CaveGirl
-
Posts
6,085 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
12
Posts posted by CaveGirl
-
-
I feel terrible that I forgot Antoine's birthday so I want to wish him a very happy 88th birthday!
Can you believe that he is 88 and still around? Amazing and what is also amazing are all his great performances on film like in stuff like "Shake, Rattle and Roll", "The Girl Can't Help It", "Jamboree" and "The Big Beat".On top of that I love the way he turns a single syllable word like "thrill" into two syllables, as in "the-rill". That takes talent!
He turned 88 on February 26 and was born in 1928. So glad he is still with us.
Any other fans here?
-
Trust me here, Speedy. You DID find Sandy Dennis, with her nasality little whiny voice, "annoying" in almost every movie you ever saw her in!
(...sorry...I guess I was projecting here, huh)
C'mon Dargo, I bet you just loved her in "Up the Down Staircase". You told me that you wished she had been your homeroom teacher!
-
1
-
-
And you can see him in the opening to High School Confidential!, which is a hilarious movie.
Don't forget that besides Jerry L. Lewis, we also had John Drew Barrymore acting up a storm. And who doesn't want Mamie Van Doren in any movie with her famed bullet brassiere?
-
Is this one better?
Yep, that looks a lot more like Jerry!
-
For some reason, I always liked Barry Fitzgerald's brother Arthur Shields much more.
He was a bit more devilish I think.
-
While I don't know which version will air tonight, I can say that the last time I saw the film on TCM it was the original ending. At least it was the ending as described on Wikipedia--I will assume that that was the original ending.
I would have to think that if this film is part of a series on "Condemned" film, then they'd have to show the original. I believe its only been ten years or so that the original Baby Face footage has even been around to restore and air. It was locked away in a vault for years, so only the "cleaned up" version was circulating.
That's great to know. I just assumed that many original endings had been lost so won't be in the televised ones unless they had been restored with found footage, or it was a film which ignored the code and was released as is, like TMIB. Thanks, SR!
By the way, the Legion of Decency was founded in 1934 by American Bishops [no women!] to ostensibly have control over the opinions of followers on films the LOD found objectionable, and to keep Catholics from attending thereby having a bit of a hammerlock on studios who went against the standards by keeping ticket sales low. The ratings were guided by the treatment of various subjects on screen rather than by any artistic or overall content or meaning. The film could be condemned if it had "whole or partial nudity" [which knocks out the Pieta!] or "immoral behaviour, actual or suggested" [ which would cause the Bible to be condemned for mentioning Mary Magdalen]. I think in 1965, the LOD gave the highly serious and meaningful film "The Pawnbroker" a C-rating for the brief showing of an upper female body part. By 1966, realizing perhaps that they had lost all control of most people, the LOD became the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures and supported the Motion Picture Association of America from 1968 to 1971, at which time they parted ways. In the 1960's, when the Legion had condemned films like Polanski's "Knife in the Water" and Bergman's "The Silence" which they said was "vulgar" and "insulting to mature audiences" and "dangerously close to pornography" they began the descent to their nadir of influence worldwide.
-
1
-
-
I will grant you that during OSCAR month SVENGOOLIE and indeed any other programming on other channels is a welcome alternative to the banal programming on TCM, but for a steady diet, come on. Isn't SVENGOOLIE the classic horror film program for people that hate classic horror films? That's the way I view it. Mocking the films, cutting the films, cutting into the films, superimposing his visage over characters faces while the film is in progress may endear him to the sophomoric fan who giggles incessantly over bathroom humor, but it doesn't endear him to serious fans of the classic horror film genre who love these films. I don't much mind his informative breaks where he talks about the cast or gives some historical info, sort of a bloated Robert Osborne in Goth, but the humor is trite, old, and for the most part bad. I know this shtick is his selling point, but he doesn't even need to show the films for that. Let METV give him a half hour or hour where he can prance around the sound stage in his getup making a total **** out of himself and his fans will eat it up. Most if not all of the films he shows are already available on DVD so they are readily available to anyone who really wants to see them. Believe me Sven's real fans don't turn in to watch the films, they turn in to watch a fat clown make a fool of himself every week and get pelted by rubber chickens. That's no way to honor these films and the performers who starred in them.
