Sprocket_Man

> {quote:title=FredCDobbs wrote:}{quote} > "Going Home" ? It's actually an old American folk tune around which 19th century Czech composer Anton?n Dvoř?k wrote the first movement of his Symphony No. 9, Aus der Neuen Welt ("From the New World"). Almost as interesting, in THE SNAKE PIT's last scene, the film's composer, Alfred Newman, re-used the melody from the Renaissance Venetian song he'd first employed in his score to THE PRINCE OF FOXES the year before.

> {quote:title=ClassicViewer wrote:}{quote} > Is there such a thing? > > Some of the early Technicolor films look too washed out...as Technicolor expert Natalie Kalmus warned the studios back then, the directors and cinematographers needed to use a proportionate amount of neutral tones to balance the bright colors. Some filmmakers did not do that, so we have really flaming red hair or glowing lipstick on the starlets...the yellows and oranges are sometimes way too shiny and distract the viewer. > > Obviously, there was a learning curve involved and we have to accept these films as products of their times. But since some studios have colorized old black-and-white prints...couldn't they do the reverse and darken up some of these super washed out prints? The early concern was that audiences' eyes would grow fatigued after watching Technicolor for extended periods of time (a misplaced fear, as it turned out; modern viewers' eye-strain and headaches from watching the new crop of 3-D movies is real, however). Still, one must remember that two-strip Technicolor had been in use, on a limited basis, from 1919, and that three-strip was introduced for use in live-action shorts and animation from the early 1930s. Many cinematographers had had experience shooting three-strip Tech by the time it was first applied to a feature film, 1935's BECKY SHARP, though most of them were veterans of studios' "B" and shorts units. Oddly enough, the Technicolor company's dictum that color should be used as accent, and not motif, is frequently ignored today, and not just in movies. Every time I enter, or see photos of, a house in which the walls of this room are painted some ghastly color, and those of that room are an even more dreadful shade, I wonder if the people living there have any idea as to how they've misused color. Color does lose its drama when it's everywhere, glaring in the viewer's face (a bit of advice: if you absolutely must have your walls radiate color, use colored ]lights. It's a thousand times cheaper than paint, and you can change it whenever it strikes your mood -- with no drop-cloths needed to protect the furniture).

Ironically, Gregory Peck's widow is also named Veronique.

It's an MGM film, now owned by Warner Bros. TCM should show it on a fairly regular basis. I remember first seeing it as part of an invitational screening in New York when I was in college. The film was followed by a panel discussion with Jeff Bridges, Andy Griffith, producer Tony Bill and director Howard Zieff. It's a cute little movie, but even then it was emblematic of the decline of MGM, a studio that couldn't marshal resources to make movies any bigger than HEARTS OF THE WEST, which saddened me because, over the previous several months the Museum of Modern Art had been running a series of screening commemorating the 50th anniversary of the founding of MGM. The contrast between a half-century's worth of glories and a little, little movie like HEARTS OF THE WEST couldn't have been more, well, disheartening. Granted, the studio did turn out the grander THE WIND AND THE LION and LOGAN'S RUN over the next few months, but the handwriting was on the wall. Now, MGM is barely a memory, with a couple of corporate raiders essentially picking over its bones.

As far as I'm concerned, the best pairing that never was is Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart in the production of The Man Who Would Be King, that John Huston tried to mount around 1950. At the same time, it's just as well that that particular film never got made, as Gable and Bogart (wonderful as they might've been together in the right project) would've been dreadfully miscast as Kipling's 19th Century British Army veterans hunting the fortunes in far-off Kafiristan (Cary Grant and Errol Flynn, now that would have been ideal, memorable casting in those parts. Too bad I wasn't around back then to suggest it to Huston). Of course, Huston did manage to make the film a quarter-century later, with Michael Caine and Sean Connery as a pitch-perfect Peachy and Danny. Still, one wonders what a couple of the screen's greatest lights might've given us in the right piece...

Isn't one query about this sufficient?

Isn't one query about this enough?

> {quote:title=lzcutter wrote:}{quote} > Not necessarily. MrCutter works for a division of Fox that is off the lot (not Fox News) but occasionally gets called to meetings on the lot. I will have to tell him about the men's room so he can check it out. It's in an open area a few doors down (to the south) of the Little Theater.

> {quote:title=DachsieLady wrote:}{quote} > John Wayne as hero in any movie he was in. Especially when he played Genghis Khan.

> {quote:title=lzcutter wrote:}{quote} >Thank you for all the info, especially about the Fox bathroom and Paramount! Well, you may eventually get a chance to see the Paramount Film Archive, but the Fox men's room is off-limits.

