Sprocket_Man

Kazan was a rat, with no sense of scruples whatsoever. Joe Mankiewicz praised his work as a director, not a human being. As for the Communists in Hollywood (or anywhere else in the U.S., for that matter), most of them were indeed "dupes," seduced by an ideology that, like Christianity, always promised more than it could ever deliver. Sure the Soviets had agents in this country who were here to undermine our institutions; we had agents in the USSR whose job was to acomplish the very same thing? So what? That's what adversaries do. But there's little true blame to be laid on those in the Hollywood community who were rightly outraged and disgusted by decades of policies and actions taken by the wealthiest and most powerful in society (sund familiar?) that thought nothing of using the mechanism of government to increase their wealth at the expense of others. In any case, Communism wasn't exactly the greatest evil ever introduced into the world; it was a social experiment -- an inevitable product of the Industrial Revolution -- that had its run and then collapsed under the weight of its own inefficiency and injustices. The only reason people like you keep bringing it up, then, is because you admire the very "malefactors of great wealth" (Theodore Roosevelt's words) whose depradations forced many Americans to seek solutions in that system that promised more than it could deliver. In making promises that more and more Americans are beginning to see as empty rhetoric, U.S. society risks going the same way at the USSR...and you and your kind, sir, with your divisive claptrap, will be its palladin.

>I'm surprised that no one has - as far as I can tell - mentioned this upcoming event: On March 9 ( sold out) and possibly March 11, at the William Randolph Hearst estate in San Simeon, California, a screening of *Citizen Kane* will take place, as part of the 2012 San Luis Obispo International Film Festival. Hearst's great-grandson, and president of the Hearst Corporation, Steven Hearst, will be present in a meaningful gesture which, on the part of the Hearst family, finally acknowledges the greatness of the film. Well, then you haven't been looking terribly hard. I started a thread on it on January 23rd: http://forums.tcm.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8609732

It was shot flat 1.37, and is supposed to be hard-matted to 1.85 for theatrical exhibition. Nevertheless, there is, as they say, many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip. If the matting is applied improperly, it can retain too much at the bottom of the frame, at the expense of the top.

> Capra's political leanings, found in compiled bio in IMDb.com: > Although most of his films were written by individuals on the political left who tended to exude the spirit of the New Deal, Capra himself was a lifelong conservative Republican who never voted for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, admired Francisco Franco and Benito Mussolini and later, during the McCarthy "Red Scare era. served as a secret FBI informer for his friend J. Edgar Hoover., > according to "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume 3, 1991-1993, pages 96-98. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001008/bio Capra's politics were morre nuanced than that, as laid out in Joe McBride's exhaustively researched and magisterial biography of the director, Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success (though the Capra family disagreed with several of McBride's conclusions, when they sought to make a documentary film avbout Frank Capra, they went to McBride to use his research materials, so highly did they regard his diligence). According to McBride, Capra tended to go whichever way the wind was blowing politically, and had few really strong political convictions, either way, though it's probably fair to say that he did have a pretty set sense of social justice. I'd stay away from the amateur claptrap one typically finds on IMDb.

It falls squarely in the "pretentious" genre.

>I was over a buddy's house. He had the TV on watching The Thing From Another Planet. So I casually mentioned, "You know that the guy who plays the "thing" is the guy from Gunsmoke. He said he didn't know that. So I said, "Yeah, it's James Arness". He said, "I still find it hard to believe that other guy is his brother" So I asked, "Who, Peter Graves?" Well, it actually called THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, but I guess it's easy to confuse it with the later THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET with all that vile marijuana smoke in the air.

>Ive read that if this wins best best picture it will be the 2nd time in history that a silent movie won since the academy awards began. Also think i heard this discussed on IMDB that no movie about Hollywood has ever won Best Picture, this could be wrong but its what ive read. THE ARTIST isn't completely silent: there are a few lines of dialogue, one full scene with sound effects, and a synchronized music score throughout. It's only "silent" as a conceit, and not as a consequence of limited technology, as was the case with WINGS (and the 1927-27 winner of the Academy's one-time-only "Unique and Artistic Picture" award). Comparing them, or even calling THE ARTIST "silent" is misleading and pointless.

No, Jack Warner was a Democrat.

>$25 seems like alot for an audio cassette, (Fred). How long ago was that. Some people, myself included would probably copy taped music for nothing so long as you supplied the tape. Oh well, I guess everybody has to eat or whatever. Anybody who believes the asinine fiction that the Nazis took control of Germany because the citizens had no guns is apt to be suckered into all sorts of dumb deals. What's next, Fred, selling the family cow for a handful of magic beans?

>What ever happened to the movie Omega Man with Charleton Heston? There's no such person as "Charleton" Heston -- only Charlton Heston. So, scareda zombies, areya?

> I knew Warner had to be Republican, but a pragmatist. Who's to say how he voted once he reached the voting booth. Jack L. Warner was, in fact, a Democrat, but he never let politics get in the way Warner Bros. profits. When the Waldorf Conference -- a summit of all the studio moguls and top independent producers held in December, 1947 -- came to the conclusion that their continuing to employ personnel who carried even the slightest taint of Communist sympathy or associations would be deleterious to business, Jack Warner jumped on the bandwagon and became a vociferous supporter of blacklisting (as did the even-more-liberal Dore Schary of MGM). Only Samuel Goldwyn, to his great credit, expressed reservations as to the morality of refusing to hire based on unsubstantiated assertions, and blacklisting in general.

Ordinarily, I think the lack of photos of the participants here is appropriate; most are from ordinary walks of life and probably don't feel compelled to share their appearance. In your case, though, I'm wondering whether you might care to post a picture of yourself so that, if you should eventually get that professional break, all of us can say (or, at least, think), "she got here start right here..."

