Sprocket_Man
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Posts posted by Sprocket_Man
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> But getting back to "Greek Hero" movies, it would have been nice if they stuck more to the actual mythology. In the recently shown Helen of Troy , the horse was taken in despite someone's sense of "foreboding", while in another film, Troy , no such wariness was displayed.
That "someone" was Paris's sister, Cassandra, who, according to myth, was given the power of prophecy by the gods, but cursed because they decreed that no one should ever believe her prophecies.
The bigger problem is that in the more recent TROY the producers were obviously so anxious not to lose their star, Brad Pitt, that they re-wrote Homer to keep Achilles in the film to the end, even though he's supposed to be fatally shot in the heel with a poisoned arrow as he drags the defeated Hector's body around the walls of Troy. That was retained in the earlier Robert Wise film.
> But are you telling me Talos was played by an actor, even a very tall actor (or doorman)? I'm crushed - I kind of liked the idea that Mr. Harryhausen had somehow conjured a bronze Titan to life.
No, it was a joke, suggesting that Martin merely had a lock (pun intended) on giant-mechanical-man roles: because of his extreme height, he was cast as the robot, Gort, in the original THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL. Yoiu may rest assured that Talos was animated 100% on a tabletop by Ray Harryhausen.
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> Whatever happened to the movie closeup? You dont see it anymore, much at all. Do you suppose it is the modern screen formats? Or is it that todays actors and actresses lack the "chops" to pull it off in a "believable" manner?
You've actually got it backward: thanks to the pernicious influence of television, where many current and recent feature-film directors got their start, modern movies are almost nothing but close-ups. What no one seems to understand nowadays is how to use the long shot, or shoot anything without a long (telephoto) lens. What today's directors seem unable to comprehend is that a close-up is a trump card: overuse it and it loses its power.
What you may actually be referring to is that the classic over-the-shoulder shot so prevalent in films shot in the old 1.37:1 Academy Ratio doesn't work well in widescreen; the extreme rectangular shape of the frame simply makes it awkward compositionally.
Take a look at CASABLANCA again and actually count the number of close-ups (defined as anything featuring one individual, from the chest-up -- a medium close-up -- or tighter, all the way to extreme close-up, when just the head fills the frame, usually with the very top of the head cut off, which is typical of classic Hollywood visual composition) and you'll find that there really aren't that many; director Michael Curtiz does indeed save them for when they'll do the most good. What the film does have is lots and lots of the aforementioned long shots, whether they're used as establishing shots or not.
Another problem with an overreliance on close-ups is that many modern actors tend to use them as a crutch; their performances become overly minimalistic to the point that the drama isn't communicated effectively.
As for me, I'm really looking forward to picking up my copy of the new Ultimate CASABLANCA Blu-ray set -- whose full 8K transfer those at the screening viewed -- at the Warner Bros. company store next Tuesday.
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>But one thing I like about a film such as, say, *Jason and the Argonauts*, is the exterior shots, like Jason and his boys wandering around some island, breeze blowing, plants waving, sea breaking on the shore, and it all looks as though they're really there. Of course, it's possible the giant bronze statue of Tallus that came to life and pursued them may not have been really there.
That's because they are there, and the Greek Islands never looked more spectacular.
As for Talos, he was played by Lock Martin, the seven-foot, seven-inch doorman at Grauman's Chinese Theater.
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>When they arrived, the two fellows were informed that Christian had mysteriously shown up the day before, as if he knew they were coming! They went out to see him and .............
.......and were never seen again, though Christian was observed licking his lips for several days afterward.
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RING OF BRIGHT WATER is otter nonsense.
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>Warner Bros. did the smartest thing. When it became clear that TV wasn't a passing fad, they started producing product for television.
And, yet, they failed to take full advantage of the new medium. In the late 1950's Warner's had the opportunity to buy the ABC network -- the old NBC Red Network of which NBC had been forced to divest themselves because of a Justice Department anti-trust decree -- but Jack and Harry Warner decided to pass on it. Had they controlled an entire network the long-term benefit to the studio probably would have been immense. Ironically, ABC is now the essential subsidiary of a Hollywood studio, Disney, and the other two original major networks are sister companies of others studios: CBS/Paramount; NBC/Universal.
Even though network and studio cultures were always a somewhat awkward fit, time has shown that they still need each other, and Warner Bros. could've led the way. Movie people like Jack Warner always looked down on television as slumming; too bad that he failed to see acquiring the network as an opportunity to turn that slum into a high-rent district.
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>...when Welles was trying to make the decision whether or not to go to Rio on the tour, he approached John Ford for advice. Ford told him he shouldn't trust the studio and should finish editing *Ambersons* before leaving the country. Welles didn't take his advice.
According to Charlton Heston, who of course starred in Welles's TOUCH OF EVIL, the restless and impatient Welles tended to lose interest in projects before their completion. Whether a studio fired him before he could finish editing, or even begin editing, was almost irrelevant, as Orson would by then have been looking to move on to something else.
