AndyM108
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Posts posted by AndyM108
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Your dentist? Eat enough of these things and you'll be your dentist's most lucrative patient.
Well, you remember what P. T. Whatley once said: "There's a cavity born every minute."
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It's "Jujubes", pronounced JOO-JOO-bees, and my dentist always has a big bowl of them on his reception desk. Says they're worth at least one French Riviera vacation a year. He used to offer Bit-O-Honey, but they only got him to the Bahamas.
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I prefer the March version to Tracy's, but has anyone seen the 1920 silent version with John Barrymore? I recorded it about three years ago but haven't yet gotten around to watching it.
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I'd totally disagree with that. I'd much rather have the unedited version of a movie to record at 4:00 AM than some blurred version shown in prime time. I hadn't realized that's why Chinatown always shows after midnight, but if that's TCM's reason than I've got no complaint. I watch 90% of my TCM movies from recordings anyway, and have no particular need to see them "live".
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Last Saturday I just replaced my 9 year old computer that had XP with a new Dell XPS 8700 desktop with Windows 7, and it's like night and day. The page loading is instantaneous instead of perpetually sluggish, the streaming is much smoother with no freezeups, and my wife was able to install the whole system in less than an hour, with only one phone call required to Dell tech support.
Oh, and *EVERYONE* I talked to recommended getting Windows 7 rather than Windows 8. I'm glad I listened to them.
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The Now Playing magazine for March shows that the March preview segment will air in the very first time slot after the conclusion of "31 Days" , and will be repeated again a week later.
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Sergeant York has shown in prime time many times over the years, and is guaranteed to be shown again in prime time in the future. Just stick around if you don't believe me. I wish I could say the same thing about many of the silent and foreign classics that often show after midnight on Sunday and then are never seen again for years.
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Not really, because the suspense in The Slender Thread derived from the fact that her call COULD be traced, but it needed the suicide Hot line office, the huge telephone company building with countless thousands of connecting plugs and wires that had to be narrowed down, plus the police and fire departments and the State Department of Motor Vehicles, in order to locate the caller's number and where she was calling from. It was like a giant public works department that gave employment to pretty much every proactive player we see in the movie. Using a prepaid cell phone that was hard to trace (though not impossible) would keep the suspense, but everything else about the film would have to be changed dramatically.
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*SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT*
I just saw the Sidney Poitier / Anne Bancroft movie The Slender Thread for the first time today. Too bad it wasn't shown in prime time, because it was a terrific suspense movie that had the added benefit of showing Poitier in a totally race-neutral role. (Although his race may have played into his demurral when he was asked if he wanted to meet Bancroft once she'd recovered.)
What also made this a movie to savor was that it was one that would be hopelessly anachronistic today. Just think: The entire plot of this 99 minute film centers around a coordinated effort by scores of public servants in Seattle to trace the phone number of a woman (Bancroft) who's called to a suicide hot line to tell a volunteer (Poitier) that she's swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills. Of course it would take about 10 seconds for the line to be traced today, which would kind of do away with the suspense!
In addition to Poitier and Bancroft, Steven Hill gives a chilling and highly credible performance as the unforgiving husband who's driven Bancroft to her suicide attempt. He's such a creepy character that he makes us almost want to force him to swallow those pills instead, and that's a sign that he plays the part to perfection.
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Richard Widmark would be 100 years old this year (Dec 26th) . He must get a top priority.
I couldn't agree more, and TCM couldn't make a better selection. Widmark often gets typecast as a street thug because of his captivating Tommy Udo role in Kiss of Death, but he had dramatic roles of almost every type, and excelled in all of them. The fact that he was also one of Hollywood's best people in real life probably shouldn't enter into consideration, but then again maybe it should.
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Should it be according to who has not had a turn yet?
That should be a big factor.
Or is it okay if the star was honored at least once before in the history of TCM?
Yes, but only after at least an 8 or 10 year lapse
What about character actors and actresses?
Definitely yes for SUTS, but for SOTM I'd use character actors only as a group, with perhaps one month a year devoted to 4 or 5 different actors, with the 8:00 PM to 6:00 AM time slots set aside once a week to give them some room to stretch out.
Should a star who would have celebrated their 100th birthday be given priority consideration?
Only if he or she hadn't been SOTM for at least 5 years previous to that 100th birthday. But for those stars who've been neglected, that anniversary should jump them to the top of the queue.
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Hey, since there aren't any notable TCM premieres scheduled for May 10th, why not? But let's do the same for George Sanders and Susan Hayward when their birthdays come around. Deal?
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My best friend Back In The Day was a Brit who came over here with his family when he was only three years old, and some of their conversations were like Abbott and Costello. My favorite exchange was like a perpetual motion machine.
*Father* (after watching a knockout in a boxing match): *Blimey, Nigel, he didn't 'alf give it to 'im, did he?*
*Son: What, Pop, he didn't give him half of it?*
*Father: No, no! - - - 'E didn't 'alf give it to 'im!*
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Who's that woman on the left? Is that Mrs. Bobby Valentine?
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Yeah, that photo of Stanwyck in Thelma Jordon cracked me up, too, and yes, of course I also immediately thought of Double Indemnity. And what was really funny is that Stanwyck tried to deny that that was her in the photo!
