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Post by thwhtguardian on Aug 10, 2015 22:01:51 GMT -5
From what I heard, and you'd have to pay me to actually observe, Robin Williams made a few movies after Being Human that were so much worse. Patch Adams, Death To Smoochy I love Death to Smoochy
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 10, 2015 23:24:59 GMT -5
From what I heard, and you'd have to pay me to actually observe, Robin Williams made a few movies after Being Human that were so much worse. Patch Adams, Death To Smoochy I love Death to Smoochy I love the premise for Death to Smoochy but I've never seen it. It's never on cable. I checked to see if it's on YouTube (it is but it's not free) or on Netflix Instant Watch (it's available on dvd but not streaming) but no dice.
It has a bad reputation but there's some movies with bad reps that I love (like Speed Racer with Christina Ricci as Trixie and John Goodman as Pops!).
Jon Stewart sometimes mentions it, but never in a positive manner.
I love Shakes the Clown. Lawanda Page is hilarious! I imagine Death to Smoochy having the potential to be funny in the way Shakes the Clown is funny.
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Post by Dizzy D on Aug 11, 2015 6:40:55 GMT -5
Phantasm (1979) Memorable cult horror film from the 70s. Movie opens with a blonde seductress screwing a guy in a cemetery and then stabbing him. Then a young boy observes some weird going-ons during the burial. He investigates the adjoining funeral parlor and is chased by dwarves in brown hoodies and a big strong guy. A metallic ball speedily floats through the corridors, sharp pincers protruding, also after the boy. The boy ducks and the ball smashes into the strong guy's forehead. A drill comes forth from the ball, drilling a hole thru the guys brain and a river of blood shoots out the other end of the ball. The young boy escapes with someone's severed fingers as evidence that the funeral parlor is not on the up & up. His older brother is convinced when the severed fingers move around. Together with their ice cream truck friend they are determined to find out what's going on and why the caretaker of the funeral parlor wears such skinny ties when its the era of wide ties. What's not to like? They wound up making 2 sequels 3 sequels! (Unless this is the type of "I don't know what you're talking about, there is no third Godfather"-joke)
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Post by DE Sinclair on Aug 11, 2015 9:14:40 GMT -5
I love the premise for Death to Smoochy but I've never seen it. It's never on cable. I checked to see if it's on YouTube (it is but it's not free) or on Netflix Instant Watch (it's available on dvd but not streaming) but no dice.
It has a bad reputation but there's some movies with bad reps that I love (like Speed Racer with Christina Ricci as Trixie and John Goodman as Pops!).
Jon Stewart sometimes mentions it, but never in a positive manner.
I love Shakes the Clown. Lawanda Page is hilarious! I imagine Death to Smoochy having the potential to be funny in the way Shakes the Clown is funny.
Death to Smoochy is so very, very dark. It's like watching Barney the big purple dinosaur descend into madness. Still, my favorite part is the title.
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 11, 2015 15:16:09 GMT -5
I saw a couple of minor classics over the last few days - Strange Cargo (1940) and Chain Lightning (1950).
I've seen bits of Strange Cargo a few times over the years, and I was kind of fascinated by it because I always wondered how you could possibly create a scenario that would lead to some of the scenes I saw. I've never heard anybody say it's a great movie (it isn't) but I was curious about it, and when I finally saw it, it was so CRA-ZEE that I really loved it, aside from the way it bogged down a bit near the end.
It's a Devil's Island movie, so that means there has to be an escape attempt. The weird thing about it - the element that made me go "What the -?" when I saw segments - is that there's a woman along during the escape attempt!
I guess that part of it mostly makes sense. The female escapee is Joan Crawford, which makes the movie a lot more fun, but if you don't like Joan Crawford, you might not like this movie as much as I did. There's a scene where alligators are sneaking up on her, and I was yelling at the alligators. "Be careful! She's tougher than she looks! Especially with a coat hanger!"
She's not an inmate. Devil's Island has a village near the dock, and this village has a café (for the guards and the rest of the prison staff) and several women are working there as waitresses and bargirls. She gets in trouble with the authorities and is fired from her job but she doesn't have any money for a ticket to the mainland but she's told to leave anyway. She gets sort of involved in the escape attempt because ... well, she hooks up with one of the staff who has a cabin in the jungle but she's not actually real keen with the guy. So when Clark Gable shows up during the escape attempt, she's a not entirely unwilling hostage.
