Vautrin
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Posts posted by Vautrin
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16 hours ago, Dargo said:
True, BUT as you probably know, Klaatu is basically just Jesus Christ in a spacesuit. YOU know. There IS a reason the plot had him going by the name "Mr. Carpenter", AND how he came back to life after his crucifixion, ahem, I mean after being gunned down in the street.
(...yep, "Jesus Christ in a spacesuit", alright...BUT of course with one big bad and tough "bodyguard" by his side in HIS case!)
Yes, if Jesus had Gort around he'd (Jesus) still be alive today. I enjoy seeing the Christ
parallels that some people have put forth, but I don't take them too seriously. Klaatu
didn't change water into wine or bring back another person from the dead. And as he
says, his own resurrection is temporary where Christ's is permanent. I just see him as a
man from another planet with much useful knowledge, a concern for others, and a sly
sense of humor.
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1 hour ago, Dargo said:
LOL
Yeah, some things never change, huh!
Funny how this astute observation from our intergalactic traveling friend seems even more pertinent but perhaps even less acknowledged today, isn't it.
(...sorry...strike the word "perhaps" here)
Or the more things change....One reheated dish of Cold War paranoia. Even though he's only a
character in a movie, it's hard not to admire Klaatu.
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Getting back to the movie, I love the scene where the radio interviewer is moving down the
rope line asking people questions about the man from outer space. When he reaches Klaatu
he says it's a bad idea to substitute fear for reason. Boy it that microphone quickly moved
away.
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5 hours ago, Dargo said:
LOL
Ya know, I DID have a feeling that this very reply would be comin' back at me here.
All in good fun. Nothing wrong with folks voting. Do it early and often.
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1 hour ago, Dargo said:
So, pretty much what you find yourself doing on election days instead visiting your local polling place then, right V-Man?!
LOL
(...sorry, couldn't resist)
It's really the other way around. Going to the local polling place on election day is slumming.
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1 hour ago, cigarjoe said:
That's exactly right. I call it "tuning." Whether or not a film "tips" noir for you is going to depend on the accumulation of our individual life experiences.. What "tunes" noir for me isn't going to necessarily "tune" noir for you.
All we can do is share our lists of films to sample.
True. Though when it comes to my definition of noir most of what I would include doesn't have much
to do with life experience, it's more akin to slumming.
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11 hours ago, cigarjoe said:
So do I, what's the problem? Reducing the world to a "cinder" is a pretty dark plot point. When you compare TDTEST to many other 1950s SiFi that are brightly lit it stands out.
Planet annihilation is pretty depressing, but in a certain way it's a mass phenomenon that people
can't do a lot about. It's not as individually terrifying as having a couple of hit men out to kill
you at any cost. I think it's just that I have a different definition of noir than you do, which is
okay both ways.
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5 hours ago, cigarjoe said:
A SiFi film, yes. But you're not getting the jist. Si Fi shot in a Noir Style, Noir is not a genre it's a style with a dark story. There are not many, they are Si Fi stories first but quite noirishly filmed.
I think I get the gist. Noir is not a genre or a certain set of plot elements but a visual style.
I would disagree with that, though not completely. While some of the scenes in TDTESS
are noirish, I still see it as a sci-fi film. Another thing that's interesting is that the old style
Noir Alley type movies deal with the dark side of human nature while sci-fi films often deal
with non-human aliens, though the human reaction to the aliens is also part of sci-fi films.
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5 hours ago, jamesjazzguitar said:
Please sit down, Mr. Klaatu. I have several thousands questions I want to ask you.
The first is, can you do anything about my hair?
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1 hour ago, Dargo said:
Well, that's what the love of a good woman (who'll usually end up dying at about the 54:00 minute mark of every episode they're in) will do to a guy, ya know!
Plus getting a lot of gray hairs. Yep, being engaged to a Cartwright was pretty much a death
sentence. If I recall it correctly though, Joe married a woman but she was killed shortly thereafter.
Ladies, you've been warned.
