Palmerin

... the ANACHRONISM. Can anybody name three period movies that do not have one single anachronism? Anachronisms are almost impossible to avoid because there is nobody in the world who knows everything about how things such as fashions, weaponry, vocabulary, art and technology were at different eras of the past. The mistake of FROM HERE TO ETERNITY of the women wearing hairdos of 1953 in an story set in 1941 was an easy one to make because the time covered is only 12 years, and it's easy to overlook the quite subtle fashion changes in such a short time. What is not so easy to explain away is the fact that, in THE SCARLET EMPRESS, Marlene Dietrich portrays Catherine II of Russia--a woman of the 18th century--with the pencil thin eyebrows and cupid bow lips fashionable in 1934. Did Josef von Sternberg actually believe that Catherine the Great looked like Jean Harlow??? Another easy mistake to make involves autos. People are so used to seeing a wide variety of models at the same time at any road and street that they forget that there was a time when a particular model did not exist. In GREASE, at the Thunder Road sequence, you can see models of the 1970s riding across the avenue close to where Danny Zuko does his race. Even easier are mistakes involving symbols. Like autos, symbols are so ubiquitous that people forget that there was a time when particular symbols did not exist. In DANCES WITH WOLVES, an story set during the US Civil War, the US flag has the fifty stars of the present day. Obvious anachronisms are easy to avoid. Nobody expects US Civil War soldiers to wear body armor or carry automatic rifles. What nobody notices are the shoes, which are usually depicted as right and left, when in fact at that period shoes were made the same for both feet. There is nothing obvious about language. In THE BLACK SWAN, a swashbuckler set in 1674, Tyrone Power tells Maureen O'Hara not to be a snob--a word first recorded in 1781. Then there is technical knowledge that only experts would know. In THE BLACK SWAN, the ships are steered with wheels, an invention of the 18th century, as any seaman can tell you. Oh, mercy, the world of anachronisms has no end! What anachronisms do you recall, people?

So WHAT is a troll? Those jerks at LIVEJOURNAL use that slur so often it has become meaningless. Certainly ever since I took EMPEROROFTROLLS as my handle the usual suspects have been very silent.

I know very well what the MUTE is for. As for ,,whining'', so many bigots in LIVEJOURNAL called me a troll every time that I expressed a moderately strong opinion that I decided to follow the example of black people regarding the N slur, and I took as a proud badge of honor the user name EMPEROROFTROLLS.

This is like the fifth or sixth time that he repeats that uninteresting fig of nothing. Maybe he should have a say on what is written on the teleprompter.

In his introduction to BHOWANI JUNCTION Mankiewicz repeats yet again (groan!) his worn out chestnut of how movie studios in the 1950s produced a lot of big epics because of their fear of the competition from TV. This s c h m - c k is coming across as one of those tedious bores who only know one joke, which they keep repeating at every party that they ruin with their tiresome presence.

Richard Basehart did his best, yet the fact remains that he did not look anything like Hitler.

I went to my barber yesterday; he keeps a TV set on his shop, tuned to TCM. I asked him about Kerr's hairdo in FHTE, and he confirmed that I was right regarding the hairdos in that movie. His father served in the USN during WWII, and was a barber in civilian life, so his son would know. Incidentally, one of the movies broadcast yesterday was the KISMET of 1944. I noticed that the hairdo of Marlene Dietrich, with its ringlets over her forehead, was clearly inspired by the fashions of the 1940s.

... because I keep detecting anachronistic female hairdos in such movies as THE BLUE MAX and THE YOUNG LIONS. For example, in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY Deborah Kerr wears a hairdo that is totally out of place in 1941. Why do movie makers keep repeating a mistake that is easily avoidable, and certainly very hard to miss? I would bet that, if FROM HERE TO ETERNITY were remade today, all the hairdos would be from 2015! (SNICKER)

That is one of my paramount complaints: that it concentrates on the title characters to the point of ignoring the events that they lived. The Russo-Japanese War and the Great War are hardly represented at all! (LOUD GROAN)

Once, in answer to my complaint that there were no battle scenes in this movie, a smart a s s responded that this so-called intimate epic was exclusively about the story of Nicholas, Alexandra and their children, and that therefore there was no point in depicting the battles of the Russo-Japanese War and the Great War because the protagonists weren't present at any of them. According to that skewed logic, movies about the leadership of FDR and Churchill during WWII should not depict any of the tremendous battles of that war because neither Roosevelt nor Churchill were present at any of them!

