Sprocket_Man

> Sunset Boulevard for example: the Nancy Olson subplot is tedious (in no small part because of her bland presence) but the film holds up in spite of it. With Eve I think the flaws in regards to Baxter's character and her believabililty are the cards that make the whole castle come tumbling down. The "Nancy Olson subplot," as you put it, is neither tedious nor superfluous. In what can only be described as a Faustian bargain, Joe Gillis, has been sucked into making his pact with the figurative devil that's Norma Desmond and her limitless ability to provide him with a level of material comfort that he'd never be able to earn on his own (being sucked in, Joe becomes less and less able to discern that his scheme to manipulate Norma by editing her unfilmable Salome screenplay has been turned around one-hundred-and-eight degrees by Norma, who's now manipulating him into becomeing her kept man; only when the slavishly devoted Max tells Joe that he was Norma's first husband does Joe begin to awaken to his situation). Through the developing relationship between Joe and Betty Schaefer -- first writing their spec script, Dark Windows, then the romance that compels Betty to declare that she's going to end her engagement to fiance Artie Green -- Joe sees what his life might have been had it not taken a detour that was the result of, and analogy to, the turn his car, with its blown-out tire, made into Norma's hidden Beverly Hills driveway to escape the clutches of the Repo Men. It finally fills Joe with the degree of self-loathing he needs to walk out on Norma who, having finally gone 'round the bend ("Nobody walks out...on a star!), pumps a cylinderful of bullets into him to guarantee that he'll never be in the arms of Betty, or any other woman. Betty is, in short, the very normalcy at the opposite end of the spectrum on which Joe finds himself that any story requires to establish the parameters of the character's world. More than that, she provides essential contrast to Norma. She is, almost literally, the angel on Joe's shoulder, whispering in his ear as counterweight to Norma's devil. Drama is established by context -- spatial, chronological and emotional; without it characters and situations are adrift, and audiences are unable to fully grasp the storytellers' intent.

> I am also thinking of another substitution. In *Raffles* David Niven reprised Colman's role. Niven's fine looks, suave manner and slim build are as close to Colman's as they could be and yet as much as I adore Niven in all his roles I have to say about him as I did about Granger: he is no Ronald Colman. This brings us to the interesting, and not-unrelated subject of LOST HORIZON, one of Colman's best-remembered films. If the film has one glaring flaw, it's the ham-handed and shrill performance of John Howard as Robert Conway's kid brother, George. If ever there was a part, and film, that cried out for the participation of David Niven, it was George in LOST HORIZON. One can imagine only one actor who had the physical gifts and talent to believably play Colman's brother (or his character as a young man, if ever he'd done a film that required it), and that's Niven. It's just too bad that it never came to pass. As regards comarisons between the two ZENDAs, Colman's Rupert/Rudolf is more the dreamy romantic, whereas Granger's substituted ruggedness and virility. Each is a valid interpretation of the character that lends its respective film a distinctive dramatic thrust not found in the other. I, for one, am glad that the two films exist in tandem.

>Hope no one stops hiring me or hates me for this opinion. > >Well, seems that you insulted every one of the 25 million carpenters in the world. Well, you seem to have accused her of hating Christianity without have to say it directly. >It's not unlike my disdain for the crazy trend of wearing the waist of pants belted under the derriere >allowing full view of the boxer shorts, or worse "carpenter" crack. I hate it, it's ugly and >disrespectful to others. > >I have been accused as being "racist" and "against black culture" because of it. >Hope no one stops hiring me or hates me for this opinion. There's little or nothing undesirable about being "hated" by any segment of society that'd claim proudly that wearing one's pants around one's knees is a vital part of their cultural identity. >I did know the symbol (in a reverse direction) is used in Buddism and Hinduism. I didn't think Clara >Bow was a hard core Nazi but I thought maybe she was an early supporter in the way Charles >Lindbergh was. The swastika didn't become an omnipresent symbol of the Nazi Party until about 1933, the same year in which Bow made her last movie. >Not until Hitler went power mad on his quest to conquer the world did people see anything evil >about him and the Nazis. Went "power-mad?" Hitler's earliest writings and public statements make it quite clear that his views and ambitions were fairly firmly in place while he was still in the trenches of World War I; he merely had to wait until the late 1930's to have the resources of an entire, bamboozled nation at his disposal to turn those ambitions into a catastrophic reality. >Preminger could have had a clash with him and made up those stories. Preminger himself was a >jackass. As I understand it, in social situations, or when he was acting in someone else's movie, Preminger was congenial, highly agreeable company; it was only when he was directing his own films that he behaved as martinet and tyrant. Call him a Jeklyy and Hyde, then, but to simply dismiss the man as a "jackass" is to abdicate any responsibility to understand the man and what made him the way he was.

> She should have won the Oscar for Caged. Yes, there were all those other grand ladies, but Parker should have won, with the winner -- Judy Holliday -- a close second. No, the Oscar should have gone to Gloria Swanson for SUNSET BLVD. A brilliant, indelible performance.

You should wait for the sequel, instead.

