AndyM108
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Posts posted by AndyM108
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Well, I've also got about 2500 movie DVDs and about 1200 R&B 45's from the 50's and 60's, so it isn't just the books. I'll probably never be completely satisfied until I have the entire 20th century at my fingertips, and I don't mean just via the internet. That's cheating.
OTOH I do make one concession to the digital world: My continually updated list of DVDs is contained in Word and Excel folders. To try to put all that info on index cards and in metal card folders would be taking my Luddite-ism to near-Luddite degrees. I may be insane, but I don't want my status to be noticed and formalized by the outside world. B-)
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In response to those fabulous noir book covers, noir fans might like to know about a lavish two volume set of books, The Dark Page: The Books That Inspired American Film Noir, and The Dark Page 2, that feature full page (9.5" x 12.5") color scans of hundreds of first edition dust jackets of novels that were later adapted into movies. They're published by Oak Knoll Press and written by Kevin Johnson, a used and rare book dealer in Baltimore who's also a huge fan of our favorite film genre. You have to see these books in order to fully appreciate them, but the link below will give you a taste. They're not cheap, but they're well worth it in the long run.
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Everybody wants to go to Heaven, but don't nobody wants to die!
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> {quote:title=misswonderly wrote:}{quote}Andy wrote:
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> " ...As for clutter and the space problem, that's a matter of personal preference and how much wall space you have. I grew up in a house filled with books, and I can't even imagine living any other way, but each to his or her own when it comes to that sort of a decision...."
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> Maybe I didn't make myself clear...I don't really regard books as "clutter", and like you, feel my beloved book collection is well worth whatever space it takes up. I too grew up in a house filled with books, as is my own. Walk into our living room, and two of the four walls are filled with bookshelves- and books, books, obviously. And that's the way I like it.
> I guess I was trying to see things from many another's point of view. Lots of people do consider an excess of books to be "clutter".
> Getting back to e-readers, every now and then I see "get organized"articles about how to cut down on clutter in one's home, and these articles always suggest getting rid of one's books and switching to e-readers.
> Silly article -writers...don't they know that books are not clutter, and I'd rather have my books than a perfectly tidy home.
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Sorry, misswonderly, I should have made it clear that my comment about clutter was directed at the general argument, and not at you personally. And of course books are only "clutter" if they're not the books you want around. "Clutter" is 10 pairs of jeans, 10 suits, 20 dresses, or 20 pairs of shoes. Now *that's* what those "get organized" articles should be talking about. B-)
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If your interest in books is solely in the content, then used paperbacks are almost always going to be the best choice, since in the great majority of cases they'll be priced at less than the kindle version. The only real advantage to e-books is to people with limited space, or to people who travel a lot and want to carry their entire book collection around with them. Other than for those groups, though, I fail to see the point of e-books.
And of course one other advantage to print editions, especially hardbacks with dust jackets, is that depending on the title and the edition, they often have resale value. By contrast, I don't think you can ever recover that money you drop on a kindle "book", since as far as I know they're non-transferrable.
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> {quote:title=misswonderly wrote:}{quote}
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> Andy, speaking of film periodicals, although I'm afraid I've barely heard of the series you refer to, there was a great movie magazine, back in the 90s, called Film Comment. The book store I worked in used to sell it, but then they stopped stocking it-mayb not enough buyers. It was very good, with articles about old films as well as new ones.
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> I know an argument many make for e-readers is the lack of clutter...People who love actual books and are constantly buying more often end up having trouble finding where to store them all. For a while I literally had a few stacks of books sitting around, here and there. Nothing like the kind of thing you see on those depressing "hoarder" reality shows, didn't get that far, but still, a problem with so many books, so little space.
> For that reason, I can see the usefulness of kindles, e-readers, whatever you want to call them, in terms of books that you might not want to keep after you've read them - flashinthepan "bestsellers", so-called "beach reading", etc.