C'mon don't sugar coat it, Infinite, tell us what you really think!
-
2
-
-
Running concurrently was this:
Incredibly, this lasted until 1968 (note Hope's mod sidekick "Super-Hip"):
Now this looks exciting:
Edd Kookie Byrnes was cute but then that was only after he had his nose job!
-
1
-
-
I find it interesting that DC Comics had a Jerry Lewis series that ran from 1957 to 1971 (it was the follow up to a Martin and Lewis comic book that ended with their breakup). Did anyone read them, and did they have good stories?
DC did a really bad job of caricaturing Jerry in this cover!
-
Are they going to show the original unedited versions of these films ?
I saw Baby Face (1933), and it was with the phony slapped on ending. Nothing like what I had read. I know, all those pre codes had to be recut to be able to be aired after the code. But, which versions are going to be shown this month ? Does anyone know ?
I got the impression that they are showing the expurgated versions only but maybe I'm wrong.
I would kill to see the unexpurgated ones, but I won't hold my breath, GGG.
-
I've always liked Van Johnson although it seems sometimes he gets a rap for getting roles during the Big One, due to many major male stars being inducted and unavailable.
But I think that kind of thinking does him a disservice. He is quite appealing in many different kinds of roles and always entertaining.
As a talk show guest he also was an interesting man to hear and wasn't he famous for always wearing the red socks?
Thanks for recognizing him, Miss Wonderly!
-
1
-
-
Thanks, Holden for spotlighting the schedule. All I know is, that I went through my mailed copy and marked with a red highlighter all the films I wanted to remember to watch and there were scads of really old and obscure films I'd not seen and I am THRILLED!
Thanks TCM for raiding the vaults! -
Glenn Close won a Tony award 20 years ago as Norma Desmond in the musical Sunset Boulevard and is appearing in London this year in a semi-staged revival. It'll mark Close's West End debut. Maybe the movie version is not totally dead. in the water like Joe Gillis?
Norma got a reprieve and went on the road as a gossip columnist for the E-Channel on tv.
-
Dark Eyes - (7/10) - Russian-Italian co-production from 1987 that finds two older men, one Italian, the other Russian, talking in the empty dining hall of a slow ocean liner. The Italian tells his story in flashback, as we see him fight with his rich wife, which sends him to a health spa to recuperate, where he meets a bored, young and beautiful Russian woman who is herself unhappily married. After many overtures toward a romance, the Russian wife flees back home, and the Italian follows her, ostensibly on business, but truly in hopes of sparking the romance further.
The film is gorgeously photographed, and much attention is paid to costume and set design, as well as delicate color schemes. Marcello Mastroianni received his final of three Best Actor Oscar nominations for this, and he's wonderful as usual. Silvano Mangano plays his wife, and Marthe Keller appears as a family friend. I wasn't familiar with the Russian leads, Elena Safonova and Vsevolod Larionov, but they are fine as well. The story drags a bit in places, and lengthy passages of Russian without subtitles started to detract after a while (I'm not sure if this was the fault of the print I watched, or if it was intentional, to show the language barrier faced by Mastroianni's character). Directed by Nikita Mikhalkov.
I've always liked Silvana Mangano since I saw her in "Bitter Rice" but I've never seen this film. Your review makes me really want to so thanks for sharing, Lawrence!
-
Hitchcock's "Lifeboat" (1944) and "Rope" (1948)--Both films are almost all talk.
Excellent choices, thanks, FL!
I just realized "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" could be an all singing film to be sure.
-
1
-
-
OK, I get it. Nothing happens. People JUST talk
Kind of like here, DGF!
