CinemaInternational

My favorite Mary Tyler Moore Show episodes are usually the ones where Rhoda had an expended role, namely "A Girl's Best Mother is Not Her Friend" [Nancy Walker's second visit], "Smokey the Bear Wants You" [Rhoda dates a man who wants to be a forest ranger], "the Birds...and....um...Bees"[has quite a bit to say when Mary is to teach Bess the facts of life], "The Square-Shaped Room" [tries to redecorate Lou's living room], "Where There's Smoke There's Rhoda" [post-fire, Mary and Rhoda become roommates], "Some of My Best Friends are Rhoda" [where Mary slams Mary Frann for being against Rhoda because of her Jewish heritage], "Rhoda the Beautiful" [beauty contest one], "My Brother's Keeper"[ she plans to date Phyllis' brother], "Mary Richards and the Incredible Plant Lady" [tries to start a business with plants.... or does she?], 'Angels in the Snow" [Mary briefly dates Peter Strauss, Rhoda skewers youth fashion especially in the infamous store Shot Down in Ecuador Junior]

I think we all like to talk about what films we have seen, it kind of goes without saying, and everybody responds a different way to a film. I realize that I lashed out harshly against Bless the Beasts and Children this week moreso than any film I've seen in a while (though Desire Under the Elms irked me in June), and there are people who like one or both out there. Do I feel like i am a great reviewer? No. I just write what i feel and try to do a good, well-writen job, but I know I'm no Roger Ebert or Pauline Kael.

If Nymph was meant to have a lurid title, wouldn't it have an O at the end so it would be Nymph0?

I do have a library copy of Gunfight at the OK Corral at home waiting.... as for other Wallis productions, I tracked down a few Elvis films (King Creole, Blue Hawaii, Roustabout) at the library as well. Supposedly a rental of The Furies is coming as well. He was a great producer, just a bit frustrating though that some of his films are hard to find.....

August 10 Testament (1983) The Day of the Locust (1975) 9 Yesterday (2019) The Fugitive (1947) The Long Night (1947) HM Pullham Esq. (1941) Career (1959) The Swimmer (1968) Hot Spell (1958) The Abdication (1974) King David (1985) The Sign of the Cross (1932) Ladies of Leisure (1930) Cry Havoc (1943) Blonde Venus (1932) Monkey Business (1931) Platinum Blonde (1931) Star Trek: The motion Picture (1979) Desert Bloom (1986) Once Upon a Time (1944, and seemingly one of the few to like it) Catch-22 (1970) Is Paris Burning? (1966) Ask Any Girl (1959) Ada (1961) I know this seems like a lot, but I've seen over 70 this month, and I use the grading system kind of like the old newspaper four-star scale: a 10 for a 4 star film, a 9 for a 3.5, an 8 for a 3, a 7 for a 2.5 (which is the beginning of the failing grades), etc.... And if movie scenes could get scored, special mention then to She's Having a Baby, a 1988 comedy drama that went from a 7 to an 8 through an extraordinarily touching scene set to the heartbreaking Kate bush song "This Woman's Work" (a song robbed of an Oscar nomination). The scene itself is a 10.

Yes, I did indeed see Silence on a day in June of 2017. I had rented the DVD from Netflix.

Bless the Beasts and Children, well i did finish it, but then i wrote this rant to get the anger I have for it off my chest..... And I rarely if ever find a film that makes me feel like this.

Just as a followup to what I said about Watcher in the Woods, I have quotes from an article I have read before about its travails to note how different it would have been for the time originally.....

