King Rat
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Posts posted by King Rat
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49 minutes ago, JamesJazGuitar said:
It's been a long time since I read the James Leo Herlihy novel, and I can't remember if the name is ever explained. In any event 1) the name Berry-Berry drives most viewers Berry-Berry crazy and 2) the William Inge screenplay insists on using the name over and over again. I believe we're supposed to think of the disease beriberi, for the Warren Beatty character brings sorrow to all those around him. When he tells his kid brother he hates life, he isn't joking.
The 1950s/early 60s was the era when people worried about ineffectual or absent fathers/domineering mothers, reflected in movies like Teresa, Rebel Without a Cause, David and Lisa, and All Fall Down. Sometimes this is a cue for concerns about mothers turning their sons homosexual, obviously not the case with Warren Beatty (I won't use his character's name again). Instead, he simply treats women badly, including physical violence. The novel includes a scene with younger son Clinton having sex with a woman in Key West, so apparently Mom didn't turn him gay, either.
The novel is no more explicit about Echo's sexuality than the film. The fact that she's gorgeous, unmarried, thirty, and a virgin might lead us to think in a certain direction. The boy she says she loved--who didn't want her sexually and killed himself--was, one gathers, gay. Unfortunately, All Fall Down doesn't give us nearly enough Eva Marie Saint or Warren Beatty and too much Angela Lansbury, who is believable, but we got the point six scenes ago.
Whatever the imbalance of the screenplay, the acting and directing are first-rate. Brandon de Wilde is flat-out wonderful as the kid brother, another role that could be tiresome without such believable acting.
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Both Constance Ford and Madam Spivey in All Fall Down.
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9 hours ago, Bogie56 said:
Marilyn Monroe as Angela Phinlay in The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and ....
Marilyn Monroe as Miss Casswell in All About Eve (1950).
These are my favorite Marilyn Monroe performances.
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1947 (forget most of the Oscar noms; this year has depth) and 1962 would have my votes. The 1940s is certainly my favorite decade for Hollywood films.
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1 hour ago, LoyFan said:
I like it when actors with southern accents let their accents slip. I've noticed Joseph Cotten's, Irene Dunne's, & Una Merkel's quite often.
Randolph Scott, definitely.
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1 hour ago, EricJ said:
I remember listening to Whitney's "The Greatest Love of All" on every radio station and joking "If the lyrics express her concern, from this rendition, Whitney should reassure herself that she is in no immediate danger of not loving herself enough... 🙄"
Good one!
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3 hours ago, CinemaInternational said:
Muldaur's big plunge on LA Law ended up becoming a metaphor for the series itself, as the series which had been a critical and audience favorite and mostly a calm and cohesive working environment fell entirely to pieces shortly after she left the show. The episode where she was killed off aired in March of 1991 as part of the show's fifth season, which would become the series' fourth to win Best Drama series at the Emmys. To make it even more shocking, they killed Roz off at the end of the episode's first main act.
It was later revealed she was killed off the show because the writer/producer who created the character, David E. Kelley was leaving the show to create his own show Picket Fences (and later another trio of law shows: The Practice, Ally McBeal, Boston Legal), and he didn't want to see the character get softened or maladjusted by the new troop of writers coming in because Roz was his favorite character and one he had created himself.
In addition to Kelley leaving at the end of the fifth season, so too left original cast members Harry Hamlin, Jimmy Smits, and Michelle Greene, which left a gap on the show. Some new producer came in, didn't even last the whole sixth season, as show quality sagged and ratings dipped. Kelley , Smits, and show creator Stephen Bochco (doing groundwork at the time on NYPD Blue) came back in for just a handful of episodes to try to shore things up, which was enough to keep the show up for Emmys that year. Richard Dysert won the show's final award that year. But by season's end, Susan Dey, another original cast member left, as did would-be cast replacements Amanda Donohue, Cecil Hoffman, Tom Verica, Michael Cumpsty and Conchata Farrell.
Season 7 brought in the showrunners from St. Elsewhere and Northern Exposure. They were a bad fit for LA Law, as fans of the show started turning it off in droves as the show sank in quality. The season opener, inspired by the riots after the verdict in the Rodney King case, was regarded as the only decent episode of the season. And yet another original cast member left, this time Susan Ruttan. And the Emmys dropped the show entirely.
