Filmgoddess

I go back and forth on the question of isolation. While it isn't for me, I do think that it's a good thing (for some) because we live in a time when you no longer have to live in a major metropolitan area to be connected to the larger world. There isn't a movie you can't see or a connection around the world, or a food you can't get or ... well, you get the point. When I was growing up if you didn't live in New York or Chicago or San Francisco or near a major college campus you couldn't see a foreign film. Period. Now you can live in a shack in Wyoming and see a foreign film on your computer or delivered by Netflix. That, to me, is a good thing.

What's even more fascinating about this -- and baffling -- is that most of this stuff (meaning old movies, music, etc.) has never been more available to more people than at this moment and yet there are millions completely uninterested. I just don't get it. As a teacher, I can't tell you how frustrating it is to be confonted with students who are not only completely clueless about anything that occurred before 2005 but also not interested in the least. A few years back I saw the play "The History Boys" by Alan Bennett and then the film. Yes, it's set a few years back and in an English public school so comparing to here is probably not fair. However, I though about showing that film to my kids and realized they probably wouldn't get a single literary reference or film reference or cultural reference in the film. And before some blame teachers and parents hold on. We try. We're just faced with a lot of kids who just don't care what came before them. And as someone well over 50 years old I can't remember a generation as uninterested in the past as this one. From personal experience.

Julie Kavanaugh's masterful biography of Rudolf Nureyev. Washington Post reporter's account of March 30, 1981 "Rawhide Down" -- which is fascinating. Jeffrey Meyer's John Huston bio -- just fair so far.

Very true about Ebert. What an odd creature and inconsistent. It's okay to depict abuse or a horrid rape scene -- according to his reviews it would appear -- as long as there are subtitles. As for Siskel. He lost all credibility when he became so enamored of John Travolta in the wretched SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER that he went out and bought the white suit Travolta wears in the film. That's creepier than anything you'll find in George Romero film.

It's a work of fiction and I'm sorry but if you find a character who speaks in complete Steinbeck sentences in the situation that those characters find themselves in "realistic" then I'm not the one who needs to read up on my history. I'm an English teacher. Have been for 35 years. No one in the Great Depression or anywhere else in the history of the poor spoke in that "high-falutin" way that Steinbeck depicts. Puh-leeze, as the kids say. "Many did speak out and resist." What that has to do with this picture is beyond me. THE GRAPES OF WRATH is a sanctimonious portrayal of a white-washed view of one side of what happened during the Great Depression. Realism is THE BICYCLE THIEF. Wrath is just a sanctified view of history by a crafty Hollywood director at the top of his game. It's not only BORING, it's a bore.

I can't tell you how unbelievably sad I find that statement to be. I'm glad I live in a happier but no less honest world.

Merci beaucoup!

That sounds like a doctrinaire "liberal" to me -- not that there's anything wrong with that! ?:| Politics, religion and big business ... I'd add "slash" unions to the big business part. Both are responsible for so much of our mess.

Just finished watching this. I carved out two hours and was surprised when it was over in 1 hour and 45 minutes. Both TCM's schedule and IMBD list the running time as 2 hours and 2 minutes. A difference of 17 minutes. Odd, they'd both be so off or was this an edited version of the film? I've never seen it before so I have no idea. Curious.

You can't blame the Academy for that but the individual countries that submit the entries each year. If they're picking films to represent their country that are not "represent of what's going on in world cinema" (and what do you actually mean by that?) then only those countries are to blame. Of course, if what you mean are those obscure, weird Asian films being made today well, I doubt must people would want to see that dreck. I don't see how one could argue that films like SECRET IN THEIR EYES or IN A BETTER WORLD are not great foreign films.

Grauitous personal attacks about other poster's parents is really uncalled for. If you actually read what I said, I think 42nd STREET is overrated because it's bad musical. If made as a straight film, it might have been good. The musical performers in the film are woefully bad.

If GONE WITH THE WIND is the greatest film ever made then we're in really big trouble. Talk about too long and too talky and completely unrealistic.

