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Post by Hoosier X on May 17, 2016 17:26:25 GMT -5
Today on YouTube Theatre: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943). This is one of the best movies I've ever seen. I'm surprised it's on YouTube, and such a nice copy! I went in not knowing much about it except that it's long, it covers a long period of time, it's about a British officer and it's a major classic of 1940s British Cinema. So I'm not going to say much about the plot. If you decide to take the plunge, you'll just have to see for yourself. I will tell you this: A young Deborah Kerr is in it! If I had known Deborah Kerr was in it, I'd have watched it a lot sooner! The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is not for everyone. It expects a lot from the viewer. As I was watching it, I kept thinking of all the things you had to know a little bit about to really get what was going on. (And I admit there were a few little bits that I rewound and watched two or three times without getting the significance.) A British moviegoer in 1943 would have understood all these things. (And it completely amazes me that this was made in 1943! Churchill pulled strings to keep Laurence Olivier from playing the lead because he hoped it would flop without a male star of Olivier's stature.) You have to know a little about the Boer War, British colonialism, the Prussian-dominated German military, dueling in the early 20th century, trench warfare in Flanders in World War II, European attitudes toward the British, European attitudes toward the Germans, London in the blitz, etc. You really have to pay attention to the dialogue to get how brilliant the screenplay is. I get why critics love this movie. They've seen movies that help put some of this in context, like Breaker Morant, Hope And Glory, Brief Encounter, A Matter of Life and Death, I Know Where I'm Going! and I See a Dark Stranger. Even if they don't really know British history that well outside of watching movies, they will still have a pretty good background for Colonel Blimp. I also thought of the fourth series of "Blackadder." But I don't think anything crossed my mind more times than the stiff-backed, gruff British officer played by Graham Chapman in numerous episodes of "Monty Python's Flying Circus." This film is highly recommended. But it's not for everyone. There's no shame in not really getting it. (But there's no need to be proud about it either.)
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Post by Hoosier X on May 17, 2016 17:41:29 GMT -5
You probably won't be surprised to hear that Casino Royale (1967) is one of my favorite movies.
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Post by Deleted on May 17, 2016 18:36:23 GMT -5
You probably won't be surprised to hear that Casino Royale (1967) is one of my favorite movies. That's one of my favorites as well and I usually watch it on a rainy day for fun and it's has a cast that's amazing of what they did to put together in that movie.
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Post by Hoosier X on May 18, 2016 10:29:31 GMT -5
I DVRed The Sea Bat (1930). I haven't watched it yet. I saw the name of Raquel Torres in the film summary and I decided to check it out. She's in one of my Top Five favorite movies - Duck Soup - and I've never seen her in anything else. Also, The Sea Bat looks wonderfully silly. Edited to add: I forgot to mention that Boris Karloff is in it.
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Post by Hoosier X on May 18, 2016 17:24:02 GMT -5
After watching The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), I watched Kenji Mizoguchi's The Life of Oharu (1952). And this morning, I watched The Burmese Harp (1957). That's three masterpieces of world cinema in about 28 hours. It's a bit much. Other movies may have trouble competing with the sensory overload provided by my Masterpiece Marathon. But there's no reason to fret! I have some good choices lined up for tonight. If The Sea Bat doesn't satisfy, I also have Bell, Book and Candle. (I can't believe I've never seen Bell, Book and Candle!) This movie is great! A bit of a downer though. But there's a puppet show! The Life of Oharu is a Holy Grail movie for me. Back about 1988, I bought a movie book where a bunch of international film critics rated the Top 100 Movies and, little by little, over the years, I've seen almost every movie in the book. About three years ago, I was down to four movies left. Voyage to Italy (with George Sanders and Ingrid Bergman) was on cable about two years ago. And shortly after that, I found The World of Apu on YouTube. And Netflix finally got The Life of Oharu! (That only leaves Abel Gance's long, silent film Napoleon, which isn't available on Neflix and isn't on YouTube.) I was totally blown away by The Life of Oharu! It's a beautiful film, and lead actress Kinuyo Tanaka is magical. The film also has Toshiro Mifune and the guy who played Inokichi in Yojimbo and several other actors I recognize from other Toho productions. It's not a cheery film. Oharu and her family are banished from Kyoto because she had an affair with a retainer below her rank. So her father sells her to a lord to be a royal concubine because the lord's wife can't have children. After an heir is born, she gets sent back to her parents because the lord spends too much time in the bedchamber with her and the rest of the clan is afraid he'll have a heart attack while the heir is too young. Then she is sold (by her father again) to a brothel where she becomes a courtesan. That doesn't work out either. Then she's married to a fan-maker who gets killed by bandits. And so on until she's a 50-year-old prostitute living in a warehouse with a bunch of other used-up prostitutes. I'm not selling this, am I? I've had it for a few days and I just about put it off again last night because it was kind of late (it's more than two hours long) but I decided to start it and see how it was. I was hooked hard, right from the start! The disrespectful banter of the prostitutes is hilarious. And then Oharu wanders into a gorgeous temple with hundreds of statues of squatting Buddhas that all look like they're taking a dump. It was just the first of a series of wonderful sets! And then the flashbacks start! I had no trouble staying awake because it was all wonderful at the same time it was frustrating, depressing and heartbreaking. Highly recommended! The best movie I've seen since The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp! Edited to add: Ish, I forgot to mention Netflix sent the Criterion Collection version! I watched the documentary about Kenji Mizoguchi last night. This morning, I watched a documentary about the actress Kinuyo Tanaka, making a 1949 goodwill tour of Hawaii, California and points East. They called her "The Bette Davis Of Japan"! And when she went to Los Angeles, she met Bette Davis. And also Janet Leigh and Elizabeth Taylor. It was pretty neat.
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Post by Hoosier X on May 18, 2016 17:52:31 GMT -5
Today on YouTube Theatre: The Burmese Harp (1956), directed by Kon Ichikawa. This movie is so cool! The dude is a Japanese soldier masquerading as a Buddhist monk in Burma. And that Buddha statue in the background has a secret room like something from a Mr. Moto film! I've been hearing that The Burmese Harp is a great movie for years, but I never really knew that much about it. I didn't even know it was a Japanese movie until yesterday. So it was a fascinating voyage of discovery for me, and it should probably be that way for anybody else who watches it. So I'm not going to say too much about the actual plot. But here's a few clues. To give you a bit of an idea about what you will see if you dive in. When you think of a 1950s movie set during World War II, involving prisoners of war in Southeast Asia, what's the first think that pops into your head? The Bridge on the River Kwai, right? Well, in The Burmese Harp, they're in Burma instead of Thailand. And they're Japanese instead of English. It takes a completely different tack. They cross a lot of bridges, but they don't building any. There's a lot of singing though. And again, for the third time in two days, I found myself completely drawn in and watching one of the masterpieces of world cinema. Here's a warning about the YouTube version I watched. It's split into two parts; the first is 80 minutes and the second is 36 minutes. The sound is off by a few seconds. Somebody will start talking and it takes two or three seconds before you hear anything. Since it's mostly in Japanese, you are reading sub-titles most of the time, so it's scarcely noticeable that the soundtrack is not synched. But not always. There are some close-up scenes where it's a little annoying. You're looking right at the guy and he's thinking it over and he looks up and starts moving his mouth but he seems to say four or five syllables before there's any sound. There's also a few scenes in English - British soldiers - and these are a little distracting. You also get scenes where there's a close-up of an artillery gun barrel and it starts recoiling from being fired but there's no sound. And there's out-of-synch explosions. It wasn't enough of a problem for me to stop watching it, but some viewers may want to wait for a chance to see it on DVD. Or maybe TCM will get around to it eventually. Highly recommended! The best movie I've seen since The Life of Oharu.
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Post by Bronze Age Brian on May 19, 2016 0:13:19 GMT -5
Watched Hawk The Slayer (1980). Usually I love 80's fantasy movies, but this one just didn't do it for me. Half of the movie is about Hawk gathering his band of companions to stop the evil Voltan (Jack Palance), which got boring and monotonous quick. It does have it's moments, as Jack Palance is a riot and some of the magic special effects and the elf's fast-forwarded arrow-flicking were hilarious. But there isn't anything really memorable about this movie, other than the cool medieval disco music that is.
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Post by Hoosier X on May 19, 2016 8:54:59 GMT -5
Watched Hawk The Slayer (1980). Usually I love 80's fantasy movies, but this one just didn't do it for me. Half of the movie is about Hawk gathering his band of companions to stop the evil Voltan (Jack Palance), which got boring and monotonous quick. It does have it's moments, as Jack Palance is a riot and some of the magic special effects and the elf's fast-forwarded arrow-flicking were hilarious. But there isn't anything really memorable about this movie, other than the cool medieval disco music that is.
