slaytonf
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Posts posted by slaytonf
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Now, that one I know about. It's Tatianna who kills the Klebb monster to save her honey James.
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Evidence of my unfamiliarity with the series.
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Made it all the way through View to a Kill (1985). Don't know how, or why, because I don't like it. Maybe there was something interesting enough, or nothing so intolerable as to keep me watching. I do have some observations.
*The 1980s was a strange time.
*The movie represents both an advance and a retreat for women. It has the first woman featured heavy (May Day). She spoils it by a noble last act. Guess Bond can't kill a woman. But the woman heroine (Satcey Sutton) is a character straight out of 40s or 50s movies. She's completely at the mercy of, or reliant on whatever male is around her. She's always getting pulled up or down by someone. But to be fair, she drives a mean fire truck.
*Christopher Walken makes a good heavy. He should pursue this for career opportunities.
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I'd say something about For Your Eyes Only (1981), except I forgot what was in it. Oh, I remember, in this one the woman seeking revenge doesn't have to die--and she even succeeds, unlike in Goldfinger (1964). I guess you could call that progress. Parenthetically, I'm thinking of starting a thread called: James Bond is Unhealthy For Women.
I saved Octopussy (1983) for tonight, thinking one Bond a night might get me through it. I got as far as Bond on the Isle of Women. Taj Mahal looked good.
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44 minutes ago, NipkowDisc said:
and as far as moonraker I just doan buy space shuttles full of beautiful people completely indifferent to the idea of Drax's mass extermination of billions of men, women and children.
Then you don't buy Dr. No's people. Or Emilio Largo's people. Or any of the dozens of armies of Bond nemeses that habituated vast subterranean complexes.
51 minutes ago, NipkowDisc said:where did Drax recruit that group? SoCal?
Ah, the song of envy. Soooo sweet.
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Came in on The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) 40 minutes+/- from the end. That's the only reason I made it to the end. The unrelenting destruction sequences inspired an almost intolerable tedium. But I stuck it out. I don't feel particularly proud of it.
Moonraker (1979) had a promising start, notwithstanding it's obvious play for creds from a Goldfinger (1964) reference. The sky dive was cool, even with the distracting intrusion of the jaws fellow. And the movie had some of the original Bond movie feel to it, underneath all the encrustations. The movie forgets that humor is compatible with international espionage, but comedy isn't, as in the ludicrous boat chase in Venice. Someone was channeling Buster Keaton--or wanted to. I managed to tag along quite a while by paying less than full attention. But I gave up after the gondola thing where not only does the jaws fellow not die after crashing through and demolishing the base station (!), but finds his true love--ukkkk. The last is not for the love, which is always beautiful, but for the movie.
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So you can not have your cake and not eat it, too.
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Don't like what she chooses? Don't watch it. Have a nostalgic hankerin' for the good ol' days with Osborne and Baldwin? Dig out your old DVDs.
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Thanks for that very nice compliment.
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On September 15, 2019 at 9:00 AM, laffite said:
Happily, my local library has a copy (just one in the whole system) and I have it coming over.
I guess I'll refrain from posting any other scenes. And there are so many of them. But I'll do one more that won't spoil the enjoyment. It's a scene at Coney Island beach where Mary (Jean Arthur), her squeeze, the incognito owner John Merrick (hey! the original Undercover Boss), and his date recreate. He wants her go give up the squeeze and asks her what she sees in him. She responds:
In all the movies of all the world, there's no better meditation on love. Whenever I see this scene I ask myself, with all the floods of gloopy romanticism, all the unrealistic expectations pandered to people, all the hackneyed sentimentalism, how this simple, beautiful evocation ever got into a movie.
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The Devil and Miss Jones (1941):
It's surprising that such an unassuming movie could have so much in it that really stands out. There are at least four scenes I can think of off hand to highlight. But this forgotten little comedy has always had a high position in my rotation of films not only because it's really good, but because it cemented Jean Arthur in the top ranks of my acting compendium. I don't know if I recognized her from other movies, but she really came to life for me in this one. She had a number of moments in the movie (after all, it's her picture), but the one that galvanized her in my eyes is this one, where she performs a feat unparalleled in movies. It was so unexpected and astonishing that at first I did not understand what I was watching. Understanding filled me with admiration.
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On September 10, 2019 at 8:44 AM, Sepiatone said:
Robert Blake hangs....
Sepiatone
In movies people don't get away with murder.
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I tagged along with The Man With the Golden Gun (1974). Although not engaging, it was at least not repellant. Roger Moore is amiable, but seems like a visitor in his movies, not the mover. Anyway, about half way through I felt I was wasting my time.
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Maybe it was a different series. Watch anything else? Like Route 66, or something?
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trig
[ trig ]SHOW IPAadjective Chiefly British.
neat, trim, smart, or spruce.in good physical condition; sound; well.-
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I'm being even-handed. I'm giving every Bond movie from now on a fair shake. I watched On Her Majesties Secret Service (1969) to the end. But that's because I came in an hour into the movie. Otherwise the level of toxicity built up would have been too great. Mr. Lazenby actually didn't have so bad a presence on screen as Bond. But, oh, I felt so bad for Diana Rigg. She was killer in the Avengers. Chic, trig, mod. But in the movie, she came off--well--I was wondering why Bond didn't go for that chicken heiress. . . . .
