cinemetal

I am too well-versed at this point to have any movies "introduced" to me by TCM, but the channel certainly does help me to track them down easier! But all of the movies listed are great choices, and now let me add a few of my own, featured here or on the once-great AMC: Scandal Sheet (1952, Phil Karlson), a taut little crime drama about oily newspaper hacks and the people around em. Written by Sam Fuller, starring John Derek, Broderick Crawford and Donna Reed. The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933, Frank Capra), a bizarre little melodrama starring Barbara Stanwyck, prisoner to a strangely alluring warlord played by Nils Asther. Gorgeous cinematography and possibly the sexiest Stanwyck I've seen. Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948, Norman Foster). Burt Lancaster and Joan Fontaine in a quasi-noir melodrama about an ex-con trying to go straight with the help of a young woman's love, even as the pressures of the world around him conspire to keep him desperate and corrupt. The Black Swan (1942, Henry King). One of the lesser-sung Tyrone Power swashbucklers, but to my estimation, one of the best, with outstanding Technicolor photography and a terrifically villainous George Sanders. Fear Strikes Out (1957, Robert Mulligan). A true-life story of a baseball player pressured into submission and mental anguish by an overbearing father. Anthony Perkins and Karl Malden are both heartbreaking. Forbidden Games (1951; Rene Clement). A deeply sad meditation on pre-adolescence and death, set in WWII France, where a young boy and a young orphan in his care build a cemetery for dead animals as a means of grasping the horrors around them. The Front (1976; Martin Ritt). Starring Woody Allen and Zero Mostel. The only movie about the Hollywood blacklist that is truly necessary. Written by, directed by and featuring many actually blacklisted players, this drama (foolishly marketed and approached by '76 critics as a comedy) captured the heartbreaking atmosphere of fear and betrayal which pervaded the era. History Is Made at Night (1937, Frank Borzage). Starring Charles Boyer and Jean Arthur, this presages all onscreen depictions of the Titanic disaster by several years (though the ship in this film is not named, the correlation is unmistakable). Wonderfully romantic. Love Me Tonight (1932, Rouben Mamoulian). Plainly stated, this is one of the best musicals of all time. Why it is not better known today eludes me completely (though the standard "Isn't It Romantic?" lives on in Paramount films to this day). The best Chevalier/McDonald pairing (and the last), this film's camera movement and sparkling dialogue remind one of Lubitsch and Clair, the two other Continental charmers of the early sound era. I don't know how many other superlatives I can use for this film. Find it! Sunny Side Up (1929, David Butler). Janet Gaynor acquitting herself capably in a singing role. One of the few artistically successful pre-1930 musicals, with beautiful and uplifting songs ("I'm a dreamer...aren't we all?") and a love story so charming that even the insufferable Swedish "comedian" El Brendel can't ruin it. Quills (2000, Philip Kaufman). A startingly frank, mature treatise on sexual perversity and censorship as evinced by the Marquis de Sade spending his last days in an insane asylum. As played by Geoffrey Rush, the Marquis is mad, to be sure, but also caustic, witty, verbose, sexy and appealing as he devises new and clever means of ducking the authorities who would deny him the chance to publish his works. Brilliant supporting work by Kate Winslet, Joaquin Phoenix, Michael Caine...need I say more?

Grumble, grumble...count me as another of the Cusack-enamored: Say Anything..., One Crazy Summer, Better Off Dead, The Grifters, I love em all! As for my most recent (and egregious) example of someone who rarely, if ever manages any sort of sexual chemistry with an on-screen partner, there is Jennifer Lopez. I find it truly alarming that, with George Clooney excepted, someone so incredibly "hot" can fail to ignite sparks with any of her pairings. I have surmised that this has much to do with the fact that she comes across as so unequivocally self-absorbed that her greatest love will always be the reflection in the mirror.

