AndyM108
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Posts posted by AndyM108
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So, "Jake Holman" and "jakeem", should we all split ourselves into two different people so we can give double strength to our opinions? It's an interesting technique that I admit I'd never thought of trying.
And what the h e l l, why not take it a step further?
Of course if the two of you are twin brothers, then I'm doubly nonplussed.
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Well, that's quite a relevant counterpoint, Jake. I'll leave it to you to explain exactly what you're trying to get at.
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Steiger's gum chewing is a thing of beauty. Notice how he modulated it -- or stopped, especially when his character was deep in thought.
Here's Steiger's real life Mississippi model, only he chewed tobacco instead of gum and there wasn't any Hollywood ending. Those of a certain age won't have any trouble identifying either the sheriff or the scene.
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I saw In The Heat of the Night when it came out, and while the acting was terrific and the plot fairly good, both then and now it seems much more 1967 Hollywood than 1967 Mississippi. The idea that a character like Gillespie would ever allow an outspoken and forceful black man like Tibbs to work with him, no matter how well qualified he was to aid in the murder case, just doesn't ring true in that time and place. Certainly there weren't any real life stories from Mississippi in the mid-60's that paralleled anything remotely like that.
If anyone should want a much better and more realistic depiction of the racial conditions of the Deep South during that time frame, Michael Roemer's Nothing But a Man with Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln is the gold standard. Given the Hollywood bias for blockbusters with big name stars, it never got the recognition of the Steiger / Poitier movie*, but it was highly acclaimed by all the critics and it's now listed on the National Film Registry.
*Jaime Christley of Slant Magazine put it best when he wrote that "It can't be overstated just how Nothing But a Man is militantly tone-deaf to the Hollywood muzak of race relations."
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1. Pepe Le Moko (Gabin) Glad I caught this on Gabin's SUTS day
2. The Lady Eve (Sturges' best)
3. I Wake Up Screaming (TCM needs to get this from FOX)
4. Ladies in Retirement (Lupino & Louis Hayward)
5. The Devil and Daniel Webster (that ending!)
6. High Sierra (another great Lupino)
7. The Maltese Falcon
8. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
9. When Ladies Meet (Garson and Crawford)
10. Meet Boston B l a c k i e (the best one in the series) -
Max's "Symphony of Six Million" was our wedding march back in 1981. We had it played by harp and violin. Sheet music was never issued, but I called the publisher and got an old-timer on the phone and he made me a lead sheet for it, which I gave to a couple of musicians from Julliard. My wife and I couldn't have had a better way to begin our lives together.
That's a beautiful story, though I'm afraid if I'd been there I might have been overcome by the combination of the moment and the music. Fortunately or unfortunately, at the time of my marriage it would be another 20 years before I was first exposed to the movie and the melody.
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She lost out on two other roles--All About Eve because of injury and State of the Union because she couldn't work the hours they wanted. Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn stepped into the roles and Bette, at least, got a career defining role out of it.
Great a talent as Colbert was, I can't even imagine any other actress acing Margo Channing the way that Bette Davis did, in what was truly a performance for the ages. It's the combination of a fierce intelligence and malignant wit that sets her apart in roles like that. Colbert couldn't have pulled it off with the same degree of authenticity.
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The more I've seen of Colbert, the more I've come to appreciate her. My two favorites of hers both come from 1950: The Secret Fury and Homecoming, but there are others that are nearly as good.
But she ain't no Barbara Stanwyck. Stanwyck had an emotional range that was the equivalent of a six octave singer, which gives her characters a consistently realistic quality that no other actress (or actor) can match. I'd have to see a lot more of Colbert's earlier work to convince me that she was capable of that level of performance.
(Which come to think of it, would make for a great SUTS day: 24 hours devoted exclusively to Colbert's silents and pre-codes! That might be enough for me to put her up into the Bette Davis category, if not to Stanwyck's.)
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I watched Morris Engel's Little Fugitive last night, called the first indie film, what a wonderful slice of life of New York's Coney Island, and a great little film.
My question has TCM ever aired this?
Not for the past 5 years, which is when I began recording every movie in sight, but I do remember having seen it at one point sometime before that. I'd love to see it again, as aside from its considerable artistic qualities, it presents a wonderful time capsule of New York City childhood of the 50's, when every waking moment wasn't crammed with organized activities scheduled by helicopter parents.
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What makes the Street Scene melody so particularly evocative for me is that all the movies I've heard it in are set in what I think of as "Lost New York City", meaning the economically diverse city as it was before the yuppies and the gentrifiers colonized pretty much the entire borough of Manhattan and began extending their tentacles outwards to Brooklyn and Queens.
