AndyM108
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Posts posted by AndyM108
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I don't remember if Jr had any scenes with Peter Lawford -- that might have been awkward.
There were several highly dramatic confrontations between the two of them at pivotal points of the movie. You just need to see the film again to refresh your memory.
Every time I thought the movie was going somewhere, it seemed to retreat into a mini-cliche, but that was more a problem of the screenplay than anything else. It was still worth watching to see Sammy Davis Jr. in one of his best roles, plus Ossie Davis, Louis Armstrong, and the young Cicely Tyson in her first major role, six years before Sounder made her a mainstream Hollywood star.
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In a review of one of Guy Kibbee's films, a critic says that the entire affair is centered around the beloved character actor's "familiar bombastic-idiot persona." While I don't think Kibbee always played obnoxious characters (his later film roles show a gentler, softer nature), it is probably true that audiences associate him more with the roles where is over-the-top and blustery. Especially in BIG HEARTED HERBERT, a cute Warner Brothers programmer from the thirties that pairs him with frequent costar Aline MacMahon. He also made several films with Jane Darwell.
What is your favorite Guy Kibbee movie...?
There are way too many to mention all of them, but I do wish that TCM would run The Captain's Kid for the first time since 2009. I wouldn't even mind if TCM ran every single Kibbee movie they could get their hands on from beginning to end.
My all-time favorite quote about Kibbee was in The Dark Horse, when the scheming political insider played by Warren William was asked to describe the amiable puppet (Kibbee) he was running for Governor: "Every time he opens his mo u t h, he subtracts from the sum total of human knowledge." That pretty much summarizes Kibbee's character in more than a few movies, but in terms of lovability if not intelligence, he's a perfect complement to another great character actor, Charles Coburn.
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A salute to Cagney is scheduled on July 17 from 6a - 8p.
6:00 AM Taxi! (1932)A feisty independent cab driver fights off a crooked syndicate.
Dir: Roy Del Ruth Cast: James Cagney , Loretta Young , George E. Stone .
BW-69 mins, CC,
7:15 AM Winner Take All (1932)A prize fighter tries to help an invalid and her baby.
Dir: Roy Del Ruth Cast: James Cagney , Marian Nixon , Guy Kibbee .
BW-66 mins, CC,
8:30 AM Footlight Parade (1933)A producer fights labor problems, financiers and his greedy ex-wife to put on a show.
Dir: Lloyd Bacon Cast: James Cagney , Joan Blondell , Ruby Keeler .
BW-104 mins, CC,
10:30 AM Hard To Handle (1933)A hustling public relations man promotes a series of fads.
Dir: Mervyn LeRoy Cast: James Cagney , Mary Brian , Allen Jenkins .
BW-78 mins, CC,
12:00 PM Lady Killer (1933)A criminal on the run becomes a Hollywood movie star.
Dir: Roy Del Ruth Cast: James Cagney , Mae Clarke , Margaret Lindsay .
BW-76 mins, CC,
1:30 PM Mayor Of Hell, The (1933)A racketeer goes straight to run a reform school.
Dir: Archie Mayo Cast: James Cagney , Madge Evans , Arthur Byron .
BW-90 mins, CC,
3:15 PM Picture Snatcher (1933)An ex-con brings his crooked ways to a job as a news photographer.
Dir: Lloyd Bacon Cast: James Cagney , Ralph Bellamy , Patricia Ellis .
BW-77 mins, CC,
4:45 PM Here Comes the Navy (1934)A cocky naval cadet clashes with an old friend serving with him.
Dir: Lloyd Bacon Cast: James Cagney , Pat O'Brien , Gloria Stuart .
BW-87 mins, CC,
6:15 PM Jimmy The Gent (1934)An unscrupulous detective makes a killing locating missing heirs.
Dir: Michael Curtiz Cast: James Cagney , Bette Davis , Allen Jenkins .
BW-68 mins, CC,
Nothing new in that early Cagney tribute, but they're all great fun. Having seen them all, I'd especially recommend 5 of them: Footlight Parade, Hard to Handle, Lady Killer, Picture Snatcher, and Jimmy The Gent. If anyone hasn't seen the "Shanghai Lil" song and dance number at the end of Footlight Parade, they're missing what may be the best musical scene in the history of film.
