AndyM108
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Posts posted by AndyM108
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Shut up!
Spitfire was on last month (or so) and it was one of the most entertaining, grand and glorious failures I've ever seen.
Loved every minute; and I still laugh recalling Hepburn using the term "whaht traish."
If Laurence Olivier did a guest spot on Amos N' Andy it wouldn't be as good as Spitfire.
Now that's what I love, someone with a strong POV who stands up to the mob, even when I'm part of the lynching party.
And truth be told, I have to admit that I found Spitfire "captivating" (if that's the word), for about the same reason that I can't stay away from Reefer Madness or My Son John. Some movies are just so sidesplittingly and unintentionally risible that they easily cruise into the Guilty Pleasures category. Spitfire is definitely one of those movies.
And Kate? Well, she had both the looks and the "southern" accent of one of Seinfeld's Brooklyn-born girlfriends, Tracy Kolis.
But A Minority of One? Nah. That one should have been sent to the Soviets as part of our special Psywar exchange program, to convince Khrushchev & Co. that we were a bunch of clueless wonders and have them let their guard down.
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I don't think you are pointing things out correctly. You griped about Retroflex showing repeats without also acknowledging that TCM shows its share of repeats (as do many other classic movie channels). I am currently looking over the new October schedule for TCM and there are several repeats within the same month, not to mention films airing in October that are airing earlier in the summer. So if you are going to try to slam Retroflex and its sister channels by that criteria (repeats) you have to apply it to TCM, too.
I've many, many times over the past few years stated my wish that TCM would show fewer repeats, but let's get a little perspective. When I just now looked at Retroflex's online schedule for the next two weeks, I found multiple movies that were repeated 2 or 3 times within a period of 48 hours. Black Sunday will play 3 times within 24 hours tomorrow. An Unmarried Woman has 5 scheduled showings over the next two weeks. Hairspray will have 6. There are many others that will be played 2 or 3 times within that same period.
How many movies does TCM even show 6 times within the space of a year? I don't know the answer to that, but I'd strongly suspect that it's very few, and it's a relatively rare occasion that a title even gets shown 3 times within the space of 2 months. IMO the bigger problem in many ways is that it relegates its "rarer" titles to the overnight schedule, especially those that aren't considered to be in the Hollywood "mainstream", whatever that is. Of course there are exceptions to this general rule, for which I'm grateful.
As I said, a little perspective. More power to any network that can provide uninterrupted movies that TCM doesn't have, and even more power to any network that shows these movies without requiring a subscription to a premium movie package.
None of this is meant to say that TCM is perfect. We all want it to improve in directions that we favor. But where else are you ever going to find The Housemaid, Diary of a Chambermaid, an entire evening of Mae West, Wings, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, a day full of classic noirs, multiple different Screen Directors' Playhouse shorts, a night full of rare documentaries like the one that's on now (Salesman), and innumerable other classic features from the Studio era and beyond, all in the course of a rather ordinary 7 days? And I didn't even mention Maureen O'Hara, who's not my cup of tea but who obviously has a big following around here.
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These other stations are competition to TCM (i.e. they pull viewers from TCM), but yea, it is of a very limited nature.
But one point is clear: if a station is showing a movie one really wants to see, that TCM isn't showning (or hasn't shown for years), one is likely to seek out that station (or purchase the movie if it is available).
I just went out an hour ago and dropped $130 at Barnes & Noble's half-price Criteriion Collection sale, which got me two boxed sets and a copy of Samuel Fuller's The White Dog. I'm fully aware that TCM is not the sole source of terrific movies, but it's far and away the best one for those of us on limited budgets and a desire to go beyond movies we already know and have seen. I often feel that this point gets lost amidst the constant kvetching about TCM's shortcomings. These folks certainly have a right to their opinions, but by the same token I've got a right to mine.
But yea the rotation of movies is very limited on these stations.
So does TCM have any reason to be concerned? I have no idea. But some concern (even if unfounded) by TCM execs would help us TCM viewers; e.g. if the concern about losing viewers motivates TCM to lease more movies from outside the Turner Library, that is a big win for us TCM viewers.
I would agree with the above sentiment. We all wish that TCM would expand its repertory in directions that we favor, with all the variety that this implies. But I also think it's relevant to note the extremely limited nature of these other channels, some of which are premium, and others of which constantly interrupt their films for commercials.
