FredCDobbs
-
Posts
25,502 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
17
Posts posted by FredCDobbs
-
-
Mercedes McCambridge
-
-
> I looked forward to Bob Dorian's introductions (as I
> do Robert Osborn's now),
Yeah, me too. I'd like to see TCM hire Bob Dorian to do some intros. A lot of TCM films don't have intros, so they could work in Bob Dorian for some of them. I'd like to see Osborne and Dorian talk about movies together and also that Mankowitz boy too.
-
I think the change-over to wide screen was more sudden. I think most screens were wide by the late 1950s.
I remember some people complaining about the screens of small theaters that had no room to make the screens any wider. So all they did was mask the top and bottom of their regular screen and show the movies in letterbox. People in small towns thought Cinemascope was a joke, since many of the little theaters actually had smaller pictures with the top and bottom of the screen missing.
-
That's an interesting question, but I don't know the answer.
I recall that it was a gradual change-over during the 1950s and early '60s.
I think most films were in color by the late '60s.
-
About 1-1/2 years ago TCM ran a Mexican film festival in the middle of the night. I was able to record only a few of them, and very few people actually got to see them because they were on so late. The best of the films need to be shown again and have an introduction by someone who knows something about Mexican films.
-
Uhh.... Are you an alien from Venus? Come to earth to try to conquer us men?
-
Uhh.... are you a militant feminist?
-
> > Oh, his remark was not in any way intended to be
> > offensive. Not any more than calling a girl a
> ?blonde
> > bombshell? or a ?hot redheaded mama? or an ?Irish
> > princess? or a ?China doll?.
>
> I didn't think that it was meant to be
> offensive.
>
> I do believe that it is offensive, because
> you're comparing a woman to something you eat....
Surely you are joking. Ha, ha, ha.
A ?hot tamale? is a metaphor, just like ?blonde bombshell? and ?Mexican spitfire?. I don?t expect Jean Harlow to explode or Lupe Valez to spit out fire.
Like the name of the Mexican town they were in.... ?Caliente?, which means ?hot? or ?warm?. And the hotel where she was dancing.... ?Hotel Agua Caliente? (Hotel Hot Water).
She?s hot, hot, hot, get it?
-
> 3.) Speaking of Hot, did anyone see those
> costumes in the Lady in Red number? Um, good
> thing they were photographed by candlelight, or those
> production code boys would've been all over this
> movie with a big pair of scissors and maybe a
> dropcloth for the chorus.
Certainly I saw those costumes! I nearly fell out of my chair. I studied them carefully. But we were tricked. The girls had on flesh-colored blouses underneath their see-through blouses.
>Say, wasn't that Judy
> Canova doing the hillbilly bit w/ Horton? Oh, and
> now I know what I can do with any of my old 33 1/3
> records: make them into hats!
I hate to admit that I used to go see Judy Canova movies when I was a kid.
-
> I saw that story on a Twilight Zone episode, could
> you be thinking of that?
>
> Anne
I saw that too. Something about a guy traveling in a rocket while frozen for 20 years.
-
I used to work on Sunset Boulevard. I had a penthouse office in a small office building in the county area (which is now the town of West Hollywood).
There were at least a dozen or so nice cafes and restaurants in that area of Sunset, stretched out for about a mile. I would eat in those places every day and I would see movie stars almost every day. In this particular part of town, they can go to these places and not be seen by tourists. The tourists are over in Hollywood and in cafes around the big studios looking for movie stars.
One day I was in a nice place that had a couple of little balconies with a small two-person table on each of them. The balconies went out into the sidewalk area just a little and they were raised up about 4 feet off the sidewalk.
So one time at noon I was in the place having lunch and Connie Stevens was sitting at a table on one of the balconies, along with some young man. During the lunch, one older lady, walking by on the sidewalk, stopped and told Connie she loved her and her work and said she was so cute in such and such a movie. Connie grinned and thanked the lady and both of them seemed so pleased. Both were so polite to each other.
The lady then turned and walked on down the street. I could tell that she most likely lived in that neighborhood. I could also tell that Connie loved that kind of brief attention. Otherwise she wouldn?t have been sitting out on the balcony that overlooked the sidewalk. The older lady did just enough and not too much, and Connie got just enough, but not too much, attention from the lady.
Now, compare that to sitting in a more well-known tourist place and having EVERYONE who passes by stop and say something and want an autograph.
-
> Maybe it's trite, but I find that the old golden rule
> works both ways. People approaching a famous person
> should think: would I want someone horning in on my
> dinner, or accosting me as I walk down the street?
