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Bogie56

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Posts posted by Bogie56

  1. Actually, I think those performances by Swanson and Davis are not their best -- way overdone and overrated, despite the characters.

     

    Talking of Over the Top, I just saw Patti LuPone in an enjoyable new play called Shows for Days. It suits her character to be OTT as did her foray into the audience the other evening to grab a cell phone from a texting audience member:

     

    http://nypost.com/2015/07/10/three-cheers-for-patti-lupones-strike-at-cell-phones/

    Your LuPone story reminds me of reading an interview with a well-known Canadian film director (there aren't many of those!) who told the reporter that what he hated most about going to the movies was sitting beside someone who was eating popcorn.

    After reading the story in the Toronto Star I emailed the reporter to say that not once, but twice I had been seated behind that same director in a public film screening when his phone went off!

     

    **I might as well tell you, the film director was Atom Egoyan.  And on both occasions he was seated smack-dab in the middle of the theatre, and got up and walked out taking the call.

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  2. Actually not. I think a young, innocent woman, unjustly jailed and with a lot of problems and a baby she has to give up, has a lot more reason to be OTT than a couple of hammy actresses!

    Yes, but they are Theatre people, darling.  One might say the same thing about Finney in The Dresser.  I thought he was damned good too doing his larger than life, Donald Wolfit.

    I'm sure you've met plenty of OTT people in real life.   I love to see actors go for it when they get roles like these.  Like George C. Scott did in Patton.  

    As for Davis and Swanson, yes they had their extreme moments but the characters also had a bit of 'down' time in those films too and IMHO it was all rather well balanced highs and lows.

    And we were forewarned to fasten our seat belts.

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  3. I'm a hardcore Caged fan, but you won't get any death threats from me. That is, so long as you don't give me any: I think Eleanor Parker's performance is brilliant. I think the two really "mannered" performances that year were by Bette Davis in All About Eve and Gloria Swanson in Sunset Blvd.

     

    The actress who plays Kitty Stark is Betty Garde. She's wonderful. Her other notable performances include Wanda Skutnik in Call Northside 777; the original Aunt Eller in the Broadway show Oklahoma!; and Thelma the Maid in one of the best episodes of "The Honeymooners."

    But don't you think in the case of All About Eve and Sunset Blvd. the 'mannered' performances of the ladies fit the characters they were portraying and were therefore entirely appropriate?

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  4. ... Joe E. Brown in The Circus Clown (1934).  A mildly amusing b-comedy.  Brown's athleticism impressed me.  He is obviously doing some of his own stunts.

    What was curious though is that a major plot point has Brown falling in love with a rather manly female impersonator.  And of course he has no idea that she is really a he.  Shades of Some Like It Hot.

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  5. Monday, July 13

     

    6 a.m.  The Mikado (1939).  Never seen this colour Gilbert & Sullivan film.

     

    9:45 a.m.  The Bad Sleep Well (1960).  Recommended for those who haven’t seen this Kurosawa film.

     

    12:30 p.m.  Scandal (1950).  This is an early Kurosawa/Toshiro Mifune that I have not yet seen.  Kudos to TCM for programming these films!

     

    8 p.m.  Stowaway (1936).  Never seen this Shirley Dimple film.

     

    11:45 p.m.  Heidi (1937).  I liked this when I was younger so I’ll be recording it.

     

    1:30 a.m.  Little Miss Broadway (1938).  I can’t say I recall ever seeing this one.

     
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  6. Easy question to answer. Ali by decision during Marciano's era. If fought under later rules when films were more frequently stopped because of cuts, Ali by TKO. (And, yes, I know how that crazy computer fight ended).

    They used to play that fight at the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) every year for quite some time.  I think I saw it three times in all.

    I seem to recall they billed it as Clay vs. Marciano.   I wonder if that one is kicking around?  Interesting that youtube shows the alternative ending with Ali winning the fight by TKO.

  7. Yes, thank to Vautrin I was able to find out about Cosmo.    I guess he did inherit some wealth because there was no way he could have afforded the apartment in the same building as Jerry (one with a door man no less) based on the fruits of his labor.   Note that even with relatively cheap apartments George had to move back with his parents when he was between jobs.   Also,  wasn't there a few episodes that centered around Elaine trying to secure a rent controlled apartment? 

     

    Anyhow, my overall point was that with Cosmo the subject of 'how does he make it' was touched upon while in Ozzie and Harriet how Ozzie was able to 'make it' never was.     Is there another sit-com in T.V. history that was like Ozzie in this regard?  I can't recall one. 

    Yes, curious about Ozzie.

    Even Herman Munster had a job.  Again, according to wiki ...

    Herman is employed by Gateman, Goodbury and Graves, a funeral home in Mockingbird Heights, having started out as a "nail boy."
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  8. I'm glad you mentioned that film.  I recorded it way back in 2010 but it got buried under an avalanche of Kurosawas that I was fixated on that month, and I never got around to seeing it.  But reading the plot summary, it sounds definitely worth watching.

    The Ladykillers has a tremendous performance by Katie Johnson as Mrs. Wilberforce.  Sellers, Guinness, Herbert Lom, Cecil Parker and especially Danny Green are great too.

    It's probably my favourite Ealing comedy.

  9. You want a prediction about the weather, you're asking the wrong Phil. I'll give you a winter prediction: It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be grey, and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life.

