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Bogie56

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Posts posted by Bogie56

  1. C'mon guys, this threads  supposed to be about World War I and hopefully some film topics that relate to that  war.  ---  I just got a dvd of a 1928  silent film "Q SHIPS" .  A  company called  Grapevine Video offers it and the picture quality is rather good. A British film,  much of it done in a semi documentary style , Q SHIPS details the U Boat menace   and what was done to combat it. A good amount of combat footage is used and there are "German" actors and a "German" sub  to illustrate what the other side was trying to do. The film is a little over an hour long and it isn't until the final minutes where  we get to see a "Q Ship" in action against a submarine.  All in all its an interesting little film to watch.  

    Quite right, Mr. Roberts.  Apologies.

    I had never heard of Q Ships.  I've seen Q Planes (1939) with Laurence Oliver and Ralph Richardson.

  2. Interesting story, bogie.

    My father was a printer, and occasionally he did some printing at home for the printing company he worked for. One day he told me he had these cards he was printing, and he asked me "who is Robert Wise?" I said "he's a director. He did West Side Story and The Sound of Music." Well, it turns out my Dad was printing a ton of invitation cards from the AFI for potential members. Each card had a "personal" invitation from some Hollywood bigshot. Besides Wise, another was from Heston, and there were two more, but I can't recall who those people were.  Ironically, a few weeks later, I got one of those cards, from Heston, asking me to join AFI. Hey, who was I to turn down Moses?  Of course I joined.

    Wow.  I'll try and dig it up and take a snapshot of it!

  3. I guess a letter could be considered a brush?

     

    When I was a student I subscribed to the American Film Institute magazine and I waited and I waited and no magazine.

     

    So, I thought I better write to them and complain.  Charlton Heston was the chairman of the American Film Institute at the time so I cheekily addressed my letter to him.

     

    Not long after I received a tiny card sized letter from Mr. Heston himself who apologized profusely and said that he would see to it personally that I received my magazine subscription.

     

    And true to Moses' word, the magazine then started to arrive.

     

    You couldn't pry that treasured letter out of my cold dead hands.

    • Like 4
  4. TCM is TV after all.  But hey, the title of the thread included the words 'once in a while.'  I'm sure they could make space for two hours a month for something like this.  But hey, this is only a thread not a programmers meeting.

     

    There have been a few movies made for television that ended up being shown theatrically in other markets too.

     

    Scenes From a Marriage, made for Swedish television by Ingmar Bergman was released in cinemas in North America.  Some great performances in that too.  Bib Andersson for one.

     

    And it is released on Criterion which TCM seems to have some sort of deal with.

    • Like 1
  5. Yes, Anna Magnani was brilliant in THE ROSE TATTOO and also in another Tennessee Williams's adaptation THE FUGITIVE KIND (which co-starred Marlon Brando).

    Magnani is probably the only actor who could "steal a scene" from Brando. 

    Magnani was terrific in Rome, Open City, Bellisima, The Fugitive Kind and Mamma Roma but nothing comes close IMHO to her performance in The Rose Tattoo.  Magnifico!

  6. I doubt there is evidence for Oswald being a fake defector or

    being taught to speak Russian by Army Intelligence. He was

    self-taught in Russian and apparently didn't do a very good

    job of it, as he scored poorly on a Russian language test

    while he was in the Marines. I think psychology had as much

    to do as politics in his assassination of JFK. LHO was one of

    these nuts who thought the world never recognized his great

    "talents." Now back to the Great War.

    There is plenty of evidence right in the Warren Exhibits themselves to refute everything you have said, I'm afraid.  See Sylvia Meagher's book for starters.  This has been known since 1964 when the exhibits were released.  Not many bothered to read them though!

    The Warren Report on the other hand was a sad reflection of the evidence in those exhibits cherry-picked to dupe a trusting American public.  A work of fiction, I'm afraid.  Even the House Committee review in 1978 said as much.

    People outside of America did not buy into the lone nut theory.  But then again, their press was not controlled by the U.S. government.

    And Jack Ruby?  No conspiracy there either I suppose.

  7. This is not a biography but a great film book, plain and simple.  I would recommend Kevin Brownlow's The Parade's Gone By to anyone interested in the silent film era.

     

    Brownlow as many of you know has been in the forefront of film restoration and preservation for quite some time and produced a marvellous series for television called Hollywood.

     

    This book is so well researched and fun to read and has some great photographs.  His description of the in-camera effects that were done in the silents is worth the read alone.  Sunrise is a particular highlight.

     

    He covers all the well known stars and directors and then some.  I had no idea how popular Reginald Denny was in the silents.  What a long career he had.