Another beautiful opening score that evokes many of the same memories is Max Steiner's composition for the 1932 Ricardo Cortez / Irene Dunne film, Symphony of Six Million, a melodrama centered on the Lower East Side. Not a noir, of course, but still a great movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0OOuKGDHIE
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TCM should have a "Street Scene Soundtrack" Film Noir's theme night.
The score is by Alfred Newman (originally used for Street Scene 1931) and was re-used for Cry Of The City, Kiss Of Death, I Wake Up Screaming, Where The Sidewalk Ends, and The Dark Corner.
I've known about that re-use of the "Street Scene" theme for several years now, but I'd never thought of making that haunting melody into an evening's programming theme. What a great idea!
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I try to find all the films I can with William Powell in them, so when I even see his name in the description, I program it into my DVR. That's the way I found "Rondezvous". Don't you wish we could have seen him as a young actor in the "Silent's" in his young career
Powell was in a 1922 silent version of Sherlock Holmes that pops up occasionally on TCM. It may or may not have him listed among the first three actors, but he's in there.
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Good points, Andy. However, while I agree there were a few clunkers made in the 1930s and 1940s, there were also hidden gems that couldn't be discerned simply by looking at the names of the actors or the plot synopses. Even the reviews aren't always spot on.
But it is nice to have the obscure little black and white movies available to surprise us, isn't it? Even if we turn them off midway, as I have done with some, there might always be the wondrous little scene, as with Lionel at the end of Sweepings, that make checking the schedule of TCM every day worthwhile. There are more misses than hits these days, but on the days of the hits - oh boy.
Completely agree with all of the above, especially with regards to the pre-code era. Along with noirs and the TCM choices of foreign and silent movies, the pre-code genre has the biggest number of "pleasant surprises", including several of those Barrymores that played yesterday during the daytime hours. And I also agree that even when I use my suggested shortcut for screening out duds, there are always going to be exceptions to any general rule. Hell, I've even seen a few Joel McCrea movies that I didn't turn off after the first 15 minutes. It wasn't that long ago that I would have ridiculed such a thought.
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Except for Lion in Winter and African Queen, Kathryn Hepburn leaves me very cold.
That's funny, because after she got those godawful pre-Stage Door films out of her system, those are the only two movies of Hepburn that I can't stand.** Formula plots on steroids and costume dramas just never do much for me, but obviously in the case of The African Queen I'm in a distinct minority.
**Though in truth I'm talking only about her films from the late 30's through the mid-50's. Haven't seen too many of the ones she made after that.
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A few of the forgotten 30s movies the station has been playing this year are surprisingly good and deserving of being rediscovered. The overwhelming majority, however, are such poorly produced cliché loaded pieces of schlock that I can only conclude that the only reason for which they were made was that their stars--even legends like Mary Astor and Lionel Barrymore--were heavy gamblers who had to film those clunkers in order to be able to pay off their debts.
While I enjoyed most of the Barrymores that played yesterday, I don't disagree with the point that most movies follow fairly standard plot lines and are worth one viewing at most. Where I disagree is that the 30's were somehow unique in that regard.
The other thing is that while Astor and Lionel Barrymore were both fine actors, neither of them had the force of personality that enabled them to carry many a cliched plot all by themselves. It took a Cagney or a Stanwyck to do that, and even actors with their level of dynamism could only take a potboiler so far. My take has always been that the only way to learn to distinguish among the best films, the merely enjoyable, and the downright insufferable is by trial and error. After a while you can look at the plot synopsis and the names of the actors and pretty much figure out which of those three categories a movie is likely to fall into, and spare yourself a lot of future time wasting.
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Somebody already mentioned Forrest Gump but I'll list it again. I thought I'd like it--the idea of him haphazrdly showing up at historical events appealed to me, but no. Just no. It's not because I dislike Tom Hanks in particular (like so many folks here). I think it's the ridiculous accent he affects that sets my teeth on edge.
I can't even imagine a sentient adult who'd read a plot summary of Forrest Gump ever wanting to plunk down 10 or 11 bucks to see it. Has there ever been a movie that was so popular and at the same time so mercilessly (and rather maliciously) lampooned? It's the sort of movie that would seem to have the power to lower a viewer's IQ by a good 5 or 10 points between the opening and closing credits.
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Absolutely priceless, and I'm glad that Part 2 was also there. "Vera" really had Bette Davis's speech patterns down pat.
