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Post by Deleted on Nov 7, 2018 9:45:33 GMT -5
A rarity post by you @mrp and I did watch Casablanca off of my DVR late last night ... it's a favorite of mine and always be.
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Post by codystarbuck on Nov 7, 2018 12:06:00 GMT -5
Round up the usual suspects... just watched one of my favorites, Casablanca, on TCM. This movie is a perennial on every top 5 movie list I have made since I first saw it. -M I still tear up when Victor Lazlo has the band strike up La Marseilles, in defiance of the German soldiers and you see the club singer and patrons belt it out with unbelievable passion. It really captures the spirit of the times and is a truly amazing piece of cinema.
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Post by Hoosier X on Nov 8, 2018 16:57:56 GMT -5
Round up the usual suspects... just watched one of my favorites, Casablanca, on TCM. This movie is a perennial on every top 5 movie list I have made since I first saw it. -M I still tear up when Victor Lazlo has the band strike up La Marseilles, in defiance of the German soldiers and you see the club singer and patrons belt it out with unbelievable passion. It really captures the spirit of the times and is a truly amazing piece of cinema. Casablanca is my favorite movie and has been for forty years. That "Marseillaise" moment is a standout for me too! Another great moment for "La Marseillaise" is from The Barkleys of Broadway," a Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie that is otherwise not particularly distinguished. Ginger is a singer/dancer trying to be taken more seriously as a stage actress, and she gets the lead in a play called "Young Sarah" where she plays the young Sarah Bernhardt. (Not Sandra Bernhardt!) When she auditions for the prestigious acting academy in Paris, her audition is … reciting La Marseillaise" for the stern humorless panel of acting judges, including George Zucco and his big scary eyebrows! It's my favorite Ginger Rogers moment, with the possible exception of that bit in Shall We Dance where Fred and Ginger are dancing on roller skates in Central Park and performing Let's Call the Whole Thing Off.
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Post by Hoosier X on Nov 8, 2018 17:27:17 GMT -5
I'm having a very lazy day. I worked two 16-hour days in a row (I was a poll worker on Tuesday and then Wednesday was my usual volunteering, transporting dogs and cats to be spayed or neutered, moving supplies around among the shelters, and then my job) and my feet are killing me! I'm trying to stay off them as much as I can today. I was looking at the TCM schedule today to see what's on, and I could have watched the W.C. Fields marathon, but I've seen these movies so many times! I love them! Especially It's a Gift (my favorite!) and The Bank Dick. But I decided to watch something I haven't seen because I love coming across the hidden gems in old Hollywood movies. So I saw that Joan Fontaine was in a 1937 movie called "Music for Madame" and I decided to watch that. She's one of my favorites, but her movies aren't always that great! I've watched a few of her pre-Rebecca movies in the last few years, and I think she's pretty good in just about everything the studio put her in. Even if the movie is not-so-great, you can always tell that she's doing her best and learning her craft and getting better every time. She made 14 films before Rebecca, and I've seen about half of them. I highly recommend "Blonde Cheat" where she plays an adventuress/con artist. It's a very entertaining little 1930s film and Joan is quite good in it. She hadn't been typecast as a barely articulate wallflower yet. "Music for Madame" was highly entertaining, and it gets a lot of points for being strange. Great cast! Besides Joan, there's Alan Hale, Alan Mowbray, Billy Gilbert, Lee Patrick and Jack Carson. And a lot of familiar faces because of all those character actors that I recognize because I watch so many American movies from the 1930s. Ward Bond has a small role. And I discovered the name of an actor I really like … Erik Rhodes. His name in this movie was Spaghetti Nadzio! He shows up in these weird little parts. He's probably most famous for playing Tonetti in "The Gay Divorcee," where his motto is "Your wife is safe with Tonetti. He prefers spaghetti." What sells this is the great musical numbers. And the use of various kinds of media - opera, movies, radio, concerts. And some great - if eccentric - performances from people like Alan Hale, Billy Gilbert and Alan Mowbray. The title song from "Pagliacci" is performed in full. You see Alan Mowbray conducting an orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl. (I think they're playing Wagner.) When Joan Fontaine and the tenor are hitchhiking, they use their hitching skills they learned from the movies, "It Happened One Night" of course. And the guy who picks them up is a truck driver who has filled the cab of the truck with horns because the company won't let him have a radio! So he performs a song called "King of the Road" using all those horns. It's delightful! I'm really glad I took a chance on this movie I never heard of! Definitely NOT two hours wasted.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2018 17:35:45 GMT -5
I'm going to watch that Joan Fontaine movie later on today -- got it recorded off my DVR ... Hoosier X -- looking forward seeing it ...
