JonnyGeetar

Yes, The Captain's Paradise is a delight! Show Lil' Tiki The Horse's Mouth too if you get the chance. And get NETFLIX if ye do not already have it (GE is on DVD) GENUINE CLASS is the best. Great Expectations is, oddly, the only Dickens novel I do NOT care for. Everyone else I know adores it, but the movie is (in my opinion) the BEST Dickens film EVER...Which is funny, because I love David Copperfield and A Tale of Two Cities as novels and feel that the film versions don't entirely capture the magic of the books. Yes, that's right, I have read (and loved) the unabridged David Copperfield I keep meaning to have tee-shirts made proclaiming that. ps- wish they'd show the 1936 (?) version of Eliot's The Mill on the Floss pss- have never seen the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol

Alan Napier (Alfred the Butler) apparently had a lot of fun ribbing "Awful Otto" for whom he worked on Forever Amber when Otto did Batman in 1966...Apparently Otto had a little trouble finding his mark, something he would rip into actors for doing when they were working for him. Why can't you find any of the old Batman eps from the 60's....I would LOVE to see them again, is it some sort of Fox vs. WB legal haggling thing?

My only beef with Murder is the amateur performance by the (real-life) judge they hired to play the judge in the movie. It comes damn near ruining the whole shebang (for me,) Laura is one of the classic films that got me in to classic films, although I admit it has it's idiosyncracies (someone got shot in the hall, but don't worry, we'll just Bon Ami the blood stain and have a little cocktail party!) I think Bunny Lake is Missing is as close as Preminger came to doing a "flawless" film. Oh, and he was the BEST Mr. Freeze EVER.

then I suppose it's also the wrong place to note that I Shot Jesse James seems more and more lifeless and tedious each time I see it (and Lord knows, I've had plenty of oppurtunities.)

> {quote:title=HollywoodGolightly wrote:}{quote} > I actually think The Hurt Locker is by far the best war movie that has come out of Hollywood in quite some time. Oh, I didn't mean to deny that, and in fact I've heard the same thing, I was just pointing out that KB has directed three of the most painful movies I can recall sitting through, each progressively more punishing than the last.

> {quote:title=redriver wrote:}{quote} > I just watched DAISY KENYON. It's not a great movie. Few Preminger films are. It's a romantic triangle and little more. But it's mature, smart, and intriguing. I have nothing against a good soap opera. This one is well worth seeing. I appreciate this message board, as I had never heard of the movie until recently. Agreed. Agreed. Agreed. Agreed. Agreed. NOTE: Years later (allegedly) Otto Preminger himself was asked about the movie and did not remember directing it in the first place. ps- The Daisy Kenyon DVD is loaded with extras about the movie, Crawford, Fox Noir, and Preminger at Fox. Edited by: JonnyGeetar on Jan 29, 2010 10:16 AM

Is this the wrong place to note that I Shot Jesse James is on _AGAIN_ ?

I have not seen The Hurt Locker but when it comes to hurting, the movies of Kathryn Bigelow (sic) rank high on my list. K-19 Strange Days and Point Break Deep hurting.

Come-a-tie-eye yippee.

Boy, I was STUNNED at the accuracy with which they depicted the communists. Hiring former members of the Bowery Boys and Dead-End kids and extras from the old WB Gangster movies was really perfect casting. Light years before Reds it was!

AND... I don't think Avatar is going to help, now things are going to suck in 3-D- which is expensive and will take focus away even more from acting, story, those old things no one gives a rat's **** about now anyhow. I have also seen firsthand how the "star system" ruins movies. agents and managers get into a **** contest to get their clients into projects, demand high (uncalled for) salaries, and then want the script re-written from page one to focus on their clients. And I think abdominal muscles are the new form of emoting.

I dunno, I kind of think The Women (1939) has many of the elements that define a western....

It's funny that you mention John Wayne, because I remembered something today I read a while ago in Inside Oscar : Duke made a quote in regards to his onetime costar Jean Arthur around the time she was nominated for The More The Merrier He shot down a question in regards to her reputation for being frosty and aloof with fellow actors and was quick to point out that visiting servicemen were always welcome at her dressing room, unlike others he had worked with. Meanwhile... Hedda Hopper called Arthur "the most criticized star in Hollywood"

i think there is a 5-disc Cary Grant Columbia (now owned by Sony) DVD boxed set out there. It contains Holiday, The Talk of the Town, Only Angels Have Wings, The Awful Truth, and His Girl Friday i bought it on sale at a Movie Stop for under $25, all the prints are all _pristine_ there are trailers and featurettes and a set of lobby card repints. i bought it just for Friday and Truth which are both also out there on some really poor quality DVD and VHS's. It's highly recommended.

Anyone else think Marlene looks even better in Witness for the Prosecution made about nine years later ? I didn't notice Arthur's clothes, but I do have to say I did not dig that Dagmaresque, braided pastry thing that was going on with her hair, reminded me of Madonna's 1993 unfortunate post- Erotica Swiss Miss period. Can you imagine a big-budget studio picture being shot in Europe with an A-Director these days that featured two leading actresses both over 45 (neither one being Meryl Streep)?

