CaveGirl
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Posts posted by CaveGirl
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Not long ago, I mentioned that the Nielsen rating company had contacted me. This is the third year in a row they have asked me to provide information for them. The past two years I did surveys for them about my TV viewing habits.
This year, their initial questions were a bit different. They wanted to know about my listening habits. So it did not surprise me when they contacted me again last week and told me they had a new survey for me, on what sort of local radio broadcasts I listen to each day.
Unlike the surveys that are presented through TCM's Inner Circle, the Nielsen company pays the respondent each step of the way. Every time they sent a new letter it had two crisp one-dollar bills inside. (I can imagine how many of these envelopes are considered junk mail by those receiving them and how many dollars wind up in the trash.) With the completion of the radio survey, ten dollars is issued.
They've called me twice to make sure I've filled out the radio survey correctly and that I have mailed it back to them (this time the return address is in Maryland-- I have sent other ones to Florida and Pennsylvania). I find their representative on the phone to be very courteous. The questions on the surveys do ask about how I spend my leisure time and money, in addition to the programs I listen to on the radio. All the questions are very specific and direct, but I don't find them too intrusive.
I think there is quite a difference between how Nielsen does this and how TCM does it. And I am not saying one is necessarily better than the other. But my experience has been markedly different with both companies in the gathering of consumer information.
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"two crisp one-dollar bills", eh?
Not to ruin your fun, TB but you do know that there is probably no gold in Fort Knox backing up the value of those bills by now, since the vaults haven't been audited since 1974.
If I were you I would ask to be paid in gift certificates to either Movies Unlimited or the TCM catalogues!
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By now, most of us have been aware of the similarities between certain aspects of the films "Mad Love" and "Citizen Kane". Now of course we are not talking about the entire movie plots or characters, but the noted resemblance of Peter Lorre as the bald Gogol and Welles as the elderly Charles Foster Kane, with similar looks.
There is also the resemblance to the Grand Guignol effect of the mansions of both men, and of course who can forget the most outre aspect of both films as seen in the cockatoo scenes.
I mean really, don't both films have a strange hypnotic quality when we see that dang white cockatoo?
Now we can attribute this perhaps in some sense to the participation of famed cinematographer Gregg Toland on both pictures. Maybe he had a thing for shooting lighting off bald pates and got a thrill out of the possibilities of cockatoos waking up an audience, as Welles had once said was his motive for including the freaky shot of the bird, just as Susan Alexander walks out on Kane.
But "Mad Love" is definitely Karl Freund's movie, so it also may just be the German Expressionism bowing its head in Kane, since Toland was only co-cameraman with Chester Lyons also at the helm.
No matter, it still is fun to wonder if "Mad Love" with its fantastical story about a Pygmalion and his Galatea, could have a bit influenced the ideas in "CK" since Kane does try to create a woman worthy of himself also in Susan.
Thinking about how one movie may have even small bits of a homage to another earlier film, keeps me off the streets and out of trouble, so if you can name some others that do the same it would be most appreciated. Remember, the films do not have to be exact duplicates but just have some bit in them which is reminiscent of another earlier film in settings, character looks or dialogue or whatever you like.
The only movie I do not want to hear about is "Xanadu" with Olivia Newton-John! -
Monday May 2, 2016
Main character is an actress on Amazon Prime
A STAR IS BORN with Janet Gaynor
MOLLY AND ME with Gracie Fields
THE PERILS OF PAULINE with Betty Hutton
99 RIVER STREET with Evelyn Keyes
I never saw a Gracie Fields' film till I was out of college since British film stars aren't shown here as much.
I did enjoy seeing her finally in something. Also though TPOP with Hutton is fun, I would kill to see the real serial with Pearl White on TCM sometime.
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Noticed last night on the Directv guide "Frozen" was playing, thought I give it a shot. Movie was fair but the music STINKS! No rhythm or beat - simply dreary. No wonder parents wanted to throw themselves off a 3rd story balcony
SHUT UP!!
Really stinks eh?
I've never seen it but I shall take your astute review to heart and keep not seeing it, Hamradio!
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So, you LITERALLY got sent off to Siberia, HUH?!
(...I take it anything written by Solzhenitsyn wasn't to be found on the shelves of your new base of operation's library, right?!)
Ya know what I like about Alexander, Dargo?
He said besides the "right to know" that people also had "the right not to know, which is more valuable".
I appreciate this philosophy every time someone thinks I want to hear about their gastric problems or bedroom issues with their spouse.
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Uh-huh. Pretty much the coital equivalent of APIAS.
(...aka: "Any Port In A Storm")
I know more about "potables" than "portables", Dargo!