I just disagree. 42rd Street couldn't be more "stagy." And the performances are so wooden they make Keanu Reeves appear animated. And the singing and dancing? Poor Ruby Keeler is a terrible singer and her dancing? Meh. It might have made a good drama but as a muscial it's a joke. Lots of people hate GRAPES OF WRATH. It's so easily parodied because it, and Steinbeck, are so laughable. It's so long and dull and those Fonda speeches are completely unrealistic. It's also so black and white in its depiction of the characters; there is absolutely no gray.

Huh? I didn't need to be in early Rome to know that GLADIATOR was unrealistic; I didn't need to be in prehistoric times to know that ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. is unrealistic .... I didn't ... well you get the point. One didn't have to live through the depression to know that the Tom Joad character is completely unrealistic along with those treacly, overly composed speeches. Puh-leeze.

Try Google. Anyone who claims to be a film buff and hasn't heard of Richard Schickel (especially since I said in my original post who he is) must be .... oh well, I won't go there.

I agree about Dr. Zhivago. But LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is pure cinema.

Rather than just a list why not tell us why you think film is overrated?

I love Joseph Cotten but KING of 1940s movies? Nah. If you go by box office and number of hits the KING of 1940s music would be Bing Crosby. If you go by film classics it would be Cary Grant or James Stewart. Today, he might be the King of Indy films, don't you think?

"It's woefully overrated" said the great film critic Richard Schickel recently in regards to one of my favorite films and, IMHO, one of the greatest films of the 1940s. Which one? THE MALTESE FALCON directed by John Huston. It surprised me. But it also got me to thinking. What recognizably great classics do I think are overreated? Not films that I don't believe are classics or that I don't like. But films that are recognized as classics but that I think are overrated. We sort of had this discussion about THE BANDWAGON -- generally acknowledged as "one of the greatest of all musicals" as Peter Travers or as Robert Osborne said "along with SINGIN IN THE RAIN the two greatest of all musicals" -- in which some thought it was overrated. Name a film(s) that you are think are overrated. I'll start. BONNIE AND CLYDE -- I just don't get it. I watched it (or tried to) again the other night for the first time in years and I just couldn't figure out why it has the reputation it does. 42nd STREET -- a musical? Where all the musical numbers are crammed into the last 10 minutes? Huh? Without the music it might have been a good movie. But a classic musical? Overrated IMHO. THE GRAPES OF WRATH -- who needs sleeping pills? A total bore to me. Overly earnest, too long, dull, preachy, completely unrealistic. Because of it I will never have insomnia.

I only knew it was the restored version because it was mentioned in RO's page one intro. In the body of the schedule where NOTHING SACRED is listed it doesn't say it's a restored version and I would probably have ignored it for that reason. It would be nice if they mentioned stuff like this. I've had the same experience as you where I missed a movie because I thought it was the same bad public domain print and it turned out to be a restored version. Oh, well, nobody's perfect!

Could be but I don't buy DVDs anymore since I consider the price points to be ludicrous (Warner Achive DVDs at $25 plus? LOL). Long live torrenting and file sharing!

Sounds like you have a good provider. I tried the same test and got 19 results for Stanwyck. All the usual suspects except for one THE PURCHASE PRICE which I don't think I've ever seen. The thing I liked best is that under AVAILABLE UNTIL it read .... are you ready .... October 2029. Now, that's planning!

I was flipping through my November guide which arrived yesterday and was excited beyond words to read that TCM will be showing a newly restored print of the classic screwball comedy NOTHING SACRED with Carole Lombard in November. This is terrific news. I had just about given up we'd see a restored print of that film. Are there other films people wish would be restored? I'll start with a few I wish could be cleaned up. Hitchcock's SECRET AGENT and the original MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH. Nicholas Ray's 55 DAYS AT PEKING. THE FILE ON THELMA JORDON Just a few. There are, of course, so many more.

I never thought of Davis as mad in IN THIS OUR LIFE. I just thought she was a beatch.

I would like to see NO MAN OF HER OWN with Barbara Stanwyck and John Lund. If it's ever been shown on TCM I've missed it.