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NipkowDisc

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Posts posted by NipkowDisc

  1. my review of Ghost Ship...

     

    doan think too much of it, not at all. last time it was scheduled I started to watch it but became uninterested but last nite watched it all the way through.

     

    captain stone sets sail with a new young 3rd officer marian. stone seems like at first a nice seasoned guy and he likes marian. first sign he's nuts is stopping marian from killing a moth flying around a light. I guess captain stone and his authority only privileges him for swatting moths. later a hook comes loose and marian reminds the captain that he warned him about it.
    then a sailor comes down with appendicitis and captain stone can't make an incision so somebody else has to. later marian tries to be supportive of a captain he likes but stone says he wasn't squeamish just afraid to fail. then stone kills a sailor he doan like by locking him in the anchor chamber but I doan think the scene was shot right. you doan get the impression that the captain was purposely locking anyone in the anchor chamber. to me it looked like the captain was walking down a deck, saw a hatch that maybe some lamebrained sailor forgot to close and dog and did it for 'em. of course on hindsight you gotta figure the captain hadda know the anchor chain was being lowered into the chamber but you doan get that impression from the captain walking down a deck and seeing an open hatch. when the guy can't get the hatch open then you realize that he was locked in but purposely?
    the captain gets reported by marian to his superiors and there is a hearing and here's marian with lowered head while not one crewmember will back him up. no doubt about it this is a crew that deserves their captain. then this refined lady friend of the captain's shows up and gives 3rd officer marian a carriage ride. does she know that stone's nuts? then later on she talks with stone on the ship and he says some stuff like for her to keep away from him and he seems to recollect having done some ugly things. self-awareness of murder?
    among the crew there is this potmark-faced oriental looking sailor who has private conversations with himself which serves as the film's narration. (our hero) somehow or other marian gets knocked out in front of a cafe and winds up shanghaied aboard the ghost ship.
    a very nice captain stone tells marian in his quarters while enjoying a hearty meal that while aboard marian will have no duties. earlier in the film stone tells his employer friend in relation to marian that "I don't want him aboard my ship" yet somehow marian winds up shanghaied. again captain stone tells marian that another captain might harbor a grudge.

     

    marian deduces the captain is going to kill him but this ain't the crew to try and clue in about that. sparks gets a message that finally clues him in. tells marian he gets the deal and then the captain toddles on down a deck with him and no more sparks. marian looses it and blurts out what's going on but the first officer, a real nice fella, has him restrained and tied up in his cabin bunk and sedated even.
    then captain stone perchance strolls by an open porthole to hear what some of the crew are thinking out loud. that tears it! he heads back to his quarters. tears a plaque off the wall and breaks it in two and breaks out a dagger and heads to marian's cabin to slice him up for bait. so here's an enraged homicidally maniacal stone with raised dagger in hand to knife a helpless tied-up marian. our potmark-faced sailor-narrator shows up and there is a big knife fight. the mad captain stone gets in his licks but our heroic potmark-faced sailor prevails and the mad captain stone collapses on the floor of marian's cabin and expires.

     

    richard dix's performance is good but not memorable imo. a better choice for the role woulda been Barton MacLane who could scare the pants offa any audience if he wanted to. finally the title doan make any sense. ghost ship? what ghost ship? captain stone is homicidally nuts but he ain't spectral. you wanna see a tyrannical scary ship's captain? get a load of Barton MacLane as captain tarnowsky in unknown island. that's the one with richard denning, rubber ceterosaurs and a giant sloth. the sloth eats tarnowsky at the end. be sure to get a hold of the cinecolor print. might even be on youtube. :D

  2. I've been trying to find a copy of the newsreel sequence in CITIZEN KANE, but it doesn't seem to be on YouTube.

     

    Anyway, there are some hand-held shots of Kane as an old man being pushed around his estate in a wheelchair, with the cameraman hiding in the bushes. The camera is moving a lot and often the bushes cover up Kane. This is brilliant! Because newsreel cameras in the US back in those days had no through-the-lens reflex viewfinders, so when the newsreel cameraman in the movie tried to get shots of Kane, he was looking through his external viewfinder, which was a couple of inches to the left of the camera lens, and he didn't realize that bush leaves were blocking his camera lens. This often happened with this type of real newsreel scenes.

     

    This is why, when I went into the news business, I bought a foreign-made Bolex camera, that had a prism system that allowed for continuous through the lens reflex viewing. ALL other cameramen in this country used B&H DRs and HRs. I was the only one in the 1960s using a Bolex with reflex viewing. I worked side by side with many network news cameramen back in those days. I first began to learn about reflex viewing by watching short clips from Leni Riefenstahl's German documentaries, when I first saw them in American newsreels in the late 1940s. They never gave her credit for her direction or photography. I never realized a woman was responsible for those films until I saw her interviewed on the TODAY Show on NBC, in the early 1990s.

     

    When zoom lenses were finally made for 16mm news cameras in the US, they used a prism system to give the cameramen true reflex viewing. This helped improve American news photography.

