LornaHansonForbes

Man, if not for THE LAW AND ORDER SERIES so many NYC actors would’ve gone another month over on the rent…

I know that Rita Moreno didn’t get as many opportunities as she should have, in part because of Marlon Brando I think, so I admit that if she had more of a body of work for me to sample, maybe my opinion would change. (I heard from multiple people that she and Brando dated and he ended up wrecking her career and having her blackballed)

You know I thought about bringing this up earlier but I didn’t, but I find myself with a little time on my hands so I’ll go ahead… Those of you who disagree, please feel free to correct me, but I am of the bold opinion that Rita Moreno its not all that great an actress. I add to this the caveat that I have never seen her live on stage. But I don’t think she’s great in WEST SIDE STORY. I don’t think she has as much fun with the part in THE RITZ as she could have, In the 1990s I watched OZ- a prison drama on HBO that was the greatest gay soap opera ever made, and she had a role as a nun who worked in the prison and I always found her, even when I didn’t have as much of an understanding of acting as I do now, STIFF AS A BOARD. She also is featured in one of the absolute worst half hours of television ever, the back door pilot for what ended up being “empty nest” episode of “the Golden girls.” She’s awful in it, but it is such DRECK I can’t blame her.

Well then you picked the perfect avatar!

I was SO disappointed to find out it just meant “as well.”

For years I thought the line was “El Dorado II” like signifying an EXTRA SWANK MODEL of CADILLAC with all sorts of luxury amenity options like crushed velvet seats and a horn that played THE FLIGHT OF THE VALKYRIES.

https://slate.com/culture/2021/12/best-movies-2021-west-side-story-remake-box-office-failure.html

The Merv Griffin joke was funny as **** though.

The next time somebody starts a thread called NAME A REALLY GOOD FILM THAT IS RUINED ALMOST ENTIRELY BY A BAD ENDING, then I have a great entry: THE MAN WITH TWO BRAINS (1983) Directed by Carl Reiner and starring Steve Martin and Kathleen Turner. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen this before, although I have a distinct memory of being told about it by an older kid on the playground sometime in the mid-1980s. It’s a somewhat slapdash affair, filmed entirely in California which is supposed to substitute unconvincingly for Europe in some scenes and the score is TERRIBLE, But the actors are all terrific, the production design by Polly Platt is worth watching, as is Kathleen Turner who I have recently watched in a handful of films I have never seen before and been reminded of what a great actress she is. It’s also a pretty good homage to a couple of goofy cult classics, namely “Donovan’s brain” which starred Nancy Reagan, who at the time was the first lady of the United States, and “the brain that wouldn’t die” there is a SOLID LAUGH pretty much every minute and a half, and if you don’t have to pause the film at least a couple of times because you are ***absolutely doubled over in hysterics***, then there is something wrong with you. One scene in particular where Martin talks to a Portrait of his dead wife and asks her to give him a sign if she doesn’t want him to remarry and the picture spins around and shoot sparks, SLAYED ME. Spoiler kind of but not really: unfortunately this really wonderfully constructed, “throw it all at the wall and see what sticks comedy” ends on an *incredibly unfunny* and lazy fat joke that not only hasnt aged well now, it wasn’t funny in 1983. And it wouldn’t be funny in 1973 or 1963 or 1953. Hell it wouldn’t even funny in 1803. But if you go in knowing the ending absolutely sucks, it’s worth it for the hour and a half of HILARITY. “Somebody get that cat out of here!”

no i have not, i will search it out. I am a particular fan of the "EL SANTO" aka "SAMSON" MEXICAN VAMPIRE/WEREWOLF/WRESTLING films and in many of those they got the same guy to dub the PROFESSOR/FATHER character and he sounds sort of like DUDDLEY DO-RIGHT, which is a trip as half his dialogue is also nonsense that comes off like a computer translated it.

