AndyM108
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Posts posted by AndyM108
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The first three are fine. After that, ewww!
Okay, if you want to restrict it to just those first three, then fine. In fact, if you just want to run the "Shanghai Lil" number in Footlight Parade in an endless loop anytime you feel the musical urge coming on, that would also be "o" with me, as Guy Kibbee might have put it. Just don't try slipping in anything else.
And BTW have you actually seen Little Big Shot? Sybil Jason's sidewalk renditions of the title song and "I'm Rolling in Money" are complete gems that make the whole movie worth watching. It's a crime that these seem to be forever removed from YouTube, as otherwise I'd link to them.
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Don't get me wrong, I love this movie. And I love musicals. But really, TCM seems to show "My Fair Lady" every month. Yes, it's on again in July. Some suggestions for other musicals to show: "The King and I", "Flower Drum Song".
Here's the official list of 10 acceptable musicals, in chronological order. Kindly send all other musicals into the dumpster and substitute noirs and gangster movies in their place.
42nd Street
Gold Diggers of 1933
Footlight Parade
Little Big Shot (well, it's got two boffo musical numbers)
Singin' in the Rain
A Star is Born (Garland version)
Guys and Dolls
Damn Yankees
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
My Fair Lady
Cabaret (leave in the musical numbers, cut the rest of the movie)
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From the FMC Website:
Tuesday, July 1:
7:20 am est, 4:20 am pst:
I CAN GET IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE
A model (Susan Hayward) climbs the ranks of the fashion industry to become a top designer and is pursued by men for her talent as well as her affection.
Cast: Dan Dailey, George Sanders, Michael Gordon, Randy Stuart, Sam Jaffe, Susan Hayward
Director: Michael Gordon
1951
Don't miss this one if you've never seen it. It's one of Hayward's best roles, both dated and "modern" in the same breath, but always keeping your interest and attention.
I can't think of any good reason why Hayward shouldn't be a SOTM.
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Notice how few of these films are gangster or crime films. Only THE ROARING TWENTIES and THEY MADE ME A CRIMINAL. That's one reason I don't think 1939 was all that great.
Bingo. Once that godawful Breen code kicked in with full force in mid-1934, Hollywood movies in general became way too goody twoshoes for my taste, even though there were still some first rate exceptions, mostly in the screwball comedy genre.
It wasn't until noir began to emerge in full force after Laura and Double Indemnity that the crackle that was so common in the pre-code era began to show up once again. IMO 1933 and 1950 represent the two highlight years of the studio era, and for sheer quantity of sizzlers, no years before or since can match them. 1939 wasn't even close.
You can have your swashbucklers, epics, and musical spectaculars, just give me movies like these:
1933:
1. Bombshell
2. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
3. Heroes For Sale
4. Baby Face
5. The Story of Temple Drake
6. 42nd Street / Footlight Parade (tie)
8. The Mind Reader
9. Wild Boys of the Road
10. Lady For a Day1950:
1. All About Eve
2. The Asphalt Jungle
3. Three Came Home
4. The Damned Don't Cry
5. Whirlpool
6. The Killer That Stalked New York
7. Panic In the Streets
8. Night in the City
9. The Baron of Arizona
10. No Way Out-
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Every year had many great B-movies and programmers. 1939 was hardly unique in that respect. The 1945-59 period was especially abundant with independent films produced by studios like Monogram, Allied, Eagle-Lion, Parklane, and others along the same line.
What would be a great idea, in fact, would to have an entire month that featured nothing BUT independently produced (or "Poverty Row") movies. It's a total fantasy thought, of course, for many reasons, but I can't think of a nicer change of pace from the Same Old Same Old that's embodied in the so-called "Essentials".
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I know that there have probably been a few threads dedicated to 1939-- Hollywood's so called greatest year of film. I know that I personally participated in a thread that was dedicated to recognizing the great movies from other years of the 1930s and beyond-- the whole point of the thread was to determine whether 1939 really was the best year of film, or whether or not these films were overrated in comparison to another year's film output. After completing 2013, there was of course no true consensus answering the question of whether or not 1939 truly was Hollywood's best year because everyone's list was subjective.