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Post by codystarbuck on Nov 8, 2018 17:38:06 GMT -5
I still tear up when Victor Lazlo has the band strike up La Marseilles, in defiance of the German soldiers and you see the club singer and patrons belt it out with unbelievable passion. It really captures the spirit of the times and is a truly amazing piece of cinema. Casablanca is my favorite movie and has been for forty years. That "Marseillaise" moment is a standout for me too! Another great moment for "La Marseillaise" is from The Barkleys of Broadway," a Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie that is otherwise not particularly distinguished. Ginger is a singer/dancer trying to be taken more seriously as a stage actress, and she gets the lead in a play called "Young Sarah" where she plays the young Sarah Bernhardt. (Not Sandra Bernhardt!) When she auditions for the prestigious acting academy in Paris, her audition is … reciting La Marseillaise" for the stern humorless panel of acting judges, including George Zucco and his big scary eyebrows! It's my favorite Ginger Rogers moment, with the possible exception of that bit in Shall We Dance where Fred and Ginger are dancing on roller skates in Central Park and performing Let's Call the Whole Thing Off. Another, in a surprisingly entertaining, if rather cliched film is Victory (or Escape to Victory, as originally titled) near the end of the soccer match, when the crowd takes it up, in defiance of the Germans and the obvious attempts to rig the game. Lot of silliness in that film; but, the soccer scenes are exciting and the game well plotted and the emotion feels genuine, especially the climax. It makes for a great fantasy, which captures the spirit that drove the resistance movements in the occupied countries.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 11, 2018 16:11:27 GMT -5
WEEKLY MOVIE REPORT
ON TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES
On Sunday, TALES OF MANHATTAN (1942), Starred both Rita Hayworth and Ginger Rogers! On Monday, I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG (1932), my first time that I seen this movie; it was excellent, Starring Paul Mini. On Tuesday, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT (1940), Great Hitchcock Movie that starred Joel McCrea, Laraine Day, and Herbert Marshall. On Tuesday, ESPIONAGE AGENT (1939), another Joel McCrea beauty -- 1st time that I seen this movie, highly recommended. On Tuesday, CASABLANCA (1942), recorded off my DVR and watched it on Thursday ... another favorite seen over and over again. On Thursday, SALOME (1923), starring Nazimova ... seen it 20 years ago and made a comparison check ... later On Saturday, WHERE EAGLES DARE (1968), Great Movie and I don't have it on DVD ... so I watched it again that day.
I also watched SALOME (1953), Starring Rita Hayworth, Stewart Granger, Charles Laughton, and Judith Anderson on Thursday as well. Both of them are good, but the 1923 is more original and the 1953 version is more stylish and dramatic.
On Friday, I watched HOLLYWOODLAND (2006), my 2nd time since it was premiered in 2006 and it was okay of a movie starring Ben Affleck as George Reeve a.k.a Superman and I really liked Adrien Brody's performance as Louis Simo a Private Detective and it was an average scripted movie that I seen it in Closed Captioning and the writing was just average. I watched it on IFC channel.
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Post by codystarbuck on Nov 11, 2018 23:19:42 GMT -5
Where Eagles Dare......Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton kill half the German Army and change magazines only once or twice. Man, I love that movie!!! Great stuff from Alistair McLean. That, Guns of Navarone and Ice Station Zebra have been long-time favorites.
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Post by berkley on Nov 12, 2018 1:45:31 GMT -5
It's funny, Alistair MacLean was one of my favourite writers as a kid and Where Eagles Dare and The Guns of Navarone were two of the best of his best novels but I've never seen the film versions of either, though they played many times on tv when I was young. I'll get around to them one of these days, though.
I'd also like to see When Eight Bells Toll and Puppet on a Chain, two other favourite MacLean books, though neither film is supposed to be that great as far as I'm aware. I have the impression that Puppet was pretty successful at the box office, however, which makes it interesting as a period piece, and Eight Bells starred a young Anthony Hopkins, who's always good to watch.
The only two Alastair MacLean films I have seen are Force 10 from Navarone and Fear is the Key, both of which I used to rank among his lesser or middling books, though enjoyable reads nonetheless. Force 10, as the title indicates, was a sequel to Guns and was one of Harrison Ford's first starring roles after he made his name in Star Wars. I remember finding it a pretty solid war movie - nothing out of the ordinary but nothing to turn you off either.
