Sprocket_Man
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Posts posted by Sprocket_Man
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> {quote:title=FredCDobbs wrote:}{quote}
> Its an oddity of geography, because of the odd curvature of Panama, so that a ship has to sail Eastwardly through the Canal, to get from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean.
The Canal actually runs northwest (Atlantic end) to southeast (Pacific end) because it was obviously cheaper and quicker to cut it across the isthmus's narrowest point. The topography was also most conducive to constructing Gat?n Lake, whose fresh water is necessary to operate the series of locks in the Canal that compensate for the fifty-foot height differential between the surfaces of the Pacific (higher) and Atlantic (lower).
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One would think that TCM would take at least minimal pains to avoid introductory remarks by Robert Osborne or Ben Mankieiwcz that are proved to be egregiously erroneous almost as soon as the film begins.
Before this afternoon's airing of FIVE MILLION YEARS TO EARTH, Ben kept referring to "Bern-NAHRD QWAH-ter-mass"; ten minutes into the film, as Andrew Keir, the a splendid embodiment of the character makes his first appearance, the audience hers, with its very own ears, that his name is, in fact, pronounced "BERN-erd QWAY-ter-mass."
This isn't exactly privileged information; no one was keeping it a secret.
All this does is send the unmistakable message that no one in charge has actually seen the movie being introduced and described. It probably prompts in more than a few heads the question, "Why should I bother listening to someone who clearly doesn't know what he's talking about?"
Why don't TCM's producers provide Osborne and Mankiewciz with notes pointing out how things are to be spoken? It really doesn't take all that much time or money to do things right, to do the necessary research. These persistently lax standards reflect poorly on all of TCM, and really shouldn't be tolerated by the people who actually run the channel, or the folks at parent company Time Warner.
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> {quote:title=SansFin wrote:}{quote}
> > {quote:title=hamradio wrote:}{quote}
> I would not use chemicals on big bug. You would miss the delightful sizzle sound of giant bug-zapper.
You'll probably also never buy another sandwich at Subway.
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> {quote:title=chakobsa wrote:}{quote}
>plays a criminal/con man who marries a rich, beautiful woman after he gets into her parents' home posing as a plumber??
To establish his cover in Boston while he and his confederates plan their heist at Los Angeles International Airport, Eli Kotch (Coburn) actually marries the young companion to a wealthy older woman. He then abandons his wife-of-convenience to pull off the robbery.
Unbeknownst to Kotch, who jets off with his partners to split their loot, his wife's employer dies, leaving the young woman her millions, the O. Henry-esque twist at the end saying that crime may pay, but not committing the crime would've paid much, much better.
DEAD HEAT ON A MERRY-GO-ROUND is one of those films seen when young that seems so marvelous, but doesn't stand up when re-viewed as an adult. I love Coburn, and the Boston locations, but the film is rather tedious and pointless. Fortunately, there are some really wonderful films in Coburn's resume.
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> {quote:title=TikiSoo wrote:}{quote}
>I noticed the last time viewing The Wizard of Oz (on the big screen) Terry had _several_ close ups, where the dog's full body filled the entire screen.
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> That little dog must have had a heck of a publicist/manager.
The close-ups were merely a cheap way of sucking up to Franklin Roosevelt's scottie, Fala.
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> {quote:title=Arturo wrote:}{quote}
> Let's not forget Rosa Stadner's memorable playing of the Mother Superior in KEYS OF THE KINGDOM from 1944.
It's Rose (pronounced "Rosa"; the "e" isn't silent) Stradner, who also happened to be the wife of writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
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> {quote:title=ValentineXavier wrote:}{quote}
> According to the Wikipedia, the **** whale that sank the Essex, an incident behind Moby Dick, was claimed to be 85' long, and the Nantucket Whaling Museum has the jaw bone of one claimed to be 80' long. So, although inaccurate, 91' isn't that far off for the actual length of the animal. But, not the prop... The blue whale runs over 100' in length.
Well, to the degree one does, or should, trust Wikipedia, bear in mind that the only ones who witnessed the Essex's sinking were its survivors, and they weren't about to admit that the great ship was sent to the bottom by a merely average-sized cetacean. So, they had to invent a super-whale just to cover for their failure. That's likely what ended up in Wikipedia, a process not dissimilar to the writing process for Osborne's scripts.
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> {quote:title=finance wrote:}{quote}
> If it failed, why did Scorsese remake it? Don't they normally remake successful films?
Martin Scorsese didn't remake it in the sense that it was a self-generated project. It was "remade" by producers Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall and Steven Spielberg, who approached Scorsese to direct. The director accepted for little reason other than he felt he was perceived as a "specialty" director, and had never made a real mainstream movie (the financial considerations in directing a film aimed at the broadest possible audience was also appealing to him).
> {quote:title=LoveFilmNoir wrote:}{quote}
> The financial failure of Cape Fear at the box office is proof that sometimes the public needs to be told what is a good movie and what stinks.
