EricJ
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Posts posted by EricJ
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I could go into my usual gripe about how Paul Thomas Anderson in "There Will Be Blood" was so role-model struck by one supporting character from Upton Sinclair's "Oil", he threw out the rest of the book, made up an entire story about how mean and cool and badass he wished he could be like the character, kept the entire plot of the book offstage while filming "everything else that happened" so he could turn the story into his usual snipe at fake preachers, and pretty much completely ignored any remote point about oil-worker unions that the author was originally trying to make.
On the other side, you could devote a whole thread to "Buy the Title & Run" overmarketed 00's-10's children's-book movies that have absolutely, positively, obnoxiously, NOTHING to do with anything that happens in their original books: Shrek, Peter Rabbit, Stuart Little, The Polar Express, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Night at the Museum, Where the Wild Things Are, the list gets longer every Christmas, and leaving out the Paddington movies, those are just the American ones.
And then, for a laugh, look up Amazon and see what happened in Ian Fleming's original James Bond 007 novels.
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5 hours ago, TopBilled said:
CONS
3. Another con is that FilmStruck's programming team does not seem to value B films or poverty row classics.
Well, we have Amazon Prime for that. It's the reason I found myself watching it more and more lately.
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Would you settle for Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster and Dana Carvey?:
(Ehh, it isn't that special.)
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2 hours ago, jakeem said:
He also sang in the 1982 film version of the stage musical "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas." One song was "Where Stallions Run," written by his co-star Dolly Parton.
While it wasn't necessarily his (live on set) singing in "At Long Last Love" (1975) that's best left unmentioned:
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2 hours ago, sewhite2000 said:
More than a quarter century after being fired from Universal, Clint and Burt finally made a movie together with City Heat. Unfortunately, it's not much of a movie. I wish this once-in-a-lifetime pairing had been more memorable. It's sort of a noir buddy comedy (and comes across as awkward as that description sounds). There are some humorous moments of the actors playing up to type - Burt as the fast-talking smoothie and Clint as the dour grouch prone to completely losing his sh*t at the drop of a hat. Been many years since I've seen it. I'm hoping a re-viewing will improve my opinion.
The script is by "Sam O. Brown", and if the initials seem familiar, the movie was originally supposed to be written and directed by Blake Edwards.
Edwards dropped this 80's-buddy-cop-concept for "Sunset", which wasn't much improvement.
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2 hours ago, sewhite2000 said:
Not converted into a musical, thank God, but as both stage and screen seem completely incapable of coming up with original ideas anymore,
London plays at least have some sense of "innovation" that lead them to try and stage adapt outside-media properties that haven't been done before (and besides, TV is still important over there as it was over here in the 70's).
US musicals, OTOH, have priced themselves to the point that only corporations can produce them now--And all that corporate studios have any urge to produce anymore is their own marketing-franchise house-icon properties, imagining they're following Universal and Disney's leads. For example, if Paramount does a Spongebob, Mean Girls, Holiday Inn or School of Rock musical, Harvey Weinstein produces a Finding Neverland musical, and Warner produces a Beetlejuice, A Christmas Story, Willy Wonka or Elf musical, it's not because of the rich musical storytelling possibilities. It's because Disney did one. (Warner at one point wanted to do a Batman musical, but you can guess which musical superhero thwipped those plans.)
And yeah, the movie sequel/reboots are made for pretty much the same reason.
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47 minutes ago, kingrat said:
According to Pauline Kael, Reynolds was the first person to become a movie star based on his talk show persona. She's probably right. It's also interesting that Reynolds had a rather macho image in his movies, but often seemed very campy, especially in his talk show appearances.
Younger people probably have no idea just how popular Reynolds was. His movies, except for Deliverance (which I don't like), were not usually critical favorites, and John Boorman is one the few first-rate directors he worked with. He might never have become a movie star except in his era. He also had a great mustache in an era where that was an asset for a man's attractiveness, offscreen as well as onscreen.
Up through the mid-70's, his "macho" good-ol' action heroes may not have been popular, but, like "Brad Pitt", they became synonymous with "The one A-list star women wanted to see in the movies, regardless of the plot". And then, in 1977, he hooked up with Hal Needham in the first Smokey & the Bandit, and made us eat those words for the next seven years.
