AndyM108
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Posts posted by AndyM108
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Loretta Young, Barbara Stanwyck, Cyd Charisse, Louise Brooks, Clara Bow, both Hepburns, Leslie Caron, Gene Tierney, Rita Hayworth and Jeanne Moreau, for starters.
Oh, and every single female lead in any movie by Eric Rohmer, from Zouzou to Emmanuelle Chaulet and Sophie Renoir. Monsieur Rohmer knew how to pick em.
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God, am I glad that February comes but once a year. Every one of these films has been ground into the dust by now, and once again we're reminded of just how totally market-driven the Oscar awards are. Hopefully TCM will find room for a few misfits and premieres in between all the technicolor spectacles and cheesy historical hagiographies, but I'm not holding my breath.
Oh well, we'll always have August.....
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This is a bit like an argument between New Yorkers and Californians as to when they should begin World Series games. You're never going to please everyone.
I can see the reason for the complaint if you've got a wide screen TV, but for those of us with an old-fashioned 21" screen, some of those Letterbox movies lose so much in the vertical that they become almost unwatchable. I'd rather that they just fill the screen and leave the side action to the imagination. But then I'm also one of those types who leaves the theater after the film is over, and never sticks around for the inevitable 10 minutes of acknowledging the 33rd assistant costume designer, so you can probably take my attitude with a big grain of salt.
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Bad remakes are too numerous to mention, but there are a few good ones that stand out. The Garland version of A Star Is Born took the very good March / Gaynor original and made it even better, in maybe the best remake ever. It's one of a tiny handful of musicals that actually has a compelling dramatic plot, and the casting is simply perfect.
But there's also one outstanding case of a great movie that was redone 11 years later with an identical plot, and came out every bit as well the second time around---no better but no worse. I'm talking about Vicki, the 1953 remake of the classic 1942 noir, I Wake Up Screaming. Before I first came across the 1953 version, I couldn't imagine anyone matching Laird Cregar's creepy detective character, but I can't see where Richard Boone misses a beat. It's too bad that both of these are controlled by Fox, with the result that TCM gets shut out while the Fox Movie Channel seems to show them about 3 or 4 times every month.
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I could watch all of these movies until I was blue in the face, and I can't believe how much longer this list has become, thanks to TCM and a faithful DVD recorder:
The Penalty
The Unholy Three (both silent and sound versions)
The Crowd
Pandora's Box
The Godless Girl
Diary of a Lost Girl
The Public Enemy
The Miracle Woman
The Match King
Three on a Match
I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang
Wild Boys of the Road
Heroes For Sale
Baby Face
So Big
Call Her Savage
42nd Street
Footlight Parade
Red-Headed Woman
Bombshell
Little Big Shot
It's a Gift
Libeled Lady
Sons of the Desert
Easy Living
Stella Dallas
Marked Woman
Bringing Up Baby
The Captain's Kid
The Women
The Philadelphia Story
His Girl Friday
The Great McGinty
The Lady Eve
Pepe Le Moko
Johnny Eager
I Wake Up Screaming
This Gun For Hire
The Hard Way
Laura
Double Indemnity
Open City
Paisan
It's a Wonderful Life
The Killers
Out of the Past
Crossfire
Kiss of Death
Dark Passage
The Bicycle Thief
Shoeshine
I Walk Alone
Road House
The Big Clock
Drunken Angel
The Bribe
Stray Dog
Thieves' Highway
The Set-up
Too Late For Tears
The Asphalt Jungle
The Damned Don't Cry
All About Eve
The Racket
The Sheep Has Five Legs
Sudden Fear
The Big Heat
L'Air de Paris
Witness to Murder
Executive Suite
Trial (Glenn Ford)
A Star Is Born (Garland version)
Touchez Pas au Grisbi
Time Limit
Rififi
Where The Sidewalk Ends
Elevator to the Gallows
The Bad Sleep Well
Kapo
Kanal
The Naked Kiss
High and Low
Bay of the Angels
Nothing But a Man
The Battle of Algiers
The Producers
The Panic in Needle Park
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
Mean Streets
Payday
Animal House
Breaking Away
Raging Bull
Angi Vera
Pixote
Winter of Our Dreams
Come and See
Boyfriends and Girlfriends
Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle
The Color of Money
Goodfellas
Short Cuts
Night on Earth
Husbands and Wives
A Bronx Tale
Children of the Revolution
Jungle Fever
Smoke / Blue in the Face
Letters From Iwo Jima
Katyn
An Autumn Tale
Menace 2 Society
Days of Glory
The Lives of Others
The Wrestler
Cinderella Man
ADD: Gilda, The Tin Men, The War of the Roses, LA Confidential
And so on....
