AndyM108
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Posts posted by AndyM108
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Couldn't agree more about All About Eve . If Hollywood ever made a better film in the general category of "drama", I've yet to see it. What's also fascinating is to compare Anne Baxter's Eve to the Christabel character that Joan Fontaine portrayed in the 1950 film Born to Be Bad , a movie that came out just six weeks earlier. Both films feature manipulative young women who put on a small town girl act in order to fool the other women while they try to wrap one man after another around their little fingers, and while their roles aren't identical, the similarities of their underlying characters are striking, to say the least. If any of you out there haven't seen BTBB , it's showing here on TCM on January 30th, and it's definitely worth watching.
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Well, if you go with a loose defintion of "better", you'd definitely want to include Robert Siodmak's The Killers , which is almost universally considered to be at least one of the top 5 or 10 noirs. The Hemingway short story ends after the movie's opening scene in the diner, and the film had to take it from there. Hemingway stated that it was the *only* work of his whose film version he liked, and watched it many times.
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I only wish that Judy Davis had more of her films available. From ingenues to hookers to the mother of Stalin's love child to sharp-tongued divorcees to Adela to Judy Garland, I've yet to see her in any movie she didn't make worth watching all by herself. Just a fabulous performer from A to Z.
As for Loretta Young, it's more her face and the subject matter of her pre-code films that draws me to her. I'm not confusing her acting talent or screen persona with Stanwyck or Lombard, or any one of several dozen others among her contemporaries, but AFAIC only Louise Brooks can match that pre-code look of hers, and in this case, that's enough for me.
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Brando - too surly and then too grotesque
Dustin Hoffman - too small
Spencer Tracy - too pigheaded
Peck - too wooden
the entire Fonda family - too much
Dietrich - too creepy
Monroe - too overrated
Hope/Crosby/Skelton/Rooney - too wholesome and formulaic
Keaton - too long a career
Welles - too full of himself
Liz Taylor - see Brando, minus the surly part
That's only 16 actors, compared to the many hundreds of actors I like or love. And except for that Hope quartet, even my un-favorites made at least one or two movies I'd watch again.
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I totally agree with all the good things that've been said about Richard Widmark, and would like to put in a plug for one of his best movies, Time Limit, which is scheduled for 12:15 AM (ouch!) on Wednesday, March 14th. Widmark plays an army investigator who's trying to find out whether Richard Basehart's Korean War treason confession is valid, and it's as good a depiction of the conflicting values of honor, truth and patriotism that you'll ever see in a movie. It also happens to have been directed by Karl Malden.
Here's TCM's synopsis and cast page: http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/17351/Time-Limit/
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All I can say is you really need to watch more movies - these cheap generalizations about American cinema today already make little sense to me but to hear them while knowing about everything that is happening around the world? Makes no sense. There are an enormous amount of movies made in the last 30-40 years that can throw down with absolutely anything made in the first seventy years of the cinema. One could just as easily ask what in the silent era (any era) can match The Wind Will Carry Us or The Puppet Master or A Brighter Summer Day? But I don't have to - I already know that these are in communion with The Dying Swan, Coeur Fidele, Tabu, The Only Son, How Green Was My Valley, The River, Adelheid.
There is no "then" and "now", there's only cinema, and what makes good cinema has changed very, very little in the last 100 years .
Very well put, Jonas. Way too many of our opinions about movies, sports, politics, etc.---you name it---are based on the flimsiest sort of knowledge and barely disguised personal preferences that have nothing to do with any objective merit. And as someone who recoils from both sappy Andy Hardy movies and raunchy modern fare, I certainly don't exclude myself from that criticism.
But with the exception of the few thousand people in the world who've taken it upon themselves to acquaint themselves with the best films from all countries and all periods in history, all we've really got to say about movies is "this is what I like". Which is fine, as long as we don't try to pretend that what we're saying represents anything more than that.
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VP19, every one of those suggestions of yours only adds to my previous thought that a pre-code month is an idea whose time has come. Mike LaSalle's books are both terrific, and he'd be a great person to have as a guest commentator. And if you don't mind my saying so, so would you and the Self-Styled Siren. Not to mention our own Eugenia H, who may know more about Barbara Stanwyck than 99% of the professional critics out there.
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*Cushlamochree!* You have to color Mr. O'Malley's wings in the proper shade of pink, otherwise Barnaby might think he was an imposter fairy godfather.
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The vast majority of mainstream movies are ALWAYS going to reflect what the filmmakers think are the cultural biases of their intended audience, modified by the formal code requirements of their era.
And each era had / has its own templates: The gratuitous violence mixed with the totally incongruous "happy endings" of many of the later silents and much of the pre-code fare; the proliferation of noble priests, virginal teenagers, and timid hagiographical biopics through most of the Breen code era; the return to gratuitous violence in the late 60's and 70's, with the added measure of shameless generational pandering and the appeal to the conspiracy mentality; and now most of the above with all the dubious high tech and digital gimmickry to go along with it.
