CaveGirl
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Posts posted by CaveGirl
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My brother was also a member of the NRA, and we never did see eye to eye on the subject, but none of Heston's guns, nor his stand on the issue of gun ownership/rights/control would have any detrimental effect on my opinion of him as an actor, nor dim my level of admiration or how much I may like any of his movies.
I am quite capable of seperating an actor's/actress's private life and politics from their body of professional work.
I still like old Shirley Temple movies in spite of her right-wing leanings
Same with JOHN WAYNE
BOB HOPE
BUDDY EBSEN
And any others of that bent.
Sepiatone
Uh, is this prompted by that TCM televised bit with Heston's son saying he hit the jackpot with who he got as a father, Sepia?
I mean Heston's okay but I think I would have preferred Ward Cleaver or maybe Jim Anderson.
Sure Chuck looked better in a toga but I bet he would not have called me Kitten or helped me dress my Barbie.
Just saying...
I am glad to know you will still like me though, Sepia if I am packing heat.
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Nice w
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When 20th Century Fox cast Alexander Knox in the title role of WILSON, he was not a movie star and in fact while he would appear in many motion pictures, he never did quite reach the upper ranks of stardom. He had been born in Canada, worked in U.S. theatrical productions and then began making movies in England. After Fox mogul Darryl Zanuck saw him on stage in Broadway in the early 40s, Zanuck knew he'd be the perfect choice to play President Woodrow Wilson in a huge biopic the studio was planning. And Knox certainly was perfect in the part-- he earned a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination. But Knox's first love, before acting, was writing. From the 1930s to the 1970s, Knox authored several bestselling adventure novels, and he also worked on film scripts. He co-wrote SISTER KENNY, in which he starred with Rosalind Russell; and he also had a hand in the screenplay for the comedy-drama THE JUDGE STEPS OUT, which paired him with Ann Sothern. He was blacklisted in the 50s and returned to England where he continued to perform in British films and other European productions. In later years, he was back in Hollywood as a highly esteemed character actor. He turned up in MGM's GORKY PARK, made in 1983, as The General.
Alexander Knox present and accounted for..!
Nice write-up on Knox, TB. Though he is more famous for his roles playing men of importance, my favorite of his parts onscreen is in the late 1940's film, "The Sign of the Ram". As you know, this is the film wherein Susan Peters, the actress who was paralyzed in a hunting accident, returned to play the incredibly manipulative and domineering wheelchair bound wife of Knox, who is buffaloed by her seemingly sweet ways, whilst she fractures the family unit most indubitably. The film is not unlike "Queen Bee" with Joan Crawford but more insidious being that Peters is more diabolical and undetectable in her machinations. With great performances also by Peggy Ann Garner and Phyllis Thaxter, this is a Knox role which is not as well known but very impressive.
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I have always wanted to visit Forest Lawn. I mean it's iconic, is it not?
I should put it in my will so even if I miss it while alive I can get a plot there.
Thanks for all the info!
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TB, isn't "Crossfire" based on a book in which the victim is homosexual instead of Jewish.
I seem to remember them changing the intent of the murder into one of anti-semitism instead of anti-gay if I recall correctly.
Seems like the book had the word "Foxhole" or something in it.
Great post as usual!
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Has anyone mentioned that Elaine May film, "A New Leaf" with Matthau?
Sorry I'm in a rush and have no time to check the thread. It is deadly funny by the way!
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Thanks all for the great answers in this thread!
Anyone here into the Alan Smithee type credit on a film?
Check this out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Smithee-
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There's the title of a dark Western, or something lurking in there...
The bits of occasional skin-colored 60's culture bother me a lot less than the destruction of that guitar did - I hate the willful destruction of musical instruments (even badly played bagpipes... hmm good name for a band, that...). I never could work out quite why Hemmings dives headlong into the mass bundle for it's remains, finally winning his prize in a very half-hearted race out of the club, only to immediately discard it in the street a moment later. There's probably some deep symbolic meaning in there, but it's over my head.
Talking of the club, that reminds me of several small music haunts in London that you'd get to via an obscure looking side door, or alleyway - right down to the matt black walls with paintings on. The only thing not true to life, was that you could see more than 3 feet in front of you - those places were typically full of tobacco (and possibly other stuff) smoke & not brightly lit for color filming...
Limey, I get what you mean about the guitar as it is sad to see perhaps a Stratocaster or whatever it was destroyed.
