Sukhov
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Posts posted by Sukhov
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Untergang
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15 minutes ago, Palmerin said:
I have never found any satisfactory material on the subject. It seems that practically everybody in the USA sees the 1936-39 War through the eyes of Hemingway, who was no historian.
Do you mean George Orwell?
Are you referring to Homage to Catalonia?
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Watchmen
Twin Peaks (TV show)
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2 hours ago, CoraSmith said:
Thanks to the Ingrid Bergman DVD collection it's possible to discover some old Swedish movies. In The Count of the Old Town (Munkbrogreven) she has a supporting role as the ever smiling niece of hotel owner Klara. The plot revolves around the "Count" (Valdemar Dalquist, left on photo), who is really a small-time swindler. The tricks to smuggle alcohol and to come into money are comical. In spite of their crimes the locals leave a jovial impression.
Looks good. I think the Swedes call this genre of movie the "pilsnerfilm."
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1 hour ago, limey said:
I think that the literary equivalent of dumbed-down reality TV would be better described by the scribblings of The National Enquirer, as opposed to King or Grisham.
It would be really apt to use that term to describe Franzen and Foster Wallace.
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I would use it to describe the large amount of spam on the front page.
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Z (1969)
Synopsis: A political assassination uncovers a hotbed of corruption.
Dir: Costa-Gavras Cast: Yves Montand , Jean-Louis Trintignant , Jacques Perrin .-
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20 hours ago, cmovieviewer said:
I'm not sure if it is related, but I notice the lineup for Feb. 13 has changed a little since the schedule for February was announced a while back. The first film on that day at 6 am (ET) was originally scheduled to be Black Orpheus (1959), but that has now been replaced by My Night at Maud's (1969). In addition, Virgin Spring (1960), the film that was originally scheduled for 2:15 am (ET), has been replaced by moving Black Orpheus to that time.
TCM has a feature article on My Night at Maud's at
http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/1379664|0/31-Days-of-Oscar-2-13.html
More than likely it was just a schedule change. Sometimes they lose the rights to show a film so they show something else instead.
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Merry Widow
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Surprised no one mentioned Some Like it Hot yet.
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A couple more reviews -
The Youth of Maxim
Early Soviet sound film with a soundtrack by Shostakovich. This one is alot more propagandistic and doesn't have the humor or light-heartedness of Jolly Fellows. A young worker named Maxim helps hide revolutionaries during the Tsarist days and spreads pamphlets. His cruel boss doesn't care for the torment or death the working class have to go through. This movie has a lot of musical interludes like when the revolutionaries are in prison and start singing an anthem and when they sing after their friend is murdered in the factory through the owner's carelessness. Overall it was technically very good though propaganda. (7/10)
Max Ophuls' Divine
The plot to this one is kind of dull. It's about an innocent countrygirl who gets corrupted in the music hall venues. What makes this film stand out is the extremely risque content in it like topless dancers and people mentioning drugs by name. This kind of content would definitely not have flown in the US at the time. Worth viewing if you want to see how "loose" with codes the studios in Europe were, in contrast to the US. Overall the technical efforts and plot were pretty average for the day. (5/10)
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Probably not. Her most famous "musicals" don't even have any singing. They're more like biopics with occasional ballet excerpts.
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Are you thinking of Kiss of Death (1947) ?