Films succeed and fail for all sorts of reasons unrelated to their quality. Film history is rife with masterpieces that tanked at the box office (VERTIGO, THE WIZARD OF OZ, CITIZEN KANE) and mediocre-to-awful films that have cleaned up financially (AIRPORT, THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH). It's often a matter of the right movie coming along at the right time or the wrong movie at the wrong time, vis-a-vis what the public want to go see. Not that the original CAPE FEAR is a great movie, but it is effective for those who want to pay their hard-earned money to be scared for two hours. In 1962 there were, apparently, a significant shortage of them.
> {quote:title=CelluloidKid wrote:}{quote}
> *Scorsese retained the original music of the 1962 film by Bernard Herrmann.*
The major part of the score to the 1992 CAPE FEAR is Herrmann's score to the original; composer-conductor Elmer Bernstein also incorporated parts of Herrmann's unused score to Hitchcock's 1966 TORN CURTAIN (the film whose rejected score provided the final professional rupture between Herrmann and Hitchcock). If nothing else, the 1992 film resulted in a good, new stereo recording of a score whose original 1962 tracks weren't available to the public.
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Well, Osborne's done it again: after tonight's airing of John Huston's MOBY-DICK, he referred to the production's "91-foot mechanical whale."
At 91 feet, that would make it about 50% larger than the largest male **** whale, which grow no bigger than 60 feet in length. There's no way that such a gargantuan apparatus would ever have been built, and no need for it. The artificial (not truly "mechanical") whale to which Gregory Peck was lashed as he went under was only a 20-foot-long section of the beast's flank; the excellent mechanical miniature was about the same length.
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The West Coast premiere of the film was at Grauman's Chinese on August 15th, 1939; the World premiere was three days earlier at Loew's Capitol Theater in New York.
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You've just confirmed by assertion.
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> {quote:title=Terrence1 wrote:}{quote}
> You're right about the music being used in "The Robe." Also, it was in the final scene of "The Song of Bernadette." It's a stirring piece of music and I never get tired of hearing it.
>
> Terrence.
Except that Alfred Newman didn't use it in THE SONG OF BERNADETTE.
Due to the (then public domain) film's constant, ubiquitous showings in the 1970s, '80s and '90s, more people have probably heard it in the last scene of IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE than in any other movie. The rest of the film's score is credited to Dimitri Tiomkin.
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> {quote:title=Big_Bopper wrote:}{quote}
> you've heard me talk about how certain pix with names in the credits become rare. one such pic is The Clay Pigeon - 1949 by richard fleisher [sic]. the name in the credits is Carl Foreman & so TCM cannot show it. I copied it off AMC in the 90's & it is not on video in this country.
> available from Spain! R.O. again worships the blacklist.
There are lots of films that used to commonly air on TV that are not to be found these days, and it's for the most innocuous of reasons. Foreman's name is on plenty of films, from HIGH NOON to THE GUNS OF NAVARONE, that TCM, and plenty of other outlets, show all the time.
You're just looking for excuses to criticize those who criticize the Blacklist, but it won't wash. We're on to you.
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Boehner ought to take his kid to play in the bed of the L.A. River.
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> {quote:title=finance wrote:}{quote}
> Olivia's long layoff (circa 1943-1946) as a result of her suspension by Warner Bros. didn't help her career.
It was just the opposite; though she'd been threatened with blackballing if she pursued her lawsuit against Warner Bros. (which all the studios knew could adversely affect their star-contract system), she was bigger than ever when she left Warners. Instead of merely playing Errol Flynn's love interest and the lead in lightweight, forgettable comedies, she snagged a series of roles, starting with TO EACH HIS OWN, through THE SNAKE PIT and culminating with her greatest role in THE HEIRESS that netted her two Oscars. In fact, prior to her parting ways with Warner Bros., her best part was HOLD BACK THE DAWN, made on loan-out to Paramount.
It was obvious by then that Warners wasn't going to cast her in challenging roles, and that -- as much as the unfairness of the studios' policy of adding service time to the contracts of actors placed on suspension -- was DeHavilland's incentive for filing her lawsuit.
Still, as bad as the studios' policy was, it paled in comparison to Major League Baseball's Reserve Clause, that bound players to their teams for life, even after their contracts expired. It took a similar lawsuit in the late 1960s, by a very courageous player for the old Washington Senators, Curt Flood, to begin the process that eventually broke the Reserve Clause system and ushered in the age of free agency.
Flood lost his suit, was blackballed and never played in the Major Leagues again, but he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame for his courage.
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> {quote:title=Hibi wrote:}{quote}
> WOW. AMAZING longevity! Wonder what her secret is? Joan too.
You want to know the secret? Simple: both Olivia and Joan are determined to outlive the other so that the surviving sister can get the last word.
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Kirk Douglas and Christopher Plummer in Arthur Hailey's the Moneychangers (1976).
