FredCDobbs

No, the film was based on true facts of the old West. You might not realize why she had such a terrified expression on her face if you are not familiar with this area of the West in the 1860s and ?70s. The older girl, having lived out in the West for a while, would have known what would happened to her if she was captured, and girls of her age were often captured and abused by the Indian raiders. She knew she would be kidnapped and passed around among the Indian men, and that is why she screamed in such a terrified way. It was more than just a matter of a fear of death. Again, the big clue is the girls being held at the fort who had gone crazy under such treatment by the Indian men who had captured them. This is a topic that modern Indian movies don?t discuss.

Figuring an average of 13 movies a day, that?s 4,745 movies a year. Ok, then show the same library over and over again, every year. It will take many years for all of us to actually watch all of these films. That represents one solid YEAR of non-stop movie watching. It might take us 5-10 years to see all those films. Eventually take some of the turkeys out (such as ?Bringing up Baby?) and add some rare rented films from other companies.

Someone should post a list of ALL films that TCM owns, and THEN we can make up a weekly schedule from that. They used to say in promos that they owned about 4,700 films. Ok, what are they.

I'll go along with "The Razor's Edge".

Did anyone see ?The Conversation? a night or two ago? I?ve seen this movie several times but I never have been able to figure out the ending. When the guy who did the bugging falls asleep and starts to dream, then the rest of the film seems like a fantasy to me. Does anyone think he really did discover a murder, or was he just having a nervous breakdown and imagined it?

Good clothes from the 1906 era coming up in ?San Francisco? to be shown on Monday March 6, 11 pm eastern time. The film was made in 1936 but they tried to use clothes and music from the 1906 era.

Do you know what the lyrics mean?

Wow, I?m surprised that I got it. Here?s how I did it.... Animated film of 1950s with name of character as title of film..... Think, think, think, think.... Lady and the Tramp (nope, too many words) Cinderella (nope, that was ?40s and only one word) Peter Pan (hmm......) Peter piper, Peter pumpkin.... (nope) Pan right, pan left (camera terms), pan out (gold prospecting term).... Hmmm... to ?pan out? means ?success?.... Peter out (means to fail), Pan out (means to succeed) (Ha! That?s it!) Peter Pan

Crack-Up (1946) (Not available on DVD or VHS) Turner Classic Movies Mar 11 08:00am I think this is a good noir film. A murder, a mystery, a painting theft or did the painting sink in a shipwreck?, a strange mystery on a train (did the train crash or did it not crash?), more mystery, mind-altering drugs, who is crazy?

Peter Pan Out Peter Out and Pan Out

I can?t stand Peter Ustinov in that movie. In other movies he?s ok, but he?s so irritating in that one, it ruins the movie for me. This film looks like a re-make of ?Sign of the Cross? to me.

The listed time is supposed to be the full running time of the movie by itself. For a 95 minute movie, the schedule time slot might be for 1 hr and 45 minutes. However, the film might start late if there are TCM promos before it and if Osborne gives a long introduction to it. The problem with ?From Here to Eternity? is that it had a long Osborne introduction, it was a 1 hr and 58 minute film, and it had only a 2 hour time slot in the schedule. The Osborne introduction caused it to start late and that made it run into the next hour?s schedule after 2 hours. So people who recorded only 2 hours of the movie missed the end of it. If you have a long movie and a tight schedule, you need to record several extra minutes at the end of the scheduled end of the movie.

Here?s some additional information from my experience regarding editing. In the TV business, some reporters (men and women) at small TV stations edit their own video. At larger stations there are generally editors (men or women) who take instructions from the reporters regarding edits. I would think that in the early film business the directors or producers would generally watch the film while a ?cutter? would do the physical cutting of the film (a ?work print? of the film). The director or producer would tell the ?cutter? where to cut the film. So, in some cases editing was a ?two person? operation. In other cases, before the unions, a director would do the physical editing. Later, editors began to make the cutting decisions and became experts at editing, sometime with some advice from directors. This would probably vary from film to film, such as with Orson Welles wanting to be in charge of editing his own films, while a ?cutter? actually did the cutting of the film. Also, they would edit a ?work print? of the original film. This avoided the cutting of the original camera film until the ?final edit? was decided upon. Then a ?cutter? would take the fully edited ?work print? and cut the original camera film to match the edited work print. One time I did editing of a work print for one of my film documentaries, and then I hired a lady to do the cutting of the original film to match my edited work print. So, I made the decision about how the film was edited, and she did the delicate job of cutting the original film. I would have probably scratched it too much if I tried it.

