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Post by Hoosier X on Mar 13, 2016 13:07:41 GMT -5
I'm sure everyone is curious about my Top Five Barbara Stanwyck Movies list. It's actually a Top Six list because I couldn't bear to throw The Strange Love of Martha Ivers or The Mad Miss Manton off the list after I saw The Bitter Tea of General Yen. So here it is. #4, #5 and #6 are listed in chronological order because it's actually a three-way tie. 1. Night Nurse (1931) 2. Double Indemnity (1944) 3. Baby Face (1933) 4. The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933) 5. The Mad Miss Manton (1938) 6. The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) If you think Night Nurse is a weird choice for Favorite Barbara Stanwyck Movie, I'm going to guess you haven't seen it.
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Post by Batflunkie on Mar 13, 2016 18:37:26 GMT -5
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Mar 13, 2016 19:09:30 GMT -5
1. Night Nurse (1931) 2. Double Indemnity (1944) 3. Baby Face (1933) 4. The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933) 5. The Mad Miss Manton (1938) 6. The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) If you think Night Nurse is a weird choice for Favorite Barbara Stanwyck Movie, I'm going to guess you haven't seen it. Some Stanwyck films I enjoyed include Annie Oakley Ball Of Fire Lady of Burlesque Sorry Wrong Number Jeopardy
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Post by Hoosier X on Mar 13, 2016 19:43:41 GMT -5
Three cheers for YouTube movies!
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Mar 13, 2016 22:24:31 GMT -5
Boyz n the Hood (1991) Cuba Gooding Jr., Lawrence Fishburne, Ice Tea, Angela Bassett
Life in South Central L.A. amid gang violence and oppressive police presence
John Singleton wrote and directed this powerful tale and received Oscar nominations for his efforts. It does not glamorize street violence, it attempts to show the consequences. The major characters are well rounded and empathetic. it can get very gritty and also sentimental within minutes. Surprisingly there are no scenes with drugs involved, only mentioned. But their affects are pervasive. A very impressive showing for Singleton on his rookie production which is heavily based on his own experiences growing up in that neighborhood
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Post by Hoosier X on Mar 13, 2016 22:25:29 GMT -5
Monkey Face ... to the rescue!I saw Frenchman's Creek (1944) this weekend. I saw Joan Fontaine's name and also, it's set in the 1600s, and not many Hollywood films are set in the 1600s, so I decided to give this one a chance. (By the way, my opening still is not from Frenchmen's Creek; it's from Suspicion, one of my obsession movies that I watch over and over. The last time I DVRed it off TCM, I watched it two days in a row, and I don't remember the last time I watched a movie two days in a row.) Frenchman's Creek started off a bit dull. I imagine it was almost breath-taking in its original Technicolor release, but TCM's print is a bit faded and weird-looking at times. But those 1600s fashions are fascinating. Joan is joined by Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Cecil Kellaway and Ralph Forbes. And the movie is silly silly silly. Almost profoundly so. Joan becomes quite exasperated with her silly husband Ralph Forbes, so she gathers up the children and goes to the ancestral estate in Cornwall. Everybody warns her about the pirates, but she says "tish tosh" to them and goes anyway. And it turns out the pirates are RIGHT THERE, hiding in the small river on which the estate sits and the head pirate (Arturo de Cordova) has befriended the household staff and frequently spends the night in madame's own bedchamber. I was just about to give up on this silly movie, partly because the print is so bad but also because it was kind of dull, but it gets REALLY SILLY about 40 minutes into it, and I got a lot more interested as it got more and more silly. Joan is quite enamored by the head pirate, and she's eager for a little pirate adventure, so she talks the head pirate into letting her go with them on a raid. She dresses as a cabin boy, and she even plays a crucial part in the plan by pretending to be a boy and taking a message to the house of the guy in charge of the garrison and distracting Nigel Bruce while the pirates attack the ship in harbor. Very silly. Silly plan, silly fight scenes, silly escape scene. Silly silly silly. But very entertaining, if you like movies like this and get past the first forty minutes. Eventually, Joan has to choose between her old life as a mother to the children of a wealthy British aristocrat and the life of a pirate. She chooses her old life because of the children. She shows a little more spunk than you typically expect from Joan. She stabs Basil Rathbone when he tries to have his way with her, and when that doesn't quite kill him, she finishes the job by pushing a suit of armor on him and knocking him down the stairs! Joan Fontaine, like Barbara Stanwyck, is one of my favorite actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age, and I'll put Joan's best three films ( Suspicion, Rebecca and Letter from an Unknown Woman) against Stanwyck's best three any time. But Stanwyck still has ten (at least!) great classics once you get past Double Indemnity and Baby Face and Stella Dallas. Whereas Joan Fontaine, well, she still has quite a few entertaining films, and she has a lot of great performances. But she unfortunately doesn't have bunches and bunches of classic films in her filmography like