FredCDobbs

I didn't want to make a whole thread out of this but I thought "The Barefoot Contessa" was rotten from beginning to end. I'd rather have a date with Norma Desmond than see this film again.

Star in the Night http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038115/

Well, maybe my next machine should be a hard-drive DVD. I can buy an add-on gadget for my computer, but complicated computer instructions confuse me.

Kent Smith was in ?The Cat People?, as the same character, ?Oliver Reed?. Simone Simon was Irena Reed in ?The Cat People?. But the plots have nothing to do with each other. ?The Cat People? was more like ?The Leopard Man?, but they didn?t have the same cast.

Glad to see you here. I heard about the crash in Van Nuys and I hoped it didn't hit you.

> LOL.............. I know what you mean. Sometimes I > can go for a month or two before getting around to > watching something I've taped. Yeah, me too. I used to tape everything I wanted, but now I've got hundreds of tapes and no place to store all of them. So I got a DVD machine and I started making DVDs. Then sometimes I would set the timer wrong, or the film would run over a couple of minutes, so I wound up with DVDs without the whole movies on them. So I started taping and dubbing the tapes to DVD. That works fine, but now I'm behind on my dubbing. I'm running up to three weeks behind. I'm still trying to figure out how to get rid of all the commercials in NBC's "It's a Wonderful Life". I think that might take me a full day of dubbing, stopping, starting again, etc.

The tribal "mask" thing used in a lot of older movies was usually an African mask, sometimes used in Zombie movies from the Caribbean islands. Like Walter Houston's African mask in "Kongo".

When I read a movie description like this, I remember the lady in bed, I remember the noise downstairs, I remember her turning the lights on and off, I remember the guy in the mask, but I think all these memories are from separate movies. I think there was a tribal mask in an old Twilight Zone show. The lady upstairs reminds me of ?Body Heat? when the husband comes home late at night. Etc., etc.

> > Yes, it is. Very strange movie, but good. > > That's a pretty good summary of this movie. Some > people don't like it because it's not really a true > sequel to Cat People, and it's a different type of > movie to Cat People, but I think it's a great little > movie in its own right. I've tried watching it a couple of times, but I just don't get it. Maybe I'm stupid or something, but I like the kind where there is a big black cat on the loose and someone is walking down a deserted street at night. Yikes!

> > >The Worker " was > > > published twice - weekly back then. > > > > Ha, ha, ha, you should know. > > At the same time I also subscribed to: National > Review ( conservative ) , The New Republic ( then > liberal ), Human Events ( conservative ) American > Opinion ( John Birch monthly Rightist ) The National > Guardian ( later the Guardian -Ultra - left--now > defunct ), Review of the News ( Birch - rightwing ) > The People's World ( W. Coast Communist Party > newspaper that advocated a "united - front " approach > ) The New Guard (conservative ), Political Affairs > (CPUSA Journal ) The Republican ( GOP monthly ). So I > have read over the years a wide variety of political > journal - NR and HE for over thirty years. My > favorite political journal is " The Nation ", a left > - liberal publication. I am also a " Nation Associate > " which means that I contribute money to keep it > going. I also belong to a number of " leftish " > organizations. Well, as long as you like classic old movies, you'll be a "good ol' boy" to me.

> Paul Muni's life and death ( 1967 ) was the subject > of a small article in U. S. Communist Party newspaper > " The Worker ", at the time of his demise, where it > called him a " champion of the little man ", or > something very close to that. So was Frank Capra, so was Abraham Lincoln, so am I. I?ve told you before, the problem with the CPUSA after WW II was that it was helping the Soviet Union spy on the US, steal our industrial and military secrets, and propagandize for communism inside the US, as the Soviet Union took over country after country in Eastern Europe, and after the Berlin Blockade when the Soviet Union tried to take over all of Germany. There is nothing wrong with an objective pro-Russian movie like this one, especially to salute their heroes during WW II. The problem in the late ?40s and early ?50s was that the CPUSA was acting as a secret agency of a hostile foreign government that wanted to dominate the US. I mean, would you want France to get away with taking over all of Eastern Europe, stealing our industrial and military secrets, propagandizing our people, and making French propaganda movies in Hollywood? Of course not. Lol.

>The Worker " was > published twice - weekly back then. Ha, ha, ha, you should know.

Yay! Great movie, thanks to Paul Muni!

> "Man with 9 Lives" was part of a package of four > movies Karloff did for Columbia. This film is actually based on real science... the slowdown of the human body by cooling. Some Russian hospitals actually use this technique for operations today. This type of cooling research is what led to the invention of cooling human embryos for long-term storage.

Star in the Night Great short.

> This is true, LOL!!! There's definitely something to > be said for communal living... Lol, you mean cute blonde dames? Yeah, it's best that they be kept out of communes.

Yes, quite an interesting movie. King Vidor's ideal of true Americanism. I wish we could all act more unselfish like the people in this movie. Lol.

Hey, "Counter-Attack" (on now) is a rare film that shows the brave Communist soldiers fighting the Nazis. Released in 1945, this is one of the last pro-Russian Hollywood films of WW II.

> Bartlett: > > Sometimes a film is damaged so they leave a 'freeze > frame' in place while the dialog continues until the > damaged section is passed over, therefore continuing > on with the film. This happens quite often in > silents and some very early talkies, There > are several movies where you get 2 or 3 minutes of > freeze because of damage to the film. It doesn't > bother me because I'm happy to get more than 99% of > the film than none at all. > > Anne Yes, this is true. This is a different reason. They are showing still frames or still photos since the original old film is damaged or lost. Usually the sound continues on during these kinds of segments.

> That used to happen to me when I had Direct TV, but > it would last for more than a day each time. The > sound would continue but the picture was frozen - one > time I had a butt shot of John Wayne bending over on > my TCM channel for 3 days. Ha, ha, ha, maybe you were watching it on tape and you had your VCR on "pause" for 3 days!

Network TV signals today come to us via satellites. Even if you have cable TV, the signal goes to your cable company by satellite then out to your house by cable. If a satellite system has a signal problem, instead of showing you a bunch of fuzzy or bad images breaking up, the sytem is designed to freeze on the last good image. Sometimes the sound continues on, but sometimes the sound stops too. That might be what you are seeing. Whenever it snows where I am, and snow gets on my Direct TV satellite dish, I start getting a picture break-up in the form of a lot of big blocky pixels. Then I have to go out and clean the snow off my dish. However, if the problem is on the satellite side of the Direct TV system, I'll get a freeze frame for several seconds. This happens on all channels, not just movie channels.

Phantom Lady is a really good movie.

> What did you think about the ditch digging > sequence? > > I know I had not seen the movie before tonight, but > the ditch-digging seemed like yesterday to me - > where? And then I remembered - within the past year > or so TCM showed The Men Who Made the Movies: King > Vidor, so that MUST have featured the scene. Wow! A sequence like the ditch digging scene usually has to be carefully planned and it requires the close cooperation of the director, the cameraman, the editor, and the music director. I think the director generally knows that a scene such as this will be the most remembered in the film, so they can afford to spend some extra money and time on such a project. I also noticed that several of the scenes had good natural sound and dialogue, so the sound recordist plays an important part in such a long and artistic sequence. If the dialogue was dubbed in later, then the editor would have a major role in that job.

> I never saw such a straight-on Jean Harlow look-alike > as that Barbara Pepper, I'm surprised she didn't take > over the 'mantle' when Harlow died. She appeared in many films but often as just an extra. I thought she was a good actress in this film. What did you think about the ditch digging sequence?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077629/