    I love them ol' bolex reflex cameras. :)

  3. I've been trying to find a copy of the newsreel sequence in CITIZEN KANE, but it doesn't seem to be on YouTube.

     

    Anyway, there are some hand-held shots of Kane as an old man being pushed around his estate in a wheelchair, with the cameraman hiding in the bushes. The camera is moving a lot and often the bushes cover up Kane. This is brilliant! Because newsreel cameras in the US back in those days had no through-the-lens reflex viewfinders, so when the newsreel cameraman in the movie tried to get shots of Kane, he was looking through his external viewfinder, which was a couple of inches to the left of the camera lens, and he didn't realize that bush leaves were blocking his camera lens. This often happened with this type of real newsreel scenes.

     

    This is why, when I went into the news business, I bought a foreign-made Bolex camera, that had a prism system that allowed for continuous through the lens reflex viewing. ALL other cameramen in this country used B&H DRs and HRs. I was the only one in the 1960s using a Bolex with reflex viewing. I worked side by side with many network news cameramen back in those days. I first began to learn about reflex viewing by watching short clips from Leni Riefenstahl's German documentaries, when I first saw them in American newsreels in the late 1940s. They never gave her credit for her direction or photography. I never realized a woman was responsible for those films until I saw her interviewed on the TODAY Show on NBC, in the early 1990s.

     

    When zoom lenses were finally made for 16mm news cameras in the US, they used a prism system to give the cameramen true reflex viewing. This helped improve American news photography.

    Dick Proenneke filmed his one-man alaskan odyssey with a 16mm wind-up bolex movie camera. :D

    • Like 1
  4. Am still waiting for the following films - have requested many many times

     

    And Justice For All (favorite Al Pacino film)

     

    Straight Time - One of Dustin Hoffman's finest performances

     

    O.S.S. - Alan Ladd and Geraldine Fitzgerald (love this film)

     

    Salty O'Rourke - Alan Ladd and Gail Russell (terrific together)

     

    Let's Live A Little - Robert Cummings and Hedy Lamarr in a very funny romantic comedy - Cummings is terrific.

     

    Manhattan Murder Mystery - Woody Allen & Diane Keaton and great musical score

     

    The Counterfeit Traitor - I know it's been on TCM but too many years ago for me to remember. One of William Holden's best performances and co-starring the great Lilli Palmer

     

    Champagne for Caesar - Ronald Colman, Celeste Holm and the great Vincent Price who could do it all. One of the best comedic performances ever by Price.

     

    The Fixer - Not sure if TCM has ever shown this but have requested it many times

     

    The Gambler - The best film about gambling addiction ever. James Caan is superb as is the entire cast

     

    A Brief Vacation - Wonderful De Sica film starring Florinda Bolkan

     

    And Now My Love - Claude LeLouche film starring very young Marthe Keller

     

    Garden of the Finzi Continis - Great De Sica film

     

    I'm sure I'll remember more, but for now here's the above films

    dustin hoffman's straight time is a great film I wouldn't mind seeing either. once upon a time...eons ago...tcm had shown the alan ladd films botany bay as well as two years before the mast, both long gone from tcm...

     

     

    so why do some complain? :lol:

  5. I very much like the idea of showing GONE WITH THE WIND back-to-back with SONG OF THE SOUTH. Since Hattie is in both...since we have African American Oscar recipients for both films...and since they both touch on the legacy of the south in ways that might be considered controversial by contemporary audiences-- there's a lot that can be gained from examining these films and their on-going popularity.

    sounds like a great doubleheader to me.

    • Like 1
  6. That's a fairly good point, Nipkow. Considering how much TCM and Robert Osborne like to play up the history of the Oscars every February, it is somewhat of an oversight that they haven't taken a look at SONG OF THE SOUTH in this historical context.

    you woulda thought they would have being such grest self-professed devotees of cinema. :D

  7. Political correctness is why Disney won't acknowledge "Song Of The South" as one of their own,why they've never complained about Copyright Infringement when it's appeared online and why they've never remastered or re-released it. It has finally been remastered,but it had to be done by somebody else,and it was done w/o even the slightest peep out of Disney about Copyright Infringement.

    I have an excellent re-mastered copy i downloaded off an internet movie website.

    And political correctness causes disney and others to ignore the fact that James Baskett won a special oscar for playing uncle remus and never mind Hattie McDaniel being in the film either. :)

  8.  

    FRIDAY OCTOBER 30, 2015

     

    TCM

    220px-bedlam-poster.jpg

    THE MUMMY (1959)..Christopher Lee & Peter Cushing

    CAT PEOPLE (1942)..Simone Simon & Kent Smith

    THE SEVENTH VICTIM (1943)..Kim Hunter & Tom Conway

    THE LEOPARD MAN (1943)..Dennis O'Keefe & Margo

    THE GHOST SHIP (1943)..Richard Dix & Russell Wade

    THE BODY SNATCHER (1945)..Boris Karloff & Bela Lugosi

    ISLE OF THE DEAD (1945)..Boris Karloff & Ellen Drew

    BEDLAM (1946)..Boris Karloff & Anna Lee

     

    only ones I might set my vcr to record are The Mummy and Bedlam. Karloff's really empathetic in that one. :lol:

