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Post by Hoosier X on Oct 3, 2016 11:38:11 GMT -5
"You're going to jump on me. I know you're going to jump on me – like Nero jumped on Poppaea ... Poppaea. She was his wife. And she was unfaithful to him. So he got mad and he jumped on her. Up and down, up and down, until he squashed her like a bug. Please don't jump on me!"
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Post by Hoosier X on Oct 4, 2016 10:31:56 GMT -5
The Thin Blue Line (1988), directed by Errol Morris. I saw this was available on On Demand yesterday and decided to watch it. It came out in 1988, the first year I lived in Los Angeles and I was going to see every movie (it seemed like it, anyway). But I wasn't such a huge fan of documentaries then, and I missed The Thin Blue Line. It's hard to believe that I never got around to seeing it because it's a very influential documentary with a very compelling subject about how awful the police frequently are when given half a chance. (And if you're more outraged that I'm saying that than you are about how awful the police are a lot of the time, then you're part of the problem. Yes, we KNOW that Blue Lives Matter. When you kill a cop, the full weight of the law is directed right at you. You're lucky if you're not blown away within hours. When a cop kills someone, he gets desk duty for a few weeks. If there's video and it's just really really super obvious, then a cop might get fired.) Errol Morris later directed The Fog of War (2003), with extensive interviews with Robert McNamara. It's a must-see documentary about the Vietnam conflict. The Thin Blue Line is pretty good and the time just flies by. Recommended.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Oct 4, 2016 13:41:51 GMT -5
I'll be cutting back on movie notes for awhile until my replacement PC arrives and I'm up to snuff with it But last night's "entertainment" was The Black Cat (1941)
It's a 10 Little Indians type story in a creepy mansion. An old lady has her greedy family gathered around to wait for her death. When she kicks off her will leaves the money to her maid and cats. Unless the maid croaks.
Broderick Crawford and Hugh Herbert are also in the house acting like Abbott and Costello. In fact, that's what the movie feels like it was written for but since A&C are not their, the comedy is slightly tuned down. Bella Lugosi as a gardener is hardly around and is buried under makeup and stubble. Basil Rathbone, Anne Gwynne, Gladys Cooper, Gayle Sondergaard and a very young Alan Ladd give their support.
71 minutes and basically a double feature entrée.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Oct 5, 2016 7:51:00 GMT -5
The worst thing about my computer crash are the excel files I had and stupidly never backedup elsewhere. The biggest was my master list of the DVDs I own and a separate list of DVDs still waiting to be watched Considering I owm about 5000 titles between Movies, TV series, Music Discs, Documentaries along with notes for each, it was a massive file built over many years Will I ever re-create it? It would be such a long process that I tend to doubt it Meanwhile lat night I viewed The Bodyguard (1992) with Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner First time watching it and nice to be reminded of Whitney's talents before the burn out. Very enjoyable as a whole. Not packed with action, not a compelling romance sub plot, not alot of Whitney singing, not thrilling enough to keep you on the edge of your seat. But it certainly kept my interest and I'd rate it as 6.5 of ten easily.
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Post by Hoosier X on Oct 5, 2016 8:42:59 GMT -5
I started my October Monster Movie Festival with Dracula's Dog (1978). Also known as Zoltan, Hound of Dracula. It's about a vampire dog who tracks the last descendant of the Draculas to Southern California to turn him into a vampire. Zoltan creates a pack of vampire dogs to help him with this quest. There's also an adorable little vampire puppy. I gave it a "7" at IMDB because it is HILARIOUS! Jose Ferrer is in it.
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Post by Hoosier X on Oct 5, 2016 10:23:43 GMT -5
I DVRed Little Annie Rooney with Mary Pickford and I was looking at the IMDB entry to see how long it is ... and I discovered it's directed by William Beaudine!
He has a reputation as one OF the worst directors ever, but I love the goofy parade of bizarre feature films that he directed. Like The Ape Man, Voodoo Man, Ghosts on the Loose and Billy the Kid vs. Dracula.
