CaveGirl

Great list, Faceinthecrowd and by the way, great TCM moniker too! Yes, Zachary Scott as a poor, simple farmer type was really out of his comfort zone but he did it magnificently. Oh, that Robert Ryan was fab also, as are your other mentions...

Hi, CN and thanks for the name compliment! You are welcome to still have my child, as it is akin to the one Liz had in WAOVW. I love the way you mention "films you do not want to see" and think you should start a thread about it. I was forced to see The Nun's Story, by...what else, nuns at the school I went to. Sundowners is pretty good and I was not into Mame either but have to admit it has great costumes and settings. Friendly Persuasion and Sergeant York are films I've seen but could pass on a second go round, not meaning they are bad...but A Letter To Three Wives is scintillatingly funny and clever and reminds me of the dialogue in All About Eve, which is top drawer. I've decided not to send you the dvd of ET, but maybe just a stray alien that dropped into my backyard last nite. He is cute, with lime-green skin and says he wants to stay here till the TCM showing of I Am Curious Yellow which has been banned on his planet. Edited by: CaveGirl on Oct 8, 2013 3:34 PM

Slayton, maybe I'm hallucinating but I think TCM has shown some of his films before. I've seen it in a theatre but remember seeing it on tv in the last few years, and who else but TCM would have shown it? Also, my tv is almost glued in place to TCM so I am hardly on any other channels... But I could be wrong.

Kid! You just used my favorite expletive-phrase. To the Cornfield! And where is Billy Mumy when we need him, I ask you?

I gotta agree with you, Heuriger about Rod Stewart. Though I totally think an artist or anyone not an artist, should be allowed to do the music they want, his forays into Mantovaniland are a bit awkward, as much as he says that he remembers the songs from family time in the 1950's. On the other hand, any who have those books on really strange music, will admit that many hard rockers have secret closet interests in listening to easy listening stuff from the 1950's, like Martin Denny and Les Baxter so that may be where this latent nostalgia comes from. For me, I have only one criteria I hold dear about music that I think is great. Would it sound as good on the radio or cd player in my car, as it does on tv with the video performance? To me, that is why someone like Roy Orbison is such a star. He's not the best looking guy and doesn't do much on stage but sing...but sing he can! There are so many horrid people who sound tone deaf now, that appear on tv and on these terrible housewife shows, and can't even carry a note. It hurts my ears to hear them mangle a song. I can sing better than most of them, yet people are telling them how great they are. Has the general public become tone deaf also? Now if someone is purposely not trying to sing in key, or is doing a Dylan move I'm fine with that... Edited by: CaveGirl on Oct 8, 2013 3:22 PM Edited by: CaveGirl on Oct 8, 2013 3:22 PM

Tillie and Gus, really? Yay! Thanks for the update, Cody and keep'em coming!

Camel is just bringing to mind that great Hollywood film, Ishtar!

Thanks, Tom...seen them both and also Black Angel which I own but then I am a Duryea fanatic. I have this sick thing where I have to at least watch the opening credits of any movie on TCM, just to make sure I don't miss someone in the cast I like. I mean one never knows for sure if Nazimova or Harry Langdon might be playing a bit, so I've probably seen almost all Duryea films. Also those of Elisha Cook, Junior and one can only wonder what in the heck Senior looked like. I love him in Rosemary's Baby too!

Oh yeah, Dargo...? If you are casting Nazis for Bert and Ernie, then who plays Big Bird? I'll go with Herman Goering...

No ET! Please I beg you. I'll give you my firstborn in return for obliging me. By the way, how about a TCM stop-gap point of starting with any film made by Spielberg? Just a thought. I do sympathize with you though, Cinemanut and hope you get to see ET soon. I went years and never saw The Sound of Music but of course was not upset about it. How's about I buy you ET on dvd if you promise not to ask TCM to schedule it???? Edited by: CaveGirl on Oct 5, 2013 5:21 PM

So...now it is wrong to be academic? Geez, what a mortal sin it must be to be scholarly! Hey, Dargo I believe you said that it seems that Cousins is holding the films of Tinseltown in lower esteem than the European ones... Are you saying that this is a BAD thing...haha! Kind of like giving prostitution a bad name, ain't it?