I saw quite a few of those 1980s sword and sorcery movies but this doesn't ring a bell at all. From what you're saying, I gather it's not as good as The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp?
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Post by Hoosier X on May 19, 2016 9:59:56 GMT -5
My nephew bailed out in less than ten minutes. He said the special effects physically hurt him to watch. I watched The Sea Bat (1930) last night. Holy Moley! Where to begin! It's not good. By any objective metric, it's pretty bad. Oh, but it's so wonderfully bad! The sea bat is a gigantic ray that has a bad habit of attacking the sponge divers. This is such a common occurrence that the sponge fleet has a special flag that they run up the mast if one of the divers is killed by the sea bat. That way, everyone on shore knows ... the sea bat has struck again. Raquel Torres is magical! Her brother is a sponge diver, killed by the sea bat in the first scene. She mourns. Oh, does she mourn! She makes promises to favor the man who kills the sea bat. These promises are of a rather vague nature, I think. I couldn't understand what she said exactly because the sound is a little rough and also Raquel has a high-pitched voice and a think Spanish accent and the more excited she gets, the harder it is to understand her. And she was pretty excited when she made her vow, wet and standing on a rock and wielding a knife and impassioned by her desire for VENGEANCE against the sea bat! I can't tell from this whether Raquel Torres was a good actress. Probably not. But she's a magnificent performer! Geez Louise! There's a voodoo ceremony scene where she's dancing all crazy and rocking out to the voodoo drums. Charles Bickford (he's an escaped convict masquerading as a preacher) yells at her: "What kind of a white girl are you?" Not a movie I would recommend in general. You have to have a pretty specific taste for a special kind of silliness in the movies of the 1930s. I thought it was hilarious! The best movie I've seen since The Burmese Harp. I should add that Boris Karloff has a very small part, not big enough to warrant watching the film if all you are interested in is Boris Karloff.
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Post by Bronze Age Brian on May 19, 2016 15:10:52 GMT -5
Watched Hawk The Slayer (1980). Usually I love 80's fantasy movies, but this one just didn't do it for me. Half of the movie is about Hawk gathering his band of companions to stop the evil Voltan (Jack Palance), which got boring and monotonous quick. It does have it's moments, as Jack Palance is a riot and some of the magic special effects and the elf's fast-forwarded arrow-flicking were hilarious. But there isn't anything really memorable about this movie, other than the cool medieval disco music that is.
I saw quite a few of those 1980s sword and sorcery movies but this doesn't ring a bell at all. From what you're saying, I gather it's not as good as The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp? I haven't seen The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, but based on your high praise of it a page back I may have to check it out.
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Post by Hoosier X on May 19, 2016 16:49:16 GMT -5
I saw quite a few of those 1980s sword and sorcery movies but this doesn't ring a bell at all. From what you're saying, I gather it's not as good as The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp? I haven't seen The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, but based on your high praise of it a page back I may have to check it out. It's on YouTube! We have a set-up where we can watch YouTube stuff on the television. I don't think I would have attempted to watch Colonel Blimp on my laptop screen. It's a pretty good print. I was trying to think of what to compare it to, but it's very much a one-of-a-kind movie. The closest thing I can think of is the very best British films of the period - like I Know Where I'm Going, I See a Tall Dark Stranger, A Matter of Life and Death - but it's very different from any of those thematically.