And pretty much anything else directed by Kurosawa, Rohmer or Fuller, or starring Stanwyck (anything with Stanwyck), Harlow, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis (but no costume dramas on ante-bellum schlock), Lancaster, Edward G. Robinson, Robert Ryan, Kirk Douglas (but no westerns or Bible epics), Judy Davis, Sybil Jason, Jean Gabin (anything with him in it), Toshiro Mifune, and probably any comedy with Fernandel.
Edited by: AndyM108 on Nov 5, 2011 12:32 AM
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This has been a great November so far: Detour , Tension , Lady in the Lake , Brute Force , The Big Sleep , and the two noirs Supreme: Out of the Past and The Killers . It doesn't get any better than this.
Next to the last two, Detour is my favorite of the lot, in great part because it has the feel of a pure B movie. Savage's sheer viciousness and Neal's melancholy hopelessness make for a perfect combination, and the lack of any sexual chemistry between the two is of little distraction or disappointment to me. And who in the hell could ever be attracted to a Black Widow Spider like Ann Savage to begin with?
Tension is also terrific, and I agree with the previous poster who said that Richard Basehart often gets overlooked in his noir roles, not to mention his tour de force in one of the most underrated movies of the 50's, the Army hearing drama Time Limit . Although in the case of Tension I have to admit that Cyd Charisse was part of the main attraction. AFAIC she and Anne Bancroft leave the Monroes and the other Blonde Bombshells of her era in the dust.
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Who knows just how many of these blondes were really au naturale ? But whatever they were born with, these were the best:
*Jean Harlow*
Jeanne Moreau
Joan Blondell
Brigitte Bardot
Glenda Farrell
Veronica Lake
Lana Turner
Ginger Rogers
Jean Arthur
Carole Lombard
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*2012 WISHES:*
More silents, more pre-codes, more film noir, more foreign movies, and *MORE PREMIERES*
Fewer musicals, fewer westerns, less excess of wholesomeness
Specific wishes for movies not shown for at least the last two years or more:
Gambling Lady (Stanwyck)
The Lady Gambles (Stanwyck)
Double Indemnity (Have I just missed this?)
The Killing (Hayden)
Sudden Fear (Crawford, Palance)
Easy Living (the 1937 Jean Arthur / Edward Arnold version)
Body and Soul (Garfield)
The Color of Money (Newman, Cruise)
Absence of Malice (Newman, Field)
Glengarry Glen Ross (Pacino, Lemmon, Spacey, Baldwin)
Diary of a Lost Girl (Louise Brooks)
Beggars of Life (Brooks, Beery)
Prix de Beaute (Brooks)
The Valiant (Muni, Johnny Mack Brown)
The Captain's Kid (Sybil Jason, Kibbee)
Thieves' Highway (Conte, Cobb)
The Brothers Rico (Conte)
Deliverance (Voigt)
The Penalty (Chaney)
Husbands and Wives (Allen, Judy Davis, Farrow, Pollack, Juliette Lewis)
Goodfellas (DeNiro, Pesci)
Raging Bull (DeNiro)
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If you ever take up competitive pool, you'll find the same phenomenon. The tournament I play in every week in Glen Burnie, MD has players ranging from about 18 to 77, and age is absolutely irrelevant compared to one's ability at the table.
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Not Liz Taylor, Marilyn Monroe or Barbara Stanwick.
Sorry, but for me it's Stanwyck or nothing. I'll gladly donate the other two to the tabloids. *All* movie stars are unattainable, but as long as we're playing make believe, why not shoot for the top?
