Sprocket_Man

> I think it is shameful that a channel like your's, with all the best classic movies ever made, would PURPOSEFULLY ignore one of the greatest men of our century and why? For political reasons? That's even more shameful. The classics are to be enjoyed by everyone and all of them should be shown for the benefit of all. Ah, you've just made a far more compelling case as to why TCM hasn't done it than I could: you don't want Reagan as Star of the Month because he was a great, or uniquely entertaining actor, one whose contributions to the art and crafts of acting and film are significant and enduring, but simply because you want the channel to abet the relentless inflation of his reputation as a politician. That's what screenwriters and cynics brand an ulterior motive. The fact remains that there are countless other mediocre actors whom TCM has failed to make SOTM's and, based on that criterion alone -- what the subject accomplished as an actor -- Reagan fails to make the cut. PS: "...PURPOSEFULLY ignore" should read purposely ignore (purposefully and purposely don't mean the same thing).

> As some of you probably know the ABC televison network has cancelled the long running Soap Opera series ONE LIFE TO LIVE after 43 years on the air. The final 3 episodes air the rest of this week. I have been watching/recording this since 1998 and I think it's probably the best soap ever on TV. I am very sad to see it taken off for another stupid reality show. I will miss the show greatly, and it is about my last link to commercial network Television after the C W Cancelled SMALLVILLE last year. Would anyone else care to lament their extreme hated of the ABC network here, and reflect on the series? I hope that their heads of programming are fired and ABC and Disney go completely Belly up! I sure wouldn't shed any tears if it happened. Serves 'em right! I think you miss the essential point: everybody's life is already a soap opera. Just take yours, add commercials and voilà!

>What prompted my question was that I looked at her Wiki page, and it says that her family claimed that she was "murdered". Harrison would seem to be a likely suspect. No, but that episode of his stalking Doris Day was a bit suspicious.

>I recognized Richard Coote on the streets of London and told him I admired his work. All you compliments may have gone for naught if you kept addressing him as "Richard"; his given name was Robert.

>I thought you'd find that tidbit fascinating. Michael Crichton wrote The Andromeda Strain. I worked briefly with his mother on a project a long time ago. She was very tall. Very nice, too. I don't know about Crichton's father, but it's obvious from your recollections that half his genetic material contained the tallness gene. I saw him at the funeral of film composer Jerry Goldsmith back in 2004 (though we didn't speak); I'm 6'1 1/2" and he towered over me by at least five inches.

>A Geico commercial could disrupt the best of trains of thought. You really must begin to look at this from a lizard's perspective...

It's THEM! For what it tries to achieve, it's pretty much a perfect movie. No other bug movie even comes close.

> I read somewhere that Alice Faye attended Betty Grable's funeral. At first, I thought they would've been rivals but it seems they were very good friends. Faye outlived her younger "rival" Grable by twenty-five years (and they both outlived Marilyn Monroe, who was Grable's general successor at 20th Century-Fox), a sad irony that cannot have been lost on her. Anyone who wants a career in show business, particularly as a performer, really needs to understand one thing before he or she starts: when you arrive in Hollywood, say at the tender age of twenty-two, and begin to achieve a measure of success (if you're talented, and/or lucky), there are already eighteen-through-twenty-one-year-olds who are lining up to take your place, some of whom eventually will, because the Public -- ever fickle and easily bored -- is always looking, and ready, for something and someone that at least gives the appearance of being new and different. The Next Big Thing. If you learn that, and make your peace with it, you'll probably be okay (no swan-dives off the Hollywood Sign, like Peg Entwhistle). As for Faye and Grable, it's easily explained because both ladies were genuinely nice people who understood the above. And when Marilyn Monroe began to be cast in roles at Fox that Grable had owned a few years ealier, the older woman accepted that with the same cheerful grace and helpful equanimity that Faye displayed during Grable's ascendancy at the studio. Both women probably understood that while dramatic actors can transition into mature supporting roles, the options of those who are primarily musical comedy stars (particularly women) are more limited. Transitions can be messy things, but a measure of realism and honesty can go a long way toward making the process easier on everyone.

Yup, it's HAWMPS, all right. And based on a true story; there may still be, in fact, camels roaming around the Southwest U.S. that are descendants of the original cavalry mounts that were released into the wild after the Army's experiment was abandoned.

Yes, it's a wonderful film all round, and Miklos Rozsa's score, one of his earliest, aids the film immensely.

>Now we know what Lincoln really kept under that hat - a hammer and stake. No, no, no. The real reason Lincoln wore that hat (a little-known historical fact) was because old Abe had a really good magic act. He could hide a lot of rabbits in that thing.