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I taped this this morning and just saw it. I had seen Lina Basquette in the 50's on The $64,000 Challenge and remembered her for her name and the fact that she was a silent film star. Then at the 2011 Festival Marge Champion said that she was her half-sister and mentor when her own career began. I began looking for her films to see her in action. This was my first one and worth the wait.
I was surprised at how good the cinematography was. Most of the film was as clear as any made 20-30 years later and that firey climax was realistic. I saw one last night on an 80's TV show and except for the lack of color in the film you couldn't tell they were 65 years apart.
The story was not what I expected. Although the religious theme was throughout the plot it took a back seat after the "reform the reform schools" idea and old-fashioned love story took root. Instead De Mille let the music do the preaching. The main theme, while a classical piece, has religious wording. "Oh, Sacred Head Now Wounded" refers to Jesus and is used at Good Friday services while the one heard while the couple was on the run is "What Wondrous Love" and what used to be called "a Negro Spiritual". I'll not think of either again without remembering this movie.
The actors were very good and without a lot of the gestures that usually go with silent films. I was impressed with Lina but even more so with Marie Provost who played Mame. The male lead was okay but the villainous guard-one of the Beerys-ran rings around all the men.
DeMille movies always crack me up.
He uses religious themes which allow him to show liberal doses of sinning type behaviour.
Killer way to get around the censors for sure!
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So did an '80's flick called PURPLE HAZE. More so than the Robert Downey Jr./Keifer Sutherland romp 1969.
But speaking of anachronisms, my mother, who was 14 years old in 1940, and had a clear memory pointed this one out to me. I might have caught it myself eventually, but until she mentioned it, I didn't notice...
In the well loved holiday "classic" A CHRISTMAS STORY, which, according to the date stamped on Ralphie's Orphan Annie decoder pin, takes place in 1940...
during the scene in which poor Flick's tongue is stuck to the flagpole, and the view from the classroom window shows both the fire department and then the cops showing up, notice a house across the street from the school's playground has both aluminum storm windows, storm door and aluminum siding , which didn't hit the consumer/home improvement market until AFTER WWII ! in fact also...
The house I spent the first 11 years of my life in was built in 1948, and still had, to my memory, WOODEN storm windows and screen doors until about 1956 0r so when my mother( a single mom at the time) could afford to replace 'em. and STILL had that old asbestos siding most, if not ALL story and 1/2 frame houses of the times had, and still had it when we moved OUT of it in 1963.
Sepiatone
PS CAVEGIRL: Heh! Your mentioning the old MARCEL hair-do in relation to GATSBY reminded me of an old photo my grandmother used to bring out every now and then and have a laugh over of her and her sister, my Aunt Mary, two farm girls from a small mining town, went into the big city of Pittsburgh and got spanking new MARCELS! When they got back to the farm, her brother, my Uncle John, thought it so hilarious he just HAD to take a snapshot! I still have a copy 'round here somewhere...
Sepia, please share the marcelled hair photo sometime!
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Stock film of battleships, steaming on the seas. Stirring music plays over.
JOHN CLEESE (booming): There have been many stirring tales told of the sea, and also some fairly uninteresting ones only marginally connected with it, like this one. (meekly) I'm sorry, this isn't a very good introduction.
Great choice!
I'd listen to anything Basil Fawlty narrated.
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Now I'd like to be classy and say my favorite movie narrator is the great Kim Stanley, as the adult Scout in "To Kill a Mockingbird" but I'd be lying.
My favorite is really Ed MacMahon as the narrator of the classic "Daughter of Horror" [aka "Dementia"] which if you don't remember is the film being shown at the movie theatre, in "The Blob" with Steve McQueen.
Who do you enjoy most as a narrator?
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I love your review Andrea.
I first saw this movie a few years ago and it freaked me out but I could not take my eyes away from the screen.
Me too, Columbo Fan!
I love all Peter Weir films, particularly that short one made for Australian tv, called "The Plumber".
If you've ever had a handyman in your home who is taking forever to finish the work, you should see this film!
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I want to chastize myself for admittedly somewhat desecrating the original meaning of "life imitating art" which is a bit more about that, for example one seeing a Turner landscape in an oil, would then view a real landscape influenced by the way it was painted.
So it is not just about the same storyline being recreated.
Just wanted to clear up that both ideas work for me in this post.
Mea culpa!
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You are correct that both scenarios of the climbers and Stella's husband are similar in that both were encase in ice. The "waiting for the glacier to move" is what got my attention.
Snookums, I just find that bit about both bodies being able to be seen through the ice, sounds like something out of a Poe story.
