EricJ

Tragic, but oddly satisfying, in a way, to hear the unfortunate later karma-consequences of legendary attention-seekers. Much like the fate of "Rainbow Man" (the guy in the rainbow wig at 80's sports games, who invented the practice of holding up "John 3:16" in crowd shots), when he was arrested in a police standoff for taking a group of hotel guests hostage.

For those who said, "But the ceremony will DIE if we don't have a Hip, Edgy Young Comic to attract the Young People who think the show is too long!", they have now just been proven WRONG. And that bold is so that you'll hear Kevin Spacey's "Wroooong!!" from "Superman Returns". The tearful mutual hugginess in the speeches may have been a little harder to take without a chaser, but it reminds us that that was what the show is about: People who work in a profession we take for granted realizing that they're not taken for granted among other people who work in their profession. Or even by people who like the product that they make every day, and/or consider it sacred, like all classic movie buffs do. Oh, and did anyone notice, it came in under four hours?? That's for all those nervous ABC folk saying "But the viewers say it's TOO LONG if it's not Hip, Edgy and Funny! Maybe if we just shot the awards out to the folks in the seats with a T-shirt cannon!"

Unfortunately, Warner using '37-Star stock footage in Bugs Bunny's "What's Cooking, Doc?" has forever made it difficult to for me to watch the March/Gaynor version seriously, without quoting cartoon dialogue.

He may have been (or at least Roy Scheider certainly was), but I just don't know of that many straight people who use the word "Fosse" in a sentence.

The Chief, Ann Darrow, and the little Disney girl aren't as surprising as "Rod McKuen" on the cast list-- I take it this was his younger years, when Rod actually could sing, unlike his later 60's themes?

The Chief, Ann Darrow, and the little Disney girl aren't as surprising as "Rod McKuen" on the cast list-- I take it this was his younger years, when Rod actually could sing, unlike his later 60's themes?

So, after "Feud", has FX just given up on ANY bio-miniseries aimed at heterosexual audiences? Or, are they just safely assuming there aren't any watching cable anymore?

I think a large portion of the uncommitted audience were watching them JUST to rub it in the face of ABC losing their "No songs!" and "No Cinematography!" attempts. Seriously. 👍 In which case, no hosts actually worked: After the Funny-ABC-Host opening of Obligatorily Snarky Oscar-Ceremony-Hating jokes from Tina Fey, Amy Schumer and the Other One, if they'd been hosts for the whole show, it would have been a disaster. Not a Seth MacFarlane dog-in-the-manger disaster, more of a mild didn't-read-the-room Neil Patrick Harris or Whoopi Goldberg disaster. But after "getting that out of the way", the No-host vibe felt like the nominee actors were taking their OWN show back, and returning the Oscars to their own union Mickey & Judy barn-show it always was. Basically, after that No-Cinematography camel-straw, every winner felt like they were telling the network "We worked all year, and maybe our entire career, for this award, ABC, because that's what we do for a living, and we're going to get it with or without you...If you 'need' us for your ratings, you give the show back to US, and say thank you."

Yep. And Lawrence Welk owned a luxury-RV resort. Long before Planet Hollywood, everyone in the 50's wanted to be the next Arthur Murray.

So, Nip turned off the Oscars, and went to play with his plastic collector models instead? ("'Harry, Harry!'...Look, I'm smashing the town!") I was GOING to just stream an hour or two, but that little devil on my shoulder started noticing that Black Panther was getting Technical awards, and nudging me in the optimism...It deliberately does that to torture me. This year, I thought I was going to be the smartypants, and think "Okay, which is the second-place winner that's accidentally going to take the prize because of the Preferential-Voting problem?" And I thought that was going to be Roma, because of all the Netflix-hate.

That may actually be TRUE: By the time M2 came out on Blu, there was no original film-print source for the opening credits and George Burns' host introduction, and the Blu had to show the unmastered laser/TV version of the scenes as a bonus extra. Also, when it first went to TV/VHS around that time, the opening Harry Hamlin "Dynamite Hands" feature, which was supposed to be in "30's B/W", used the original color footage to keep from confusing the audience, and fans raised a bit of controversy which may have been part of the reason for the studio burying the movie afterwards. ...But it's still easy to see why Donen liked it. ("Boxing's for suckers--I'm planning on going to law school...These hands are for reading books!")