Fear, I saw as a very young person and don't recall much about it other than liking it at the time - but I was at that age when just going to theatre was a thrill in itself and it would have to have been a pretty dire movie to spoil the experience. Trying to recall it after all these years, I suspect it wasn't very good, but who knows.
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Post by Hoosier X on Nov 12, 2018 14:48:13 GMT -5
I DVRed the 1922 version of Salome and watched it a couple of nights ago. It was awesome! I've seen so many silent films, I keep thinking I've seen all the good ones … but there's always something else that's amazing!
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Post by Prince Hal on Nov 12, 2018 20:21:27 GMT -5
Apropos of nothing except the talk of excellent war movies, The Great Escape is still a superb movie.
Ditto The Train.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 13, 2018 11:42:37 GMT -5
I watched SULLY last night on TNT and I felt that they did a grave injustice in the beginning of the movie making more an a documentary like format and the 2nd hour of the movie was okay. But, it was an excellent film for most part of the the end and the human aspects was good. I find the 1st 30 minutes was boring and it's took a long time to get it all worked up. Tom Hanks did a good job in this film, but not exceptional -- if you think I'm that critical that's fine with me and I can accept that fair and honestly.
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Post by brutalis on Nov 13, 2018 13:32:13 GMT -5
Last night I watched Humphrey Bogart in Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Watching Bogey's descent into his greed and madness is chilling. Perhaps people of today may not realize just how desperate and consuming the gold disease was to those hunting and dying in the mountains and deserts in hopes of striking it rich to escape poverty and the responsibilities of every day work. Huston's directing of Bogart really shows the toll of what happens when you become obsessed and lose control of your humanity becoming more bestial in attitude and perception. The black and white here truly shows the sweat, dirt and pain a person can sink to in attempting to find the elusive gold in them thar' hills.
Whether it was the combination of Dad and son Huston on the set or his own desire to create something unique as an actor nobody can know for certain but Bogart stepped up his acting and really shines in being the dirtiest and most ugliest kind of person there is. That his insanity allows him for becoming insanely suspicious and jealous to the point of killing a friend (which he failed at) so that he can have it all is more frighteningly real as in the beginning he swears that a man and his word means more than all the gold in the world. He is generous and giving with both of his partners only to find in the end that he isn't as strong or so proud as he devoutly believed.
This is the type of movie you lose yourself in watching and in the end when it is over you are still feeling the movie haunting your thoughts and dreams. And that is the power of cinema folks! Looking forward to more Bogart goodness this week and next with several bogey DVD's on the shelf calling to me...
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Post by Prince Hal on Nov 13, 2018 13:46:22 GMT -5
Last night I watched Humphrey Bogart in Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Watching Bogey's descent into his greed and madness is chilling. Perhaps people of today may not realize just how desperate and consuming the gold disease was to those hunting and dying in the mountains and deserts in hopes of striking it rich to escape poverty and the responsibilities of every day work. Huston's directing of Bogart really shows the toll of what happens when you become obsessed and lose control of your humanity becoming more bestial in attitude and perception. The black and white here truly shows the sweat, dirt and pain a person can sink to in attempting to find the elusive gold in them thar' hills. Whether it was the combination of Dad and son Huston on the set or his own desire to create something unique as an actor nobody can know for certain but Bogart stepped up his acting and really shines in being the dirtiest and most ugliest kind of person there is. That his insanity allows him for becoming insanely suspicious and jealous to the point of killing a friend (which he failed at) so that he can have it all is more frighteningly real as in the beginning he swears that a man and his word means more than all the gold in the world. He is generous and giving with both of his partners only to find in the end that he isn't as strong or so proud as he devoutly believed. This is the type of movie you lose yourself in watching and in the end when it is over you are still feeling the movie haunting your thoughts and dreams. And that is the power of cinema folks! Looking forward to more Bogart goodness this week and next with several bogey DVD's on the shelf calling to me... Nice review. Hope you try (if you haven't already) Key Largo!
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Post by brutalis on Nov 13, 2018 14:14:06 GMT -5
Last night I watched Humphrey Bogart in Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Nice review. Hope you try (if you haven't already) Key Largo! You know it oh great Prince of Haldom. I have Key Largo, of course Casablanca, The Big Sleep, Dark Passage, To Have and Have Not, Sahara, High Sierra, Sabrina, Dead End,The Barefoot Contessa and again of course the Maltese Falcon. Many of these I have seen in the far foggy past (my grandfather was a BIG Bogey fan) on television. Over this last year I have managed to find cost effectively many in DVD.
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