-
My favorite film is The Petrified Forest with Leslie Howard, Bette Davis and Bogart. Ok, this isn't only people sitting around and discussing the world but over 80% of it is just that. The characters all have different backgrounds, life changing events and stories and I can listen to the dialog of that film over and over again. Yea, the movie runs like a stage play (which of course it was based on with Howard and Bogart recreating their hit Broadway performances) but that doesn't matter to me since it these exchanges that make the film for me.
Right on, James that is what I meant. A lot of films in the 1930's are accused of just being staged plays on film, but often that does not bother me either. TPF is a great film!
-
1
-
-
As every good [and bad] Catholic knows, if one wants to find fodder for a fun film, then one need only look to the Index of Forbidden Books to find a tale that would make a great film.
The legend also it that the Vatican has the largest collection of pornography in the world in their library being that they would confiscate it and then add it to their domain. If true, I wonder if Russ Meyer ever availed himself of their library for new ideas? But I digress.
Tonight TCM begins the Condemned series of films banned by the Vatican, with I think "The Story of Temple Drake". I am very curious what Sister Rose Pacatte will be saying since she seems to already have a non-appreciative attitude toward vintage films, in the interview below calling the films in the series to be "old" and "not very good" anyway.
This opinion might be at odds with those of many film buffs who appreciate vintage films and there are many classics on the list of condemned films to be sure. But I will leave it to others to dispute or agree with the good sister after one is privy to her remarks.
I know I shall be watching all the films tonight with her comments, but will you?
For some reason these addresses down below will not pop up [Vatican conspiracy?], so just put the following in as a Google search and the article comes up:
catholic philly sister rose tcm
‘Condemned’ movie series to be featured in March on TCM - Catholic Philly
-
Friday March 4, 2016
John Garfield’s 103rd birthday on TCM
THEY MADE ME A CRIMINAL with Claude Rains
DESTINATION TOKYO with Cary Grant
NOBODY LIVES FOREVER with Geraldine Fitzgerald
AIR FORCE with Gig Young
DANGEROUSLY THEY LIVE with Nancy Coleman
THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE with Lana Turner
I always liked Julius Garfein or whatever his real name is. I credit that with why I also like Peter Falk so much since they so remind me of each other. Thanks for the list, TB!
-
2
-
-
Of what type? Films with no singing or dancing? That category encompasses all non-musicals. And this is the best of ALL of these films?
Sorry for being so cryptic, Down.
And yes, for me "MDWA" is the best all-talking film. Now you may have a difference of opinion here and I would like to hear your favorite all-talking film, with no other qualities to report on.
Or you could do something like, an all surfing film, or an all tap dancing one or whatever.
-
Don't forget Gary's first big hit, which reached No. 1 on the Billboard pop chart in 1965!
I saw Gary Lewis at an oldies show last year. Never thought he could sing but the crowd loved him because he was so thrilled to be performing it seemed. He told a funny story about Jerry. Gary said a young journalist was interviewing him and said "I love your father's music!" Gary said "What song do you mean for example?" and the girl said "Great Balls of Fire". Gary said he told Jerry about it and Jerry said "I guess I need to be accompanying myself on piano more."
-
2
-
-
WAIT! Are you tellin' me here I COULD have maybe ALREADY enjoyed a nice dish of steamed shellfish after YOU mentioned it earlier if ONLY I had seen it in THAT thread, GPF???
(...goes to show I need to read more of these things around here, I guess)
Dargo, you should only eat oysters in months without an "o" and snails in months without an "s", or an "e" for escargots.
Not doing so could explain any dyspepsia.
-
2
-
-
I sure hope Rinty had lush accommodations in his retirement years after making all that money for his humans,TB.
-
But that movie came way before the Doris Day image of being "virginal".
As Oscar Levant said "I knew Doris before she was a virgin."
Sister Rose and Revisionist History
in General Discussions
Posted
I watched all of the films presented last night on TCM in the Condemned Festival as hosted by Sister Rose Pacatte, and listened to all her prologues and epilogues.
