Sprocket_Man
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Posts posted by Sprocket_Man
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>Fred, boy is my face red. Can you believe it was due to the HDMI plug being in the wrong socket, or whatever it's called on the back of the television? I kid you not, as Parr used to say!
How can one plug an HDMI into the wrong jack? An HDMI will only fit into an HDMI and, due to its shape, cannot even be inserted upside-down. My Samsung set has four HDMI jacks, any one of which will provide the proper signal as long as the set's input is set to that particular source.
PS:
Parr (Catherine) = sixth wife of Henry VIII, 1543-1547.
Paar (Jack) = host of NBC's "Tonight Show," 1957-1962.
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Janet Gaynor. Not plain, exactly, but very, very mousey.
Frankly, I don't think there were many actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age much plainer than Bette Davis, and it's a testament to her talent that she reached the pinnacle of her profession in spite of the face that nature gave her (one can even argue that she attained that status precisely because of her appearance, as her's was a face into which one could read any emotion, so uncluttered was it by any notions, or audience preconceptions, of physical beauty. In essence, her performance became her face, and not vice versa, as it is with so many screen actors).
As terrific as Olivia DeHavilland is in her greatest film, THE HEIRESS, one cannot help but question how a woman who looks like her can plausibly be made up to look plain, as her character, Catherine Sloper, is supposed to be (in a sense, she's not really, physically, plain, but has been inculcated by her father's subtle, veiled scorn to think of herself as such), but with Bette there is never a question. You must admit that no one was better at playing lonely spinsters than Davis, and she played a lot of 'em.
As for the aformentioned Marjorie Main and Marie Dressler, "plain" doesn't describe them, either, since the adjective can only really be applied to a fairly young woman to make fair comparisons. Main and Dressler were never young; prematurely elderly is more to the point.
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I have never experienced any of these problems with TCMHD on my Samsung set. I always get the proper ratio.
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>Doh, color me stupid. So that was the alien's HOME where Keir was allowed to live out his life and then the aliens rebirthed him? Judas Priest, and I even read the book.
No, just a recreation of familiar surroundings to give Dave Bowman comforting points of reference while he ages, dies and is reborn.
>But why just (Bowman)? Why did they kill off everyone else and rebirth him? Did they do the same thing to a female? I guess I paid too much attention to the music and the pretty colors.
"They" (I presume you mean the aliens) didn't "kill off everyone else" -- that was HAL's handiwork.
The whole process that led to Bowman's rebirth as the Starchild was the final stage of a cosmic test:
Test 1: The man-apes learn to kill from Monolith #1, are introduced to the joys of being carnivores (high cholesterol to be worried about later).
Test 2: The human race, having survived and advanced for four-million years, reaches its planet's Moon, locates Monolith #2, determines where #2's signal is headed.
Test #3: Humans make the more arduous journey to Jupiter to rendezvous with Monolith #3
Test #4: A human (Bowman) enters and survives the trip through the Stargate with his body and wits mainly intact.
Clarke's novel isn't too much more specific as to what the aliens' ultimate purpose is, but that's not the point (there's a deeper, rather ironic, point, but I won't make it here). Bowman wasn't chosen by the aliens; rather, his own race chose him. Had he or the technology or racial determination that sent him to Jupiter faltered at any point along the way, and the human race would have been allowed to go its merry way, utterly oblivious to the greater intelligences that had guided humanity in its infancy, and that were prepared to help them take the next great step. The only question is how many other lesser races were breing assisted at the same time.
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> (Frees) doesn't narrate The War of the Worlds, but is an onscreen radio reporter serving much the same function in that film.
Well, he doesn't...and he does. While Cedric Hardwicke narrates the film proper, Frees does provide the narration for the faux Paramount black-and-white "newsreel" that opens the movie. Frees is also seen on-camera as the reporter dictating into his tape recorder as the clock counts down to the dropping of the atomic bomb.
The problem with Frees is that all his vocalizations were unmistakably him, so distinctive was the timbre of his voice.
>Toshiro Mifune was not in TTT. Besides all the Japanese in it spoke Japanese, obviating the need to have their voices dubbed.
>But Frees did do a voice in TORA, TORA, TORA, that of actor Shogo Shimada speaking English while playing Ambassador Nomura. It's unmistakably recognizable.
