Palmerin

I was afraid to spend any money watching this Oscar honoree on the big screen; now that I have watched it on the SUNDANCE channel, I am satisfied that my reticence was justified. An absolute tedium--bored boring people sitting around pretending that the stutter of George VI was a national emergency. A genuinely riveting drama could have been made of the true tragedy of the life of GVI: his addiction to tobacco--THIRTY to FORTY cigarettes a day, plus several pipes and cigars!--, which killed him at the tender age of 55.

Ekberg was supposed to star in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE; when that wasn't possible she made a kind of cameo appearance in the form of a movie poster where her mouth is the window through which a Soviet agent tries to escape from the Turkish police, only to be shot down by Sean Connery and Pedro Armendariz.

A lot of people have died since December 2014, such as Luise Rainer and Rod Taylor; who am I forgetting, please?

The last shot of THE BIRDS: Taylor, Hedren, the mother, the sister, and the lovebirds driving away as the fearful birds glare at them and do a lot of loud cawing. A most memorable ending.

Like so many in this realm, you are terribly insular. I have lost count of the many Yanks who speak about THE monarchy and THE royal family as if, for example, the cousins of the Windsors, the Saxe-Coburg-Gothas of Belgium, were as fictional as Tintin.

Who ever told Adam West that he could act? Someone who hated him so much that he set him up to be hated by everybody else in the world. As for the KK of de Laurentiis, it's an absolute miracle that that mishmash that was neither an exciting adventure nor a witty comedy did not ruin forever the careers of Jessica Lange, Jeff Bridges, and Charles Grodin!

Then don't say THE MONARCHY as if the House Windsor were the only monarchy in the world. Not everybody in the USA is of British ancestry; as a Puerto Rican of Spanish descent the House Bourbon is of greater relevance to me.

anybody feels grief? I don't forget that he was one of the perpetrators of those atrocious crimes against humanity: the BATMAN (BARFMAN) TV show and the KING KONG of de Laurentiis.

THE monarchy? Which monarchy: Belgium, Denmark, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the Vatican, Lesotho, Swaziland, Bhutan, Cambodia, Japan, Thailand, Tonga, or any of the several Arab kingdoms?

Do you recall the fashion show of Cukor's THE WOMEN? All those scarecrow outfits always leave me rolling on the floor with giggles. And the hats! Did the women of 1939 actually wear those weird contraptions on their heads?!

Where can I access the coats of arms of Collins and the other people mentioned in this thread, please?

SPOILER FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NOT SEEN CHARADE!!! This thriller has one of the most unbelievable story twists ever: the treasure that the villains are looking for is an envelope with three rare stamps FROM THREE DIFFERENT COUNTRIES, ONE OF THEM THE KINGDOM OF HAWAII--and yet through the entire film nobody notices the implausibility of one envelope being stamped with stamps from three different countries, one of which stopped issuing its own postage back in 1898 because it is no longer independent!

THE ABSOLUTE WORST MALE FASHION EVER: men sporting open shirts with no underwear in movies such as de Palma's SCARFACE. What made Pacino, Robert Loggia and all the other men in that movie think that their hairy chests were sexy??? And speaking of less than sexy fashions, I shudder to remember how AWFUL Princess Sophia of Greece looked when she married Prince Juan Carlos. That happened, if I recall correctly, in 1962, which means that she dressed in those tacky one piece dresses that her compatriot, Melina Mercouri, wore in NEVER ON SUNDAY. Add to that that rat's nest that was the Jackie Kennedy hairdo, and the result was that the poor lady looked so GRUBBY that it was hard for me to visualize what Juan Carlos saw in her. The princess was obviously aware of how cheap she looked, because once she became Queen of Spain she wore for state occasions 18th century style dresses that were genuinely elegant, and certainly far more regal.

Birth control from age TWELVE??? How precocious are the children in your community?

