Palmerin

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, Puerto Rico's TELEMUNDO station had a Friday evening's movie show hosted by Manolo Urquiza of Cuba, who provided a lot of comment about the movies he presented. While he knew more about movies than the average person, he really was not an expert. He wasted too much time on SO AND SO AND WHAT'S HER FACE FELL MADLY IN LOVE WHILE FILMING THIS OTHERWISE UNREMARKABLE BUNCH OF NOTHING type frippery, and failed to make really deep comments, such as, say: THE THREE MUSKETEERS has been a favorite of movie makers since the Silent Era, and every decade since then has had at least one version of the story. The version starring Gene Kelly, Lana Turner, and Vincent Price is one of the most notable. Brando's reading of Stanley Kowalsky made such an impact, that ever since then all actors attempting that role have found themselves inadvertently making imitations of MB. While GONE WITH THE WIND has been controversial for its depiction of black characters, it must be borne in mind that, unlike THE BIRTH OF A NATION and the SHOWBOAT of Ava Gardner, at least the black characters were portrayed by real blacks. Still, the man was very likable and entertaining, and he did accomplish the achievement of making Puerto Ricans regard movies as more than a trivial way to waste a couple of empty hours.

Or THE SPIRIT OF SAINT LOUIS. 'tis truly amazing how Wilder and Stewart managed to create riveting entertainment out of what was basically JS talking to himself for more than an hour. How did Lindbergh stay awake for three days? Like myself, he must have been an insomniac in serious need of sleep medication. When in Puerto Rico, have a taste of the greatest monument to Lindy: the Lindbergh, a confection in the shape of an ice cube made of such ingredients as custard, vanilla, coconut, guava, tamarind, and other sweet flavors.

I very much appreciate the attention that all of you have dedicated to this thread. Signore Dargo, the USA established in its soil a POW camp for particularly fanatic Nazis and Fascists. The N made up more than 100,000, while the F made up 56,000.

JS's performance in that movie is not his best; his Anthony Mann Westerns and Hitchcock thrillers are much more worthy of the Oscar. Stewart's obsessed and almost demented detective in VERTIGO is a particularly memorable character.

In the late 60s there was a public service commercial that consisted of a boy playing with his dog, succeeding in school, kissing his girlfriend, and at the end going to the beach with his girl, now his wife, and their son, while in the soundtrack alluring and teasing voices told him of how much fun illegal drugs were, and how he was wasting his life away by not being an addict. I was only a tween at the time, but I understood that ad immediately: that youngster was having a happy and fulfilling life without any need for that crutch that is substance abuse. Unfortunately that message was too subtle, for it generated a very hostile reaction; people actually thought it was advocating drug abuse! Public health, totally taken by surprise at such a reaction, cancelled the ad because it was obvious that they were DEALING WITH MORONIC PEOPLE (Peter Falk in IT'S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD). What about you? Do you recall instances of a point being massively missed by people who clearly can't tell the difference between their right hand and their left foot?

If I did I would not frequent this board in order to take notice of your comments and recommendations.

The OSCAR people have this curious bias that an English accent is a guarantee of quality and high class; that's the only reason why pompous self-important bores like CHARIOTS OF MISFIRE and GOONDHI have been awarded the top prize.

... that THE KING'S SCREED, that thrill-a-minute epic about stuttering, actually seemed like the best movie of that Godforsaken year?

Good news!: starting with the musical of that name--supposedly set in the time of Coolidge, but with the women all wearing fashions and hairstyles of the time of Truman--the closed captions have been resurrected.

For the last several days, all their closed captions have VANISHED!

GAUDEAMUS=JOY! The online petition to keep the boards open has surpassed more than 5,000 signatures--I was number 50--, and it's now well on its way to 10,000.

Because of the many trolls that infest IMDb's message boards, its administration has decided to close all message boards by the 20th of February. This is an outrage!; you cannot cure abuses of freedom of expression by curtailing freedom of expression. Please: if you are subscribers to IMDb. com, go now to that website and express your disapproval of such an abusive antidemocratic edict.

Scorsese certainly did not prettify the women of GOODFELLAS and CASINO. Excessive, almost mask like makeup; hair that looks as hard as electric wiring; exaggerated clown like dresses: the ugly fashions of the 1970s and the 1980s are all there!

Have you noticed how Julie Christie and Geraldine Chaplin wear hair and makeup that is clearly in the style of the mid 1960s, the time when the movie was made? Truly regrettable, how Lean repeats a mistake already common in the work of such as De Mille and Griffith, of blindly assuming that the women of the past wore the same hair and makeup as women of the present. Look at Claudette Colbert as Cleopatra: her mouth is painted in the cupid's bow style of Jean Harlow.

Murray's speech in STRIPES about how he and his fellow soldiers are mutts who were kicked out of every decent country, and how that does not matter because they are American soldiers who always kick **** is not too shabby, either.

If you put glasses and a small moustache on him he makes a perfect Igor Stravinsky, a role he should have played.

You all know the speech that Peter Alexander Ustinov as Nero delivers in Le Roy's QUO VADIS, the one that ends with: LET IT BE WONDERFUL! OR LET IT BE AWFUL--AS LONG AS IT IS UNCOMMON! The eloquence of that speech is worthy of Shakespeare and Calderon; what other movie orations would you regard as equally memorable?

Plus the added tragedy that he did not live to adulthood?

... one of the more obscure kings of England--someone very short of the stature of MT's contemporaries, Victoria and Edward VII? If it weren't for THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER and its many adaptations and parodies, Edward VI would be of interest only to historians who specialize in the Tudor period.

Very interesting assortment; I'll definitely explore it. Gracias.

This production has one of the most amusing anachronisms I have ever reported to IMDb.com's GOOFS squad. Robert Young is an artist who goes with Tracy to draw maps and eyewitness accounts of the expedition. Just before the climactic sequence, RY shows his drawings to ST. THEY ARE NOT IN THE CORRECT STYLE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY; instead, they resemble the work of such magazine illustrators of 1940 as James Montgomery Flagg.

Which is the Saura movie where the central character remembers his childhood, and the adult actor romps on the floor and looks up to the adults of his youth, exactly as if he were a little boy?

How do you like THE ST VALENTINE'S DAY MASSACRE? It came out in 1967, the same year as Penn's BONNIE & CLYDE, and, like the latter, was heavily criticized for its violence. I myself found it very absorbing, even though it has a feature that still turns off many people: except for the pitiful mechanic played by Bruce Dern, practically all the characters are damned miscreants who richly deserve to get whacked.

The story of CHARIOTS OF FIRE in Puerto Rico was really ridiculous. Movie managers, aware of how boring it was, waited until after the Oscars to release it, praying that its Oscars would deceive the public into thinking that it was a good movie. The public was NOT deceived; everybody in PR hated it. If Hudson wanted so badly to do a movie about the Paris Olympics of 1924, why didn't he film the story of gold medalist swimmer JOHNNY WEISSMULLER, who had a really interesting life and a really memorable career, instead of wasting all that money and resources on two nonentities whom nobody remembers??? This misFIRE has not improved with time; quite the contrary. Which leads me to my question: how many movies do you recall that were universally panned when they came out, but which now have vastly improved reputations? I know, for example, that Roger Corman was once dismissed as a cheap maker of trashy schlock, but now he is very well respected, and several of his cheapies are now admired as true classics.