Gave up on Diamonds Are Forever (1971) after the save from cremation. Toooo lame. This notwithstanding Jill St. John.
Onward.
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20 minutes ago, Gershwin fan said:
It was on the last Bond night but in the very early hours of the morning, like 4 AM.
I'm glad it was on.
And I'm glad I missed it.
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The Wages of Fear (1953):
The French have a history of hard-case movies. Tales of thieves, gangsters, killers, and low-lifes who have a run-in with life and come to a bad end. Some have seen in it an antecedent of film noir, but I think that's a stretch. But with their discovery of a characteristic in American cinema of dark stories shot with dark cinematography, it's no surprise it struck a strong resonant cord, and French filmmakers set out right away to emulate it. Most of which we will turn a benevolent blind eye to, and focus on the triumphant, like Melville, who turned out a string of winners. They of course added a twist to them suited to their own culture. In American noir, the world presented a bleak prospect, institutions corrupt, people unreliable, life nasty, the American Dream a cheat, and then you die--because somebody kills you. A sour disillusion underlies the stories. In French movies, the quality is more of a disenchantment, a psychologic distancing, with more philosophic observations. In American noir you get betrayal; in French emulations, you get disappointment. In America, a sneer; in France, a sneer, and a shrug.
But there are exceptions. Exceptions where the director played hardball right down the line, as the lady says. And this movie by Henri-Georges Clouzot is the best of them all. It is the meanest, hardest, nastiest, most unforgiving, unrelenting, and pitiless of the French noirish movies. It's terrific. Aside from a little of the intellectualizing, especially in M. Jo's death scene about the fence in Paris (Rien! Rien!), it's on a par with American movies for its grittiness, and toughness, mirrored in the cinematography and camera angles. It's populated with dead-end losers who through bad luck, being too clever, or not clever enough, have been shaken out to the ragged edge of civilization's fabric. And become scraps themselves, detached and unravelling. Their disposition leads them to scrap and quarrel over petty matters, exacerbating their condition and increasing the absurdity of their existence.
In the clip we are startled to see the tobacco blown away by an unexpected puff of air while M. Jo rolls a cigarette. A moment later it becomes clear why. The truck Luigi and Bimba are driving in ahead of them has exploded, and it is the pressure wave that made the puff of air. Associating the two implies life is tenuous and insubstantial, as easily snuffed as tobacco is scattered from a hand.
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Not just MGM. The Cocoanuts (1929), Monkey Business (1931), and Duck Soup (1933) are slated.
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Good luck!
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I hope this is just the inaugural post of a long line, Diane. You will be happy to know that TCM does do Marx marathons on occasion. Sometimes in the mornings and afternoons, or a whole evening of 'em. Keep your eyes peeled for when. Or you can also go to the TCM movie database to get a clue. Just type a Marx movie title in the search bar. On the movie's database page, under the title, you will see upcoming air dates. If, say, three or four of their movies has the same air date, that's a clue there's a marathon. I can't say if there's a marathon in store, but a quick check of the database shows a number of Marx movies coming up this month and in October.
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On tonight. You Only Live Twice (1967) is not one of them, despite the John Barry soundtrack. Three of them directed by Terrence Young. Not a coincidence.
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12 hours ago, scsu1975 said:
Hmm ... I thought that was a woman ...
Allowance needs to be made for my dyslexia. Then it would be clear I meant the woman on the left.
10 hours ago, MovieCollectorOH said:Easy enough for me.
You are the wonderful wiz. I will leave it to others to pore through the list of movies. Assuming that I am right about it being Mr. Kolker.
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The man at the center looks like Henry Kolker to me. But it would be a job to go through all the skeds to find which movies he appeared in this year. The guy to the right. . .as the man said, the face is familiar but I can't place the name.
A rogues' gallery of cops.
in General Discussions
Posted
The blue suited some actors better than others. They radiated an aura of authority, or of a generalized suspicion of all mankind--as often as not erroneous, as the plot required. I'm not talking about big stars in lead roles as law enforcement officers. I'm talking about the work-a-day actors from the talent pools of the studios who got the supporting roles or bit parts. They were the standard face of law enforcement. The inevitable consequence of wrong-doing. The nemesis, or dupe, or obtuse counter to the lead hero, or villain, or sleuth.
The actor who will immediately occur to many as the paradigm for movie cops is Charles McGraw, the gravel-voiced hard-as-nails bantam. But he really wasn't a career cop (I don't count sheriffs in westerns). His renown stems from one role in The Narrow Margin (1952) as a harried cop trying to get a mobster's moll from Chicago to Los Angeles with the syndicate after her. It may be the only instance in movies of a lead actor leaving the impression of being in a supporting role.
On to the real career cops. To begin, Jack Cheatham:
Clips are hard to find, but here's one from The Hatbox Mystery (1947):
Starting in cop work early in his career with Sinister Hands (1932), he created the model career movie cop profile, rarely becoming anything more than a uniformed street cop. He soldiered away in mostly uncredited roles, but managed to appear in features such as Gambling Lady (1934) with Barbara Stanwyck, The Thin Man (1934) with William Powell and Myrna Loy, The Petrified Forest (1936) with Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis, and This Gun For Hire (1942) with Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake.