Sprocket_Man

>If you watch the '35 version, pay attention to the score by Max Steiner. It's a good 'un!! Whose love theme Steiner recycled nineteen years later for KING RICHARD AND THE CRUSADERS (Did he think no one would notice? Jack Warner should have asked for some of his money back).

> I'm sorry I missed a chance to see monkey children! That's nothing compared to sea-monkey children: just add water and voil{font:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif}à{font}!

No, it's DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK, all right. It should be easy for the initial poster to identify, since MOHAWK's the only color film Oliver ever appeared in.

>(CASABLANCA) complicated? It was a love story during a war - I am sorry, but what is complicated about that? And "letters of transit" - they are ticketsout of the country. If students are in a class to learn about movies, what do they want - the 3 Stooges? Well, it's actually a valid point. To paraphrase the Pickpocket at the beginning of the film, "CASABLANCA is full of subplots, subplots everywhere! Be on your guard, Monsieur..."

The best version (albeit a very loose one) of "The Three Musketeers" is still a little film called GUNGA DIN.

{font:Calibri}^>Couldn’t recall seeing John (Carradine) in color before.^ ^^ ^Carradine's first color film was JESSE JAMES in 1939.^ > In the film of the (A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM), Carradine's role of (Marcus Lycus) is played by Phil Silvers. In the show's 1972 revival, Silvers played Pseudolus, the role originated by Zero Mostel.{font}

I think that THE EXORCIST is one of the most unintentially funny movies ever made. About three years ago it was being run at the Motion Picture Academy and I decided to go see it, on the theory that I hadn't seen the movie since its initial release in 1973. I figured that I'd changed in the intervening thirty-five years and miight be better able to appeciate it (as was the case wiith any number of films, including BARRY LYNDON, which I disliked intensely back in '75, but now view as one of the most extraordinary evocations of time and place ever put on film). I went with an open mind; I really wanted to like THE EXORCIST, but found it as dreary, dreadful, pointless and misguided as the college student I was had in '73. I've never liked horror films, stories of the occult or supernatural, but find THE EXORCIST's rough contemporary, THE OMEN extremely affective anf frightening, despite my general disdain for the work of Richard Donner. Well, as they say, it takes all kinds to make a world.

THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE is about nothing so much as Fate, with a capital "F"; Howard, by virtue of his age and personality, has always been aware of this; Curtin less so and Dobbs not at all. Dobbs's inability to see this, as exemplified by Howard's insistence on restoring the mountain -- which he refers to as "she" -- is an illustration of his belief that you only get out of life what you put in, and vice versa -- is his ultimate undoing. Curtin, the youngest of the trio, is still malleable enough to come around to Howard's way of thinking and it proves his salvation as, Dobbs wasn't destroyed by the bandits or even his own greed, but by an inability to understand the very life that Fate granted him.

Larson E. Whipsnade -- that's Larson E., not larceny!

>My home studio is filled with all sorts of art in various stages of restoration. I kind of want to think my forté is film related memorabilia although I don't get enough of it in. The world is forte, with a silent "e," pronounced as in Fort (Apache, or Tukatou, or Zinderneuf, for all you BEAU GESTE fans). It derives from the French fort, meaning one's strong-suit, the same meaning it has in English, and not the Italian forte, in which the "e" is pronounced.

The scene near the end of BEN-HUR in which Judah's mother and sister are cleansed of their leprosy during the tempest following Jesus's crucifixion. Miklos Rozsa's soaring score, that then follows the water musically as it mingles with Jesus's blood to flow, symbolically, across the whole earth, is nothing less than breathtaking. PS: Re >The scene in *The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp* during WWI, where Brig.Gen Clive Candy (aka Blimp) arrives [at] a U.S. Army communcations outpost... The character's name is Clive Winn-Candy, and should always be referred to as such.

There's only one actor whose name is synonymous with "phoning it in": Don Ameche.

>Yes, I know that the role of Matthew Harrison Brady calls for a certain floridity (it's a role that Spencer Tracy would never have attempted) but I've always thought that March went way over the top in that one, particularly in the film's climax when he essentially has a breakdown in the courtroom. Brady was a thinly-veiled portrayal of the great Democratic populist William Jennings Bryan. Frederic March was certainly old enough to have heard Brady's speeches on the radio as a child and young man, and he captured the man's old-fashioned, silver-tongued oratory to a tee. The fact is that virtually all politicians of Bryan's day were theatrical on the stump and in the exercising of their offices, something that wasn't always switched off in their more private moments.