In humor, which is not what this movie was about, but still I want to say this, W.C. Fields said that things that break are not funny, but things which bend are. I concur with his assessment and for that reason do not find total destruction of objects as funny, unless of course a whole house is destroyed as it falls on Buster Keaton. Do they still have the cool bar at the Black Lion in London?
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exactly, so many answers if needed. I definitely see the body as "real" and the sequence of events adds up: while he is out someone is removing any evidence from his loft, then while he is out again "they" realize they need to remove the body which wasn't important until they realized he knew (when they found the blow up). Its a pretty neat subplot to explore but inconsequential over all because what his forgetting the camera that night reveals is that for a moment he had a bit of humanity that wasn't caught up in his quest for fame and accolades. Believe-able or not its up to individuals to decide.
Not to say Antonioni cared anything about the Kennedy assassination, but the body on the grass did remind me of a lot of the many blowup photos of the grassy knoll with a supposed gunman and his gun. Wonder if Antonioni was thinking of that at all with this scenario?
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Me too.I could have sworn I heard the tennis ball and rackets softly thudding even before Hemmings throws the imaginary ball back to the players.
But apparently - according to my husband and Sister Mary Rose - the court is silent until the bemused photographer returns the ball.
Golly gosh, Miss Wonderly are you and I both enroute to the loony bin?
And I wonder if they play tennis there?
Just think, we won't even need rackets or balls.
There's an opening for a joke there. Too bad Dargo is not here today.
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I'm a hetero man, but even I think Alain Delon was a purty fella.
I'm a hetero man, but even I think Alain Delon was a purty fella.
He was awful purty I gotta agree, Lawrence but recent pictures have shown his looks getting a big scary.
Not as bad as Jean-Michael Vincent at a low point, or how Brigitte Bardot looks now, but check out Delon's teeth in recent pictures.
The guy was played the handsome Jorges, in last nite's Bunuel film "Viridiana" was also a looker but now looks like another human being entirely. Sorry I have this sick impulse to check out old and current photos on Google.
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Well, that deserves a big MWAH!
By the way, Richard could fit into my category also, Lawrence.
Merci!
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Not to be a copycat, but I'll start with Stuart Whitman.
Sure I could have begun with someone more famous but why?
Next!
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Oh, I disagree, Sepiatone. The talk show host's sidekick was named "Ed", and his producer was played in the movie by Fred DeCordova, who was Carson's actual producer. He was supposed to be Carson, at least initially. One major difference was the fictional show was still in Scorsese's beloved NYC, whereas Johnny had been in Burbank for many years by the time this movie came out.
You say you don't really know if Carson was approached, but I've seen and heard that from many, many different sources, including Ben M. in his introduction for the film. My memory's fuzzy on where else that's been reported, but it's a story that's been circulated practically since the movie's release.
(But okay, yes, they didn't literally call the character "Johnny Carson" in the movie, like they called Dean Martin "Dino" in KISS ME, STUPID, which is why I added the caveat "more or less")
Yes, Ben did mention that Carson was approached and demurred. I am glad it was Jerry since I think Carson would have played it for laughs but Jerry unearthed a rather reptilian side to the host types, that was fascinating to watch.
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I agree it was a helpful site and I used it occasionally to reference things. But its pages were often slow to load. And they only had information for two weeks. I like to see schedules a month or two in advance.
Gee, too bad there is not a site which shows advance schedules like three months in advance so I can plan my vacations in Europe better! Nothing worse than finding out TCM is showing the restored "King Kong" with the spider pit sequence restored and I'm stuck in the Vatican gift shop.
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I think I've watched too many movies since last nite while watching "Blow Up" for like the 15th time I started hearing tennis balls being hit in the early scenes where no one was at the tennis court, and I also heard the lens clicking sound during many of the scenes where Hemmings was not even using a camera.
Hallucinations or just mental anemia?
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I know some people might respond with, 'Which one?', but there's something that just nags at me whenever I watch it, or consider it in depth. And that is, here's this photographer, who has a camera in reach all the time. Everywhere he goes. And then, going out to verify a murder, one of the most vital events in his sorry life, he takes no camera with him to verify it with a clear hard close-up. Huh? Of course, you could say he was shocked out of his habits, confronted with such starkly real thing, him existing so much in a sphere of pretense and image. And from a purely functional standpoint, you could also say, 'Simple, stupid, if he takes a picture of the corpse, then the whole thing about what is real and what is imaginary, and how do you establish a fact, and the irony of needing an image to verify reality is made pointless (No delay, no play).' I know, I know. But still. . . .
