AndyM108
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Posts posted by AndyM108
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I can't believe it! TCM is finally going to show "Call Her Savage" with Clara Bow on 9/26.
I know they showed it at their film festival 2 or 3 years ago. I've been waiting for years for
TCM to show it. I hope there isn't any schedule change on this one.
This is one of the best pre code movies ever! Clara really showed her great acting talent in
this one. Don't miss it!
Totally agree with that assessment. Parts of Call Her Savage are every bit as forceful and dramatic as the opening setting in Baby Face, and even the hokey "half breed" angle manages to be mostly just a minor distraction from the real action.
I'm going to get Safe In Hell (9/5), The Story of Temple Drake (9/12) and Call Her Savage (9/26) all on one disk. The first two have played on TCM a couple of times before, but none of these three are in any sort of regular rotation, and I want to strike while the iron is hot.
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By "ALL", of course, you mean "Fred C. Dobbs".
No, by ALL I mean all the original early subscribers and 2nd tier subscribers who WANTED the OLD TCM just like they wanted the OLD AMC the way it used to be.
I'm utterly fascinated by how you came to know this. Is your real name Fred C. Gallup?
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Sorry to put it so bluntly, but that's the way I see it. Anyway, how many times can anyone watch the same movie before wanting to see something that hasn't already been screened a million times?
I'm fine with TCM premieres of ANY era. Why I watch TCM less now than in the past is the constant repeats of films shown to death (of any era) and its ususally in prime time. I guess it was inevitable with rising costs...I also watch less of TCM now than I did when I first became addicted to it in 2009, but that's hardly TCM's fault. It's simply because in 2009 I'd only seen a tiny fraction of the thousands of films that I've seen on TCM since then. And whereas in 2009 these films were mostly all "premieres" to me, they're now mostly films I've already seen. A movie can only be a "premiere" once.
Case in point: The fabulous pre-code lineup that's just been announced for September. That's 96 hours of solid programming spread out over four Fridays, plus many more pre-codes and gangster movies scattered throughout the month on other days of the week.
If this were 2009, nearly every one of those movies would be "new" to me. But since this is 2014, I've seen all but a few of them already. Of course some of them I'll be happy to watch again, but it'll be a renewal of an old friendship rather than a new discovery.
And yet amidst all these "repeats" are movies I may have missed, plus a few premieres. In September, there'll be three Bardots I've never seen. In August, a whole day of the great Jeanne Moreau, another day of Lee Tracy, and another day of nothing but Edmond O'Brien. And though I've already seen all those Barbara Stanwyck SUTS day movies, and 90% of the September pre-codes, I figure that there are thousands of other TCM viewers for whom these films will be personal "premieres". It'd be kind of small of me to expect TCM to keep coming up with personal premieres for me the way that it did five years ago, when the world was young. Let others have the same thrill of discovery that I had back then.
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The genius of TCM is that there's something for every taste, and most of the time when I read people kvetching about too much of this or not enough of that (and I've done my share of kvetching) it usually just boils down to "Why don't they show more movies that I like, and not as many movies that I don't." Understandable, but hardly a principled objection to the scheduling.
This was not a problem 10, 15, and 20 years ago, because TCM showed plenty of films that ALL of their PAID SUBSCRIBERS liked.
By "ALL", of course, you mean "Fred C. Dobbs". I'm finding plenty of films on today's TCM that ALL the people I know like to watch. Movies from all eras and all genres and many different countries. You're entitled to your tastes, but nobody has the right to impose his idea of programming on everyone else.
And what's this thing about "paid subscribers"? Since TCM has always been a cable channel, all of of TCM's viewers have always been paid subscribers, from 1994 right up to the present. If your cable company has switched TCM to a higher tier (Fios hasn't), then that's on your cable company, not TCM.
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The best thing about the Bardots is that they've put her earlier movies in prime time and saved the worthless Contempt for the wee hours. I say "worthless" only because the dubbing is so horrible that I've never been able to watch more than the first 10 minutes of the movie. Too bad they never released a subtitled version for people who know how to read.
Why not just learn French?
It'd be a lot easier to learn French than to learn whatever language they were using in Contempt. If I had to try to identify it, I'd say it came from the ancient kingdom of Garbledonia.
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Andy, TCM has mistakenly shown an English dubbed version of Contempt on a couple of occasions. They do have the correct version, which has been available on DVD since 2002 from Criterion and is currently on Blu-ray from StudioCanal/Lionsgate.
Hopefully they trashed the bad version after the second time they accidentally showed it.
I think the operative word there is "hopefully", but hopefully our wishes will be answered. And in the meantime those four early Bardots will satiate me. If the other three are as good as And God Created Woman, I can hardly wait.
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IMO the most important thing is the presence of lots of TCM premieres. I don't particularly care what period they come from, and I'd much rather see a premiere of a good 1990's movie than the 10,738th showing of Adam's Rib or Meet Me in St. Louis.
