NipkowDisc
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Posts posted by NipkowDisc
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I liked this film (and my standards are high). I think for what it is, or what it attempts to do, it does it very well-- which is to present simple yet thoughtful entertainment. Crawford lends credibility to the entire affair. In the hands of a lesser actress, it could have been utterly dreadful. What I liked most about it is that there are horror elements, but that the caveman isn't made to be too much of a monster-- he has a gentler, less primitive side that Crawford's character is able to appeal to and reach. Of course, everything goes off-kilter and he runs amok until right before the final fadeout, when she is able to talk him down and hand over the child he had kidnapped.
But TROG is not as bad a film as it's been made out to be-- and in many places, I have seen it receive two out of four stars. CALLING PHILO VANCE, which also aired recently on TCM, usually gets one star. Final analysis: glad I took the time to watch it. If anything, it gave me a deeper appreciation of Joan Crawford as an actress, doing the best she could, given the material and the circumstances.
I thought Trog a fairly good horror film since first seeing it on the CBS Late Movie 40 years ago and John Scott's music is quite good.
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The Egyptian is my favorite epic. I was taken to see it as a child, forgot the name of the movie, but for years had an occasional dream about a man with an eye patch taking off the patch, plucking a ruby out of his eye socket, and buying passage on a ship for himself and a little boy. Years later, I saw The Egyptian on television and realized that was the movie. I find it an incredible movie -- as accurate to the style of the time as it could be, with a literate script and excellent performances by actors who speak in that heightened style appropriate to epics. The music by Bernard Herrmann and Alfred Newman is sublime.
Fox Movie Channel finally showed the film a few years ago, and I DVR'd it, but it wasn't in HD. They showed it again, and it was in HD. It's glorious. I recently showed friends the scene in which the W h o r e of Bablyon (Bella Darvi) meets Sinuhe (Edmund Purdom). They were entranced. The quality of the dialogue, the delicacy of the performances, and the design of the scene (those blues!) are amazing.
I'm glad the film has found its way to TCM. It's listed as 139 minutes, same as on Fox. But I will record it and compare.
it's a great film and I always watch it. it's visual opulence is on a par with DeMille's The Ten Commandments.
this film is also notable for history's first put-down of twittering by horum-hep. (victor mature)
watch for it in the tavern during horum-hep and sinoray's all-nite bender to commemorate the old pharaoh's passing.
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an outtake from Joan's Guest Programmer interview with Bob:
You don't talk smack about June Allyson in front of Bob.
You just don't.
is that bob Osborne? looks like it could be Sam Wanamaker.
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Yep, CG. I first took notice of Joan at age 15 in 1967 and while watching a first run episode of the original STAR TREK series titled "The City on the Edge of Forever", and where she played a character named Edith Keeler, a social worker and an ill-fated love interest of Captain Kirk's, and a story in which involved time travel back to 1930's Depression era NYC.
(...and I've been hot for Joan ever since)
I saw The Doomsday Machine twice on it's original NBC run, did you?
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I am quite fond of alotta 70s films and a few 80s and 90s films. the problem is Hollywood today has only one demographic in mind, teenagers and young adults, mostly those who came of age in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s.
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what for? how about some movies. what am I suppose to do with AFI honors steve martin besides not watching it?
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Quentin Tarantino and Spike Lee? You're over 10 years behind the curve. Those two haven't been the leading directors of movies for a long time. Who are you going to single out next, Ron Howard?
Ron Howard! only decent film he's done is Apollo 13.
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You are absolutely right, I'm sad to say. The number of medium budgeted films directed to an 'adult' audience has shrunk considerably over the last 20 years. Studios prefer to put all of their rotten eggs into one big blockbuster basket now.
Yes, there have always been blockbusters but not at the total expense of an abundance of good dramas which is the state of things these days.
I think you hit the nail and that is what I have been getting at. they have been aiming at fifteen year olds for years now and what about everyone else? they're just are no more Sidney Lumets, Robert Aldriches or John Sturges' any more. all we got are a bunch of quentin tarantinoes and spike lees who have a decidedly non-traditional approach to filmmaking. films are not gonna rise to being an artform simply on the basis of ultra-violence and cgi.
take Alfred Hitchcock, he didn't just throw mindless violence at the audience.
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just ask yourselves this...where would Hollywood today be without cgi?
now take the new vacation movie. it is now rusty's turn to be a complete a-whole like his dad. stupid. what? they think chevy chase is over the hill comedic-wise? I sure as hell doan. here's the story I woulda gone with. a nostalgic Clark Griswold gets the idea to recreate his family's 1983 odyssey only this time he is even a bigger shtootz than before. maybe chase didn't wanna do that but he sure coulda imo if he wanted to. so we're suppose to buy Rusty Griswold being just as big a shtootz as chevy was in all the past movies? I mean how smart does a Hollywood person hafta be to see chevy chase is at the heart of all those films and that is the problem in Hollywood today, near total counter-intuitiveness. so vacation will fail because these Hollywood shtootzes didn't have the sense to hand the comedic chores over to chase like they should have. how dumb can you get.