Okay, not the best person to answer being I've only been here a short while but I started posting here, hoping that amongst the retinue there would be some who enjoy and like to discuss the more outre and off the wall films, unlike the general public who mostly watch only popular films. My guess would be, if one does not find an interested audience for their particular film devotion that they might leave? I mean, let's say a person is mesmerized by the work of Rene Clair but never sees anyone posting who even cares about his films. They might move on to greener pastures? It's like a tennis match. Someone has to hit the ball back and make it worth swatting in return. I enjoy other people's rebuttal so that would not be a turnoff but it has to be based on some interesting thought patterns and not just the proverbial I hate it because I know what I like and that's not it. Looking forward to other answers to your questions from more longtime TCM posters.

Slayton, can I say beyotch? Not sure I spelled it correctly. By the way, the guy connected to the finger in the shot looks like a Nazi taxi driver. Just saying...

The color on that shot of Jane and Scottie is just unearthly! That was Scottie Beckett, right? I only glanced quickly as the surrealistic tones of shading were so technicolorishly frightening...

I don't even know what LEAVE PAGE is... I guess I just actually leave the page literally and hence have no such problem. Was told recently that I kept answering myself and had to use a box to the right which looks like a flower. Who knew! Unfortunately for all here, my posts always show up...

OMG, you have featured one of my most favorite actors. I love, love, love Dan Duryea. I actually was looking through an old magazine the other day which had a whole article about him, with the bytag of his very wholesome home life as opposed to his movie persona. Always gave a great performance, as late as his Twilight Zone one and as early as the simperingly annoying son with Bette Davis in TLF. Thanks for the great tribute post!

Why, what a coincidence...I was bored the other night and rooted through my garage to find my set of reprints of the old EC Comics line of William Gaines and now I find to my delight a Mad connection to look forward to on TCM. How utterly maddening... Thanks, Mister D!

Now that is a great idea, having someone like Jennifer Jason Leigh as the Noir Hostess! Who needs any man to be the host of such an event? Hogwash. Every real noir fan knows that a woman like Gale Sondergaard or even Lizbeth Scott would be the type of host needed, and no mealy mouthed Don Defore types have any real reason to be heading the show. Why, men in noirs who are real men, are as scarce as hen's teeth...which is why a hen and not a rooster, should be host. Now no offense to Don, as I love him usually and even as Hazel's boss, but a noir host for any retrospective should be someone diabolical in depth and persona and able to be the lead dog and not the maligned mark type or puppy in puppy love with the femme fatale, which is why Mr. Muller does not fit the bill. In the spirit of Jennifer Jason Leigh, I was thinking just yesterday when I saw Gina Gershon on tv, that she would be a fabulous host for TCM. She's as close to an Ava Gardner type as we have now in films...

Sorry the only fingers I really like are those in The Beast with Five Fingers... Shouldn't you be focussing on Mabuse's eyes, which were scary as h_ll during that one scene in the film last night? Edited by: CaveGirl on Oct 5, 2013 3:26 PM

Wow! I really hate to admit that I probably could easily live happily in a Twilight Zone way, of having only pre-1970 films to view. Now I would not want to become dogmatic and force everyone else in the world or as a TCM fan, to only watch what I want to see nor do I believe that all films made even by the major studios are classics, since all one need do is look through any of those giant film books on Warners, Columbia, RKO, MGM etc. to see that there was much claptrap and sub par film creations for all years during the studio heydays. Nevertheless, I have always wondered why people like to make everything be palatable to all tastes, sort of like taking a Polish restaurant and ameliorating all dishes into a hodge podge of all world cuisines. I like to think of TCM as being the one treasure trove of older and more obscure talkies and silents, and since no other network supplies that demand I hate to see it full of new crapola* that is available everywhere else anyway. *sorry for the pejorative attitude!

