JonasEB

Eric Rohmer is fairly straightforward but his use of dialogue and character will be off putting to a lot of people. On an "Easy" to "Hard" difficulty scale among the generation of French filmmakers circa-1960, be it New Wave, Left Bank, or no...(and this doesn't in any way designate how good or bad the work is, just how I think a person will acclimate to each person's films.) Easy Francois Truffaut and Louis Malle Claude Chabrol Moderate Eric Rohmer and Agnes Varda, overall on the easier side but with some difficulties Alain Resnais Hard Jacques Rivette and Jean-Luc Godard Resnais and Rivette have made films that are more "down to earth" so to speak. Some Rivette (Ne touchez pas le hache) is relatively close to Kenji Mizoguchi's films for example - particularly pre-war Mizoguchi - but a film like L'amour Fou, in form, length (four hours long), and pace, will be exceptionally difficult for almost anyone. And a clarification on my comment about Godard and narrative form - he actually does use full narratives quite often but they don't function like they do in a classical style film. Breathless and Band of Outsiders both have conventional crime plots but they mostly serve as a canvas for ideas and tangents. Contempt follows its source novel closely but the content explodes in several different directions (Godard's principle theme - communication; classicism and modernity in movies, art, and civilization; a musing on the end of the old era of movie making, placed squarely in the context of the time but also recalling the "heroic, adventurous" age of D.W. Griffith; art and commerce; and the large number of ways in which these themes come together.) On the other hand are the films like Vivre sa Vie and Two or Three Things I Know About Her, which are conscious of cinematic forms and rules but don't follow any traditional form at all. These are often called the "essay films".

Glad to see that Olive is in fact going forward with the Blu-rays. The company seemed to be in trouble a while back. Now...please, please, PLEASE get to The Savage Innocents already!

> {quote:title=FredCDobbs wrote:}{quote} > > {quote:title=Kinokima wrote:}{quote} > > I think most people who say they dislike French Films must think they are all like the French New Wave films. > > I think you are right. > > But these tend to be the most available of the French films, and perhaps the worst. Now that I've had some time to think about it, I realize that I do like older French films, but older French films are more difficult to find, both on TV and in little theaters in big cities. > > > I remember seeing several New Wave French films in "Art Theaters" in the 1960s, and I didn't like them. But I did like the Italian and Japanese films of the same era. Italian and Japanese films from that period hew closely to more traditional/classical narrative than some of the French New Wave films do but at the same time, what Jean-Luc Godard does is completely different from what Truffaut did in the French New Wave. Results will vary, so don't think everything "French New Wave" is of the same type. With Godard you need to drop all conceptions of genre and narrative and just get back to film and technique. There are no walls, not even a "breaking of the fourth wall", there's just fiction & theatricality, documentary & realism, and plot, story, & narrative and these things exist independently in varying measure depending on whatever he's doing at any given point. The rules of classical narrative cinema don't apply at all to what he does. If one doesn't like this type of thing, that's fine, but it's a completely valid way to go about making a film. But on the other hand Truffaut is mostly a classical style filmmaker, like Visconti in Italy or Kurosawa in Japan. Louis Malle, who wasn't part of the New Wave, is also mostly classical. I haven't watched Elevator to the Gallows yet so I can't speak for the "plot holes" but I'd presume they're _not_ intentional creations in his case and just a product of inexperience with fictional narrative film making (this being his first.)

Anyone else notice that just about every Civil War themed film made before WWII is from the P.O.V. of the South or seems to favor the South? I know why the studios did it that way but nevertheless... TCM could also have picked up Ang Lee's Ride With the Devil for this occasion, a modern Civil War film with a Southern P.O.V.

The Savage Innocents

I'm not irritated by movies easily. It takes something on the order of the terrible overuse of "Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair" in Barbary Coast to set me off... No one from the old guard really stands out as irritating for me but I will say that the cast of Tobacco Road, with the exception of Gene Tierney who is at least easy on the eyes, is excruciating (especially the son.) In this case that's most definitely John Ford's fault - Fordian humor taken to the deepest pits of hell. As for today, I have nothing but contempt for Russel Brand. He's not funny, he never was funny, he never will be funny, please stop showing Hop commercials on TV 24/7, and please stop putting him in every other new movie. And Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler earned a special place in hell for The Bounty Hunter.