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yeah, but what is sadly missing from todays pathetic offerings is any appreciably well-done dramatics because today's Hollywood people simply do not know how. all they care about are the cgi sequences they build their life action scenes around...and they doan even do the cgi. the studios' cgi nerd technicians do that. look at something like the towering inferno from 1974. Irwin Allen directed some action sequences as well. that is old school competence compared to todays incompetent mediocrity.
just ask yourselves this...where would Hollywood today be without cgi?
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OP asked how come todays movie titles all sound like they belong on Sesame Street? (I'm paraphrasing): Parents would have strokes if these appeared on Sesame Street:
San Andreas--(a CGI remake of Earthquake (1974).
Best of Enemies--a political documentary.
Listen to Me Marlon--documentary about Brando, a brilliant actor but one also famed for using obscenities.
Jurassic World--CGI film about destructive dinosaurs & related problems.
There Are quality films on release. You just have to search them out. The biggest budgeted films always get the most publicity, because they have to at least break even--whether they're worth a hoot or not. Hollywood is a business--as long as a theme/subject makes $$, they'll drive it into the pavement ( & yes, I know other posters have said it, but I'll repeat it so we all make a point (the point?).
Hollywood's a business. You want more quality films, you go spend your $$ on those films, so the current ****** films Lose money--or at least spend money to get them when they are available to watch at home (this is all assuming one is Not on a fixed budget & can get out of the house easily--if I have offended any such people with my post, I Apologize to them Now.
yeah, but what is sadly missing from todays pathetic offerings is any appreciably well-done dramatics because today's Hollywood people simply do not know how. all they care about are the cgi sequences they build their life action scenes around...and they doan even do the cgi. the studios' cgi nerd technicians do that. look at something like the towering inferno from 1974. Irwin Allen directed some action sequences as well. that is old school competence compared to todays incompetent mediocrity.
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2 More:
"The Conqueror"--(1956)--John Wayne as Genghis Khan, & Susan Hayward as Bortai, his murderous bride.
"The Sandpiper"--(1965)--Elizabeth Taylor & Richard Burton as a reverend fall in love--filmed less than 2 years after they fell in love on the set of Cleopatra (1963) & broke up their marriages--this one is guaranteed to send people who remember "Le scandale" (what it was called at the time) into hysterical laughter--Best line is Burtons' "I've lost all my sense of sin".
the sandpiper does have that nice semi-topless shot of elizabeth taylor while Charles Bronson chips away.
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This is the same over the top stuff you have said many times. Over the top? Yes; e.g. you posted before about there being no war films, and when people mentioned war films that have been released in the last few years, you come up with a lame excuse. While I'm not a fan of many recent movies, your rants are very tiresome. At least a few months back you were funny. So what is in decline is the quality of your post.
go take a look at the upcoming films listed on IMDb like a Lego Brickumentary. that does sound like sesame street. compare the vintage stuff shown right here on tcm to todays fare. could or would todays Hollywood turn out a film like Judgment at Nuremburg? the subject matter is way off. what are fifteen year olds gonna care about WWII? nothin'! our culture has been dumbed down from intelligent filmmaking to sesame street level HS. anybody who has watched as much movies and TV as I have for close to 50 years now can plainly see this. it was not an impossible feat to reboot Nat'l lampoon's vacation for 2015. the problem was that no one in Hollywood today knew how to. the people running the studios are dumb enough to let parking attendants and trash collectors write and direct films and the current crop looks it.
it's very simple. todays Hollywood "filmmakers" think filmmaking is a big joke, like writing for snl or tales from the darkside, rather than it being an artform. they doan take any subject matter or it's execution on film or it's translation to the screen seriously.
Hollywood is dying of acute sesame street / cgi syndrome.
I can see it, others can't.
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Criticizing a movie you have not seen ? You sound like a typical older film critic.
I just saw Ant Man the other day. I laughed quite a bit watching it. Minions was just released, its also a big hit. Lots of little kids who saw that laughed also. Both are making big box office. I don't quite get your point. People worldwide are spending billions to watch these "Hollywood comedies".
I don't get what your issue is frankly ? What do you want ?
my point is that everything outta Hollywood seems geared to an audience raised on either sesame street or transformers. where is the substance and the interesting subject matter? minions? a play on onions. yellow pac men in overalls. a terrific idea for ten-year olds. where are the historical epics? nowhere. where are the war films? nowhere. todays films swing back and forth between saturday night live skit-like comedies to sesame street-like cgi fests. to me that is decline.