The genius of TCM is that there's something for every taste, and most of the time when I read people kvetching about too much of this or not enough of that (and I've done my share of kvetching) it usually just boils down to "Why don't they show more movies that I like, and not as many movies that I don't." Understandable, but hardly a principled objection to the scheduling.
Sorry to put it so bluntly, but that's the way I see it. Anyway, how many times can anyone watch the same movie before wanting to see something that hasn't already been screened a million times?
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I am not against production code correctness (I see it as its own 'style' with its own fans), but obviously there are other ways to depict the same stories. Some films (film endings) were compromised badly by the code-- and some precodes and postcodes would be better if they had a bit more 'correctness.' So this is not a perfect science.
Yeah, but I think that on balance it's indisputable than from the standpoint of a screenwriter's integrity it's a pretty lopsided balance. You might argue that a handful of films under the code were forced into a sort of sublimated sophistication as a way of getting around it, and succeeded in their aims. Maybe The Lady Eve or Adam's Rib needed such a straitjacket to succeed, though I doubt it.
But here's the thing: Nothing before 1934 was preventing films like The Lady Eve or Adam's Rib from being made, but after 1934 there were hundreds of pre-code titles that never could have passed Pope Breen's censorious eye, and we would have been much the worse without them. It wasn't just movies like Call Her Savage, Safe in Hell and Baby Face, either. It was sophisticated comedies like Trouble in Paradise (unpunished thieves) and Red-Headed Woman (homewrecker gets to eat her cake and have it, too) that would have been left in the dustbin.
And those code era endings: Good grief. If I had a dollar for every Hollywood code era film that wound up with a marriage proposal (or a bickering couple being reunited) in the last two minutes, or a with a snarling criminal being sent off to fry with a priest by his side, I could almost buy the Los Angeles Clippers. I never fully realized this until I became a TCM devotee and began seeing many hundreds of code era movies instead of just a handful of highlight films. It's one of the reasons that so many of the foreign films from that era are so much more interesting than the Hollywood product, even if technically they lagged way behind. Those foreign filmmakers weren't always having to look over their shoulder.
Obviously many hundreds of great movies came out of Hollywood in spite of the production code, but that they managed to do this is much more a testament to the genius of the filmmakers than to the code itself. About the only upside I can see to the code is that it unintentionally brought about a greater appreciation for those pre-code films, as evidenced by the amount of time that TCM and the repertory houses devote to them.
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We do have to admit that some of us lovable message board snobs place noir a bit higher than the average TCM viewer might. Bias.
Marcy Syms used to say that "an educated consumer is our best customer". That might explain the bias we have towards noir and pre-codes.
It's the same bias you see in the better remaining repertory movie houses, i.e. a reaction against excessive wholesomeness and production code correctness.TCM seems fair when it comes to selecting films across a variety of genres (with the exception of science fiction which is truly the misbegotten stepchild around here).
I'd agree, although I'd substitute foreign films for science fiction movies, which IMO are about as tedious as musicals. But then no two TCM viewers are ever going to agree on priorities, and besides, what would be the fun if they did?
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I'd like to think that all these crime and pre-code movies are a belated make-up gift for having been inundated with so many godawful musicals and "family" movies for the past few months, not to mention foisting the likes of John Wayne and Rock Hudson upon us for SOTM.
But then there's always noir after the sunshine, and in the words of my man Jack Webb: "In America, there's always a tomorrow". God Bless America, and God Bless TCM.
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Those Friday pre-codes are a mind blower. My only regret is that I can't induce amnesia and be able to see them all for the first time all over again. The one I can't remember seeing on TCM before, though it's played plenty of times on Fox, is Clara Bow's Call Her Savage. That's right up there with The Story of Temple Drake and Safe in Hell as the raunchiest of them all, and if I can remember to do it I'm going to put those three films on the same disk.
The best thing about the Bardots is that they've put her earlier movies in prime time and saved the worthless Contempt for the wee hours. I say "worthless" only because the dubbing is so horrible that I've never been able to watch more than the first 10 minutes of the movie. Too bad they never released a subtitled version for people who know how to read.
Any idea when the full schedule will be posted on one page? It's also too bad that the monthly schedules can't be in the same format as these daily and weekly ones.
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Again, as I said, most kids are not going to understand the context of Hitler being spoofed (especially when they know more about Lady Gaga than they do about the second world war). But if TCM is to persist with this theme, of Hitler and WWII, then truly THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK is a much better choice and more easily defended as an Essentials Jr. selection.
I'd say there are two general points that might be made about "films that 21st century kids might like".
1. Kids like movies where kids have prominent roles.
2. Black & white films of any type are hard for most non-TCM 21st century viewers to relate to, adults and well as children, but children especially so.
