slaytonf

Hey, that's political to me.

See? You don't get filmmakers like Spike Lee. Ok, they did show Do the Right Thing (1989). And Get on the Bus (1996). And She's Gotta Have It (1986). Maybe TCM is reluctant to do do the work to come up with a list of movies. For Labor Day, I want to build a line up for TCM to make it easy for them. Hm. There's the obvious The Grapes of Wrath (1940), and Norma Rae (1979). Then Roger and Me (1989). Going back there's Our Daily Bread (1934), and The Devil and Miss Jones (1941). And I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932), and Heroes For Sale (1933). I'll have to think of others.

Wait. . . .what?. . . .all this time. . . .TCM has not been a part of a larger left wing program to undermine Western values and bring down the free market? It's--it's only a channel that shows old movies? I feel robbed. Oh, but that can't be true! TCM shows moves by Eisenstein. From Russia. And they showed Salt of the Earth (1954). And Modern Times (1936).

Gulp! I wasn't calling for war movies on Labor Day. I was calling for movies celebrating American workers and their campaigns for better lives and jobs. Movies about building, and creating, not destroying. And not just labor union oriented movies, but also movies about average Jills and Joes trying to make it possible to live like human beings in a world determined to undermine their individuality and independence.

A major attraction of TCM for me, naturally, is its liberal bias. Love those up the people flicks! But here it is, another Labor Day weekend, and no worker movie marathon--to say nothing about May Day. You know, looking at things on the whole, a gnawing fear that the lefty lean of the channel is just a pose is beginning to grip me. On two holiday weekends, Memorial and Veterans Days, we get three days of war movies. And you can toss in 4 July, too. In December, we get a whole month drowning in Christmasy schmaltz and sugar coating, and not one movie involving Kwanza, or Chanukah. I--I don't know. . .I-- (sigh) Agonizing reappraisals.

Pardon me, Flamin' Hot Cheetos.

Superfly (1972)

Maybe TCM is trying to even the score.

It's nothing unusual. TCM almost never shows the silent version.

Try looking in cyberspace. They might be there. Cberspace is unreliable.

I think someone posted once that the number of occurrences in Websites raises the spamming sites rankings in searches. So spammers look for sites with weak defences to inundate.

Opinions may differ. Allowances can be made Down-distraction.

I believe that.

Generally, I agree with you, as far as my knowledge of the two movies allows me. I look at it this way (and excuse me if I seem too clinical in my thinking). You can have a good heist movie without a good heist, as long as everything else around it is good. In fact, I know one without a heist at all, and it's one of the best. It's Bob le Flambeur (1956), by Melville. But you can't have a good heist movie with only a good heist. The Great Train Robbery (1978) is one. Good action sequences, dead otherwise. Certainly having both is the best of all worlds, like Topkapi (1964).

Hooboyyyy! People here will snag on the smallest detail and spiral off into the wildest tangents. I guess I should be used to that by now. I was hoping to provoke an energetic discussion on socio-culturo-economic themes. But I'm expecting now people to start matching up studios with their respective car manufacturers. If the Cadillac reference is just intolerable, use a different image. The point I was making when people zoomed away was about MGM's express policy of aiming for a high tone in its product, and Louis B. Mayer's sappy sentimentalism. Whether other studios matched its production values or excelled them is immaterial. It was this goal and sentimentalism that was responsible for MGM's validating of the aristocracy and royalty in its movies. Now if you scour the filmography (as I know somebody will) I'm sure you can find a movie that has a critical slant on the nobility. I'm talking about the tone in general. Just as I'm sure you can find a WB movie, despite its iconoclasm, gritty realism, and express policy of making movies "ripped from the headlines," that has a positive slant on the nobility.

So there could be no resentment on their part for the rich priss. As for speculating on what would happen in reality, as I mentioned before, it's a dangerous path to venture on with both of these movies. One observation I might make is that it would be unproductive to analyze too closely the heist--in this movie, at least. It occupies so little of the movie, its role serving as the pretext of what follows, the affair. In this, it exemplifies the formula for a good heist movie. That being that the heist is the least important part of it. With regard to the latter movie, I can't say anything about it, about how much the heist--or multiple heists--occupy the movie. But if I know my movies, I would risk saying that it, or they, take up a considerable amount of time, dwelling on the cleverness of them, and substituting for what would otherwise be spent on the characters' development and interplay.

