EricJ
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Posts posted by EricJ
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4 hours ago, calvinnme said:
Nip, some of the problems with the Universal Monster Franchise is that two distinct companies actually made them. The original Frankenstein and Dracula films were made when the Laemmles owned Universal. They lost the company they founded in 1936 to a bunch of money men who apparently had no idea how to make motion pictures. I have copies of some of the programmers they made in the late 30s and it is hard to argue that point after viewing them. According to Richard Barrios, in "Song in the Dark", excluding Abbott and Costello, nothing important happened at Universal Studios from 1936 until the 1950s when Rock Hudson and Douglas Sirk showed up.
Not to mention that the pre-Code outcry over Edgar Ullmer's "The Black Cat" pretty much finished off Universal Horror's popularity with the public, and made the supernatural a box-office-taboo word at the studio. Most of Universal's, quote, "horror" output without the Laemmles after that was generic "Old Dark House" thrillers--with comic elements added, for Scooby-Doo value--with Bela Lugosi reduced to playing just generic red-herring sinister butlers and gardeners.
The "Vs." monster-mashups were only after Universal was reduced to showing the Classic monsters to matinee revivals, and discovering that they had B-movie value with kid and teen audiences. At which point it became a B-movie industry at the studio, with budgets and production value to match, until the Jack Arnold "Universal International" days of the Creature From the Black Lagoon.
5 hours ago, Swithin said:I'm a big fan of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. I remember being really scared as a kid, by that early scene where he's in bed watching the moon through the window. And of course there's the priceless "Festival of the New Wine" operetta, and Larry's brilliant outburst. I hear the Metropolitan Opera has been considering an expanded version of the operetta for a forthcoming season.
Although, of course, we've already had the thread that explained why FMtWM feels so disjointed and that there's a lot more Wolf Man than Frankenstein in the finished product--After the studio cut out the major subplot continuing Lugosi's talking Ygor-stein Creature from the end of "Ghost of Frankenstein".
It's a nice idea for a monster-mashup, and good points for intent, but like certain Warner DC Comics mashups, you wish for a do-over that had all its ideas worked out before they went in.
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7 hours ago, Bethluvsfilms said:
I bought the movie on DVD because I finally wanted to see what all the hoopla was all about. And while it wouldn't be what I would have chosen to be THE greatest movie of all time, it is a damn fine film for sure.
And at last I finally understand what 'Rosebud' means!
Roger Ebert reportedly owned one of the two prop (SPOILERS) rescued from the fire, and...can't remember, was it Steven Spielberg who owned the other?
It's the one Movie That Millennials Fear (with "The Seventh Seal" coming in second, followed by "Forrest Gump" and your choice of Oscar-winning documentary), because nobody ever seems to academically rhapsodize about anything except Welles' "revolutionary" use of editing ("Merry Christmas, master Kane..." "...'And a Happy New Year'"), the B/W cinematography in the opera house, or the fact that Welles put ceilings on his sets. Which unfortunately puts them in the mind that that's "all" that Grownups ever talk about when they pick a Great Film, so just stick with Big Lebowski, Office Space, and Princess Bride.
But what folks never get around to mentioning is just how good Orson is at digging the snarky irony out of Herman Mankewicz's script, and making Charles take as much of the stinging social-criticism barbs in later life as his younger self dished out. You CANNOT watch the iconic scene of Candidate Kane's hypocritical speech next to his 200-ft. poster ("My opposition has launched a series of attacks on me"), and not think of Trump parallels.
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6 hours ago, Swithin said:
A bigger question for me is "Why don't I like Barbra Streisand?" I saw her on stage in Funny Girl; she was excellent. And I love her recording of "Miss Marmelstein" in I Can Get It for You Wholesale. But apart from that, I don't like her.
Streisand was funny as a Brooklyn Jewish Girl in the 60's and 70's of "Funny Girl" and "Hello Dolly", because she had enough humor to play herself as realistically New Yawk and comically over the top for late-60's/early-70's comedy and Broadway.
By the time she did "Funny Lady" in '74--which was also about the now career-established Fanny Brice turning into a ruthless self-promoting businesswoman with an entertainment empire--art was starting to imitate life, and we were on our way to the rampaging Barbara-Zilla of the South Park episode. (The one we got in "Yentl", which would have been a better movie musical if anyone else had been allowed to sing in it.)
And while I don't absolutely loathe Katherine Hepburn in BAB as much as other posters--or at least to the murderous degree I hate the "wacky" family in "My Man Godfrey"--her complete lack of any motivation for WHY she's such a looney will test your ultimate patience for 30's Screwball Comedy.