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50 minutes ago, sewhite2000 said:
I Just Watched, 31 Days of Oscar Edition, Post #2, 2/2
Limelight (United Artists, 1952) - This was my first time to see this film all the way through. It's both funny and poignant but verrry loooonng. Presumably, it did not win an Oscar for Best Editing. I feel like I need to read a Chaplin biography and learn what it is exactly that got him banned from the States for essentially 20 years. Red affiliations, I'm sure, but I don't know the specifics. If he was publicly declaring Communist manifestos, I've never seen or heard anything about that. Really my only exposure to his backstory is the Richard Attenborough biopic, which concentrates more on his earlier life. I do know from that movie and other sources about his predilection for very young girls. It's hard for me to watch this movie and not want to play amateur psychiatrist. His character Calvero, as written by Chaplin himself, is able to resist the temptation of young flesh in a way the real-life Chaplin clearly was not. I want to say maybe it was an idealized presentation of Chaplin himself the way he wanted to be, but I'm sure my assumptions are simplistic. Claire Boom, only 20 in this film, is not an actress I'm very familiar with, but she is admittedly lovely. She reminds me of Audrey Hepburn and got her movie start a couple of years ahead of Audrey, who often early in her career played innocent gamines who through the course of the movie gain life experience and become more sophisticated and a bit more world-weary by film's end, just like Bloom's character in this movie. At least in this film, however, Bloom is totally lacking in the humorous side Audrey would also give us. Looking at her imdb resume, I do see I've seen her in other things, though I didn't know who she was when I was watching them: Queen Mary in The King's Speech, Hera in Clash of the Titans, Martin Landau's clueless wife in Crimes and Misdemeanors, "The Wife" in The Outrage, Theodora in The Haunting, Katya in The Brothers Karamazov, Lady Anne in Olivier's Richard III. I mean, my gosh, I've been watching her for years. I just didn't know it. Seeing Sydney Chaplin in a prominent role makes me wonder which Chaplin son it was Brando said Chaplin was so verbally abusive to on the set of The Countess from Hong Kong. Sydney Chaplin would have been middle-aged by then, so I'm wondering if it was a younger son. But Sydney was in that movie as well, so maybe it was him. I guess my biggest gripe about this movie is that it telegraphs its ending so thoroughly practically from the first frame. I was dreading the ending right from the beginning because it was so obvious to me that (Spoiler Alert!) Calvero was going to die. Thereza was so unfailingly devoted to him, even after he ran away, that the only way to get her into that age-appropriate relationship Chaplin probably thought the audience demanded was to kill off his character.
Fiddler on the Roof (United Artists, 1971) - I just haven't warmed up to this movie very much after repeated viewings. I suppose the numbers and the choreography are just as impressive as any lavish production from MGM's Golden Age, but the setting and the costumes and the plethora of characters I just don't care about that much have always failed to capture my imagination. Musicals aren't my favorite genre to begin with, but if I have to watch one, I suppose I prefer the flash of swanky nightclubs and tuxedos and three-piece suits and dresses and evening gowns to poor Russian Jewish milkmen living in the middle of nowhere in 1900. I guess I'm a snob. There is some nice social messaging, and Topol brings a nice subtlety to the lead role. They say in the promo TCM often shows that Zero Mostel originated the role on stage, but Norman Jewison wanted somebody less in your face for the movie, and I think that was a wise choice. I like Mostel, but he knew only one approach to acting, grand and scenery-chewing. I didn't know that John Williams had won an Oscar for "scoring adaption and original song score" for this film. Is that a category that's still in use? Prince won the same award for the Purple Rain movie as I recall, accepting in full Prince regalia, and the Beatles also won that award for Let It Be. And none of of the Beatles actually showed up. Quincy Jones accepted on their behalf. But if it's an award that's still being given, I have no idea who's won it in the last 20 years.
Yankee Doodle Dandy (Warner Bros., 1942) - I always get a kick out of Cagney's dance style, especially the performance of the title number. All that crazy hunch-walking with long strides, coupled with dramatic spins and kicks so high, it's a wonder he doesn't fall on his Irish-American arse. I wonder what someone like Fred Astaire thought of Cagney's dancing, if he ever commented on it. Cagney seems to me to have not had any classical (or any?) training. He just does what comes naturally to him, and it works. I love that scene where Joan Leslie first meets Cagney in his makeup and thinks he's a hundred years old and about to go on a date with a 17-year-old! That makes me laugh every time. There are other nice scenes, like when Cagney worries needlessly about having given Leslie's show part away to Fay Templeton. And when Cagney gently kisses S.Z. Sakall on his hat, and Sakall looks up, uncertain what's just happened. And when young Cohan's parents decide a good beating is just what their son needs and debate about where is the best place to strike him! Nice casting bits with Cagney's real-life sister playing his movie sister and Eddie Foy, Jr. playing his father. One weird moment: what the heck was the bit with the number early on in the movie where six-year-old Josie Cohan apparently pulls up her dress and flahses the audience while her parents look on adoringly? We don't see anything, but still ... that certainly wouldn't fly today.