Yet whatever biases shape the context, great movies are always going to be made, and great movies are always going to be in a minority. There are probably more truly first rate movies being made today than ever before, but in order to see them all you have to be operating on a 168-hour day with no time allowed for sleep, since they come from all over the world, and they don't all show in the U.S. Whereas with the best movies of past generations, you need only to be a little patient and they'll eventually plop in your lap via TCM, even the silent and foreign ones. There's nothing that we can do about the moronic blockbuster movies of today beyond simply ignoring them, because like it or not, the major studios have zero interest in appealing to the sort of film buffs you find watching TCM.
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That's a great idea, jh33, and TCM should concentrate the films that suggest *why* the Breen boys clamped down on them in mid-1934. Start off the month with a film like The Story of Temple Drake (which was shown here in September for the only time in memory) and take it from there. The only thing I'd add to your suggestion would be to include films from the silent era, since that's when many of these great actresses like Shearer and Joan Crawford first burst into stardom. There are many silent films that are completely "pre-code" in spirit even if we don't generally think of them under that label. I'd bet that a month like that would generate more favorable publicity for TCM than any program they've had in years.
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Some Like It Hot has now moved into strong contention as the most overplayed movie on TCM, right up there with NBNW, Splendor in the Grass and Payment Deferred . If they're going to re-run Monroe, at least give us Don't Bother to Knock so we can get Richard Widmark and Anne Bancroft thrown in.
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That Fields segment in If I Had a Million may be the best thing he ever did. It hasn't shown on TCM for nearly two years, but here it is on You Tube in two parts running 5:27 and 5:57. It's absolutely hilarious, and may possibly have inspired the producers of the DeVito / Dreyfuss classic, The Tin Men .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDSW-ybm0mg
and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfIoKTTZuUo&feature=related
*"How did you like that, you great snorting road-hog!"*
*"Oh, Rollo, it's been a GLORIOUS day!"*
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Swithin, you write well, I respect your opinions, and like you, I'm a Hepburn fan, if not to the extent that you seem to be.
But I'm sorry, the only way you can overrate Miss Barbara Stanwyck is to claim that she gave birth to the Baby Jesus.
And now that I've offended probably everyone here with that remark, including myself, I'll give myself 30 lashes, apologize, and wish everyone here a Merry Christmas. This is one of the best forums I've yet to discover on the internet.
Oh, and a particularly Merry Greeting to Eugenia H, who is my personal hero(ine) of this particular forum. Great sense of humor, works like Rosie the Riveter, and a GREAT taste in actresses.
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Other than Mifune and Gabin, I have a hard time thinking of any male actor whose movies I enjoy more than Lancaster's. He started out with a bang in one of the two top noirs of all time ( The Killers ), and then there was Criss Cross, Brute Force, I Walk Alone, Mister 880, All My Sons, Elmer Gantry, Sweet Smell of Success, Judgment at Nuremburg, Seven Days in May , and even one of his lesser known later films, The Swimmer . And the only reason I'm leaving Birdman of Alcatraz off is because I haven't yet watched it all the way through. Other American actors may have had a greater number of top movies than Burt, but I've only seen about 15 or 20 of his to date, and I've yet to encounter a genuine stinker in the whole bunch. The one I've yet to see but is top on my list is Sorry, Wrong Number , as it's got him paired with my #1 actress, Barbara Stanwyck. I only wish that TCM would hurry up and get that one on its schedule.
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I've kept a small list of films I haven't seen on TCM for at least 2+ years, and some of them are surprising in their omission. Do people have any idea why these 10 haven't shown up?
The Lady Gambles
Sorry, Wrong Number
Double Indemnity
The Great McGinty
Easy Living (the 1937 Preston Sturges "riot in the automat" movie, not the 1949 Victor Mature football movie with the same title)
Criss Cross
The Killing (as opposed to The Killers, which has played repeatedly)
Body and Soul
Dracula (the Lugosi version)
Sudden Fear
This is but a small list, and I could list many more omissions from later years, or from the silent era, or among foreign films, but the 10 above are right smack in the sweet spot of TCM's preferred era.
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That quote from Peter Fonda is pretty amazing. I guess that political lunacy may just run in the family. What's even loopier is that he fancies that Easy Rider had something to do with stopping the war in Vietnam!
What's even more ironic in retrospect is that Jane Fonda's co-star in one of the more famous anti-war movies of the 70's--- Jon Voigt in Coming Home ---has wound up being one of the more prominent right wing wingnuts around. He's like the Adolphe Menjou of the 21st century. You have to wonder what his poor daughter Angelina must think of his incoherent rants on immigration and Obama's "socialism". Maybe those rumors about Alzheimer's have a kernel of truth to them.
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Let's get back on point here. Meaning the overrated thing...one "actress" I always felt was overrated as far as acting and looks by too many people who should have known better for too long was...MARLENE DIETRICH(sic)!!
With all the other obvious beauties with far more obvious talent that so much adoration has been heaped on this ostrich-faced HACK just rankles me. And I DEFY! I DEFY! ANYBODY with ANY taste to tell me she was more beautiful than Paulette Goddard or more talented than Irene Dunne! GO AHEAD. Just TRY!