*"That's not me, that's my twin sister Phyllis Dietrichson!"*
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Andy, our posts came in a minute apart and I see we both have the same take about Corey's Cleve character
when watching Thelma Jordon, did you also think of Remember the Night and how MacMurray tried to botch the case against Stanwyck in court, just as Cleve does?I did, but I thought of Double Indemnity even more, since in both that film and Thelma Jordon, Stanwyck appeared much older than MacMurray (because of her blonde wig) and Corey (because of the 7 year age gap). Whereas in Remember The Night Stanwyck was still in the period of The Lady Eve and Ball of Fire, where she played entirely credible younger characters, with her male co-leads* almost exactly the same age.
*Andrews, not Cooper in the case of Ball of Fire
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Easy memory trick:
Michael *JORDAN*
Thelma *JORDON*
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Andy, I think TCM showed The File on Thelma Jordan a few years back. Well, as you say, I guess it was 2008. Of course I had to not only watch it, but record it, as I am greedy for any and all film noir titles.
I've recorded over 50 different Stanwyck titles since I got my DVD recorder in September of 2009, and since that month The File on Thelma Jordon has yet to return. After the SUTS showing in August 2008, it was played again in December of that year, but since then it's been AWOL and definitely due for a new engagement.
I agree with you that Wendell Corey is no Robert Mitchum, but then again Corey was probably more believable as someone who could be taken in by Stanwyck. Older femmes fatales such as the then 43 year old Stanwyck wouldn't be as likely to sucker in some stud who would have had many more opportunities than someone like Corey.
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By the way, who's the hoofer? My middle-aging eyes can't quite make him out. I hope he has frizzy hair under that checkered hat. Odds bodkins !
Here he is in a more dignified and recognizable pose:
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If there's ever been a long-unscreened Paramount movie that's just begging for a repeat, I'd say it's Barbara Stanwyck's The File on Thelma Jordan, a film that lacks the co-star quality of Sorry, Wrong Number, but otherwise is far superior in every way. The last time I can find it in the old program guides is when Stanwyck had a SUTS day in 2008, and I'd say that six years is a long enough time for one of her top noirs ever to remain in exile.
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For all those Preston Sturges films the TCM programmers select, they go to Universal to get them.
Again, they could just as easily set those overplayed titles aside for awhile and get something else from Universal the fans want to see-- how about some more Mae West films, or some Burns & Allen films, or some W.C. Fields films, or some Alan Ladd films...you get the idea.
I love Sturges, but I completely agree that his films have been way overplayed in recent years, not to mention the Paramount Marx Brothers. By contrast, I doubt if I've seen more than three or four W.C. Fields comedies on TCM in the past five years, and only two of them (The Bank Dick and It's a Gift) more than once.
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My top 10 of the decade. I haven't seen enough movies since 1999 to compile a separate list for each year, but these ten are so damned great it's almost impossible for me to rank them. IMO every one of them is worth many repeated viewings.
1. Mystic River (2003)
2. There Will Be Blood (2007)
3. The Wrestler (2008)
4. City of God (2002)
5. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)
6. Letters From Iwo Jima (2006)
7. The Gangs of New York (2002)
8. The Human Stain (2003)
9. The Lives of Others (2006)
10. The Departed (2006)
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But "honey" I always associate with what husbands and wives in commercials for floor cleaner (or maybe breakfast cereal...some domestic type product, anyway) call each other. A generic advertising epithet.
Hon, you must've never been to Ballmer.
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I agree. While there are movies I enjoy more than "Citizen Kane," (but that's not saying I don't enjoy 'Kane,' which I do) I wouldn't bury it deep in this list or any "Greatest Movies of All Time" list (which is so subjective). What I love about 'Kane' is how the film was shot. I love Welles' use of camera angles and shadows as a means to subtly convey specific character traits, or moods, etc. While the plot is not the most original (definitely not a bad plot however and really what plotline is 100% original?) it is engaging and interesting enough to me to keep me watching.
*IF* I were rating films purely on the basis of pioneering cinematic greatness along the lines you're mentioning, then I'd rate Citizen Kane much higher, up there with such previous entries as The Birth of a Nation, Metropolis, Sunrise, Fritz Lang's two Mabuse films, and many blockbuster movies of fairly recent vintage that I've yet to see.
But when I rate movies, I can't see using merely coldblooded technical measures, like lighting, camera work, soundtracks, etc. I also want to see great acting and a story that grabs me underneath the dazzle. Sunrise delivers that, and certainly so does Mabuse, but the storyline Citizen Kane (to me, anyway) comes off as little more than a borderline bio of William Randolph Hearst with a bit of psychobabble added and most of the historically interesting parts left out. Welles denied that Hearst was the inspiration, but anyone who believes that must not know much about Hearst.
And once you get past the camerawork and all that, and begin to consider the rest of the picture, Hitchcock's Vertigo is but one of many movies that leaves Citizen Kane in the dust. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse would be another. I wouldn't put Vertigo at #1, but I can certainly see a much better case being made for it.
You People Are About as Appetizing as Werner Klemperer's Bald Pate...
in General Discussions
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*Homer:* That's it! You people have stood in my way long enough. I'm going to clown college!
(stalks out of the room in a snit)
*Bart Simpson:* I don't think any of us expected him to say that.