With KANE, of course, Welles stuck it through to the end, but it was, after all, his first Hollywood film, and he also had John Houseman to corral him and keep him focused. Whether the government had prevailed on Welles to go to South America after the principal photography on AMBERSONS, or the Universal executives grew tired of his production methods on TOUCH OF EVIL, it may have been inevitable that the task of completing these films would have fallen into other, less talented hands anyway.
It was just Orson being Orson...
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The word "bunk" isn't as common as it usded to be, but it still can be heard. There are also variations still in use: "bunkum," "bunko" (used by law enforcement for their anti-fraud units), and "bunkaroo" (used in Hitchcock's FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT ).
Then there's also the contest-winning catch-phrase in Preston Sturges's CHRISTMAS IN JULY: "If you can't sleep, it isn't the coffee. It's the bunk."
Perhaps most important, it's a much more genteel was of saying B.S., and isn't nice to preserve this vestage of (as Obi-wan Kenobi put it) "a more civilzed age."
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But General Herkimer (for whom a county in upstate New York is named) was wounded in the knee in the movie.
In any event, DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK is one of the most wonderfully vivid movies anyone would ever want to see, a gem, and surely the best Revolution-era film ever made.
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>Payne Stewart. Not an actor but great professional golfer, character, and a joy to watch!
Strictly speaking, Stewart wasn't killed by the plane's crashing; he and the others aboard his aircraft died from lack of oxygen caused by a passenger compartment pressure-valve leak. The plane, already filled with corpses, continued to fly on autopilot for hours until it ran out of fuel and crashed.
The same can probably be said for Glenn Miller. The best available evidence is that his plane was struck by bombs dropped by Allied bombers releasing their payloads over the English Channel after a raid. Again, the occupants of his plane died well before they ever hit the water.
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>I can only speculate that it was because the English had tea imported from China long before the Americans had coffee imported from Latin America. Any ideas? After years of watching movies in which frustrated angry men ask for a "bicarbonate of soda", I've decided to try it, and it does seem to have a relaxing calming effect, especially when my stomach is irritated. The English, on the other hand, tend to take a shot of brandy. I tried a bottle of that but I didn’t care for it.
I drink neither coffee, nor tea, and my stomach's never irritated.
Draw what conclusions you will.
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Since Scarlett and Rhett's daughter, Bonnie, died after falling off her pony, and Scarlett probably couldn't have any more children after aborting from her tumble down the Butlers' Atlanta mansion staircase, I think all succeeding generations in the O'Hara family would issue from sisters Suellen and Careen.
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>This is the story of a Irish woman who hates the English so much she wants to work for the IRA but gets involved with Nazis.
The Germans did, indeed, view Ireland as fertile ground to recruit anti-British agents, and the British were particularly vigilant as regarded traffic between their island and the large one to the west.
Interesting that TCM's showing of this film should follow close on the heels (pun intended) of Nike's marketing a new shoe called the Black and Tan for St Patrick's Day (when it was pointed out to them they apologized. Profusely)
If you're not familiar with the significance of the Black and Tans, please refer to John Ford's THE INFORMER.
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One should never illustrate a posting on color cinematography with a tinted black-and-white photo. Yuk.
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> Nothing wrong intristically with method acting. There ARE those trained in "The Method" who are so good at it you can't really tell. Like Garfield. Then there are those who make it obvious. Like Dean.
The problem with the above, and this whole discussion, is that most of the actors cited weren't Method actors, which is to say that they weren't students of Lee Strasberg (who was, himself, a disciple of the Method developed by Konstantin Stanislavsky), or products of the Group Theater that Strasberg co-founded in 1931 with Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford.
Brando, who studied under Stella Adler (who detested Strasberg), wasn't a Method actor; neither was Garfield.
The confusion stems, I think, from the very evolution that acting underwent, both on stage and on film, during the first half of the 20th century. Garfield, and then Kirk Douglas, were among the first to break from the measured "big-acting" that had settled in as the accepted style of the time. When Brando came along he pushed it still farther. Unlike "The Mothod," in which actors are taught to internalize their character's emotions, feeling what they feel and making themselves inseparable from the character (often carrying off-screen or stage), what each of these actors did is bring a level of observation of human behavior that allowed them to add a texture to performances that few, if any, actors had achieved before.
Kirk Douglas (not a Method actor) was once asked if he ever lost himself in his character to the extent that he "took his performance home." He replied that it happened only once, when he played Vincent van Gogh in LUST FOR LIFE, and it was an experience he never wanted to repeat. I frankly feel that actors can take their internalizations too far. Like the films, themselves, there's a point where the striving for verisimilitude saps the life out of a drama. A little formalism and theatricality is eminently useful for keeping the audience abreast of the emotional geography of a story.
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It's really impossible to make a fair comparison between the two Fairbankses: Senior was a creature of the silent cinema (though he did appear in several sound films, most notoriously with wife mary Pickford in the 1929 THE TAMING OF SHREW, whose main title contained the now-infamous credit, "From the plasy by William Shakespeare, additional dialogue by Sam Taylor"), while Junior, working in talkies, grew up in his father's shadow, wanting to emulate him, but determined not to copy him (though anybody seeing SINBAD THE SAILOR would justifiably feel otherwise). It didn't help that Senior tried mightily to dissuade, if not prevent, his son from becoming an actor.
