CinemaInternational
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Posts posted by CinemaInternational
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8 hours ago, LornaHansonForbes said:
Still one of her best performances though.
Yes, Meryl was great fun in She-Devil.... even if the scene I got the biggest kick of in the film had her in the backseat.... the scene where her mother Sylvia Miles spills all her dirty laundry to People Magazine.
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4 hours ago, txfilmfan said:
There's also the case of the largely overlooked Testament, which was originally produced for the PBS series American Playhouse. Paramount, after viewing it, were impressed enough to release it in theaters in the US, and then it aired on PBS. So it started life as a TV movie, but was released theatrically first and then aired on American Playhouse. Jane Alexander was Oscar nominated for her role in this film.
And as it stands it was one of the best films of its year. Broke my heart when I saw it last summer.
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If ever there has been one type of programming that is a bit of an enigma, it is the world of TV movies. Firstly, are they TV, or are they films? They first came around in 1964 when Universal started making them, and by the 70s and 80s, every channel was airing at least one new one every week. Plus, beginning in the 80s, cable stations started getting into the mix with TNT and HBO making high-quality ones with big-name casts. And yet within the last few years, they have mostly vanished. There were only 16 in the whole 2019-2020 TV season. I guess this is a post to reminisce about ones of years ago, to point out fine performances or films left mostly untended. Maybe we can shine a light on some things that should not be neglected.
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Just now, LawrenceA said:
And not something that belongs on TCM Underground. I guess they just wanted another Susan Seidelman film to pair with the more appropriate Smithereens.
True. Desperately Seeking Susan would have been the best fit for Smithereens of her others thematically, but that too was still a major studio production with recognizable names. Last time they aired Smithereens they teamed it up with her Making Mr. Right, also a major studio film. However, all of them do feel smaller and more Underground than She-Devil. (the prospect of Meryl Streep in a film shown on TCM Underground is very .... odd)
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Cookie (1989) is the second half of TCM Underground tonight and its worth a look. Not a major film, but nice sharp playing by Emily Lloyd, Peter Falk, Dianne Wiest and Brenda Vaccaro makes it a fun little comedy.
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5 hours ago, Sepiatone said:
Well, there's still a small chain( really, three outlets in three different cities) called FAMILY VIDEO in operation 'round here. The closest one to me is in neighboring TAYLOR, MI. , a 5-10 minute drive from me. Another just down the street from my daughter, who lives a 45 minute drive away. Not sure where #3 is though. But once the Covid restrictions are lifted enough, I'll head for the Taylor store and check it out.
Sepiatone
That's the chain in the town I live.
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The only problem I have had with TCM recently is that I really love catching up with a film for the first time, and recently it seems I always turn it on and its something I know and like (or love0 already. That said, I did see Executive Action this afternoon.
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1 hour ago, txfilmfan said:
Those of you who still use a VCR, don't you find the video and sound quality lacking? I stopped using mine 20 years ago.
The sound sometimes is stronger than some DVDs, at least so it seems. Image? That varies. Some tapes looked washed out, but I saw one recently of 1956's The Mountain (with Spencer Tracy) and it looked pretty great.
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2 minutes ago, LawrenceA said:
The type of neo-noirs/thrillers you're referring to were sometimes called "yuppie nightmare" movies back then (at least by us in the video store business). They started with The Morning After in '86 or Fatal Attraction in '87, and continued on with stuff like Pacific Heights, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Consenting Adults, Unlawful Entry, etc.
The "erotic thrillers" I was referring to in the Eyes Wide Shut review were more low-rent, stuff with Shannon Tweed, Shannon Whirry, Joan Severance, Tanya Roberts, etc. They rarely had more than a perfunctory theatrical release, and appeared on late-night Cinemax ("Skin-a-max") and on video store shelves. They were much less interested in the "thriller" aspect than they were in the soft-core sex and nudity angle. Free internet porn virtually killed off the sub-genre.
Kubrick's film seemed more like the latter than the former.
I guess you could say that Basic instinct and Single White Female kind of straddled both of those types because they both had yuppies and they both emphasized sex and nudity. Thank you for the differentiation, I will add the turn Yuppie Nightmare to my lexicon.