That whole phase unfortunately gave his career the image of an unserious cracker-barrel actor who joked and wisecracked his career off, and if it wasn't for the respect he got from his fellow actors for his Florida theater, his career might have been wrecked along with those Trans Ams.
In his "comeback" TV and Boogie Nights-era jobs, he played the confident older, wiser, more grizzled ex-hunk, and that was a little more believable enough to let his acting style emerge.
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3 hours ago, TopBilled said:
From my understanding, Paramount controls its own films from 1950 forward; and also it controls the entire Republic Pictures library (1935-1959). So when we don't see those films on TCM very often, it's because TCM doesn't have a deal with Paramount. Probably because of cost. Though TCM does seem willing to pay out for Billy Wilder movies, Preston Sturges movies and Mae West movies.
Although, again, Paramount did lease some of its "unwanted" late 70's to early 90's catalog to Warner, when they were cutting back on home video, so it's possible a few recent late 20th-cty. titles, like the Tom Clancy movies, may be under Warner's banner, and thus TCM material.
If they show "The Untouchables" for Sean Connery's Oscar, you have your answer.
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31 minutes ago, sewhite2000 said:
I would say this virtually guarantees a Best Picture nomination now for Black Panther, whose makers had loudly bristled at the prospect of being shuttled off to the popular category.
ABC reportedly wanted the category to "boost troubled TV ratings", but before the laughter died down
, it did bring the issue up that what the Academy WANTS to do is revamp the Best Picture nominations and bring them back to the same five mainstream commercial titles they were before they screwed them up in the 00's...And they don't remember how.
Nominating Black Panther, just for no other reason than because they want to, would be the first good start.
(And yes, it stinks compared to Civil War, but as far as representative "Symbolic winners" go, there were a lot better Martin Scorsese films that should have won BP besides "The Departed".)
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4 hours ago, LornaHansonForbes said:
I DON'T think i'll ever forget seeing this as a kid. a major formative moment in my childhood.
I didn't realize there was more than one--I only remember the CB episode where the real Charo guested, and we get a sketch at home with her Mom:
https://www.theretrosite.com/carol-burnette-and-charo_1c3f6f73f.html
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3 hours ago, Gershwin fan said:
Open Your Eyes- decent blend of psychological thriller and sci-fi film from Spain. A man cheats on his girlfriend with another woman and she retaliates by crashing their car and trying to kill him. He survives but extremely disfigured and his life takes a turn for the strange. Ideas, themes and phrases seem to repeat everywhere and the answer is strange. Overall this was an okay film but I think the ending should have been less concrete. It should have left more uncertainty with whether he was dying or waking up. I would have preferred an ending like that but overall the film was very good.
If you want "ambiguous", try its American Tom Cruise remake, Vanilla Sky (2001). Goooood luck with that one.
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With the big studios still caught in the limbo between thinking that vintage-catalog disk is "dead", and the reality that digital video is dead, a lot of vintage catalogs have fallen into an unwanted semi-public-domain "Orphan" state.
There's been jokes among streaming fans of the "MGM/UA Orphans", that the MGM, UA, Orion, Hemdale, Atlantic and Cannon Pictures catalogs have suddenly been up for grabs--Which is why you haven't been able to throw a rock anywhere on streaming or third-party disk companies in the last year and not hit Woody Allen, the Pink Panther, Robocop, Dances With Wolves, Bill & Ted or Thelma & Louise.
But just in the past few months, they've been joined by the late-70's to 80's Paramount catalog titles that Paramount leased to Warner to release on disk, and Warner, characteristically let lapse. Which is why Clue, Clueless, A Clear and Present Danger and The Untouchables have now joined the usual streaming suspects. TCM isn't just confined to Warner-owned titles, they're allowed to show a few ownership-challenged public domain titles as well.
Now recently the Columbia catalog has started to wander the orphan streets (probably now that Sony is thinking about putting Crackle out of our misery), and Oliver, Godspell, Godzilla and Baron Munchhausen have been sighted more frequently...
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8 hours ago, LornaHansonForbes said:
The 8 spot instead goes to a film DEAN made with JANET LEIGH and JERRY LEWIS in 1954 called LIVING IT UP. I am unfamiliar with the premise, but am hoping it's a taut psychological thriller about a likeable, appealing couple (Leigh and Martin) who pick up a psychotic drifter (you know who) and the film ends with his flaming body falling into a canyon screaming "LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY-DEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!'