As for what male actor I think is "my type", I suppose I fancy myself as being a combination of Robert Ryan (grizzled yet ruggedly handsome), Jean Gabin (total no-nonsense), Toshiro Mifune (capable of great emotional depth), and Gene Kelly (graceful, yet in a manly way). And oh, yes, with the deadpan wit of George Sanders, in order to scare off the competition without having to resort to violence. The mere threat of a bad review in my newspaper would suffice.
But in reality, I'd probably come off more like Woody Allen, and wind up with Diane Keaton, while being subjected to inane streams of consciousness like this.
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Arturo wrote:
Speaking of Fox Movie Channel: my service (Directv) has been posting on the viewers guide next to this channel (and others), that if a deal is not worked out with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. re: the increase in rates NC wants to charge, that these channels may stop being shown effective 11/01/11. Anyone familiar with this situation?
I've had FMC on Fios since May of 2010, and about 90% of the best films I've managed to see there ( Thieves' Highway , Kiss of Death, etc.) were played in the first few months, and since last Summer I've seen maybe one film a month that they haven't already shown 20 times previously. Yesterday they had Breaking Away, and they began showing The Incident (a fabulous "real life" noir) a few months ago, but mostly it's just the same old same old (and mostly not that old) stuff, padded with the most mindless celebrity interviews imaginable between shows. If Fios drops it, I doubt if I'll miss it too much.
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I often have some success in getting people to tune to TCM, but I'm always careful to match the film to their genre taste. It does little good to recommend The Killers or Out of the Past to a person who's mostly a fan of musicals or screwball comedies.
The point about TCM's being the only TV source for classic movies (beyond Fox, which is extremely limited) is a good one, and it's reinforced by the other exception: PBS. PBS shows "classic" movies every so often during prime time, and leaves them uncut and commercial free. BUT---it's always one of the AFI Top 50, either Casablanca, The Thin Man, The Wizard of Oz, etc., in a seemingly endless loop---nothing that ever goes beyond that. I guess you can't expect too much from a network that's so addicted to family-friendly everything, but it's still kind of a bummer.
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Libeled Lady should be on the short list of greatest comedies of all time. Has there ever been a film where five outstanding comic actors have ever been put on the screen at the same time? And they keep it going right to the final frame, with Walter Connolly shouting at the other four in frustration to be *QUIET!*
And if anyone doesn't agree, I can only reply....*THAT'S ARSON!*
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Can't quite yet figure out just how old I really am. Depends on how I look at it. At 67 I still play competitive (non-handicap) nine ball against some of the best players in the country, but OTOH I've got glaucoma and I get up 3 or 4 times in the middle of the night. I guess I can live with this tradeoff for another 30 odd years, and with luck I'll live to see the Yankees win their 50th World Series and finally see Angi Vera on TCM. I ain't asking for much.
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ValentineXavier wrote:
BingFan, allow me, a Kurosawa lover, to recommend some of his films that are not costume dramas. They are modern, and you might like them, especially if you are a film noir fan:
*Stray Dog*
*High and Low*
*The Bad Sleep Well*
You can add Drunken Angel to that list while you're at it. I'm not a fan of costume dramas, either, but that doesn't stop me from appreciating Kirk Douglas or Bette Davis in their many other films that were set in the present. In terms of great acting, dramatic tension, and connecting fiction to the moral dilemmas of the real world, there's not a single film *ever* produced by Hollywood that can top High and Low or The Bad Sleep Well. Those who dismiss foreign or silent films for reasons of convenience simply don't know what they're missing, not to mention that in the case of Toshiro Mifune they're missing an actor who towers above any male actor that Hollywood has produced for the combination of versatility and emotional depth.
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To each his own, I guess. I'd take one Louise Brooks over a hundred Marilyn Monroes, and I'd rather watch grass grow in Antarctica than suffer through pap like Bus Stop or How to Marry a Millionaire a second time, but that's what's so great about TCM: It only pays attention to us when we're in our better moods, and ignores us when we're telling it to stop showing the ones we don't like.