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On 4/21/2020 at 8:57 AM, LornaHansonForbes said:
a genre that- God help me- is dear to me. those were my teenage years and we stole pay-per-view and paid for CINEMAX (GOD BLESS IT) and I cannot tell you how many of those movies I have seen.
Literally, I can't even name most of them since they are all interchangeable noun/pronoun combos: Illicit Confessions, Dark Desire, Illicit Desires, Desirous Confessions...
On 4/20/2020 at 10:40 PM, LawrenceA said:Kubrick's final film is a clunky arthouse version of an erotic thriller, a particularly dubious sub-genre that was very popular in the 1990's, glutting video store shelves and late-night cable TV schedules.
I have to say though, 90s thrillers, the neo-noir types, are kind of a guilty pleasure for me. They are often stylish and have casts that are enjoying themselves. I would have loved to have been in an audience for 1991's Shattered just to see the audience go crazy over the twist. I actually saw one of that genre's ilk late last night, and unfortunately it only got really juicy in the last 45 minutes or so. That was 1993's Malice, which really didn't hit its full stride until Anne Bancroft dropped in for a foul-mouthed five minute cameo as a tipsy woman who held all the secrets of the film's plot. Bancroft was a blast. She knew her material was trashy and she played it to the hilt, and made her every line into great entertainment.
She could have given a seminar at the time: How to steal a 107 minute film in only 5 minutes.
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I have had videotapes on the mind recently. Even though much of the town where I live is closed up currently, I have been volunteering to help a local place get rid of most of the videotapes it loans out. I still watch them and have a player, but it makes my mind drift back to the actual video stores. They used to be everywhere for a while. My small town had 6 places you could go to for movies at the height of it all. And it just used to be so much fun browsing through the aisles for films and you could read about it and take it home for either a night or a few nights. There is only 1 left now. But I really do miss those days.
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55 minutes ago, LornaHansonForbes said:
Aw dang. She was INCREDIBLE in the HBO MOVIE about the McMARTEN PRESCHOOL HYSTERIA.
She tied for the Emmy in 1995 for that....
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And TCM was just showing her in The Group last night..... She was a great talent.
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I received the book as a gift last night. There is a lot to unpack from it. First of all it should be noted that much of the book strikes a regular Woody Allen tone, self-depreciating, wisecracking, acutely aware of his own faults and shortcomings in addition to others, obsessed by beauty (I swear it felt like he developed an unrequited crush on most of his leading ladies). But then there is the 1/5 of the book that deals with Mia Farrow. And that section is entirely bone-chilling. I'll leave it at that. But it did reveal one thing that makes all so much sense in retrospect. The Allen/Farrow relationship had begun as a combination artistic and personal relationship in the early 80s, but Allen write that romantically it was pretty much over by late 1987, and while they kept working on films and kept the appearance up of still being a couple (largely for the sake of three children), it was no longer anything more than that. It makes sense because if you look at the last four films they made together filmed after late 1987, in three of them she dumps him (New York Stories, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Shadows and Fog) and in the fourth (which he does not appear on screen), she leaves her husband (Alice). Very telling the more you thing about it.
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16 hours ago, Dargo said:
This thing reminds me of these old Polaroid Camera series of television commercials starring James Garner and Mariette Hartley.
(...and how many people at the time also thought these two were or might be a couple)
I read portions of Garner's bio. The two truly liked each other, but were never romantically involved. He said that Hartley started wearing a T-shirt when she was out and about reading "I am not James Garner's Wife". When she gave birth to a child, she even had one made for the baby reading "I am not James Garner's baby"
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9 hours ago, TikiSoo said:
I thought so too, but it's a worthwhile movie-just close your eyes during the violent parts and remember-it's only play-actors! To ensure I would sit through the whole movie, I saw it on the big screen at the Eastman House in Rochester. Trust me, there is a comedic release in the "payoff" to the character's disgusting violence.
I still haven't seen Kubrick's FULL METAL JACKET for similar reasons. Someday....
Full Metal Jacket has a grim, disturbing, but exceedingly effective first act that comes to a shocking close, but after that, I never felt it was quite as interesting for the remaining 70 minutes. Maybe that's a minority opinion, but its how I felt at the time.
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I read that one drive in in Florida became the first screen to open in weeks this past weekend.....