  9. I didn't watch any of tcm's disney fare last nite but later on I turned to tcm and escape from witch mountain was on and the two kids were playing with ray milland and donald pleasance watching them on TV monitors and the little girl was making some puppets dance and I thought their movements was more realistic looking than today's cgi. older is better. :)

  10. well, as I said in another thread, I downloaded hammer's 1958 restored dracula and made it a VCD. played good too and no freezes but it was a little on the dark side but I did get it on a vhs tape. later on I put in my DVD of hammer's restored dracula and the picture quality knocked my socks off. the file I burned it from was a BDRip and boy what imagery. that fantastic technicolor that hammer used. vibrant colors everywhere from within chateau dracula. I say that because castle dracula in the 1958 film looks more like a bavarian chateau. colors, colours everywhere. from the wall tapestries and even the chairs like the one in jonathan harker's guest room. a 57 year-old film never looked so good. of course I have the BFI restoration print and not that cruddy americanized print tcm insists on occasionally showing. now, just some thoughts. this harker guy played by john van eysson is really dumb. he initially crosses over a mountain torrent to enter chateau dracula and while doing so passes right by the crypt room's metal vault door and doan even go down to see if it's accessible. maybe he felt it woulda been locked. once in the dining area he opens a letter from dracula, eats some food dracula has left out for him, throws a log in the fireplace, sits down to open his diary, knocks his plate on the floor, bends down to retrieve it and vampire babe valerie gaunt shows up in her evening attire. proceeds to ask harker if she will help him and harker seems perplexed. why? he knows where he is and what dracula is so the babe's a mystery to him? then count dracula, the great christopher lee shows up, and is as gentlemanly mannered as can be. some of the few lines of dialogue lee is ever afforded in these hammer dracula films. he shows harker up to the guest room and exchanges some verbal niceties with the man and leaves harker to his business. harker awaits daylight in his guest room to destroy the count the next day. the door being unlocked during the night attracts his attention and then harker makes his biggest mistake. he leaves his room. :lol:

     

    he sees a shadow in the library. must be vampire babe valerie gaunt who unlocked his door. he goes down and she rushes to him from behind the library door to again plead to him for help. she wants to get away from dracula but what's the point? she doesn't feel she can tell harker that she herself is a vampire but wants his help nonetheless. harker chivalrously agrees telling her not to distress herself. then she starts eyeing his neck and goes for it...then dracula appears and gives her a hearty hiss. he rushes down and manhandles her to the floor. a bit harker tries to assist and dracula throttles the weak fool.
    two questions about this 19th century english genius jonathan harker. he'a a colleague of van helsing's but completely fails to surmise that valerie gaunt, the babe in the gown, might be a vampire? what did he think she was doing at chateau dracula? she first introduces herself to harker in the dining area after dark he and can't figure out the rest? maybe her hotness clouded his academic judgment. the later dracula films are not so well-mounted as this first one. next film dracula gets resurrected gruesomely and victimizes a vacationing foursome, third film he wastes time with a catholic clergyman and his niece, fourth film he gets resurrected yet again by some british libertine thrill-seekers and the fifth film deals with nearby village rustics who decide not to tolerate him anymore after centuries of passive indifference. in that one the count fl og s his manserveant (who likes it) and knifes an unfaithful vampire babe to death? gets shafted by a metal rod and juiced by lightning and those two last alan gibson films I doan even want to think about. but dracula a.d. 1972 aka. dracula today is watchable just to hear some forceful dialogue thrown at cushing by lee at the end. it's just a dam shame that hammer never afforded christopher lee more lattitude to do more with his dracula persona. what might have been.

  11. At times I am such a knucklehead. If there was one film I wish was still on my dvr, it would be SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 1946. For the film noir course in June and July I recorded many of the required films. Unfortunately I do not have SJ anymore, and the movie was so good. I remember that Maureen and John Payne were married, and they adopted a little girl. Maureen died young, and her daughter tried to take her mothers place. Maureen and the daughter wore matching robes with their initial. John Payne was so upset at Maureen`s passing that he ignored his daughter. The film was a tearjerker and would probably appeal more to women, but I thought the film was very good. John Payne was another actor who was underrated.

    I wish tcm would show john payne's allan dwan-directed korean war film 'hold back the night'.

    • Like 1
  12.  

    strange but true, tcm has never ever shown the BFI restoration of hammer studios' dracula from 1958.  they should but they haven't. "this is no fantasy." -marlon brando, superman  if you profess to be devotees of cinema "then you've got to act like one and think like one!" -fredric march, the desperate hours

    I gues them BFI chaps really are tough. :D

    b6f1pw.jpg

     

    what do I mean? tcm claims to be great devotees of cinema but have failed to conduct themselves as such. they should have tried, to have made the effort, to get the BFI restoration of hammer's dracula from 1958, but apparently were not interested in doing so...horror being one of those lesser genres. is that it? yeah well, not everybody out here is head over heels puppy dog in love with the third man or gone with the wind either!...

     

    "cinema is vast. I'll explore! maybe find another space cadet not unlike myself."  :D 

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