Anyone seen it? Amirite?
Technically....nnnno.
It's a remake of "Nothing Sacred", with Jerry as Carole Lombard, which means he doesn't really have six months to live in this version either.
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17 hours ago, Bogie56 said:
Wednesday, September 5
1:15 p.m. Dangerous Mission (1954). Thriller with Victor Mature and Piper Laurie.
The girl, THAT'S Carrie White's mom and Catherine Martell?? ?
When was Piper Laurie ever young and/or nice?
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2 hours ago, scsu1975 said:
Hey. wait a minute ... you didn't like his song about the Pythagorean Theorem?
While "Court Jester" is still on my A-list of favorites, I have a low tolerance for Danny Kaye movies without Sylvia Fine songs (eg. his Sam Goldwyn work), and the terminal precious-cutesies in this movie sank below it within a half hour the first time I watched.
I should probably try to get through it again some time.
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6 hours ago, Sepiatone said:
I did too, but did get quickly bored with the GARY COLLINS/ESP "Sixth Sense" period episodes.
"The Sixth Sense" was a completely different series, and was stuck in to fill the reruns out to syndication length, when they cut the first and second season Gallery episodes down to half hours to fit the third.
Even though Sixth Sense was more of a weird team-procedural show, it didn't stick out from Night Gallery's cheap 70's-Universal quality as much as, say, sticking Outer Limits reruns in with Twilight Zone would have.
QuoteAnd "Escape Route" with Richard Kiley from the 1st season is also still a favorite.
That was also from the pilot movie, wasn't it? Let's face it, the movie was just BETTER.
There were memos that Rod Serling wanted to revamp Twilight Zone to the "art gallery" opening if he ever got a sixth season (ie., if the fourth season hadn't jumped the shark), and from the short-stories Serling adapted for Gallery, it's pretty clear that show would have gone the same way.
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1 hour ago, NipkowDisc said:
and it's the girl's idea.
Why, getting hopeful?
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1 hour ago, sewhite2000 said:
In the first movie of the final day of SUTS to have a host intro, Ben Mankiewicz declared that in her long career, Joan Crawford had been directed by "everyone from Lewis Milestone to Steven Spielberg", which immediately had me thinking, "What the hell?" Ben chose not to elaborate, so I had to do a little imdb detective work. It appears Crawford starred in a segment of a 1969 episode of Night Gallery entitled "Eyes" that was directed by a 23-year-old Spielberg in his first-ever professional job. Anybody seen this particular segment?
It's in the pilot TV-movie, so it's not on the Hulu episodes. Which is too bad, as the movie was easily better than most of the one-joke Tales From the Crap that Rod Serling wrote for the regular series. (It never got better than that first Roddy McDowell "Graveyard" segment from the pilot.)
Spielberg mentioned it in 1982:
Spielberg also directed the regular TV segment "Make Me Laugh", which...you'll see what I mean. He was on the Universal lot doing episodes of Marcus Welby and Columbo, and even he admits his "new innovative camera angles" were fresh out of film school.
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2 hours ago, TheCid said:
Never actually saw one, but my recollection is that the purpose of the movies was their quasi-pornographic attributes. They were substitutes for the real, illegal pornography. Strictly to show naked people.
Yes, you're right, you never actually saw one:
Actually, most of the nudist magazines and movies were painfully transparent at being "softcore"--y'know, the folks there just play volleyball for eight hours every day--but nothing sexual ever happened, because, you know, that's not WHY a nudist camp exists! As the narration spends most of the movie lecturing us, the camp is for "open-minded" people who have "opened their eyes" to give up the "tyranny" of clothes that society "enforces" on us, etc., rinse, repeat...You can probably name any recent gay movie that was less openly didactic and wagon-circling against being "socially misunderstood". (Remember, this was the 50's, and any sexploitation had to be a "social criticism" or an "expose'", for the public good.)
Of course, you don't go to movies to be lectured, so we see the progressive folk mostly sitting around. Not posing, per se, just very little from the front, and usually with legs crossed.
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17 minutes ago, TopBilled said:
These films are now off the schedule. In place of the guest programmer on the 30th, TCM is instead doing a night of Bowery Boys Horror.
If Landis is rescheduled for November or a later month, I wonder if his selections will change.