Hm. War. Small boat. Romance. English accents. Tyrone Power was in a small boat in Abandon Ship (1957), one of his best performances: http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/16168/Abandon-Ship/ But maybe Lifeboat (1944), with John Hodiak and Tallulah Bankhead: http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/81373/Lifeboat/ click on the READ THE FULL SYNOPSIS button to see a detailed description of the movie.

Those are the ones with his name in the title. Others include: The Seven Per-Cent Solution (1976) The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939, '59) A Study in Scarlet (1933) There may be others.

Or Warner Brothers v. MGM. Or Jack Warner v. Louis B. Mayer. Earlier today we were treated to Dolores del Rio and Reginald Owen bringing to life Madam Du Barry and Louis XV. Respectively, that is. It's my favorite of Ms. Rio's roles. She plays it effervescent, irreverent, and unrepentant. What strikes me about the movie is its worldliness and cynicism. Totally in agreement with WB's gritty realism, it must have beat it under the executioner's axe of the production code. Louis' "after me, the deluge" line would never have made it into a movie then. One can't help wondering if this movie's tone was purely the expression of WB's controlling ethos, or as an answer to, and skewering of, MGM's typical extolling and sentimentalizing of monarchy and the nobility in their costume dramas. Maybe both. The two movies exemplify the difference between the studios. MGM, Mayer rather, the Cadillac of studios. All movies high production values. All emotions exalted, refined, burnished. The paradox of an Eastern European Jew up from dirt poverty, sentimentalizing, slobbering over, and promoting the white Northern European Christian American dream--what? as a way of gaining acceptance from a system that despised him for his origins? And WB, or Jack Warner, up from the same dirt poverty. The iconoclast, the cynic, hard-headed, unvarnished. For what? To break up a system and build a new one to replace it where he would find acceptance? Did he care? So the iconoclasts beat out the sentimentalists. Or did they? Maybe it's a battle that will never be won. There will always be parties committed to exploitation and theft. They cultivate a mystique of the elite to create compliance and admiration in the populations they steal from. Sometimes the parasites gain ground, sometimes the parasited gain. Anyway, my sentiments are certain: Down the aristocracy! Up the people!

With regard to believability, I think both films rely on a generous suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience. And the people recruited to pull off the heist had no idea who it was they were working for, as I'm sure you knew when you typed your post. The surest way to make Mr. Crown uncompelling for me is to make him just like any other criminal who tries to pull off a robbery. In the '68 movie Crown is a businessman successful, accomplished, and continually in search of opportunities. His delight is in pulling off a deal, gaining the advantage on others doing it. Remember his comment leaving the room after closing the sale of one of his properties: "You paid too much." The robbery is the in the same line with his business practices. But he never dreams of exposing himself to danger from law enforcement, delegating the work to others. Just like he routinely has others take on tasks. This sets up the romance/combat between him and Vicki Anderson. They are both brilliant, confident (to the point of egotism), and predatory. Their parallel games of fencing and lovemaking create strange tensions that are fascinating to watch play out. What is pretense, and what is real? Are these two just amoral machiavellians not adverse to taking some time out from their cobra/mongoose act to play around with each other? Worse, use it gain their end? Is all this sophisticated, cosmopolitan planned spontaneous relationshipping just a front for the desperate covert struggle going on? Well, we find out in the end--sorta.

One Sunday Afternoon aired on the 10th, so it's a candidate.

While I can't speak with knowledge about Ms. Russo's performance. I would like to say I don't think there was anything restrained about Fay Dunaway's Vicki Anderson. She was chic, stylish, refined, and frank about her interests and appetites. Although she didn't tear Thomas Crown's clothes off him the moment she first met him (admittedly inconvenient at a polo game), she made her interest in him clear, both sexually, and as a suspect. I personally am not predisposed to dislike remakes of older movies I like. As an example, I think Richard Lester's The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974) the best adaptation of Dumas' work, not withstanding earlier good versions. I lost interest in the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, as I said, because the remake had Thomas Crown doing the actual thieving. This destroyed one of the major aspects of the original that made it appeal to me. The way he committed the crime indirectly through others who had no knowledge of his identity was an expression of a vital part of his character. And this affected his relationship with Vicki and how the movie played out.

Do you remember the day and time?

Another newbie with the same old phony complaint. These are so similar I am coming to think it is the same person creating different avatars to continually bring the same tired subject forward.

Not a super nova, like others, but it melts you inside.