NBC still decided to go in with a final year with new producers, bizarrely even folding in two characters played by Debi Mazar and Alan Rosenberg from a cancelled Bochco show, Civil Wars, that had aired on a rival network, ABC. The final year was regarded as a big step up from the previous year, but the show had lost its momentum and the ratings were on par with the previous year. Jill Eikenberry got one last farewell nomination at the Emmys (much like Angela Lansbury, they loved to nominate her, but always stiffed her over in the end); she lost to Leigh Taylor-Young on Picket Fences. And NBC decided to give LA Law's timeslot to a certain new medical show called ER.....and the rest they say is history
Thanks for the background information. My lawyer friends used to hoot at the opening scene in many of the shows where all the lawyers would sit around the conference table and talk about the one case they were working on. As if!
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Tonight TCM is showing three films in a row which have a strong claim to being the best English language film of that year: The Great Escape (1963), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), and King Rat (1965).
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Actress and singer Joan Copeland, sister of Arthur Miller, has passed away at the age of 99. Her career included Broadway, soap operas, television, and movies. The attached obituary from the Hollywood Reporter generously covers all of these aspects of her career. According to me, she deserved a Best Supporting Actress nomination for Middle of the Night. If you wanted someone who would convey New York smarts, energy, and edge, just cast Joan Copeland.
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5 hours ago, TikiSoo said:
Before reading the article.... I noticed something happening with draining color in movies begining in the late 90's-early 2000's. I started seeing movies not with one or two scenes in blues & blacks to show night time in a basement or wet city streets, but ENTIRE MOVIES that were dark and duo tone. I chalked it up to computer filters added to better camouflage the "effects".
I found watching duo tone movies like this visually tiring & it's one of the reasons I don't go to see any new superhero or fantasy movies.
EDIT: ...just read the article. So funny, the first movie I noticed this was A LOTR movie, which is actually mentioned. Never applied this to TV, but see it's included in the article.
This style has run rampant in TV drama. If it's drama, then it ought to be dark, according to the new practice. The Dynasty reboot, of all things, uses sepia backgrounds for most of its scenes. This version is much campier than the original, but the lighting and filtering are much darker. It doesn't make sense. If you compare the later seasons of Suits to the earlier, the bright colors and window views of the offices have given way to the new sludge. Once Mike went to prison, everything went dark.
The Americans may have been one of the first TV shows to adopt the New Darkness. Even some comedies have been affected. The Ted Danson comedy Mr. Mayor (not very good, IMO) is darker in looks than most comedies have been.
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If you have wondered, as I have, what happened to all the color spectrum in recent movies (and television) and why the sludge instead, here is an outstanding article by Emily VanDerWerff which does a good job of answering those very questions:
https://www.vox.com/culture/22840526/colors-movies-tv-gray-digital-color-sludge
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I had never heard of Somewhere in the Night--one of the best noir titles ever--and if I had seen this film knowing nothing about it, I would never have guessed the director, a name well known to most of the people who post here. This is the second film of Joseph L. Mankiewicz; his first was Dragonwyck. The cinematography by Norbert Brodeen is superb. Foster Hirsch, introducing the film, suggested that Somewhere in the Night is the most visually interesting of Mankiewicz's films, and that makes sense to me. The opening of the film is great. The camera moves around, occasionally going out of focus, as we discover that we are in a medical tent with several patients and medical officers, and eventually the camera emphasizes a patient with a bandaged face (and, incredibly, a perfectly trimmed pencil mustache). This is John Hodiak, the star of the film.
Hodiak is 1) a WWII veteran 2) with amnesia 3) and a new face. Yes, there's no doubt that this is noir. His name may be George Taylor and he has reason to believe that a man named Larry Cravat knows something about him. The more he learns about Larry Cravat, the shadier the man seems to be. A lot of other people want to find Larry Cravat, too, and most of them have no problem playing rough. A large sum of money has gone missing, and all of these people want it.
The plot is as complicated and convoluted as The Big Sleep, and like Dark Passage there might be a plot hole or three, but as with those two films, if you can just shelve those thoughts and roll with the movie, there's much to enjoy. One more reservation: The leading lady is Nancy Guild ("Rhymes with wild!" the Fox publicists wrote). Zanuck saw her picture on a magazine cover, thought she looked like Gene Tierney, and signed her to a movie contract. She's not really bad, but it's understandable why Gene Tierney and Lauren Bacall had bigger careers.