It reminds me of a story about how, during the filming of Mr. Skeffington , Bette Davis crashed a Packard Coupe through what she thought was Vincent Sherman's living room and made it all the way to the Solarium when she discovered it was actually Michael Curtiz's house. Boy, was THAT embarassing!

I think the problem many have is not that TCM repeats, it's WHAT they repeat (horrid Disney live-action movies, A Thousand Clowns ; the Angela Lansbury oeuvre) and the times of day they show stuff (****-crack of dawn, late nite, same things on Sunday.) It's gotten more tedious over last year, but I've come to feel like I'm beating a dead horse when I **** about it.... Of course, here I am flogging away. OMG, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is coming on AGAIN.

> {quote:title=Hibi wrote:}{quote} > She seemed to make a habit of driving up to director's houses......... Better than driving through them, I suppose.

two things i'll toss out before i (try) to get some work done today: 1.I am fine with Arthur in Shane :a film in which she is at her least Arthurian. (In fact, I didn't know it was her until I imdb'd it after seeing it for the first time.) 2. I have tried to like Jean Arthur, I really have. So many people whose opinions I respect really like and admire her...But it just ain't happening. I feel the same way about In a Lonely Place , but that's another thread.

> {quote:title=finance wrote:}{quote} > If you tell me that Jean Arthur had an irritating voice, and June Allyson did not, then I give up. Okay, fine, yes, I would take a Jean Arthur film festival over watching June Allyson in anything for five minutes. You win that one.

> {quote:title=HollywoodGolightly wrote:}{quote} > > {quote:title=visualfeast wrote:}{quote} > > She never gave a bad performance, though Columbia sometimes gave her inferior scripts. > > Wasn't she Columbia's top star - at least until Rita Hayworth came along? Yes, and (grateful thing that she was) when her contract was up, she ran through the studio shouting "I'm free! I'm free!" (allegedly) She did about four more films and a TV show and that was it. For the record, I am NOT saying she was a crummy actress, I am saying she annoys the hell out of me. I have always considered Jean Arthur to be the "Bizarro" Irene Dunne. Both looked similar, both were youthful beyond their years (both born at the turn of the century) both were bubbly and homespun. But I'll take Irene over Jean EVERY time, There's something less frosty and more genuine about her,

> {quote:title=visualfeast wrote:}{quote}You admit falling asleep during the film; perhaps if you had remained awake for the entire thing you'd have a different take on it Nah, she bugged me for the first hour and fifteen too. and it's not entirely the voice... Elizabeth Taylor, for example, sounds like a Fishwife screaming her wares on the street, but she's a brilliant actress and I adore her, There's just something so faux folksy-poo about Arthur, so "Golly Gee! Let's put on a show!" about her...There's a scene in Only Angels Have Wings where she's in Cary Grant's cabin making coffee and she goes into this little spiel about "oh, it's so warm and cozy in here with all the rain outside and I thought I'd make coffee...." I wish Cary would just palm her face and push her over a la' The Philadelphia Story

the voice, yes, has MUCH to do with it. she is, at times, the cinematic equivalent of running a garden fork down a chalkboard. Had we put her on a megaphone and somehow been able to broadcast her reading the Santa Monica phonebook throughout all of Germany and Japan, we would have won the war so much sooner. shame, really. Also, I have read numerous bios and blips that paint her as far from Miss Congeniality, frosty and aloof with costars, and (in some cases) difficult for directors to work with. I know Stevens and Capra loved her, but I find her ESPECIALLY insufferable in all her Capra movies and think she's dreadful in Only Angels Have Wings There are plenty of actresses I'm not a big fan of (Jane Wyman, Anne Sheridan, Kay Francis) but in each of them, I have seen moments where I was like "Okay, I get it." With Jean Arthur, I never get it.

i feel bad because i dozed off during what i gather was a rather important 15 minutes or so in the film. when i went to sleep Marlene Dietrich was sort of the heroine, and then, next thing I know, she's being carted off to break rocks in a Gulag (yeah, I'm so sure.) In the end, I'm rather surprised Wilder coaxed her in to doing such a thankless role. i could not help but see so much of One, Two, Three and Witness for the Prosecution in this, I have to say I kind of prefer both of them, but I think Foreign Affair demands repeated viewings...not that I'll get the chance with it not on DVD. I wish the set design/art decoration had gotten Oscar nominated. Does Jean Arthur annoy the everliving crap out of anyone else here? I admit she has her moments (esp. the "Paul Revere" recitation) but I found her even more annoying in this than I do in The More the Merrier or Talk of the Town (two films i have never been able to finish she grates on me so much.)

My bad on the Holiday Inn mix-up. I had a feeling I was getting something wrong as I tend to avoid movies about the holidays and/or featuring Danny Kaye. I will always remember, an episode of my life a few years ago: My Dad and I were really stressed with the usual Christmas bull**** . We got home from some dinner or party or something and I turned on TCM while I cleaned the kitchen. Holiday Inn was on and they were smack in the mid part of Ole' Abe Lincoln . It was one of the most offensive things I've ever seen and the both of us almost died laughing, It really brightened up the night for us. I love it when TCM goes all un-PC ps-This has to be one of the most intriguing and hilarious series of threads I have read on this site.