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While TDTESS has some noir visuals I still think of it as a sci-fi film. I didn't watch it last night
as the FMC has been showing it a number of times over the last month or so. My favorite
line is when Jaffe asks Klaatu how he knows his theories will work. Well I find they work well
enough to get me from one planet to another or something along that line.
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9 hours ago, Sepiatone said:
I think maybe BONANZA had a lot to do with GUNSMOKE extending to hour long episodes and content. The former was always about more than just cattle ranchers, and hour long westerns with a storyline seemed to be more attractive to TV audiences than just a half hour of "shoot 'em up". And the competition of the hour long THE UNTOUCHABLES episodes might have caused "The Naked City". lengthening their show too.
Sepiatone
That could be, though on the other hand Gunsmoke took a while to convert to color in 1966.
Yes, Bonanza always dealt with other issues than mere gun fights. From what I recall, the
Cartwrights were kind of tough hombres at the beginning of the series but they mellowed over
the years.
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10 hours ago, Sepiatone said:
As one who recalls seeing most of the episodes when they were first run (and faithfully plopping my a** in front of the tube when it came on) I always tried to catch any reruns of it over the years. It was then that it came to light the show also featured early work of many who went on to bigger and better things.
There was one episode in which VIC MORROW played a guy trying to become a cop, like his Father before him. Another one in which a very young DUSTIN HOFFMAN could be seen pulling a diner "hold up" which was foiled by a guy pretending to be a beat cop. I've also noticed ROBERT DUVALL and a young WILLIAM SHATNER in some old episodes.
Cool show. It's due for another round of syndication IMHO.
Sepiatone
For whatever reason Naked City flew below my radar. Or around it. I had heard of it of course,
but that's about all. I would like to see it, especially as it's a show I've haven't seen. Yes a lot of
those actors you mention show up on many of the TV shows of that time. It's fun to see them
as young actors just starting out. I just saw Shatner doing a commercial for CPAP machines.
Anyone have a bunch of oily rags?
The hour long episodes of Gunsmoke do have a lot of additional elements that have little to do
with two fisted action, but I still like them. Doc is always a kick. Except for Kitty he couldn't
get along with anyone. Some are also on the pessimistic side, where Matt doesn't come to the
rescue every time. Insp has been playing The Virginian for a number of years. They have so
many commercials that you're no longer truly watching a 90 minute show.
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14 hours ago, Dargo said:
Well, of course I picked the name "Zelda" because it has kind of a funny sound to it, but surely there have been other "Zeldas" in the past and other than ol' F. Scott's wife and muse?!
(...btw...do you think there's any chance at all that your dad's NYC tattooist might have been one of the guys depicted in this flick?...naaah, probably not, huh...it's a big city, huh...a big NAKED city...and which NOW reminds of watching that TV show when I was kid, and wonderin' why they called it that when it was clearly shown in it that everybody in NYC was fully clothed...well, except of course whenever you'd see Paul Burke walk into one of those sleazy Times Square strip joints while investigating a crime and you'd maybe see a quick shot of some of the ladies on stage, and...hey, am I ramblin' on here???)
That's the first one that popped into my mind and off hand I can't think of any others.
I never saw the TV show on the first go around and I don't think it was syndicated
very much. There are eight million stories in the naked city and 85% of them should
have been clothed.
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2 hours ago, Dargo said:
...and to this very day, anytime the name "Zelda" is mentioned around them, my father gets this strange far-away look in his eyes, and my mother gets the giggles.
Not Zelda Fitzgerald? His girlfriend's name was likely more common than Zelda. He said he went
with a bunch of his buddies and after he got his they all chickened out. Lesson learned. The tattoo
certainly stood the test of time.
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I had never seen this one before. Sure it was your typical police procedural,
but nicely done for the most part. And the newbie college educated guy teamed
with the shoe leather veteran officer is not original either, but it was fun to see
the two of them bouncing wisecracks off one another. Naturally they were on their
way to becoming pals before the end of the picture. From what I could gather, the
woman was killed by her first husband because she was a scam artist who took
advantage of people. I never realized that was Patricia Berry, either by her looks
or her voice. She was in scads of TV shows during the 1950s and 1960s. I did
recognize Jack Lord, who had a few brief scenes as one of the cops. Even back
then it was easy to recognize his helmet hair. Book 'em. My dad got a tattoo in
New York during the war. It had his girlfriend's name on it with an arrow going
through the background. Well, he found out his beloved was "stepping out" on
him and ended that relationship though he kept the tattoo.