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3 hours ago, LornaHansonForbes said:
?ONE NIGHT IN BANGKOK AND THE WORLD's YOUR OYSTER...?
You do know that the song has absolutely nothing to do with sex or the Bangkok trade, don't you? ? (Hint: It's sung by an int'l chess champion in the Abba musical, and the queens he uses would not excite you.)
2 hours ago, Princess of Tap said:Swith--I watched the funeral of prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
I was truly surprised if not shocked to see large groups of people who were protesting Margaret Thatcher's political policy even on the day of her funeral.
When?--I wasn't aware she was sick.
Although I remember a BBC series analyzing Shakespeare, that paralleled the weak "God shall defend his king!" inaction of Shakespeare's Richard II with Margaret Thatcher's stay-the-course belief that loyal England would rally to her side during the Vote of No Confidence that drove her out.
(How Meryl Streep handled it, I haven't got around to renting.)
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22 hours ago, kingrat said:
I thought I was the only person who would admit to having seen Yes, Giorgio. Well, the music is great, anyway. Believe it or not, I have read that originally there were plans for Pavarotti to have a rear-view nude scene. No, I'm not making this up.
I'll admit I tried to watch it, along with "Monsignor", as part of a series on "lost" John Williams scores. (Er, the Oscar-nominated song was good, but...) But after the sustained insufferable cutesiness, which was excessive even by early-80's rom-com standards, I gave up after ten or fifteen minutes. English issues aside, Pavarotti LOOKS like he should be a better actor than he is.
From what I saw, if they wanted to show a "cute" gag showing Pavarotti's hinder, at that point, it wouldn't surprise me. ?
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3 hours ago, jamesjazzguitar said:
As for "Oscars aren't perfect"; Perfect at what????
The 'goal' of most industry awards is marketing; To increase the sells of products (films) and to the overall marketing value of those in the industry (actors, directors, screenwriters etc..).
Of course it appears most people wish to have the romantic notion that awards are about ensuring the 'best' are recognized.
The goal of most awards is to give awards to EACH OTHER--Simply because nobody else outside the industry knows what work merits one as intimately as those inside the industry. They don't televise your office's Employee of the Month winner, but if you work there, it's nice to have.
The Golden Globes, for example, was started as a way for press columnists to show their loyalty to the studio-system publicists, which is why nobody cared about them until we couldn't think of our own nominations anymore and got onto our big fantasy-baseball "Oscar buzz" kick.
The Tonys could be considered "marketing", since the whole point of televising the musical excerpts is to give people outside of NY a peek at what they could come to town to get, but once Neil Patrick Harris opens his audience-schmoozing mouth, it's back to the private industry get-together again.
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2 hours ago, Dargo said:
Btw, that was Triumph up there talking, not me.
(I'm old enough to remember the NBC Conan O'Brien episode where they premiered Triumph, where he was meant in context of an actual joke. That was a long time ago, and I'm pretty sure nobody else today does, least of all R. Smigel.)
QuoteAnd btw again CG, you're right. Those Dark Crystal puppets DO look a lot like Michael York.
Michael York and Pia Zadora, which I always found a bit odd.
Brian Froud on the disk commentary mentioned showing Dark Crystal to kids, and often heard the reaction of "Cool, what is this, it's not CGI?"
I'm assuming the stop-motion of Ray Harryhausen, Lotte Reiniger and, ahem, Henry Selick's Halloween movie are disqualified, as we're talking about puppets with real-time movement. (Also, I remember being trapped in a theater watching Lotte's shadow-puppet animation "Baron Munchhausen" movie with an audience when the winter heat went out, and...I'd rather not relive those memories, thank you.)
Oh, well--Moving right along:
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21 hours ago, sewhite2000 said:
Actually in the new movies Quinto's Spock was having a hush-hush sexual relationship with Zoe Saldana's Uhura.
...What would Nurse Chapel think?? ?
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If I'm ever in court, can I get out of it by charming their better natures with a big "Aww..." feel-good speech directly to the jury about why it was the right thing to do, like at the end of all those 80's comedies?
(...Can't I even bring in some sick kids, like at the end of "Patch Adams"?)
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11 hours ago, LawrenceA said:
Then again, I'd never heard that about the hanging man in The Wizard of Oz until the last year, either, all though I make no claims to being an expert on the minutia of that movie.
I'm not sure whether I want to dig up the YouTube conspiracy theorist who complained that now that we have Oz on pristine 4K restored Blu-ray, we can now SEE, in crystal clarity, that the "hanging" Munchkin was actually the same African crowned crane who was strutting about and flapping its wings near the house during the Tin Man's song:
It would be disappointing to say that technology had permanently robbed us of a favorite old urban-chestnut, so, never say die, the theorist was trying to float the theory that Warner had altered the scene with CGI for the Blu-ray, to try and bury the suicide evidence once and for all!