So you got Clark Gable and Joan Crawford. Also Ian Hunter, Paul Lukas, Albert Dekker and J. Edward Bromberg. And Peter Lorre is also in it. He's not an inmate, he's some lowlife who lives in the village and informs on the prisoners. His name is Mssr. Pig. And there are some great scenes where Joan Crawford is yelling at him and really being mean because he's so disgusting. "You're a pig, a sneak and a dirty stool pigeon!"
And Gable has a bible with the escape route marked on a map drawn on the inner back cover! So he's carrying this bible all through the movie and sometimes he reads from it. There's some pretty cool scenes with dialogue based on bible imagery as Clark discusses what he's reading. In one great scene, he reads from the Song of Solomon to Joan Crawford.
Yeah, it's a strange one.
And then there's Chain Lightning.
I think I've mentioned how much I love Humphrey Bogart and how much I love watching Bogart movies that I've never seen. (I think Chain Lightning raises the total to 55.) Bogart made the kind of movies I like, under the studio system, so even if the story is kind of dopey, there's a good chance that there will be some combination of great acting, interesting direction and really cool dialogue.
So even now, after watching Bogart for forty years or more, I still find new Bogart films that are pretty good, and some of them are near-great! I would definitely put Chain Lightning in the near-great category.
Bogart is a pilot who misses the excitement of flying missions over Europe in World War II, so he becomes a pilot testing jet fighters! His boss is Raymond Massey, who wants to rush the JA-3 into production even though the head engineer has made a few improvements and wants to hold off on the JA-3 because he's moving ahead on the JA-4 and thinks the JA-4 should be offered to the US government.
Bogart makes a dangerous test flight with the JA-3 from Nome, Alaska, to Washington D.C. while the engineer heroically speeds up testing on the JA-4. (Bogart's test flight is actually pretty suspenseful, the best part of the movie.)
But is the engineer going ahead too quickly with the new plane? And is Bogart pushing the JA-3 for selfish reasons?
The engineer and Bogart are both in love with the same girl, played by Eleanor Parker, who does a wonderful job with a role that could have been just a generic love interest.
I liked it a lot. This is the movie for you if you are interested in seeing Humphrey Bogart play a pre-power ring Hal Jordan.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Aug 11, 2015 17:31:31 GMT -5
I love the premise for Death to Smoochy but I've never seen it. It's never on cable. I checked to see if it's on YouTube (it is but it's not free) or on Netflix Instant Watch (it's available on dvd but not streaming) but no dice.
It has a bad reputation but there's some movies with bad reps that I love (like Speed Racer with Christina Ricci as Trixie and John Goodman as Pops!).
Jon Stewart sometimes mentions it, but never in a positive manner.
I love Shakes the Clown. Lawanda Page is hilarious! I imagine Death to Smoochy having the potential to be funny in the way Shakes the Clown is funny.
Death to Smoochy is so very, very dark. It's like watching Barney the big purple dinosaur descend into madness. Still, my favorite part is the title. And that is why I love it
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Aug 11, 2015 17:47:22 GMT -5
Patch Of Blue (1965) Sidney Poitier, Elizabeth Hartman, Shelley Winters
Selina is an 18 year old blind white girl in the city. Her mother is a boozy call girl (Shelly Winters) and she also lives with a drunken grandfather in a slum apartment. Selina is treated like Cinderella by her evil sisters, only good for cleaning, never enrolled in a school and occasionally beaten. Begrudgingly they let her spend a day alone in the park when Sidney happens by and takes pity on her. They begin to meet each day in the park as Sidney intends to do something about Selina's situation and Selina falls in love with him
Filmed during the heights of the civil rights movement, Sidney plays his characteristic "Magic Negro" type of role. Elizabeth Hartman shines as the blind girl as does Shelly Winters as the evil mom. A very touching film which could easily have gone overly melodramatic but stays true to itself
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Aug 11, 2015 17:57:44 GMT -5
Mon Oncle (1958) Directed by Jacques Tati
My 3rd Jacques Tati movie (Mr. Hulot's Holiday, Playtime), sorta Frances answer to Charlie Chaplain. Again this features the character Mr. Hulot, a pipe smoking middle aged man who hardly ever speaks and strolls through life without quite fitting in or understanding whats going on. Amusing, small visual comic bits, colorful. There always seems to be something going on at the edges of the screen if you look closely.