> Yep. There are just 10 kinds of people in this world - those who understand binary, and those who don't. It's two kinds of people. That's the joke: 1's and 0"s, yesses and nos, totaling two. > Which reminds me, in the "Court Martial" episode of the original Star Trek, we got this gem from Kirk. Suspecting a dead crewman is alive and hiding, Kirk explains how he can locate him by using an auditory sensor on the computer: "By installing a booster, we can increase that capability on the order of one to the fourth power." And that reminds me of this immortal bit of dialogue from the classic space opera THIS ISLAND EARTH (Faith Domergue, referring to the laboratory's pet cat): "Oh, that's just Neutron. We call him that because he's so positive!" Just how intelligent were those Metalunans, with their crock-pot-sized craniums, that they recruited Earth physicists who were that stupid?

> I have enjoyed Jack Cardiff's work long before I was aware of who he was. He shot The Four Feathers with such care and with such vision. Except that he didn't -- Cardiff was one of eight camera operators on the film. He wasn't cinematographer (chores that were divided between Georges Perinal in the studio in England, and Osmond Borradaile on lucation in Sudan and Egypt). Beyond this, there's something that needs to be explained when discussing the work of Cardiff, or any British cinematographer: the system under which British film crews worked was different from what existed, and exists in Hollywood (it's now pretty standard everywhere). In Britain back then, the cinematography was typically split between the cameraman and the lighting cameraman, i.e. one was responsible for composing shots, lens choice, camera movement and focus, and the other dealt with lighting the set. Cardiff's renown rests on his use of lighting and color, but as camera operator on THE FOUR FEATHERS he was rather isolated from those functions. What he surely did do is observe Perinal and learn, building on the older man's experience to create his own style and bag of tricks when he did finally get the chance to design films' cinematography, especially in color.

Newman employed the only moderately talented Mockridge frequently when he was head of music at Fox. Much of Mockridge's output was, in fact, written, or at least sketched out, by Newman, but Mockridge was given screen credit at Newman's insistence. It's a testament to Newman's generosity and sense of paternal reponsibility as the employer of so many composers and musicians at the studio. Whether Mockridge actually consulted with, or relied on the by-then-independent Newman to help him with the score to LIBERTY VALANCE at Paramount, I don't know, but it's fairly certain that he drew on music he'd used on other films to score it. Then, too, John Ford was happiest when scoring was sparse and largely reliant on folk melodies, and that's pretty much what Mockridge (and, maybe, Newman) gave him.

Anyone who's ever seen photos of real Civil War figures would know that, say, STONEWALL JACKSON, WOLF MAN is fact, not fiction.

Except that Newman didn't write that "Hallelujah" chorus, Ernst Toch did. It was also used in the last scene of IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE. In fact, Newman did write his own "Hallelujah" chorus for the Act I and ACT II finales of THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD (cut from the film, unforgivably, by director George Stevens and replaced by G.F. Händel's from his Messiah; the music is available on the film's restored soundtrack CD). It's really much better than the one composed by Toch (no one knows for sure why Newman didn't write his own for THE ROBE, but time constraints were probably the cause).

Really? When I order titles from the Warner Archive, I usually receive them within 8-9 days. Have you conbsidered the possibility that the order got lost in the mail?

What do you expect from a decades-long drug addict? Still, she probably wasn't as angry or depressed as when she learned she had terminal cancer.

>I'm recording *Wings of the Morning* at the moment. Had a glimpse -- it looks fascinating. I've read mixed things about it but am looking forward to watching this pioneering film. The film was dreadful; it set back the crafts of screenwriting and acting for talking pictures by a half-dozen years, but remains an eternal cure for insomnia.

>CineSage, that's what I said yesterday, when I said, "So Khrushchev's comment meant that the Soviet Union will outlive the US, because their system was better than ours, and with their system, they would outlive us and, thus, they would "live to bury us". Stalin instituted the first 5-Year Plan in 1928. They had a new 5-Year Plan every couple of years. That was a big joke over here and even mentioned in some of our old movies. Khrushchev's remark meant they would out-succeed us and would bury us as we and our system died out. You don't need to repeat everything I say and make it seem like you thought of it. "Their system" can mean anything. Economics are economics. If you'd learn to state things clearly, you wouldn't have santiation teams mopping up after you.