I just get tired of hearing about it is all (my post wasn't aimed at you personally but to the general response these kinds of films would have around here.) All of the "camp" parts of Johnny Guitar have as much thematically to do with the film as the blacklist thing, simply on the level of genre and cinema but particularly within all of Nicholas Ray's films. I don't really have a problem with certain parts being considered camp but I don't think that necessarily makes the entire movie camp (and a lot of the things people find humorous about the film are intentional; some of the other potentially unintended funny moments I never laughed at - but that's me.) It just irks me that people can take the "I'll never be hungry again" speech seriously in a movie about the lies and myth of the Antebellum South and then simply cast off something as wildly original as Johnny Guitar, which is always honest with itself. I remember someone here posted that they went to see a film on a double bill with The Rocky Horror Picture show. The film that they wanted to see played first and the Rocky Horror people would not shut up. This poster actually had to berate them for ruining the movie he wanted to see. Apparently, it worked in his case and they did shut up for most of the film. From what I know about theatrical showings of Johnny Guitar, I would not be able to see the movie in this country without suffering those types of people - I'd have to go to Japan or France to see it without idiotic commentary, quotations, and all of that stuff.

Johnny Guitar and Shock Corridor aren't camp... Giant and Gone With the Wind sure are though. The difference is two know they are being excessive and with point. The other two do not.

The problem with doing Cannes is that it's impossible to see a lot of the older films. Even if we take for granted that most of them aren't as good as the remembered films, I don't feel strongly towards picking any one thing. What is refreshing is seeing so many important names of the last 20 years on the slate (as opposed to the Academy Awards foreign language category.) But I will say... 1960 - The Savage Innocents (Nicholas Ray)

> {quote:title=musikone wrote:}{quote} > This post is related to your concern about what is happening to the so-called "classic" movie and why. This is a virus which infects this entire operation. If it is not checked, and soon, more and more and more silent movies, movies from the 30s and 40s, and foreign movies, in particular, are going to disappear, as movies of the type that you mention from the 60s and later (some even later than 2000!) take center stage as the "new" classics. > > Unless we put a stop to this. Figure it out...... It has been demonstrated countless times on this board that the number of post-60s films has remained consistent for a very long time (and they're very clearly a minority.) Whatever anyone thinks of the 60s, they are still for the most part "Old Hollywood" and shouldn't be used to add weight to the percentage. TCM's silent film ratio has remained constant over 15 years but we probably got more of them last year than we ever did before. Ditto foreign language films. There is no "virus".

R.I.P. Bowie. You might not have been the biggest star but, hey, you were in They Live by Night!

I'm against colorizing particularly because the results are usually poor. Certain films, like Yankee Doodle Dandy, wouldn't be so adversely affected but a film like The Fountainhead would be. I think a lot of the aversion to black and white is predicated on the notion that films are supposed to be "realistic" - an undefinable and unreachable plateau. Certainly, preference for acting seems oriented this way (the supposed realism of a De Niro or, laughably, a Pacino vs. Grant or Stewart.) We sometimes see the same reaction in other art & literature (like Shakespeare) but film seems most susceptible to it. Knocking out the superficial importance of "realism" would go a long way in not only getting audiences to accept black and white but also a wider variety of films in general. > {quote:title=misswonderly wrote:}{quote} > but the b and w, far from hindering me from pursuing them further, had the opposite effect. They were mysterious, from another world and another time. So true. Last November TCM showed a package of early Shakespeare films circa 1900-1910. None of them were any good, as films or as Shakespeare (but I actually think it is theoretically possible to do a great silent Shakespeare film), yet they all had a quality unique to the earliest days of cinema - the jerky frame rate, the tinting and hand coloring, the gestures, the silence, and the added piano music. I found these qualities fascinating and they felt "new" in a sense. It's not the first time I'd encountered these things, far from it, but they've become so distant and alien that it is an entirely fresh experience each time.

> {quote:title=gagman66 wrote:}{quote} > Jonas, > > OK, Originally they had *THE GARDEN OF EDEN* scheduled? Or at least I thought that they did? Or is that coming up soon at another time? Don't worry, it's going to be on the next week, the 15th of May.

The Divine Lady is on May 8th, that Sunday's silent feature. http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/3794/The-Divine-Lady/ And sure, The Circus isn't exactly rare but it is usually shafted among Chaplin films (TCM skipped it on Chaplin's birthday a couple of years back.) I haven't seen it in a long time and this would have been the new Janus/Criterion edition - none of the PAL speedup, blurring, and ghosting that the MK2/Warners had (and at the pace Criterion is going it may be two or more years before it hits Blu-ray/DVD.) _________________________________ Anyway, these are my last words on the subject and then I'll shut up: If Sunday is going to be fodder for tributes, why not at least leave Silent Sunday and Imports intact? I've read numerous complaints from posters here about films they want to see running late into the night and into the morning. Give them the day, leave those precious hours of the night to the films that really need it if they have to be dumped there. So it would be a 20 hour marathon instead of a 24 hour marathon for Elizabeth Taylor...Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol didn't get _any_ tribute on TCM (not even a film on TCM Imports.)