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As a big Richard Conte fan, I have to admit this wasn't one of his best. Nowhere near on the level of Thieves' Highway, The Blue Gardenia, Cry of the City, Northside 777, Somewhere in the Night, or 13 Rue Madeleine. About all The Big Combo had going for it was the atmosphere, but the "romantic" sub-plot was just silly and Conte's role was nowhere near as nuanced or complex as it could have been. All in all, just a rather routine cop drama, OK once but not for a repeat performance. I just wish that TCM could pry Thieves' Highway away from Fox, since *that's* what a great noir should really be like.
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More silent gems:
The Hoodlum (Pickford, 1919)
Within Our Gates (1920) Oscar Micheaux's answer to The Birth of a Nation
The Blot (Louis Calhern, 1920)
The Penalty (Chaney, 1921)
Lady of the Night (Shearer, 1924)
The Scarlet Letter (Gish, 1926)
Metropolis (1927)
The Crowd (King Vidor, 1928)
The Racket (Louis Wolheim, 1928)
A Lady of Chance (Shearer, 1928)
Speedy (Harold Lloyd and Babe Ruth, 1928)
Pandora's Box (Louise Brooks, 1929---coming up on TCM in November)
The Godless Girl (1929)
Diary of a Lost Girl (Brooks, 1929)
With the exception of Speedy, all of these films are straight dramas that could stand up with just about anything from the sound era. I defy anyone to find a more compelling villain than Lon Chaney's Blizzard in The Penalty ---and I've seen White Heat and 90% of the classic gangsters, noirs and mob movies. I can see the point that silents (and foreign films, if you don't understand the language) force you to actually pay attention to the screen---it's hard to enjoy a silent from the next room---but to dismiss the genre completely means that you're missing out on hundreds of great films.
Edited by: AndyM108 on Oct 20, 2011 11:31 AM
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Eugenia, with your encyclopedic knowledge of film I'm sure you probably know this already, but in real life Robert Ryan may have been Hollywood's all-time mensch. Happily married to the same woman for his entire adult life, and as he put it (paraphrasing here), he spent his entire life fighting against the sort of characters he portrayed so convincingly on the screen.
Another very similar tale can be told about Richard Widmark, another screen villain (though not as universally villainous as Ryan) who in real life was from all reports a terrific person whose character was 180 degrees opposite of Tommy Udo and Ray Biddle. In fact, during the shooting of No Way Out, Widmark repeatedly apologized to Sidney Poitier for the lines he had to recite in the movie, although like the pro that he was, he spoke them with seemingly true conviction.
And good old happy-go-lucky Bing Crosby, of course, wasn't so happy-go-lucky around his children, proving once again that what you see on the screen is only a screen portrayal.
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"But 42nd Street? Are you kidding? *Must have been tough on your mother, not having any children*."
Grauitous personal attacks about other poster's parents is really uncalled for.
If you actually read what I said, I think 42nd STREET is overrated because it's bad musical. If made as a straight film, it might have been good. The musical performers in the film are woefully bad.
The sentence you seem to be offended by, "*Must have been tough on your mother, not having any children*", was the famous comeback by Ginger "Anytime Annie" Rogers, in response to another chorus girl's disparaging comment of "*Getta load of Minnie the Mountaineer*". I was using it totally tongue in cheek, and no offense was intended.
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Most overrated: Bonnie & Clyde or The Graduate. Gratuitous violence or even more gratuitous generational pandering, take your pick.
Strong Contenders: Nashville, Yankee Doodle Dandy, The Stranger, Touch of Evil, Bus Stop, San Francisco, The African Queen, Sylvia Scarlett, Harper, East of Eden, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, Duck Soup, The Silence of the Lambs, Reds, The Big Chill, Field of Dreams, To Kill a Mockingbird, and any of those interterrestial extravaganzas of the late 60's and the 70's....
And granted, Grapes of Wrath is a bit much, even if the conditions it depicts were all too real.
But 42nd Street? Are you kidding? Must have been tough on your mother, not having any children. That's one of the few musicals of the 30's (along with Gold Diggers of 1933 and Footlight Parade) that wouldn't put a speed freak to sleep. Even if you don't like all the musical numbers, the repartee among the gumsnappers and the stagehands is a delight from beginning to end.
