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Post by Hoosier X on Jan 12, 2017 1:43:31 GMT -5
Yesterday's agenda included Shadow of A Doubt, a nice Joseph Cotten picture by Alfred Hitchcock, and earlier I viewed the Pacino classic Dog Day Afternoon. Very well-acted by Pacino. I love both of these. Shadow of a Doubt was my favorite Hitchcock film for a while. Now I'm a lot more likely to pick The Birds.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jan 12, 2017 2:28:28 GMT -5
My final verdict on Clerks: It is HIGHLY over-rated.
I found the hockey game very amusing, and I was hoping the last half would be funny, but the conversations with the old girlfriend were tedious and a bit of a chore, and the segment where she slept with the dead guy - because a dead guy was a better lover than her old boyfriend, ha ha - was really cringe-inducing.
(She didn't KNOW he was a dead guy. It was dark, you see, because the lights were out in the bathroom. And she found a dead guy on the floor of the bathroom and assumed it was her old boyfriend role-playing. or something. So it's really really funny because it's really really funny when a really dumb girl doesn't know the difference between a dead old guy and her old boyfriend. Ha ha.)
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Post by berkley on Jan 12, 2017 4:04:21 GMT -5
Yesterday's agenda included Shadow of A Doubt, a nice Joseph Cotten picture by Alfred Hitchcock, and earlier I viewed the Pacino classic Dog Day Afternoon. Very well-acted by Pacino. One of Pacino's best movies, without a doubt.
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Post by Prince Hal on Jan 12, 2017 11:19:07 GMT -5
Yesterday's agenda included Shadow of A Doubt, a nice Joseph Cotten picture by Alfred Hitchcock, and earlier I viewed the Pacino classic Dog Day Afternoon. Very well-acted by Pacino. "Nice?" I'll say! It's one of Hitchcock's best. He may have cited it as his favorite, IIRC. DDA is an excellent film, from back when Pacino didn't need to ingest every piece of scenery to convince us all that he was acting. An all-time great exchange between Pacino and Charles Durning, too, when Durning is assuring Pacino that he'll be dealt with fairly: Sonny: "Kiss me." Cop: "What?" Sonny: "Kiss me. When I'm being f*cked, I like to get kissed a lot." Man, has that line come in handy over the years.
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Post by Prince Hal on Jan 12, 2017 11:35:43 GMT -5
"Nice?" I'll say! It's one of Hitchcock's best. He may have cited it as his favorite, IIRC. How about very nice, haha? I probably favor other films of his more, which is by no means an insult to this enjoyable, well-acted film. I just think some other movies of his are absolutely great. Very nice captures it! And I know what you mean about having plenty to choose from with Hitchcock. So many of them are so compelling that you can't turn them off even if you come upon them when they're half-over. I love Cotten in Shadow. That opening sequence with him in Philadelphia is creepy and he just gets creepier as the story unfolds.
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Post by Rob Allen on Jan 12, 2017 14:12:19 GMT -5
Last night we saw The Love Parade, a 1929 musical, one of the first musicals. It was Ernst Lubitsch's first picture with sound, and it made stars of its two leads, Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald.
Jeanette plays the vivacious young queen of a fictional country, and Maurice is a ladies' man who becomes her Price Consort. They have some ups and downs and misunderstandings but it ends happily. There's a lot of sexual innuendo and even some breaking of the fourth wall. It's a fun movie and an interesting time capsule from just before the stock market crash and the Depression.
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Post by berkley on Jan 12, 2017 15:29:23 GMT -5
Yesterday's agenda included Shadow of A Doubt, a nice Joseph Cotten picture by Alfred Hitchcock, and earlier I viewed the Pacino classic Dog Day Afternoon. Very well-acted by Pacino. "Nice?" I'll say! It's one of Hitchcock's best. He may have cited it as his favorite, IIRC. DDA is an excellent film, from back when Pacino didn't need to ingest every piece of scenery to convince us all that he was acting. An all-time great exchange between Pacino and Charles Durning, too, when Durning is assuring Pacino that he'll be dealt with fairly: Sonny: "Kiss me." Cop: "What?" Sonny: "Kiss me. When I'm being f*cked, I like to get kissed a lot." Man, has that line come in handy over the years. One bit that's always stuck in my head ever since I first saw it on tv as a kid is when Pacino is trying to get his slow-witted partner in crime to think where they should demand to be flown away to for their escape, and the guy thinks it over and says, "Wyoming?" Just the way he says that, the look on his face, and Pacino's reaction are so spot-on. It sounds like a comedic moment when I describe it like this, but the effect when watching it wasn't like that at all - the opposite, in fact: it felt sad almost to the point of despair.
