FredCDobbs
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Posts posted by FredCDobbs
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?PSYCHO is one of my favorite films, but is there anyone online that saw this film when it came out in 1960? What were you thinking when the supposed protagonist was murdered half-way through the film??
I haven?t been able to take a shower since without locking my bathroom door.
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I hope I?m not lynched for saying this, but I can?t stand Katharine Hepburn?s voice, or her. The only other worse voices and ?actresses? are Mercedes McCambridge and an older Joan Crawford.
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To all,
One of the problems with showing modern movies on TCM is that everyone will disagree about which modern movies they like the most, and what will ultimately result is the showing of more and more modern movies, in an attempt to please everyone and to get a maximum audience, and in the meantime all our classic old films will be shoved back on the shelf, never to be seen again, and then TCM will be exactly like TBS, TNT, AMC, and all the other modern-movie channels on TV. Once it degrades that far, THEN they will start inserting commercials in the movies, and there will be no more old classic movie channel on TV.
My suggestion is that if modern movies we might like are available on the other channels, and are available for sale and available at the tape rental stores, we who like old classic movies need to lobby TCM to keep these easily-available films OFF of TCM.
Why should I lobby TCM to show these modern films that I like: ?Wag the Dog,? ?Romy and Michele's High School Reunion?, and ?Selena?, if most other old-movie fans might not like those movies and when I can see them on other channels and I can rent them at Blockbuster or buy them at Wal-Mart for $5?
It would be different if all the rare old classics were available on tape and DVD for rent or were shown on a lot of other channels, but they aren?t.
Classic noir films like ?Stranger on the Third Floor? might be shown on TCM only once every 5 years, and if modern films are shown more, that means the old classics might never be shown again or maybe shown only once every ten years.
There are a few modern films I watch on the other channels, but I would NOT like to see them shown on TCM because they have no historical value, they are NOT classic films in any way, and they most likely will not be liked by most old-movie fans.
If some people like the modern ?Titanic? film (I do), they can get it from many sources other than TCM. But some people might like many old classics that are ONLY available from TCM. So I say let?s keep the modern films off of TCM since they are available elsewhere, and let TCM stick to showing older classics.
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Hey, last night I watched a tape of ?Somewhere in the Night?. This is a pretty good noir film from 1946. I recommend it, although it is not shown on TCM very much.
It?s about a guy (John Hodiak) who wakes up in a military hospital at the end of WW II, and he doesn?t know who he is. People call him George Taylor, but he?s never heard that name before. He spends the next hour and 40 minutes trying to find out who he is, and he gets robbed, beaten up, chased, and threatened by a bunch of crooked characters, and he doesn?t know why. Some beautiful dame (Nancy Guild) runs into him and decides to befriend him and fall in love with him. (Gee, why can?t that ever happen to me whenever I can?t remember who I am and when hoodlums beat me up and leave me dumped in a sewer by the docks?)
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This DVD stuff is a little complicated today.
There are several different DVD formats. I did a little research and I bought a recorder that uses several formats: DVD ?R, DVD R, DVD ? and RW, and DVD RAM.
After reading the 84 page instruction booklet, I started out using DVD +R disks. They require a ?finalizing? process before they can be played on any other DVD player. I just go to the main menu and click on ?finalize? after I finish recording the disks, and that takes about 3 minutes. My ?finalized? disks will play on all DVD machines, including computer DVD drives.
You might read the instructions of your recorder and your player and see if the disks you use are compatible.
If I record onto a DVD +R disk but do not ?finalize? the disk, it won?t play on other machines. I?ve never used the other formats, so I don?t know how they would react to being played on other machines.
I can record movies off of TCM either directly onto DVD or onto tape. I can copy the tape directly to my DVD machine.
You might want to try playing your disks on some friend?s machine to see what happens.
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Scarlett, Edgecliff,
Right, the girl?s chin is too small and her face looks nothing like that of Ann Sheridan, and she looks Mexican. It?s possible they shot a scene with Sheridan but decided not to use it, or maybe she is some other lady on the street who is not quite so obvious, or maybe the guy who started the rumor got his films mixed up.
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Hey, I just remembered. There is at least one Japanese noir movie, titled ?Drunken Angel? by Akira Kurosawa, 1948, with Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura. Mifune plays a local gangster who hassles people for money. He wears a white zoot suit. There are some nightclub scenes with Japanese dames singing American type jazz and jive music. Very good film.
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Wow, an all noir week! That sounds great!
I?d like to see a couple of clever modern directors, such as Martin Scorsese, discuss the history of noir movies. I think there should be some discussion about full noir and semi-noir. I maintain there are two main elements that make up a true noir movie: 1) special low-key lighting, and 2) men and women getting themselves into a lot of trouble, especially with each other, and especially in criminal matters.
Scorsese did a great re-make of ?Cape Fear? several years ago.
TCM aired an interview with several older retired film noir lady stars a while back, and I?d like to see that interview again. It was funny. They were all nice ladies. I had always thought of them as being rude heartless tough dames.
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Ok. I rule that you are Not Guilty of Lowering the Standards of Cinema.
Next case please....
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A google search said that Oliver Hinsdell was head of the MGM drama school in the '30s.
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You can buy a 3-hole binder punch machine at Wal-Mart for about $5.
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I think it would be a good idea to show the two German films, ?Pandora?s Box? and ?M?, and explain that they were early German ?noir? type movies, and then show the 1940 American film ?Stranger on the Third Floor? and point out that it tended to imitate some of the old German crime and mystery films in its style, ushering in the ?film noir? era in the US. I would also like to see film noir movies from France. A whole ?film noir style? night would be good.