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On 4/14/2020 at 7:10 AM, TikiSoo said:
That's why I want to see Texasville so badly, to find out what happened to Jacey. Obviously, the charactors are very "real" to me.
To try to sum up briefly from what little I know about Texasville (via what is printed online and what other details I could rustle up) is that Jacey became a film star for a while until her career crashed and burned. She returns a bit of a wreck but also a bit warmer and wiser, and immediately takes up into an affair with old [and married] flame Dwayne (Jeff Bridges), who is an oil baron of a company about to go belly-up, married to firey Annie Potts and has a teenage son who is a ladies man. Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) is cracking up emotionally even though he's the town mayor. Ruth (Cloris Leachman) is Dwayne's secretary. Lestor (Randy Quaid) seeks to undermine Dwayne as he is a rival businessman. Genevieve (Eileen Brennan) still works at the diner.
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I shouldn't joke like this because I really like all of them, but James Garner, Doris Day, and Debbie Reynolds in Basic Instinct.
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Again, I feel like the harbinger of death since I was just watching Gorky Park yesterday, and he was so good in it. That said, I guess I will always associate him first with Foul Play, one of my favorite comedies, but he was always good in roles such as the friendly bartender in 10, or as the increasingly malevolent trader in Never Cry Wolf, or as the alien leader in Cocoon.
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On 4/12/2020 at 9:23 PM, LawrenceA said:
I've been watching the "making of" featurettes and documentaries on each disc (some of which are longer than the actual films!), and it was interesting seeing how much of Friday the 13th Part VII was edited out. By that point in the decade, the MPAA was starting to really crack down on what they considered immoral and overly offensive horror films, so they started slapping them with X ratings (NC-17 was still a couple of years away). Nearly every kill in Part VII had some elaborate special effects work, most of which ended up being cut out to avoid the X rating. Of course, by the mid 00's, films like Hostel and the Saw series and their imitators would be much more graphic, and without the winking, tongue-in-cheek quality of many of the franchise slasher flicks.
Even non-slasher films had issues with the MPAA in the 80s. I'm reminded of the James Bond film Licence to Kill (which remains the most brutal film in that series). All the Bonds up until this one were PGs, and then you had this one with an exploding head, a character on fire, one getting ground up, shark bites, tortue, heart being ripped out of a person offscreen, and the film was slapped with an R. They edited a bit to get a PG-13, but interestingly, they sent the R-cut to the MPAA about 17 years after the fact and it got a PG-13 no questions asked.
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Watched Gorky Park today. It got a bit too violent for me at times, but talk about an overlooked 80s film. It's a very solid thriller and all four main players are on top form: William Hurt, Lee Marvin, Brian Dennehy, and Joanna Pacula. The film is also blessed with a literate script. The music can be a bit much at times though.
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3 hours ago, LawrenceA said:
July Criterion Titles Announced
The War of the Worlds (1953) July 7
SPECIAL FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New alternate 5.1 surround soundtrack, created by sound designer Ben Burtt and presented in DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray
- Audio commentary from 2005 featuring filmmaker Joe Dante, film historian Bob Burns, and author Bill Warren
- Movie Archaeologists, a new program on the visual and sound effects in the film featuring Burtt and film historian Craig Barron
- From the Archive, a new program about the film’s restoration featuring Barron, Burtt, and Paramount Pictures archivist Andrea Kalas
- Audio interview with producer George Pal from 1970
- The Sky Is Falling, a 2005 documentary about the making of the film
- The Mercury Theatre on the Air radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds from 1938, directed and narrated by Orson Welles
- Radio program from 1940 featuring a discussion between Welles and H. G. Wells, author of the 1897 novel The War of the Worlds
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by film critic J. Hoberman
Marriage Story (2019) July 21
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New 4K digital transfer, supervised by director Noah Baumbach, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New interview with Baumbach
- The Players, a new program featuring interviews with actors Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver, Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Julie Hagerty, and Ray Liotta
- The Filmmakers, a new program about the production of the film, featuring interviews with Baumbach, editor Jennifer Lame, production designer Jade Healy, costume designer Mark Bridges, and producer David Heyman
- The Making of “Marriage Story,” a new program featuring behind-the-scenes footage
