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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 19, 2019 23:41:55 GMT -5
Dial M for Murder is one of my favorite Hitchcock films, mostly for Grace Kelly and Ray Milland, but John Williams is also great in it!
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Post by dbutler69 on Aug 23, 2019 8:19:42 GMT -5
I love how Hitchcock can have a whole movie basically take place in one room and yet make it interesting!
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Post by Prince Hal on Aug 23, 2019 10:53:10 GMT -5
I love how Hitchcock can have a whole movie basically take place in one room and yet make it interesting! And he also did it in Rope (1948), Rear Window (to an extent), and Lifeboat (1944).
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Post by Deleted on Aug 23, 2019 10:55:41 GMT -5
I love how Hitchcock can have a whole movie basically take place in one room and yet make it interesting! And he also did it in Rope (1948), Rear Window (to an extent), and Lifeboat (1944). Especially Lifeboat!
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Post by dbutler69 on Aug 23, 2019 11:54:49 GMT -5
I love how Hitchcock can have a whole movie basically take place in one room and yet make it interesting! And he also did it in Rope (1948), Rear Window (to an extent), and Lifeboat (1944). Yup. I had Rear Window, at least, also in my mind when I said that. It might be my favorite Hitchcock movie.
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Post by profholt82 on Aug 23, 2019 13:52:16 GMT -5
Back in the 60s, scriptwriter Larry Cohen had the idea to make a movie that took place entirely within a phone booth and presented it to Hitchcock. Hitch loved it, and they worked on it for a bit, but it never came to fruition. Decades later, Cohen revived the idea, and ended up with the script for Phone Booth which would be directed by everyone's favorite Batman director Joel Schumacher. I think all things considered, he lucked out in the timing as the movie came out in the early aughts, just shortly before phone booths became extinct.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Aug 23, 2019 14:17:00 GMT -5
Marathon Man (1976)I'm a big Dustin Hoffman fan, but this movie was a disappointment for me. The first hour or so is fantastic, setting up a great dual story of Hoffman trying to get his PhD and win the girl while Roy Scheider is engrossed in an international espionage conspiracy. However, once Scheider and Hoffman meet up, the story begins to fall apart and the third act becomes quite tedious. The infamous tooth scene is well shot and suspenseful, but the action is rather uninspired and the ending is rather anti-climatic. Just watched this today - first time ever. While I have a higher overall impression of the movie than Pharozonk (I thought what he considered an anti-climax to actually be pretty effective), I do agree that the first roughly half of the movie is better than the second. And even though it had a horribly tragic outcome, I found the geriatric car chase at the very beginning somewhat darkly humorous.
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Post by codystarbuck on Aug 23, 2019 16:36:28 GMT -5
Marathon Man (1976)I'm a big Dustin Hoffman fan, but this movie was a disappointment for me. The first hour or so is fantastic, setting up a great dual story of Hoffman trying to get his PhD and win the girl while Roy Scheider is engrossed in an international espionage conspiracy. However, once Scheider and Hoffman meet up, the story begins to fall apart and the third act becomes quite tedious. The infamous tooth scene is well shot and suspenseful, but the action is rather uninspired and the ending is rather anti-climatic. Just watched this today - first time ever. While I have a higher overall impression of the movie than Pharozonk (I thought what he considered an anti-climax to actually be pretty effective), I do agree that the first roughly half of the movie is better than the second. And even though it had a horribly tragic outcome, I found the geriatric car chase at the very beginning somewhat darkly humorous.
I have to say that it works well as a character study; but, makes for a bizarre thriller, especially compared to other espionage/conspiracy thrillers of the era, like Three Days of the Condor. I think part of the problem is that Hoffman is in his element for the earlier part of the film, and a bit overwhelmed in the rest (not to mention clashes in style with Laurence Olivier). Still a fascinating movie; but, a little unsatisfying by the end. Didn't do much for the dental profession, that's for sure. This is actually one of the film's I knew better from Mad, until I finally saw it, in the home video era.
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Post by Pharozonk on Aug 23, 2019 17:08:53 GMT -5
Marathon Man (1976)I'm a big Dustin Hoffman fan, but this movie was a disappointment for me. The first hour or so is fantastic, setting up a great dual story of Hoffman trying to get his PhD and win the girl while Roy Scheider is engrossed in an international espionage conspiracy. However, once Scheider and Hoffman meet up, the story begins to fall apart and the third act becomes quite tedious. The infamous tooth scene is well shot and suspenseful, but the action is rather uninspired and the ending is rather anti-climatic. Just watched this today - first time ever. While I have a higher overall impression of the movie than Pharozonk (I thought what he considered an anti-climax to actually be pretty effective), I do agree that the first roughly half of the movie is better than the second. And even though it had a horribly tragic outcome, I found the geriatric car chase at the very beginning somewhat darkly humorous.
