Sprocket_Man

> King of Kings is my favorite movie of all time. So I was surprised to hear what Ben Mankiewicz had to say about it after it played. He said it got *awful* reviews at the time and he cited one that didn't make a bit of sense. *It sounded more like his personal point of view, being a Jew*. Well, what a lovely bit of anti-Semitism you've just injected to get everyone here into the true Christmas spirit. You probably stage yearly passion plays at your local fundamentalist church. Ben's text was merely reporting what was the prevailing critical response to the film at the time of its release (or maybe you think that all the critics back then were Jews eager to sharpen their knives and spikes on the cinematic Jesus). It really isn't a very good or coherent movie, though you're certainly entitled to like its rather simplistic, cartoonish approach if that's your wont. As for > He ended by saying that Jeffrey Hunter didn't look anything like the real Jesus. How in the heck would *he* know what the real Jesus looked like? What a dope. One thing no credible scholar or theologian thinks is that Jesus was a blue-eyed, Nordic figure with shaved armpits. Even most of your fellow anti-Semites can agree on that.

>Whatever....it seems that all some people do is to nitpick on every little inaccuracy in Robert's intros, instead of spending time ENJOYING the movie. ] If they're not going to be informative, then what's the point of showing them at all? They just waste our time. Or is the whole point just finding work for Osborne so that he won't have to sleep on park benches and subway gratings?

>There's a superfluous "o" in your spelling of "superfluous." I was hoping you'd notice.

*...WE HAVE MET THE REAL SAVAGE, AND HE IS US.* > Why are we using the term "miscegenation?" Is it a matter of what love between two people of different races were referred to at the time the movie was made, or just talking about that term in modern context? I know people today still have a hard time believing that people of two different races could find love successfully as much as they have a hard time believing people of the same gender could find love successfully too. This brings up an important point: at the time the films in question were made, they were exactly that -- films about miscegenation, an act and topic about which American society was profoundly uneasy, if not downright antagonistic. In looking at a film like THE SEARCHERS, the modern take on it is that Ethan Edwards is an Indian-hating racist in the broadest and most abstract sense, but he's not. Unfortunately, that view tends to obscure that the film really is about miscegenation, a topic toward which 1950's audiences were acutely sensitive. They knew one when they saw it, without having to be told that's what it was, though viewers today may need to be reminded. Looked at from the perspective of what we at least like to think of as a mult-cultural society (though one merely has to look at all the Republican and Tea Party race-baiting disguised as mere political "disagreement" directed toward President Obama to know that true multi-culturalism is still a long, long way off), the term "miscegenation" seems quaint and unnecessary, but the film, and current events, show it to be as relevant now as it ever was.

>This is one movie that could really use the latest techniques for restoration as well. I think the prints I've seen are not holding up at all. The Blu-ray is excellent, and two weeks ago this evening I saw a newly-struck 35mm print of it at the Motion Picture Academy's Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood. I looked splendid (followed by Ben Burtt's indoor snow-making. A wonderful evening).

Growing up, George Lucas was clearly a huge fan of The Beverly Hillbillies sitcom. He obviously named his galactic knights in honor of millionaire hillbilly Jed Clampett.

I'd say Miklos Rozsa's score was the best ever -- the Beethoven's Ninth of film music.

Correctly put, it's "not that big a deal," not "...big of a deal..." Why some people drop an utterly superflouous "of" into locutions like this is an enduring mystery...

The greatest film about miscegenation is John Ford's THE SEARCHERS. A significant part of its power and that greatness is that it never addresses the subject head-on, but only through the words and actions of its protagonist, Ethan Edwards.

I had a long conversation with a Paramount executive this afternoon in a friend's living room. You'll all probably be pleased to hear that SHANE is being prepared for Blu-ray release in 2012.