Misswonderly, I guess I wasn't clear about that Citadel "series". It wasn't a periodical, but a "series" of books that the Citadel Publishing Co. issued from the 60's into the 80's. They were what you might call small coffee table books, 8.5" x 11" and usually running about 200 to 300 pages. They varied in quality, but even the worst ones were useful for the basics: Brief bios; complete filmography with full cast, plot summaries, and a sample of the reviews of the time. If you look on abebooks.com and search for "The Films of" with Citadel as the publisher between 1960 and 1990, you can currently find 2209 choices, ranging from under $4.00 (with free shipping) for such stars as Bogey, Cagney, Bette, and Reagan, all the way up to $1,995 for Anthony Quinn. I should add that nearly all stars have multiple choices with varying prices and conditions, and that same Quinn book is also available for $5.00 as well as $1,995.00! I always confine my searches for hardback copies with dust jackets, but if that's not important to you, you can almost always find what you're looking for for well under $20.00.
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?bi=0&bx=off&ds=50&pn=citadel&recentlyadded=all&sortby=17&sts=t&tn=%22thefilmsof%22&x=51&y=7&yrh=1990&yrl=1960
As for clutter and the space problem, that's a matter of personal preference and how much wall space you have. I grew up in a house filled with books, and I can't even imagine living any other way, but each to his or her own when it comes to that sort of a decision.
And BTW to finance's point about book theft by book store employees, I never had that problem, since I always allowed my employees to buy any book at whatever price I'd paid for it. I think it's more the chain stores that run into theft problems, rather than smaller shops such as my own.
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> {quote:title=misswonderly wrote:}{quote}Andy, how interesting. A (former) used book dealer !
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> I worked in book retail for years too, although not in the used book business. I bet, in many ways, that is more rewarding than working in "new" book stores.
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> Still, there were many things I loved about bookselling. Seeing the new titles come in, always knowing what was coming out by my favourite writers, and helping people find and choose great books (or even sometimes not-so-great.)
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I have to admit that I had the best of both of those worlds, in that I got to pick from collections that often dated back to the early 20th century, while at the same time I was buying new books from the head book reviewer of the Washington Post. It was like being turned loose in a candy store for 23 years. I might add that this reviewer always had me make the check out to a local Friends of the Library group, and never took a dime of it for himself.
One minor regret in hindsight about my personal collection is that I didn't pay particular attention to movie books. About a dozen or so years ago, a man sold me what must have been nearly a complete run of the old Citadel "The Films of...." series, which are a terrific introduction to many of Hollywood's leading stars and their films. I could have had an instant collection, but instead I took home only about half a dozen of them, and sold all the rest. Of course now that I've discovered TCM, I wish I'd kept a lot more, but then everyone's Hindsight IQ is always about 50 points higher than our IQ in the present.
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> {quote:title=jcphelps wrote:}{quote}I have question , since we are living in the age of e-books, would fellow movie bufss prefer to get their movie star bios, or movie histories or any other books on the movies, via kindle or nook or in good old paper. I ask because lately I find myself so use to my Kindle, that I'm tempted to switch over to getting my movie bios on it as well. Have others made the leap?
As a former used book dealer with a personal collection of over 8,000 titles, I think my answer is rather predictable.
Hardbacks with dust jackets first (if they came with them to begin with), trade paperbacks second, and everything else a distant last. Fortunately one aspect of the rise of Amazon is that if you can wait less than a year after the date of publication, many hardbacks are now cheaper that the e-book version. This is a buyer's market in books like we've never seen before. -
> {quote:title=finance wrote:}{quote}I've just discovered that it's all noirs every Friday evening in June. OK!!
And there were months filled with Esther Williams, Mickey Rooney, Doris Day, and Elvis Presley. We all have to suffer sometimes. Personally I'd gladly sit through Industry Safety Film Month rather than any more of those four for about the next 10 years.
That said, I wasn't complaining about the lack of noirs. Some months are great for them, others not so much. I do wish they'd give more foreign films a chance, but even in that category I have to admit the choices they've made have been superlative, and July will see a whole month of Truffaut.
As for Sci-Fi, I'm all for that genre, too, at around 4:00 am on Leap Year's Day or thereabouts. B-)
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> {quote:title=finance wrote:}{quote}TCM seems to show a good share of sci fi films. If anything, they come up a bit short in the noir area.