In the first film “The Story of Temple Drake” I fear the Legion of Decency should have been glad that no mention was made of the “corn cob” bit that I recall from reading the story in my college class on American Southern writers with Faulkner at the head of the milieu, as it was a much more raw expose of the situation. Yet to my jaded eyes TSOTD was hard hitting and still relevant. Sister Rose makes mention that Temple is the book is not so nice as Temple in the movie, which is certainly good to know, and I did note that they changed the name of the **** from I think Popeye to Trigger, probably to save spinach prices from descending.
The next film was the highly regarded “Black Narcissus” by Powell and Pressburger. When Sister Rose reviles the critics in LA for their negative reviews of “Black Narcissus” by impugning their male smugness, she exemplifies amusingly the biblical aphorism of “Strain at a gnat, swallow a camel” [Matthew 23:24] in not realizing her adherence to a church which has continually kept woman and nuns as subservient, which is much worse than one bad film review but I digress.
In BN it is often said and also by Sister Rose that the “mad nun”, Sister Ruth is in need of therapy of a mentally medicinal type, but to my mind she may be the only sane person in the film. Sure Cardiff shows her lust blowing up in the face of Mister Dean as a red glow, but perhaps being stifled away in a convent in rarified states, only brings out normal human tendencies of jealousy and lust, which is symbolized by the bell tower, which is so phallic a statement. The ruins in Pompeii produced wind chimes in priapic forms that created sounds not dissimilar from those tintinnabulations emanating from the deserted harem palace walls. Jealousy has been represented in films with bell tower scenes from as far back as Bunuel’s “El” in 1953 to “Vertigo” in 1958, since the clapper and the outer shell resemble a union and it is not probably a coincidence of the similarity of the words “cloca” and “cloaca”.
The next film was “Design for Living” in which Sister Rose describes only the platonic relationship between the threesome, wherein when Hopkins describes it as a “gentlemen’s agreement, but I’m no gentleman” it is obvious that much more is occurring. Sister Rose states that the church never said it was a sin via the Legion of Decency ratings to attend a condemned film, yet I have it on good authority through relations alive at the time that when one was obliged during Mass in the 1930’s and later to pledge their support to not attend such films, that it was always mentioned that they were an “occasion of sin” as described by their Baltimore Catechisms and Catholic Telegraph newspapers, of which the bishops of the Legion of Decency had control. Sister Rose also states that of the Lubitsch touch there may have been some who thought the innuendo was funny, which begs the question, who and is the subtext that Lubitsch humor is immoral in its sophistication? I got the feeling that Sister Rose did not find it funny, but I may be assuming too much.
In “The Outlaw” we find Sister Rose stating that one of the objections to the film by the LOD was due to “disrespect toward sheriffs” and though risible, I can only assume that the bishops had never engaged in reading western lore which abounds with such distortions of outlaw connections, since the Hughes’ film is full of John Ford type “print the legend” over the truth commonalities. I would hardly expect Billy the Kid to be deferential to any sheriff which would be so ludicrous. By the way, making a point of saying that Russell’s photo used in the ads where she is laying back against the hay, was never even in the film as being a critical issue in the LOD decision, makes one wonder if the LOD or nuns should have been protesting all the figures of angels portrayed with wings, which adorn buildings, books and holy cards yet don't seem to be supported by biblical text?
We end with “Baby Face” and thankfully by this time, I had decided for myself that the good sister was a bit out of her element in reviewing any of these films. It is a rather like asking a taster at Carlo Rossi to assess the wine of her employer as being sound. Far be it from me to say she is a shill and question her ethics, but some might describe her with the antiquated term “company man” [in an organization which will never accord her the rights of a man] spewing out the company gospel, in defense of itself but just repackaged to be more palatable to latter day standards and to whitewash the past. I’m sure she is a very nice lady but was not a perfect impartial choice to host such a series.
If you actually watched all the prologues, epilogues and films I would be interested in your comments, yea or nay.