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I should preface this by saying that my biggest crush of all is on my wife, Fallon. But, in roughly chronological order, these women can stand up to the best of anyone else:
Norma Shearer in Lady of the Night and A Lady of Chance (both silents)
Louise Brooks in Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl (both silents)
Clara Bow in It (silent) and Call Her Savage (sound)
Joan Crawford in Paid
Jean Harlow in Red Dust, Bombshell, and Libeled Lady
Theresa Harris in Baby Face
Loretta Young in all of her pre-code era films, but especially A Man's Castle and Heroes For Sale
Joan Blondell , Kay Francis and Ann Dvorak in a whole slew of pre-codes
Glenda Farrell in Hi, Nellie! and Little Big Shot
Katharine Hepburn in everything from Bringing Up Baby up to Pat and Mike
Myrna Loy in everything, period
Bette Davis in So Big, The Petrified Forest and Marked Woman
Ann Sheridan in They Drive By Night
Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday and the beautifully made Roughly Speaking
Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle
Ida Lupino in pretty much everything, but especially The Hard Way, Road House and While The City Sleeps
Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca
Gene Tierney in Laura
Judy Garland in The Clock and A Star Is Born
Anna Magnani in Open City
Lauren Bacall in Dark Passage
Jane Greer in Out of The Past
Lana Turner in Homecoming
Claudette Colbert in Three Came Home
Jennifer Jones in Carrie
Cyd Charisse's legs in Singing in the Rain
Leslie Caron in Gigi
Susan Hayward in I Want to Live
Susan Strasberg in Kapo (at least at first!)
Ruby Dee in A Raisin in the Sun
Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady (and in real life)
Abbey Lincoln in Nothing But a Man
Jeanne Moreau in Bay of Angels
Zouzou in Rohmer's Love in the Afternoon (not to be confused with the other movie of the same title)
Liza Minnelli in Cabaret
Veronika Papp in Angi Vera
Emmanuelle Chaulet in Boyfriends and Girlfriends (another Rohmer)
Judy Davis in Winter of Our Dreams
Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio in The Color of Money
Juliette Lewis in Husbands and Wives
Rosie Perez in Night on Earth
Annabella Sciorra in Jungle Fever
Carla Gugino in Righteous Kill
And of course *Barbara Stanwyck* in every movie she ever made, from the silents up through the end. Great actresses come and go, but there's only one Barbara Stanwyck.
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If you're mentioning Richard Boone and villains, you've got to see him as the perverted detective Ed Cornell in Vicki, which was the 1953 remake of I Wake Up Screaming. Matching Laird Cregar's performance in that earlier noir took one hell of an acting job, but Boone is every bit as creepy as Cregar was.
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"Bitter Rice" "Open City" and "The Bicycle Thief" It doesnt get any better. You can tell the difference between Hollywood and neo-realism in these films.
"Open City"" was like a book you couldnt put down. Other than Magnani no great stars but great photography and no happy ending. What a gem as are all of them.Thanks TCM
Amen to everything you wrote, michaelryan. Open City is up there with Angi Vera, Pixote, The Bad Sleep Well and The Battle of Algiers in my all time top 5 list. Funny how the overwhelming majority of my favorite movies are U.S. made, but when I get to the top dozen or so, it's a nearly all-foreign list. I think the reason is that morally serious political issues and themes are almost impossible for Hollywood not to cartoonize, whereas the best foreign directors have an entirely different idea of what movies should be about. It's not that there aren't plenty of exceptions to the rule, but in recent years our reliance on cinematic gimmicks has overwhelmed everything else.
platinum blond
in General Discussions
Posted
That picture of Young is also nice. Again, I put her mug side by side with Harlow and I just find Young way more attactive. Platinum blond hair must blind men, otherwise how would anyone find Mae West sexy.
My take on those two is that Young's far and away the bigger babe, but Harlow, as always, can act circles around her. There's never been a more stunningly beautiful actress than the young (and even not-so-young) Loretta Young, but there's never been a more talented comedienne than Jean Harlow.
And if you don't agree, I'm turning you in for arson!