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No problem. Sometimes I will read parts of a thread and come back to reply much later.
I wish the "old" AMC was still on.
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17 hours ago, sewhite2000 said:
I said this virtually word for word in a previous post, but thanks for your contribution.
Yes, but you didn't mention Macys and Gimbels and that makes all the difference.
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Did Macys used to celebrate Gimbels? Of course not. TCM is a business. You don't expect them to
brag about a former competitor. I remember TBS used to show studio era movies on the weekends
and late in the evening on weekdays. Of course they had commercials.
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1 hour ago, Dargo said:
What's so funny about that, Vautrin.
Guess you never heard James Dreary, ahem, I mean James Drury, would often suffer from vertigo while he sat on his horse.
In fact, word was Lee J. Cobb caught him and/or broke his fall on at least three occasions as he fell off his horse during the run of this series. Uh-huh, TRUE!
(...not)
Maybe that's why Cobb left the series before it ended. "Damn it, I'm sick and tired of
picking up that gd Drury every other episode. If he was a method actor I wouldn't have
minded, but he thinks he's just playing things naturally." Personally I don't go with the
vertigo theory. Drury wore the same pants and vest for so long they became slick and
he couldn't stay on a horse or a bar stool.
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5 hours ago, jamesjazzguitar said:
I noticed while watching Maverick that parts of The Big-Sleep soundtrack were used in an episode. Both were Warner productions.
I don't know if there was any connection in the case of The Virginian, but it is certainly noticeable in
setting the mood in certain scenes. Even funnier in that it's transferred to a bunch of cowpokes
riding around in Wyoming.
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A lonely semi-psycho big city cop has to be sent upstate to try to calm his violent tendencies
(IRL at that time he likely would have been given some sort of medal). There he runs
into a temp-psycho seeking to kill his daughter's killer with his big old shotgun. Despite
that premise, things turn out fairly well. The big city cop, with the help of a blind woman,
learns to chill out and relax and the daddy is brought to his senses after the death of the
killer. I liked the rural locale of the second half of the picture and Ida's house was a nice
cozy place, gemutlichkeit galore. Granted the ending was kind of corny, but that's okay.
It also struck me that at least some of the local yokels on their hunt for the killer were just
as dangerous as any big city crook.
I've noticed while watching certain episodes of The Virginian that the music bears a striking
resemblance to some parts of the Vertigo soundtrack. Weird.
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4 hours ago, Dargo said:
...or hour-long formulaic television drama in general, for that matter.
That's for sure. Route 66 was just one of many. I doubt it took very long for the
experienced TV viewer to figure out where things were headed about 90% of the time.
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1 hour ago, TheCid said:
I remember that episode, but never re-watch it. Too depressing. I think Barbara Barrie played another blind person at the school for the blind.
I agree it was on the depressing side, even though we're about 99.9% sure that Buz will
regain his sight, you feel sorry for all the residents who won't. It was Barbara Barrie
who played the woman who fell in love with Buz. Hard not to fell a little sorry for her too.
I just saw Barbara on an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show where she tried to sell
Murray a piano and maybe more.
The Day The Earth Stood Still - almost every genre of film can have a Film Noir
in General Discussions
Posted
Live by the Christ parallel, die by the Christ parallel. If people are going to stick to that idea,
they are liable to be criticized by showing that Klaatu differs from Christ as much as he is
similar to Him. No Joseph or Mary, no flight into Jupiter, etc. And not to take it too seriously,
but Klaatu looks to be older than 33. I think either Ben or his guest pointed out that that line
was added so it wouldn't appear that Klaatu had the power of life and death that belonged solely
to God and not some alien in a shiny spacesuit.