Filmgoddess
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Posts posted by Filmgoddess
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What a thoughtful and nice gratuitous response!
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Okay, I'll ask. What exactly is a "new Hispanic Hollywood movie?"
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To me, the most bizarre "couple" in later years was Elizabeth Taylor and Rod Steiger especially since he was in that bald head, big gold chain-wearing, "looks like a retired mafia boss" phase.
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I seriously doubt there was a bed manufactured that could hold them
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I watched COVER GIRL tonight. What a beautiful example of an early color film noir.
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I'm still not sure why anyone gets excited about getting TCM HD. Unless the film was shot in HD, there will be NO difference in the quality of the film. Absolutely none. I have both channels side-by-side and I switch back and forth and there's no difference in picture quality.
The same is true of blu ray vs. standard DVDs. If the film was not restored, all the blu ray will do is let you see every flaw even more clearly.
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I couldn't possibly compare TITANIC (1953) with A NIGHT TO REMEMBER (1958). The great Barbara Stanwyck-Clifton Webb classic doesn't attempt to be a completely accurate depiction of the sinking that night; the Kenneth More film does. TITANIC uses the sinking of the ship to show the stories of a few interesting people on board. It is, for my money, the best drama made about that event (far better than that horrificly anachronistic 1997 version). NIGHT is more along the lines of a docu-drama made almost as a documentary.
I'm guessing TCM is showing one and not the other because the 1953 film won the Best Screenplay (or was it story?) Oscar while I don't recall that A NIGHT TO REMEMBER won any Oscars.
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Overeasy: I mean this with all respect but you don't know much about Danny Kaye! There's a reason that he received NO standing ovation upon getting the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Oscars, a real rarity. He was impossible, no one told him what to do, and he was very disliked.
Danny Kaye gave an overly broad performance in the film because that's what he wanted. He wouldn't have done a thing that the director wanted. He was never capable of a more "nuanced" performance. Look at him in SKOKIE. Egads. It's the worst caricature of a Holocaust survivor on film. That's just what Kaye was ... way too broad, now pure camp, and sadly dated.
I can't put aside Vera-Ellen's health problems because they not only led to her early death but she is very painful to watch not just knowing that but looking at those legs of hers. Her dancing is good but she's not in the same league as dancers like Charisse, Powell, or Miller.
I don't have any idea what you mean by your last paragraph. Obviously. As I said, I like certain things about the film but there are many things that are difficult to watch and which contribute to making it a deeply flawed film. It's one of my least favorite Christmas films.
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Well, that's an automatic "Ignore Member" if I've ever seen one
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I'm not sure how LINCOLN can "surge ahead" when it's been the favorite for months among most of those who predict such things.
By the way, I think the one movie moment that most people will remember long after all of this is over will be Anne Hathaway singing "I Dreamed a Dream" in LES MISERABLES.
I saw the film twice in crowded cinemas of jaded New Yorkers and the audience broke into applause after she sang it. I've never witnessed that before in a cinema.
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Damien Lewis is a fine actor and it's funny that his best known roles -- Band of Brothers and Homeland -- are as Americans! Really, there is far better stuff on TV these days than in the cinema (for the most part).
It's also funny that Andrew Lincoln -- the star of Walking Dead -- is also a Brit!
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Don't you know? Every film is a noir! Or at least from what one reads here and elsewhere. Some people seem to make the case that any little melodrama or crime thriller is a noir. Next they'll tell us that Merchant-Ivory have been making film noirs all these years
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James Bellamy aka Simon Williams. Be Still My heart. I can still hear the gunshot. I was gutted.
Yes, when the old maid shows up wet an shivering ... those were a couple of really great episodes.
Stevens was the lead in LINE OF BEAUTY. It can't compare to the book -- which was incomparable -- but it wasn't bad.
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Winters was sexy for a time albeit in a really cheap, vulgar sort of way.
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When the children of your favorite stars start dying? Or worse, their grandchildren.