The English language has been very adept at coming up with subsitutes for the words "Jesus" and "Christ" (substitutes for "god" constitute another list). They include Gee Jeepers Jehosaphat Bejeezus Judas Priest Cripes Crikey Crimminy And who can forget Katharine Hepburn's chaste exclamation of "Chistopher Columbus!" in the 1933 version of LITTLE WOMEN? the real point of all this is that the taking of Jesus's or god's name in vain was imposed by the 1934 Productiion Code, and kept in place until the mid-late 1960's, when the Code broke down for good. Was the Code's proscription a good thing? Probably not; people do utter oaths, and the absence of such oaths in the movies they attend has never kept them from doing do. If movies are to present a reasonably accurate depiction of the way people behave, then they can't be bogged down by limitations on language, or insistence by censoirs that married couples must sleep in twin beds and keep one foot on the floor. Still, there are ways of saying things without explicitly saying them. That was always part of the beauty classic screenwriting that gave us all those great classics of the 1930's and '40's. Had the Code allowed the exposition in CASABLANCA to say, directly, that Rick's casino fleeces beautiful women of their limited funds so that they'll then be forced to trade sex with Capt. Renaud for exit visas (for which, in return, Capt. Renaud permits Rick's to remain open), CASABLANCA would be very much the poorer for it. The sad fact is that anything-goes literalism is one of the main reasons modern films are seldom worth anyone's time or money. Crikey.

>Frederick March is a way better actor than Spencer Tracy. Mamoulian a way better director than Victor Fleming. the 1932 version is way better than the 41 version. No comparison. That Mamoulian was a better director than Fleming is something I tend to agree with, especially when comparing the two men's visual sense, but when comparing Tracy and March, it's almost a matter of the proverbial apples in oranges. March was like most of his contemporaries during the first years of the sound era: broad, florid, hammy, very much in keeping with the style of the time when Hollywood's actors and directors were still groping for a symbiosis with camera and microphone that would allow sound films to realize their full potential. It took him years to learn to rein in that floridity and learn to act for the screen. If one charts some of the major roles of March's career, in films like DR JEKYLL; LES MISERABLES; A STAR IS BORN; THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES; THE MAN IN THE GREY FLANNEL SUIT; INHERIT THE WIND and SEVEN DAYS IN MAY, one can see the tremendous evolution that took place in his approach to acting. Spencer Tracy, on the other hand, knew how to act in films almost from the moment he first stepped in front of a camera. You can look at his films from the mid-1930's to the end of his career and see very little change in style or degree. Tracy had it nailed from the beginning and is still the standard against which all screen actors are, and should be, judged. In a sense, then, it took March years to catch up to Tracy but, by the latter stages in March's career (he steals SEVEN DAYS IN MAY from his high-powered co-stars Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster and Edmond O'Brien, though they're all superb) he was every bit Tracy's equal.

>Yes Douglas was the star/producer and Trumbo wrote a the great script- but I believe the film has becomes timeless because of Kubrick's direction. "Barry Lyndon" is one of the most beautiful movies ever made- yest it's slow but I think that's the point. Kubrick's direction is superb, no question, but he wasn't the production's originator or guiding creative force (an intolerable situation he would rectify for the remainder of his career). If one awards a possessory credit (and no one should, really; they're a narcissitic by-product of the director-centric auteur principle), then it should go to that creative force, and on SPARTACUS that was [u[Douglas[/u].

As the producer who conceived the project, hired screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, oversaw the casting, art department designs, music, etc., and hired Kubrick to direct after Anthony Mann was fired, the film is called, far more accurately, Kirk Douglas's SPARTACUS.

Julia Faye -- THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, 1923 & 1956 (and, yes, her being C.B. DeMille's favorite mistress had something to do with it). Gene Barry & Ann Robinson -- THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, 1953, 2005 Alan Hale -- ROBIN HOOD (1922); THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938); ROGUES OF SHERWOOD FOREST (semi-remake; 1950).

Angela Lansbury as Laurence Harvey's character's mother in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, the scariest thing ever put on film.

>. . . during his duel with Flynn in *The Adventures of Robin Hood*? Don't believe me? For those with the DVD of the film, fast forward and freeze frame at the 96:32 minute mark of the film. Just after the "Do you know any prayers, my friend? - I'll say one for you" dialogue exchange Flynn, his back on the floor under the candle stand, reaches with his sword towards Rathbone, who moves backward and his sword comes OUT of his hand. At the 96:33 mark of the movie if you slowly advance your freeze frame you will see the sword in mid air with Rathbone standing beside it. That's because the sword Flynn uses in the film -- which I own -- has magic powers. Many's the time it's come to my aid, which is why I, myself, am so utterly disarming.

Neal was the real leper, of the social variety, having beaten Franchot Tone within an inch if his life (including a severe concussion) over a woman, and then eventually being convicted of involuntary manslaughter for blasting his own wife in the head with a .45.

> I agree with Ray: Definitely not! A agree with Everett Sloane in CITIZEN KANE": "Soitenly not!"

It should be noted that the film was released in the U.K. as HALLELUJAH, I'M A TRAMP, since the term "bum" has an entirely incompatible meaning to Britons.

>You may not confuse them, but you're confusing me. Which one do you like? Like Robertson (and he seemed very nice when I met him about four years ago, though I belive that Peter O'Toole was robbed of the 1968 Best Actor Oscar), loathe Ford (as big a phony as I've seen. Fake "integrity" oozes from his every pore). I will say, though, that I also think Ford is excellent as Pa Kent in SUPERMAN (1978), though there's little else about that film I like.