JamesJazGuitar
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Posts posted by JamesJazGuitar
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20 minutes ago, speedracer5 said:
Parker's mother, Beulah Bondi, doesn't approve of her daughter being involved with a soldier. Part of this stems from Parker's older sister Molly's marriage to a soldier.
Looks like you wish to be kind to mother (ha ha); But really Bondi's mother was so bitter, mean, uncaring, etc... that when she slaps Parker I wanted Travers to sock the old bag in the choppers! What I did like was the transparently shown in the various relationships; Travers didn't appear to love his wife anymore than I did but since there were younger children wasn't going to divorce her. The older sister behavior was selfish but also bold, but I did find her transformation somewhat phony.
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11 hours ago, rjbartrop said:
I think Western comedies like Paleface should count, simply because all the elements are there, but there's just a difference emphasis in how the story is told.
Have you see the Gary Cooper film Along Came Jones this is a western comedy and it has all the element of a classic western but done with a wink.
Dan Duryea plays the heavy (the only one to play it 100% straight).
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Big fan of Eleanor Parker but only fairly recently when she was SOTM. She started out at Warner Bros the studio that didn't feature actresses, other than Davis and later Crawford, very well (verses their male stars), so Parker was competing for roles with the other actresses at WB like DeHavilland, Lupino, and Alexis Smith.
Parker made some good films for the studio in the 40s but the 50s were her decade and she really excelled in all type of roles.
She had a sophisticated screen persona but she could play sexy and dangerous like her role in Scaramouche.
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5 hours ago, lilypond said:
FAUSTERLITZ, what a closely and persuasively reasoned analysis of the two of them-- love it and agree with most.
SPEEDRACERS, glad you mentioned Jean Arthur. She's on my supplementary, next level-list with Claudette and Ida. Jean Arthur, Depression-era angel exhorting the despairing Jimmy Stewart, in that voice, and with that spunk (unlike Lew Grant, I love spunk), immortal. I'm so glad she had that late-career role in "Shane" too, bittersweet and quietly luminous.
My top 4 favorites are Davis, Stanwyck, DeHaviland and then Arthur.
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32 minutes ago, Aritosthenes said:
I (Strongly) (and Subjectively) Think As Well that, many times. The Academy is Unfortunately Biased. (Which Might Very Well Play the role of kissing cousins with Respect to Your Studio Politics Observation.)
Its A SIN that Phoenix had Not Won Squat Prior to Joker.
There is no such thing as "the Academy" as if this is one entity - instead it is groups of various individuals; E.g. different people vote in each Oscar category.
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13 minutes ago, NipkowDisc said:
some great unsung music I can think of is some of Gil Melle's music to Frankenstein the True Story and Howard Shore's remarkable score to The Fly.
I'm a big fan of Gil Melle and his music, both as a composer and as a musician. Melle did some recordings for Blue Note in the 50s and featured one of my favorite guitarist, Tal Farlow.
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My choices are all very conventional "A" production choices:
The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity, Laura, Out of the Past and The Big Heat.
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26 minutes ago, Shank Asu said:
I find plenty to mock but i suppose this isn't the thread to be having this conversation. They picked the name to begin with- they didn't just change it for no reason.
cheers
I assume the reason was mostly marketing related.
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33 minutes ago, TopBilled said:
Friday October 8, 2021
Beauty on TCM
beauty for the asking
mannequin
Thanks for the tip; I haven't seen either of these films so for me they are premiere films and that is refreshing.
EDITED: I have seen Beauty For the Asking. I believe TCM showed the film just within the last 2 - 3 months and that is when I saw it.
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1 hour ago, Shank Asu said:
You can't call them the Dixie Chicks anymore. (I don't write the new rules, i just mock them)
There is no "new rule" going on here with this name change since they did this because they wanted to and not because of pressure from activist groups; They didn't wish to be associated with the term "Dixie".
Thus I see nothing to mock here.
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Watched Il Posto last night on TCM. While my wife, who grew up in Italy had heard of the film she had never seen it.
There was a lot to like about the film despite the storyline really not going anywhere (well expect in one-direction related to the title).
My favorite part was when the two leads were just getting to know he other. This came of as really genuine. I also feel the actress Loredana Detto gave a great performance (as well as being well directed). Her "I'm interested,,, but" way of how she interacted with the young man very refreshing.
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22 hours ago, Katie_G said:
Amazing Mister X, 1948
1 hr.17 min. Directed by Bernard Vorhaus Starring Turhan Bey, Lynn Bari, Cathy O'DonnellRecommended by Eddie Muller as an underrated B noir that would be perfect as the bottom billed feature with Nightmare Alley. A Horror/Noir thriller and Amazon had it for rent or purchase. Since the purchase price was only $6.00 I pulled the trigger, not knowing the horror was with the print. Extremely grainy and dark, with pops, jumps and muddy sound. Given the glowing reviews there must be a better print out there which would make all the difference, so don't waste your money on this one. I wrongly assumed anyone selling it would have the best version available.
The standard plot makes Nightmare Alley look like Citizen Kane, but the acting is good and the ambience is spooky enough, taking place primarily in a mansion by the sea. Lots of crashing waves, steep cliffs, a mysterious stranger with a squawking black bird, one dead husband and two rich and vulnerable sisters. The charlatan only fools the women 'cause let's just say he's got a magic touch. A suspicious boyfriend hires a debunker like the Amazing Randi, who shows off his old magician trick by barfing up some playing cards, and we're off to the races...
I would like to see this film especially since I'm a fan of the two leading ladies, Lynn Bari and Cathy O'Donnell, but I do wonder about the performance of Turhan Bey.