I fail to see what's wrong (or "sarcastic") about pointing out that there's more than one side to a story. Or is only one side of a discussion considered to be "productive"?
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So if you were head of programming what would you program? e.g. what percentage of programming would be devoted to pre-codes, Production-code movies, foreign films, silents, movies released in, say the last 20 years, color films verses black and white etc...
I'd simply try to get the most varied selection of the best movies available that TCM could afford within the constraints of its budget. Due to those constraints, it's clear that the bulk of the schedule would have to be devoted to studio era films, but I'd try to include better later movies and foreign films within the limitations of that budget.
And you know what? With a few minor adjustments around the edges (more silents and foreign movies; fewer repeats on the musicals), I strongly suspect that "my" programming wouldn't be a whole lot different than what we're already getting right now.
Of course if I had an unlimited budget to work with, that'd be another story, but that's not what I assume the question was about. We all wish that TCM would simply show only the movies that WE want to see, but fortunately that's not the way it works.
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But when I see something like SUNSET BOULEVARD, THE MATCHMAKER and KING CREOLE on Retroflex with perfect prints and no commercials, you can bet I am right there watching it. In fact, Retroflex is becoming my go-to for Paramount gems; ME-TV is becoming my go-to for those classic horror gems from Universal (even with commercials); Encore Westerns is becoming my go-to for all those great Columbia B westerns that TCM does not show; and with FLIX I am getting some British gems like THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST starring Michael Redgrave and Margaret Rutherford that TCM again does not play.
So what am I using TCM for-- the occasional titles in the Turner Library that are not overplayed or that I do not have a copy of in my collection. And I am using TCM when they have a knowledgeable guest host who has first-hand accounts of the making of a classic movie (like Mitzi Gaynor, Dolores Hart, Shirley Jones and Robert Wagner).
If we look at what I have just written, TCM is competing with several other classic movie channels for my attention.
Just for grins, I went down to look for Retroflex on my TV, where Fios is my provider. I quickly discovered three salient facts:
1. Their schedule is very repetitive, with some selections were being played as many as 3 or 4 times in the next few days.
2. Nearly all of the titles I found had played on TCM, and I already had either recorded them or I never wanted them to begin with. (King Creole? No thanks.)
3. When I actually tried to tune in to the channel, I discovered that it's part of a premium package, just like HBO and Encore and Sundance. Whereas at least on Fios, TCM comes with the lower priced package.
If that's "competition" for TCM, it's certainly of a very limited nature: Limited to those who can afford the extra charges, and limited to those who don't mind all the repetition, which is infinitely greater than TCM at its worst.
Oh, and BTW, do they also show uninterrupted, commercial-free silent and/or foreign films? That's not a rhetorical question. Where else other than TCM can you find Lon Chaney, Louise Brooks, Toshiro Mifune or Jeanne Moreau on your TV? If there are any such networks, I'd sure love to know about them.
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So only Jews should play Jews?
No, just actresses who can do so a bit more convincingly than Roz did in this picture. It was on the cringeworthy level of Katharine Hepburn's "hillbilly" portrayal in the mercifully forgotten Spitfire.
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Molly Picon instead of Roz Russell, and Sessue Hayakawa in the Guinness role?
Never heard of Molly Picon, but surely they could have found someone, anyone better than Rosalind Russell to play that part----and again, don't get me wrong, I love her in just about everything else I've seen her in. She just was hopelessly miscast in this one.
As for Guinness, same deal, only not quite as extreme. Only an 8 on a 1 to 10 scale of awfulness, whereas Roz was a full-blooded 10.
And Kate was about a 13 on that same 10 scale in Spitfire---she was off the charts.
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It is EPIC miscasting, like on a "John Wayne IS Ghengis Khan"-level miscasting.
I've never seen either of those movies (thank God), but no miscasting could possibly have been so laughable as Rosalind Russell and Alec Guinness playing a Jewish widow and a Japanese widower in the howler known as The Majority of One. Roz is one of my all-time favorites, but listening to her trying to put on a "Jewish" Brooklyn accent had me begging the screen for mercy by the time her first scene was half over.
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I enjoyed it quite a bit, too. Early on, I was worried this film would be too silly with how they waved the rat poison in the face of the viewer. However, I was really pulled in hearing that piano. Sometimes it would be the soundtrack to the film, sometimes it would be someone playing in the other room, and sometimes the housemaid would be at it, banging away. It really added to the atmosphere and cranked up the tension as the movie progressed.