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Not to the point of Salome demanding your head on a platter, but the ideal Essentials co-host has yet to be found...
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> A good car could be bought in the 1920s for $600, and home that cost $500,000 to a million dollars today cost only about $3,500 in the early 1930s. So his $3,000 a year income in the early 1920s would be like an annual inheritance income today of $100,000 to $200,000 or more. Yet that was not enough for her.
$3000 in the 1920's had the equivalent buying power of about $40,000 today. Certainly enough to live on, but hardly in the bracket you suggest.
>The Razor's Edge's dramatic and beautiful score by Alfred Newman was originally done by Newman a decade before for Goldwyn's These Three. The music works just as well here, heightening the visuals of this film tremendously. Since it was virtually a repeat score from before, I assume that's the reason why it did not win an Academy Award nomination in 1946. Since Newman won nine Oscars in his career, however, I guess he was somehow able to survive this "tragedy."
Taking over the running of Fox's music department in 1939 made Newman a very busy man; between functioning as administrator, conductor of others' scores and writing his own, it's a wonder that he even knew what day of the week it was. It's also hardly surprising that he'd re-use themes from other scores of his (which is what he did; he didn't simply lift his entire score from THESE THREE). There are, for instance, themes from THE BLACK SWAN in CAPTAIN FROM CASTILE, from THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME in THE ROBE and PRINCE OF FOXES, and from THE ROBE in THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD.
Other composers did the same thing, usually due to time constraints, but also the result of a conviction that producers or audiences were unlikely to recognize or remember a theme from an earlier movie. They certainly didn't foresee, that decades later, obsessive fans, with these movies and recordings at their disposal, would sit around making comparisons.
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Please stop posting the same message across multiple forums. People will find it in their own good time.
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Why don't you include a link to get there, then?
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> True story: When we went to "The Hall of Presidents" at Disney World in 1980, even my six year old son noticed that all the Presidents sounded the same. It was Frees doing all the voices. He even mentioned that it sounded like some cartoon character which I've long since forgotten. It may have been one of those Rudolph or Frosty specials instead of a cartoon.
"It's like going to see Abe Lincoln at Disneyland!"
...Don Masters (Godfrey Cambridge) upon encountering robot TPC (The Phone Company) executive Arlington Hewes (Pat Harrington) in the great 1960's satire THE PRESIDENT'S ANALYST.
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> Let me try to rephrase this: if, when I'm watching a film, it does not take me out of myself - there's a Greek word for it, but I can't be bothered to look it up right now ( not "catharsis", that's something different again) - if I don't in some way get into the world of the movie, and if I keep wondering when it will be over, then I am bored and I make no apology for it. I don't agree with SprocketMan or Swithin or clore that there's something worthwhile to be derived from every movie-watching experience we have.
The word you're looking for is vicarious -- that which, to some degree, enables you to see yourself, or live your life, in place of someone else.
>But really since when was there ever only 10 (Commandments)??
There actually were only five, but the Academy expanded it to ten a couple of years ago.
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>History can dispell historical myths i.e. Paul Revere's April 1775 riding though the streets yelling The British are coming! LOL, we WERE British subjects. That's like someone running down Wall Street yelling The Americans are coming!
No, the whole point to the Revolution is that, because of physical distance from the mother country, the growing sense that this continent of North America was breeding a species of tougher, more resilient and independent men and women, and little slights like the British Crown's taxation without representation, the people here had begun to think of themselves as "Americans" well in advance of the formation of a new country called the United States of America.
The British were, by contrast, the British (or, more correctly, the English, who dominated the other two components of the Great Britain at the time, the Scots and Welsh), so that's exactly what the colonists (except the Tory loyalists) would have called them on the night of Revere's ride (even if Revere never completed it, leaving it to a couple of other guys called Prescott and Dawes).
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>I agree that Hepburn did not do the lower/working classes...
Yes, and it just occurred to me that when it comes time to make a "biopic" of the life of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the only actor who could possibly do the role justice is Katharine Hepburn. No doubt she'd nail his effeminate quality cold.
After all, it's only a small step from THE PHILADELPHIA STORY's Tracy Lord to Romney.
I can see it now: the movie should be called Long Day's Journey into Mitt (although The Romney of Scarecrow Marsh also has a ring to it).
Too bad that the timing hasn't worked out, but perhaps this is one instance when digital technology may actually ride to the rescue and resurrect Hepburn for the role of a lifetime (even if it's past her lifetime).
CASABLANCA
in General Discussions
Posted
TCM isn't releasing the CASABLANCA Blu-ray, its sister company, Warner Home Video, is. Each has its own schedule, but the screenings of the film around the country is still obviously meant as a cross-company marketing tool to drum up interest in, and desire for, for the Blu-ray.