And how about Sarah Miles? She outclasses everyone else in the movie. She doesn't have much time on screen, or much to say, but with a few deft moves and glances, she tells us all we need to know about her character.
Maybe he did not have high intensity film for night shots?
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Well, not to try and pre-influence (if there wasn't such a word before, there is now) anyone's opinion of this thing before they've seen it, but I'll say here and now that I loathed Kiss Me Stupid. I usually like Billy Wilder fare, but this was as stupid as its eponymous title.
Poor Kim Novak, why did Billy (because shirley it wasn't her idea ) make her talk in the dumb semi-baritone (for a woman) voice? Not funny. I felt the whole role was somehow beneath the lovely Kim's dignity.
In fact, the entire film smacks of that awkward mid-60s American idea of comedy, with really obvious and unfunny jokes (mostly sex jokes) , heavy mugging into the camera, and just in general, very dumb schtick on the part of the stars involved. For me there's nothing much in filmdom less funny than these circa 1962 -68 "comedies".
If I'd read this before I watched last nite, Miss W. I might have been "pre-influenced" but even not having been I got so far into it and believe it or not fell asleep. I apologize to Billy Wilder but I may have had too much Gaelic brew beforehand. I did wake up for the epilogue and then stayed up to watch the next two condemned flicks.
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speedy...do you mean the beginning of the film after the opening credits? Because that opening scene - which does include the credits, but nobody's watching the credits, they're watching the shot - is very famous for its long take, the action with the cars, and the opening music theme.
I too love this film. I agree, the seediness of the crummy Mexican town, Marlene Dietrich's performance, and the whole mood and atmosphere of Touch of Evil are great fun.
Poor Janet Leigh ! How come her husband, who claims to adore her, is always leaving her somewhere? I laughed out loud at your comment, "Janet Leigh needs to stay out of motels."
Yeah, she always has bad luck in old out-of-the way motels !
That motel scene in the Orsen Welles film is priceless.
"I want to watch."
Having always seen this film with the opening credits over the long take, and then seeing it unencumbered by such distractions, it is a revelation, ain't it, Miss Wonderly? I like films set in motels or trailer courts so this is a favorite!
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What a disappointing night (3-17) for commentary on "condemned" films. Sister Rose is so dismissive its embarrassing that TCM allows her to share her simplistic views.
I thoroughly enjoyed "Kiss Me Stupid" which has to be the clearest pre-cursor to a Seth Rogan comedic style I have ever seen. And the self deprecating Dean Martin as well as Kim Novak's role were stellar to say the least. Sister Rose? She sums it up as lacking in story. How quaint! Yes, we know you have no sense of humor Sis.
Next up was Blow Up. A landmark of cinema to anyone with a head on their shoulders and an appreciation for art. Sister Rose says she was "unmoved." It was male centric (huh? funny term) and sex obsessed. I couldn't disagree more. It highlights misogyny and includes many uncomfortable sexual scenes that leave the viewer unsettled to say the least. Sister Rose says the film is centered in and can't get out of the 60's but she is viewing it from a post- feminist, corporate hollywood lens. She has no idea how a viewer in the 60's saw it.
Perhaps its because she misses the point again and again that she can't understand Antonioni or Bunuel, let alone Billy Wilder!
Blow Up introduces us to Thomas, an arrogant, albeit attractive hack and his opportunistic, hollow little world.
He can't connect with women and when he does it turns out she has a dark secret. He can't find fulfillment in his work so he pursues more and more exploitative "art". He struggles through what do with his discovery of a murder and we imagine the story may get interesting and we may learn of a hidden plot. But no, this is a dystopic, a-moral, egotistical world full of corruption and malaise. Thomas eventually returns to the scene of the crime but upon discovering the corpse is gone, he is deflated because he didn't get his shot.
The mime troupe returns and enacts a game of tennis. They frame the story. At the beginning they seem completely arbitrary. By the end their re-appearance symbolizes Thomas' "play- acting"and his inability to do anything but go through the motions: of being a photographer, an artist, a lover. When he agrees to pretend to throw the tennis ball back to the players we can hope that he may finally realize why he is so unfulfilled.
Sister Rose, all I can say is- take some cues from art critic Sister Wendy. Try to imagine what it is like to enjoy life!