I can't say I'd complain too much about the lack of noirs since most of what they haven't shown in that category is more likely a matter of permissions than anything else. But the dearth of foreign films is another matter. Given that there are likely about 50 first rate foreign movies for every worthwhile sci-fi programmer, the near-total relegation of that former category to the wee hours of Monday morning is a far worse "crime" than any lack of Robby the Robots and flying saucers, entertaining as those might be in very small doses.
All that said, we all have our pet genres, and if FlyBack favors aliens and hydra-headed humanoids over dramas about real people, who am I to say he's missing a screw somewhere?
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> {quote:title=twinkeee wrote:}{quote}...as I mentioned before, I have always wondered why only anywhere from 3 to 20 users? I have always felt given that , as you say, hundreds of thousands watch TCM then why not more users?, that baffles me....
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I've always thought that the low number of guests was easy to explain by the fact that TCM automatically logs you out if you don't make any comments or change pages for more than about 10 or 15 minutes. But once you're logged off, until you close the tab and leave the website altogether, you're still counted as a "guest".
By contrast, on most other sites, once you log in you're kept logged in until you actually leave the site altogether. If TCM did that for their forums, the number of "guests" would drop precipitously and the number of "users" would go way up.
As to *why* TCM is so quick on the logout trigger, that's something I couldn't answer, unless it just wants to have an accurate idea of how many people are actually *commenting* (as opposed to "just browsing" the website) at any particular point in time. And if that's their goal, I think that they're probably accomplishing it.
I also note this: The automatic timed logout affects *only* the forums. If I enter any other TCM page, I'm always logged in no matter what. Only for the forums do I have to keep signing back in.
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Since I didn't get to 1941 when it first came out, I was going to record it. But after reading these comments I'm glad that the best Orioles game of the year ran past the 10:00 starting time. Saved me a disk and a waste of two hours. I watched about five minutes of the film after the postgame wrapup, and it seemed to wholly justify the mocking I'm seeing here.
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> {quote:title=GoodGuysWearBlack wrote:}{quote}Doctor Zhuvago AND Lawrence of Arabia...again. Yippee!
> ...and on the same day too! B-)
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> /sarc
Plus Special Torture Days of Doris Day and Charlton Heston, served with vanilla ice cream between slices of Wonder Bread. Ouch! I'd add Mickey Rooney, except that at least they're mercifully laying off the Andy Hardy schlockfest.
And where would we be without our 1862nd showing of Rebel Without a Cause, or our 8744th screening of Splendor in the Grass? Oh, the humanity!
Okay, these clinkers are somewhat offset by Catherine Deneuve, Charles Coburn and Glenda Farrell, but in terms of new faces there's nothing on the level of Toshiro Mifune, Jean Gabin or Lon Chaney. And when are we *ever* going to get George Sanders?
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> {quote:title=slaytonf wrote:}{quote}Didn't this thread have more responses earlier? I'm feeling very disoriented. . . .
It did, but then the TCM exterminator showed up and zapped a small mouse who was mistaking himself for a critic, editing his contribution to the thread down to one incorrect word.
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> {quote:title=jamesjazzguitar wrote:}{quote}Using Star of the Month as a basis, there were 5 named Robert (Young, Mitchum, Montgomery, Taylor, Ryan) and 4 named James (Stewart, Cagney, Mason, Garner).
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Is there any movie that's had *more* than 3 SOTMs with the same first name in it? Crossfire had Robert Ryan, Robert Mitchum, and Robert Young in the three leading male roles. There must be others like that, but I'm drawing a blank.
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> {quote:title=AuntiePam wrote:}{quote}What I'm looking for is a way to search TCM to find out when a movie featuring a particular star, director, screenwriter, etc. will be shown?
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> I've recently become enamored of films with screenplays written by Frank Fenton. I have a list of his movies from IMDB, and am looking for a quick easy way to see when one of his movies will be shown. I subscribe to the Guide, but can only search for a month at a time. I'm hoping there's an easier way.
Just type in his name in the search box, then click on his name when it appears. The two upcoming movies of his are Millionaires in Prison on June 4th, and Nocturne on June 21st. There may be more, but there's an ad blocking your view where the forwarding arrow usually appears.
