Sprocket_Man
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Posts posted by Sprocket_Man
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It falls squarely in the "pretentious" genre.
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>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.
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>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.
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No, Jack Warner was a Democrat.
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> When I watched (BEYOND THE FOREST) at a revival movie house in NYC, the mostly young audience jumped up and cheered, shouting "Bravo" at Bette's operatic fate at the end.
If true, then they should've shouted brav*a*! -- for a woman, or women -- not bravo.
It just shows you what they know.
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>$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?
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>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?
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> 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.
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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..."
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All what "Nazi films?"
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> Titanic (1997) - garbage.
Clunky drama, with an unconvincing and awkward male lead? Absolutely.
But, visually, almost poetic, and a considerable accomplishment in the sense of its assured manipulation of the medium (and it actually almost achieves a level of tragic emotion -- not in the trite story of Jack and Rose, but in the stunned sorrow of Andrews, the ship's engineer who designed the "unsinkable" Titanic, as played by the splendid, and unjustly unheralded Victor Garber).
I, personally, will save my use of the term "garbage" for a rainy day (more water!) so that it doesn't lose its sting, or smell.
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Well, MacDonald did make that movie with Lassie (THE SUN COMES UP), so I guess you're forgiven for associating the Iron Butterfly with dogs.
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>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.
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Sheer POEtry.
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>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."
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>I think that you mean "It's all about exaggeration."
Surely you Geste, Beau.
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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.
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> 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"...
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Robert Osborne makes one too many flawed intros aboard the TCM cruise...
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...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).
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>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...
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The movie's actually called CORVETTE K-225.
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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."
HOLLYWOOD POLITICAL LEANINGS IN 1940 - TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE
in General Discussions
Posted
> 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.