Here's "Shanghai Lil" in its entireity on YouTube, which is unusual, since it usually gets removed almost as soon as it gets put up. It's the first time in many months that I've found it up there for more than a brief clip or two:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xjzpoy_footlight-parade-shanghai-lil-1933_music
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I loved the lady who introduced Witness For The Prosecution, though I may be biased because that's one of my all time favorite films. I should have stayed up for the 10 year old, but I've seen and recorded Modern Times at least twice already and the hour was getting late.
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Well, I won't be using my recorder for the three movies I planned to record and watch later.
There are a few good movies getting bumped, and one great one (Bombshell), but overall this a great day to pay the obligatory tribute. I only wish that all such pre-emptive tributes to overrated and overplayed actors were as non-disruptive as this one.
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speedracer5, 1961 America was still segregated. Property titles could still exclude all sorts of racial and ethnic groups. It was still before most the the Civil Rights movement. So, yeah, don't give it much credit. Not only is Mr. Rooney's role in Tiffany's offensive for it's stereotyping, it is also a bad performance. And wretched make-up.
And in another bow to 1961 sensibilities, the movie version "converted" Paul's character from gay to straight.
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I agree Holden. That makes the most sense.
April 13th would be a great day to fill up with Mickey Rooney movies, since all the good movies scheduled for that day have already been shown a thousand times. This way a Rooney tribute will do the least damage.
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Out of Muller's top 25, I wouldn't even think of choosing Touch of Evil, and I've yet to see Tomorrow is Another Day, Raw Deal, or The City That Never Sleeps. But the other 21 are all terrific, and I can see the case for any of them as a top 25.
Too bad he only considers American noir, because that omits many foreign noir classics like M, Rififi, and Elevator to the Gallows. But with that constraint in mind, here'd be my top 25, as least as of today:
1. (tie) The Killers
1. (tie) Out of the Past
3. Nightmare Alley
4. Thieves' Highway
5. Sudden Fear
6. The Asphalt Jungle
7. Too Late For Tears
8. The Big Heat
9. Dead Reckoning
10. The Damned Don't Cry
11. The Big Clock
12. Road House
13. Detour
14. Odds Against Tomorrow
15. Act of Violence
16. The Killing
17. Night and the City
18. The Night Holds Terror
19. Underworld, USA
20. Life in the Balance
21. He Walked By Night
22. The Maltese Falcon
23. Shock
24. Flamingo Road
25. Nightfall
Honorable Mentions: Oh, only about 100 of them.
And yes, Double Indemnity would be among them, even though the ending was a bit too predictable.
And then there are others that are listworthy, but I'm not sure they're really noirs:
The Incident
Born To Kill
Murder, Inc.
House of Bamboo
Crossfire
The Bribe
Gilda
And so on.
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J. Edgar Hoover and Shirley Temple, testifying before the Dies Committee on Un-American Activities in 1938. Click on the thumbnail to view what they were saying to each other.
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At first, I had trouble referring to the common first name shared by famous actors O'Toole and Sellers. But I've noticed that the name now sails through without asterisks. Maybe the word filter is becoming sentient and knows the difference between a common name and a ****.
Here's a simple enough test: racist Jew
EDIT: Looks like you're right. It's a Festivus miracle!
EDIT #2: Unfortunately the miracle also dropped this comment to the bottom of my page, even though I was responding to the comment on the top of the page.
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At first, I had trouble referring to the common first name shared by famous actors O'Toole and Sellers. But I've noticed that the name now sails through without asterisks. Maybe the word filter is becoming sentient and knows the difference between a common name and a ****.
Here's a simple enough test: racist Jew
EDIT: Looks like you're right. It's a Festivus miracle!
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No, blackface doesn't bother me, but moronic movies do.
To me any movies that resort to blackface are almost moronic by definition. It's probably not a coincidence that The Birth of a Nation and many midcentury musicals were among the prime employers of this moronic gimmick.
"It doesn't offend me as a ****. It offends me as a comedian." (EDIT: Those four stars replaced the term used for a practicioner of Jerry Seinfeld's religion.)
---Jerry Seinfeld, responding to his newly converted Jewish dentist's habit of telling "Jewish" jokes. Substitute "movie lover" for "comedian", and that's my take on any and all non-parody uses of blackface in movies.