?If I could go back in time it would be to that era of filmmaking in Los Angeles. What fun it must have been. And I could still be an editor because most editors were women.? Izcutter, Are you a woman?? Dang, I thought I have been arguing with a man all this time! Fred C Dobbs

I didn?t notice the thing about the blue eyes. I wonder if that information is in the book? It could be a hint that they are all related. The thing about Ethan is this: When the wilder Indian men kidnapped white women or girls, they would usually rape them, and sometimes it would be a gang rape, and the age of the girl didn?t matter. She could be a child. Later, one of the stronger men in the tribe would take the girl for one of his wives. This is why the young women who are being held at the fort (in the movie) after being recaptured from the Indians were all crazy. This is why the older sister who was kidnapped began to scream in her house when she realized why her mother didn?t want any lights on and why her father went outside with the gun. She knew about this custom of the Indian raiders and she was terrified of being captured. The younger girl didn?t scream because she was too young to know about this wild-Indian custom. This is why there was the old story in movies about how women should ?save the last bullet for yourself? during a shoot-out with Indians, and this is meaning of the old phrase, ?a fate worse than death.? This kind of capture and abuse was ?a fate worse than death? for the women and girls. Ethan hated the wild Indians because of this habit of theirs. He got along ok with the non-wild ones, such as the ones he traded blankets with. Out in the West there were peaceful Indians and wild Indians. Quite a lot of white men in the 19th Century married Indian girls from the non-wild tribes. Some of those tribes were parts of the Navajos and most of the Pueblos. The Pueblos were mostly in New Mexico, around Santa Fe and Albuquerque, and over toward Grants and Gallup, and as far West as the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Mesas of the Hopis in Arizona, which are West of Window Rock and East of Tuba City. The Pueblo tribes were the most settled and civilized. Generally speaking, they were never driven off their land by whites. They were granted ?reservations?, where they already lived, specifically to keep whites from stealing any of their land or settling on it. In the late 19th Century the Hopis petitioned the US government for definite reservation boundaries to keep the Navajos from encroaching on their land. The Hopis and Navajos are still arguing in federal courts today about their land boundaries.

Kathcat, I think Bette Davis made two movies in which she was twins. One in the ?40s and one in the ?50s. In the first one the bad twin died in a boat accident and the good twin took her place with her husband. In the first film, as the bad twin, Davis acted like she did in her ?bad girl? movies, and as the good twin she acted like she did in her ?good quiet shy girl? movies.

mpom, I haven?t had that kind of problem, but I?ve had other kinds of DVD problems. When I use Sonly disks on my Panasonic recorder, about 1 out of every 10 disks stops in the middle of a TCM recording. I think this is a problem with the type of disks. I?ve also used a lot of Verbatim disks and I?ve had only one of them (out of about 300) stop in the middle of a recording. I think the problem is with the individual disks. I think the home DVD recording technology has some flaws in it. My Panasonic will not record commercial movie tapes. It stops after a few seconds and says on the TV screen that the tape has some kind of electronic protection on it and it can?t be recorded. This is a system established by the film industry with a detector built into my recorder to turn it off whenever it detects a certain non-copy signal. But I can record other tapes, such as tapes I made off TCM, that don?t have the electronic protection. You might try different brands of disks and see how they work out with your machines.

?Unless I have forgotten something, Ethan's motivation (the heart of the story) is simply to find the girls. It is when he discovers what has happened to Debbie that he wants her dead. If she had simply been living with the indians and had not been despoiled (is that a word?) by an indian buck, he would have taken her back home with him. Right?? No. This was a well-known problem in the old West. This is what some indians were notorious for. This is specifically why women were kidnapped by them. This is why some of the villages of some of the wild tribes in the West were wiped out by the US Army. This is one reason why they were called ?savages.? This is why the girls Ethan found being guarded at the military fort had gone crazy. This is why Shelly Winters knew to save the last bullet for herself in ?Winchester 73?.

My opinion is that since a lot of kids? vehicles in the old days had special names, such as ?Red Ryder?, ?Bullet?, ?Charger?, ?Comet?, (or whatever) for bikes, sleds, toy cars, etc., he merely said the name that his particular sled was titled when he was a kid. Remember at the beginning of the film he was playing with the sled the day the man came to take him away from his family.

?O.K., here's a chance to put all that energy you've got into something positive (for a change?). Be TCM's programmer!? First, give us a full list of the complete TCM library. All Titles. All run-times. And a list showing which date in the past each title has been aired. That will tell us what films are easily available and how often they have already been aired. We should disregard birthdays. No one goes to the movies because of some actor?s birthday. The next thing we do is make sure that ?Bringing up Baby? is NOT aired during the next 10 years.

Thanks. That sounds good.

Yes, and TCM needs to show ?Stranger on the Third Floor? about three times that month, because it is often considered to be the first American film noir movie. It contains certain elements that makes it genuine noir: 1) the hero narrates it, 2) the hero is unjustly accused of murder, 3) the hero is trying to find the real killer, 4) the photography and lighting is strictly noir, lots of dark scenes with good side-lighting, low-key lighting, 5) takes place mostly at night on city streets, 6) a crazy killer on the loose, 7) and a great fantasy dream/nightmare sequence which out-noirs them all!

I think I heard somewhere that there was an Imax camera crew there filming the flood, so maybe they'll have a documentary finished about it later.

"Anybody else reading this may wonder what this all has to do with classic movies." Well... uhh... I used to go to the Royal Art theater in the French Quarter in the early '60s, where I saw a lot of foreign films, mainly Italian films. I saw "La Dolce Vita" there and "La Strada." I lived in an apartment on Bourbon St. I was a cool dude in those days.

I?m trying to find a video of ?America Paese di Dio?, 1966, Directed by Luigi Vanzi. This is a ?mondo cane? type documentary. This was never released in the US. I?ve been trying to find a video tape or a DVD of it.