That being said, here are some of the many good things. Jeff Corey has a bit part as a bank teller! Harry Morgan has a small part as an attendant at a Turkish bath! If you want examples of Chekhov's "There are no small parts, only small actors," those guys provide them. The nightclub owner who's sweet on Nancy Guild is played by Richard Conte. An aging lady right out of a Tennessee Williams play is played with appropriate delicacy by Josephine Hutchinson (Oil for the Lamps of China, The Story of Louis Pasteur). An actor named Fritz Kortner does his best to walk off with the film playing a character known as Dr. Oracle. Kortner is great, but he can't entirely walk off with the film, though, because Lloyd Nolan plays the police detective trying to make sense of this chaos, and if you love Lloyd Nolan, you'll want to see this film. He brings some welcome comic moments while always seeming real, and as Foster Hirsch pointed out in his intro, Nolan has a long speech midway through the film where he explains much of the backstory. Nolan makes this necessary and complicated exposition sound like ordinary conversation. It would be a perfect scene to show to an acting class.
One more fun fact about the film, courtesy of Foster Hirsch: the producer of the film is Anderson Lawler. Mankiewicz chose him because he knew Lawler wouldn't interfere with what Mankiewicz wanted to do. Lawler was best known as a "walker," the guy studio bosses would let escort their wives to parties because they knew the women were perfectly safe with him. Lawler is also well known for having a well-documented affair with Gary Cooper back before Cooper was a star.
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On 1/10/2022 at 9:01 AM, TopBilled said:
Today's neglected film is the British classic THE SPY IN BLACK (1939). I watched it yesterday on the Criterion Channel, though afterward, I discovered there is a better looking print currently available on YouTube. TCM has broadcast the film 11 times, most recently two years ago.
The print I saw several years ago on TCM was dreadful. I'm glad to hear there's a better one available on YouTube.
13 hours ago, TopBilled said:Today's neglected film is SOMEWHERE IN THE NIGHT (1946) which is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel as part of its Fox Noir theme. It has never aired on TCM.
This is not a typical noir, there is no real femme fatale, a lot of the crime occurs off-screen, and the action is minimal. Instead we have more of a psychological probe going on with the main character. He's a war vet who happens to be an amnesiac, trying to regain his memory and put the pieces of his life back together. It's intriguing stuff.
I saw Somewhere in the Night at the Palm Springs Film Noir Festival a few years ago, and the audience seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. I'd like to see this one again.
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1 hour ago, LornaHansonForbes said:
I think I was the only person in America who was devastated when ROZ SHAYS fell down that elevator shaft and into Prime Time History.
Though I was not a big fan of L.A. Law, I thought it was foolish to kill off such a good character played by such a fine actress.
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On 1/8/2022 at 6:54 PM, Toto said:
I hate to bring a light to this but there has been some accents in famous films that just didn't hit the mark.
In the amazing film "Spartacus" directed by Stanley Kubrick and set in ancient Rome, Tony Curtis has a Brooklyn accent. His acting though is still really good.
Tony Curtis is equally miscast as a Southerner in The Defiant Ones. South Bronx, maybe.
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1 hour ago, LornaHansonForbes said:
NICOLE KIDMAN has just plain MESSED UP HER FACE to where I just CAN'T WITH HER.
(and this is coming from someone with a photo of late-stage JOAN CRAWFORD as their avatar}
This weekend I was chatting on Zoom with some friends who had seen Being the Ricardos. They all seemed to have similar views:
--They thought Nicole Kidman's face looked weird. (Lorna, you are not the only one!) They were not that impressed by her performance.
--They liked Javier Bardem. One of them really liked J.K. Simmons as William Frawley. (That sounds like wacko casting to me.)
--They did not like Aaron Sorkin's script, especially the concentration on one day.
--All in all, they were not very fond of the movie.
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5 hours ago, jameselliot said:
The title is super bland for a crime thriller.
IIRC, after the success of Call Northside 777, everyone in Hollywood "knew" that having numbers in the title was good for a crime film. Thus 99 River Street, 711 Ocean Drive, etc. I'm with you. Now it doesn't seem like a very exciting title.
