TopBilled
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Posts posted by TopBilled
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Yeah, the police do not perform their duties too admirably in FRENZY. The serial killer continues to baffle them and thwart their efforts.
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Alida Valli also shares that birthday. But I just checked and none of her RKO films are scheduled for May 31.
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Did you try the other actors who share a birthday with Eastwood? TCM is not necessarily going to honor the same actor every year. This year, in January, Luise Rainer turned 102 and they did not air one of her films. In prior years, they devoted the entire daytime schedule to her.
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The Keystone Kops were the original klassic klowns of law enforcement in the movies:
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Gillespie was definitely changed for the television version, starring Carroll O'Connor. He was much more in charge of things and certainly not inept the way Carroll played him.
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Again, we have differing views on the definition of classic film. Maybe RUTHLESS PEOPLE has not yet achieved classic status, but I do think BODY HEAT, a more contemporary noir, has definitely reached the realm of classic film.
The tearing down of the production code is a morals issue, not a classic film issue. Many precodes are considered classics. So I feel we need to loosen up on the idea of restricting classics only to the Breen era. It's a disservice to the talented artists who worked in years prior to and after the dissolution of the code. Also, are we to say that Jimmy Stewart or John Wayne, who kept working in film after the code, were suddenly no longer classic film stars no longer making classic films? Most people would say THE SHOOTIST is a classic, made eight years after the production code ceased.
Going back to your comment about a villain getting away with a crime, of course that would not happen during the code years. Unless it was an imported film made on foreign soil, where their film industry guidelines were not like those found in the U.S.
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You have to admit that most films released in January and February of each year are likely to be ignored or at least forgotten (if they are fairly good) by the time Oscar comes around again.
The only film I can think of that beat the odds was THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. That had a February release, and it was released by a faltering studio (Orion). It is truly a miracle that film lived such a long life and pulled off its great Oscar coup 13 months later, winning in all major categories (best picture, best director, best actress, best actor, best screenplay).
Any films released so far in 2012 that could be another LAMBS and silence the competition in '13?
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>The trigger-happy cop who fired a gun at a carousel filled with children while trying to shoot Robert Walker in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN. This killed the little guy who crawled under the ride and when he fell, he hit the lever that caused it to go faster than any carousel was ever built to go. When the thing finally crashed and sent bodies flying everywhere, the cop was more concerned with a cigarette lighter than the mayhem that he caused.
Trigger-happy is a good word for it.
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I like the title of this thread.
The film has screened in the past year on Cinemax and Fox Movie Channel. Fox has also released it in a handsome DVD, so it has hardly been out of circulation.
I think the black-and-white cinematography makes it look more old world, more old faith. By comparison, THE MIRACLE OF OUR LADY OF FATIMA is filmed by Warners in Technicolor. It looks too lush and too rich, and the stark poverty of the religious subjects seems all but glossed over.
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Andy,
If I am not mistaken, Kathleen Turner gets away with her crimes in BODY HEAT and ends up on some beach enjoying the fruits of her labors. Also, the kidnappers in RUTHLESS PEOPLE (played by Helen Slater and Judge Reinhold) go unpunished...actually, their victim (Bette Midler) runs off with them!
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I love the example of Dogberry (Michael Keaton) in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. He's as inept as they come! They don't make 'em any dimmer.
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Antecedent is a good word. And RAISING ARIZONA is another great example.
I also happened to catch MIDNIGHT RUN yesterday, with Robert DeNiro and Charles Grodin. DeNiro is a bounty hunter and Grodin is the white-collar criminal he is escorting across the country. Of course, they run into their share of buffoonish cops.
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*WHEN STRANGERS MARRY (1945)*
From Agee on April 7, 1945:
I want to add my own respect for the Monogram melodrama WHEN STRANGERS MARRY. The story has locomotor ataxia at several of its joints and the intensity of the telling slackens off toward the end, but I have seldom seen one hour so energetically and sensibly used in a film. Bits of it gave me a heart-lifted sense of delight. Thanks to that, I can no longer feel so hopeless as I have, lately, that it is possible to make pictures in Hollywood that are worth making.
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*LASSIE*
THE PAINTED HILLS (1951) with Paul Kelly, Ann Doran & Brown Jug
LASSIE'S GREAT ADVENTURE (1963) with June Lockhart & Jon Provost
THE MAGIC OF LASSIE (1978) with Mickey Rooney, James Stewart & Alice Faye
LASSIE (2005) with Peter O'Toole
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Joel McCr______
Joel McCr______
Please don't spell it 'a-e'
Spell it 'e-a'
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This must've been my day for movies that showed officers of the law failing to apprehend fugitives.
Encore aired THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS this morning. In the film (directed by Steven Spielberg), Goldie Hawn and William Atherton kidnap a cop and run from the feds. It's played for laughs but has a few serious moments. Of course, whenever we see a sheriff, it's a comedy sequence.