(And what were his compelling arguments?: A) "They can do that now!", and B ) "The old shot was totally different!--It always looked like one on my fuzzy old VHS, years before!")
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47 minutes ago, jamesjazzguitar said:
While I was clearly being a wiseguy Spock is an asexual being and so if there was some push-back it really wouldn't surprise me.
Pretty much even the most basic Trek fan knows that Spock once had the very violent hots for T'Pring, back when he was feeling his Vulcan-ritual oats.
Can't say I blame him, but she just as asexually turned out to be a politically manipulative schemer. As he told the better Vulcan man who won, "You may often find that having a thing is not as pleasing after all as wanting it...It is not logical, but true."
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1 hour ago, jakeem said:
My favorite production number was Pharrell Williams' energetic performance of Best Song nominee "Happy" at the 86th Academy Awards on March 2, 2014. Williams, who wrote the song for "Despicable Me 2," even interacted with nominees Lupita Nyong'o, Meryl Streep and Amy Adams. Unfortunately for him, the song lost the Oscar to "Let It Go" from "Frozen." But it was a worldwide No. 1 hit.
The "Triplets of Belleville" theme was also a lively defense of the Best Song number: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w6IAXW3qe8
Oh, and I DID already mention Cirque du Soleil's '02 salute to great moments in Best Visual Effects, right?
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7 hours ago, LornaHansonForbes said:
1. Love the Biltmore. My favorite film ever filmed there is 1981's THE PRIVATE EYES...a Tim Conway/Don Knotts murder mystery comedy that, Honest to God, works on every front. I adore this movie.
I'm going to have to agree with Tiki on this one: Anyone who abuses the Text Color and Capitals feature usually ends up attacked by a Wookelar.
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5 hours ago, jakeem said:
By the way, those were two of the great moments in Oscars history.
As was Pilobolus on Ellen DeGeneres's '07 hosting:
(Which I always put second to Cirque du Soleil's '02 appearance as evidence-for-the-defense toward Why to Leave the Entertainment Numbers IN.)
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2 hours ago, LawrenceA said:
Will: G. Gordon Liddy sounds amusing since Liddy is such a goofball, but unfortunately it has never been put out on DVD, and the VHS is going for too much, or I'd have bought that, too.
I even subjected myself to Fire Maidens of Outer Space the other day based on your recommendation.
I'm curious about looking up some of the old "70's Mainstream TV Tries to Do Watergate" miniseries based on all the hit post-jail autobio bestsellers (yes, I'm THAT desperate for good old-fashioned Old Skool 70's TV that Hulu won't show), back when few people literally understood what the heck had been going on, and it took "All the President's Men" to FAQ-101 it to them--No one even remembers the TV miniseries of The Final Days, except for 70's SNL doing a hilarious Dan Aykroyd parody of the book's excesses. Sadly, no "Will" on YouTube, except for isolated clips of Robert Conrad, although you can find "Blind Ambition" in some back corners if you look.
As for Nip, Lawrence, you're catching on: It's not that he posts recommendations for anyone else, he just.........posts.
And Fire Maidens is much better downed with the obvious chaser:
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5 hours ago, Det Jim McLeod said:
James Dean-I think he would have kept on getting good roles in films and probably would have won an Oscar. He may have been competing with Paul Newman and Steve McQueen for roles. I can definitely see him in "Cool Hand Luke" or "The Great Escape"
I don't know, seeing Dean's sudden bursts of Method Acting in his films--Filmstruck's Twitter page has had fun comparing Dean's "You're tearing me apaaart!" in Rebel to with Tommy Wiseau's from "The Room"--puts one in mind of what happened to Marlon Brando ten or twenty years after "Stell-laaa!"
Except that Dean didn't quite seem to be as ambitious to play against his own real-life brooding-delinquent-who-stumbled-into-acting personality, and probably wouldn't have played Shakespeare's Marc Anthony quite as well.
1 hour ago, TopBilled said:I think Monroe would have been washed up by 1970 but probably made a comeback in the 80s if she wrote a tell-all book about her life.
Monroe was aware that she didn't like glamorous concocted studio images--always sardonically joking about "her"--and she was curious to break out into more challenging projects to play against her image but didn't quite know how to do it, especially if her Acting Institute coach wasn't around. Even when all her other smitten directors were starting to give her less glamorous and more sympathetic parts like "The Misfits", just to see her natural offscreen personality emerge in casual clothes.