Stanwyck or Bette Davis or even her sister Olivia de Haviland. I admit I love The Constant Nymph as much as anybody, but it's so darn goofy! (Joan is 26 years old and playing 14.) Does it really stack up against The Bitter Tea of General Yen? Joan Fontaine is one of my biggest screen crushes of all time, but that doesn't mean I can't be realistic about her career. Yes, she's great in Ivanhoe and The Bigamist, and these are both classics. But Ivanhoe is Elizabeth Taylor's movie, and The Bigamist belongs to Edmond O'Brien and Ida Lupino. Joan Fontaine is very good in supporting roles in both films. But she's not the lead. And I would say that's the realistic view of most of Joan Fontaine's career. A handful of cinema classics. Some very good lead performances in interesting lesser movies (like Ivy and The Witches). And some supporting roles in great movies, like The Women. That's why I watched Frenchman's Creek. When you're a Joan Fontaine fan, you have to take a chance on some obscure movies. I don't know if I should recommend Frenchman's Creek. Do you like Joan Fontaine and Restoration fashion enough that you don't mind a lot of silliness? Then perhaps it's worth taking a chance.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Mar 14, 2016 1:55:37 GMT -5
The Brood (1979) Oliver Reed, Samantha Eggar Written/Directed by David Cronenberg
Frank's wife, Nola, is under psychiatric care by a practitioner (Reed) of an unusual therapy. Those that Nola has a deep rooted atred for begin to get bludgeoned to death by cleft-mouthed deformed children
The only thing I recalled after watching this movie from its initial release was its final scenes which was quite err... slimy and sick. It's pretty good,an early Cronenberg effort. In fact he wrote it due to the divorce and child custody battle he was experiencing. Oliver Reed, during filming in Canada, made a bet with someone that he could walk from one bar to another in the freezing night air without a coat. The RMCP actually arrested him for that stunt. Dudley Dooright always gets his man.
Wait a minute..can it be..yes, it's a Criterion with an extra disc packed with goodies
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Post by Hoosier X on Mar 15, 2016 14:12:32 GMT -5
I just saw The Rich Are Always With Us (1932). An early Bette Davis movie. She's not the lead but she has a really good supporting part and she makes the most of it. If you watch enough movies from the early 1930s, you see movies like this one. How the American aristocracy lives and loves. Single woman are very open about their relationships. Husbands and wives are fairly indifferent to what their spouses are doing with their free time. And everybody is just so darned reasonable and civilized when things go wrong. (At least, they pretend they are reasonable and civilized. And then things go wrong.) On top of all that, they are so darned smug about being so "modern." I'm mostly joking. I like an awful lot of these movies. (But if you've seen one, you know what I mean about how smug they can be.) They seldom overstay their welcome. ( The Rich Are Always With Us is a sprinting 71 minutes.) You usually get a lot of good actors, in this case, Ruth Chatterton, George Brent, Bette Davis and Adrienne Dore. And there's the sparkling dialogue where everyone talks as if their lines were written by Moss Hart, Ben Hecht or Dorothy Parker (and sometimes, they were!). So this was watchable and entertaining. The best thing was finding an actress I've never heard of before. Adrienne Dore is the gal who steals Ruth Chatterton's husband away. She's really good in this. Here she is on the phone telling Ruth Chatterton to shut her fat stupid face!
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Mar 15, 2016 18:35:34 GMT -5
I just saw The Rich Are Always With Us (1932). An early Bette Davis movie. She's not the lead but she has a really good supporting part and she makes the most of it. I'm a sucker for these old movies, love the pre-codes too. Never saw this one but still have a whole bunch of box set collections to wade through before searching for more. Plus I've seen in the library many old films available to borrow too. Hoosier-If you see these on YouTube please mention the quality. I would think YouTube would be the last resort for movie watching
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Post by Hoosier X on Mar 15, 2016 22:06:26 GMT -5
I just saw The Rich Are Always With Us (1932). An early Bette Davis movie. She's not the lead but she has a really good supporting part and she makes the most of it. I'm a sucker for these old movies, love the pre-codes too. Never saw this one but still have a whole bunch of box set collections to wade through before searching for more. Plus I've seen in the library many old films available to borrow too. Hoosier-If you see these on YouTube please mention the quality. I would think YouTube would be the last resort for movie watching The Rich Are Always With Us was on TCM. And it was a beautiful print! I also DVRed Front Page Woman, a 1930s Bette Davis movie that is one of my favorites! Highly recommended! It's my third favorite Bette Davis movie after Whatever Happened to Baby Jane and Jezebel. ( All About Eve is a very close fourth.)
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Post by Hoosier X on Mar 16, 2016 8:28:26 GMT -5
I watched the 1942 version of Jungle Book last night.
In the 1990s, I taped Thief of Baghdad (1940) off AMC and for a while there, I watched it a lot. Sabu and Conrad Veidt and June Duprez. And the genie! I love the genie.
I also saw Elephant Boy, and that's a lot of fun.