Then, I watched CRAZY MAMA on Netflix streaming. This was good fun. Jonathan Demme directs Cloris Leachman and Ann Sothern, portraying two desperate gals who go on a shooting spree across the country before they have a climactic face-off with police in Arkansas. This, too, was played for laughs. The law was seen as ineffective and silly throughout much of the movie.
I am sure there are plenty of other examples like this, made in the 70s after BONNIE & CLYDE, but done in a humorous vein. They typically show anti-heroes on the lam with bumbling officials unable to catch them.
Both SUGARLAND EXPRESS and CRAZY MAMA had me giggling at the antics of the characters and such broadly played farce, especially by such excellent comediennes like Hawn, Leachman and Sothern.
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Of course, there are Oscar teetotalers, as well as those who over-indulge on all things Oscar.
What I do like about the 31 Days of Oscar is that it sort of forces the programmers to look at classics from the 70s, 80s and 90s. We see more recent classics in February than we do during any other time of the year on TCM.
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At first, I didn't think I had the patience to sit through all of it. I found it a bit drawn out. A 140-minute exercise in cat-and-mouse that probably could've been done just as well in a tighter 100-minute version.
Still, there are some compelling scenes. I particularly liked the scene where Fox has bent his leg back and has to be filmed walking as a disabled veteran. I wondered if that was done in one take. Also, he has to keep the routine going as he enters the old woman's place. Then we see him un-bend his leg. What an actor has to do for a juicy part in an A-budget film.
Next, I had read some reviews that said Zinnemann was trying to convey some ideas about the JFK assassination through this narrative. I agree. The watermelon scene substantiates this to some degree.
I also found it interesting that Zinnemann, who was still alive and in his 80s, fought with the studio about the remake. He did not allow them to use the exact same title. Meanwhile, author Forsyth had battles of his own with Universal and prohibited them from marketing the remake by mentioning him or his novel as the original source material. Instead, THE JACKAL is 'inspired by' or 'loosely based' on the earlier film and its story.
Finally, I will agree with the poster who said there are no emotional connections offered the viewer with regards to the characters. I think if Zanuck had made this, as he had done all those great semi-documentary crime dramas in the late 40s, there would've been some sort of love interest and some emotional attachment that Fox's character felt and that we in turn felt for him and his nefarious predicament.
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***double post***
Edited by: TopBilled on Feb 19, 2012 3:13 PM
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*48 HOURS/WENT THE DAY WELL? (1944)*
From Agee on July 15, 1944:
48 HOURS is a story by Graham Greene. It has some very good professional and unprofessional actors. The film is not a fanged masterpiece like Hitchcock might have made, but it falls on a very solid ground.
The village types are remarkably lifelike. They are charming dolls which not only Greene but Coward and Waugh so often create instead of characters: a dear-old-boy rector; his passionate but constricted daughter; the merry old woman who handles the switchboard and the mail; the robinlike lady of the manor; etc. Beautifully played, these characters are not to be scorned, namely because there is poetic force in this puppetry though it lacks complexity and depth.
I think the best part of 48 HOURS is neither in its people nor in their exciting, melodramatically plausible actions. It is instead how it relates its people and their actions to their homes, their town and their tender lucid countryside. When invaders prowl through the placid gardens of the barricaded manor in the neat morning light, the film has a sinister freezing quality.
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*GEORGE M. COHAN*
THE PHANTOM PRESIDENT (1932) with Claudette Colbert & Jimmy Durante
GAMBLING (1934) with Wynne Gibson & Dorothy Burgess
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I'd agree about Eugene Pallette. He began as a leading man. I would like to see him in an early role as a romantic lead, that would be a trip!
Your mention of ZaSu makes me think of Patsy Kelly.
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>What does not occur during the other 11 months of the year is the heightened awareness or interest in these films due to their association with the Oscars.
I thought most of your post was well-written except for what I have highlighted above. I think people are very aware of Oscar all year-round. Especially because we have film critics and studios as early as June and July telling audiences that so-and-so has given the year's first serious Oscar-worthy performance. The buzz starts early. And we drink it all down.
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I think John Derek had other outside interests in addition to acting. He would of course become a director. Both his parents were actors, so it was definitely in his blood. David Selznick certainly felt in the beginning that he could become a huge star. He was billed as Dare Harris back then.
WANTED: Classic Films Featuring This Classic Artist
in General Discussions
Posted
*JOHN PHILLIP LAW*
HURRY SUNDOWN (1967) with Michael Caine, Jane Fonda & Diahann Carroll
THE SERGEANT (1968) with Rod Steiger & Frank Latimore
BARBARELLA (1968) with Jane Fonda
DEATH RIDES A HORSE (1969) with Lee Van Cleef
THE HAWAIIANS (1970) with Charlton Heston & Geraldine Chaplin
VON RICHTOFEN AND BROWN (1971) with Don Stroud, Corin Redgrave & Hurd Hatfield
THE LAST MOVIE (1971) with Julie Adams & Rod Cameron
THE LOVE MACHINE (1971) with Dyan Cannon, Robert Ryan, Jackie Cooper & David Hemmings