Here Mr. Hulot's brother-in-law tries to get him a job at a rubber hose factory. Hulot's sister's family lives in a futuristic house somewhere in France. This house must be seen by todays' audience-its so fantastically tacky
Once again, thanks to Criterion for making Tati's film available on disc.
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Post by berkley on Aug 11, 2015 23:06:15 GMT -5
Patch Of Blue (1965) Sidney Poitier, Elizabeth Hartman, Shelley Winters
Selina is an 18 year old blind white girl in the city. Her mother is a boozy call girl (Shelly Winters) and she also lives with a drunken grandfather in a slum apartment. Selina is treated like Cinderella by her evil sisters, only good for cleaning, never enrolled in a school and occasionally beaten. Begrudgingly they let her spend a day alone in the park when Sidney happens by and takes pity on her. They begin to meet each day in the park as Sidney intends to do something about Selina's situation and Selina falls in love with him
Filmed during the heights of the civil rights movement, Sidney plays his characteristic "Magic Negro" type of role. Elizabeth Hartman shines as the blind girl as does Shelly Winters as the evil mom. A very touching film which could easily have gone overly melodramatic but stays true to itself I'd like to see this one. Interesting to hear of Shelley Winters playing this kind of role so early as 1965 - I would have thought she was still in the sex-symbol stage of her career then, but that must have been earlier than I thought.
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Post by berkley on Aug 11, 2015 23:11:42 GMT -5
Mon Oncle (1958) Directed by Jacques Tati
Mr. Hulot, a pipe smoking middle aged man who hardly ever speaks and strolls through life without quite fitting in or understanding whats going on. Except for the pipe-smoking I feel like that myself, at least some of the time. Which of course probably accounts for Tati's popularity - probably everyone feels or has felt like that at some point in their lives.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Aug 12, 2015 13:32:52 GMT -5
Uncertain Glory (1944) Errol Flynn
A gem of a film I had never heard of previously.
Its occupied France during WWII and career thief and murder Jean Picard (not the bald headed guy, this time its Flynn) is on the way to the guillotine. Just before the execution, British bombers attack the area, killing the prison guards and allowing Picard to escape. He is soon tracked down and re-arrested by Inspector Bonet (Paul Lukas). On the train ride back to Paris for the execution, an overnight stop cannot be avoided due to saboteurs destroying a bridge. Staying at a nearby small town that night, Bonet and Picard hear that the Germans will kill 100 random villagers if the saboteur does not surrender himself in 4 days. Picard asks Bonet if he could claim he's the saboteur, saving the 100 innocent men. Picard would rather die by firing squad than guillotine and he'd get 4 more days to live before surrendering to the Germans as well. But can Picard really be trusted to uphold his end of the bargain with the inspector?
The movie pushes along at a good pace. Flynn is a total scoundrel, you're not really sure if he'll really go willingly to the Germans. Especially when he realizes he'll probably be tortured for more information. Very much recommended
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 13, 2015 1:34:38 GMT -5
I've been on YouTube the last few days, looking for old or rare movies that I've been interested in for a while. Over the last few years, I've seen some cool stuff on YouTube. Like The Crime of Dr. Crespi, a 1930s movie with Dwight Frye and Erich von Stroheim. (I swear I didn't make this up!)
And The Mad Ghoul, a Universal horror movie from the 1940s that I'd been wanting to see since I was 10.
And also stuff like Love Happy (with the Marx Brothers and Marilyn Monroe), The Black Camel (an early Charlie Chan talkie with Bela Lugosi), The Kid Brother (with Harold Lloyd), Tramp Tramp Tramp (with Harry Langdon and Joan Crawford) and I Was Born, But ... (a Japanese silent film).
And I highly recommend The Great White Silence! This is a documentary film from the 1920s and it's about Robert Falcon Scott's exploration of Antarctica and his doomed attempt to reach the South Pole. It's amazing! It's freaking footage from 1912 of Scott and his men and their ship and the camp and the dogs and the ponies and penguins!
The last few days, I decided to see which Louise Brooks are available for free on YouTube and I found several that I haven't seen! So I watched A Girl in Every Port (1928) yesterday. It's directed by Howard Hawks and stars Victor McLaghlen and Robert Armstrong (who played Carl Denham in King Kong a few years later). McLaghlen and Armstrong are a couple of sailors who become pals and then McLaghlen meets Louise Brooks in Marseilles. She works in the circus and she is a high diver, jumping into a tiny pool of water several times a day. McLaghlen fals in love with Louise and she starts taking him for everything he's got! And Armstrong can't say anything because he knows McLaghlen won't believe him and he'll get mad. What a dilemma!