i felt like watching something offbeat, so I rented SANTA SANGRE (1989)- a Mexican/Italian coproduction filmed in Mexico and starring, I think, mostly Mexican actors (except, oddly enough, DEAN STOCKWELL'S BROTHER!) THE VERSION i watched was in English, not dubbed, at least I don't think it was. it really genuinely seemed like everyone in it was speaking English (I have watched a lot of dubbed Mexican Horror movies.) i will pare it down and say it is the story of a RELIGIOUS FANATIC WOMAN married to a straying CARNIVAL BARKER who cuts off her arms, years later THEIR SON ends up in a weirdassed sort of NORMAN BATES type scenario where he operates as her arms, kind of MAD LOVE STYLE, equally crazy, but with actually physically different hands. they're sort of like a homicidal Mexican SONNY AND CHER, only mustacheless and far more watchable... it's too long (2 hours, 3 minutes) and there are MULTIPLE plot points that GO NOWHERE, but it's VISUALLY STUNNING, and well shot and the cinematography is great and I think had it been told with a less conventional narrative structure (ie, less linear) it would have been better.

I'm the opposite. I'm always uncomfortable watching films without full frontal nudity. TUBI is where it's at though, they're got SO MANY GOOD British "arthouse" films right now...

I don't know if I am ever going to get the chance in this crazy world, but if I ever get to go to LONDON again, I want to film a video of me GADDING ABOUT like ED GRIMLEY while cheerfully singing: "There's a hole in the world like a great black pit And the vermin of the world inhabit it And it's morals aren't worth what a pig can spit And it goes by the name of London!"

YEAH BUT certain actors just have distinct manners and characteristics about them, and I just don't personally see LUCY as being able to nail the "thickness" of BILLIE DAWN- and by that, I mean her initial naivety and lack of sharpness. Lucy is too fast too smart and too sharp for the part. But honestly, I got all kinds of issues with BORN YESTERDAY...

EFREM ZIMBALIST JR. was also the voice of ALFRED THE BUTLER on BATMAN THE ANIMATED SERIES from the 1990s. and he played the father of DON DIEGO on a really cheesy but kinda interesting family channel version of ZORRO.

I still can't believe RKO distributed STROMBOLI. Notsomuch out of my own personal feelings about the BERGMAN/ROSSELINI scandal but because the film really sucks.

of course to be totally honest with you, I love JUDY HOLLIDAY but BORN YESTERDAY bores the **** out of me. Always has. The only part I like or buy is when BILLIE DAWN and the HOTEL MAID have their first meeting.

I have a had time seeing LUCY taking BRODERICK CRAWFORD'S CRAP. HOLLIDAY, OK. GLORIA GRAHAM, sure.... but one of the hardest elements of BORN YESTERDAY to take is watching the abusive dynamic between BILLIE and the AWFUL BRODERICK CRAWFORD CHARACTER, and I just can't see LUCY in that situation.

ah, okay then, yeah that's really bad. That's like having a framed portrait of BILL CLINTON in the background of a film set during THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION

ALTHOUGH.... I did look it up, and RKO did distribute STROMBOLI in America!!!! Box office The film opened Feb. 15, 1950 in the United States[19] and was a box-office bomb, but did better overseas, where Bergman and Rossellini's affair was considered less scandalous. In all, RKO lost $200,000 on the picture.[20]

IT'S LIKE AN ONION OF INNACURACIES, every layer reveals something incorrect.

AND LIKEWISE, JUDY HOLLIDAY would have been ALL WRONG for the part LUCY played in THE BIG STREET.

i didn;t even think about that! there was so much wrong with the notion of RKO having a STROMBOLI poster in their lobby that I was overwhelmed by the innacuracies. I think JUDY HOLLIDAY made 2 movies for MGM and then 4 or 5 for COLUMBIA and that was it, she had a small filmography, and she worked solely in the 1950s, when RKOs output was dwindling. ...and as much as I love Lucy, I don't think she'd've been right for BORN YESTERDAY

also, STROMBOLI sucks, but that has nothing to do with anything really. just felt the need to point that out.