Watching Fox's restored "Something's Got to Give", she's still not quite on the beam for playing a fast-paced dialogue comedy, compared to trouper Doris Day in "Move Over, Darling"--Doris could move on to 60's comedy and TV sitcom, but Marilyn in "Let's Make Love" looks like she feels she still "has" to do breathy-earnestness and suggestive musical numbers.
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12 hours ago, hamradio said:
"The Last Pope" (2018) a documentary that focuses on Malachy’s “Prophecy of the Popes,” which emerged in the late 1500s and made predictions about future popes, predicting the last one would be the 112th.
Is Francis the last, time will tell.
Y'know, it WOULD be just like Pope Francis the Hippie to decide he's going to finally dissolve the Vatican and make it a democratic collective...
(And I'm a Protestant who means that as a compliment.
)
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11 hours ago, Sepiatone said:
Apologies to Humbert Humbert, but I'm not referring to Edgar Alan Poe, but rather....
Of course, if there WAS a thread about Edgar Allen Poe, mention would have to be made of Jeffrey "Re-Animator" Combs doing some of the most dead-on biographic portrayals of Edgar's troubled Maryland absinthe-drinking ne'er-do-well days--Most notably in a Showtime "Masters of Horror" episode as well as onstage:
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17 hours ago, shutoo said:
House of the Long Shadows (1983)--A re-telling of Seven Keys to Baldpate..but different in many respects than the 1935 Gene Raymond version (only other one I've seen). Notable here is the presence of Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and John Carradine as some of the 'key holders'..but the main character is...Desi Arnaz Jr. (?)
According to the story (at least on the "Electric Boogaloo" documentary), Menahem Golan--yes, it's an 80's Cannon picture--went in saying "Get me those Monster guys! We need to get them all together for one of those Monster pictures!"
He was surprised when they got Price, Lee, and Cushing together, and associates later suspected Golan didn't realize that Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre were dead, and that's why they hadn't been seen in many films lately.
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On 8/11/2018 at 5:29 PM, speedracer5 said:
Lol yes. I also prefer Captain Blood to The Sea Hawk.
The Sea Hawk is good, I like Flora Robson and Claude Rains. I also enjoy the antics of Flynn's monkey. The galley scene featuring a shirtless Flynn is the highlight in my opinion. The sword fight with the shadows projected on the wall is also a pretty cool effect. I can't help but feel like Warner Brothers should have shelled out some more money and filmed this movie in color. I think color would have greatly improved the spectacle that I feel this film was intended to be. For me, the real drag in this film is Brenda Marshall. She has a pretty face, but she just has no screen presence. She's so bland--especially when in scenes with Flynn who has charisma oozing out of every pore.
As they also mention in the docu-feature, Henry Daniell was clearly no Basil Rathbone at the dueling sword, which explains why most of Sea Hawk's final duel has a high degree of cutaways, long shots, silhouettes, and stunt doubles with their back to the camera.
But if Brenda Marshall was clearly no Olivia de Havilland, Flora Robson's Elizabeth I was no Bette Davis, and I mean that in the good way.
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8 hours ago, LawrenceA said:
Yeah, it was the Best Picture Oscar winner for 2001(the year the movie was released), and it won in 2002 (the year the ceremony took place).
I don't see your point as it relates to my comment on Eric's post, though, as whether one considers the release year or the ceremony year, no one was taking bets on Lord of the Rings winning anything in 2005.
Okay, so I got a year off...Nitpicker. Would it save the last six paragraphs if I just used the Edit button?? ?
Numbers corrected, the point still stands: Boy, did every showoff THINK they knew what an Oscar film was "supposed" to be, other than just the darn best and most competently made in its genre the studios could produce that year. Black Panther isn't a great Marvel movie, but at least it's no "Thor: Ragnarok", and if you had to put one commercial movie up this year to show the industry and posterity how to make one, you could do a lot worse. (We still have Globies keeping an "Oscar watch" on Lady Gaga's movie and the Mamma Mia sequel.)
Although it does relate to jakeem's "A Beautiful Mind" comment, as '02 was the year the Academy, wowed at the last minute by a late December Oscar-run release, thought that the "Heartfelt, visionary, mindbending" ABM "should" have been the Oscar front-runner, and that Fellowship of the Ring was "too commercial". When the craze cooled and they regretted it almost immediately later, the whole discussion turned to "Oh well, it's a trilogy, let's give the award to ALL THREE, two years from now..."
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12 minutes ago, rosebette said:
I had the treat of watching Captain Blood last week on my 50" TV. I had just had cataract surgery and could view it without glasses, what an eyeful. Who else can stand on the prow of that ship and shout that corny dialogue so convincingly?