Oh my, how could I forget A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film, by my friend Richard Barrios? It's a much-acclaimed book which I think many of you could very much get into, basically tracing the birth of musicals from the advent of sound up to the 1934 enforcement of the Production Code? A lot of rare films are discussed therein, from DeMille's Madam Satan to the notoriously Golden Dawn.

Lemme see if I can recommend any film-oriented books for yas... Frank Capra's The Name Above the Title Josef von Sternberg's Fun in a Chinese Laundry Peter Bogdanovich's Who the Devil Made It

It's pretty cool, but I don't see all that much mentioned about people's ages. As for me, my father who was born in 1930 taught me much about old movies and music, to the point where by the age of five I had a basic understanding of opera and ragtime and could distinguish between Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone. This was compounded by showing me a book about movie villains called The Bad Guys, wherein I was drawn to all the classic movie monsters like Lon Chaney, Bela Lugosi, etc., and also learned about classic films like Greed and The Birth of a Nation -- all of this, to repeat, before I turned six! From there it was only a matter of tracking those movies down wherever I could find them -- Phantom of the Opera by seven, Chaplin's Easy Street by eight, and so forth.

Just out of curiosity, what fave directors would you like to see spotlighted on the channel? Of course, I love Hawks, Curtiz and Ford, but we get plenty of their films already, so dig a bit deeper for me! Me, I'd like to see more pre-Code Mamoulian, Van Dyke and Browning.

> I'd like to see a month of Ida Lupino (and include > the movies she directed too), Robert Ryan, the > Barrymores (all 3 together), and William Powell. > Jean Arthur and Claudette Colbert would be a lot of > fun to watch too as stars of the month. You just missed the one film which all three Barrymores played together, Rasputin and the Empress, which was screened either last month or the one before. As for whom I'd like to see featured, let's see...Conrad Veidt, Jennifer Jones, Harry Langdon, Lon Chaney Sr., Alain Delon, Jean Gabin, John Garfield and El Brendel (heh heh, points to anyone who knows the last one!).

Howdy, I'm new here and just wanted to get a basic idea of whom I'm consorting with here. Age is rarely a concern of mine in discussing the arts, but I have to confess having great admiration for people whose appreciation of cinema and other arts precedes the immediacy of their own timeframe. To wit: I am 26 but my appreciation of film goes right back to King Vidor, Chaplin, Browning and Lubitsch. And it has since youth, when my good ol' pop (born 1930) regaled me with childhood cinema tales of Errol Flynn, James Cagney and Sonny Tufts (don't ask!). And still, that backward-looking good sense doesn't mean I am not a big fan of Steven Soderbergh, Spike Lee and Cameron Crowe, again, to name but a few. Ye regs and guests, please drop a few pertinent lines here so that I can get to know you lot better. Thanks.

It refers to the Indian genre films which incorporate choreographed musical interludes and other classic Hollywood motifs. It does not, however, refer to ALL Indian cinema; for example, the neo-realistic style of Satyajit Ray and the overt sexuality of Mira Nair are not generally considered to be "Bollywood."

> Ah La voyage dans la lune makes me happy, There was a > smashing pumpkins music video about that movie... the > movie is of course much better.... The video is "Tonight Tonight," directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris in 1996, which is very affectionately made in homage to the original film. Dig the name of the ship in the vid: the "S.S. Melies."

> Why is everyone so adamant about hating "American > Beauty"? It's not about demographics, income level, > military branch affiliation or sexual preference. > These characters are exaggerated almost to the point > of "caricature" status - hardly anything to get > defensive about. > Personally I found it witty, suspenseful, and > innovative. After relishing every scene of the > build-up, I could hardly wait to see 'whodunit'! stlgal, you hit it right on the head, but your insightful comment is precisely the reason why I hate the film: namely, the caricature. It is the outlandish, too-broad-to-be-really-clever mishmash which was passed off as "incisive satire" that angered me about the film. Whereas The Ice Storm (1997, Ang Lee) skewed the hypocrisies of the middle class brilliantly, if a bit coldly, American Beauty seemed to me like kid's stuff by contrast.