I've seen some of his early films, and he made some great movies in the silent era. He made several movies with Mary Pickford and you would never guess it's the same guy who directed Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla 25 years later.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Oct 5, 2016 10:42:19 GMT -5
I DVRed Little Annie Rooney with Mary Pickford and I was looking at the IMDB entry to see how long it is ... and I discovered it's directed by William Beaudine! He has a reputation as one OF the worst directors ever, but I love the goofy parade of bizarre feature films that he directed. Like The Ape Man, Voodoo Man, Ghosts on the Loose and Billy the Kid vs. Dracula. I've seen some of his early films, and he made some great movies in the silent era. He made several movies with Mary Pickford and you would never guess it's the same guy who directed Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla 25 years later. Billy The Kid vs. Dracula was one of the all time worst/fun movies ever made I still remember taping it off cable TV's WTBS Atlanta in the 1980s at 3AM
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Post by Hoosier X on Oct 5, 2016 11:16:09 GMT -5
I DVRed Little Annie Rooney with Mary Pickford and I was looking at the IMDB entry to see how long it is ... and I discovered it's directed by William Beaudine! He has a reputation as one OF the worst directors ever, but I love the goofy parade of bizarre feature films that he directed. Like The Ape Man, Voodoo Man, Ghosts on the Loose and Billy the Kid vs. Dracula. I've seen some of his early films, and he made some great movies in the silent era. He made several movies with Mary Pickford and you would never guess it's the same guy who directed Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla 25 years later. Billy The Kid vs. Dracula was one of the all time worst/fun movies ever made I still remember taping it off cable TV's WTBS Atlanta in the 1980s at 3AM I taped it off late-night TV in the 1990s and I had it on VHS for many years. It wasn't one that I watched a lot like Bowery at Midnight or Voodoo Man, but I saw it several times over a ten-year period.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 5, 2016 17:27:08 GMT -5
I just watched (off of my DVR) Yours, Mine and Ours a 1968 Film - Starring Lucille Ball, Henry Fonda, Van Johnson, and others that really set the tone of a super-family of which Frank had 10 children and Helen had 8 children of which all of them lived in one house. It was a delightful film and I loved the fun that they had in this great drama/comedy back then. It was on Turner Classic Movies yesterday and it's one of the better family films that I seen in my life. I have seen this movie twice in 5 years and I came away a different perspective on the film.
It is much better than the remake that came on in 2005 - Starring Dennis Quaid and Rene Russo.
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Post by Hoosier X on Oct 7, 2016 10:45:44 GMT -5
We took my niece and nephew to see the special screening of Young Frankenstein on Wednesday night. They both liked it quite a bit. My nephew especially was laughing very loudly a lot and he's been misquoting the "roll in the hay" scene for two days. (He says "rolling in the hay" sort of to the tune of "Bringing in the Sheaves" instead of "roll, roll, roll in the hay.") He's 13. He said Young Frankenstein is almost as good as Rhubarb, the 1951 film about the cat that owns a baseball team. Which is high praise indeed because Rhubarb is his favorite movie. It's not such a bad choice for your comedy barometer. Yesterday afternoon, I watched Little Annie Rooney (1925), an absolutely hilarious movie with America's Sweetheart, Mary Pickford. She lives in a New York tenement district and her father is a cop. She's the leader of a kid gang that's very culturally diverse, she's Irish, there's a black kid and a Chinese kid and a Jewish kid and an Italian kid and a rather chubby fat white kid. (You couldn't make this movie today without a lot of screeching about all the "political correctness" because the gang is so diverse.) They get into it with the local Irish kid gang and they run into an alley and start throwing bricks at each other. It's so chaotic! Whenever anybody gets hit with a brick, he or she rubs his head and looks around and starts throwing bricks again. It goes on for twenty minutes. They upset the horse pulling a fruit cart and it runs off, wreaking havoc in the streets. (But the horse is safely captured and returned to the owner.) They've done $5 in damage, so they put on a show in the alley and charge admission to the neighborhood kids. (It's a good thing these kids are invulnerable because the medical bills should be astronomical from getting hit in the head with bricks.) In the show, Annie plays the sheriff, so you get to see Mary Pickford in drag with a fake moustache. Also, the chubby kid plays the damsel in distress. And the show is hilarious, including the audience, about a hundred kids all heckling and showing their appreciation with the razzberry. The first half of the movie is like "Our Gang" on