All what "Nazi films?"

>It, too, has one of the great screen duels, a superior cast, rousing musical score by Alfred Newman... Even if that rousing score was written, it is now generally conceded, by Hugo Friedhofer, though Newman received sole cedit.

Sheer POEtry.

>Our country's name is "The United States of America". See the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. All of the Western Hemisphiere is "America". You apparently haven't traveled in Central or South America, since you don't realize that they call themselves "Americans" too. It's like: Europeans, Asians, Africans, Americans, etc. It's probably an inevitable consequence of the U.S.'s sense of Manifest Destiny that it should appropriate the term "American" and turn it into one synonymous with "the United States."

If it wins the Best Picture Oscar, it'll only be a testament to the thinness of the field this year. While a very pleasant way to spend an hour and forty minutes, THE ARTIST is the proverbial inch deep. As Gertrude Stein once said, There's no there there. As for me, a little substance merits far more consideration for superlatives than this exercise in style over substance. The film's greatest accomplishment is that, in this day and age, such a thing could actually get made at all.

> But the thing that really irritates me is the shameful way the Miniver's daughter, Judy, is treated. She constantly gets crowded out of both the plot and the frame, mostly due to the antics of her oh-too-cute brother. She hardly has any lines, is virtually ignored in the scenes she's in, until, in the final frame of the film, she is completely obliterated. I am always torn, as I watch it, between enjoying all the wonderful things in it, and my anger at the rotten deal she gets. It is the rock in the shoe, the sand in the sandwich, of an otherwise excellent film. If they didn't want to treat her fairly, then they shouldn't have had her in the film at all Maybe William Wyler should've have had Judy gunned down by the downed German flier before Kay disarms him and calls the constables. Yeah...that would've provided a very nice sting right in the middle of the picture. And it's sleight of hand, not 'slight"...

...WHO GOES TO THE ELECTRIC CHAIR IN A PLACE IN THE SUN. >I hereby suggest the suits at Turner Entertainment pony up the cash to name the home of the Oscars "The Robert Osborne Theater". What a ghastly idea (Bob could warm up the Oscar-night crowd by reciting old TCM scripts full of misinformation). It may be moot, anyway, since the Academy is considering moving the ceremonies to the much bigger Nokia Theater in downtown L.A. (and, as a resident of Hollywood, who's inconvenienced by street closures for the week preceding the Oscars, the sooner they leave, the better).

>First time I've laughed aloud since Gandhi started! How can you have even found anything funny since Gandhi was assassinated? As for THE 49th PARALLEL, the central section in the Canadian heartland of Alberta is, by far, the best in the movie. Oddly, and rather ironically, it seems to recall (for me, anyway) the tone and rhythms of the "mountain films" of which Germans have always been so fond, especially during the Nazi era. And re Walbrook, I just had a conversation with someone about THE RED SHOES. I stated that I really don't care for it, not because it isn't a wonderful and utterly audacious piece of filmmaking -- which it is -- but because I think the music, including, if not especially, the ballet, itself, is third-rate. Brian Easdale's music is predictable and tedious, not even remotely worthy of the film for which it was written. Though British films frequently drew on home-grown composers of considerable note in the concert hall -- Williams, Arnold Bax, Malcolm Arnold, Arthur Bliss -- I've always found British film music (with the exception of William Walton, a true titan) like British food used to be: substantial but uninspired. Music figures dso prominently in THE RED SHOES that anything less than anything groundbraking in its scoring can only undercut the whole scheme that Powell and Pressburger conceived. It's a great shame...

The movie's actually called CORVETTE K-225.

!

Treves was actually the the great nephew and namesake of Dr Frederick Treves, the surgeon who became famous for discovering and befriending Joseph Merrick, best known as the "Elephant Man" (played in the David Lynch film by Anthony Hopkins). You may also recall that, when the film was shown on AMC, in his introductions the hapless Bob Dorian would pronounce the poor doctor's name "TREV-ehss" instead of the correct "TREEVZ."

> :Walbrook is fascinatingly miscast, perhaps... Not necessarily; you haven't seen the long-lost excised part of the film in which his character browbeats Glynis Johns's character into becoming the first-ever Hutterite ballerina. > One doesn't got many opportunities to hear film scores by Ralph Vaughn Williams, either. True, but Williams wasn't the first choice to score the film. Powell and the producers had wanted Miklos Rozsa (who had written the music for Powell's THE SPY IN BLACK -- also about a German U-Boat's grounding in Canadian waters -- four years earlier), but he'd already gone to Hollywood with Alexander Korda's THE THIEF OF BAGDAD company (co-directed by Powell), decided to stay there because of the greater opportunities, and was unavailable.

I don't believe any of this. "Rosebud" is the very mechanism that propels the film's plot, is spoken perhaps a half-dozen times, and seen on the sled as it's consumed by flames in the furnace. If Hearst was so apoplectic over its inclusion, then even one mention would have been one too many. It's quite simple: there can't have been anything removed at Hearst's insistence for two reasons: One: The film couldn't have survived dramatically with mention of "Rosebud" excised, and Two: Welles's contract for KANE with RKO was ironclad, and entirely in his favor. The very same protections he negotiated that prevented Ted Turner from colorizing the film forty years later also handcuffed RKO, which otherwise would have acceded to Hearst's demands. The studio wouldn't make the same mistake twice, however -- that's why they were able to cut and re-shoot THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS while Welles was in South America. As RKO campaign manual for their exhibitors crowed about their production slate for 1942: "Showmanship instead of genius!"