The confusion is understandable, because Frees did loop Mifune in the actor's role as Admiral Yamamoto in MIDWAY, a film in which the actors playing Japanese (playing, since they were all Japanese-Americans -- Robert Ito, James Shigeta, Clyde Kusatsu, etc. -- except for Mifune) all spoke English.
Mention should also be made of English-Greek actor George Pastell (George Pastelides), who was, in effect, the Paul Frees of the British film industry. His voice can be heard in movies as diverse as EL CID, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, and any number of James Bond films. Again, his voice is utterly unmistakble. even if his name is all but unknown today.
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It was a hallmark of director Josef von Sternberg's films that they were photographed with copious amounts of diffusion, whiich probably accounts for a lot of the appearance you're describing.
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All the films listed on this page, and no one's mentioned GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT. Granted, Garfield played a supporting role (incisively, I might add), but the film's topic, anti-Semitism, was very important to the actor, who never forgot where he came from. It was mportant, too, that there should be at least a couple of real Jews in such a movie (the other being Sam Jaffe), in which you have a Gentile actress, June Havoc, playing a Jew, and, of course, Gregory Peck as a Gentile passing himself off as Jewish.
Watching Garfield as Dave Goldman, I get the sense that it really may take a Jew to play a Jew, as the atavistic memory of five-thousand years of inherited suffering, lamentations and achievement cannot be adequately written on a script page, nor refined in rehearsal.
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>I just saw Nick Nolte. He's not aging well.
He looks like a regular Ronald Colman compared to that wild-haired mug shot of his a few years ago.
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>post-Oscars sartorial review (aka FASHION GESTAPO!)
Considering who started this thread, shouldn't that be "Fashion Geestapo?"
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{font:Arial}>The production was part of the highly admired NBC network “Producer’s Showcase” program that was the creation of broadcast pioneer Sylvester (Pat) Weaver.
Father of actress Sigourney Weaver (Pat wasn't so creative that he actually named his daughter "Sigourney"; her real given name is Susan).
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>"The So®cerer's Apprentice", "Night on Bald Mountain", and "Ave Marie" are perhaps the most celebrated segments, and "The Pastoral Symphony" is almost certainly the most controversial & criticized, but for me "The Rite of Spring" is as powerful & memorable as "Ave Marie".
It's "Ave Maria, not "Marie" (same name, of course, but different languages. The title and lyrics are in Latin, as per Catholic liturgy).
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You're probably thinking of Lubitsch's TROUBLE IN PARADISE.
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>October - *Jim Leher* - journalist and news host
That's Jim Lehrer.
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>Does anyone know of a good DVD or Blu-Ray edition of "Exodus"? The domestic one produced by MGM/UA some years ago is underwhelming to say the least, and deficient in so many areas (not anamorphic, no overture or intermission music, etc.). I know that a DVD and Blu-Ray edition of "Exodus" were released in France just a very short while ago. Has anyone seen this edition, or are there other foreign editions that anyone has seen. All comments are welcome! (I have an all-region Blu-ray player, so regional codes are not an issue.)
The MGM/UA DVD was also encoded at a fairly low bitrate so that the nearly 3 1/2-hour movie could be crammed onto a single disc, which is why the image is so fuzzy.
While I've never been a huge fan of this movie (or anything else by Otto Preminger) as drama, it is gorgeous to look at and deserves a first-class transfer in Blu-ray.
What all-region Blu-ray player do you have? I've been looking for one at a reasonable price, but have found that a lot of those being advertised as such aren't. It's doubly confusing because some function as all-region DVD players, but not region-free Blu-ray players. -
> ...several times during the film, he, and others, say, "Damn the torpedoes, full STEAM ahead". Other times, it's said using the word SPEED, like it's supposed to be. What's going on?
Well, the movie's called THE MORE (VERSIONS OF THE STORY), THE MERRIER, isn't it?
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>RO has, to my knowledge never said Hello, He always says "Hi"
"Hi" -- Robert Osborne.
"Hello" -- Earl Scheib & Mr Ed.
"Greetings" -- Your local draft board.
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>And re Paul Frees. If you'll pause the linked YouTube video below of this trailer for *The Thing* at the 00:46 mark, Paul Frees is the gentleman third from the left in this scene.
If you've ever heard one of the older Pillsbury Doughboy commercials, you've heard Frees (and since all of Frees's voices sound like Frees, no matter how he tried to disguise it in pitch or accent, you've heard them all).