> {quote:title=lzcutter wrote:}{quote} > The buildings on the Warners lot are still there but some of them are now called different names and have different offices in them. Very few of the old film vaults on studio lots are still in use for that purpose, as they were always woefully inadequate, having little, if anything, in the way of climate control (in fact, one film vault, on the far west end of the 20th Century-Fox lot has been turned into a couple of very pleasant...lavatories. A wall of one of the toilet stalls in the Men's Room is actually the door to a vault, complete with locking mechanism. When in there I've often wondered how many current visitors to that lavatory realize what it was once used for). That's one of the reasons there's been so much deterioration and destruction of irreplaceable picture and sound elements. Many studios now store much of their materials off lot, some of them, mainly negatives and color separations, deep in Kansas salt mines where temperatures and humidity are always ideal and constant. The biggest on-lot facility is at Paramount (behind the "Blue Sky" cyclorama at the center of the lot, that's visible to passing cars on Melrose Avenue). It was a state-of-the-art building when it was opened about twenty years ago, but it became apparent that it was already becoming dated. Upgrades have been done, but film-storage and preservation has proven to an ongoing challenge. > Watching the restored film it was obvious from the beginning that James Mason had been the one most robbed by the truncated version. As the love story played out across the screen we were all shown for the first time in almost twenty years, just how nuanced, tragic and moving his performance really was. I think you really meant thirty years.

> {quote:title=filmlover wrote:}{quote} > As I am watching "Life With Father," I realize that when I get humorously frustrated at times, I will say or write, "Gad!" as Clarence Day would bellow. > > What expression(s) from movies do you use in your everyday life? In the original Howard Lindsay-Russell Crouse play, Clarence Day was given to uttering "God!," as many others are. When Warner Bros. purchased the film rights they were informed by the Breen Office that all these exclamations of the Deity were unacceptable, and so "Gad" was inserted as a suitably evocative replacement.

> {quote:title=misswonderly wrote:}{quote} > Thought of another! This one's British, and comes from a slightly different angle: this time it's the union that's causing problems for the creative product inventor: *Man in the White Suit* 1951, starring Alec Guinness (delightfully young!) and Joan Greenwood of the fascinating throaty voice. Alec develops a chemical -or a material made from this chemical, can't recall which exactly - that renders clothing permanent and perfect -never any stains, holes, threadbare patches, etc. Your suit will last forever! > > But wait -who wants that? If a set of clothes lasts forever, there will be no need for people to ever buy new ones. Thus the union - and eventually the clothing company business heads, too - want to prevent Alec's invention from production. Much confusion and husky-voiced cajoling (on the part of Miss Greenwood) ensues. > I don't usually go into plot synopsis (plural= synopsi?) like this, but it's fun describing this movie. Plus, it does fit with the "nasty greedy business philosophy" theme we're talking about. > > (ps-If you want guidance on spelling corrections, I suggest you consult finance.) > > Edited by: misswonderly on Jun 17, 2010 8:43 PM One of the most celebrated and prototypical of Alec Guinness's Ealing Studio films, it almost didn't get made in this form, or even as a comedy. Originally conceived as a semi-drama about the effect of cheap, limitless nuclear power on the British economy (if you're old enough to remember, that was the electric companies' selling point when the push to build N-plants got underway in the late 1950s), the concept slowly metamorphosed into the more whimsical realm of textiles. The film's final gag, that the supposedly indestructible and un-stainable fabric from which inventor Guinness's suit is made suddenly and irreversibly begins to disintegrate of its own accord -- after nearly turning British society upside-down -- actually served to mirror the then-unknown reality of nuclear power, and practically everything else that was ever over-sold: if it's too good to be true, it probably isn't. As such, the movie's as much a cautionary tale about making promises that can't be kept, based on research that hasn't been done, as it is about anything else. And it's hard to imagine anyone other than Guinness in the role of boffin Sidney Stratton.

It'd only really be "Ralph Bellamy Night" on TCM if the only people who watched this evening were men (his reputation as a second lead being that his characters never ended up with the girl).

Whoa! If you think that SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is based on a true story (besides the fact that there were, during the war, multiple brothers from a couple of families killed in combat), then you're laboring under a tremendous misapprehension. The incidents depicted in Spielberg's film are 100%% fiction, including the extremely fanciful (and dramatically superfluous) scene in Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall's office, when he decides to risk the lives of a whole squad of soldiers by sending them on the proverbial wild-goose chase looking for the surviving Ryan brother. In reality, there was no such mission ever undertaken by the Army or any of the other armed services, for the all-too-obvious reasons that men get killed in war, and that while two or more from the same family dying may be unfortunate, it really won't affect morale, either among the troops or on the home front. What will affect morale is news of other, unrelated soldiers' lives being risked and maybe wasted in a pointless hunt for surviving siblings of the dead. As I wrote earlier, most of the movie is B.S., from its combat tactics to the fact that Miller's squad walk far to closely together in enemy-held territory, thereby making it much easier for German snipers or an opposing force to kill them all quickly. (Just as a point of reference, Dale Dye, whom Spielberg employed as his technical advisor, and who makes a living in that role, never held a combat command in his years in the Marines.) When the Sullivan brothers were all killed in a torpedo attack on the USS Juneau in 1942, the Navy changed its regulations to prohibit the assigning of siblings to the same vessel to reduce the chance that a family would lose more than one child. It's all they could do. The fact remains that the Sullivans all died, yet we went on to win the war, anyway.