This is correct. I learned it when I was in the TV news business. I wanted to be left alone by strangers, but after 10 years on the air I was a big local hero and TV ?star?. I hated that. It was ok the first year or so, but after 10 years of it, I got tired of it.
Suppose you work as a secretary or a business woman, and EVERYWHERE YOU GO, people come up to you and say, ?Hey! YOU are that SECRETARY! I love your work! I want your audograph! Can you wait here while I go get my grandmother?? Then the person yells across a store or a restaurant, ?Hey Grandma! Look! It?s Moira!?
And supposed you are dressed in old blue jeans and you are just shopping in a mall on Saturday, and now all of a sudden 30 people in the store are looking right at you, and you know that half of them are discussing the sloppy way you dress in public, as if you should be in a thousand dollar dress all the time.
-
> > Lucky,
> >
> > Do you ever watch the Novellas on Univision?
>
> Sometimes, if I'm home at the lunch hour, I'll watch
> the old movies that get shown on Azteca America, with
> the captions on. Today, they showed one from 1951
> with Katy Jurado called C?rcel de Mujeres, a
> noirish film in which (if I got the plot right),
> Jurado was playing a prisoner in a women's prison.
That sounds great!
I don't receive Azteca America. I receive only Univision and Galavision, but they don't show old movies.
-
-
I've been searching Mexico real estate ads, looking for some of the types of houses that are shown in the Novellas and some of the kinds of places Mexican actors retire to. Here is a good one.
Click on the little pictures on the right side of the page to load that picture to the main frame in the website....
-
> Hi Fred----what I like about the "novellas" is that
> they are in many ways close to the style and plots of
> classic movies. Latin people still like to see
> beautiful women falling in love with rich, handsome
> men and all the drama that goes along with that.
> Which is why I like to watch them, too!
I?ve noticed that our American soap operas are rather bland and boring when compared to the ones of Mexico. Our actors and actresses are ok looking, but not outstanding. Everyone seems to live in small apartments. And all they do is stay in small rooms and talk to each other.
Summary of a Mexican Novella:
Opening scene: We see a beautiful young Amazonian woman riding a majestic stallion through a meadow surrounded by mountains, and she?ll ride on down into a valley and out on a desert plain and on to her papa?s million-acre hacienda. While the foreman?s son ? a poor boy who is strong and handsome and who looks like a Greek God from outer space and a young Marlon Brando type ? stops chopping brush with his machete and gazes at the girl as she rides by.
That?s the ?set up?. That?s when we in the audience are ?set up? to wonder if they will get married by the end of the Novella, and quite often each episode of the Novella will start out with this same logo type scene.
In-between the opening scene and the final elaborate wedding, which will be filmed either in a vast old Church near Mexico City or in the formal gardens of the hacienda, we?ll see dozens of beautiful women and handsome men unlike any we ever thought existed in Mexico (or anywhere else on earth).
And all during the Novella well see elaborate disco scenes with the latest Mexican pop singers, annual festivals at night with exploding fireworks and colorful peasant fiesta costumes, pool-side scenes of all the local rancher?s beautiful daughters dressed in string bikinis, and a fleet of handsome tall young and bronze Mexican body-builders flirting with all the girls.
Occasionally we?ll see mama and papa billionaire, who will be some famous old Mexican actor and actress. Papa always has gray hair and looks like a Vicente Fox type with a deep Spanish voice, and Mama is always dressed in an old Spanish aristocrat?s formal dress as if she still lives in old Spain.
We?ll see scenes of the old foreman?s wife begging the old foreman not to be angry at their son just because he is secretly seeing the billionaire?s daughter in the bougainvillea garden at night, and there will be scenes of papa billionaire telling his own wife that he?s going to take his rifle, the one he fought alongside Pancho Villa with during the Revolution, and blow the head off the foreman?s audacious son, while mama billionaire tries to convince her husband that the boy and their daughter are really in love.
There will be some shooting and a lot of shouting during the Novella, usually with some bandits kidnapping the daughter while the foreman?s son manages to save her from the bandits. And some gorgeous but jealous and crazy babe trying to shoot either the daughter or her handsome young lover, or both.
In the end, papa billionaire will be so grateful to the foreman?s son for saving his daughter, he finally consents to the marriage, and the final marriage scene will last for three episodes and the billionaire?s daughter will be dressed in an elaborate million-dollar wedding dress made entirely of bright white satin overlaid with the finest hand-made lace imported directly from Seville. Mama and papa foreman will look all dreamy-eyed and will look at each other and smile because their son finally got to marry the billionaire?s daughter.