Burt Lancaster in Moses, the Lawgiver (1974)
Laurence Olivier, Anne Bancroft, Peter Ustinov, Christopher Plummer, Anthony Quinn, Ralph Richardson, Rod Steiger, Ernest Borgnine and James Earl Jones in Jesus of Nazareth (1977)
John Gielgud, Trevor Howard, Viveca Lindfors and Derek Jacobi in Inside the Third Reich (1982)
Toshiro Mifune in Shogun (1980)
Richard Widmark in Mr Horn (1976)
Charlton Heston in Chiefs (1983)
Marlon Brando, Olivia de Havilland, Henry Fonda in Roots: The Next Generations (1979)
Gregory Peck, John Gielgud, Christopher Plummer in The Scarlet and the Black (1983)
Anthony Quinn in The Old Man and the Sea (1990)
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The older Morse gets, the more he looks as though he and the late George Plimpton were separated at birth.
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It's not off-topic at all; one film segues into another (never mind that David O. Selznick was, ultimately, responsible for both movies); it all serves to illuminate the original poster's observation.
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> {quote:title=cinemafan wrote:}{quote}
> *$5 a ticket????* That's got to be the best deal going! This is one time I wish I lived in LA.
As a non-profit organization, the Academy loses money on every public program they present (it even provides parking in commercial lots close to the theater). That doesn't mean it couldn't charge more -- a lot more -- if it wanted to but, to the organization's credit, it understands that it has an educational, cultural and civic mission to fulfill.
For those of us who purchased $30.00 season passes to the current Films Noirs series ($5.00 per individual ticket), the per-film price is reduced to $2.00. One almost feels guilty for buying them...
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Odd that you should remember it that way, since I should think that the only memorable thing about the vastly inferior SON OF KING is the image of Denham and Helene in Little Kong's grasp, as he sacrifices himself to save them from the rising sea.
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I'd been anticipating it; SPARTACUS is a seminal score, both from the standpoint of 1960s film-scoring, but also the epic film.
That said, I'm a bit disappointed, in that the announcement indicates that not all the film's stereo elements survive. What there is in stereo -- one disc -- combines the original soundtrack album, issued at the time of the movie's 1960 release, with the second disc that Decca records had planned to include in the LP album, but then canceled. While this (plus the overture and epilogue) gives a good overview of the score, that's a long way from the complete music in stereo.
That full score only exists now in mono sound. While that's better than nothing, it's been available for years as a bootleg recording, though the Varese discs should have improved sonics (the stereo sections of the bootleg sound excellent).
Still, I ordered a copy. $109 plus tax (I pick up mine in person at Varese's offices) is rather steep, considering that one of the discs is a new recording of current film composers' "interpretations" of the SPARTACUS love theme, a rather questionable enterprise. Lastly, there's a DVD of interviews with various individuals discussing the score. Even if that's of some merit, it's not the sort of thing one is apt to watch more than once.
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> {quote:title=finance wrote:}{quote}
> If anything, the names "Gable and Grable" would have been great for promoting the film.
Only if the film were ALL ABOUT EVE or STALAG 17.
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As so often happens in Hollywood, THE GREAT RACE was released at roughly the same time as THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES, a film with roughly the same story.
Though the latter film has an extraordinary look and feel to it, capturing a sense of time and place like few other film's I've ever watched (my opinion being formed after attending a screening of a 70mm print newly struck by 20th Century-Fox about four or five years ago), in every creative sense the film is an unwatchable mess. The dramatic elements in MAGNIFICENT MEN are clumsily assembled, the comedy is decidedly unfunny and the casting uninspired.
Though each film revolves around a romantic triangle, MAGNIFICENT MEN's is totally conventional: two men vying for the hand of a woman. THE GREAT RACE's is far more interesting: the Great Leslie's (Tony Curtis) competition for the attentions of Maggie DuBois (Natalie Wood) isn't another man, but the cause of women's suffrage, to which Maggie is committed (or thinks she is).
THE GREAT RACE's villain is the engagingly over-the-top Professor Fate (tackled with relish by Jack Lemmon), who seems dropped into the film from a Mack Sennett silent comedy; even better is his dim-bulb henchman, Max (Peter Falk steals the movie, plain and simple). By contrast, no one in MAGNIFICENT MEN knows the film's villain, Sir Percy Ware-Armitage (Terry-Thomas) even is a villain, thereby gutting his effectiveness as one. And he gets his comeuppance via his own miscalculation, and not through the wits and resourcefulness of the piece's hero (they, in fact, don't even know to where, or why, he eventually disappears, since they never knew he was trying to undermine them in the first place). This is not the stuff of good drama. It is, in fact, unforgivably inept.
THE GREAT RACE is, then, by far the superior film, consistently wry, funny and trafficking lightly and effectively in the language of traditional Hollywood comedy, which Blake Edwards obviously took in with every draw on his mother's milk (with the unfortunate exception of the rather strained "Prisoner of Zenda" section). Getting to Paris was never, and has never been so much fun.
"MGM: Hollywood's Greatest Backlot" book due in Oct 2010
in General Discussions
Posted
1978 was the year I had the entirety of MGM's Lot 2 all to myself for a few afternoons. Block after block of New York and London streets, ocean liner facades and small midwestern towns. It was pretty dilapidated by then; simultaneously fascinating, exhilarating and sad.
As you can imagine, I've already ordered the book, along with the companion volume about the early Warner Bros. lot that's due out in a couple of weeks.