It's okay as Cantinflas's US One-Hit Wonder. (Studios intentionally tried to repeat his "surprise all-star Hollywood cameo cast" gig for a solo vehicle without David Niven in Pepe (1960), and his US career was quickly over.) Even though Mexican comedies are easily amused, it's easy to see why he had such a legendary following, without having to track down rare imports. The cameo-spotting is also fun and even if Around was "only" Todd-AO, the locations feel like we got our one representative Cinerama-epic winner, for film-historical posterity. It's better watched over a series of nights as a mini-series, but it's not bad, and you've got the Victor Young theme to go with the pseudo-Cinerama scenery. And rather than join in on the Broadway Melody bashing (the early talkie-musical "Stage-O-Vision" almost killed off talkie-musicals before Busby Berkeley cut loose with his camera), or bring up old zeitgeist grudges of Crash (2004) or Gladiator (2000), I'll just ask: Can anyone explain WHY Tom Jones (1963) won? I've never been able to figure that one out. (And does anyone remember A Beautiful Mind (2001) for anything other than "Fellowship of the Ring should have won"?)

I know Nip thought this was the John Wayne Airport thread and posted the Conqueror trailer, but why did Jake?? 😵

Perfect if you're flying to Miami Beach via BOAC.

But not Neat?

Since it came out completely unheralded and under the radar, I'll also point out that Donen's Movie Movie (1978) (with script by Larry Gelbart) is now available on Blu-ray, and has resurfaced from years of limbo on Amazon Prime. With its B&W first half restored, which may have created the problem that led to its sudden vanishing act in the first place. Darn, just yesterday another thread was asking for "Most memorable Oscar speeches", and I forgot about hoofer Stanley. 😅

I was just checking to see whether TCM was an "Internet April-Free Zone", in case we get more of these next month. And then I went out to see if I could find that wartime clip of Chico telling an interviewer, "Well, maybe for the war, I be a Greek, Italians aren't too popular right now..."

So, do we change Ronald Reagan Airport in Washington DC, as well? (FTR, flying into John Wayne/Orange County instead of into LAX will save you several hours if you're trying to get to Anaheim for Disneyland. Just from experience.)

For a second, I thought he was going to go into the Mike Myers SNL "Sprockets" sketch: "I have seen the American TV program 'Mister Ed': A man escapes his futile existence and loveless marriage by reaching out to the Freudian symbol of a horse--But soon hears voices, deep mocking voices that only he alone can hear...A gripping portrait of a man's tortured descent into madness."

One observation I'd heard about the Marx Brothers was that they were a "cross-section" of early stage-era American humor, playing off each other: Groucho was a motormouthed ad-libber for those who'd never seen Burlesque, Chico was a funny Q&A foreigner for those who'd never seen Vaudeville routines, Harpo was a clown for those who'd never seen the Circus, Zeppo had his brief time as Variety star, and when they fell into synch, you got a perfect mix. The Monkees were assembled to try and repeat the four "Hard Day's Night" Beatles characters, but the show's producers also didn't know which 60's "Young people" would be watching, and tried to create a crossover appeal: Davey was the bubblegum idol for the 12-yo. girls, Mike came out of the folk-rock movement, Peter was the flower-child hippie, and Mickey's vocals had an "angry" vibe that gravitated to the Yippie protests by the time he started singing antiwar songs and wearing tied-dyed dashikis...Basically a cross-section of 60's music and culture, and when they fell into synch for comedy and cultural-satire, you got a perfect mix. Er, Mike Nesmith was already a songwriter before joining the group, having already written "Different Drum" for Linda Ronstadt & the Stone Poneys. (As he parodied on the show. ) Not to mention a few of the Monkees' own later hits. They may not have played their own tracks on the albums, but Peter Tork's keyboards were usually his own.

That's an interesting question, so leave it up to the film-culture Historian to ponder that one... .... ...AHA! I know! I would put the historical cutoff date to 1991, when he was still playing "Hip dudes" in Hudson Hawk, but a large part of the disastrously inflated budget was in tweaking his onscreen/marketing image to try and hide the fact that his hairline was obviously receding. (Yes. Not making this up.) He still had hair in 1988's Sunset and 1990's Die Hard 2, but after '91, he switched to his "bullethead" shaved look, and adopted more "bulletproof" comic-book personas to go with it.

That's the same Foghorn picture I use when I troll Trump's "Mexico will pay for the wall!" tweets with: "The boy, ah say, the boy's so dumb, he thinks the Mexican border pays RENT." (Foggy was prophetic for his time.) As for Jake, think he already missed the obvious Emily-Latella thread disclaimer about forty-three posts ago, back on Page 1...Thirty-six of them Jake's.