Watcher in the Woods was done during Disney's experimental phase. It's nothing content-wise compared to what they would be putting out of Touchstone a few years later (I could imagine some jaws dropping in 1986 when Disney first ventured into R-rated waters with Down and Out in Beverly Hills, with its language, nudity, and extramarital sexual scenes --- that is if it hadn't gone out under the Touchstone aegis) But, compared to the stuff Disney was known for, it was pretty daring. You had an attempt at a supernatural horror film for teens, with jump scares, sudden jarring bursts of light, unnerving music and two creepy seance scenes. However, its also a film that was meant to be even creepier than it was..... There was a rush to get it to theaters to coincide with Bette's 50th anniversary in film (and although her role is brief, shes quite good in it), and they never finished the special effects work at the end. That didn't go over well, and they ended up releasing it a year later in a shortened version with a different ending, and also new opening titles to diffuse what would have been a big jolt at the start. The original ending showed the "watcher", the revised version didn't. Let's just say, he was no looker in the original version......

Its wonderful. Very tiny and bittersweet, touching, and poignant. In some ways, I feel it should qualify as being the last film of the classic era. Although made long after the studio system ended, it features 5 players all of whom were working while that system was in place, and serves as a touching farewell to its three leading ladies (even if Davis did a few scenes for Wicked Stepmother afterwards)

I would go with Bette Davis, you look at her run of films, especially her prime years: 1937-1946 and she keeps appearing in some of WB's best films consistently every year.

1960s nominees [not previously mentioned]: Melina Mercouri, Janet Leigh, Peter Falk, Sal Mineo, Lotte Lenya, Telly Savales, Terrence Stamp, Bobby Darin, Rachel Roberts, Grayson Hall, Lee Tracy, Elizabeth Hartman, Anouk Aimee, Ida Kaminska, Jocelyne LaGarde, John Cassavetes, Carol Channing, Sondra Locke, Lynn Carlin, Seymour Cassel, Catherine Burns, Rupert Cross Victor Buono was apparently an extra in Judgment at Nuremburg.

There have been other films post-wide screen era that have appeared in pan-and-scan prints on TCM before.... I think that film The Oscar (1966) was pan and scan, as was a showing of 1963's Take Her She's Mine.

It was (up for Best song; and also according to the database here, it aired in 2012's 31 Days ) That category has occasionally housed some films that were panned otherwise: You Light Up My Life, Mannequin, 50 Shades of Gray, Yes Giorgio, Junior, Casino Royale (1967), Ben, Nine... Oh joy, I feel like I am making a listing for TCM presents 31 Days of Oscar: The Dark Side! Incidently, the song lineup in 1971: "Theme from Shaft"/Shaft "The Age of Not Believing"/Bedknobs and Broomsticks "All His Children"/Sometimes a Great Notion "Bless the Beasts and Children"/Bless the Beasts and Children "Life is What You Make It"/Kotch Shaft obviously won, I'm guessing either this song or the Bedknobs and Broomsticks song was runner-up.

https://variety.com/2019/film/news/julie-andrews-venice-film-festival-lifetime-achievement-award-1203158233/ Very well-deserved I feel. She's always been a favorite of mine, and I've grown up with her films.

Looking at another on Amazon prime... and its not pretty so far. Bless the Beasts and Children (1971) is one of those films that feels very much of its era without having crossover appeal today. It's limp, and combined with some truly nasty scenes of (actual) buffalo slaughters and some disturbingly long scenes of teenage boys in underwear in which the camera seemingly ogles lustfully over their bodies, it makes for a depressing experience. It just tries too hard to be "hip" and "mod"...... Lovely theme song from the Carpenters though.

Yeah, Lois wasn't in Broadcast News for very long and Roy described the funniest bit of her role. The rest had her as an attractive anchorwoman and having that bizarre bedroom scene with William Hurt with its sudden jarring R -rated silhouette in close-up.

That's definitely what people have been indicating, that it is Temple Drake. Now this is a Paramount film, but Fox bought the rights to it so they could make Sanctuary. It's conceivable then that both versions will appear in the same Criterion release, ala Maganificent Obsession..... Speaking of Criterion findings, i wish they would do 1984's Swing Shift some day. i have heard that the unreleased director's cut is a masterful film (better than the cut released), and I'd love to see it.