     

    - Bill Murray in Groundhog Day (1993)

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  10. I've probably told this story before on another thread, but those scenes have a particular resonance for me. Back in the early 70's, my former GF and I were returning to Washington from a fairly long trip where we were showing bootleg 16mm prints on college campuses, charging $1.00 per head and averaging over 1000 people per weekend.   Most of the take was in small bills, and we stuffed them all into a 20 year old canvas suitcase that by the end of the trip was fairly bulging at the zipper.

     

    Yada yada yada our car broke down only a few blocks from our house, which wasn't in the greatest of neighborhoods, and while we were running down the street, one of us dropped the suitcase, it burst one of the seams, and about five or six thousand bucks came spilling onto the sidewalk.

     

    Lucky for us it was well after midnight, the street was deserted, and even luckier for us that we'd wrapped tight rubber bands around the bundles of bills.  So no harm, no foul, but I'm telling you every time I see The Killing or Armored Car Robbery, my mind goes back about 40 years, and at least in the former case of Sterling Hayden I really start to feel the pain of the robber. :)

    Great story.  Add The Ladykillers (1955)  to this list!

  11. I've been watching a bunch of circus themed movies.  The other night I watched He Who Gets Slapped (1924) and tonight I watched Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928) both with Lon Chaney.

    They were both from TCM broadcasts and both very good.  The music with Laugh Clown Laugh was particularly good.  I think it was by H. Scott Salinas for the 2002 restoration.

    I know the silents are entirely a different sort of screen acting but I might stick my neck out and say that Lon Chaney was perhaps the very best screen actor of all time.  He is just so versatile.  The silent style is no longer 'believable' but I wonder if stars of today could have possibly have achieved what Lon did in his variety of roles.  Alternatively, I think it would have been a breeze for Chaney to act like a Gene Hackman or Robert De Niro.  But this is kind of like asking who would have won the fight if Cassius Clay had ever faced Rocky Marciano.  (Some will know that there was such a staged fight that was filmed.  It was supposedly determined by a computer.  I saw it several times).

    Loretta Young was a revelation in Laugh, Clown, Laugh.  I couldn't get over how incredibly beautiful she was at that age.

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  12. Sunday, July 12

     

    10 p.m.  A Boy and His Dog (1946).  An Oscar winning short subject starring Harry Davenport.  Not sure if the 10 o’clock start will be accurate.

     

    midnight.  Grandma’s Boy (1922) and …

    1:15 a.m.  For Heaven’s Sake (1926).  Two good Harold Lloyd films that are worth recording.

     

    2:30 a.m.  Ivan’s Childhood (1962).  If anyone has not yet seen this Tarkovsky film I would highly recommend it.  It is a lot more accessible than some of his later films and has a great juvenile performance from Nikolia Burlyayev.

     
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  13. Looking at theyshootpictures.com top 1000 movies, the following are the highest rating missing on DVD:

     

    A Brighter Summer Day

    The Mother and the ------

    The Travelling Players

    Celine and Julie Go Boating

     

    Then there are all the movies that were on New Yorker DVD when that company went bankrupt.  Good to see that The Confession is now on DVD.

    If you are okay with European dvd's I think you can get all of these quite easily.

    I bought Travelling Players ant Mother ... in the BFI shop right off the shelf.

  14. "Well I don't think it's quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip up sir."

     

    - George C. Scott as General Buck Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove; of How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

     

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  15. I think just the fact that these films were in Technicolor explains a lot of their appeal.  I know that when I first started going to movies as a small child in the early 50's, seeing that "Color By TECHNICOLOR" imprint during the opening credit lines made it seem like a special event, and not just one more movie.  Of course the irony is that nearly all of the films from the 20's through the 50's that I cherish today were shot in black and white, while those Technicolor movies mostly seem like cotton candy fluff, but at the time the sheer newness (and beauty) of it all was far more important than anything as pedestrian as an interesting plot.  Plots were for grownups. B)

    Agreed.   Plus everything was in b&w on the home television - at least in my house.

  16. Saturday, July 11

     

    7:30 a.m.  Beauty and the Boss (1932) with Warren William and Marian Marsh.  Another pre code that I have never seen.   These just weren’t on tv when I was a kid.

     

    10 a.m.  Batman and Robin: Tunnel of Terror (1949)

     

    5 p.m.  America, America (1963) by Elia Kazan.  If I didn’t already have a dvd copy of it this would be my pick of the day.  Really solid supporting performances by Paul Mann, John Marley, Salem Ludwig, Lou Antonio,  Katharine Balfour and Linda Marsh.

     

    12:15 a.m.  The Baroness and the Butler (1938).  A William Powell film that I have yet to see.

     
  17. I never watched MURPHY BROWN, MAD ABOUT YOU or EVERYBODY LOATHES RAYMOND.  Couldn't be arsed to watch any of them more than just an episode or two.  Meh. 

     

    I did, however, used watch MURDER, SHE WROTE.  The "bloodless murder"-type series that Dick Van Dyke's "doctor" show tried to continue with when "Murder" went off the air. 

     

        Just once it would have been fun to watch Jessica Fletcher go completely off the rails -- have her possessed by demons or something -- and start swinging a lethal ax and chop the bad guy to bloody bits.  The cops show up just in time to see Jessica eating digits, foaming at the mouth and screaming "I WORSHIP ONLY ZUUL!!!" (think GHOSTBUSTERS).

    You've come very close to describing Angela Lansbury's performance as Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit.  She was a real treat to see on the stage.

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