Finally got around to The Sea Hawk, and as their featurette critics point out, Flynn seems to be playing it with a game wink to his audience of "Do you believe this either?
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They also point out the story was clearly skewed as a pre-war Britain-vs-Germany metaphor, with Spain "out to conquer the world" (and never once mentioning Elizabeth's parentage), and Flora Robson's Elizabeth I finally coming around to Flynn's idea that maybe Spain can't be appeased and might be building an Armada to attack, after all.
Still, hadn't seen too many vintage studio-water-tank privateer epics, and was struck by just how much a game, jolly Flynn pre-influenced the style of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies--A good transitional for those trying to get their kids into watching B/W.
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18 hours ago, sewhite2000 said:
Could you clarify what you're trying to imply by this question? The biggest grossing movie of the year is going to be Black Panther, which I didn't swoon over as much as a lot of critics but still thought was pretty entertaining. I wouldn't describe it as schlock. In fact, prior to this announcement of a new Best Popular Film category, there was definitely a movement pushing for it to get a Best Picture nomination.
The issue is, why NOT Black Panther for Best Picture? What's the embarrassing stigma that requires "apologizing" for it as a mass-market commercial movie? (Aside from it being overpraised and not really the best Marvel, but then "Up" was never exactly the best Pixar movie either.)
Whether it was ABC's cheap Disney plug or not, has the Academy, complaining that they've "typecast" themselves into dreary Sundance indies and wanting to get out of it, feel that it's too "embarrassing" to go back and put a Marvel movie in as one of the year's "best" commercial films? (I put "best" in quotations, for obvious reasons.)
I remember the Oscar betting pools in '04: Oh, you just TRY and tell someone back then that "LOTR: Return of the King" was the far-and-away front runner for Picture...And watch everyone turn into snooty backhanded-cynical Oscar pundits saying "Oh, the Academy hates fantasy films! It's too commercial for the mature voters, and it'll be seen as too escapist!...It only got nominated for its half-billion box office! They've given the award to Clint Eastwood too many times, and Sean Penn is Oscar gold, your smart money is on Mystic River!" Oh, did I wait dearly for that Tuesday morning, and all the rich payback I knew even from the start I was going to reap. Never was it more truly earned. ?
Was Return of the King the best movie of '03?--YMMV. Was it the best of the original Peter Jackson LOTR films?--I wouldn't put it first, since that would still be Fellowship, but then, the other half of the pundits were saying "Yes, even if the Academy does regret giving '02's award to 'A Beautiful Mind' instead of 'Fellowship of the Ring', they're probably going to make a symbolic gesture of giving an award to all three..." (Which is why nobody minded when Chicago beat Two Towers...Well, almost nobody.) Do I, however, object to the idea that a big-budget fantasy film was ushered into the Best Picture pantheon?--Not. A. Bit. I've always seen BP as some cross-section representation of every great movie Hollywood can make, from musicals like Sound of Music, to war pictures like Platoon, to comedies like Annie Hall, to even horror movies like Sixth Sense making the nomination cut. (Few others truly deserved to.)
If superhero movies, especially Marvel ones, have now been a part of American movie culture for ten years, why wouldn't the best one show up for a nomination at least once? I've often thought that if Toy Story 3 had just broken out and given Pixar a notch in film history with the Oscar in '10 like its supporters wanted it to--before "The King's Speech" made its usual last-minute Miramax grab--history might be very different today.
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30 minutes ago, cody1949 said:
What piece of schlock took in the most money from the masses in 2018 ? Now which presenter will have the courage to say it.?
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=2018
They won't have to say it, THAT'S the movie they're trying to push for the Oscar the whole evening. And don't think they won't try to get the second one, too, and get the third out of its own category lock.
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The Muppet Movies
in General Discussions
Posted
O-kayyy.....To ACTUALLY try and answer the question: ?
The first two (the Movie and Great Muppet Caper) are owned by Disney, the third and fourth (Manhattan and Space) are owned by Sony, and the post-Jim Hensons (Christmas and Treasure Island) were after Disney bought them back again. Labyrinth continues to be one of Sony's house darlings, while The Dark Crystal may be back with Disney again...It's all confusing.
Not sure which of those applies to TCM, but Sony Columbia films have been turning up more lately where the "unwanted" films turn up, so if any of them have or do show up, you're probably more like to see Space and Manhattan than the others. And at least "Muppets Take Manhattan" was one of the "real" Muppet movies, unlike the bitter in-house Beatles-breakup that "Muppets From Space" ultimately turned into.