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I'm sort of embarassed (okay, not really) to admit that I'm rooting for Dan Stevens to fail. I guess I find it annoying that these actors whose careers are made by TV series leave in the middle without a seeming care for the character they've created or that the fans will be disappointed. It's rather selfish. Now, one can argue that the fans are selfish for wanting him to stay but I beg to differ. There's a long line of these actors who think they're bigger than the show they're on. Remember David Caruso of NYPD Blue? He really hit it big and then left for a big movie career ... that never happened. He ended up back on TV. I like Dan Stevens (he was in a terrific adaptation of Alan Hollinghurts LINE OF BEAUTY) but he seems made for the small screen. I don't see him having the charisma of a big screen star but, perhaps, I'm wrong. He was good in THE HEIRESS, I must admit.
Jeremy Irons, of course, became a film star but he also didn't leave a hit show in the middle of the run. I remember when Rachel Gurney left UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS in the 3rd season, I believe. She had tired of it and didn't think it was going anywhere (this was before it's huge success in the USA). So she left. The writers sent her off on the maiden voyage of the Titanic! It broke viewers hearts. She later said she really regretted leaving.
I must admit I loved what Julian Fellows did to Matthew on Downton. Having that blood trickle down his face at the end was delightful!
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I just don't think there's any comparison between these people who can write little pop dittys. It's not great art. They don't compare to Gershwin or Berlin or Porter yet alone to Mozart, Bach or Wagner.
The standards of the last 40 years have to a level that no on writing music in the 1930s or 40s would have believed. Just about every so-called "tune" sounds the same, same beating bass, same 4/4 time. It's all rather disheartening but as a wise sage once said "all the really great tunes have already been written."
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Mozart wrote his first opera when he was 6. There's just no comparison between this pop people who can "pop" out a 3 minute tune and the great composers who wrote complex, complicated, beautiful works of maturity and grace.
For the record, I worked in the classical industry for over 20 years
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No, publicity had nothing to do with it. People simply liked it; and it's a bigger hit here and internationally than in the UK.
I also love CALL THE MIDWIFE which recently finished Season 1. I'm dearly missing SPOOKS which went off the air after 10 seasons last year. The two-part RESTLESS with Charlotte Rampling and Michael Gambon which my friend Will adapted from his acclaimed novel was terrific.
There's a ton of great stuff from across the pond.
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GOSFORD PARK is brilliant. My favorite Altman film (not hard since I don't care for much of his work). I think I've seen it a dozen times since its release in 2001.
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I've already seen Season 3 and the Christmas special in Scotland. Enjoyed it very much. Two big deaths, both shocking, lots of other great stuff. Very, very enjoyable.
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Infinite: no, all films aren't dated. Some, many performers are timeless. Danny Kaye isn't one of them.
I love Laurel and Hardy and Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. They're all funny; Danny Kaye is just annoying.
You can have the Three Stooges. It's been my experience that the only people who like them are 12 year old boys who have yet to reach puberty.
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james: believe me I knew the Allyson remark was facetious. The day I meet someone who thinks that June Allyson (or Esther Williams or Loretta Young) was a great actress is the day that my mouth drops to the floor and I'm speechless.
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Mr. Stevens thinks he's going on to a bigger career but methinks he's going to disappear like so many others over the years who make it big on a hit TV series and leave mid-stream because they think they're going to be movie stars. Some make it, most end up back on TV if they're lucky.
I think THE HEIRESS is a great play, a much better play than the turgid GOLDEN BOY. But I'm a huge Jamesian so that shouldn't be surprising.
Jessica Chastain is an actress I admire but she was just all wrong for the play. They seemed to think that Catherine Sloper was some sort of feminist hero and missed the whole point of the play (or one of the points): which is that, in the end, she becomes her father. I don't think the producers or the actress really understood what the play was about.
GOOD WILL TO ALL
in General Discussions
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Darkblue: as a card-carrying member of the Academic world I can tell you that your response is hopelessly naive and narrow-minded. In all the various walks of life I've lived in I have never found a more intolerant atmosphere than in the very liberal halls of the academic world.
As with most things in life, they can't be boiled down to pithy comments that serve one's political agenda. They are far more complex.