I should have mentioned that important element, and you're absolutely right. At times it got to the point where you wanted to run upstairs, strangle the girl, and feed her to the rats yourself.
Of course since it would've more or less ended the movie right then and there if Mr. Kim had followed my armchair impulse, I'm glad he allowed the plot to lead to a more unconventional denouement.
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There is nothing gay about either one of these characters. I suppose no one has ever kissed a best friend or their Father when they were dying? Please! This world today is nuts! It isn't even the first male to male kiss in the movie. That happens earlier when the French General is pinning medals on Jack, David and another man. Granted, the other man is slightly giddy.
This is obviously true, and if it weren't, you would've had the Catholic Church and every other guardian of 1920's "morality" howling for the heads of the filmmakers. Funny how nobody at the time uttered a single indignant peep about it.
Not funny at all, that's how clever directors (and writers) got around the rules. That was the beauty of the language of cinema, before it got so explicit.
Of course movies could get around the rules, but there were limits to that wink-winking that extended all the way up through the end of the Production Code. You would never see interracial romantic scenes between whites and blacks, and you never saw any actual romantic scenes between same-sex couples, only parodies that were obviously comic, or scenes of male friendship bonding under emotional conditions, such as you had in Wings. There was enough public sympathy for bootleggers in the age of prohibition to let the Volstead Act be ignored and even implicitly preached against on the screen, but there was no such sympathy for "race defiling" or "crimes against nature", which in the 1920's were taboos on the level of incest.
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There is nothing gay about either one of these characters. I suppose no one has ever kissed a best friend or their Father when they were dying? Please! This world today is nuts! It isn't even the first male to male kiss in the movie. That happens earlier when the French General is pinning medals on Jack, David and another man. Granted, the other man is slightly giddy.
This is obviously true, and if it weren't, you would've had the Catholic Church and every other guardian of 1920's "morality" howling for the heads of the filmmakers. Funny how nobody at the time uttered a single indignant peep about it.
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That B.J. Thomas song in BCATSK represents everything I can't stand about so many of the movies from that time period. It's the complete interjection of present-day sensibilities into movies set in the past, which in this case seemed so totally incongruous and over the top as to make you wonder WTH they were even thinking about. It's as if movies had to double as a rock or pop concert in order to attract an audience. I like both Newman and Redford, but IMO this one was just a clinker.
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Like CaveGirl, I seldom scare easily in movies. The Exorcist mostly had me just rolling my eyes. I knew about the shower scene in Psycho so I was prepared for it. 99% of my favorite noirs and mob movies I can write off as "entertainment", and in many ways Freaks was as much a humanistic social commentary as it was a horror movie. And even with war movies there's the comfort (if you can call it that) that while there can be grisly moments there's seldom anything depicted that I haven't already read about or seen in documentaries.
But The Housemaid----Wow. Just wow. Or make that WOW. To call it "Hitchcockian" is to flatter Hitchcock, though I guess Vertigo may be a "better" movie. But for sheer psychological horror that builds from nearly the first foreshadowing scene where the girl slips the note in Mr. Kim's piano, to the almost Jonestown-like double suicide at the end*, I can't think of a single other movie that comes close, in spite of all the unanswered questions that Kay notes below. It doesn't have just one chilling moment, it's that literally every moment is fraught with the anticipation that some unspeakable horror is about to take place within the next ten seconds. There's not a single juxtaposing "normal" scene once you get past the first minute or two. I only hope that next time TCM shows this remarkable work, it gets the PrimeTime spot that it richly deserves. I'll only add to this by saying that every character was perfectly cast, including the children.
*Well, not "the end", exactly, as there's an "ending" that almost seems like a variant of those tagged-on Breen endings during the height of the Production Code era that tried to negate everything that's gone on before. But even this rather incongruous tag-on is done with such subtle skill and humor that it doesn't even detract 1% from the movie's overall impact, which if nothing else will likely make you want to eat out for the next few weeks, or at least never hire a maid.
Oh, and if anyone didn't record it and doesn't want to wait for it to show up again, here it is in its entirety on YouTube.
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Other than Reefer Madness, which I use to show for profit, I think the movies I've watched the most have been The Battle of Algiers, Casablanca, The Killers, Out of the Past, Kiss of Death, The Asphalt Jungle, and Baby Face. But of all those, only the first two were primarily on the Silver Screen.