> {quote:title=kingrat wrote:}{quote} > Mr. O sometimes has difficulties with French pronunciation, which is understandable, but the production staff might give him a little help. The intro to *King and Country* referred to another film Dirk Bogarde made with Joseph Losey called *Modesty Blase*, pronounced "blah-ZAY." That should have been *Modesty Blaise*, pronounced "blaze." That does show you how obscure *Modesty Blaise* has become. As I've said elsewhere, the problem with Osborne, his producers and writers is that one is forced to question their commitment to accuracy and quality. It's a rather odd coincidence that the best way to describe them is blas?.

> {quote:title=Cobolt wrote:}{quote} > Osborne also mistakenly tagged "The Black Scorpion" as the last film Willis O'Brien worked on. I knew he was wrong right off about that having seen "The Giant Behemoth" many times. Those are the kind of mistakes an informed cinemaphile should not be making. Osborne's biggest mistake was in not pointing out the redundancy in the title: there are no small behemoths.

> {quote:title=casablancalover wrote:}{quote} > > {quote:title=redriver wrote:}{quote} > > When I was in third grade, Miss Parker's class, a friend of mine had a GUNSMOKE lunch box. Day in, day out. You never saw him without his little red lunch box. Damn thing's probably worth $20.00 now! > > I would say more like $200 now. The TV-themed lunch boxes fetch more... Depends on on the condition, and whether or not you've got the matching Thermos (which needs to have its inner glass vessel intact). Beyond this, the most collectible memorabilia's probably from 1960's TV shows like The Man from U.N.CL.E, Star Trek and The Monkees.

> {quote:title=mrroberts wrote:}{quote} > Actually, this brings up a good question. At what point does a national emergency call for the interruption of any normal broadcast programming? That's precisely what Operation ECOMCON was designed to do. Oops, General James Matoon Scott and the Joint Chiefs of Staff are about to announce on all channels that Jordan Lyman is no longer president...

Yes, ALL ABOUT EVE's great, but my feelings about it can be summed up thusly: I have to be in the right mood to sit through it, but I can watch SUNSET BOULEVARD every day.

No, but you make it such a pleasure to do so.

Pan-and-scan Pal.

> {quote:title=hlywdkjk wrote:}{quote} > In the past, one could access upcoming months in full-month layout. That ability is no longer being made available through a link on the website. You can find them through links provided by members of these Forums. TCM has made a decision to provide a link to only the current month in a printable format. > Kyle In Hollywood Fine, but where do those members find the links?

> {quote:title=Arturo wrote:}{quote} > The reason it is not better known in Stanwyck's oeuvre is that everyone focuses on her noir films just before and after: DOUBLE INDEMNITY and THE STRANGE CASE OF MARTHA IVERS; The movie's titled THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS.

> {quote:title=FredCDobbs wrote:}{quote} > Cinesage, believe it or not, there are things in life you don't understand. > > Why do you always criticize people? Why do you always act like you are so smart, and everyone else is so stupid? Why don't you help people instead of always disagreeing with and criticizing people? Time and again you demonstrate that being offended is your natural state, though it's usually a consequence of your inflating someone's benign comments into something approaching the proverbial federal case. As regards what I wrote earlier, when I issue a criticism, there won't be any ambiguity about it.

The film is part of a long spate of colorful, if goofy, 1950's Universal-International sword-and-sandal epics that have been absent from all U.S. broadcast television for over fifteen years. Why that is is hard to fathom (the one I enjoy most is the Tony Curtis-Janet Leigh THE BLACK SHIELD OF FALWORTH, which, fortunately is available on Blu-ray in the U.K.) . One would think TCM would have struck a deal with Universal studios to license these, along many other of the studio's films from that general period (such as the Douglas Sirk films they sometimes run), but no luck. Perhaps the TCM Programmer can shed some light on this glaring gap in the channel's offerings.

> {quote:title=MovieMadness wrote:}{quote} > This is what i found- > > Hamlet (1996): Kate Winslet, Julie Christie, Robin Williams, Judi Dench, Charlton Heston, Jack Lemmon, John Gielgud, John Mills and Richard Attenborough (Best Director winner). (9) (Kenneth Branagh, and possible other cast members, will join the list in the future.) > Murder on the Orient Express (1974): Ingrid Bergman, Sean Connery, John Gielgud, Wendy Hiller, Vanessa Redgrave, Lauren Bacall (6 actors), plus Sidney Lumet (director) Paul Dehn ( screenwriter), and Geoffrey Unsworth (cinemotographer) (9) > A Bridge Too Far (1977): Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Gene Hackman, Anthony Hopkins, Laurence Olivier, Robert Redford (future winner for direction) and Maximilian Schell. (7) > How the West Was Won (1962): Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Gregory Peck, John Wayne, Walter Brennan, Karl Malden and narrator Spencer Tracy. (7) Many of the these movies also have additional Oscar nominees. This one has 10: Lee J. Cobb, Carroll Baker, Carolyn Jones, Robert Preston, Richard Widmark, Thelma Ritter, Agnes Moorehead, Debbie Reynolds, Russ Tamblyn and Raymond Massey > Nine: the Musical (2009): Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz and Sophia Loren (6, and nominee Kate Hudson) > JFK (1991): Walther Matthau, Jack Lemmon, Kevin Costner (direction), Sissy Spacek, Tommy Lee Jones, Joe Pesci. (6) > The Longest Day (1962): Sean Connery, Red Buttons, Rod Steiger, John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Edmond O'Brien. (6) > The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965): Jose Ferrer, Sidney Poitier, John Wayne, Shelley Winters, Martin Landau, Charlton Heston. (6) A: This discussion is only taking into account Oscars won for acting, not direction or anything else, nor is it about who was only nominated. B: Lauren Bacall has never won an Oscar. C: You neglected to list Oscar winners Joseph Schildkraut and Van Heflin, who appeared in THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD.