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2 hours ago, Sepiatone said:
Well of course, if Kay's character works for Lenin, it might be her character strongly believes in Lenin's stance and work, so will also of course, speak of Lenin reverently. That doesn't really make the MOVIE "pro-communist" however.
Sepiatone
It kind of does. The British, including our star Leslie Howard, are shown to be incompetent spies. Kay Francis seems about the least likely of all Hollywood stars to be praising Lenin, which gives the movie a certain charm.
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6 hours ago, Bogie56 said:
Monday, January 10
10:45 p.m. British Agent (1934). Michael Curtiz film with Leslie Howard and SOTM, Kay Francis.
Very interesting if only because this is one of the most pro-Communist films ever made in Hollywood. Kay Francis' character, who works for Lenin, speaks of Lenin with the hushed reverence usually found only in films about Jesus.
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3 hours ago, CinemaInternational said:
Then, 1997's In and Out....
Acceptance speeches at award shows are, by their very nature, brief. And most are forgotten quickly. But Tom Hanks' 1994 acceptance speech in which he outed one of his teachers provided the impetus to In and Out, which itself was up for an Oscar, somewhat surprisingly so (Joan Cusack, for Supporting Actress).
Joan Cusack does a great job in one of those horrid roles: the girlfriend the hero is going to dump. We can't root for the couple because they are going to be separated by the plot. If she is too awful, however, we'll automatically downgrade the hero for becoming involved with her in the first place. Cusack walks the tightrope as well as or better than anyone else could, given the circumstances. Kevin Kline, as usual, brings smarts, humor, and energy to the film.
Thank you for pointing out the painfully stereotypical ways the audience, and the Kevin Kline character himself, come to realize that he is gay. Of course all gay men love Barbra Streisand and disco dancing! Very low marks to Paul Rudnick for this aspect of the script. I'm glad, however, that one of my favorite soap opera actors, John Cunningham, got to do the voiceover for the he-man video.
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I also remember Saint Jack as being pretty good, with an excellent role for Ben Gazzara.
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On 1/7/2022 at 8:50 AM, LornaHansonForbes said:
You know how some of you, I imagine, have a neighbor or friend or relative who, when someone dies, always brings TUNA WIGGLE to the wake or funeral or IMMEDIATELY TO THE HOUSE AS THE PERSON IS STILL ASSUMING ROOM TEMPERATURE [*for those of you who are Southern]...?
well, here is my TUNA WIGGLE [aka posting someones credits from imdb]:
I knew far too many people who would bring congealed salads, next to which tuna casserole would be a blessing from on high.
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55 minutes ago, JamesJazGuitar said:
Watched Columbia noir film 711 Ocean Drive. I have seen this on GET-TV (since they feature Columbia films), but it was nice to see it without interruptions\commercials.
Not a great film but it has it moments. I also like the Palm Springs setting, as well as other L.A. landmarks.
I also especially enjoyed the Palm Springs and LA settings, James, and the visit to Boulder Dam in the climactic section. 711 Ocean Drive is a good example of docu-noir. We also have a plotline that will make plenty of viewers today think of The Sting. Edmond O'Brien is quite good, and Sammy White as his friend Chippie is a delight. A noir story without the usual noir visual style.
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12 hours ago, LornaHansonForbes said:
all kidding aside, WITH PROPER MANAGEMENT, PIA ZADORA could've had one Hell of a career.
(she's also fun in NAKED GUN 33 1/3
Pia Zadora could have been, or perhaps was, the Zsa Zsa Gabor of her generation. Instant cultural reference, as in Hairspray (where she's also fun) and Naked Gun 33 1/3.
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Why Steven Spielberg’s ‘West Side Story’ flopped at the box office
in General Discussions
Posted
"Metallic-sounding" and "flat in a lot of places" describes much of today's music. The new soundtrack probably uses AutoTune, which often has a deadening and unreal and metallic effect. Here is Ansel Elgort singing "Maria." He has a pleasant voice, but a problem with sibilance. Each "s" comes out too strongly. This might not be noticeable in the theater, but on a recording, this could be annoying with repeated hearings:
And I was surprised to learn that Rachel Zegler is Colombian. So she's no more Puerto Rican than Natalie Wood?