- New interviews with composer Randy Newman and Baumbach about the film’s score
- New program featuring Baumbach walking the viewer through a key location from the film
- Trailers
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: Notes on the film by novelist Linn Ullmann
Plus Blu-ray upgrades for :
The Lady Eve (1941) July 14
SPECIAL FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Audio commentary from 2001 featuring film professor Marian Keane
- Introduction from 2001 by filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich
- Interview from 2020 with writer-director Preston Sturges’s biographer and son Tom Sturges and friends
- New video essay by film critic David Cairns
- Costume designs by Edith Head
- Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of the film from 1942 featuring Barbara Stanwyck and Ray Milland
- Audio recording of “Up the Amazon,” a song from an unproduced stage musical based on the film
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien and a 1946 profile of Preston Sturges from LIFE magazine
Taste of Cherry (1997) July 21
SPECIAL FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Project, Abbas Kiarostami’s 39-minute 1997 sketch film for Taste of Cherry, made with the director’s son Bahman Kiarostami
- New interview with Iranian film scholar Hamid Naficy
- Rare 1997 interview with Abbas Kiarostami, conducted by Iranian film scholar Jamsheed Akrami
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by critic A. S. Hamrah
War of the Worlds holds up very well; the funny thing about Marriage Story is that Criterion announced that they would be handling it later in the year only a day or two after I signed up for Netflix for a month so I could see it! (little frustration there) it was a good film, even if I do think the early parts were better than the later ones. Scarlett Johansson and Laura Dern were wonderful in their big scenes, and it was nice to see good supporting parts for Alan Alda and Julie Hagerty.
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On 4/11/2020 at 3:07 PM, NewYorkGuy said:
The Last Picture Show is the one movie I remember going to with just my dad. And although we'd both by that point seen women's breasts in a couple of movies, yeah, it was a new experience for both of us when the guy got out of the pool. And then the girl, top and bottom visible.
Interesting that TCM blew up the image the other night when the guy got out so we didn't see below his waist, but not the girl. We'll assume that's because it was still in prime time... But so much for the uncut part of "uncut and commercial free" (and, yeah, that can be a double entendre).
20 hours ago, kingrat said:I remember Saint Jack as being pretty good. Wonder if TCM will fuzz out the brief frontal nudity of the young Asian man.
2 hours ago, alleybj said:Interesting that TCM blew up the image the other night when the guy got out so we didn't see below his waist, but not the girl. We'll assume that's because it was still in prime time... But so much for the uncut part of "uncut and commercial free" (and, yeah, that can be a double entendre).
I didn’t see it in its original run, so I’m not sure if your memory is correct, but the official dvd release is cropped the same as what TCM showed, so I don’t think you can blame them for censorship. They just showed what’s currently available.
I think what happened with the nudity is this. Movies are always supposed to be framed, so to speak. There is what would normally be projected, plus there is some extra part of the image on all four sides (top, bottom, left, right) in case the projectionist or projector messed up the image, even though these extra parts were not supposed to be seen. My guess is that Bogdonovich originally framed the shot exposing all of the woman but not quite all of the man in front, but many theatres botched the image at the time so the man got more exposure so to speak. The botch continued to the original pan and scan videotape release (which due to the loss of width would show more up and down), but was changed for the DVD, likely back to what Bogdanovich originally intended. The reason i say this is because I have certain Roger Ebert review books at home, and some man wrote a question to Ebert about a disappearing nudity syndrome (namely Faye Dunaway in Network and even more nudity of Alice Krige in Ghost Story), and Ebert said it was likely because such things were not meant to be in the original image anyway, but just barely offscreen.
This has to be it because TCM has not flinched from showing this male nudity before: The Deer Hunter, Never Cry Wolf, Return of the Secaucus Seven, The Silence of the Lambs, Persona, Who's That Knocking at My Door, Women in Love, Medium Cool, Woodstock, Walkabout, Ali; Fear Eats the Soul, Desperate living, The Onion Field, Amistad, Under the Volcano......
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She could have given a seminar at the time: How to steal a 107 minute film in only 5 minutes.
DID ANYBODY WATCH BOGDAONICH'S NICKOLODEON?
in General Discussions
Posted
I saw it last year when it and a bevy of Columbia titles were on Amazon's streaming service.... But the print I saw was Color, not the black and white director's cut that TCM aired the other night. I thought it was a wonderful film and terribly underrated.