Based on what I have seen, he is often the weakest actor in a film.
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42 minutes ago, Bethluvsfilms said:
Foch was nominated, but didn't win.
Eva Marie Saint took home the Best Supporting Actress that year for ON THE WATERFRONT.
Thanks for that correction. I now recall that I messed this up once before! My only excuse is that Foch's nomination was memorable because of how little on-screen time she had.
Also, I have always viewed Saint's performance as deserving an Oscar nomination in the lead actress category instead of supporting given that she is one of the only females in the entire film.
But still, silly me.
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5 minutes ago, Roy Cronin said:
Nina Foch won an Oscar?
Yes, best supporting Oscar for her role in Executive Suite. I believe it was the shortest on-screen performance to win an Oscar (at least at the time 1954).
Note that the same year she married James Lipton, the guy from Inside the Actors Studio.
Nina was cute until she started to put her hair into a bun.
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6 minutes ago, Roy Cronin said:
She was good in "That's Entertainment! III"
Is this a wise crack? I ask because That's Entertainment III is a documentary film released in 1994. In the Wiki list of her films it isn't even included.
So if that is the one film someone says she was good in, I have to assume they are trying to be funny.
But if not, are you saying out of all the films you have seen that Allyson was in this is the one that stands out?
For me the one film Allyson is in where she doesn't get under my skin is Executive Suite. But she has a small role in this film (as Holden's wife), and the 3 other actresses still are much more impressive; Stanwyck, Winters and Oscar winner Nina Foch.
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19 minutes ago, Thompson said:
That one movie, with the guy from Psycho, the baseball movie. I think that other guy, Carl Malden played the dad. That one could border on a noir movie if they tweaked it a bit.
The actor is Anthony Perkins, and the film was Fear Strikes Out (1957). His dad was played by Karl Malden. The film has many dark scenes but the only crime was Perkins playing in the outfield.
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6 hours ago, Bethluvsfilms said:
Never saw this one.
I actually don't have a problem with June Allyson. She may not be one of the greatest actresses out there, but she's not all that bad in the films I've seen her.
Is June Allyson even in Bunker Bean; if she is the role is uncredited. As for "not all that bad", please note my avatar: nothing is as bad as something that is not so bad (from the Scarlett Pimpernel).
Allyson is my least favorite actress of her era.
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2 minutes ago, ElCid said:
One of the impressive things (sort of) is the number of blonde women in the shows, especially early on. In some episodes I think Della was the only non-blonde female.
True; And Drake struck out with each and every one.
Related to The Falcon, Martha Vickers was included in the 1959 Perry Mason episode, "The Case of the Jaded Joker", in which she played Sheila Hayes.
This was the second to the last work she did prior to retiring.
But for me the real star is Executive Producer Gail Patrick - From Godfrey and being a less than favorite wife, to being a main reason there was even a Mason T.V. show.
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The Los Angeles Times, Calendar section, Tuesday, October 5th, has a really nice article about Tommy Kirk: An Appreciation - Unsung Screen Heroes. (this is a two part article with the second part about D.J. T.V. host Sam Riddle). It was written by Robert Lloyd.
The Tommy Kirk section was interesting and really respectful to this unsung-hero; E.g. "neither was a superstar by objective standards, but if you were young or even not so young at a certain time and place, you might well have looked at them that way.
"Kirk was clean-cut, in the mid-50s to early 60s mold, but he was more Ricky than David Nelson".
Fan of the late Tommy Kirk should check it out!
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15 minutes ago, txfilmfan said:
I haven't seen it, but from what I read the new PM series on HBO had a much darker tone, and a more morally ambiguous Mason, and set it back in the early 1930s, a darker/grittier time in US history than the post-war 50s and 60s, most would say. I suppose they're closer to the tone found in the books.
I haven't see the new PM series but there is a thread at this forum about it and those that watched it said it had a much darker tone and was thus more "true" to the characters in the books. Another thing in the book is that Tragg and Perry really respect each other and will work together to find the actual criminal(s).
In the books the cop that hates Perry and is willing to so shady things to try to trap him is Sergeant Holcomb who was only featured twice in the PM T.V. show. (thus removing a dark area of the books, but I assume this was done because such a portrayal of a Cop on T.V. would have caused a major PR issue for the network, in those two T.V. episodes Holcomb is just incompetent and stupid not corrupt \ bending the law).
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4 hours ago, Bethluvsfilms said:
Love this movie.
Though you have to wonder how many Eve Harringtons there really were back then, or are still out there nowadays.
My guess is that there were a lot of what-a-be Eve Harringtons out in the real world of acting but only one in a million were able to advance like Eve in the film.
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On 10/4/2021 at 4:32 PM, misswonderly3 said:
Oh, lighten up, you're reading way too much into what is simply a light-hearted little teen film.
What about the narration Ferris; isn't this a way to explain or in some way justify, his 100% self-absorbed, sociopathic behavior?
If the producer and director really wanted to make a simply light-hearted little teen film, I see no reason for said narration.
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1 hour ago, rjbartrop said:
I m not sure if this counts as just a period piece or true noir, but how about the Ellery Queen Mysteries from 1975?
Ellery Queen is a period piece since it is set in Post WWII, but I don't see much noir in the show.
I Just Watched...
in General Discussions
Posted
Saw the Sharron Stone film Scissors (1991), which came out right before Basic Instincts (1992), followed by Silver (1993).
I have only seen Basic Instincts.
I agree with you about Stone's screen persona; she is indeed watchable. Scissors wasn't a very good movie and it appears Silvers is only OK as well.
Too bad producers couldn't find the right fit for Stone during the 90s when she had that IT quality I'm looking for in a lead actress.