The problem is that once you get past the obvious picks like The Wizard of Oz and Meet Me in St. Louis, it's not that easy to find "essentials" that meet the requirements of color and kid-centric. So you have to compromise. Where to go from there?
To begin with, I'd go with more slapstick comedies like the Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields and Laurel & Hardy, and less with the sort of comedies that appeal mostly to somewhat more sophisticated adults who can understand the dated cultural references and lifestyle portrayals that might leave younger viewers just scratching their heads. Yes to A Night at the Opera, no to My Man Godfrey.
I'd then try to put in some (though not too many) films that feature younger actors as central to the plot, but that also have a strong moral component. Besides the aforementioned The Diary of Anne Frank, I'd feature The Search, and maybe even a more graphic movie like Germany: Year Zero, which has a teenaged protagonist who's forced by circumstances to try to figure out how to survive in postwar Germany. These two movies would need a good introduction by someone who really understands their point, and they wouldn't be for pre-schoolers, but my wife and I have shown both of those last two movies to our 12 year old goddaughter, with appropriate post-viewing commentary regarding the rougher scenes, and she wasn't any the worse for wear because of it. She was actually more traumatized by Bambi's mother being killed in that 1942 animated feature.
And then for balance I'd put it some vintage cartoons. TCM has had Bugs Bunny festivals in the (distant) past, and with access to the Warner Brothers library I can't imagine that it couldn't be done again. Too bad that Disney films are off limits, because those early Technicolor Donald Ducks are still the gold standard of that genre.
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Unlike Van Doren, Dors could act. She had a career rebirth on stage in London in the 60s....She was married to Family Fued's Dick Dawson for quite awhile. I think she died fairly young.....
I may be mistaken, but if my memory is correct I think Dors' biggest problem in sustaining her film career was metabolic more than anything else, as she went from 120 to 213 pounds. Dors herself put it this way:
"Chocolate biscuits were my downfall," she says. "Also, I'm the best gravy maker in Britain. I love potatoes, and sugar and cream in my coffee and fruit pies with that lovely Reddi Wip they sell in the States. I never knew what the word diet was. Everybody else was always watching my figure, particularly men, but the last person to watch it was me."
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I liked Man Bait better than Blackout, but I'm glad I'm getting all the overnights for later viewing. What a great change of pace from the bland prime time fare we've been getting lately.
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Interwesting. By the way, have you seen Wancho Natawious?
All joking aside, it's a film I saw wecent...a few months ago and than re-watched some of again when it re-aired recently and I really liked it a lot.
Never seen it, since Westerns are just about at the bottom of my interest list and my eyes usually glaze right over them on the TCM schedule, but now that I know it's a Lang film I'll catch it the next time it shows up. Thanks for the tip.
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I'm a big fan of George Sanders but I can see logical reasons why he isn't SOTM; In his most famous films Sanders isn't the lead actor. I don't think it has anything to do with Sanders NOT being a traditional hero, but instead that his best work was as a supporting player.
IOW he's not a "star" in the same sense that Cooper (groan) or Rooney (triple groan) or the Hepburns (both of whom I love) were. I get it, but I'd like to think that the concept of SOTM could be expanded to go beyond that limited category, especially considering that half of them didn't have half his acting talent. Others have made the same point about other actors such as Susan Hayward, and I'd agree that Sanders isn't the only one who's been ignored for superficial reasons, but IMO his omission stands out more than any other.
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Just curious- because I like your style- what are your favorite Fitz Lang films?
God, where to begin? I'll restrict myself to ten, but I've yet to see a Lang movie I didn't like, and at least four of the ones below might be among my favorite 50 films of all time, with Ministry of Fear and The Big Heat knocking on the door.
Dr. Mabuse/The Gambler
Metropolis
Spione
M
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
Liliom
Moontide
Ministry of Fear
The Big Heat
The Blue Gardenia
I've never seen The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse, and I only hope TCM will eventually get around to showing it. The only director I'd put above Lang is Kurosawa, and the only other one who's even in the same neighborhood would be Hitchcock. I only wish we could see more of his Weimar era films.
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I don't want to alter what others wrote. The only alteration I make when quoting others is to boldface a particular section.
I may be the only one here who never uses the quote tab, because I don't trust it not to malfunction. I still use the former method where above your own comment you just copy and paste the parts of the comment you want to respond to, and then italicize them in order to indicate that the words aren't yours. The only disadvantage is that it doesn't automatically indicate the name of the person to whom you're responding, but if that's important (which it usually isn't), you can always add that information separately.
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THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW is rarely shown anywhere. In the last 5 years I saw it once shown on PBS. Luckily I've always had both tapes.
FWIW The Woman in the Window was shown on TCM on November 7, 2010. Not quite five years, but close enough. Although I seem to remember having the chance to record it again before last night, but decided against it. Neither it nor Scarlet Street are among my favorite noirs, and they're nowhere near my favorite Fritz Langs.
