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Post by dbutler69 on Jun 20, 2019 9:15:14 GMT -5
I love The Maltese Falcon, and while I've never read the book, it's nice to know that the film is a faithful adaptation.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jun 20, 2019 9:21:34 GMT -5
Huston pretty well used the book as a shooting script. There were certainly things that had to be excised for length and for the censors. But it's as faithful an adaptation as you're likely to ever find.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jun 20, 2019 15:09:33 GMT -5
I read the book long before I saw the movie. And it's a great movie! I don't know how many times I've seen it. Every two or three years since about 1990, I bet.
I like the two earlier versions of The Maltese Falcon as well. It was made in 1931 with Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade and the cast includes Dwight Frye in the Elisha Cook Jr. role. TCM sometimes shows it with the title Dangerous Female.
The other version was made in 1936 under the title Satan Met a Lady. Warren William is the Sam Spade character and Bette Davis is Brigid O'Shaughnessy. And Arthur Treacher is Joel Cairo! And Casper Gutman is a woman! It's so crazy!
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Post by berkley on Jun 21, 2019 21:48:56 GMT -5
Huston pretty well used the book as a shooting script. There were certainly things that had to be excised for length and for the censors. But it's as faithful an adaptation as you're likely to ever find.
Yes, and I think Bogart's screen persona and delivery was better suited to Hammett's Sam Spade than it ever was to Chandler's Marlowe, though his appearance wasn't much like Hammett's description of the character, IIRC.
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Post by mrbrklyn on Jun 21, 2019 23:46:30 GMT -5
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Post by berkley on Jun 24, 2019 2:06:24 GMT -5
Speaking of classic 80s movies, I finally saw Withnail and I for the first time a month or two ago and found it even better than its reputation had led me to hope.
Next 80s classic for me will probably be Raising Arizona, an early Cohen Brothers movie that I remember wanting to see because of the preview when it first came out but never have gotten round to. I don't think I realised back then that it was by the same guys who had done Blood Simple, which I had seen at an art-house cinema on its release, or I would have made more of an effort.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jun 25, 2019 12:20:46 GMT -5
Speaking of classic 80s movies, I finally saw Withnail and I for the first time a month or two ago and found it even better than its reputation had led me to hope. Next 80s classic for me will probably be Raising Arizona, an early Cohen Brothers movie that I remember wanting to see because of the preview when it first came out but never have gotten round to. I don't think I realised back then that it was by the same guys who had done Blood Simple, which I had seen at an art-house cinema on its release, or I would have made more of an effort. Probably their single funniest film...... My favorite line is still when the police are interviewing Nathan Arizona and ask him why he changed his named from Nathan Huffheim... "Would you buy furniture from a store called Unpainted Huffheim?"
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Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2019 1:48:27 GMT -5
Valkyrie I watched this film that came out in 2008; starring Tom Cruise as Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg and I was pretty impressed by the acting of Tom and I'm shaking my boots that this is the first time that I've seen it. I just can't believe that I missed not seeing it in 2008 and let alone waited 11 years to see this movie. Carice van Houten who played Nina von Stauffenberg was significant and she was incredible in the periods that she appeared in this movie. My favorite scene ...Caprice as NinaIt has an outstanding cast, good script, great pacing, excellent scenes, very well everything else, and some minor problems that I just can't put a figure on. I just wanted to remind you that this is my first time and I just in awe of how Singer made this movie well crafted that I just find it quite impressive. Bryan Singer did a bang-up job on it. Tom Cruise bears a resemblance to the Colonel in this movie. Real Colonel ... Tom CruiseFor what that I've seen ... I would give this movie a straight out A minus and I do enjoy this movie a lot and the details of the attempted assassination of Hitler. Every character did their job quite well and not one of them missed their cue and that the most impressive feat in this movie of which all of them held their own and do it well. It was pure drama and showcased a dark history of World War Two in a way that Bryan Singer did his job well.