"Why am I always the dummy?" Because you were good at it, Pete--It takes the right delivery to be one of the great "dim" characters in sitcoms, and you can't play dumb without being smart enough to do it. (Sorry, that's one of the complaints I always had about the show, "Head" and Bob Rafelson taking out their own fatigue with the "kiddy" TV series on the audience. Don't blame us, we KNEW what we were watching, and we liked it.) Boyce & Hart claimed they were trying to write "imitation Beatles" songs for the first episodes, and thought "Wasn't there a 'train' in 'Paperback Writer'?--'I can meet you at the station', something like that?" There wasn't, and a classic was born. "Paperback Writer" is one of the few Lennon/McCartney songs that has a catchy standout guitar riff, and any time anyone asks me my favorite Beatles song, I pick that one because, quote, "it has a great Monkees-like guitar riff in it". That's how you could tell the two groups apart. He was the genuine representative Peace-&-Love San-Francisco Hippie, and put a good mainstream face on the "movement", while Joe Friday on another night was preaching against the wrong kind. I remember Tork appearing at the beginning of one episode to promote his new crusade of "The 'Hippie' movement is dead!", ie. that if the word was causing everyone to get so upset, maybe they should just all try calling themselves something else instead. And anyone who claims "The Monkees couldn't play their own instruments" has never seen Pete on the keyboard: And a great sense of humor, too...But: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfgUck_AifM

As for me, I love old movies, I like Audrey Hepburn as much as the next heterosexual guy, and I STILL wanted to slap Holly Golightly upside the head with a wet trout. 😠 And Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is okay, but Marilyn wasn't quite up to speed with the over-the-top humor of the original musical--They'd practically handed Marilyn the chance she'd always wanted to be a good sport and lampoon "Her"'s image, and she didn't quite seem to be in on the joke. (Now, "Seven Year Itch", OTOH, Billy Wilder gives her just enough to work with, and her character is Nice rather than Dim, which surprised most first-time viewers ready to make feministic PC crusades against The Dress Scene.) With most old-movie 'phobes, it's not that they don't want to see old movies, it's just that they're still carrying around their parent's 70's jokes dismissing "Late night movies" as trivial, silly, outdated, cliche'd, etc., without realizing where those traditions first came from out of our troubled Nixon era. (When to be happy or sentimental about past times was just pathetic escapism for those who couldn't cope, and cynicism was enlightenment...) Ask someone to picture "Musical", for example, and they'll probably picture the Smoke number from Esther Williams' "Million Dollar Mermaid"; ask them to picture "Noir", and they'll imitate Humphrey Bogart from "Maltese Falcon", ask them to picture "30's comedy", and they'll think the Keystone Kops were still running around back then. The trick is, how do you find the right movie to counteract that, and make them deservingly feel like schmucks for it? 😈 The use of Singin' in the Rain, for ex., has already been mentioned as the best pre-emptive strike against "MGM Musical" cliche's, "The Music Box" is the right strike against "30's comedy", "The Searchers" for those who think all westerns were a white-hat amalgam of John Wayne and Roy Rogers, etc... ...Remember, we're trying to help people who DON'T KNOW ANYTHING. Why are we considering them a threat?

First time I heard Kirsten Lopez's song in the movie, I kept thinking "Why are they singing Frozen songs in Mexico?" 😛 If it was up to my vote, I would have picked something catchier, and more appropriate to the tone of the movie that got less screentime, like "Mi Corazon" at the at the end--But all through the movie, I felt as if studio publicity was dangling a watch in front of critics' and voters' eyes saying "You WILL nominate this for Best Song...It's better than Cats, you'll sing it again and again..." Only problem was, it was just such a non-song, and being justified with "Well, it's so central to the plot!", that I explained it to one fan with "Imagine if they'd picked Rapunzel's flower-incarnation song as the best song from 'Tangled', rather than 'I See the Light'--Yes, we hear it repeated throughout the movie, and yes, it's 'central to the plot', BUT..." So, yeah, as "shade" goes, we're talking Total Solar Eclipse, and thoroughly justifiable, too. 😎 (And TBH, you can draw an ethnic line between those who sniffled in raptures of family sentimentality over "Coco", and those who...didn't. Most white people didn't, but it wasn't altogether a bad movie.)