steroids. It gets very serious in the second half. And it's a very touching melodrama at times. My eyes teared up when she found out her policeman father had been killed at a dance hall that turned into a riot and he went to calm things down. Mary Pickford's pretty awesome. I can see why she was such a huge star in the silent era. I've only seen a few of her films but I always keep my eyes open for more of her movies because they sometimes show them on TCM. One of the IMDB critics said he or she couldn't watch more than thirty minutes because it's ridiculous that 32-year-old Mary Pickford was playing a 12-year-old. When Pickford started playing adult roles, the movies didn't do so well, and the studio got 20,000 letters imploring Pickford to be America's Sweetheart again. And really, Mary Pickford in her 30s playing a teenager (I didn't see anything in the film that says she's 12, I think she's a few years older) is just about the least surreal thing about this movie. The 1920s were a different world and silent filmmaking just makes that strange world a lot stranger. Anybody obsessing about Pickford's age is really missing the point and doesn't deserve to appreciate this movie or any other movie made before 1970! I recommend Little Annie Rooney for anyone with even the slightest tolerance for silent films, especially if you like out-of-control, crazy movies about street urchins pelting each other with bricks. And last night, I watched The Big Short (2015), but that's a very recent film so I won't go into it except to say that Steve Carell is great.
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Oct 7, 2016 16:27:32 GMT -5
I started my October Monster Movie Festival with Dracula's Dog (1978). Also known as Zoltan, Hound of Dracula. It's about a vampire dog who tracks the last descendant of the Draculas to Southern California to turn him into a vampire. Zoltan creates a pack of vampire dogs to help him with this quest. There's also an adorable little vampire puppy. I gave it a "7" at IMDB because it is HILARIOUS! Jose Ferrer is in it. Just added this to my Netflix DVD queue to come next. It has a "very short wait" on it so I should hopefully see it soon after I return The Cat Returns after I watch that this weekend. I really enjoy 70's Dracula movies. And what's cooler than a werewolf/vampire hybrid? A vampire Doberman.
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Post by Hoosier X on Oct 7, 2016 16:41:08 GMT -5
I've seen The Cat Reurns quite a few times because my niece is always putting it in the DVD player. Among the voices are Peter Boyle and Elliott Gould and Judy Greer! I prefer Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro but I get sucked into The Cat Returns a lot just because my niece plays it so much.
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Oct 7, 2016 17:52:53 GMT -5
I just watched Spirited Away for the first time not too long ago. For the adoration it gets, I was kind of underwhelmed. It's nothing specific, just didn't really do anything.
I haven't watched anime much since Princess Mononokee and Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, and The Cat Retuns were all suggested to me by friends and word of mouth. I also haven't watched Grave of the Fireflies yet either.
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Post by Hoosier X on Oct 9, 2016 13:24:40 GMT -5
I decided to watch all the Universal Frankenstein films this Halloween season. It's something I used to do in October from about 2004 up to about 2010. But I started skipping some of the films because I'd seen them too many times and I eventually quit watching them as a group because I didn't want to wear them out.
But it seemed like a good time to try it again so I watched Frankenstein (1931), The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and The Son of Frankenstein (1939) over the weekend.
These movies are so great! There aren't very many movies that I've seen more times than The Bride of Frankenstein. I don't think I could ever get tired of that one.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 9, 2016 18:53:53 GMT -5
I decided to watch all the Universal Frankenstein films this Halloween season. It's something I used to do in October from about 2004 up to about 2010. But I started skipping some of the films because I'd seen them too many times and I eventually quit watching them as a group because I didn't want to wear them out. But it seemed like a good time to try it again so I watched Frankenstein (1931), The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and The Son of Frankenstein (1939) over the weekend. These movies are so great! There aren't very many movies that I've seen more times than The Bride of Frankenstein. I don't think I could ever get tired of that one. There is a theater in Northern Vancouver BC that shows all three films for $20 that's includes Pop and Popcorn - that I attended 5 to 7 years ago seeing these three films and I was still wondering if they still do this. I don't mind watching these three films again and again ... these are timeless classics.
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