I shall have to reread the original story. The bit in the AHP episode where the naive wife looks through the crystal trench to see the young face of her hubby and then spots the locket, is unbelievably sad. Particularly since she is now aged and has refused to marry the faithful suitor for lo those many years, thinking that she had the perfect husband and marriage.
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Slayton, totally enjoyed your take and comments on Mister Ryan!
I remember once that someone said he had a face that looked like a four-wheeler had run over it, which made him look more tough.
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Those are 2 different incidents, the climbers were buried in an avalanche and Stella's husband fell into a crevasse which are quite deep. She must had a l-o-n-g wait for the glacier to move. His name wouldn't be Ötzi?
Far as life imitating art, the politics / big brother watching you in "Babylon 5" is coming true.
Babylon 5
OMG, are you trying to put me in a home, Hamradio?
Must we quibble that the one guy was in the Alps and the other was in the Himalayas, when my point was that both were found years later preserved in ice, and both had wives who have aged yet both of the lost mountaineers seemingly has been preserved in the ice at a younger age and appearance.
Don't make me come beat on you with a dvd copy of Babylon 5.
Life imitating art, does not have to have every exact element of the original story to be the same, just the most salient points for clarification if anyone else decides to nitpick, and then I will smack them with a mountain goat's wet goatee.
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I doubt this fits...
But the other day I watched a rerun of "Law and Order: SVU" in which a kid shot and crippled by one of the squad was named YUSEF.
About three or so minutes after the episode ended, I signed into a music forum I bleong to and from another member's thread learned of the death of long time jazz saxophone giant YUSEF LATEEF!
Sepiatone
Well, that kinda fits in a sort of offshoot way, Sepia!
A man I worked with, said he once started thinking about the song "Hillbilly Heaven" and the next thing he heard on the tv, was that Tex Ritter had died.
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is it me or does dorothy comingore sound like judy holiday.
You mean "screechy" and "whiny"?
Nah, I think she sounds more like that chick Jack Lemmon picks up at the bar in "The Apartment". Bizarrely her name is Hope Holiday. But I think Judy spelled her last name with two "l's.
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Been there, done that.
The Festival was great except for some self-professed "experts" who tried to countermand the TCM agenda.
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why is Kane so fixated on turning Susan Alexander into an opera singer, when it's so obvious that she does not have the voice or stage presence necessary for such a demanding career?
Okay, either he is totally smitten after dealing with Ruth Warrick, the society dame and wants an easier type chick OR the writers had to make a parallel between that story and Hearst's trysts with Marion Davies.
He did want her to make more high class film fare than the comedies she was known for, so the comparison might be apt.
We know it is based on Davies since the word "Rosebud" was used in the script and that was Hearst's pet name for an unmentionable body part.
Don't ask!
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Good eye, CG. Yeah, there's definitely some Klaus in Gollum there, too.
Thanks. Dar!
I am the arbiter of male beauty for sure. Can't say I've ever found Kinski attractive though. But Buscemi is so cute.
Miss Wonderly and I can never go out bar hopping, since we'd be fighting over the same Buscemi-like guys!
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My very flattering portrait of the costar of RAUL JULIA in KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN:
an oval with eyebrows drawn together in a frown of pain, on top a receding hairline.
That's probably why he was picked for the Addams role since he can look like a cartoon figure.
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Okay, I gotta admit I never got into those Peter Jackson "Middle Earth" flicks, BUT from just being a casual observer of 'em and knowing and seeing a few of the characters in 'em over the years...well...does THIS little guy HERE remind anyone of a certain actor???....
Uh, Klaus Kinski?
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... describing Steve Buscemi?
Here's Buscemi for you!:
a shriveled dwarf of a man, all skin and bones, with a head that looks like a skull with a rat's nest on top, with protruding eyes and a mouthful of rodent teeth.
Definitely not the most beautiful son of Brooklyn.
I kinda think he is adorable!
Much more attractive than Ben Affleck.
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Maltin's gonna be there?
I'll have to miss since I have some very important shelf paper to be up in my kitchen cabinets.
I hope all who go enjoy themselves!
I Just Watched...
in General Discussions
Posted
I just finished reading a book by a criminologist called "Why We Love Serial Killers" which has a whole chapter on what he calls "mob panic". The implication is that whether a person or situation is really dangerous, if the powers that be which include the police, the authorities and the media all conspire to make the story seem ultra-dangerous for the community, that people in the area will act up instantly and participate in mob mentality. I agree with you in essence, Miss Wonderly that it seems a bit insane that this could happen in a two hour window, but I also agree with Lorna that things like this can get stirred up quickly and begin to have a life of their own.
Maybe I will be moving to Canada!