Frees is one of the reporters in George Pal's THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (his best line: "It's the latest thing in nuclear fission." He also narrates the "newsreel" that opens the film).
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>I wish they had not shown us "the vision." What was the problem with asking THE AUDIENCE to suspend THEIR disbelief and/or make THEIR OWN assumptions as to what Bernadette saw?
And that's exactly what's wrong with the movie. Franz Werfel's foreward to his novel (reproduced at the beginning of the film) states "For those who do not believe, no explanation is possible; for those who do believe, no explanation is necessary" (certainly a nice turn of phrase, and applicable to a great many things).
Everyone in the film scoffs at Bernadette's account of her vision; most are brought around to her view, either by the appearance of the unexplained (the miraculous), or Bernadettte's suffering adherence to that account as she's devoured by cancer.
Unlike the characters in the story, the [/i]audience[/i], are already privy to her version of events, so there's no room for doubt or debate. Bernadette's vision is what she says it is from the moment we see it (reinforced by Fox's decision to cast the more-than-comely Linda Darnell as the Virgin Mary). The movie gives us absolutely no opportunity to make up our minds and see the progress of events as everyone in the film does.
That's cheating, plain and simple. It's a fait accompli (in keeping with the French character of the story). When Vincent Price's characters scoffs time and again, what can any of us do except think, "We know what you don't, nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah." In many ways, then, the tack the film takes is counterproductive to its aims: there's an undercurrent of resentment toward a movie (and, by extension, the religion it's promoting -- that blatant promotion being part of the problem -- that seems to have so little faith in its own message that it feels it necessary to cook the cinematic and dramatic books.
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Good grief.
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>Just as a change of pace, he should begin one intro with, "Hello, I'm Robert Osborne, and you're not".
No, "Hello, I'm Robert Osborne" is the only statement Osborne makes in his introductions that you can count on to be accurate.
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{size:12px}I'm annoyed by yet another of Bob Osborne's flubs, referring to director Luis Bu{size:12px}ñuel as "Looie."
It's Spanish, Bob -- pronounced "LOO-eess" -- not French.
It's your job, Bob, one for which you're being paid money to inform, not misinform. Why can't you do your homework?
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WITHOUT A CLUE was just a riff on the Moonlighting series that was a popular fixture on TV at the time.
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>Here are some links that might help in research and finding contacts woth people who can assist you:
You make it sound as though Glinda, the Good With of the North, is descending on Munchkin Land in her Technicolor soap bubble.
BORING : a movie's worst sin
in General Discussions
Posted
Billy Wilder once said that the Eleventh Commandment is Thou shalt not bore the audience.
He was right, of course, but movies, as with anything else, are like food: one's true and practical favorite is what one really craves at any given moment. So, if you're in a frame of mind to be bored, it really doesn't matter what you're presented with; you'll be bored.
As for myself, as a child I was frequently bored, as most children are. As an adult, I learned that there's always something to think about, so boredom is more or less impossible.
Now, while there's always something worth studying about a film that keeps it from being boring in a strict sense, a movie can be incredibly tedious. One such film is ONCE UPON A TIME (1944), which I'd had in my DVR's queue since TCM showed it last summer and I finally got around to watching. It's got to be the absolute worst film Cary Grant ever made, a very, very unfunny comedy with touches of some of the most cloying and revolting pathos I've ever seen on a screen. As punishment for inflicting such a pile of inane dreck on an unsuspecting world, the people who made this film all deserve to die, if they weren't already conveniently dead.
Some might be persuaded to call ONCE UPON A TIME "Capra without the 'Capra Touch'" (other examples of this deservedly neglected sub-genre are the Gary Cooper GOOD SAM and Jimmy Stewart MAGIC TOWN), but I'd call it Capra with the Ed Wood Touch. Oddly, what all these ersatz, Capra-wannabes have in touch is that they're tedious like few other films are. The horse is dead, rendered and turned to glue and the filmmakers continue to flog them.
I couldn't wait for the film to end; frankly, if Grant hadn't been the star, I'd have given up on it after the first twenty minutes. So, awful? A resounding yes. Boring? No, because if one can't learn and be enlightened from vewing a train-wreck of such magnitude, one is as dead as the makers of the movie.