Hey, I saw Limelight for the first time yesterday too. What a beautiful film! Seeing Chaplin and Keaton perform together was good and the ending was so beautiful. Ranks up there with Modern Times for me.
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7 hours ago, jamesjazzguitar said:
I believe the post that were deleted by the moderators were generally ones that made snark comments about her appearance, ethnic background or over the top, nasty criticisms of her abilities and therefore what you're saying here about the deletions of threads isn't accurate.
Evidence of my POV is that I'm commenting on your post. I.e. a post that offers criticisms in a classy way with no snark hasn't been deleted. (of course maybe it just hasn't been discovered yet, ha ha!).
Yeah, my post was pruned even though it wasn't particularly mean spirited.
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1 hour ago, LawrenceA said:
I hope when/if you have a chance you'll say something about this one.
Avodah or labor is a 1935 documentary from Palestine though people who already lived in Palestine were not the intended demographic. It was one of the Zionist documentary/ propaganda films of the time urging Jews to leave racism in the US and Europe for a life in the British Palestine territory. The film documents Jews working on vatious projects. These actions plus the camera shots really bring to mind Vertov, Eisenstein and Reifenstahl's documentaries that focused on joy being brought through labor. The cinematography was clearly influenced by their films. The film overall brings to mind Berlin: Symphony of a City as well - like when the camera shows people having fun in a port city. The music was also composed by Paul Dessau - a frequent collaborator with German playwright Bertolt Brecht. This was the kind of propaganda travelogue they used to show in Yiddish theaters and neighborhoods during this time period. (8/10) Here is a short film clip on the internet courtesy of the Spielberg Jewish film archive.
Also this is one of the films my grandpa used to have with his personal projector (he was a composer and also ran a Yiddish theater during that time. He passed away in the early 2000s).
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6 hours ago, Princess of Tap said:
Hugh Herbert is simply boring and not funny at all. I can't think of anyone who I can't stand more than him in terms of a comedian.
If I have a DVD that he's in I just fast forward it and if it's TV I turn my head briefly.
I heard that he wrote a lot of material for other people-- maybe that's why they tolerated him so much.
I thought he was kind of funny in Gold Diggers of 1935. The way his clueless character was taken advantage of all the time.
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On 1/30/2018 at 3:10 AM, Palmerin said:
EM is amazing in his job as host of the Film Noir hour. He explains every movie in detail, and always finds something interesting to say about even the most average productions. In a word, he is ENTHUSIASTIC about his work.
About Mankiewicz, his typical demeanor is one of ill concealed apathy. Two Sundays ago, when he introduced KING SOLOMON'S MINES of 1950, he limited himself to a mechanical repetition of what he has said before about how pioneering that movie was by being filmed on location rather that on a backlot, exactly as if that were late breaking news. I waited to see how he would introduce Negulescu's GUNOI=GARBAGE, and, just as I expected, he just repeated the same crib notes of the last time he introduced the Webb-Stanwyck vehicle. Only when he has a co-host, such as Alec Baldwin or Friedkin, does BM feel motivated to pontificate magisterially about movies, exactly as if he were an expert on everything from A productions that earn Oscars and Golden Globes to turkeys that are of interest only to movie critics compilating lists of 10 Worst Movies of the Year.
So how would the enthusiastic Herr Muller speak about the Granger-Kerr-Carlson vehicle? You can bet he would mention such interesting factoids as:
1. When the hunter who has just killed an elephant is about to shoot another, Granger stops him and tells him that one elephant is enough. In 1897, the year of the story, hunting animals by the pound was perfectly normal; clearly that attitude was changing by the middle of the 20th century. Today you have President Kenyatta of Kenya setting fire to $105 million in ivory to symbolize his country's rejection of ivory as a source of wealth;
2. Only a few years after 1950, the struggle for African independence began; were the makers of this movie aware of the coming unrest?;
3. Only African music is employed in the soundtrack; since that music is unfamiliar to most Westerners, some explaining of it would be very welcome;
4. Some of the animals are little known. For example, what breed is that huge spider that gives Kerr such a fright?;
5. What about the true star of the production, Siriaque of the Watusi tribe? That man has such powerful presence that he totally upstages Granger, Kerr and Carlson. If this treatment of Haggard's story had been filmed today, people like Cameron, Ridley Scott and Spielberg would be paying very good money to hire him.