According to IMDb: At the time of release, the film was banned in Germany because the story was considered to be anti-Nazi propaganda by the wartime censors. Since CASABLANCA's world premiere took place almost a year after the U.S. declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy, the film didn't need to be banned; almost the entire European market was closed to American films, and the Germans didn't need to pick and choose the ones they didn't want the people under their domination to see. Everything was verboten. The idiotic things one finds on IMDb.

> {quote:title=Arturo wrote:}{quote} > I don't think it was the script per se that took so long, but rather the NY money men who vetoed Zanuck's idea as too expensive in the 1940 retrenchment of the industry caused by the outbreak of WW2. According to Philip Dunne, whom I heard speak at the Motion Picture Academy about twenty-five years ago, it was the script.

> {quote:title=joewillie wrote:}{quote} > Has there ever been a movie that had so many actors that won an Oscar in their career play in the same movie? Spencer Tracy, Lee Marvin,Walter Brennan,Sam Jaffe and Earnest Borgnine. The film's cast won a total of eight Oscars: Brennan 3; Tracy 2; Jagger, Borgnine and Marvin, one each. HOW THE WEST WAS WON ought to be called "How the Oscars Were Won," because its cast were awarded a total of ten statuettes during their careers: Brennan 3; Tracy (who narrated the film) 2; Gregory Peck, Karl Malden, James Stewart, Henry Fonda and John Wayne one each.

Now that you mention it, it occurred to me that I have an original copy of the script around somewhere...

Ford's films made under Darryl Zanuck's aegis at 20th Century-Fox (including VALLEY; YOUNG MR LINCOLN, MY DARLING CLEMETINE, DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK; and THE GRAPES OF WRATH) have a very different character than those he made elsewhere, especially Ford's more personal films like THE SEARCHERS; THE QUIET MAN; and the "Cavalry Trilogy." Zanuck's influence insured that Ford's films for Fox were far more tightly written and restrained; he reined in the director's sentimentality and penchant for low physical comedy. Even the indulgence in the themes for which Ford's now most renowned was de-emphasized; Zanuck demanded a subtlety that Ford was incapable of or, perhaps more accurately, disinclined to, muster when left to his own devices. What's interesting, though, is that HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY was originally to have been directed by the great William Wyler, who supervised virtually all the film's pre-production, including the finding of Roddy McDowall in England and the writing of the script (whose writer, Philip Dunne, said that Wyler's constant hectoring and prodding -- the same basic technique that Wyler used to guide his actors to an unequaled thirteen Oscars -- resulted in what Dunne felt was the best script of his long and distinguished career). Without that script, Ford (whom Zanuck asked to step in after Wyler's loan-out from Sam Goldwyn expired before the film could begin shooting due to the extremely long script-development process) would not have had as much to work with. He and Zanuck may very well have Wyler to thank for their respective Best Director and Best Picture Oscars for 1941. I'm also of the opinion that, had Wyler been able to continue on the film, it would be even better than it already is.

Why do you over-complicate it? Just take the photo's address -- http://www.moderntimes.com/mystique/image/sierra.jpg And add an exclamation point -- ! -- to each end of the address.

> {quote:title=RayFaiola wrote:}{quote} > The punch bowl scene was one of several that were cut from GUNGA DIN when it was reissued at 93 minutes. The 93 minute version also served as the negative from which the tv prints were made. It wasn't until the 1980's that an uncut version finally re-surfaced (on VidAmerica home video). Also cut were the character and all references to Rudyard Kipling. The scenes depicting Kipling were reportedly excised at the insistence of Kipling's family. > {quote:title=hlywdkjk wrote:}{quote} > *"I do agree with kyle, who said the performance of the actor playing the leader of the "Tugees" was quite chilling. He was very good, one of the best things in the film."* - MissWonderly > > Actually, that was RayFaiola who wrote that. But I also, like you, agree with what he wrote. The murderous cult were actually Thugs (from which the English word is derived), though the "h" is silent. Their activities, and the adjectival form of the word, is thugee.

> {quote:title=wouldbestar wrote:}{quote} > Prince Tallen is being played by Philmon Ahn. Is this the Phillip Ahn who was in so many 50's and 60's movies and TV shows or a kinsman? I can see the older actor I remember in him. No, Prince Tallen was played by Philson Ahn, brother of Philip (seven years his senior).