AndyM108
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Posts posted by AndyM108
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I read The Ethicist every week, and what he didn't really address is the strong possibility that there might be a better case for boycotting Mia Farrow's films. Here's Woody Allen's defense, in his own words:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/opinion/sunday/woody-allen-speaks-out.html
I'm not making this point as a lover of Woody Allen's films (I'm not a particular fan of his), but only as someone who doesn't believe in railroading an innocent person on the basis of questionable assumptions, questionable testimony, and questionable scenarios, simply because that person seems vaguely "creepy".
Anyone who says we should boycott Woody Allen's movies owes it to themselves to read and digest his summary of the charges against him, and not just hand wave them away.
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TCM posted the following excerpt from the film to their Twitter and YouTube accounts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5ugqr1Q6oA
This leads me to believe that they will indeed be airing the original 1925 version later this evening.
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You don't look like no South American to me!
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THAT makes me think of the old BO DIDDLY song
Which in turn makes ME think of Bo Diddly's famous "ugly stick" in this classic song that I'd sing to my mother in my lesser moments....
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I'm going for the Peeping Tom baby that went around snooping down the hotel hallways in 42nd Street.
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(I'm sure I'll have to watch it again now just 'cause it's so bad)
Funny how that "so bad it's good" principle can work on your subconscious. For the past five nights I've had to fight off a similar urge to watch My Dinner With Andre, though fortunately for my sanity I've so far succeeded.
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Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how have you been enjoying this thread?
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One of the neatest things about the old (and now revived) Howard Theater in DC was the way that the singers would often come out in white suits or dresses, and as they went from one song to the next, the spotlights would shine on them in different colors, changing the apparent colors of their clothing to green or orange or whatever. Since this was at a time when a large segment of inner city fashion was dominated by bright and solid neon colors, the practice worked on more than one level.
This may have been a common practice in other music genres, but since my taste in music back then was almost exclusively R&B, it wouldn't have come to my attention. But it wouldn't have worked as well if the performers hadn't been dressed in solid white.
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Very sad story about Flo Ballard, and also about Mary Wells, though at least in Wells's case she did have a few good minor hits on 20th Century Fox and Atco - - - "Ain't It The Truth" and "Dear Lover" IMO were *almost* (if not quite) as good as some of her best Motowns.
And died at 49 of too many cigarettes. What a heartbreak for those of us who remembered her at her peak.
I didn't realize that Cindy Birdsong was with Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles, another of the great screaming groups. "I'm Still Waiting" is one of my all-time favorites in that genre.
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This doesn't even touch on the inner group tensions when
Diana was selected over Florence as the lead singer.
Didn't Florence Ballard eventually get the boot over these tensions, to be replaced by (?) Cindy Birdsong? And didn't she (Florence) pretty much die both young and broke?
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Melvin Franklin had the lead in "I Truly Truly Believe", which was the flip side of the Tempts' classic Number One hit, "I Wish It Would Rain".
Kind of ironic I didn't know that, since I liked the B-side on that single much better than the hit side.
Another non-Ruffin Tempts lead that I loved was "Please Return Your Love to Me", with Eddie Kendricks doing the upfront honors. Did he lead on many (or any) others? My Temptations memories aren't all that strong compared to some of the other groups.
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Old Fred watching TCM:
Don't forget to dress appropriately for the occasion:
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I'll cede the r&b crown to Arturo. Maybe all I'm left with is the title of "King of Disco"......Answer my Melvin Franklin question..
No idea about that Temps question, and I've got only about half a dozen disco 45's in my 1000+ R&B / soul collection. At that point in time (to use a catchphrase from that era), I'd turned backwards and was mostly into Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington and the other vocalists from the swing and bebop eras.
And even further back, to the great soundtrack theme song from They Shoot Horses, Don't They, as sung by the great Lee Wiley:
Of course my wife grew up with disco, so much so that when I met her one of my names for her was "Disco Duck". She's worn out my Anita ward and Chic records to the point where I cry for mercy.
