AndyM108
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Posts posted by AndyM108
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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.
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Cripes! it DID!
It gave m e r d e the "star" treatment!
Sepiatone
You should have tried "mergleferde." The nanny doesn't understand doubletalk.
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I haven't seen too many movies on your list, but I loved Heathers, and I've yet to meet a single person who doesn't like (or love) Reefer Madness. Along with Pink Flamingos and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, that was one of wildly popular perennials of the "midnight movies" phenomenon of the 70's, and probably attracted far more actual viewers than most of the mainstream first run releases of that era.
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Two drop-dead gorgeous actresses who kept their looks well into middle age and beyond...
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Here we go savilng tens of BILLIONS of dollars a year buying prescription drugs from Canadian pharmacies, and we won't even let them watch STAGECOACH??? What's going on here???
I know if I were Canadian, I'd be grumbling almost as much as the guy whose boss wouldn't spring for genuine Scot paper towels!
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In reverse order in which they were shown, I'd go with Spione, Laura, and for something completely different, The Sin of Madelon Claudet. I'd throw in Baby Face if it hadn't been aired about half a dozen times a year, whereas the other three don't show up nearly as often.
And if I had to choose one, Fritz Lang's Spione (Spies) would win out. Fans of his two early Dr. Mabuse films would love it. The Weimar era films of Germany may well be the best set of movies ever made, and this is one of the best of that group.
As for the worst, I'll leave that blank. After just seeing John Wayne in a movie (The Big Trail) that I actually liked, I feel in too good a mood to go negative unless someone mentions The Graduate.
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Whenever I find myself feeling a mellow vibe I like to listen to
the flower people and their far out, life affirming music.
I've always thought of Simon and Garfunkel as the idols of
sensitive, liberal leaning, poetic undergrads and precocious
high schoolers back in the day, nttawwt of course. Yes, somewhat
of a stereotype, but there's still some truth there. Feelin' groovy man.
Whatever works, but when I want to find life affirmation in popular music, I'll go with The Spinners' "Sadie".
Or Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOYuhLNwh3A
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Where have you been, Andy my old friend
I think your take on Paul's intent is off,
Off, off, off
Because I always thought it was about
A yearning for those grand old days of yore
Yore, yore, yore
And not a slight....on Joltin' Joe.
You had me up to the "Woo Hoo Hoo."
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I don't know how to say this politely, but Garfunkel always struck me as effeminate, at least in songs like Rosemary, Sage, The Sound of Silence, etc. Just too precious for my taste. And you can't mock Joe Dimaggio and later try to pretend you didn't! (Grrrrrr)
The one group you named I have some recollection of is the Jefferson Airplane, but it's not because of their music, it's because I used to be acquainted with Jack Casady when we were both at Alice Deal Jr. High School in Washington. He and I used to accompany a mutual friend on his Evening Star paper route. Jack used to spend every evening going from one side of the DC area to the other, soaking up every kind of music he could: R&R, R&B, country, blues, bluegrass, the whole nine yards. I never cared much for the psychedelic sound, but I had to respect his background and his dedication. Another guy from that band, the guitarist whose name escapes me (Korkunen or something like that), went to my high school, but he was a few years older and I never met him.
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I'm not a fan of Wayne's movies in general, but I loved The Big Trail.
But what AMAZED me was finding out that Red Flack---who looked like a combination of Haystacks Calhoun and The Gold Rush's Big Jim McKay on steroids---was played by Tyrone Power's dad! You could've knocked me over with one of Charlie Chaplin's shoelaces.
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The appeal of THE GRADUATE, upon release, on the nation's campuses, was almost universal. It was certainly not restricted to the "eternal flower children".
A most painfully true rebuttal, which I had the misfortune to witness first hand. But a lot of those people eventually got over their rapture, so their 106 minute sojurn into Simon and Garfunkel's flowerland proved to be blessedly transient.
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Eek ! I don't mind your denigrating The Graduate, because while I like it (don't "love" it, and I have to be in the mood for it), I can absolutely understand those who don't, for the reasons you and others gave here.
BUT ! ! I will not stand by and allow the beautiful evocative music of Simon and Garfunkle to be dissed. I believe that almost all of their soundtrack for The Graduate was a good fit. But even if one disagrees with that, isolate the music from the film, just listen to it on its own, and you hear thoughtful well-written well-composed songs. Songs whose appeal is not limited to 60s "flower children".
"Lubyanka-level" torture?? ! Come on ! If that's "torture" to you to hear, I can only imagine the excruciating pain you must experience upon hearing, say, the Byrds. Or Nick Drake. Or Joni MItchell.