When RO introduced NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA he explained that the reason why Spiegel's production was not a financial success was that the public of 1971 preferred grittier fare such as THE FRENCH CONNECTION. Osborne is obviously a very polite man, for he did not dare to suggest that the reason for the failure of N&A is that it was a DEADLY DULL movie. Franklin Schaffner, the director of the very exciting PATTON and PAPILLON, was not at his best in this movie. Instead of making it the way David Lean would make his epics, he made it into a talky stage-like production with too many actors, and hardly any action. The many magnificent opportunities this story provided for magnificent battles--Tsushima in the Russo-Japanese War, and the many huge engagements of the Great War--were totally ignored and neglected. Things were not helped by the fact that Michael Jayston was a singularly uncharismatic performer, totally devoid of the magnetic personality of a real star, such as Peter O'Toole.

how many movies, including shorts, have been candidates for at least one Oscar, and how many movies, including shorts, have won at least one Oscar?

I wonder how my 85 y/o mama would react to FIFTY SHADES OF GREY.

My mother just quit watching SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS because it was FRESH. Obviously my octogenarian mother has never watched SHAMPOO or any of many MANY other films from the 1960s to our time that stretched the limits of what is allowable in a movie.

On Friday 30 January my mother suffered a bout of gastroenteritis which caused much vomiting and diarrhea. Listening to Mario Lanza served to soothe her frazzled nerves. 'tis absolutely tragic how such an outstanding talent, who inspired Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras, died at such a prematurely early age.

Some replies ago someone raised the point of whether TCM has the obligation of showing every movie that has ever been made. I, for one, am in favor of that approach, for even movies with no artistic merit have historical interest. Let's take the movies of Steven Seagal. Granted, none have been candidates for the Oscar, but they do have the merit of dealing with crime, one of the most universal subjects. There is one, whose name I unfortunately cannot recall, that deals with a particularly brutal sort of crime: the traffic of women for prostitution, a subject that shows such as LAW AND ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT have also tackled. As long as that crime exists, that Seagal movie and similar shows will remain relevant; should that crime cease to exist, shows dealing with it will have as much historical value as the gangster movies of the 1930s, which dealt with criminals which were a major threat to the society of that period.

THE BIRTH OF A NATION is a puzzler of a movie. As a Puerto Rican, the 1861-65 War, the Reconstruction and the K K K are no concerns of mine; I have lived in Florida since 1980, and have never met any Klansmen. Nevertheless Griffith's movie is perplexing to me; why did DWG choose to make an epic out of a rag like THE KLANSMAN, instead of the Bible or some other universally recognized classic?

One of the Garland-Rooney Berkeley musicals has them performing one blackface scene.

Speaking of this movie, it is full of inaccuracies, so nothing in it deserves credence.

Who carried out the attack on CHARLIE HEBDO? Was it Jews, or Christians?

The competition where the first GODFATHER won the Oscar for Best Picture developed, or was manipulated, into a mano a mano with CABARET. I personally don't know why, because I didn't think either movie was that good, but that was how the wide public chose to visualize it. Very instrumental in this contest was the movie critic of EL MUNDO, who kept the Puerto Rican public duly informed on how the fight was going. Once THE GODFATHER I won, you know what that critic did? He started carping that G and C were worthless commercial products unworthy of any prize, and complained about the Oscar not giving its principal award to the work of such auteurs as Fassbinder, Pasolini, and Visconti! Even to this day I'm still infuriated with the hypocrisy of that critic. If he thought so little of the Oscar, he should have admitted it openly, instead of deceiving the public by pretending to take seriously a contest that he obviously despised. What critics do you recall who have behaved in a similarly dishonest manner?

Criticism of such as Obama, Holder and Sharpton=racism criticism of feminists=sexism criticism of homosexuals=homophobia criticism of Islam=Islamophobia What other above reproach sacred cows can you mention?

Mr. Levine is telling the audience what to think of the movies he is presenting--an attitude very disrespectful of the right to free expression. Opinion changes all the time; what do you bet that what is politically correct on 16 January 2015 will no longer be so on 16 January 2020?

I tried to watch EDWARD & MRS SIMPSON back when it played on MASTERPIECE THEATRE, but I quit at the second episode because, just like THE KING'S SPEECH, that show was nothing but morose people droning on and on about how the affair of Edward VIII with Wallis Simpson was a threat to humanity in general and British civilization in particular. What am I missing? Everybody in that affair behaved like idiots; only Mrs. Simpson, who was willing to remove herself so that EVIII could keep the throne, behaved with any dignity.

And, speaking of THE KING'S SPEECH, what is your take on the Abdication Crisis? Ever since I read in detail about that event I have felt that it was all a mountain range of nonsense. The Prince of Wales never wanted to be King-Emperor, so why was he not allowed to quit while he still had the chance? And, please, don't give me that jazz about the kingship being his responsibility and duty! My stepfather--who was as much of a beastly ogre as George V--loved to torment me by forcing me to do things I did not want to do by arguing that it was my ,,responsibility and duty'' to do them.