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Well I prefer that when someone has a negative attitude towards an actor, actress, director, etc... they don't "just leave it at that", but instead take the time to explain why. (even in a thread devoted to said person).
This forum will get very boring if people feel that only cheerleading is cool.
To me being harsh and negative is just as "cool" when one can back up their POV.
I've only seen a few of Skelton's movies, but a few was more than enough. The last one, only two weeks ago, was "Whistling In Brooklyn", which seems fairly representative of his style of comedy.
And while I'm sure he was popular and all that, IMO that whole style of comedy (Skelton and Hope) wears thin after the first few scenes. It's tough to walk a line between a romantic aspirant and complete buffoon, but I don't think he pulls it off all that well.
And beyond that, there's just too much of the "ten impossible things to believe before breakfast" schtick, most notably with Skelton doing his Max Patkin imitation before a curiously credulous crowd at Ebbets Field. Personally I'll take Grant / Hepburn or Belushi / Ackroyd or Jean Harlow or Fernandel any day.
But that said, it's all just a matter of taste, especially in comedy, and I'm certainly not recommending that TCM hold back on any birthday tribute or even another SUTS day somewhere in the future.
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*What was the first "modern" (meaning post - 1950) R&B song with "Soul" in the title?*
Could it be Eddie Floyd's "Tortured Soul"?
See, this is what I love about TCM: I learn something every day.
And what I learned today is that "Tortured Soul" is probably the correct answer to my question.
What I'd *thought* was the answer was one of my all-time favorite songs, Larry Williams' "My Baby's Got Soul,"
which came out in 1959 as the B-side to his mini-hit "Every Day I Wonder".
But the Chess label # for "My Baby's Got Soul" was 1736, while the label number for "Tortured Soul" was 1552, meaning that it likely came out around 1955 or 1956, before Williams went over to Specialty Records and recorded his biggest hits, "Short Fat Fanny" and "Bony Maronie".
So give yourself a Gold Star to put on top of your crown. You are *DA MAN* of R&B on TCM.
Now your next assignment is to find "Tortured Soul" on YouTube so that we can all listen to it.
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I could have listed "I'll Try Something New" in my Miracles set, since that was a huge favorite of mine.
For the Marvelettes, I have a big preference for their earlier works. "When You're Young and in Love" is the exception, because I'll always associate it with a rather magical woman I was with at the time of the song's release. She's long gone, but the song remains.
I've heard Mary Wells' "When I'm Gone", and it can't hold a candle to Brenda's. But then very few singers could match Brenda Holloway at her peak.
You're right about "Sadie". I have the single but I've gotten so used to hearing it on YouTube I'd forgotten they were on Atlantic at the time.
My personal favorites, beyond Motown, were the great screamers: Lorraine Ellison's "Stay With Me", which a local DC DJ once played for half an hour straight without interruption; Carolyn Franklin's "It's True I'm Gonna Miss You"; and the Queen Bee of the screamers, the incomparable Linda Jones ("Hypnotized" and her definitive version of "For Your Precious Love"). When she collapsed onstage at the Apollo and died of "the sugar" shortly thereafter, to me it was more demoralizing (by far) than the death of John Lennon.
And of the male groups, IMO nobody could top The Impressions at their best. Too many great songs to list, but one stands out that I'll never forget because of the context: On the early morning of the final leg of the 1965 Selma-Montgomery march, when the caravans of cars were streaming into downtown to join the march, the radio station didn't air a single commercial. Instead, it played an endless loop of but two songs: The Impressions' "People Get Ready", and Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come". Talk about the perfect match of mood and music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yYOWQj2Wdo
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Arturo may be crowned the resident Motown expert, but I crown myself the resident r&b expert.
Then maybe you can answer the question I posed below.
*What was the first "modern" (meaning post - 1950) R&B song with "Soul" in the title?*
IOW covers of "Heart and Soul" or "Body and Soul" don't count.
I'll even give you a hint: It was on the Chess label, and it predates Arthur Conley's "Sweet Soul Music" by more than half a decade.