Actually my listening experience in that era was pretty much limited to the likes of Lorraine Ellison, Carla Thomas, The Manhattans, the Royalettes, and whoever and whatever else was being played on "Double-U-O-L, 1450 in DC". I don't think those singers you mentioned ever showed up too much there, though I loved Joni Mitchell when she later started working with Charlie Mingus. The entire British invasion and other forms of "white" pop music from that period pretty much passed right over my head, and by the time it was over I'd moved on to jazz, Big Band, and bluegrass. You might say I'm generationally confused.
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Can you watch movies set in the present where the actors are wearing costumes from the past?
Well, maybe if the garment workers were being paid union wages.
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Andy, if you're saying what I think you're saying, then I agree.
Do you mean the present of the actors you mention? As opposed to those actors in a costume dramas set in the past?
Or do you mean................. ummm, not sure.
I mean that I enjoy 90% of those actors' movies, but only when those movies are set in the present. I can't stand costume dramas of any type, even those featuring my favorites actors. Marked Woman and The Lady Eve, pass the popcorn. Jezebel and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, pass me my dueling pistol.
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I can understand why Bonnie and Clyde was hit. I can understand why In The Heat Of The Night was a hit. I can even almost understand why GWCTD was a hit. But The Graduate mystifies me. What was it about this film that struck such a chord? It isn't anywhere near as funny as the Universal sex comedies of the early '60s -- in fact most of the supporting cast is wasted. The hero isn't a rebel, but just a blank. Did it touch on some sort of Oedipal issue?
I can't stand The Graduate, either, but movies of that era that portrayed the older generation as clueless and "plastic" were always going to meet with approval from the twentysomethings of the time, no matter how vapid the protagonist. Add on the Lubyanka-level torture of that Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack, which if anything is even worse the film itself, if that's possible, and you've got a perfect cinematic storm to separate the eternal flower children from those who like their generational pandering to be a bit more subtle.
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Andy, you rattled off so many genres, your classic film viewing must be narrow.
These are a few of my favorite things: Silents; pre-codes; gangster / mob movies; noirs; serious dramas set in the present, minus costumes; many screwballs and other comedies; honestly sentimental movies (Stella Dallas, A Man to Remember, etc.); war movies that go beyond elaborate battle scenes; about a dozen musicals (the 3 Berkeleys from 1933, both versions of A Star Is Born, My Fair Lady, Guys and Dolls, etc.); movies that deal realistically with social, racial and political issues; whodunits, especially the B-movie variety (Boston B l a c k i e; Torchy Blane, etc.). All of the above can be in any language on Earth, provided the foreign ones have readable subtitles.
And then there are 90% of the studio era movies set in the present* featuring Barbara Stanwyck, Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Ida Lupino, Dana Andrews, Louis Calhern, Glenn Ford, Robert Ryan, William Powell and Myrna Loy, Warren William, Lionel Barrymore, Clark Gable, Marlene Dietrich, Rita Hayworth, Richard Widmark, James Stewart, Cagney / Bogart / Robinson, Ray Milland, Edward Arnold, Rosalind Russell, Charles Coburn, and many others too numerous to mention. The fact that I've got about 4000 movies (mostly from TCM) and enjoyed the great majority of them should tell you that there are more than enough categories of films around here for everyone to love.
*That's the real dividing line for me. I can think of virtually no movie set more than a few years in the past that I really enjoy. There may be about two dozen or so exceptions at most (mostly post-1970 mob movies), and few of them would make my top 100.
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After turning back to TCM from the ballgame in order to record Spione at midnight, I have to add one more set of movies that drive me to the funny farm:
ANYTHING with Howard Keel in it. I've seen about 10 minutes each of about half a dozen of his films, and his singing cowboy roles remind me of everything I hate about a certain type of "family entertainment" movies. I'd rather watch Hitler do a jig with Lady Godiva's horse at halftime in the Super Bowl (which admittedly would be an improvement over the usual Super Bowl halftime entertainment) than to sit through another minute of Howard Keel's baritone bleeting.
Seriously, I'm now going to have to watch Goodfellas, Pink Flamingos, and the barroom brawl between the Mafia and the Hell's Angels in A Bronx Tale just to get ten minutes of Howard Keel in Annie, Get Your Gun out of my system.
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Out of over 3000 movies I've rated, these 11 are at the bottom of the list for those that are both well known and generally loved and admired
Bonnie and Clyde
The Graduate
Five Easy Pieces
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
Zorba the Greek
San Francisco
Bus Stop
Forbidden Planet
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek
The Searchers
If I'd added the many movies I watched halfway through and gave up on in despair, the list would have been a lot longer, and would have likely included anything and everything made by Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Red Skelton, Esther Williams, Elvis Presley, all "Swashbuckler" films and Bible Epics, all Costume Dramas, all "adventure" movies featuring noble whites and various dark-skinned savages, and any "Beach Party" or "Singing Cowboys" movies. The common denominator here is "When you've seen one, you've seen em all".