    • Like 1
  8. Yes:  Zenobia (1939) is a pleasant farce with a comedy dream cast (Oliver Hardy, Harry Langdon, Billie Burke (champion ditherer of all time, IMO), Hattie McDaniel, & Stephen Fetchit) plus the obligatory ingenue and suitor.  Ingenue announces she's getting married, town veterinarian (Hardy) goes to treat a sick elephant  (Zenobia), & elephant then refuses to leave him.  Complications ensue.  Amusing film.  Definitely worth a look.

    Enjoy.  We're just not ready for Zenobia in Canada I'm afraid.  We're getting Racing Lady (1937) which has been on a zillion times.

  9. In 2005 at the Toronto International Film Festival I caught a documentary about Orson Welles' time in Spain called The Well, or Brunnen by Kristian Petri.

    I'm not sure there was enough in the film to make it that worthwhile but it did have some interesting bits.  It showed Welles' in his Ronda villa, scenes with him eating this local dish which was essentially a big bowl of lard (no wonder he was so big!) and his friendship with a famous bullfighter, Antonio Ordonez.

    And the story goes that Welles' cremated remains were taken to Spain and placed in a well in Ordonez' garden.  Hence the title of this film.

    Flash forward a year or so and I happened to be in Seville, Spain which is not far from Ronda.  And I decided to go on a pilgrimage there.  Lovely drive and Ronda sits on top of a mountain with beautiful views.  There is a street named after Welles just behind the bullring.

    When we arrived my wife was desperate for a washroom so we went in the first bar/restaurant we could find.  I had occasion to ask the owner if he knew where Orson Welles was buried.  He did.  He knew Antonio Ordonez quite well.  Ordonez was long dead at this point and his ranch was now owned by someone else.  Anyway he was able to give me directions out of town and told me to look for a small bar and store next to the ranch.

    We headed out and were able to find the ranch and lo and behold there was this little well in the front garden under a very nice tree.  I took some photos and we headed back to Ronda for the real tourist part of our trip.

    I asked many other locals who we met in Ronda if they knew where Orson Welles was buried.  No one had any idea and had not even heard that he was buried nearby.

    In fact I could find no one else who had even heard of the bullfighter, Antonio Ordonez.  So it just shows how serendipitous my wife's pitstop was when we first arrived.

    • Like 2
  10. Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo (1970) and his The Holy Mountain (1973) gained a certain amount of notoriety on the midnight film circuits in the seventies.

     

    Some found them vulgar and grotesque.  Me for instance.  I didn't particularly care for them.  Though they did have their humorous moments.  They were also a bit of a mess as I recall.

     

    Jodorwosky gave a wild interview for Playboy magazine about the time he was trying to get his Dune off the ground (I would like to see the 2013 documentary chronicling the Dune venture).  It was an outrageous interview and Jodorowsky true to his form was very much into shocking people.  He recounted that when reading the Fantastic Four comic book it conjured up pornographic images for him of sexual acts between Mr. Fantastic the stretchy guy and his wife the Invisible Girl.  Quite a character. 

  11. That's an interesting question. I'm guessing in the films which had these scenes added in post, there may well have been an editor and crew which had no connection to the original production.

    I wonder how someone like Slavko Vorkapich felt about his Hollywood career and begin pigeon-holed as the guy to make up those transitional montages?

    I don't think he had much of a career in film, if any before he left his native Russia.  Still, there was and is much more competition for the top jobs in Hollywood.

  12. He gets around, doesn't he? And they probably were just joking. Every mention of him seems to produce a laugh. I hope he doesn't play the nurse. I see you mentioned the films of Leopoldo Torre Nilsson (oh, excuse me Leopoldo TORre Nilsson). We have to make sure we spell words in accordance with current zeitgeist.

    According to the illustrious imdb Registered Night Nurse IS in fact Tor Johnson's first film.  And they were not joking when they were talking about him having hair in that film.

  13. The only surviving print is at the UCLA Film Archive. It can be screened by appointment.

     

    If you're trying to see every Best Pic nominee, East Lynne (1931) has only one known extant print (again at UCLA), though according to Wikipedia " somehow, bootleg DVD copies exist, minus the final scene." However, no print of Lubitsch's The Patriot (1928) is known to exist. The trailer can be viewed on YouTube:

    I just rewatched this. Lewis Stone is hyped as possessing "Polished Acting Genius", while Neil Hamilton is described as merely "handsome and popular" lol

    Thanks Richard,

    Just watched the trailer for The Patriot.  It featured "special sound effects" no less.  I guess we could go on and on about the loss of these films.

    It didn't take them very long to lose all existing copies of these films, did it.  Ernst Lubitsch and Emil Jannings no less.

    • Like 1
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