The intros are usually between 3 to 5 minutes. You can't expect him to go into all of that.
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My list for 1935 -
1.) Avoda (Labor), Helmar Lerski, British Palestine Mandate
2.) Carnival in Flanders, Jacques Feyder, France
3.) Yunost Maksima, Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg, USSR
4.) Happiness, Aleksandr Medvedkin, USSR
5.) La Bandera, Julien Duvivier, France
6.) Divine, Max Ophuls, France
7.) Princesse Tam Tam, Edmond T. Greville, France
8.) Quelle Drole de Gosse, Leo Joannon, France
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1 hour ago, sewhite2000 said:
Dennis Miller introduced some movies on TCM, and MM made no objection to him.
Don't forget the orange cheeto Benito conman himself was once a guest programmer in Nov. 2007.
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My list for 1938 -
1.) The Adventures of Robin Hood
2.) Bringing up Baby
3.) Alexander Nevsky
4.) Volga-Volga
5.) La Femme de Boulanger
6.) You Can't Take it With You
7.) Jezebel
8.) Boy's Town
9.) Block-Heads
10.) Algiers
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My review of the Jolly Fellows -
The USSR sent Sergei Eisenstein and Grigori Alexandrov to the US in order to better improve their fledgling film industry in the early 1930s. The Jolly Fellows is the perfect representation of what came back. Alexandrov's musicals are often called "Soviet Hollywood" due to the high production cost and effects and beautiful cinematography. While in the US Alexandrov saw US movies and befriended Charlie Chaplin - this really shows in his musical Jolly Fellows as it's full of songs and gags in the best Hollywood tradition. This musical film is about a poor farmer (Leonid Utyesov) who is mistaken by an upper class snooty woman for a famous Italian conductor who is vacationing in the area. A lot of gags and mix-ups with Utyesov conducting a concert and we get a zany finish where everything is set right. After seeing this film Stalin said "Anyone brave enough to make a movie as humorous as this has got to be a brave man!" I liked this film very much. The songs are catchy and it is full of humor. You can really feel the influences of Chaplin, Busby Berkeley, Ernst Lubitsch and Keaton in this film. If you like Hollywood comedies of the studio era you will like it. (9/10)
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1 minute ago, Bethluvsfilms said:
I did catch THE STRIP, sorry to say I didn't share Lorna's enthusiasm for it. The music score is great, but that alone isn't enough for me to give it another look.
Think Mickey was getting too picky about what kind of scripts to choose from around this time, either that or a bad agent giving him bad advice, or maybe a bit of egotism in him thinking he could make ANY movie watchable no matter how bad the script (he can't, at least not IMO). Or it could have been all three, who knows.
All I know is that he would never quite regain the popularity he had achieved from the 30's to late 40's. He did score a once-in-awhile bullseye with a hit movie occasionally (BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S, in spite of his horrible imitation of a Japanese man, IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD, which I do find hilarious, but again it's in spite of Mickey rather than because, THE BLACK STALLION, which I will admit he did turn in a fine performance as well as in his Emmy-winning performance in BILL).
I have to admit though, my heart broke for him when I found out about his abuse at the hands of his stepson some years ago. No one, despite their faults, deserved to be treated as monsterously as he was by people who should have had his back. I understand his stepson stole and then sold the Emmy he won for BILL, and his supposedly devoted wife Jan was in on it.
I saw it too and I agree with you. I didn't hate it but it just seemed like an average gangster movie. Nothing about it really stuck out to me as interesting and it had too many music numbers.
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Are you referring to Homage to Catalonia?
What docs would you like to see on TCM?
in Documentaries
Posted
Avodah and Chris Marker's Description d'un Combat would be good choices to go along with it.