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When I first saw George Clooney, although yes, he somewhat resembles Gable, (esp in attitude) I see a stronger resemblance to Pat O'Brien.
When I first saw Pat O'Brien, he was starring in a Serutan commercial. That's "Natures" spelled backwards, folks. B-)
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I'm a complete non-fan of Eastwood's cop movies and westerns, but I'd love to see TCM do a back-to-back screening of Flags of Our Fathers, Letters From Iwo Jima, Bird, Gran Torino and Million Dollar Baby. That'd beat 90% of what we've been getting on prime time lately, all but Bird would be TCM premieres, and those first two movies would be a 100% improvement over those endless repeats that were shown over the Memorial Day weekend.
He can then debate another chair for an encore, and hope that he does better this time around.
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> {quote:title=LonesomePolecat wrote:}{quote}TopBilled has a good point about character actors with Roz Russell. I mean Auntie Mame is quite a character. Some lead actors never play anything but leads or lead types (can you imagine Gene Tierney as a character?) and some get to do it all, like Jack Lemmon. I agree that many lead actors play character roles, like Sanders, who aren't "character actors". It's a tricky definition though.And a can of worms.
Which is why I gravitate towards actors who are consistently *interesting,* as opposed to caring about whether or not they usually had "leading" roles. No matter how few of those "leading" roles George Sanders or Joan Blondell or Peter Lorre had, they were always a lot more compelling in their movies than "leading" actors or actresses such as Elvis Presley or Esther Williams, who were little more than mediocre character actors with a guitar and a swimming pool as their respective sidekicks.
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> {quote:title=lydecker wrote:}{quote}So . . . why doesn't Pat O'Brien get any respect?? Veteran of over 100 pix, some of which
> he held leading man status, yet, to my knowledge he has never been SOTM. Hell, I'd rather
> Pat O'Brien be SOTM than, say . . . Paul Henreid or Eleanor Powell.
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> Just sayin' . . .
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> Perhpas TCM needs to recognize him one of these days!
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I'd second the motion, and I'd much rather watch 90% of Pat O'Brien's movies than about 80% of Paul Henreid's. But I can see why O'Brien doesn't get full props in the spotlight of hindsight. I like his "character", and his movies are nearly always entertaining, but he usually seems like a lesser version of either Spencer Tracy (pigheaded Irishman who thinks the world revolves around him) or Lee Tracy (fast talking con man who pretty much defined that archtype). O'Brien played both of those types very well in many movies, but if you watch him along with Lee Tracy in Jean Harlow's classic Bombshell, you see that Tracy brings a sort of 110% manic intensity to his character that O'Brien can never quite muster. It's a fine distinction I'm drawing, but I never saw O'Brien stepping beyond it. He's pretty much a King of the B's with a few lesser roles in a handful of A movies like Angels With Dirty Faces.
That said, O'Brien's certainly worthy of a SUTS day, and at some point maybe even a SOTM. He'd certainly bring better movies to the schedule than Esther Williams or Teen Idols.
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> {quote:title=NoraCharles1934 wrote:}{quote}
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> > As for Lorre, I wonder if anyone can list the movies TCM showed when he was SOTM. His tribute would also make for an interesting mix of films and themes.
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> Just to be clear, I wasn't trying to advocate for another Peter Lorre SOTM tribute - at least not before Mr. Sanders and the like get their first shots.
I only meant to raise Lorre as an example of a character actor having recieved the distinction. But that said, I'd be quite happy to see Joel Cairo among next year's SUTS mix. 
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> Edited by: NoraCharles1934 on May 30, 2013 7:22 AM
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Since we all seem to agree on the SOTM worthiness of Sanders and Lorre, I wonder if we could put that question aside for a minute and address the general question of *"What, exactly, is a 'character actor'?"*
Is it an immutable description of an actor, due to a unique screen presence that transcends any particular role he was in? Or is it simply a way of describing any actor who never gets cast in romantic or comic leads?
By the first definition, George Sanders would qualify, but so would Gary Cooper. By the second definition, only Sanders would.