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At the risk of being laughed at forever, I'd nominate The Umbrellas of Cherbourg as the most "beautiful" movie I've ever seen. Of course the scenery is unremarkable, but with the singing, the poignancy of the plot, and the ethereal loveliness of Catherine Deneuve, the entire film just kind of floats on a dream. It's kind of ironic, since musicals are just about my least favorite genre, but this one is a major exception.
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Jose Cabiya, the husband of the younger sister of my mother, loved SHANE so much that he gave to the second of his five sons, Jose Luis Cabiya, the nickname Shane.
I also knew a Shane who was named after the movie character. Unfortunately this one wound up as a d r u g g i e who's now serving time for a hit-and-run case that happened while he was s t o n e d out of his mind. Maybe his mom should have gone with Cody or Bruno instead.
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Andy, Iagree with what you said about Myrna Loy. I always try to imagine Myrna in this role, but I just can't! Haha
Both Myrna and Roz were first rate dramatic actresses, as you can see in The Best Years of Our Lives and the vastly underrated classic Roughly Speaking, which I am SO glad TCM makes a point of showing at least once a year.* And both were among the better comediennes of all time.
But within those comic roles, there's a divergence. Loy's comedic touch was defined by the razor-sharp, sophisticated Nora Charles character, who so perfectly complemented William Powell's equally debonair Nick. Whereas while Russell's best comic characters often could also give as well as take (His Girl Friday and The Women), there was usually at least an underlying zaniness or even lighter than air quality about them (as in Rendezvous) that would've seemed totally incongruous for Myrna. I can't exactly imagine a disheveled Loy sprawled in a clothes hamper while Joan Crawford mocks her with "Do come again, Mrs. Prowler," whereas that was one of Roz's finest comic moments.
*Some men fantasize about Marilyn Monroe. If I were single, I'd be looking for a woman just like Rosalind Russell's Louise Randall.
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Personally, I prefer that than to the longer version. **** Erich von Stroheim for not making a 140-minute movie in the first place and forcing MGM to edit the movie.
I totally hear you. 4 hours?? I don't think so. Had no idea the 140 version had seen the light of day on TCM.
Having seen the 241 minute version twice through, my only thought was that I wish that they'd preserved the original 462 minute version. I can't imagine that you could cut it down to 140 minutes and preserve the full impact of the greater work. Some movies (Lawrence of Arabia; Intolerance) drag on forever, but Greed is not one of them.
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Right, Andy (or is that Arnold?)
Actually most of my acquaintances call me "Taxi", but that's another story.
I'm all for book shops. Sadly, they're becoming an endangered species. I agree, most self-promotion threads I regard as spam, but anything that promotes books and book shops is fine with me.
Since I had a shop for 23 years myself, I couldn't agree more, and here's one in Baltimore, of all places, that now deals in movie memorabilia on a scale that's probably second only to Edmunds. Their emphasis of film material is understated by their home page, but when you browse their online catalogs you'll start to get the picture, and even there it's the tip of the iceberg.
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I recorded Rendezvous way back in 2010 and just watched it for the first time after reading this thread. And I'm glad I did. The plot was good enough for what seemed kind of like a programmer, and though this wasn't Roz's best role by a long shot, just seeing her in any movie is always a treat. And I loved that elaborate yet primitive "intelligence room", with their alphabetical decoder circles that looked like giant inserts from the 1969 Baseball Encyclopedia. This was about the highest level of technical wizardry my feeble brain could ever comprehend, and I'm glad they kept to the basics.
As for the plot: Maybe if our Army intelligence hadn't wasted so much time going after "Bolsheviks" during WW 1, they might have caught on to a few of those German agents operating right under their noses.
P. S. This wouldn't have been that good a role for Myrna Loy, not after seeing her in the debonair Nora Charles role just one year earlier. The Roz of 1935 was much better suited for a part like this.
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If it's not too late, I'd split my vote between Skimpole and SansFin. If it were to come down to it, the tiebreaker might go to Skimpole for including La Haine. Lydecker would be up there but for one minor glitch: Including the abridged 140 minute version of Greed as a premiere, when TCM has already shown the much better four hour version at least twice in the past few years. But all three of those entries easily stand out over the rest of them.
So does your vote go to Skimpole, since you can't split?
Fair point. On the strength of La Haine, then, I'd give Skimpole a split 15-round decision in triple overtime and about 18 innings worth of upstate returns. That film is just so powerful that it has to be shown on TCM. SansFin's and Lydecker's entries were so damn strong I hate to vote "against" them, but as the Brooklyn Eagle used to say after each Dodgers' World Series loss: WAIT TILL NEXT YEAR
In the Heat of the Night (1967)
in General Discussions
Posted
So I guess that if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's really just a duck and a goose quacking in highly entertaining harmony.