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What!! No Nazis? No Europe? Just a film about a bunch of monkeys?
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Ernie Kovacs did comedy skits using this idea for his live TV show in the 1950s. He mounted a live TV camera on a tilted floor. The floor was titled at about 45 degrees, and he mounted a table and chairs on the floor too, and he and other actors sat in the chairs. From the camera?s point of view, the floor, table, and chairs were perfectly level. But when Kovacs opened a bottle of wine for dinner and tried to pour it into a glass, it seemed to pour sideways. Someone at the table opened a bottle of olives and all of them fell out of the jar and rolled down the table, but the table looked perfectly level. It was so funny. There is a good kinescope of this show. It aired on one of the cable networks several years ago.
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The most important part of the trick was that the camera was mounted firmly on the floor of the turning set, so the camera always saw the set as being upright, but when Fred was on the ceiling, the camera was upside down, mounted firmly on the floor, and the floor was upside down too, so Fred was dancing right-side-up but the whole set was upside down.
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Treasure of the Sierra Madre
The Third Man
The Lady from Shanghai
Over and over and over again.
When I watch Sierra Madre, I keep thinking that Curtain should have tied up Dobbs every night while Howard was away with the Indians. I told a friend about that once and he thought I was nuts. His attitude was, ?Hey, it?s only a movie?. My attitude is that ?its real?. Doh....
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Robert Osborne keeps claiming that Ann Sheridan plays a cameo in ?Treasure of the Sierra Madre? as a girl walking past Humphrey Bogart in a street scene. She turns a corner and goes up some steps to a house. She turns and looks at Bogart. I say that is NOT Ann Sheridan but a Mexican actress.
Any opinions about this?
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I?ve tried several times to watch ?Oh Brother?, but every time I?ve found it boring and a cheap imitation of a 1930s film, like a $19.95 Taiwan copy of a Rolex watch.
Please tell me why you think it is a ?classic?.
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?When Fred Astaire danced on the ceiling in the 1951 film?
Does anyone here need to know how they made that sequence?
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?While we're on Double Indemnity, let's not forget how great Eddie G. was (when wasn't he great?) in the role of Keyes.?
Yes, he was absolutely terrific. I can?t imagine any one else trying to play that role.
I think the film is important for several reasons. Not only the good story and the good acting, but the basic lesson it tells us about men.... some of us men will do the most stupid things just to get a date with a hot good-looking dame. How many times have we told ourselves, ?I?d better leave that one alone... she?s looks like trouble,? and then we go and make complete fools out of ourselves over the dame and she knows it because she?s had that very same experience with many other men.
?His scenes with MacMurray are terrific, and my favorite one is after the murder, when Robinson rattles off all the ways people commit suicide, every possible statistical variation, until he drops the punch line: "No one has ever committed suicide by jumping off a train moving less than 5 miles an hour!"?
Yes, that was a brilliant script and he said the lines brilliantly. It seemed like he was really the true character speaking the lines for the first time. And while he spoke them, old Fred was gritting his teeth and realizing what a danged fool he was.
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?And I do agree with you on one very important matter. Some of these guys are saying "if you don't like it, change the channel". But if every other channel is showing these same modern films over and over, then there is nothing to change TO.?
Exactly. I?m paying Direct TV $44 a month -- $528 a year ? so I won?t have to change channels. I could get a cheaper satellite service without TCM in it, but I don?t wanna. I want TCM as Ted Turner originally designed it, as a premium channel with premium classic old movies, while the basic-cable TNT and TBS plays the modern junky movies. I don?t want to pay $528 a year for 3 Turner channels of junky movies plus AMC and Fox junky movies too. If I want to see junky movies I go to the local theaters and the video rental stores or watch the junk-movie channels. Or I could just watch NBC, ABC, and CBS. They are free and filled with junky movies.
What is happening this month on TCM, with all the bad modern movies, is like a football fan paying extra for an all-football channel and then getting a lot of golf and bowling programs in prime time, with the football programs being shown occasionally at 2 AM.
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?Nice suggestion. But if TCM aired the non-classic, modern, available in almost any video-store and library O Brother, Where Art Thou, you and I both know the stink that cause elsewhere on these boards and I just don't think I could take that!?
Oh, phooey.
Robert Osborne could say, ?Ok, now that you have all seen ?Oh, Brother Where Art Thou? on a dozen other channels, now we?ll show you the two movies that inspired it, which are ?I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang? and ?Sullivan?s Travels?.?
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?I felt like that when I went to see Man Trouble with Jack Nicholson. I was one of two other people in the theatre and they were people I went with. I should've known better when no one else came in.?
Funny you should say that. I?ve been to a few modern movies that I didn?t like but that had large audiences, but I went to one several years ago that only had about 5 people in the theater. It was ?Selena? with Jennifer Lopez. I loved the film, but I think it bombed at the box office. Too many Mexicans in it. But I thought it was a great film, which reminded me some of the old bio classics of the past, the ones about struggling musicians whose lives ended tragically.
But I?ve been to Mexico many times. I like most Mexicans, especially the family-oriented kind like in that movie. Selena?s story is a very sad and tragic one, which was well told by that great film, but the film never attracted much of an audience. That film should have received a few Academy Awards, such as for sound and for make-up. They made Lopez look just like Selena. And she acted like Selena too.
need name of movie
in Information, Please!
Posted
I can?t remember the name of the film. It was about a bomber crew that had to head toward the Philippines right after Pearl Harbor. I think that?s the film with a little dog in it and the crew of the bomber got stuck on some island trying to repair their airplane and take off before the Japs overran the island. They finally made it. The fighter pilot was flying with them. Maybe someone else will remember the name of the movie.