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Post by Prince Hal on Jan 12, 2017 16:52:20 GMT -5
"Nice?" I'll say! It's one of Hitchcock's best. He may have cited it as his favorite, IIRC. DDA is an excellent film, from back when Pacino didn't need to ingest every piece of scenery to convince us all that he was acting. An all-time great exchange between Pacino and Charles Durning, too, when Durning is assuring Pacino that he'll be dealt with fairly: Sonny: "Kiss me." Cop: "What?" Sonny: "Kiss me. When I'm being f*cked, I like to get kissed a lot." Man, has that line come in handy over the years. One bit that's always stuck in my head ever since I first saw it on tv as a kid is when Pacino is trying to get his slow-witted partner in crime to think where they should demand to be flown away to for their escape, and the guy thinks it over and says, "Wyoming?" Just the way he says that, the look on his face, and Pacino's reaction are so spot-on. It sounds like a comedic moment when I describe it like this, but the effect when watching it wasn't like that at all - the opposite, in fact: it felt sad almost to the point of despair. Well put. That was a touching moment.
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Post by WestPhillyPunisher on Jan 13, 2017 4:55:49 GMT -5
Watched last night: McQ: The Duke does Dirty Harry as John Wayne stars as a badass Seattle police detective out to avenge the murder of his partner in a hard boiled thriller with a goodly number of twists and turns. I've watched this film nearly a dozen times and it never gets old as it's cheesy good fun, and the supporting cast was also good with Eddie Albert as Wayne's boss, Diana Muldaur as the widow of Wayne's partner, longtime character actor David Huddleston as a seedy gumshoe and a pre-Magnum P.I. Roger S. Mosley as a pimp/informant.
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Post by Gene on Jan 13, 2017 23:20:32 GMT -5
I just got home from seeing the original Friday the 13th on the big screen for the first time. Coincidentally, it was also the thirteenth movie I've watched this year.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jan 15, 2017 15:13:51 GMT -5
Two NFR films were crossed off my list today, though only one was a full length feature. That honor belongs to The Killers (1946), inspired by a story by Hemingway and the painting Nighthawks. An enjoyable whodunit film, in a way, though not entirely so (a whodunit, I mean). My 3rd Burt Lancaster film, and I believe my 1st with Ava Gardner. I saw it too. I DVRed it off TCM. I saw it before but that was years ago. Decades even. Great movie. It's one of the movies they used in Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, which I saw fairly recently, and it was interesting watching the scenes in their original context. (Edmond O'Brien's character is James Riordon, whereas Steve Martin is Rigby Riordon, I assume so that more of Ava Gradner's dialogue can match Steve Martin's scenario than some of the other movie star appearances, many of which are little better than cameos.)