Sepiatone.
Funny, but while I agree somewhat with the ostrich-faced part (there have been literally hundreds of better looking actresses than Marlene Dietrich---her eyes are utterly lifeless), I can't agree at all with the "hack" part. I've only seen her in about 10 or 12 movies, but just on the basis of A Foreign Affair, The Blue Angel and Witness For the Prosecution alone, there's no way to say that she wasn't an actress of remarkable talent.
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I can't even imagine anyone NOT falling in love with Myrna Loy. I've now seen nearly 30 of her films, and so far not a cough in a carload. Loy and Powell are so far and away the best screen couple for what the baseball people call "career value" that it'll take several centuries for any other pair to overtake them.
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* *Hmmmmm, then, what about this one?*
*http://www.vulcannonibird.de/noni/films/night/night-promo02.jpg*
Now wait a minute---I have a question.
To which the answer is: It's a girl.
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Passable to first rate actress in a few good movies ( They Shoot Horses..., Klute, Walk on the Wild Side ), but a persona that's like fingernails on a blackboard. And even though I'm as liberal as anyone and thought that the Vietnam war was hopelessly misguided at best, her "Hanoi Jane" label was a rather precisely accurate way of describing her shameful role during that period. Even during that Osborne interview tonight, you had a definite feeling that this was a woman who's carried a chip on her shoulder since the day she was born. I wouldn't want to have been raised in that Fonda family, either, so I can sympathize with her in that, but at some point I wish she could have learned to relax and treat her life as a journey rather than as a constant battle.
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I also feel that Babs persona is less intense than that of Kate or Bette. As I said before Bette could also downplay her persona in roles like The Corn Is Green and All This and Heaven Too, but still in most of Bette's standout performances the Bette persona clearly is there to see. With Kate I believe this is even more so.
I agree that Bette and Kate play their outsized "selves" in a much higher percentage of their films than Stanwyck, but when Stanwyck needed to, she could ramp it up with the best of them: Think of Baby Face , Ladies of Leisure and The Miracle Woman , as well as some of her later movies like Martha Ivers and The Violent Men .
The above is one of the reasons I believe Babs is more universally loved by classic movie fans than say Kate or Bette. For some their persona is just too much for them to take. Me, I love them all.
Well, Davis is right behind Stanwyck in my personal pantheon of actresses, and Hepburn makes my top 10, so I don't have anything against their personae per se . It's just that in Hepburn's case, in too many of her early movies her persona is either laughingly miscast ( Spitfire ) or inappropriately exaggerated ( Alice Adams, Morning Glory ) Despite those curious early awards, I don't think she really began to find her groove until Stage Door. From that point on, and particularly beginning with her screwballs with Grant and her pairings with Tracy, her persona fit her roles far better, and she became a lot better in holding it down. Stanwyck's persona was more of a generalized intensity and intelligence that she applied in pitch-perfect proportions to her parts as the scripts demanded. She could easily dominate your *interest* while *not* trying to dominate the movie (as Davis and Hepburn often did). That's the sort of talent that's one of the rarest qualities in an actor or actress, and it's the main reason she'll always be at the top of my list.
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*I find it interesting that with all this talk of the auteur theory, I don't think there's been one mention of Orson Welles*.
That was a deliberate omission because personally, I believe that Welles could film himself for two hours on a toilet seat and be praised for it. I'm not even partial to TOUCH OF EVIL, a film that I find quite stylistic but so full of holes that I can't enjoy it.
I do love his 40s work and understand that much of his output later on was compromised by meager budgets and studio interference. But he's such a sacred cow that it's a subject I avoid.
Well, after many years, I'm glad I finally found someone else who's less than thrilled with Touch of Evil and Welles in general. Welles could be a damn good actor in many of his films (particularly in Trent's Last Case , Compulsion and The Third Man ) , but in some of his movies such as The Stranger and Touch of Evil his acting and / or directing are so completely over the top that it just leaves me rolling my eyes. And for "overrated", he wins the bleeping Oscar. -
I scarcely know what to make of Ryder these days, as my everlasting memory of her will always be that of a foul-mouthed and somewhat androgynous taxi driver in Jim Jarmusch's Night on Earth , a film which I would LOVE to see sometime soon on TCM. AFAIC both she and Rosie Perez should have won Oscars for their roles in that most sublime of modern era comedies.
popular actors who are not your favorites
in General Discussions
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Dietrich made my list because her whole persona is just creepy, and for an actress who kept getting cast in glamour roles, she had about as much sex appeal as Mae West.
That said, as an *actress* she's pretty damn good. Just finished watching Witness For The Prosecution a few minutes ago for about the 5th time, and she was absolutely terrific, as she also was in The Blue Angel, A Foreign Affair, and Stage Fright . In my mind she's like the mirror image of Loretta Young, a drop-dead gorgeous actress whose chief virtue was her looks, not her acting. Marlene's kind of like the Atlantic ocean in New Jersey on a hot day in early July: It takes a minute to get used to the frigid temperature, but once you do, you can appreciate the bracing qualities.
But she's still creepy.