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Post by Prince Hal on Jun 26, 2019 13:51:12 GMT -5
Did anybody watch Attack! (1956) last night? Eddie Albert (Oliver Douglas on "Green Acres") is a US Army captain with a yellow streak whose indecision is endangering the company as they make their way across France late in 1944. Lee Marvin is the colonel who protects him because they know each other from before the war and Eddie Albert's father is a very influential judge. The rest of the cast: Jack Palance, Buddy Ebsen, Robert Strauss, Richard Jaeckel, Strother Martin and a few other recognizable faces. I thought I'd seen all the really good war movies of the 1950s. If I've already mentioned this, chalk it up to my poor memory. A couple of things about Attack!, an excellent movie that was legendary among kids in the early 60s (speaking at least for myself and my friends), who were fascinated by for its realism and for the particular way one of the GIs was injured. (HINT: tank vs. soldier.) It was adapted from a Broadway play... It featured two future members of The Dirty Dozen, Lee Marvin and Richard Jaeckel. Jud Taylor also was in The Great Escape. The medic is Bing Russell, father of Kurt. It was made without the co-operation but with the disapproval of the US Army. Eddie Albert was actually quite a hero in WW2, winning the Bronze Star for rescuing marines at Tarawa. Marvin, Ebsen, Jaeckel, Strother Martin, and Palance were in the USMC, USCG, Merchant Marine, USN, and USAAF, respectively.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jun 27, 2019 14:02:41 GMT -5
You'd be amazed about how many more realistic war movies were made without help from the DOD. They are notorious for wanting script approval and other concessions that turn films into recruiting ads. There was a really great book about it, Operation Hollywood, by David L Robb, which goes into the deals required to get DOD cooperation and access to military sites and personnel. One of the biggest instances was An Officer and a Gentleman. The screenwriter had been through the Navy AOCS program and based the story on his experiences there, from things like the interaction with the drill instructors and classroom training to hte relationship with the local community and the section of women who looked to land pilot husbands, as a way out. Director Taylor Hackford and the writer had a meeting with the Navy and the Navy laid out all kinds of script objections, including things like profanity and anything which made Naval personnel anything other than tokens of virtue. Hackford pointed out that he heard every word of objectionable dialogue just walking across the base to the office, where he had his meeting. The Navy refused to budge and Hackford refused to make cosmetic changes to the story. The Navy refused cooperation, which is why the film takes place near Puget Sound, in Washington, rather than NAS Pensacola, in Florida. They shot at a Washington National Guard facility, which was made available to them. Now, that was the minor scuffle. It was tradition that the Blue Angels performed a fly over at the graduation ceremonies of the program. Since the Navy wouldn't co-operate, the filmmakers secured a Canadian military demonstration team. The DOD put pressure on the Canadian government to withdraw the unit from the film, which they ultimately did, at the last minute, causing the scene to be scrubbed.
By contrast, Tony Scott was so in bed with the Navy, on Top Gun, they might as well have been married. The Navy even had recruiters at theaters showing the film. About the only thing realistic in it was Ladies' Night at the O Club, at NAS Miramar (Wednesday Night; at least, in the 80s).
The military learned one really valuable lesson from the Vietnam War and that was to control media access, to better control the spin. It is manifested in reporting "pools" and in how the military is portrayed in film.
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Post by Prince Hal on Jun 27, 2019 14:30:45 GMT -5
codystarbuck, here's an article from Time on just what you're talking about re Top Gun. I remember jay Leno, in his less careful years commenting on the "Top Gun Effect" It went something like this: "So the Navy is setting up enlistment stations right outside theatres showing Top Gun, and the kids are signing up in droves, because they want to be like Tm Cruise and fly one of those fighter jets that cost the Navy a few billion dollars each. I wonder if all those geniuses regret their decision as they're painting the hull of some cargo ship in Newport News." I've looked for another such article in the years since that movie (I never have seen it) unsuccessfully. The article followed up on the surge in enlistments among kids who saw Top Gun who got cold feet. Not when they heard about the dangers of serving, not when they heard about the pay, but when they asked their recruiter, "When do I get my Top Gun jacket?" According to the story, so many recruiters lost potential enlistees when they heard that the jacket wasn't standard issue that the Pentagon bought a few million bucks' worth of jackets to use as incentives for recruitment. Even if it's an urban legend, it has the ring of a greater truth. Just ordered the book you've mentioned from the library, which says that the Navy said the number of young men who joined wanting to be Naval Aviators went up by 500 percent.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jun 27, 2019 15:28:39 GMT -5
I don't know about the jackets; but, t-shirts and ballcaps are standard things.