If your cup of tea is "entertainment" movies, then 1939 can't be topped. Fancy dress balls! Swashbuckling pirates and other kindly robbers! Killers who get talked by a priest (with a friendly reminder from Pope Breen) into acting yellow on their execution day! Fantasies about political villains committing suicide and a lone idealistic Senator walking away with the nation and the girl! And lots and lots of savages!
Of course if you favor a bit more realism and a lot less fantasy and historical amnesia, then 1939 is nowhere near the top of the list. For people of this persuasion, 1932-33 or 1946 through 1950 would beat 1939 hands down, and probably many other years as well, right up to the present. The truth is that there's not a single movie on that 1939 list below that's remotely connected to the real world, which is fine for some people but not for everyone.
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What!!! You're corrupting my TARANTINO thread!!!
Kidding, kidding .
. . . or am I?
We futurists prefer the term "disrupting".
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Scorcese's Top 12 is a lot more eclectic than Tarantino's. It appears to be in alphabetical order.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) – Stanley Kubrick
8½ (1963) – Federico Fellini
Ashes and Diamonds (1958) – Andrzej Wajda
Citizen Kane (1941) – Orson Welles
The Leopard (1963) – Luchino Visconti
Paisan (1946) – Roberto Rossellini
The Red Shoes (1948) – Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger
The River (1951) – Jean Renoir
Salvatore Giuliano (1962) – Francesco Rosi
The Searchers (1956) – John Ford
Ugetsu Monogatari (1953) – Mizoguchi Kenji
Vertigo (1958) – Alfred Hitchcock -
Here's Farran Nehme's (AKA The Self-Styled Siren) tribute to Ruby Dee, as posted on her blog:
In Memoriam: Ruby Dee, 1922-2014-
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It would be interesting to see if a station like TCM would survive under a true ala carte system. They might have to lower their user fee (fee they charge the cable company that is passed on to users) and add commercials to make up the difference if there wasn't enough of a market for their brand.
I'd think that TCM would have little problem surviving an a la carte system, since doing away with packaging would free up lots of money to spend on one's favorite channels on a one by one basis. While I don't know TCM's total audience, I strongly suspect that for many of its viewers, it would be right near (or at) the top of the list of channels they'd want to keep, even at a relatively steep a la carte price. I can't imagine any semi-serious film buff who wouldn't be willing to ante up for a channel like this.
Not that I'd want to see this choice forced upon us, but I doubt if it would kill TCM.
OTOH the minute they stuck commercials in the middle of the movies, I'd pull the plug without a second thought. We don't need another g-dmn AMC.
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I think that part of the concern is that they won't wait to do a better tribute later, and will just stop at the few films they have. Everyone would be waiting in the hopes that something more extensive would come along, only to be disappointed. From what I've read and seen, the network DOES have access to the films that people have mentioned on this thread, along with a few others, that would constitute a lengthier tribute. We'd all like to hope that the network is waiting until later, but I'm not sure, and that's what I'm concerned about.
That's my concern, too, and it's rooted partly in the fact that TCM seldom seems to show much interest in African American films beyond those of Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, and a handful of character actors in servile (or singing and dancing) roles. It's not that they never show anything but movies featuring those two actors, but the exceptions are usually few and far between, and almost never show in prime time.
Particularly noticeable for their scarcity are serious dramas: Movies like Shadows and One Potato, Two Potato get shown once and then disappear for what seems like forever. And unless I'm missing something, I've yet to see a screening of the multi-award winning Nothing But a Man (with Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln), though it's been on DVD for quite some time.
And while they may not own the rights to the majority of Dee's movies, with over 50 features in her repertory it's hard for me to believe that if TCM wanted to, they couldn't come up with a tribute that's longer than two of them.
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How is a Cary Grant docu-short at ten tonite suppose to beat out Terence Fisher's The Brides of Dracula on Me TV?
And how are either of them supposed to beat out the final innings of Masahiro Tanaka going against the Red Sox?
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By now, every time I see To Be Or Not To Be on the schedule, I channel my inner Stanislav Sobinski and schedule a hike out of the theater. And then I do a search for Concentration Camp Erhardt's phone number and point him towards the schedule maker.
And hell, I LIKE this film. I can only imagine my reaction if I didn't.