Notice that, in the photo below, Danny Kaye is wearing gray shoes with a gray suit. Who wears gray shoes? There's actually a good reason for such an unusual choice of footwear: just as Fred Astaire so often wore contrasting saddle shoes to draw attention to his feet as he danced, Michael Curtiz and the producers of WHITE CHRISTMAS put Kaye in the neutral-colored shoes that matched his clothing and blended in with the tone of the floor so that audiences wouldn't watch his feet. As talented a man as Danny Kaye was, he wasn't a professional dancer, and was sorely outclassed by Vera Ellen, whom they wanted to dominate the scene. Dancing movies have evolved since Astaire and Gene Kelly's days. Their dance routines were usually in long shot, and in long takes, to make it very clear it was all done by them, and how well. A recent musical like, say, CHICAGO was just the opposite: short takes, often shot from the waist-up (with close-ups of legs and feet that could be anybody's) to give the illusion (and it is an illusion) that Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renee Zellwegger can dance. Much, much worse than a pair of gray shoes.

Studios routinely used stage money that only bore a passing resemblance to real banknotes. While some used generic fake money, several had it printed up to their specifications; the designs often featured the name of the studio and even its familiar corporate logo (I have specimens of many of these in my collection). Apart from the obvious advantage of not using real -- and valuable -- bills on set where they might conveniently disappear, there was always a concern that overly realistic duplicates of American currency, or even close-ups of real banknotes, might run afoul of U.S. Treasury regulations. Both by dint of improved film stocks and lenses, and audiences' demands for more verisimilitude, stage money has become much more realistic, and real banknotes are often used when close-ups of money are required. As for me, I'll take as much of the real thing as I can get my hands on.

In spite of the fact that I generally share her politics, I've never found her particularly attractive physicially and would be hard-pressed to think of a movie of hers that I like. Still, her ill-considered actions during the Vietnam War were essentially the product of an immature individual who failed to consider the simple (though so often ignored) fact that all actions have consequences, many that cannot be foreseen, and many that can (it's difficult to imagine, though, that she was so immature that at least some hint of those consequences, both to her image and our troops, didn't cross her mind). Another significant cause of those actions is, ironically, the same thing that made John Wayne's politics to abhorrent to someone like me: they were half-formed, motivated far more by what he -- and Fonda -- were against than by a clear, coherent vision of what they were for that might make better the society of which they were part. You might think it odd to think of them as kindred spirits but, in the mechanism of their thinking, if not their stated views, they were very much the same. Of course, most people's politics are similarly incomplete, but the average individual is typically anonymous: his or her opinions, statements, sentiments and votes don't attract the attention, admiration and/or condemnation of those made by a Fonda or Wayne.

>...a wonderful character actor who was in a lot of movies whose name I can't remember right now. Thin, wiry guy with glasses - I think he did the do we not bleed speech in To Be Or Not To Be, or *sigh* I could be wrong. You're thinking of Felix Bressart (NINOTCHKA, THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER), who was obviously a great favorite of director Ernst Lubitsch.

Kodak wanted to market a Kodachrome negative film, as well as go into the business of making 35mm Kodachrome release prints of studio films, but Technicolor told them that they would cease buying Eastman 35mm black-and-white stock for use in their cameras if they went through with their plans, so a truce of sorts was forged that kept Kodak out of the release-print business.

>PRINCE OF FOXES was planned in Technicolor, and those Italian Renaissance would have been spectacular in same; however, I think that the amount of lighting needed to film in color would have damaged the frescoes and paintings; hence a beautiful Black and White film crying out for Technicolor. There are a couple of reasons that Fox scrapped plans to shoot the film in color. One was that Tyrone Power's previous costume epic, CAPTAIN FROM CASTILE under-performed at the box office, and the studio felt that color wouldn't improve PRINCE OF FOXES' prospects. The other is that it was felt that the Italian locations, spectacular as they were, would just look like a bunch of old buildings and ruins in color, whereas in black-and-white they could be made to look relatively new, which they would have been at the time the film's story takes place.

>None of my Latino friends have that name, so I haven't heard it often. The Spanish-speaking world is very large. In the Americas and the Philippines, many words and proper names derive from native words that existed before the Spanish colonized these territories beginning in the 15th century. A name or term common in, say, Peru may very well be unknown in Mexico, Cuba or Spain. >That's Rene A-bear-noise... No, that's "Reh-NEE oh-BARE-zhon-WAH."

>Yes, I love Maria Ouspenskaya. That's another one. I am guessing the emphasis is on the third syllable...? Da.