Are there intermediate categories? What about actors like Edward Arnold, who played leading roles in some movies but not in others, and who played a wide variety of noble characters and infamous scum during the course of his career? I often hear Edward Arnold described as a "character actor", but I have a hard time seeing him placed in the same category as Franklin Pangborn or Tom Kennedy. You could say the same thing about Sanders and Lorre and a whole host of others.
What about top-billed stars like Gene Autry or Mae West, who play the same character in every movie, and who in fact are really little more than character actors with top billing? Does the fact that they got top billing exempt them from the fact that their characters never waver more than 1% from one film to the next?
I guess to me, "character actor" is a more narrow category, one that I'd define loosely as *"actors or actresses with distinctive personalities who play stereotyped roles in nearly every movie they appear in.....AND who seldom if ever appear in the first 4 lines of the credits".*
Franklin Pangborn, Nat Pendleton, Eric Blore, Sig Ruman, Una Merkel, Margaret Hamilton, Edward Everett Horton, Donald Meek, Margaret Dumont, etc. etc. *THOSE* are what I'd call "character actors." The Lorres and Sanders and Thomas Mitchells and Edward Arnolds are much harder for me to pin down into any one category.
So what do you think?
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{font:arial, helvetica, sans-serif}There is such a concept as lead actor.{font}
James, I fully understand the concept of a "lead" actor. And I'm not trying to claim that Sanders fits that description in all but a relatively few cases.But I don't see that as being an overriding factor in determining who should be SOTM, especially when we're talking about an actor with Sanders' talent and repertory. The history of Hollywood is littered with lead actors and actresses whose performances are nowhere near as compelling as Sanders', a fact with which it appears you might agree, our differing opinions of Leslie Howard notwithstanding.
To me the main qualification for SOTM should be "How many movies does an actor appear in where it's hard to imagine the movie without him?" And by that standard, Sanders more than qualifies.
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> {quote:title=jamesjazzguitar wrote:}{quote}Well I like intelligent actors. Note that I said lead male roles. I don't think there is any comparison there. Sanders best roles were as character parts. His lead roles where in movies like the Falcon and The Saint. Not exactly high class material in my view (but still I enjoy these movies).
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> Anyhow, I was the first one that seconded your choice of Sanders, but I couldn't ignore what I felt was an overstatement.
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Forget The Falcon and The Saint. Just off the top of my head, Sanders had compelling and critical roles in these distinctly A-level movies, regardless of if they got defined as the "lead".. Whether or not they're merely "character parts" is up to each of us to decide, but by that sort of reductionism you could deconstruct nearly every actor or actress in Hollywood this side of Barbara Stanwyck.
Rage in Heaven
The Last Voyage
All About Eve
The Lodger
I Can Get It For You Wholesale
Witness to Murder
Death of a Scoundrel
The Light Touch
The Picture of Dorian Gray
While The City Sleeps
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
And that's only a partial list, based on some of the highlights of the relatively few Sanders films I've been able to watch, about 30 out of the 110 features that he was in.
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> {quote:title=jamesjazzguitar wrote:}{quote}Well Leslie Howard wasn't STOM until last year and I would say he has a stronger resume as a top male star than Sanders
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I'll be charitable and say that this is just a matter of taste. But if you like costume dramas with wimpy male roles, then I guess Howard would be your man. And anyway, he's now had his month, whereas Sanders has yet to have even 24 hours in August.
What is a good classic movie to watch on a first date? Please help!
in General Discussions
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> So this past college semester I met this pretty awesome girl, pretty both as an individual and physically
. I am 22 years old and she is 24. For the whole semester we didn't talk much until a friend of hers told me that she actually had a crush on me. Anyway, after getting to know her I was shocked and amazed to find out she too was a huge fan of classic movies, not only that but she loves the fashion from the 1940's, the music, again...I was shocked! 
It really isn't everyday I meet someone around my age like this, and being a lover myself of some many things from the past its not really something I broadcast to the world because they end up thinking I'm weird.
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> Basically though I plan on watching a movie (a classic movie) with her soon for our "first date" but I am debating what movie to choose, what would you recommend? Any help would be great!
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If she loves fashion / glamor / atmosphere and the music, you couldn't possibly go wrong with Laura. The soundtrack from that film will become "your" song, and you can't get more glamorous than Gene Tierney's Laura Hunt character.