> {quote:title=JarrodMcDonald wrote:}{quote} > It's definitely spring. Tomorrow is the first official day of the season... I hate spring. And I hate summer even more. I'm counting the days till next winter.

> {quote:title=JarrodMcDonald wrote:}{quote} > Okay, here's the deal: > > I bought a copy of this film several years ago and it sits in the original wrapping. I have decided that I am going to tear this film apart...I mean it figuratively and literally. > > I am going to watch it, very slowly...I will spend four to five hours on it, pausing it along the way and writing down notes. I am going to be very methodical about it. > > I am going to be brutal. > > If this film is as good as everyone says, it will be able to withstand my extreme scrutiny of it. If it's that good, then I will fall in love with it and reverse my opinion. But in the event I do not reverse my opinion, the brutality will stand. > > We have to understand, > > There can be NO: > > Well, it was made in 1942 excuses (it has to hold up to today's standards, or else it's time as a true classic is finite and it has a shelf life that it has exceeded). > > There can be NO: > > Well, anyone could find something wrong with it excuses. > > There can be NO: > > Well, that is not what Curtiz meant. (I will be reporting the facts of what appears on screen.) > > There can be NO: > > Exemption from politics. I am a registered Republican. If I feel the film is entirely too liberal and that it interferes with its entertainment value, I will definitely cite examples. > > There can be NO: > > Repeat viewings. I will only watch this film once and then I will put it under one of the tires and drive over it. I will crush it. If I happen to like the film, I will ask Santa to bring me a new copy later this year. > > Expect my findings in the next day or so. The above relates more to the 12 ANGRY MEN thread elsewhere on the board, because you've appointed yourself a one-man jury that's already convinced that the defendant is guilty. The idea of "innocent until proven guilty" is obviously a foreign concept to you; you think that CASABLANCA (or, by extension, any movie) needs to prove it isn't bad for you to think it worthy of being appreciated by others. Most people go to see a movie with an open mind; they'll roll with the movie's punches until and unless it strikes them as being ineffective, unconvincing and, perhaps, inane. You, on the other hand, already think it ineffective and unconvincing without ever having seen it. So your only reason for actually watching it is to reinforce the convictions you already hold, which is the typical act of a narcissist. At least in a trial, a competent judge instructs the jury to leave its prejudices at the door and weigh the case on its merits. The judge in a matter like this is the individual movie viewer's conscience and sense of fairness, but the one in your skull is apparently Judge Roy Bean, who's already ordered the gallows to be built before the trial's opening arguments are even made.

Makes no sense to you. In fact, it's your comment that makes no sense (at least to anyone who has a sense of humor).

> {quote:title=Jenetico wrote:}{quote} > Speaking of the chicken or the egg. Which one is correct? The egg. No joke: it's the egg.

> {quote:title=hamradio wrote:}{quote} > Some Universal films were cremated in the studio fire recently. A lot of 35 mm prints and video masters were destroyed (I have it on good authority from a friend of mine at Universal Home Video that that the losses were substantially greater than the studio admitted to), but no negatives or sound elements were lost, as those are too precious to be stored in a mid-grade, above-ground (and obviously not fireproof) vault on studio property. The problem is that if a print is requested for an archive or repertory screening, and the only print went up in the fire, Universal may not be too terribly inclined to strike another one for a purpose that doesn't generate much profit for the company.

> {quote:title=fxreyman wrote:}{quote} > Easy question.......easy answer...... > > 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood. I'll second that.

> {quote:title=audreyforever wrote:}{quote} > Yes, it was a good intro. And also he brought up how committed you had to be to work with David Lean. That's why Finney turned it down, and I believe Brando for the same reason. Even when it came to Doctor Zhivago, Rod Steiger was on the set for 12 months! But, in the end, it all pad off with each film, and as you can see, with this one, everybody worked their heart out. Albert Finney emphatically did not turn down the lead in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. He signed a contract and began shooting the film in Jordan with Lean & Co. After two weeks' principal photography, Finney walked off the picture, leaving Sam Spiegel and Lean to re-cast. As for Steiger and DR ZHIVAGO, he was offered the part of Komarovsky only after James Mason turned it down.

> {quote:title=FredCDobbs wrote:}{quote} > Scottman, as a journalist and news reporter for nearly 40 years, I can assure you that none of us will ever know exactly what happened at the OK Corral, if we were not personally there to witness the actions ourselves. Whoa! A few days ago in another thread, you described yourself as having been a cameraman for forty years (or whatever)!

I guess all those raccoons have finally got their revenge.

> {quote:title=patful wrote:}{quote} > *By the way, whenever you see saguaro cactus in a Western movie, that usually means the cactus itself was filmed in either Southwestern New Mexico, Southern Arizona, Southeastern California, or Northwestern Mexico.* Or the "cacti" are made out of plaster, with wooden bases, and were trucked to the location from Hollywood.