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Since Arturo seems to be the resident R&B expert, maybe I should have re-directed my earlier question to him:
*What was the first "modern" (meaning post - 1950) R&B song with "Soul" in the title? It's one of the great forgotten songs of the 50's, even though the singer had several hits, including the "A" side here.*
My favorite Motown groups were always The Miracles and The Marvelettes. My favorite songs were the Miracles' "You Can Depend on Me", "Who's Loving You", "Way Over There", and "I Need a Change"; and the Marvelettes' "Goddess of Love", "Forever", "Locking Up My Heart", "Strange I Know", and "When You're Young and in Love".
But my all-time favorite Motown songs were Brenda Holloway's "When I'm Gone", and The Spinners' "Sadie". I had a GF who used to pantomime Brenda on "When I'm Gone" right down to the last finger point, and it's hard to me to keep a dry eye I when I hear "Sadie" and think of all the real life "Sadies" I've known.
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I hope its the original. Its been YEARS since I seen GOLD RUSH on TCM. Its good to see Chaplin on TCM.
They play The Gold Rush a lot on TCM, usually at least once a year. Unfortunately it's always the worthless 1942 version.
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When I saw Ride The High Country on the schedule as a programmer choice I thought the same. A good film for sure, but really being overplayed on TCM. I would like to think that anyone doing the guest programming would try to think a little out of the box. We all have favorite films that are very popular and well known by the general public. I would want to promote something lesser known or appreciated, share that film that I thought was special and deserving of a viewing.
OTOH I appreciated that the two most overplayed movies that Pelecanos chose last night were relegated to the bottom of the schedule when only the DVRs and DVD recorders were likely to have been awake. Whereas the first three films that get played here a lot less frequently got placed in the first three slots of the evening. I've seen The Outfit before, but the last time it played on TCM was back in 2010 at 4:00 AM. It was nice to see a classic mob movie like that in prime time for a change.
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Also, seems the guest programmers frequently pick the same movies that are already being shown over and over and over. Same for The Essentials.
I've always wondered how much of this "sameness" is the guest programmer's fault, and how much of it is due to the constraints imposed by the prime time schedule. I'm not talking about R-rated films so much as I am about films that might be considered too obscure for prime time viewers, who presumably are more "mainstream" oriented than a lot of us true TCM junkies whose favorite films usually show up around 2:00 AM.
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Random question on early soul music: What was the first "modern" (meaning post - 1950) R&B song with "Soul" in the title? It's one of the great forgotten songs of the 50's, even though the singer had several hits, including the "A" side here.
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Again, they often show more than one silent and / or foreign movie between midnight Sunday night and 6:00 AM Monday. If you haven't noticed this by now, you probably just haven't been paying it much attention, and understandably so given the late hour. For some of us, this is the best time slot of the week, because unlike prime time, it's seldom movies that have been shown 100 times already.
Boycotting Woody Allen Films??
in General Discussions
Posted
The problem I had with The Ethicist's response wasn't that his generic point about boycotting films wasn't reasonable and balanced.
The point is that by limiting his naming to Woody Allen, he wasn't acknowledging the parallel question of whether Mia Farrow's movies should be shunned, if she was simply making up those charges. After reading Mia's accusation, Allen's defense, and the conflicting thoughts on the matter by Allen's children, I think that it's much more likely that Farrow was motivated by hurt and rage at Allen's liason with their 20-year old adopted daughter, and as a result began making all kinds of unwarranted inferences about his relationship with Dylan.
Personally I don't take an actor or actress's character into account when deciding to attend his or her films. And though I believe Allen's story to be far more credible than Mia's, that doesn't mean I'd want to boycott her movies. In fact it's rather ironic that the one Woody Allen movie I still would want to see again is Husbands and Wives - - - the last one he made with Mia Farrow. Farrow's done a lot of good things in her life, and I don't think of her in general as a bad person, but I've seen too many cases of "recovered memories" and vengeful spouses (mostly men, I might add) not to take her accusations against Allen with a mountain of salt.