No, it's pronounced "ar-mehn-DAR-eess" -- that's why there's an accent over the second "a" in the name: Armendáriz. >To my surprise, someone posted this a couple of years ago: Zay-Soo: It was, in fact, pronounced "ZAY-soo."

>Yay, verily, yay to that! Well, it's actually "yea, verily, yea," but the frantic adventures of Hubert Hawkins are, verily, in a class by themselves.

When I was in college, a wise (if otherwise generally annoying) woman called Berta Kaslow gave me a very short lecture on the dangers of speaking in absolutes and superlatives (i.e., if you do, you're almost surely going to be proven wrong). It was some of the best advice I ever received. I suggest that you watch the THE SORROW AND THE PITY, Marcel Ophüls's landmark documentary about the Holocaust, before you declare something to be "the saddest movie ever made."

> Well, sprocketman, although I certainly see your very valid point, the movie can't really change history, can it? If the Ark really did destroy every Nazi and save all the Jews in the camps, it would confuse uneducated people everywhere and ruin educated people's suspension of disbelief. Although, it raises a valid point: can a movie just change history like that for the sake of really good storytelling? It's not a question of changing history, only confronting the inconvenient question as to why the Ark, and the power behind it, would stop at vaporizing the handful of irreligious Nazis threatening Indy and Marian. In a way, it's a microcosmic, and cinematic, conundrum that faces every person at whom tragedy has struck, or those who have observed same: if there is a god, one as benevolent as the various Judeo-Christian faiths like to claim, why would said god allow any of this to happen? (In fact, it's why the whole tale of Job was cooked up in the Old Testament: when things go bad long enough, and one can no longer make a convincing argument that that god is watching over one and offering protection, then one's only recourse is to claim that these terrible vicissitudes are the manifestation of some Divine plan whose mechanism requires the individual or group to suffer. It makes no sense, of course, but desperate people will cling to any fantasy in order to make sense of their apparently endless sorrows.) I suppose that within the context of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, then, one might speculate that the Ark was only disposing of an otherwise instractable local problem, but that humanity, and the Jewish People in particular, needed to be redeemed via their own suffering, determination and inner strength -- but it's all rubbish, of course.

>Watching "Life With Father" and this is a crime of a movie... the big bright Technicolor dictates a bigger, bolder directorial style from old-school B&W artist Michael Curtiz. The dialogue jokes and sharpness of the film drown in the big colorful splendor. How many other movies were ruined by Technicolor that should have been shot in B&W? Take a look at THE COURT JESTER some time; you'll change your tune.

>I've recently bought *The Searchers* on Blu-Ray and would love to hear from those who like this great Ford western, whether they've watched it on DVD, blu-ray or in a theatrical presentation. (Like you and CineSage at the JW retrospective). I attended the premiere of the restoration of the film at the Motion Picture Academy about three years ago, and own the Blu-ray (it's the same transfer), and am thoroughly dissatisfied with the work that Warner's did on it. The colors are all wrong, and it seems clear that no one bothered to take a look at an original IB Technicolor print to see what the bloody movie's really supposed to look like (the trailer on the disc has more accurate color than the feature).

> My favorite Jewish movie is "Disraeli", 1929. He was a Jewish Prime Minister of England in the late 19th Century. Here he exchanges some quips with the head of the Bank of England, regarding who might provide the money for the purchase of the Suez Canal for England: Benjamin Disraeli was Jewish by descent, Christian by conversion. No Jew, practicing or otherwise, has ever served as Prime Minister of Great Britain (ironically, the British Royal Family considers itself to be descended from the Biblical King David, yet anti-Semitism was allowed to thrive in Britain throughout most of its history). > My dad always said that the best Jewish movie of all time was Raiders of the Lost Ark because God himself destroys the Jews' greatest 20th Century Villains, the Nazis, in a horrible way with the Jews' own artifact, The Ark of the Covenant. Yeah, well Spielberg's cinematic "god" might've lifted an extra, wrathful finger or two to save the six-million Hitler actually exterminated instead of Indy and Marian. Der Führer could hardly have done a more efficiently murderous job withhout getting his hands on the Ark than he might've done with it. Looking at it logically, then, not only negates the movie's whole, central conceit, but also serves to offend Jews everywhere.