Adventures with Amazon Prime! I've dealt with 4 on there in the last 24 hours and am heading in on a fifth. Some of these expire on there at the end of the week so i wanted to get to them before then. Once Upon a Time (1944) involves Cary Grant, child actor Ted Donaldson, Janet Blair, and a dancing caterpillar. It's supposed to be a fairy tale type of a film, and it greatly charmed me with its 40s snappiness. Rocket Gibraltar (1988) was the last semi-leading role for Burt Lancaster. in actuality, its an ensemble piece, with Lancaster as a dying patriarch who nobody, save his youngest grandchild (Macauley Culkin) seems to realize is dying. The plot is wispy, but its made up for due to Lancaster's gravitas, and a potent cast (not just Culkin, but also Patricia Clarkson, Kevin Spacey, Frances Conroy, Bill Pullman, John Glover, and Suzy Amis). Star trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) Until last week i hadn't seen any of the films in the series, but I really admired the first one, and have decided to go after the rest of the first 6. I'd heard that this was by far the weakest of the first six, so i decided to get it out of the way before moving onto bigger things. In truth, there are some sequences in this that work quite well being either exciting or charming (and the cast is very likable), but its ultimately too porridgy for its own good in the closing sections. And I thought that Catch-22 (1970) was an excellent film, a savage dark comedy and indictment of war, enacted by an exceptional cast and a style of filming that pays homage to its literary roots. Now, back to Rosalind Russell in Tell It to the Judge.....

2000s onward: Kate Hudson, Will Smith, Diane Lane, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Sophie Okonedo, Felicity Huffman, Eddie Murphy (aforementioned), Ruby Dee, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Demian Bichir, Melissa McCarthy, Jennifer Jason Leigh (aforementioned), Isabelle Huppert, Mary J Blige and Janet McTeer and Laura Dern again. Dern and Will Smith have a chance at breaking the jinx this year.

1970s: Carrie Snodgress, Chief Dan George, Margaret Leighton, Ann-Margret, Diana Ross, Jeannie Berlin, Susan Tyrell, Jack Gilford, Diahann Carroll, Giancarlo Giannini, Tuesday Weld, Gary Busey, Mariel Hemingway. [smaller total than the 80s or 90s] and Madeline Kahn, Marcello Mastrioanni, and Isabelle Adjani mentioned earlier.

Again, too dense and quick. Sigh. I'm always making mistakes.....

80s nominees: Gena Rowlands, Eva La Gallienne, Diana Scarwid, Dudley Moore, Melinda Dillon, Joan Hackett, James Coco, Lesley Ann Warren, Tom Conti, Rip Torn, Pat Morita, Christine Lahti, James Garner, Eric Roberts, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Marcello Mastroianni, Norma Aleandro, Anne Ramsey, Edward James Olmos, River Phoenix, Pauline Collins, Isabelle Adjani And James Woods who was already mentioned for the 90s.

Shoot. Big mistake there. Lord of the Rings trilogy and amazingly I was dense enough to miss it on the iconography completely....

yesterday, when I made the list of winners who never appeared in a Best Picture nominee, I left out Jennifer Hudson. I started looking over nominees who never made it into a BP nominee. For some reason, i started with the 90s (although I also know that one 2015 nominee Jennifer Jason Leigh has never made it into a Best Picture nominee), so just nominees from the 90s alone here..... Bruce Davison, Laura Dern, Michael Lerner, Juliette Lewis, Joan Plowright, Robert Downey Jr, Catherine Deneuve, Stockard Channing, Rosie Perez, Rosemary Harris, Nigel Hawthorne, Jennifer Tilly, Chazz Palminteri, Sharon Stone, Elisabeth Shue, Billy Bob Thornton, James Woods, Lauren Bacall, Peter Fonda, Fernanda Montenegro, Janet McTeer, Samantha Morton, and Chloe Sevigny.