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Post by Hoosier X on Jan 16, 2017 13:48:42 GMT -5
I saw a few movies during my absence. Private Lives (1931) - Based on the play by Noel Coward, and starring Norma Shearer, Robert Montgomery, Una Merkel and Reginald Denny. This is a great movie! I saw it about 1990 and I've wanted to see it again ever since! It transformed my views of the film of the very early 1930s. I had seen Dracula and Little Caesar and a few of the Marx Brothers movies and not much else. I knew they had made good monster movies and gangster movies and madcap comedies that early on, but Private Lives is a sophisticated comedy, a genre that I didn't even know I liked at the time. The entire cast is great! If it wasn't for Dracula, I'm pretty sure Private Lives would be my favorite movie of 1931. Dames (1934) - I DVRed it because it stars Joan Blondell and I need my Joan Blondell fix every so often. About five minutes in, I realized I'd seen it before, but I decided to watch it anyway, even though it isn't quite as good as Footlight Parade or 42nd Street. It has a lot of great moments! The cast is great! In addition to Blondell, you get Dick Powell, Ruby Keeler, Guy Kibbee, ZaSu Pitts and Hugh Herbert. You could do a lot worse with a 1930s movie. The Killers (1946) - I already mentioned that I saw this. Great movie! I was thinking about writing a short essay about film noir in the next few days, and I think I could frame it as an essay about all the reasons why The Killers is a great film noir. So I'll save my comments for later. Silver Lode (1954) - This is another film from the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" list. I thought the summary sounded interesting, a western with a Cold War theme, but the real selling point was the inclusion of Lizabeth Scott and Dan Duryea. John Payne is the hero. I don't dislike him, but he's one of the most bland leading men of the 1940s and 1950s. He's not so bad here, not at all. Time had put some wrinkles on his face and made him a little more interesting. And I liked Silver Lode a lot! It gets really really silly and contrived in a few scenes. When it goes dumb, it goes into really stupid, eye-rolling territory. But when it isn't being really silly, it is very exciting and well-acted, and Scott and Duryea are uniformly excellent. Dolores Martin is also really good as the dance-hall girl who is still in love with John Payne. Carry On Cleo (1964) - The "Carry On" series is a long-running British comedy series that went on for years and years. Before I saw Carry On Cleo, I had only seen one film from the series. They are kind of weird. I find them interesting despite how seldom I actually laugh. But I do laugh from time to time. Carry On Cleo is more often amusing than actually funny. The real selling point is Amanda Barrie as Cleopatra. She's stunning. And she has an off-kilter comic talent suited to Cleopatra in a weird British comedy. I often laughed just at her facial expressions when nothing else funny was going on. She takes a lot of baths. Irrational Man (2015) - I'm trying to get caught up on Woody Allen's most recent movies, and fortunately my library has most of the movies he's made since 2011. Irrational Man is hard to categorize. It's a minimalist existentialist thriller. Very cerebral. It's not one of his great movies by any means, but I applaud him for doing something different and I tend to like many of his half-successful efforts. Joaquin Phoenix is a depressed and cynical philosophy professor, looking for meaning to his existence. It also features Emma Stone and Parker Posey. (I've liked seeing Parker Posey in Woody's latest two movies, but I hope he wises up and builds a film around her the way he did with Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine.) I feel pretty safe saying Irrational Man isn't for everyone.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 16, 2017 15:12:11 GMT -5
I watched Terminal Island from 1973. It was on TCM. The premise is that California does away with the death penalty and ships the worst of the worst off to a secluded island to fend for themselves. It's a 70s exploitation film with an early appearance of Tom Selleck. The guy who played TC ON magnum PI is in it too. The blonde from Lost in Space is in it too.
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Post by berkley on Jan 16, 2017 18:05:18 GMT -5
I grew up watching the Carry On films on tv as a youngster, as I think was probably true of most people of my generation who grew up in an English-speaking Commonwealth country. We loved watching them back them and I remember them very fondly. Not sure if I saw Carry On Cleo or not, though. I know Carry On Up the Khyber was the first one I saw - and looking at the list on wiki I think it must have been fairly recent at the time.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jan 17, 2017 0:35:07 GMT -5
I grew up watching the Carry On films on tv as a youngster, as I think was probably true of most people of my generation who grew up in an English-speaking Commonwealth country. We loved watching them back them and I remember them very fondly. Not sure if I saw Carry On Cleo or not, though. I know Carry On Up the Khyber was the first one I saw - and looking at the list on wiki I think it must have been fairly recent at the time. The other one I saw was Carry On Constable, which I remember as being kind of funny at first, but less so as it went on. Shirley Eaton was in it! She's the girl that got covered in gold in Goldfinger. Is Amanda Barrie a regular in the series? That would be an incentive to seek out more Carry On movies. For sure.
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