TopBilled
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Posts posted by TopBilled
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>I noticed that the Fox Movie channel will be showing an old Joel McCrea film---Banjo on My Knee---on 3/31/2012. the film also stars Barbara Stanwyck. Check it out!
This film, BANJO ON MY KNEE, is also available as a streaming title on Netflix. It's a charmer in more ways than one.
As for the FMC schedule, I am in the Pacific time zone, and it is listed for 6 a.m. However, the next title listed is for 9 a.m. BANJO is not a three-hour film. So it will be interesting to see if they correct the schedule in the weeks ahead.
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I am glad you made this comment. I stated at the beginning of the thread that the length of his reviews vary according to each film and that sometimes I would condense or else continue the longer ones in a later post. On some (rare) occasions he has misspelled an actor or director's name and I correct those.
In this case, he wrote about BRIEF ENCOUNTER with ANNA KARENINA (which I omitted) and then went into comments about THE BIG SLEEP, which he had seen during the same week of 1946. For purposes of this thread, I felt that ANNA KARENINA and BIG SLEEP deserved separate posts and photos. However, the opening line of his review for BRIEF ENCOUNTER is how he started, with a comment about Coward's play and then going on from there.
What I noticed with this review is that it doesn't hit print till the last day of August '46, and the film was actually released in 1945. Perhaps it premiered in the U.K. a year earlier and was just getting to American movie screens almost 9 months later. Unless it was a re-issue and Agee was just getting around to reviewing it.
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*BRIEF ENCOUNTER (1945)*
From Agee on August 31, 1946:
The film is an expansion of a one-act play by Noel Coward. It is a story about two decent middle-class people who fall in love outside their marriages. Beset by guilt and unable to stomach the enforced deceit and humiliation, they give each other up.
The story is written, filmed and acted with a good deal of positive qualities. The picture is a pleasure to watch as a well-controlled piece of work and is deeply touching. I particularly like the performances of Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard as the lovers. I like the things that are done with their faces and with the various ways they walk at various stages of the affair.
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*DAVID WARNER*
MORGAN! (1966) with Vanessa Redgrave & Robert Stephens
A KING'S STORY (1967) with Orson Welles & Flora Robson
THE SEA GULL (1968) with James Mason, Vanessa Redgrave & Simone Signoret
THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE (1970) with Jason Robards & Stella Stevens
A DOLL'S HOUSE (1973) with Jane Fonda & Trevor Howard
THE OMEN (1976) with Gregory Peck, Lee Remick & Billie Whitelaw
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Of the sisters, I would say Polly Ann most resembles Loretta. However, Polly Ann had a shorter film career than Loretta or Sally. There was a half-sister named Georgiana who married Ricardo Montalban.
All four ladies appear on camera together in Fox's THE STORY OF ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL (1939).
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>Hey TB, how about if we add Wonder Boys (2000) to the Michael Douglas list here?
THE WONDER BOYS is definitely one of his better more recent films.
Going by the list I provided, I would say that COMA is my favorite of his from the 70s. I thought he and Genevieve Bujold had fabulous chemistry together.
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*POLLY ANN YOUNG*
MAN FROM UTAH (1934) with John Wayne
THE CRIMSON TRAIL (1935) with Buck Jones & Ward Bond
THE BORDER PATROLMAN (1936) with George O'Brien & Smiley Burnette
THE INVISIBLE GHOST (1941) with Bela Lugosi
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*THE PIRATE (1948)*
From Agee on June 19, 1948:
Color worth seeing, and Gene Kelly's very ambitious, painfully misguided performance. Judy Garland is good, and Vincente Minnelli's direction gives the whole business bulge and splendor. My sympathies are largely with them, for they are all really trying something. Many people admire THE PIRATE but it seems to me to have the culture-cute mirthful grin of the average Shakespearean comic.
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Yes, he certainly was not impressed by A GUY NAMED JOE. I would agree that it's glossed-up hokum.
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*A GUY NAMED JOE (1944)*
From Agee on May 6, 1944:
The makers of A GUY NAMED JOE had courage, if a moral idiot has it. I doubt whether taste and honesty enter into it at all.
I can hardly conceive of a picture more stonily impious. Spencer Tracy's affability in the afterlife is enough to discredit the very idea that death in combat amounts to anything more than getting a freshly pressed uniform. And he is so unconcerned as he watches Van Johnson palpitate after Irene Dunne that he hardly bothers to take his gum out of his mouth.
The people who have the best right to picket God on this matter, or at least MGM, are the dead whom the film is supposed to honor.
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*MICHAEL DOUGLAS*
HAIL, HERO! (1969) with Arthur Kennedy & Teresa Wright
ADAM AT 6 A.M. (1970) with Joe Don Baker
SUMMERTREE (1971) with Jack Warden, Brenda Vaccaro & Barbara Bel Geddes
NAPOLEON AND SAMANTHA (1972) with Will Geer, Johnny Whitaker & Jodie Foster
COMA (1978) with Genevieve Bujold & Richard Widmark
THE CHINA SYNDROME (1979) with Jane Fonda & Jack Lemmon
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I like the Dorothy Dandridge films on the 29th. Good job on that!