Dear Silent...please define the exact meaning of "God awful"? I agree with Roverrocks, I totally dig the way the narrator talks. But then after drinking Guinness in a bunch of pubs in Dublin, this feeling of affection comes naturally to me. Perhaps those here who don't like Cousins, should go have a few brewskis in Ireland and they might learn to like such voices. I'm sure after a few drinks they could be converted??? Actually, reading this thread is making me want a Guinness now...

Sfpcc2...yes, brilliant! I'd forgotten about that. What an amazing conclusion to a series. I wonder if it had been planned from the beginning or was come up with later. But regardless...thanks for the great reference! Edited by: CaveGirl on Oct 1, 2013 5:17 PM

Finance, you said a mouthful when you said this most sensible statement about not using Muller as host: He IS likeable, but in keeping with the mood of noir, it might be interesting to have a noir host who was very unlikeable. So true, so true. It's like having Debbie Reynolds introducing a series about women who are serial murderers. Does not fit or compute. And instead of a guy hosting, they should have a woman, preferably someone diabolically entrancing like Glen Close or maybe a Gloria Grahame type. Now that would be fun and in keeping with the noir spirit!

Wow, I've read "Rebecca" and find these interpretations of the DuMaurier intent, most fascinating. Interestingly...the heroine, as played by Joan Fontaine doesn't even have a name in the book by Daphne. And if one wants to film a sequel with Maxim being killed in a car crash, then it is too bad that J.G. Ballard did not write it being that his conjunction of sex and cars would prove most alluring to film. Maxim all bandaged up like Brad Pitt in "Fight Club" is an image I can't get out of my head now...

As an oneiric entity in CK the snow globe for me is the heart of the storyline. Historically...though snowglobes go back in Europe to the 16th century, possibly beginning production in Thuringia they first received mass adoration during the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1878 and became a Victorian phenomenon, which figures as a time period in Orson's exposition, just as it did in TMA. Many believe that early snow globes with scenes and landscapes originally represented Marie Antoinette and her search for the past in her charming replica of a peasant village and chalet at Petit Trianon. Much like Kane, Marie fantasized a bourgeous life of continual contentment in a past time yet this type of artificial sentimentalized setting never really existed and would have probably proved boring to her in reality, as would Kane's life if he has persisted with his beloved Rosebud and lived on in dire poverty. Time trapped and suspended in animation in a blizzard globe, is an artificial and petrified state of nature and the snow globe in CK is a still life, with Kane's memories crystallized in a static state expressing his melancholic view of times gone by. Some say that every souvenir one collects is a symptom of the subconscious knowledge of impending death which is why a mania for collecting objects is known as "collectionism" in neurology. The only difference between a hoarder and a collector, is the value of such and the way one houses their objects of adoration, and Kane was definitely a hoarder with the first object hoarded being the blizzard form of a presse-papier which represented the lost Rosebud. The mnemonic landscape of the film portends perhaps that actually it was Welles pinning his own story onto the Hearst bandwagon, to disguise his own evanescent images of reminiscences of his childhood, as that is why travel souvenirs and dream spheres, as they were named by Ludwig II, the mad king of Bavaria who had his own demons, became so popular...to reestablish one's past in one's memory. This is my exegesis of the importance of snow globes in CK but you may disagree or have other ideas as relevant. Perhaps the resemblance of Kane in old age to Peter Lorre in "Mad Love" or the infamous cockatoo scene. By the way, speaking of "Rosebud" it seems odd that it is continually Robert Osborne introducing CK in the prologues, when TCM has an actual Mankiewicz relative on the payroll. I feel perhaps Ben could add some pertinent insights into the gynecological connections that have been referenced in books on Hearst, the word "Rosebud" vis a vis Marion Davies, and W.R.'s distaste for the film. Please extrapolate at your leisure!