I was an NROTC midshipman, from 1984-1988; so, my second Summer Training Cruise was in the summer of 1986, when the film was in theaters. I was in San Diego, for CORTRAIMID (Career orientation Training for Midshipmen). It is 4 weeks, with each week focusing on a different segment of the Navy, to help you choose your career path (Surface, Submarine, Aviation, Marine). We were quartered at NAB (Naval Amphibious Base) Coronado, where the SEALs have BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL School). We would then go to Naval Station San Diego for tours, simulator training, damage control trainers, and the like, NAS North Island or NAS Miramar for flight related stuff, and Camp Pendleton for Marine Week.
During that time, we visited the Navy Search and rescue School, where we met divers who worked on the scenes where Maverick's plane has gone down, killing Goose, who said they should have let Tom cruise drown, when he started to be dragged under, by his parachute (he was not well loved by several accounts of the filming, including a story that he was kicked out of the wardroom, on the USS Enterprise). We went out to NAS Miramar, where they still had an F-14 with the Iceman nametag on it. We, on our off time, went to the various Ladies Nights, at the various Officers' Clubs, including Wednesday night at NAS Miramar.
We also went to Horton Plaza, in downtown San Diego, to see the film, and laughed our heads off. Even as midshipmen, we knew that Maverick would have been grounded and would have never set foot near Fighter Weapons School (aka Top Gun).
Later, after I had been commissioned, you could see the numbers of fools who enlisted, because of that film, only to find out that only officers can be pilots, and the only enlisted billets on a flight crew were on ASW helicopters (sonar tech), P-3 Orion (also technical crew) and the E-2 Hawkeye (radar operator). You don't get the glamor job. The best you can accomplish there is to qualify as a SEAL; but, they were kept relatively secret back then, despite putting on a demonstration every 4th of July, at the Coronado Yacht Club.
They also had recruiters in theaters, in Charleston, SC, when I was on active duty, when The Hunt for Red October was in theaters. That didn't quite get as many takers. Too few sex scenes and the idea of being trapped underwater is pretty powerful.
Navy SEALs only got limited cooperation, because of Charlie Sheen's character. For a scene on an aircraft carrier the studio had to hire one from the Spanish Navy. They were only allowed minimal filming at one naval base (Norfolk, I believe).
My real eye opening experience was in the wake of the USS Iowa gun explosion, which killed most of the gun crew. The Navy was stage managing the investigation and the media coverage of it, pointing the blame on sabotage by a disgruntled and spurned sailor, who was maligned as a homosexual. The crew who refused to cooperate with this smokescreen found themselves shipped to remote stations, including an officer who was the captain of the gun crew, but elsewhere during the gunnery exercise. He had led the damage control team into the space, to fight the fire and identified the maligned sailor elsewhere in the space, based on a distinctive tatoo, on his arm. he was nowhere near the breach, as the investigation claimed. he was shipped off to Alaska and held incommunicado, until his father, a retired captain, screamed holy hell, at the Pentagon. he subsequently resigned from the Navy and cooperated with 60 Minutes on an investigative piece, which revealed the unstable nature of the 40 year-old powder charges (from WW2!), improper storage of said powder, during a shipyard period 9on non-climate controlled barges, in the summer, in Norfolk), unauthorized gunnery experiments by an unqualified warrant officer, and the certification of the powder charges as safe by the same people who conducted the official investigation into the accident and the specific stability of the gunpowder. The team that put together the expose also put out a book on the subject. The Navy was forced to make an official apology to the dead sailor they tried to blame and recant their story. I was going to school in Norfolk, when the bodies were brought to Norfolk, for a service for the families. Iwas a bookseller by the time the book came out, from the 60 minutes team and the naval apology. The school was less than a year into my 4 year commitment. Barnes and Noble was a year after I left the military, to give you an idea of how long it tok the truth to come out.
The Gulf War was the other incident. I had access to message traffic that contradicted things said in Pentagon press briefings, not to mention reports from international agencies, like Reuters and the BBC. CNN couldn't have been more cooperative if they had had offices in the Pentagon (same with the network news agencies).