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they can't even remake comedies good anymore. the new vacation movie. any stupe can figure out...easily...that the previous films irregardless of the setting or situation, were always built around the antics of Clark Griswold. that was the glue that made 'em work. today's hollywood stupes couldn't even figure that out?
I would watch the new film only for the chevy chase-beverly d'angelo cameos. no other reason to at all.
another thing, how come today's movie titles all sound like something that belongs on sesame street?
must be an indicator of the mentality of today's Hollywood studio executive. I doan doubt it. well, if the aging celebs of Hollywood's yesteryear on the tcm classic cruise doan mind. why should I?
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it's because of men like you that all film noir must end...
because all you of earth are stupid! Stupid!
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whose arty?
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In a new interview detailing the development of TCM's Guest Programmer series (http://www.yourtvlink.com/joan-collins-picks-a-nights-worth-of-tcm-movies/), Robert Osborne seems to be conveniently rewriting TCM's history.
He says in this interview that "the first [guest programmer] was Stephen Sondheim." I suspect that R.O. and everyone else at TCM would prefer to forget that, in fact, Bill Cosby holds that distinction.
Osborne goes on to mention Cosby's name in passing in this interview, but there's no getting around the now-troublesome bit of trivia that Cosby was the first guest programmer in the network's history. Indeed, a TCM press release from January of 2005 (archived at: http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/86668%7C0/Guest-Programmer-Bill-Cosby-.html), states plainly that: "Our first guest programmer is Bill Cosby."
I just don't understand why Robert Osborne would misrepresent such an easily verifiable fact, unflattering as it now may seem.
because it is inconvenient to acknowledge it and because tcm doesn't want to highlight their thought processes (whatever they might be) that go into who tcm asks or chooses to be a guest programmer. was cosby asked or chosen and surely only RO knows for sure.
thankfully, bill cosby has never been on a tcm classic cruise.
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I produced the kids' show "Picture Pages" with Cosby when he was post "I Spy" and pre "The Cosby Show." He would show up once a month, we would shoot several of the shows and he would go away. On every occasion he brought a new "girlfriend" with him. So much for the great family man. He had a habit of saying some very weird things to the kids on the set. The shows were
aimed at pre-schoolers and we were generally shooting anywhere from 1 - 5 kids per show with Cosby. One time he told a 4 year old that the ice cream he was eating had "rat poison" in it causing the child to totally flip out. (And, me too.) Very, very disturbed guy! Anyone who ever worked with him professionally knew he was A: A serial cheater and B: A legend in his own mind. When all of these stories came out about drugged and raped women I thought: "Sounds like Cosby to me."
Lydecker
that would certainly explain Leonard Part 6.
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there are some bright spots in today's tcm schedule like god's little acre and picnic but tonite for me it's me tv all the way.
tonite is my favorite star trek ep "that which survives". a good one from the 3rd year. they come across an uncharted planet only 10,000 years old and no evolutionary process to support it's formation..so they beam down. the enterprise gets molecularly displaced through the galaxy and kirk, mccoy and sulu encounter a computer-generated lee meriwether who likes to touch guys with her lovely nail-polished fingers. my favorite ep!
followed by son of dracula with lon chaney jr. as count alucard and featuring an alluring ravishing louise allbritton who becomes a vamp. compared to louise allbritton in her black wig mary astor is miss canfield from leave it to beaver.
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tcm is hamstringing itself. they coulda gotten a hold of the complete superior BFI print of hammer studios' Dracula from 1958
they wouldn't.
as far as the recent passing of the great Christopher Lee, they coulda had osborne or manckiewicz host a primetime sit-in with a hammer personage such as veronica carlson, who incidentally lives in the u.s., they wouldn't.
science fiction? this island earth, a classic so imbedded in our cultural consciousness that steven spielberg put a scene or two in ET, but since tcm doan show it, can we ever expect to see a primetime sit-in with it's still living star Rex Reason? probably not. with horror and science fiction such conspicuous subject matter in Hollywood for most of the past 50 years, it ill behooves tcm imo to disregard it so.
just sayin'.
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Now this one is questionable. The babe in Robby's arms is nowhere to be found in the movie, along with the background images, but the inserts to the right are scenes from the film.
yeah, and whoever would think Robby could hold his legs that far apart.
and notice how the two slanted gyros in his transparent head cap are suppose to come across like eyes and the orange-colored instrumentation a nose, mouth and a temple hickey.
bob kinoshita must've loved this. -
Interesting construction "sotm-izing" ... I had to read the title thread twice just to make sure ...
completely unintended on my part but so help me this may be the last time I ever complain about tcm in any way ever again.
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what does a smileboxed film look like on one of them new curved screen 4k UHD TVs?
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TROG
in General Discussions
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Wilma's hot but john goodman is more stupid as fred flintstone than fred flintstone.