It's funny that I generally can't stand musicals, but the few I do like I've watched repeatedly and will probably keep watching: A Star Is Born (Garland version, though in many ways that's more a drama than a musical); the three Berkeleys from 1933; Singin' in the Rain; Damn Yankees; My Fair Lady; and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. I wouldn't mind if TCM showed My Fair Lady every three months, just so I could be continually re-enchanted by Audrey, and of course Rex Harrison is perfect as 'Enry 'Iggins.
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Yeah, Bendix is fine in those I suppose, but for MY money ya STILL can't beat Frank Faylen and Douglas Fowley when it comes to drivin' cabs!
I'd go with Harold Lloyd in Speedy,
while driving him from downtown to Yankee Stadium. After the ride was over, the Babe turns to Lloyd and says "If I ever want to commit suicide I'll call you".And then there's the classic scene in The Great McGinty, where Brian Donlevy and Akim Tamaroff are brawling in the back seat with no holds barred while Frank Moran just keeps up this totally nonsensical monologue in the front seat, totally oblivious to the mayhem that's going on behind him. Of course since he's technically a chauffeur rather than a cab driver, this may not qualify as an entry.
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(...and so after readin' your thoughts about Messrs Newman and Cruise lack of prowess with a cue stick, I can JUST imagine what you might think of Tony Perkins' on-field performance as Jimmy Piersall in ANOTHER sports related film!!!) LOL
In truth the only non-comedy baseball movies I've been able to stomach are Eight Men Out and 42, and for the same reason. I also played baseball up through college, and watching the likes of Anthony Perkins, Gary Cooper, Ronald Reagan, and Robert DeNiro try to impersonate ballplayers is simply cringeworthy. It's as if they'd never picked up a baseball in their lives before they got on the movie set, and watching them in all their gaucherie is a bit like it would have been if Spencer Tracy's first move on Katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year had been to skip the preliminaries and immediately start feeling her up.
And yeah, I know that this sounds waaaayyy too picky, but sometimes when a movie gets the "little" things wrong it kind of creeps into the rest of the film.
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The only Newman movies I really love are The Young Philadelphians, The Sting, and my favorite, Absence of Malice, but he always gave us his best shot and he's certainly among the top actors of his generation. The only performance of his I find overrated is his Fast Eddie character in The Hustler, but that's largely because in that movie he handled a cue stick like someone who'd never picked up a cue before in his life, not because of his portrayal of Fast Eddie's character.
(And OTOH compared to Tom Cruise's pathetic cue artistry in The Color of Money, Newman looked like Efren Reyes by comparison, so I guess it's all relative.)
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I hated it
and do like to watch people fight
even your own friends
there is nothing worse than being out with a couple who should have parted ways
misery loves company
So does this mean you're not a fan of The War of The Roses?
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Oh, and Rosalind Russell. I'd add her in ANYWHERE.
Well, if I weren't happily married and Rosalind Russell wasn't dead, I'd run away with her to some long lost balcony in an abandoned Manhattan movie palace. If ever I think of the perfect woman in a single movie, I think of Rosalind Russell in Roughly Speaking, where she's the absolute embodiment of human solidarity.
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I don't know if SUTS ever includes a day of a particular director's films, if so, I would perhaps sub out some people and sub in some directors, like:
Alfred Hitchcock
Michael Curtiz
Howard Hawkes
John Huston
William Wyler
Billy Wilder
Orson Welles
Frank Capra
Fritz Lang
George Cukor
Preston Sturges
Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Vincente Minnelli
I thought about that myself, though since I usually don't classify movies by directors, it'd be a harder list to make.
That said, I'd definitely like to see days devoted to these thirteen directors, at minimum:
Vittorio De Sica
Howard Hawkes
Alfred Hitchcock
Akiro Kurosawa
Fritz Lang
Oscar Micheaux
Yasujirō Ozu
G. W. Pabst
Eric Rohmer
Roberto Rossellini
Martin Scorsese
Francois Truffaut
Billy Wilder
And probably some more, if only I knew which films some of these others directed. When I think of Hollywood movies, I think of the lead actors first, not the directors.