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These seem like the most classic choices if we're going with a star who appeared memorably in the horror genre:
Peter Lorre (selected in 2004)
Christopher Lee
Boris Karloff (selected in 2003)
Peter Cushing
Lon Chaney
Bela Lugosi
Mia Farrow
Anthony Perkins
Janet Leigh
DING, DING, LADIES AND MONSTERS, WE HAVE A WINNER!
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James, I realize the point about availability, but Ms. Dee had nearly 60 distinct feature credits under her belt, and I'm talking about a tribute of maybe 12 hours maximum. It would be a great opportunity to go beyond the few movies of hers that have already been shown a lot, though I'd include those as well.
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Rae Robinson in The Jackie Robinson Story (1950)
Connie Brooks in No Way Out (1950)
Ruth Younger in A Raisin In The Sun (1961)
I agreed Dee was a good actress. First two of these films are hardly great classics.
I'd disagree about No Way Out, which was one of the first Hollywood movies to deal forcefully with race prejudice. You could also add Edge of the City, Take a Giant Step, The Incident, and Do The Right Thing. You could probably also show a fair number of her lesser known later movies that suffered from lack of distribution. There shouldn't be any more problem filling a good tribute to Ruby Dee than there was for Eli Wallach.
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Mid-Life? Cooper in LITA looked closer to end-of-life (which, it turned out, he WAS)
True, but I was referring to the potential audience, not to Cooper himself.
("Hey, if that horsefaced old goat can score a babe like that, what's to stop me from picking up the next Playboy bunny I see? And I won't even have to take her to the opera!")
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As you know in Love In The Afternoon, Audrey has a strong reliable father but no mom. I don't know of any psychological theory that leads one to seek an old worn out looking Gary Cooper based on her situation. But getting serious, this is why I mentioned the creative angle. Say Cooper was also a musician. I can see them bonding over music since the sharing of a creative interest can create a strong pull.
The only way that Love In The Afternoon makes any sense is as a marketing pitch to men going through a midlife identity crisis. I'm only half joking when I say this. That pairing is about as plausible as Harold and Maude.
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Like so many discussion this one about 'is cable today better than T.V. in th 'old days' becomes too black and white. Anyhow Andy, you make some very valid points and I tend to agree; overall T.V. is WAY BETTER than the 'old days' as far as access to content. It is crazy to think otherwise.
What is concerning about T.V. today is the lack of pricing options. Even if al-carte isn't the answer it would be great if cable providers offer multiple T.V. station bundles packages instead of starting out with 'basic' (which already is too expensive and has too many stations), and than going right to extended basic etc....
e.g. have stations in pricings tiers. allow users to pick a set number of stations from these tiers with limits on the number of choices from the upper tiers.
Hey, I'm sure one can pick holes in my idea here but you get the general idea.
Sounds like a good idea to me. What might be a good place to begin would be to get a list of what each cable network charges the providers in order to carry their content in their non-premium packages. I know that ESPN is the most expensive network in my Fios lineup. That doesn't bother me, since I watch ESPN a lot, but I can see the complaints of non-sports fans in having to subsidize people like me.
Of course I doubt if many people at all ever watch more than a dozen or so "regular" channels. For me it's just TCM, ESPN, TBS, the two local Comcast Sports channels, PBS, the occasional CBS/ABC/NBC/Fox sports presentation (never any of their regular programming), Al-Jazeera America (infinitely better than the competition for serious 24 hour news coverage, as opposed to nonstop partisan flaming), the MLB, NFL and NBA channels, and that's it. Adding them up, it's 14 networks,10 of which I watch exclusively for sports. Overall TCM is far and away the one I watch most, especially if you count the overnight recording hours.
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My family pays $85 a month for cable, and I am still furious that TCM disappears from their lineup for periods of weeks at a time sometimes.
We've got Fios, and so far so good. I dropped Comcast in favor of DirecTV because at that point it didn't carry TCM. Had to switch to Fios because of satellite problems during bad weather.
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Good point, in distinguishing MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. In films like LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON, the impression conveyed is "Age gap? What age gap?