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Post by Hoosier X on May 21, 2016 13:39:14 GMT -5
I usually spend at least a few minutes looking at the available images when I'm trying to find something to go along with my comments. Not this time! Bask in the glow of the cinematic witchery of Kim Novak and Pyewacket! I saw Bell, Book and Candle (1958) a few nights ago. It's very good! Very compelling and entertaining, and smartly written. Jimmy Stewart is a book editor who becomes enchanted (heh) by a woman (Kim Novak) who lives in his Greenwich Village apartment building with her brother (Jack Lemmon) and her aunt (the bride of the monster herself, Elsa Lanchester). Strange things happen, but it seems to be a bunch of unlikely but not impossible coincidences. One of these coincidences is the unexpected arrival of a writer (Ernie Kovacs) whom Jimmy Stewart had mentioned that he wanted to meet. Kovacs tells him that witchcraft is real! They are all around us! There is a coven in Greenwich Village, and Kovacs is hot on their trail! Stewart likes the book idea because he thinks it will sell. But he doesn't believe in witchcraft and he thinks it all hogwash. But is it? I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's a very good movie. But there's a great movie lurking in there somewhere, and by the time it was over, I was a little disappointed that the great movie I was seeing at the edges never quite poked through. Don't get me wrong, there is much to love about Bell, Book and Candle. I could just start naming names because everybody is doing a great job. Jimmy Stewart, Jack Lemmon, Elsa Lanchester, Ernie Kovacs, Hermione Gingold and even Janice Rule as Jimmy Stewart's jilted girlfriend all seemed to have gotten into their roles with insightful gusto and enthusiastic joy! The real star is Kim Novak. I know who she is, I've seen Vertigo and The Man with the Golden Arm and she's OK in those. But she's amazing in Bell, Book and Candle. I finally see why Kim Novak is such a big deal beyond being a beautiful girl. I could see putting Bell, Book and Candle into my Halloween movie schedule every year just to see Kim Novak's performance. But let me say a few words about why I think it's not quite a great movie. The first problem is that Jimmy Stewart is too old. I just don't see what Kim Novak sees in him. I really don't see why his aging farm boy shtick would inspire any interest on Kim Novak's part. Stewart and Novak are so good that they can almost make it work, helped along as they are by the dialogue and the rest of the cast. My other little problem with the film is the lack of ambition plotwise. The film spends a lot of time as a great movie about witches among us in the modern world, living in Greenwich Village. But it slowly changes into a romantic comedy with witches in it. And it's a great as a romantic comedy with witches in it! But for the first forty minutes or so, I thought I was watching a great movie about modern-day witches! Somewhere along the way, witches become supernatural entities with a list of characteristics like a Hollywood movie monster, much like werewolves or vampires: they don't cry, they don't blush, they can't know love. And at the end, Kim Novak loses her powers because she learns to love and discovers how much better it is to be human. Puke. It was probably a lot more palatable in 1958 than it is now, when it's become such a nauseating cliché. Maybe I'm being unfair to a movie that's almost 60 years old. I'm just reporting that I felt very let down by the last ten minutes of Bell, Book and Candle. But I plan on watching it again during the Halloween season and maybe I'll feel better about the ending when I see it again.
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Post by Batflunkie on May 21, 2016 14:48:01 GMT -5
Rewatching the Aristocats for the first time in ages. First time I saw it was when I was around six and I just fell in absolute love with Eva Gabor's voice as Dutchess, it was as silky smooth as any I'd heard and sweeter than honey. Not to mention the fact that she was an absolute knock-out in terms of class, charm, and beauty. It's sad that we have so few celebrities like her left in the world, the only one that I can think of that can possibly match her that's still living is Sofia Vergara
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Post by Hoosier X on May 21, 2016 18:08:42 GMT -5
Rewatching the Aristocats for the first time in ages. First time I saw it was when I was around six and I just fell in absolute love with Eva Gabor's voice as Dutchess, it was as silky smooth as any I'd heard and sweeter than honey. Not to mention the fact that she was an absolute knock-out in terms of class, charm, and beauty. It's sad that we have so few celebrities like her left in the world, the only one that I can think of that can possibly match her that's still living is Sofia Vergara I saw The Aristocats when it first came out (I think I was 7) and I've always remembered it fondly. I watched it again maybe two years ago with my niece (13 at the time) because it was one of the few Disney movies she hadn't seen. We had a blast! It's fairly hilarious. And "Green Acres," of course, is one of the high points of television's long history, right up there with "Hogan's Heroes" and "The Addams Family." (I'm not being sarcastic. I love them all. Also, "The Munsters"!)
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Post by Batflunkie on May 21, 2016 18:21:51 GMT -5
I was always far more partial to The Munsters than I was the Addams' Family, though that's often cause for treason on the internet I hear. Same with saying you like Pepsi products in Alabama
Also never really understood why Marilyn was a zombie, I mean she didn't even act like one. And yes, I know that they couldn't show her eating people, they could have at least made her partial to human flesh. Well, come to think of it, she did go on a lot of dates with boys which is a bit more subtle I suppose
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