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But I have to admit I am underinformed about her film career. I wonder if TCM can/would sponsor a day or evening of a representative sample of her films.
Given that she appeared in 60 feature films, I'd think that this would be the least that TCM could do, perhaps on October 27th, which would have been her 92nd birthday. They've scheduled similar tributes to scores of lesser actors and actresses over the years.
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Duryea was to me, a lovable slimeball. I hope he wouldn't be insulted by this if he were alive to hear it, but I never saw him as the truly terrifying and psychopathic weirdo that, say, Widmark could play so well.
If I had to be alone in an alley with one of these guys, I'd take Duryea over Widmark. I'd be genuinely scared Widmark would kill me, maybe torture me first. Duryea would just give one of those snarky laughs of his, and probably let me go if I gave him five bucks.
As I like to make note of about once every few months, Widmark, Duryea and the often psychopathic racist onscreen villain Robert Ryan may have been the three best family men in Hollywood, whereas the pious onscreen saint Bing Crosby was one of the worst. You can't beat a good publicity department.
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Not only was Ruby Dee a terrific actress over the course of well over half a century, but it should also be noted that she and her late husband Ossie Davis formed one of the great performing arts couples of all time. Married for 57 years, other than Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward it's hard to think of any similarly situated couple that led such completely full lives. R.I.P. Ms. Dee.
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For me, Dan Duryea is one of the great fun heels of the movies. I guess, no matter how dispicable his character may be, I can somehow never really hate Duryea. When he died in the movies, as he often did, I used to think, "Thanks Dan, for the great ride you gave us." That's why I created a tribute thread to him last year. But my deep appreciate of "Slimy Dan," as I called him, started with these two Lang films, which were crucial in boosting his career.
Tom, I couldn't agree more, and in fact Duryea would be a great pick for a future SUTS day.
And since you asked, here's a 24 hour lineup that might be the greatest day of noirs and gangster movies TCM has ever presented. It'd be a relief after all these musicals and Rock Hudson movies. You might have to cut one or two to fit the schedule, but it'd depend on the framing.
Ball of Fire (1942)
Sahara (1943)
Ministry of Fear (1944)
The Woman in the Window (1944)
Scarlet Street (1945)
Lady on a Train (1945)
The Great Flamarion (1945)
Black Angel (1946)
Manhandled (1949)
Too Late For Tears (1949) IMO this is Duryea's best film, if not his best performance.
Criss Cross (1949)
One Way Street (1950)
Terror Street (1953)
World For Ransom (1954)
Storm Fear (1954) In which Duryea plays a cuckolded failed novelist
Slaughter on Tenth Avenue (1957)
Night Passage (1957)
And please don't spoil my fantasy by telling me how many of these titles are unavailable. A fella can dream, can't he?
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Ladd and Colbert are both getting SUTS days in August, and Kerr's already been SOTM twice. We get enough repeats as it is.
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Please excuse this test:Моє судно на повітряній подушці наповнене вуграмиI should have no problems!I once put my "entire French section" on display in one of my book shop's windows. The titles were "****!" and "**** Encore!"So does the autocensor speakka da snail? Let's see.(Curses, foiled again! Or as the French might say, "M e r d e encore!")
It's the same bias you see in the better remaining repertory movie houses, i.e. a reaction against excessive wholesomeness and production code correctness.
The first-ever 'Essentials' double?
in General Discussions
Posted
I remember being enthralled by The Pawnbroker in my younger years, but then I probably was a weird child.
When it comes to films like these, beyond considering the age and maturity levels of the child, I think a key factor is the quality of the introductions and the presence of knowledgeable adults in the room. It'd be borderline insanity to throw a child into a film like Kapo without any sort of preparation, and it would be almost criminally negligent not to be there to discuss the film's implications once the movie was over.
Besides giving the background to the events depicted on the screen, such discussions should also focus on questions as well as answers, beginning with "What would you have done in the girl's place?"
OTOH some movies with "dark" themes are probably too abstractly presented for any child to take in. The events depicted in The Diary of Anne Frank or Kapo may be horrific, but at least they're linear, whereas in The Pawnbroker there are so many unexplained flashbacks that it's much more difficult to follow. It's an "essential" movie, but more for adults than for children.
Of course all of this depends on answering the question of who, exactly, is the target audience for "Essentials Jr."? Is it 8 year olds or 18 year olds? Is the idea that this audience will be watching the movies alone, while mommy and/or daddy is occupied elsewhere? Or is it that the whole family will be watching? And then, is the purpose of these movies purely "entertainment", "education", or a mixture of both? That last question is one that divides us whether we're talking about Essentials Jr. or TCM programming in general, and you can see it in other threads here every day.