And no, I don't think they should be cut out or censored in any way, but merely taken for the moronic and often **** attitude that they entail. (EDIT: Those four stars replaced a common six letter adjective for a prejudiced individual that should be easy to infer in context.)
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It looks like a very good month, but here's the best of the lot if you're looking for premieres that you may never have heard of. This is about the working class and immigrant banlieues (suburbs) of Paris and the sort of lives that young people there are driven into. Think of Menace 2 Society and you'll get the general idea.
2:45 AM La Haine (1995)After a youth is tortured by the police, a riot explodes on the streets of Paris in this examination of racial tensions in France.
Dir: Mathieu Kassovitz Cast: Vincent Cassel , Hubert Kounde , Said Taghaoui .
BW-98 mins,
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There are some bugs on this site. Test.
Yes, but one feature is that if your believe the time that these posts are made, it takes us five hours into the future!
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Hey, I like the new look.
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The Shanker reference was understood at the time by anyone who hadn't been asleep a few years earlier. Shanker led a 1968 teachers' strike in New York City that was in the national news for many weeks and months because of its racial angle, and he was an extremely polarizing figure. When Sleeper came out five years later, Shanker's name was still pretty recognizable not just to New Yorkers, but to most sentient people over the age of about 25. It would have been like a reference to DC Mayor Marion Barry in a movie made five years after his 1990 arrest for crack possession. That wasn't just a local story, either.
And the line was the best thing in the entire movie, especially now that it's like a two stage time capsule.
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Fabulous posters, Richard. Some of the best I've ever seen.
Hope this isn't too big, but it's the smallest one I could find. You may have to scroll a bit to see the right edge.
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So who had "classic leading man looks"? That's easy to see in Grant or Taylor or Rock Hudson or the young Brando, but Bogart in Casablanca ? Spencer Tracy with Katharine Hepburn? Gary Cooper with Audrey Hepburn? Dustin Hoffman with anyone?
What makes Richard Widmark any less qualified on "looks" for romantic leads than, say, Van Johnson?
Ryan actually did mention that he didn't pursue romantic leads because he thought that the sort of roles he played were more challenging. It's certainly not hard to agree with that.
And while I'm not sure whether Widmark simply wasn't offered those romantic roles, I suspect it had more to do with Hollywood typecasting than his facial features. In any case, I'm glad the two of them weren't stuck in roles like Pillow Talk or Love in the Afternoon.
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Richard Widmark gets my vote. when he was a superstar during the 50's and 60's, he was about the same level as, say, Burt Lancaster. (ok, just a tick lower than Lancaster.) he certainly has a body of work that's large enough and it ranges over five decades from the 40's through the 80's.
Widmark would be another great choice. Like Robert Ryan, he often gets overlooked because he chose the "hard" and "complicated villain" roles over the easy romantic leads that he could have had if he'd pursued them.
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I'm guessing no Garbo is scheduled for the next three months?
She vaunted to be alone.
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If TCM's viewers enjoy silent era films so much, maybe they would be open to more foreign/subtitled films? Why not showcase actors like Jean Gabin, Yves Montand, Alain Delon, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, etc. Or Italian films - directors like Visconti, Bertolucci, Fellini? Or closer to home, what about Mexican or Canadian films? Both countries have a film industries. We have seen films about the African American experience, but what about the Mexican American or Asian American experience? I love classic mainstream movies, but maybe we could increase the range a little?
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Would you believe them thinking about using Doris Day and Rock Hudson as The My Fair Lady couple?
Talk about dodging a pair of dum-dum bullets. Those two would have made more credible leads in Gun Crazy or Born To Kill.
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George Sanders, the best actor who's never even had a SUTS day, let alone a SOTM. The only explanation is that he must've treated Ted Turner caddishly at some point when they met.
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COLOR ME UNHAPPY WITH PROGRAMMING
in General Discussions
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I can't find anything on the original 4/13 schedule that I can't live without, but I'd agree that tributes to deceased stars should be made far enough down the road that no pre-emptions are necessary. I'd hate to see a premiere of some long-awaited film removed, merely in order to run a film that's already been shown 50 times, as is the case with virtually any Mickey Rooney movie.