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Yes, I thought he handled THE HUMAN COMEDY very well. He knew the nostalgia lovers would be salivating over it and that the high-brow critics would be slamming it. He takes a middle-of-the-road approach and regards the picture as more of a curiosity. I bet that is how he would've reviewed Disney live action films in the 60s, like say POLLYANNA, if he had been around.
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*ESTELITA/ESTELITA RODRIGUEZ*
MEXICANA (1945) with Tito Guizar & Leo Carrillo
SUSANNA PASS (1949) with Roy Rogers & Dale Evans
THE GOLDEN STALLION (1949) with Roy Rogers & Dale Evans
FEDERAL AGENT AT LARGE (1950) with Dorothy Patrick & Kent Taylor
BELLE OF OLD MEXICO (1950) with Robert Rockwell & Dorothy Patrick
TWILIGHT OF THE SIERRAS (1950) with Roy Rogers
SUNSET IN THE WEST (1950) with Roy Rogers
CALIFORNIA PASSAGE (1950) with Forrest Tucker & Adele Mara
HIT PARADE OF 1951 (1950) with John Carroll & Marie McDonald
IN OLD AMARILLO (1951) with Roy Rogers
PALS OF THE GOLDEN WEST (1951) with Roy Rogers & Dale Evans
CUBAN FIREBALL (1951) with Warren Douglas
HAVANA ROSE (1951) with Bill Williams & Hugh Herbert
SOUTH PACIFIC TRAIL (1952) with Rex Allen & Koko
THE FABULOUS SENORITA (1952) with Rita Moreno
TROPICAL HEAT WAVE (1952) with Robert Hutton & Grant Withers
TROPIC ZONE (1953) with Ronald Reagan & Rhonda Fleming
JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER (1966) with John Lupton & Cal Bolder
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*ANGEL AND THE BADMAN (1947)*
From Agee on March 22, 1947:
John Wayne's first production mixes up Quakers with gun-bearing cowboys. The result is unpretentious, sweet-tempered and quite likable.
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*MAN MOUNTAIN DEAN*
WE'RE IN THE MONEY (1935) with Joan Blondell & Glenda Farrell
RECKLESS (1935) with Jean Harlow & William Powell
BIG CITY (1937) with Luise Rainer & Spencer Tracy
THREE LEGIONNAIRES (1937) with Robert Armstrong & Lyle Talbot
THE GLADIATOR (1938) with Joe E. Brown & June Travis
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*THE HUMAN COMEDY (1943)*
From Agee on March 20, 1943:
The film is an effort to create, through a series of lyrically casual, almost plotless scenes, the image of a good family in a good time in wartime. Most of my friends detest it.
A good many millions of other people, I suspect, will like it, as they liked the Andy Hardy films. I do not agree with either side.
I think my friends are too frightened of tearjerkers to grant that they can be not only valid but great. I think the audience at large is too friendly, too gullible, too eager to be seduced.
The picture is mainly a mess, but as a mixture of typical with atypical failure, and in its rare successes, it interests me more than any other film I have seen for a good while.
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I'd love an evening of Preminger's noir on TCM...LAURA, FALLEN ANGEL, WHIRLPOOL, WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS, THE 13TH LETTER and ANGEL FACE.
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> Hey, I'm the Olivia nut around here, and I only picked two of her films (Its Love I'm After, Strawberry Blond), as part of my four.
Those are both good selections.
She made four films with Bette Davis, and that would make a great evening of programming:
IT'S LOVE I'M AFTER
THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ELIZABETH AND ESSEX
IN THIS OUR LIFE
HUSH...HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE
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*CARNIVAL IN COSTA RICA (1947)*
From Agee on May 10, 1947:
I liked the score by Lecuona for this Technicolor musical. There are some fine Costa Rican backgrounds, a medium-good solo by Massine, who designed the generally uninteresting dances, and the dancing and acting of Vera-Ellen. I even liked Dick Haymes.
I was also interested to see that Anne Revere, as a Kansan, was shown to be happily married to J. Carroll Naish, as a thoroughly Costa Rican coffee planter.
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*MOLLY PICON*
MAZEL TOV (1932) with Jacob Kalich
YIDDLE WITH HIS FIDDLE (1936) with Max Bozyk
MARMELE (1939) with Edmund Zayenda
COME BLOW YOUR HORN (1963) with Frank Sinatra & Lee J. Cobb
FIDDLER ON THE ROOF (1971) with Topol
FOR PETE'S SAKE (1974) with Barbra Streisand & Michael Sarrazin
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For some reason, Judy Canova is a guilty pleasure of mine. I am watching IN CALIENTE tonight, and Judy is at the very beginning of her film career. She does a hilarious number with Edward Everett Horton. Why these two were not put together again is truly a loss for us film fans.
My favorite Judy Canova film is SIS HOPKINS. Yes, it is corn. But I love the way her low-brow humor collides with Susan Hayward's much more sophisticated diva. They play cousins! This is a film I would love to see on TCM.
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THIEVES HIGHWAY also benefits from a nice supporting turn by Jack Oakie. It's really a very good film.
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Thanks for the reminder!
Drew was Amazing
in General Discussions
Posted
I like Drew. She's charming.
However...I would've preferred Anjelica Huston as an Essentials cohost. She has a solid Hollywood pedigree, too.