That would be a phenomenal improvement over the camouflage colors of the cars of my family, all of which vanish from existence in every big parking lot in which they are parked. The important thing is to not be invisible. One of the most ridiculous scenes I have ever seen involves Victor Mature in a 1940s movie. He is impeccably dressed in a striped suit, and, not surprisingly for someone with Mature's stage presence, he looks very commanding UNTIL HE GETS OUT INTO AN STREET OF WHAT I THINK IS NYC. There he totally vanishes from view because he is totally undistinguishable from a whole herd of men dressed in exactly the same way. The movie is B/W, but being in color would not have improved matters, because it's a sure thing that all those trouser wearers are dressed in drab dull shades of brown and gray. Not Palmerin!: he would be dressed in red coat and trousers, yellow shirt and hat, and, as an extra touch of brightness, a pumpkin orange vest and tie. Nota bene: I just noticed that several posters chose to post messages about subjects that are totally unrelated to the theme of this thread. To those posters I say: COOL IT. Stick to the subject at hand, or else I will delete this thread. Enough said? (stern frown emoticon)

That is the proper look for the male. The peacock, the rooster, the lion: they are all more colorful than their females. When I have the money for it, I will dress in suits of red, yellow, violet, orange and purple. (smiling emoticon)

How do the fashions of SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER stand the test of time? The dancing dresses of the women are still cute and attractive, but the men, including even Travolta, now look so EFFEMINATE! lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol

Don't you mean ANTONY Hopkins? I once sent a fan letter to Anthony Hopkins, but Antony H received it because I did not notice the lack of the H in his first name.

What should I look for in this show? SWEENY TODD makes me very dubious about Sondheim's ability to write a tune that stays in your memory.

I was born in 1954; what does that tell you? I have never understood why that herring bone Jacqueline Kennedy was regarded as a great beauty and fashion plate. As for Harlow, she was attractive exclusively because of her natural charms, not because of the fashions of her time; those nearly non existent eyebrows did not do any favors either to her or to Dietrich and Loy.

The fashions of the time of HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING are among the worst of the misbegotten Godforsaken 20th century. The women's dresses seemed designed to deny that women had any curves; as to the men's suits, they were so tight and unwieldy that whoever wore them was in hourly risk of ripping them apart. Generally speaking, the 20th century was not a good period for fashions and hairdos. Watching movies of the 1930s is painful to me because the female fashions and hairdos were so damn FRUMPY; as to the men, they all look so ridiculous in those stuffy double breasted suits and high collar shirts. And what was the deal with those shapeless felt hats? Was their true purpose to be used as handkerchiefs and towels? I have certainly never seen a 1930s movie in which a man uses the handkerchief on the coat pocket as anything other than an useless ,,decoration''. I genuinely think that part of the success of Rita Hayworth was the fact that the 1940s were a great time for women's hairdos: GORGEOUS SEXY HAIRDOS! If Hayworth had had to search for stardom with her hair done in the dowdy unattractive fashions of either the 1930s or the 1950s her career would have died on arrival.

As I watch DESTINATION TOKYO I have to ask from were did Grant get his voice. Archibald Alexander Leach was an Englishman, yet his voice does not sound like the voice of any other Englishman I have ever heard; I certainly cannot think of any other English actors with a voice similar to his.

You do know that Oz is real, and that Baum was betrayed by having his story depicted as a dream? (angry face emoticon)

The music that John Williams wrote for JAWS and the STAR WARS series raised the status of movie composers from mere supporting players to major stars. Being a lifelong melomaniac, I would like to propose a discussion of the history of movie music and the work of such people as Steiner, Korngold, Waxman, and Rozsa. For example, the movie serials of the 1930s did not have original scores, but instead used prepackaged music such as Liszt's LES PRELUDES over and over again. When did it become the established practice for each specific movie to have its own specific music score, as was famously the case with the 1933 KING KONG and with GONE WITH THE WIND, both of which were scored by Steiner?

So an obsession with fashion trumps the realism necessary to make an story credible? No wonder so many filmmakers have nothing but contempt for the intelligence of their audience!