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In no particular order, these are the first 31 stars whose names would pop into my head if this were the first SUTS month ever. IOW starting from scratch, in alphabetical order:
1. Edward Arnold
2. Lon Chaney
3. Ricardo Cortez
4. Joan Crawford
5. Bette Davis
6. Judy Davis
7. Alain Delon
8. Robert DeNiro
9. Richard Dix
10. Kirk Douglas (but no Bible epics)
11. Glenn Ford
12. Jean Gabin
13. Jean Harlow
14. Susan Hayward
15. Burt Lancaster
16. Laurel & Hardy
17. Ida Lupino
18. Toshiro Mifune
19. Robert Mitchum
20. Jeanne Moreau
21. Al Pacino
22. William Powell & Myrna Loy together
23. Edward G. Robinson
24. Rosalind Russell
25. Robert Ryan
26. George Sanders
27. Lizabeth Scott
28. Barbara Stanwyck
29. Lana Turner
30. Richard Widmark
31. Warren William
Biggest feature: Lots and lots and lots of premieres, and the appearance of several stars who seldom get a lot of TCM play during the rest of the year. As always, the great majority of the stars peaked in their careers between the 1930's and 1950's, keeping with the main focus of the network.
The main change from the usual SUTS lineup would be the inclusion of five foreign stars (Judy Davis, Delon, Gabin, Mifune, Moreau) instead of the usual one, but since these five are universally acknowledged to be among the greatest actors of all time, there shouldn't be too much room for complaint.
Of course in order to pay for all the necessary rights and licensing, we'd have to tax the upper 1% an extra .01% off the top, but for such a good cause I'm sure they wouldn't mind.
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Speaking of premieres, both the Now Playing guide and the TCM Imports Schedule page for July shows Love and the Frenchwoman as the second Import movie of the month, and Now Playing lists it as a premiere that's to be shown overnight on the 13th.
And yet on the online daily schedule page for next Sunday, it shows Throne of Blood in the 2:00 AM Import slot. Throne of Blood is a terrific Kurosawa adaptation of MacBeth, but it's one that's been shown several times before.
Does anyone have any idea what's going on with this? I'm assuming it's just a schedule change, but Love and the Frenchwoman is still listed on the online Imports schedule.
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Yeah! Just who does tcm think their customer base is? The Cannes judging committee?
Well, if you go by the the actual number of films TCM shows in the respective genres, the actual customer base appears to consist of World War II veterans, aging cowboys, and singing tap dancers.
In many weeks you can count the number of foreign movies on one hand.-
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TheCid said: 24 hours dedicated to one star (or actor) is really too much. TCM needs to offer variety every day. There are some actors that I just do not care for and SUTS blocks a whole day of TCM for me-maybe even several days.
Really? You simply cannot DO SOMETHING ELSE for a day (or two) if there's nothing interesting to you on TV?
Doesn't TCM show "variety" all the rest of the time?
Not only that, but except for a relatively small number of one note actors who seldom get SUTS days to begin with, there's usually a fair amount of "variety" within each 24 hour tribute. All TheCid is complaining about is that on some of those days the featured actor/actress is someone he either doesn't like or doesn't get, very likely the latter.
And you're not the only viewer....there are millions of other people who fully enjoy the programming-let them have their fun.
Exactly. In any given SUTS year, there are at most 3 or 4 days I really get fired up about*, another dozen or so that are filled with movies I like but have seen plenty of times already, and the rest of days feature actors who star mainly in genres I don't like (Westerns, musicals, costume dramas, "family" movies, etc.).
But guess what? On those days, there are a zillion other things to do. Seriously, the sense of entitlement on the part of some people here is simply amazing.
*This year it's Jeanne Moreau, Lee Tracy and Edmond O' Brien. There are many other great choices, but almost no films within those days that are "new" to me.
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WINGS is a really good movie. Don't believe the negative Leonard Maltin review included on the movie's TCM entry.
You can safely apply that sentiment to just about any movie that Leonard Maltin reviews. Any correlation between the number of stars he awards and the actual quality of the film in question is purely coincidental. WINGS, which is indeed a terrific movie, is but one of many hundreds of examples of that.
TCM and Other Sources for Classic Film
in General Discussions
Posted
The issue of TCM repeats is still not being fully addressed.
Perhaps not, but since I'm not privy to any inside information on the subject, all I can do is continue to say that I wish they'd have fewer of them, while at the same time noting that relative to other non-commercial channels, they're virtually repeat-free.