A third was the release of the memoir Rogue Warrior, by Richard Marcinko, the founder of DEVGRU, aka SEAL Team 6. He had founded and commanded the team, then started another group, Red Cell, which was tasked to test Navy security in the face of potential terrorist threats. His team was so good at embarrassing Naval security personnel that he had more enemies than Saddam Hussein in the Navy Brass. However, his patron was the Chief of Naval Operations. Eventually, the enemies instituted an investigation that came up with him knowingly paying higher than market price for stun grenades, for counter-terrorism operations in conjunction with the Olympics (after being exonerated of conflict of interest charges, relating to a defense contractor). His memoir detailed such things as the death of a SEAL squad, during the Grenada mission, due to poor planning, situations he witnessed at the Pentagon, during the Iran Hostage Rescue Mission (Operation Eagle Claw) and the lack of co-ordination, and the things that his team uncovered during his time with Red Cell (including parking a forklift with a sign that said "bomb", next to Air Force One). The Navy put our official responses to media inquiries that attacked Marcinko's character, mostly based on the fraud charges, but did not refute a single claim made in the book. I ought the book ,itself, at the Navy PX, which goes to show you how far anyone took the official line against Marcinko. 60 Minutes also covered the book and his claims.
Heartbreak Ridge started out as a project about an Army Airborne unit; but, the Army had objections to the script. the Marines were more receptive, after it was retooled a bit. However, no Marine Recon team would ever be as unmotivated as the one in the film. Also, no one like the CO would ever get near a battalion command, after specializing in supply and logistics. They also wouldn't have the audacity to talk to a Medal of Honor winner like that. However, the Marines wanted a film that showed Marines kicking butt and that's what they got. Anything that put out of an image of Marines other than the victims of a car bombing, in Lebanon.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 27, 2019 19:52:08 GMT -5
I really enjoyed reading stuff from you codystarbuck about your knowledge of military in general especially US Navy.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jun 30, 2019 21:57:43 GMT -5
In June, I saw seven films from the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" list. It's a smaller number than usual because I'm getting closer to the end and the movies are getting harder to find, and also one of the films I saw was Satantango, which is more than seven hours long and it took me a week to watch it. 1. Chronicle of a Summer (Chronique d'une ete) (1961) 2. The Cool World (1963) 3. Lucia (1969) 4. Last Chants for a Slow Dance (1977) 5. Drowning by Numbers (1988) - My favorite of the films I saw this month. It made me like Peter Greenaway a lot more as I've never been a big fan. 6. Satantango (1994) - Satantango is more than seven hours long. It's a Hungarian film about a failing collective farm during the Communist era. But it's about so much more than that. At this point, I've seen enough long, slow, arty films from Eastern European that I liked this a lot, despite not really being able to explain very well what I liked about it. It's slow and mostly pretty depressing with very long takes of people walking down a country lane and cows meandering across the farm yard. Not for everyone! 7. Sombre (1998) - For some reason, I had a higher ratio of serial killer movies this month. Last Chants for a Slow Dance was about a serial killer in Montana and Sombre was about a serial killer in France who follows the Tour de France, looking for victims. Two very different examinations of the subject.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 1, 2019 1:38:52 GMT -5
Watched 1961's The Guns of Navarone with a cast highlighted by Gregory Peck, David Niven and Anthony Quinn, based on Alister MacLain's novel... I've mentioned before that the Marx Guns of Navarone playset was one of my favorite toys as a kid... and I tried, but failed to read the novel when I was about 11, but had never managed to see the all of the film. It was one of those things I would discover in TV Guide the day after it aired, or a couple hours into the movie, etc. and never tracked it down on the age of video, but TCM featured the other week as part of their WWII theme for May and June, so I DVRed it and finally got to see it. It's not perfect movie by any means, but it a damn good one. The Germans come across as a bit inept at times, but the tension level of the film and its sequence of cliffhanger after cliffhanger keep you engrossed. The impending sense of potential betrayal also ratchets up the tension level, which keeps you focused on the story and lets some of the flaws slide by mostly unnoticed in the scheme of things. Glad I got to see it. -M
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