It's OK. Louise Brooks's scenes are pretty good. She's only in the last 30 or 40 minutes and the film really picks up when she appears. She's stunning! Supposedly, this is the film that G.W. Pabst saw that inspired him to cast her in Pandora's Box.
Then this afternoon, I watched Overland Stage Raiders. This is from 1938 and it's Brooks's last film. It's less than an hour long and it stars John Wayne! Through most of the 1930s, Wayne starred in dozens of low-budget westerns, and I find them to be highly entertaining! They're the western equivalent of the low-budget horror films that Bela Lugosi made for Monogram and PRC.
It's pretty silly. John Wayne has a couple of buddies - played by Max Terhune and Ray "Crash" Corrigan - and they are all cowboys with a ranch and cattle, but Wayne has decided they needed to branch out so he's invested their money in an airport. Louise Brooks is the sister of the main pilot for the air service. Complications ensue as bandits decide to hijack the airplane because it's carrying a gold shipment. Also, the guy who owns the local bus service doesn't want the competition, so he's working with the thieves!
Louise doesn't have much to do, but the bad guys do lock her up in the radio room. Also, Max Terhune has the most terrible and annoying ventriloquist act I've ever seen. I hope it's supposed to be that terrible.
I also came across a movie I've been wanting to see for years - the 1920 Danish version of Hamlet with Asta Nielsen! I can't believe this is on YouTube! It's more than two hours long so I'm not going to watch it tonight, but I should get to it in the next few days.
So excited!
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Aug 13, 2015 1:46:09 GMT -5
I watched Pandora's Box last year and was very impressed with Louise Brooks' performance
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 13, 2015 7:46:16 GMT -5
I watched Pandora's Box last year and was very impressed with Louise Brooks' performance Pandora's Box is one of my favorites. I made a Top Ten list a few months ago and Pandora's Box was #8. When I lived in Los Angeles, I saw it on the big screen three or four times, often on a double feature with Diary of a Lost Girl, which is almost as good.
Beggars of Life is her best American film and it's also amazing.
She has a small role in It's the Old Army Game, with W.C. Fields. I saw this on a big screen with a large crowd, and there is one scene that is quite possibly the funniest thing I've ever seen in a movie. The whole audience was roaring with laughter, and I was literally sitting on the floor because I basically laughed myself right off the seat.
Beauty Prize (also known as Prix de Beaute or Miss Europe) is also really good, if you can get past the strange way they did the sound. They made the decision to go to sound after the film was finished but they made little effort to make the dubbing match the lips. The dialogue is minimal and they tried to work around it by putting in the dialogue when the speaker's head is turned. It's very odd. I still found it entertaining and very moving.
And a few years ago, I watched The Canary Murder Case, the film that got Louise into trouble with Hollywood because she refused to cooperate when they decided to turn it into a sound film. She didn't want to go back and dub her own voice, so she ended up going to Germany and making Pandora's Box. She's very good in The Canary Murder Case. She's a night club singer who swings above the audience on a trapeze as she sings. It's not her voice thought. I should probably add that it's a Philo Vance film with William Powell playing a character very much like Nick Charles in the Thin Man movies, only it's 1929.
A lot of these are available on YouTube.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Aug 13, 2015 13:29:12 GMT -5
A Time To Kill (1996) Matthew McConaughey, Sandra Bullock, Samuel L. Jackson, Keifer Sutherland, Donald Sutherland, Patrick McGoohan, Kevin Spacey, Oliver Platt, Ashley Judd, Charles S. Dutton
Somehow, in between two god awful Batman films, director Joel Schumacher successfully adapted this John Grisham novel into a taut crime drama film. In Mississippi, two young redneck mutants kidnap, rape and brutally beat a 10 year old black girl. Right before their arraignment at the courthouse, the girl's father (Samuel L. Jackson) kills them with an automatic weapon. McConaughey is prepared to defend Jackson against the highly skilled prosecutor (Spacey) and the revitalized KKK headed by the brother of one of the dead rapists (Keifer Sutherland)
An excellent cast. Great seeing the Sutherlands together in a film. Wouldn't recognize the old southern judge (Patrick McGoohan) compared to his younger days as Secret Agent Number 6. Even at 2 1/2 hours the film flies by. A must see for courtroom drama and racial thriller fans
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