Universal issues permitting, It's a Gift will probably show up, as Landis has a favorite attachment to that movie.
As noted by the talking turtle in Landis's "Three Amigos" being credited to one Carl LaFong. (Did I spell that correctly?--Capital L, small A...)
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If you want them that badly, a whole package of the specifically camp-sponsored "Lifestyle propaganda" pro-nudism movies from the 30's-50's showed up on Amazon Prime's public-domain ephemera a while ago.
Zoomed in, of course, to keep everything above the shoulders, although rear shots are still allowed.
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11 hours ago, FilmSnob said:
I have to give you credit NickandNora, if I were doing this I would skip all the live action rubbish and just do the animated movies. You're a tough cookie!
Oh, and unless you want to get into half a dozen Bette Midler dramas and Americanized Martin Short French comedies a week, I'd skip the 90's Touchstone/Hollywood/Silver Screen Partners years, when they were grinding them out like sausage, or you won't have any free time left.
If you're trying to include "Walt's" live-action movies as examples of the Disney touch, those are considered to have ended in 1982-83, when the studio changed its old studio-system policy and let out art movies by independent directors, the same as other studios, just before the arrival of Michael Eisner. Classically, Night Crossing, Tron and Tex from 1982 are considered the official last "old" Ron Miller-era Disney live-action movies--Tron usually gets the prize, out of sentimentality--but Never Cry Wolf and Something Wicked This Way Comes from 1983 are still watchable as the first "new" Disney studio films.
(Anything iconic after that from the late 80's/early 90's, like Roger Rabbit, Natty Gann, Arachnophobia, Sister Act, Good Morning Vietnam, Three Men & a Baby or Pretty Woman, were rare. Dick Tracy or The Rocketeer are good for watching on your own time, though.)
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1 hour ago, FilmSnob said:
Yeah, I have had Filmstruck since this Spring and never had any problems with it. Nothing else needed to watch on PC but it does use adobe flash player (?) .... lots of devices if you want to watch on smart TV and download the app.
Since I've been waiting in vain for that promised Playstation 4 app (maybe it's problems with Sony, or Sony or FS have given up on any further device apps, either way it ain't coming), I tried shopping around for whether to get a two-figure Roku, AppleTV, Amazon Fire or Google Stick, just to plug in for watching Filmstruck.
Problem is, from most of the Amazon reviews, the living-room devices seem to be horrible at downloading the movies for plug-ins or smart TV--I could go out and get a new built-in Amazon-enabled 4K Smart TV, they're cheap enough by now, but I don't have a 4K UHD player yet, and you'll only pry my old 3DTV out of my cold dead living-room.
So, I'm left back where I started, namely that the only thing I have that will play FS properly is my iPad tablet, which is what I was trying to get away from in the first place. Oh well, that just brings it down to whether I want one more subscription, and I'm too busy trying to finish off the last of my Hulu before dropping it and getting to work on dropping Netflix.
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One fourth-wall idea, not just talking to the camera, was in low-rent Bela Lugosi B-picture The Ape Man (1943)
There's a weird town-hick character, never named, who keeps showing up wherever our heroes are, sometimes peeping in windows, sometimes watching from the back of the crowd, and at one point as a passerby on the street warning our heroine not to go down that dark alley.
Finally, just before the end credits, the stranger shows up to interrupt our hero and heroine's climactic kiss, and our hero asks him, "Hey, just who are you, anyway?"
"Me? I'm the AUTHOR of the story!...(to camera) Screwy idea, wasn't it?"
, it did bring the issue up that what the Academy WANTS to do is revamp the Best Picture nominations and bring them back to the same five mainstream commercial titles they were before they screwed them up in the 00's...And they don't remember how.
All Hallow's Eve Film Fare
in General Discussions
Posted
I have an annual pile of rotations: "Young Frankenstein", for ex., gets swapped out with "Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein", on alternate years.
Also, I'm still waiting for "Curse of the Demon/Night of the Demon" to be released on Blu-ray, so that can take its place as Halloween tradition.
But in addition to Charlie Brown, Ray Bradbury provides my two holiday anchors every year:
Disney's "Something Wicked This Way Comes" (1983), swapped out alternately with Hanna Barbera's 1993 animated "The Halloween Tree" (available on Warner Archive):