Which is why Middle of the Night is an engaging movie that's both a period piece and timeless, whereas Love in the Afternoon is a piece of forgettable fantasy fluff with no appeal beyond Audrey Hepburn's always effervescent persona.
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Andy, just out of curiosity, is your cable tv bill connected with your internet service? Like is is all "bundled" together in a package?
It's part of a Fios bundle, but the TV connection, the Set Top box and the taxes add up to almost exactly $85.00 a month. What really kills me is keeping both a landline and a cellphone, not so much the TV or the internet connection.
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Point by point:
- Today, you have one channel on basic cable that shows movies (redoubtable movies mostly, but movies nonetheless) without commercials. All others you pay extra. I wouldn't commend cable for that. In the old days, you had Playhouse 90 and the GE Theater and Rod Serling et cetera on regular FREE television. Guess you didn't have WNET where you lived? I watched free movies without commercials since WNET began. Sorry you missed that.
Of course WNET is nothing but the local PBS affiliate in NYC, just like WETA in Washington. WETA showcases all of one movie a week, and 99% of the time it's identical to one of those "Essentials" that gets shown half a dozen times a year on TCM. Maybe WNET goes beyond that, but I wouldn't know that by watching WETA.
As for Playhouse 90, etc.: Put them all together and they added up to less than 10 hours a week. With commercials. And anyway, you can see all those shows today on YouTube, or on your TV if you want to connect your computer to it.
My $85.00 cable bill for TV includes TCM but not HBO, Showtime, etc. For the most part I have no interest in the movies those premium channels show, and anyway, for $8.99 a month more, I can get those movies via Netflix.
And BTW when did PBS cease to be free? I know more than a few people without cable hookups who watch PBS every day.
Sorry you don't like sports. To each his own.
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Yes, the cable companies are the death of good television.
Is this crazy or is this insane?
In the pre-cable days we had four networks, featuring:
No movies without commercial interruptions;
A tiny handful of selected sporting events;
History and science confined to a few "specials" that were largely starved for funding;
"Entertainment" that consisted of a mix of a few great shows and a ton of wholly forgettable ones;
All on an analog screen that often flickered and distorted the color, if indeed it was in color to begin with.
Sorry, but when it comes to TV, the "good old days" are now.
And BTW if your cable TV bill runs about $85 a month as mine does, that works out to about $11.00 a month in 1964 dollars. How many people in 1964 do you think would have complained about a deal like that, complete with a big screen color TV that costs less in real dollars than their cheesy 21" RCA?
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I think that misses the point Andy was making. In LITA I don't get the impression that the Audrey character was after the Cooper character because he was rich. She wasn't looking for a sugar daddy. She wasn't even looking for love. It just happened.
The entire situatioin leading to love could not have happened had he not been rich. Can you give me an example of an older man younger woman pairing in films (other than Bogart and Bacall) where the man is not wealthy, or at least comfortable? (Fredric March in MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT)
Middle of the Night is distinguished from pretty much all the other May/Late Autumn movies in one key respect: There was an honest recognition of the age gap problem. In nearly all of the other movies of that type, you've either got highly implausible scenarios (Dark Passage*) or impossible fantasies. OTOH Middle of the Night deals with the issue right from the beginning and all the way to the end, which IMO makes it far and away the most interesting May/Late Autumn film of the lot.
*A movie I love, but which is about as real as Cinderella.
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Could TCM give "My Fair Lady" a rest for a while?
in General Discussions
Posted
An interesting question for film buffs would be...what film in all history has been played on tv the most times.
My first instinct might have been to say Casablanca, or one of the many public domain titles that used to run over and over on late night TV, but then I started thinking of the Fox Movie Channel and the many movies they've been showing a dozen or more times a year ever since they launched the network. And doesn't HBO show lots and lots of repeats?
EDIT: Thinking about it a bit more, in the early days of television (i.e. before cable), there were hundreds of stations all over the country running late night movies on a regular basis, each with independently chosen selections. Many of these stations tried to save money by choosing their films from the public domain, and copies of those films were often easily available for less than $100 each, with no restrictions on multiple showings. I wouldn't want to guess which film among those was shown more times than any other, but I'd bet the answer to your question would be found there, and not among the realm of films like North By Northwest or My Fair Lady.