Way back then, I also started to watch Jungle Book, and I found it boring and I don't think I watched all of it.
TCM showed it a few days ago and I decided to give it another chance.
It has its moments. I love the scene with Kaa. And it is beautiful to look at, especially the lost city! John Qualen and Joseph Calleia are frequently amusing.
I also thought it funny that Mowgl's girlfriend looked like Daisy, the cook's assistant from "Downton Abbey," with a tan.
But it goes on and on forever, and very little happens for long stretches. Baloo and Bagheera aren't in it very much. Shere Khan is far too easily dispatched.
The filmmakers had the talent and the special effects and a few good ideas, and they blew it on the story. I feel like they didn't really understand the strengths of the source material.
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Post by Hoosier X on Mar 16, 2016 8:46:31 GMT -5
TCM is showing two nights of Jerry Lewis movies (March 16 is his 90th birthday). It started last night and continues tonight.
I already recorded You're Never Too Young and I've got the DVR set up for Which Way to the Front?
Anybody else?
I have mixed feelings about Jerry Lewis. A lot of his humor seems very forced or it isn't funny or it's just too stupid. But when he hits the mark, he's hilarious! I can't think of a single Jerry Lewis movie that doesn't have at least one scene that makes it worth it sitting through the whole thing. (The Disorderly Orderly was a chore to sit through but there was one scene that killed me!)
I saw Artists and Models last year, and I liked so much of it! Martin and Lewis are joined by Shirley MacLaine and Dorothy Malone (she's a comic book artist!) and so much of it is hilarious! But a plot about Communist spies develops at the end and I don't think there's a single laugh in the last 30 minutes.
But The Bellboy is hilarious, from start to finish. I consider it a comedy masterpiece start to finish. It's been a long time since I saw The Nutty Professor, but I remember it as being a really good one as well.
And The Big Mouth. I love The Big Mouth. It's pretty stupid, but it's a perfect combination of audacious, unapologetic stupidity and genuine madcap humor.
There are a lot of Jerry Lewis movies I haven't seen, and I was glad to have an opportunity to get a couple more on the DVR instead of having to settle for YouTube versions.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 16, 2016 17:49:36 GMT -5
I saw Artists and Models last year, and I liked so much of it! Martin and Lewis are joined by Shirley MacLaine and Dorothy Malone (she's a comic book artist!) and so much of it is hilarious! But a plot about Communist spies develops at the end and I don't think there's a single laugh in the last 30 minutes. But The Bellboy is hilarious, from start to finish. I consider it a comedy masterpiece start to finish. It's been a long time since I saw The Nutty Professor, but I remember it as being a really good one as well. I haven't seen Artists and Models for 20 years Hoosier X and I really enjoyed listening to Jerry Lewis's comments about Shirley MacLaine last night and it's was a delightful comedy and I really enjoyed watching that movie. The Bellboy and The Nutty Professor are gems and I do adore the talents of Jerry Lewis!
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Mar 17, 2016 1:21:38 GMT -5
The Game (1997) Michael Douglas ,Sean Penn, Deborah Kara Unger
Nicholas Van Orton, uber rich and powerful executive, gets a birthday gift from his brother. He is signed up for A Game run by the mysterious company CRS . A cat and mouse thrill ride ensues
I loved this David Fincher film when it was released. A non stop, what will happen next thriller with a great Douglas performance. And now, even knowing the ending, it's still enthralling. I did totally forget that Sean Penn was in it .Interestingly, Jodie Foster was to play the part of Douglas sister but she insisted it be re-written so that she'd be the daughter. Douglas and Fincher refused and Sean Penn was brought in instead. Foster sued the production company and there was an out of court settlement. Fincher also claims in an interview that every scene has a can of haggis hidden somewhere.
Filmed in San Francisco it should keep you guessing and on the edge of your seat
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Mar 17, 2016 1:39:45 GMT -5
Babes In Arms (1939) Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland
Talking movies are killing Vaudeville and a bunch of the veterans decide to go on a road show to revitalize the format. They leave behind their teenage children who have show biz in their blood as well. So they decide to put on their own show back home led, of course, by Mickey and Judy
Directed by Busby Berkeley so you will see some wild and extravagant choreography. Memorable numbers include Good Morning Good Morning and Where or When. Mickey and Judy previously teamed up for a comedy and an Andy Hardy film but this 3rd pairing is their first musical together. Released the same year as The Wizard of Oz and Margaret Hamilton also appears in it with a small witchy role. It was MGM's biggest grossing film of the year, outpacing Oz. Its also marred by a big minstrel blackface number by Mickey and Judy.
You'll see Mickey do a Clark Gable impression and there's a funny FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt impersonation by Mickey and Judy as well. The FDR scene was removed when he died in office but has been restored on the DVD.
Yes, there is plenty of corn but the pair are energetic and bubbly. June Priesser plays a former child movie star and is quite impressive with her acrobatic dancing
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