So Dr. Zhivago, a film that has been on probably 10 or more times within the last 12 months and is readily available on video, was just on a couple of days ago, and will be on again within a week of the Tati/Chaplin cancellations, the former of which has never been on TCM to my knowledge and the latter of which hasn't aired in years...Dr. Zhivago showing #10 can't be sacrificed? Yes, you can't satisfy everyone but I highly doubt anyone would miss a cancellation of the next showing of Dr. Zhivago. You could even replace a Chaplin with a Chaplin: The Great Dictator has been on a great deal of times in the last half year, I think twice in prime time. They can't ditch it and put The Circus/A Day's Pleasure in its place? If TCM can tell people it's cancelling programming for a 24 hour tribute, they could just as easily note that they'll show the rare film on another day in place of something else. Anyone who was interested in what was being shown that Sunday would have read the notice and in particular the people aware of the Tati film being shown in April would likely keep the air date in mind and check up on it if it suddenly vanished because they probably follow the TCM schedule. And TCM doesn't always reschedule: Last year Solaris was cancelled for the 24 hour Tony Curtis tribute and it hasn't been scheduled again. I didn't need to watch then and I don't need to watch it now but that is the kind of film that is more likely to have been deprived of someone who needed to see it than Dr. Zhivago is. Sunday is the one night silent films and international fare get a guaranteed spot. I think it's only fair that if they get bumped, they should get to bump a common film on an ordinary day, they shouldn't have to wait half a year to occupy another Sunday spot that could go to another valuable movie in either category. In fact, TCM just aired The Divine Lady for 31 Days of Oscar and will air it again in May for Silent Sunday - The Circus should get its spot. It would be simple enough to replace Tati's Mr. Hulot's Holiday, the one Tati film probably everyone has seen, with the rare and lesser known Jour de Fete.

I pay attention to important details. It's clearly a work in progress: They'll eventually get you what you want - I already have what I want. It's not the end of the world.

> {quote:title=markfp2 wrote:}{quote} > If there was something you were looking forward to seeing and it's getting pre-empted, you can be assured that TCM will reschedule it. It usually takes about about four months to get back on the schedule. Of course they could always pull a film commonly seen on TCM around the same time to make room for the cancelled films like Jour de Fete - unavailable in the U.S. and never on TV unlike Tati's other films Mr. Hulot's Holiday and Mon Oncle - and placate everyone.

Sorry, I wouldn't know.

> {quote:title=BloodhoundMan wrote:}{quote} > Oh boy; this film, as many have written, has the look of a high school production. Has anyone here seen a documentary before??? This doesn't look much different from any one made in the 70s, in fact, the production values are clearly higher.

I don't care. The only reason I needed it back is that it's easy to scan through and it provided access several months ahead. On the old schedule the plot descriptions didn't matter to me, all I'm interested in is who made the thing and maybe who's in it. I probably already know what the movie is about or I could just as easily find out on wikipedia, IMDB, or any number of websites (which is exactly what I did even when the descriptions were there.) I don't need to know when something is letterboxed or not. I'm smart enough to subtract 2 hours from EST to get my Mountain Time (8:00 PM means 6:00 PM - VERY difficult...) As for printing: COPY & PASTE

Well, I guess there's something wrong with being dissatisfied with TCM's scheduling decisions... Please reschedule this sooner rather than later.

Ah, thanks a lot for bringing this back TCM!

So the silent version is a genuine high definition transfer? It would have been nice if they'd included some more screencaps of the 1923 version, I can't really judge it based on what they've provided. If Paramount did a legitimate HD transfer then I would consider buying this thing. Hopefully Warner doesn't just dump Ben-Hur '25 onto Blu-ray in SD...but it wouldn't surprise me if they did.

...please reschedule films around the immediate time they were supposed to air. Jacques Tati's Jour de Fete has been canceled due to the Elizabeth Taylor tribute (as has Charlie Chaplin's The Circus, which hasn't aired in years.) It might be half a year or more (if ever) until it is rescheduled. I have been waiting to see this since it was announced months ago. Why not place Jour de Fete (and the two Chaplins) in the place of one of the very common films TCM shows often? For instance, it could take the place of Dial M For Murder the following Tuesday. The Circus could replace The Divine Lady, which has aired recently, in May.

Well, there are collections of D.W. Griffith's films with both of them which is the bulk of their most important work. After Griffith, they both worked for different companies (Lillian - MGM, UA. Dorothy - Paramount, Fox, British National Films) so a box set wouldn't be viable.