> I clearly remembered before the release of "Close Encounters" and the book (bunch of rubbage) "Communion", I have NEVER seen or heard of these long neck large eyed alien types before. A big jump from little green men (whatever happened to them??) Right after seeing "Star Wars" back in 1977, Jimmy Carter saw a UFO *after leaving the theatre!* A: The word is rubbish, not 'rubbage." B: Where did you ever get such rubbish about Carter's seeing a flying saucer after seeing CE3K? Jimmy Carter's UFO sighting occurred in Leary, Georgia, in 1969, eight years before he became president and the release of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS. He filed a report with the International UFO Bureau in Oklahoma City in 1973. C: Even allowing for the questionable trend of shooting films with stifling amounts of diffusion that was so fashionable in the mid-late 1970's, the transfer of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS shown by TCM the other night was disgraceful. It looked like an old VHS tape. TCM needs to preview the transfers sent it by distributors, send them back if they're deficient, and demand replacements.

You're absolutely right, and it underscores why TCM had either better revamp its writing staff, top to bottom (and it seems to have a lot of bottom), or get rid of Osborne's commentaries altogether, as they're an embarrassment to the whole organization.

Miklos Rozsa ("z" before "s").

> According to notes from the TCM database for this film, Mayer postponed its release because he was still trying to obtain actual bombing footage. The notes do not say where Mayer eventually located the footage and when it had been initially filmed. They never did obtain actual footage of an atomic explosion, as the Defense Department held it classified for several years (then, too, the only film footage of the Hiroshima blast was taken by a crewman on the Enola Gay with an 8mm camera, as the camera on the escort B-29, which was to have filmed it, malfunctioned. The first good aerial footage of an atomic bomb explosion was from the escort plane over Nagasaki. Because everything was classified, MGM's special effects department under Buddy Gillespie had to rely entirely on guesswork as to what a nuclear detonation would look like; in the end, they created the characteristic mushroom cloud effect (which they did not, and could not, have known was accurate) using chemical dyes in a large cloud tank at MGM, the same process employed eight years later by Paramount's special effects department under Gordon Jennings for WAR OF THE WORLDS. > You know, one of the biggest misunderstandings of the Cold War was when Khrushchev told Nixon "We will bury you," back in the late 1950s. The newspapers here said that meant the Russians would destroy us and then bury us. But years later I learned that such an expression is actually the punch-line of an old Russian joke. It was neither; Khrushchev was referring to his country's burying Capitalism economically (that Five-Year Plan was going to ignite the Soviet economy any day, now...) > In the weeks after the 9-11 attacks, ten years ago, I saw several news reports that said the reason NORAD and other government military agencies could not react quickly to stop the airplanes that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, was because NORAD and the other agencies were still set up to watch for Russian bombers and rockets heading over the North Pole and Canada toward the United States. Seems that no one at NORAD had ever thought of a group of American airliners filled with fuel being hijacked and crashed into American cities. More to the point, NORAD wasn't designed to monitor internal U.S. air traffic -- and why should it? Moreover, the 9/11 hijackers were savvy enough to have switched off the planes' transponders, so that they couldn't be tracked by air-traffic control, except by radar, which was, again, not designed to alert controllers that a plane, or planes, had strayed from their flightpaths (since controllers expect that pilots will inform them of deviations). Also, while McGuire AFB in central New Jersey is only a few minutes' flight time from Manhattan, and theoretically the closest site from which to launch an interceptor mission, it is primarily a cargo and logistics base that operates in concert with the Army's neighboring Ft. Dix. There are few, if any, fighter aircraft on the base at any given moment. Though the Air National Guard's 177th Fighter Wing is based at {font:Arial} Egg Harbor Township, NJ, even if a timely alert had been forthcoming, their planes were not fueled, armed and ready to scramble for a situation no one had anticipated. {font} There was, in the end, no way to prevent the hijackers from carrying out their mission. > I thought it was after we dropped the bomb on Japan it was Ike who put NASA out of the "governments" hands to avoid another Hiroshima, (I may have my facts mixed up). NASA is a governmment agency; what it is not is under control of the military.

> Clark Gable starrred in Red Dust and its remake. You mean MOGAMBO. STORM OVER THE NILE is a remake of THE FOUR FEATHERS. LIVING IT UP, a remake of NOTHING SACRED. ROCK-A-BYE BABY, a remake of THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK. HIS GIRL FRIDAY, a remake of THE FRONT PAGE. THE VAGABOND KING, a musical remake of IF I WERE KING. THE ADMIRABLE CHRICHTON, a remake of MALE AND FEMALE. RIDING HIGH, Frank Capra's remake of his own BROADWAY BILL. MOVE OVER, DARLING, a remake of HERE COMES THE GROOM. P.S.: There's absolutely no point in listing a film that was remade under the same title.