Museumgoer, your post said everything I was going to say about Sister Rose's myopia concerning "Blow Up". The dig at Antonioni also made me laugh, and her comments about the male-centric issue seemed off the wall. It is so obvious that Antonioni is trying to show the malaise of the main character and how the mystery of the image from the park, finally rivets his interest as nothing else before ever has since he leads a mostly empty life. I think Antonioni was saying that the photographic image is always distorted and one must be aware of that in the film for not only the characters but the viewers. Oh, well at least Sister did not critique the music of the Yardbirds, with Beck, Page and Keith Relf being dissed too! I had to laugh when you mentioned Sister Wendy since I agree wholeheartedly that she has a real depth in her reviews of art and not just from relating to Catholic dogma.
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She pretty much summarized the entire movie in the intro. I would think a first-time viewer might want to have some of the plot kept secret.
C'mon, just cuz someone mentions pedophilia, cross dressing, sexual sublimation, menage a trois, hypocrisy, religious mania, and a few other foibles certainly does not ruin a film for a new viewer.
Does it?
Uh, maybe she wanted to scare off viewers from watching to save their souls.
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Watched Installment #3 of the Condemned Festival with Sister Rose expostulating about Bunuel's "Viridiana". Though on the surface Sister appears to be an iconoclastic rebel in taking umbrage at the LOD's stand on the on the film as blasphemous by praising "Viridiana" for exposing the hypocrisy of some religious benefactors, methinks though that Sister has missed the boat entirely in understanding Bunuel's point. He does not ostensibly hold Viridiana up as a symbolic figure to be emulated but as a bit of a fool to be pitied.
Sister seems to see only the literal story that is topside but misses completely the subversive undertones of sordid complacency indicated by the child Rita's rope handles, the black bull she dreams about, Viridiana's repulsion at the cow udders, and other connections to her amorous uncle's exploits, and just like Sister Rose it seems Viridiana sleepwalks through life.Bunuel shows even the peasants' more rational acknowledgement of life in dialogue wherein they call Viridiana a "saint" but also "a little nutty".Did Sister Rose not note at the end, Viridiana's preening gestures at the mirror in anticipation of presenting herself at the now attractive Jorge's door, in an obvious acceptance of continued assaults on her virtue? She then joins her co-morbid devotee to Jorges, the maid Ramona, in his room to join in the card game. It appears Bunuel is not praising sanctimonious do-gooders, but rather vilifying their efforts as wasted. Sister Rose sees this film instead as a paean to to charity instead of an expose to its misguided futility.-
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This movie was so reviled on its original release date that I cannot wait to see it tonite.
Previously I have only seen bits and pieces, so don't forget to watch and see if the Legion of Decency was finally right about something.
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So far, this is the only movie by that director I have seen. I am more familiar with Fellini as far as Italian films are concerned.
I know Sweedish movies more than any other European country.
As for Miss Marple movies, funny you should mention this.
There is an actor in Blow Up who appeared in a lot of Miss Marple mysteries opposite Joan Hickson as her nephew. I think his appearance in this movie plus the photographed murder are what led me astray.
I`ll have to watch it again when it airs as part of the festival to see what I can make of it.
The actor in question is John Castle.
Well, we all know how some directors like to mix it up, and do drama and then comedy and then action and then who knows. I was thinking about "Blow Up" and its ending while watching the Lewis films, since he sometimes has a bit of a surrealistic quality to his oeuvre also, GPF. I always just thought that "BU" was about that people think they see things sometimes that did not really exist and that Antonioni brought the audience into the same mystery by making us wonder if we had seen the dead body on the original negatives that Hemmings was printing up daily. Thanks for introducing me to John Castle!
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Yeah, I already knew the word "s-t-u-d" was on Mr. Otto Censor's list of "bad ones", CG.
(...'cause I was kiddin' a few of the Canadians around here a while back, and when I called their new PM "a little s-t-u-d muffin", I discovered four of these things here---> * instead of the letters I typed in after it posted)
I had no idea that Sister Rose had already become a moderator here, Dargo!
I Just Watched...
in General Discussions
Posted
"A Quiet Place in the Country" with Franco Nero and Vanessa Redgrave.
Wow, far out!
This film had me wondering if Sister Rose would agree that the LOD should ban it for even the ghosts were nude in it and cavorting around in the all-together. Franco was not in his right mind mostly during his artistic pursuits and Vanessa looked fab, and there was blood and paint and nice Venetian settings and the bit with the two-way mirror and the Countess and her daughter, Vanda participating in some rather outre affairs was a bit much but all in all it was rather interesting. Psychedelic effects notwithstanding, it was an eye-opener to be sure which is hard to do after 3:00am in the morning.
Anyone else watch?