Alright, someone mentioned Underworld, so I have to go ahead and mention the other great Sternberg gangster silent: Docks of New York. Let's see what else my small brain can come up with right now... Show People, The Strong Man, Steamboat Bill Jr., Modern Times, Manhatta (not a misprint there!).

Chalk me up as another major fan of Miriam Hopkins. To my estimation, she was one of the most skilled at running the gamut of personas from ditzy (The Heiress) to intense (These Three), from dowdy to ferociously sexual.

I like Mank, can't stand Pollack's rambling, am tired of the "we're gonna have a ball," but I can deal with all of those by chanting my mantra and switching to decaf. But the one interstitial that continues to not only annoy me, but sometimes OFFEND me, are those "this week in Hollywood history" plugs. The music, the man's voice and what he says are all so juvenile that I wanna carpetbomb Atlanta in effigy.

Personally, I love reading/hearing stories of schmucks who remove themselves from the gene pool by doing incredibly stupid ****. Social Darwinism at work!

All of the ones mentioned are great, so I will try to list only titles which haven't already been listed: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse The Birth of a Nation Broken Blossoms Way Down West It Diary of a Lost Girl Napoleon Menilmontant Man With a Movie Camera The Man Who Laughs Safety Last! The Kid Brother Seventh Heaven Street Angel The Outlaw and His Wife Nosferatu The Joyless Street Waxworks The Cat and the Canary

I just have to mention Sanaa Lathan again. Beautiful, tough, smart. I hope she becomes a megastar. In my world, she already is.

In his time, he was perhaps the most admired actor as well as one of the biggest international box office draws. Respect + commerce = Oscar. See also: Russell Crowe. For the record, I've been a huge fan of Lon Chaney since the age of seven or so, when I first saw Phantom of the Opera and was moved in any of a dozen different ways.

No one's yet mentioned his gift for comedy, so I have to chime in and mention both his and Ruth Donnelly's hilarious performances in A Slight Case of Murder.

42nd Street (1933; Bacon) Love Me Tonight (1932; Mamoulian) Singin' in the Rain (1952; Kelly, Donen) Footlight Parade (1933; Bacon) The Band Wagon (1953; Minnelli)

You're not alone on those message films. Andrew Sarris wrote scathing words about Stanley Kramer in his auteur theory writings in the 1960s. You're in the right ballpark with American Beauty. I, for one, am sick of the white middle class (which I happen not to be) being satirized and lampooned by a wealthier Hollywood class. Where is the criticism of the permanent, self-perpertuating urban welfare classes of blacks and Hispanics?

1.Obvious, played-out jazz/pop standards in romantic comedies. This means you, Nora Ephron. 2.Female comedies where women "bond" and "celebrate womanhood" by dancing around the kitchen/dining/living room, hands over their heads ala Tevye, while an overplayed Motown standard blares in the background. 3.The equation of kicking a man in the balls with assertion of feminine "strength." 4.The arching of either partner's back at the moment of **** during a sex scene. 5.The inclusion of a black person in a film to denote multiculturalism. At this point, there are more Asians and Hispanics in the U.S. Why aren't they up on screen? 6.The revisionist depiction of all Native Americans as benevolent animists who were "at one with the land." Yeah, when they weren't warring with, mutilating and enslaving one another.

I always loved her lips, so adorable. Other fine ladies from the classic era whom I admire: Louise Brooks, Gene Tierney, Rita Hayworth, Ella Raines, Barbara Stanwyck, Ruby Keeler, Linda Darnell, Olivia de Havilland...the list could go on and on. 'Tis good to be a full-blooded American lad.

One more: American Beauty.

Jules and Jim, to which I am merely indifferent. Forrest Gump, which I hate with torrents of anger.