-
> Wow! I need a drink of water.
>
> So Fred you watch novellas for the "architecture?"
>
> Gotcha. I'll try that on Mrs. LuckyDan this weekend,
> see how it goes.
Lol, yeah, tell her it's the Mexican, Spanish, and Moorish architecture you are interested in. Try not to moan when the beautiful dames come on. Pretend you are looking at the architecture. Lol.
-
Here?s a video clip of Lucero.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzZ49wDgIh8
I think she has been in one Novella and Thalia has been in another. Thalia was in ?Maria Mar? a few years ago. These two girls are mainly singers.
Thalia...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7nX2g49Fj8&mode=related&search=
And yes I realize the stories are all the same but about every six months or so they end and a new one comes on with new stars. I like to look at the stars and their expensive houses and apartments. This is the side of Mexico we don?t get to see much when we visit there, since the rich estates are outside of town and well guarded.
Mexican architecture for estates ? whether classical or modern ? is my favorite style. With the lavish swimming pools, the giant palm trees, the tropical bougainvillea vines, the large old pottery in the gardens.
-
Lucky,
Do you ever watch the Novellas on Univision?
Have you seen some of those dames that star in the shows? Wow! What about Lucero and Thalia? Geepers!
------
For those not familiar with Univision, it is the main Spanish-language channel, and it has soap operas every day that are called ?Novellas? in Spanish. Unlike American soap operas that go on and on, the Mexican ones will go maybe six months to a year and then end.
Most are taped in Mexico, with some scenes being shot in Miami and Los Angeles. In most of them, the main families are very wealthy. The main house or hacienda is usually a lavish mansion located somewhere in rural Mexico or maybe in Miami.
The young women who star in the shows are fantastically beautiful, and the men are amazingly handsome.
At the end of each Novella, sometimes the stars will do interview shows for a few months. I learned from these shows that many of the actors and actresses are not actually Mexican but are Latin American, maybe from Venezuela, or Chile, or Argentina (everywhere but Brazil, because they don?t speak Spanish in Brazil).
I don?t speak much Spanish at all, but I sit and watch these Novellas as if I?m a poor peasant living in a small house, watching how the upper class people live. You should see these vast ranches. Many of the Novellas are taped on location in real houses and on vast estates.
-
> Hey Fred, now I know why you hate Nazi's! LOL
Dang, I shouldn?t have mentioned her. Now I?m going to have nightmares tonight.
-
> Katy Jurado sexiness was of a more earthy variety,
> but she was certainly nice to look at, in fact in "
> High Noon " I found here more attractive than Grace
> Kelly,
Grace was kinda wimpy when compared to Katy.
-
> I'll ask my wife and mother-in-law. One is a hot
> tamale, the other used to be and is now a spitfire.
Lol, I think many mother-in-laws in the US are "spitfires". I certainly had one. Her ancestors were suppose to have been from Germany.
I've been on a lot of business and vacation trips to Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Guatemala. What wonderful ladies. Sweet, kind, cute, lovable. But if I picked one out of 200,000,000 of them, she would turn out to be a spitfire, and her mother too, and her grandmother, etc., etc. That?s just my luck.
-
> "One Hot Tamale"? That kind of racially derogatory
> language really shouldn't belong here, should it? I'm
> not sure every Mexican woman would object to it, but
> it would be wiser to err on the side of caution.
>
> At any rate, I think Lupe Velez was more fun to
> watch. Wish they could play the whole Mexican
> Spitfire series from RKO on TCM, or that WHV
> would release them on DVD.
Wouldn't some Mexican women find "Mexican Spitfire" more derogatory than "One Hot Tamale"?
A WAR WITH COLORS!!
in Hot Topics
Posted
> Re Soderbergh and The Good German, here's a
> brief quote from the NYT review which I think
> expresses this more eloquently:
>
> Despite Mr. Soderbergh?s attempt to mimic the
> classic studio style, notably through the deliberate
> editing patterns and fairly restrained camerawork,
> ?The Good German? bears little resemblance to a
> Hollywood film of the period. Tonally his
> cinematography is particularly off-key, characterized
> by hot whites and inky blacks that can put faces into
> harsh light and swallow bodies whole.....?
I noticed in the TCM promos of the film that it is quite contrasty, high contrast, with almost no mid-tones. This is particularly noticable when compared directly to scenes from "The Third Man", which is a low or mid-contrast film, although it does have some good solid blacks in it.