Other than that, I'm easy.
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mark, I found NBNW wanting and turned it off. Tell me why the bad guys sent a plane after Grant, when he was standing by the side of the road, and they could have faked a pickup and shot him, movie over?
Right, or they could have had the pilot spray Grant with machine gun bullets, or drench him with poison gas while he was still out there in the open. And why in the world would the pilot go Kamikaze on a fuel truck? I'm sure anyone could add to this list of improbabilities.
But then if you can think of a single thriller that doesn't require a fair amount of suspension of belief, I'd like to know about it. In another Hitchcock movie, Shadow of a Doubt, "Uncle Charlie" acts like a borderline paranoid psychopath from almost the moment he shows up out of nowhere at the door, and yet we're expected to believe that nobody but the audience might ever look at this weird acting fellow as anything more than a mildly eccentric prodigal relative.
I love NBNW for many reasons and found SOAD laughingly unbelievable, but like all such calls, it often depends on what you (the viewer) bring to the movie to begin with. Maybe it's just that I like Cary Grant and have always thought that Joseph Cotten was kind of creepy, and if it had been a more naturally charming actor like Clark Gable or Robert Taylor in the Uncle Charlie role, I might have suspended belief myself.
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The MOVIES station plays Laura and Whirlpool a lot. Of course there are commercials but I still find myself turning to watch these movies, switching to other stations during the commercials and returning when there isn't anything better on (which is often the case).
Thanks for the note, but there's just something in me that won't let me watch any movie with commercial interruptions, especially since they're so often edited to fit the time slot. Also, I get the FMC and have seen and recorded both of those movies from that station on several occasions.
Conte appears out of place in Whirlpool as the clueless husband. He might of been better in the policeman role and an actor like Van Helfin as the husband.
Good points, and I agree that that would've made a great movie into an even greater one.
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Based on experience I believe the users at this forum feel free to share how they feel about a given actor or film.
The only off limit person is Barbara Stanwyck!
You talkin' to me?
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Finally, The Sin of Madelon Claudet (at 1:15) gives us one of Helen Hayes' more memorable roles, a tearjerker to be sure (about a mother separated from her son, who doesn't know who she is), but one played with conviction._frisco jenny_ (a very great movie) contains a similar plot.Yes, it does, but it did little for me, possibly because I can't stand the sight of Ruth Chatterton, whose face reminds me of Mae West's without the saving twinkle in her eye. I much prefer Madelon Claudet and Gladys George's version of Madame X, while realizing that it's all a matter of taste.
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On Tuesday,.April 22 @ 11:15 am eastern, Fox will show another Preminger directed noir, WHIRLPOOL (1949), in which a mentally ill Game is led astray by conman hypnotist José Ferrer, with Richard Conte her clueless psychiatrist husband.
Next to the all-time top 10 noir Laura, that'll be the highlight film of the week for me. I usually can't stand Jose Ferrer, but the extent of Evilness that he portrays in Whirlpool is off the charts, and makes it worth watching beyond Tierney's usual stunning beauty. Ironically, although Conte is almost always a solid noir actor, in this particular film "clueless" pretty much does describe him. This is a movie I've now seen three times, and it gets better with every new viewing.
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YANKEES!!! What an obnoxious nasty 4 letter cuss word!! My condolences to your fanhood. The one thing I love most about Wayne movies (not a big Wayne fan) is the overall lack of sidewalks and the glorious outdoor scenery in so many of them. Sidewalks are highly overrated as scenic commodities.
Nah, once you've seen one stage set tumbleweed, you've seen em all. When I want to savor the great outdoors, I like it in three dimensions and in odorama. Much better for the lungs, unless you're downwind from a factory farm.
OTOH I seldom run into Jimmy Cagney or Robert Ryan when I start walking around the downtown streets of Washington.
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Somebody once said that "John Wayne represents America and American values". I think that's a fair assessment.
I take John Wayne in the same spirit as I take an equally popular American icon:
"Here's to alcohol: The cause of, and the solution to, all of life's problems!"
-----H.J. Simpson, Springfield, USA
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I'm not much of a John Wayne fan either, but I like some of his movies.
I don't mind Wayne all that much, but his movies bore me s t i f f*. Too many horses and not enough sidewalks. Good thing the Yankees are off to a good start as an alternative to an entire week's worth of him.
*I really should begin counting the inane words that get replaced by asterisks.
BEST HOLLYWOOD BOOKSHOP - LARRY EDMUNDS
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Usually I tag promotions as spam, but this one gets a pass. I've heard about that book shop many times, and only wish I didn't live 3000 miles away.