Oh boy, I wonder what I'd think of this movie now considering the first time I saw this I was still in college.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 25, 2019 7:32:00 GMT -5
Today marks 80 years since The Wizard of Oz was released to cinemas throughout the United States (it had debuted in some cinemas earlier, including in Canada and Greece): Wow. 80 years, eh? I'd wager that, sadly, no-one involved in that film is alive today, not unless a child actor is still around, but they'd be 90 or more, I'm sure. It is a magical film. It has retained its charm 80 years later. And the production of the film, some of it tragic, makes for a compelling story. It's certainly a unique film. I must confess, I do prefer 1985's Return to Oz. As for the Oz books (by L. Frank Baum), I did borrow some from my library when I was at primary school. Some of the themes in the book are still relevant today. There was a DC/Marvel collaboration in 1975, which adapted the film. Cei-U! commented on it last year: classiccomics.org/post/293182
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Post by beccabear67 on Aug 25, 2019 15:49:01 GMT -5
There was an article that Jerry Maren, "the last surviving munchkin from The Wizard of Oz", died aged 99 on Jun 7, 2018. Then again, this post seems to say there could be others still with us... www.imdb.com/list/ls061321507/
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 30, 2019 13:27:36 GMT -5
Here are the movies from the "1001 Movies you Must See before You Die" list that I saw in August: 1. DeeWar (The Wall) (1975) - A three-hour Indian movie about two brothers on the opposite sides of the law! I watched it without sub-titles and didn't have any trouble following it. I found it very entertaining, but it might be a chore for those who don't watch Indian movies. The fight scenes reminded me of the fight scenes on Danger Island. Remember Danger Island, the live-action adventure segment from the Banana Splits TV show? It's not a compliment or a critique, more of an observation. Because it's a Bollywood production, The Wall has three or four musical numbers, but because so much time passes between them, you forget about them, an it's always a bit jarring when the next one starts forty minutes after the previous number ended. I love Bollywood musical numbers even more than the Simpsons parody version! 2. Man of Marble (1977) - Polish cinema! I liked this more than I thought I would because of the great performance of the woman playing the director of a documentary film about a figure from Poland's recent past who was so devoted to brick-making and brick-laying that he was touted by the Communists as a "worker hero." It's almost three hours long, so I'm not recommending it to people who don't already have an appreciation of Polish cinema. 3. The Puppetmaster (1993) - This is a documentary about Taiwan's most famous puppet theater entertainer. The puppet show scenes are great! But overall, I wasn't a big fan of this one. 4. Zero Kelvin (1995) - A Norwegian film about a couple of guys in Greenland in the 1930s. They work for a fur company, and they don't get along. One guy's hatred for his co-worker manifests in flagrant cruelty to animals, and I would have unashamedly killed him long before the protagonist of Zero Kelvin did. 5. Time Regained (1999) - A French film based on the work of Marcel Proust. Emmanuelle Beart and Catherine Deneuve are in it. I'm pretty sure they are playing the same person. Despite watching this with sub-titles, I was very confused at times. John Malkovich is in it. Somebody in the 1001 community posted a partial list of the films that are supposedly being added to the List in the next edition. I had seen four of them - Roma, BlacKkKlansman, The Favourite and A Star Is Born - but I hadn't seen The Greatest Showman. So I watched that too since it was readily available from the library. I rather liked The Greatest Showman, but I'm completely baffled as to why it's a must-see movie. I'm hoping this is a rumor because otherwise there are some very good movies that will not be added to the List because The Greatest Showman took the place of something a lot better. And pending the announcement of the new additions, I only have four films left!
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Post by Deleted on Aug 31, 2019 7:41:21 GMT -5
Svengoolie is playing the Giant Claw tonight!
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Post by codystarbuck on Aug 31, 2019 16:33:03 GMT -5
Svengoolie is playing the Giant Claw tonight! Where's Happy, the Baby New Year?
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 1, 2019 8:24:20 GMT -5
Destination Inner Space (1966)
I first saw that movie when I was about six years old, and it was probably the most terrifying moment of my then-young existence.
To no one’s surprise, the film did not age well as far as its ability to induce fear goes. The overall idea isn’t bad: marine scientists discover an alien ship that set down at the bottom of the sea, a ship that carries a hostile marine life form looking like a cross between the Creature from the Black Lagoon and a fancy tropical fish. The creature is hostile, but not in a genocidal way; it mostly seems to want its presence to be kept a secret. One important theme in the film is that if we are to meet creatures from out of space, it would be good to be able to communicate with them.
Production values are very low in this film, even if a low budget often leads to elegant solutions. (I mentioned in the past how I loved the “non-effects” in the original Star Trek, as when an alien ship exploding on screen wasn’t actually seen but was just a sudden flash of light against a black background). Here the interior of the alien ship is reduced to its simplest expression: a circular room with small triangular doors all around it, with a circular point of access at the centre of the floor. I’m sure that economy rather than pure inspiration led to that design, but it works.
Undersea shots (too long and mostly uninteresting) are either stock footage or taken at very, very shallow depths (seriously hurting even the most benevolent willing suspension of disbelief). Models for the spaceship or the undersea base are clearly very tiny too, judging from the size of the bubbles escaping from them. That, too, hurts any attempt at verisimilitude that the movie might go for.
The characters are rather interesting, I thought, for this kind of movie; Scott Brady, as a no-nonsense naval officer, starts as a womanizing martinet but is revealed to be quite competent, while the initially more sympathetic maverick who first clashes with him turns out to have a dark secret. The ladies of the cast do scream at times, but can really stand their ground too. Even the generic science guy who wants to study the monster instead of killing it acts in a sensible way hinstead of putting everyone’s life in danger, as so many movie eggheads often do.
Unintended hilarity is the bane of these B-movies... and here, it is provided generously thanks to things like submarine viewports that are clearly just small aquariums (with the same fish swimming around in it, too); with the marine monster clearly breathing from a scuba tank (you can’t see the tank, but those bubbles, man, those bubbles!!!) and from Brady really struggling to clip the belt of his scuba tank over his rotund mid-riff (but props to him for staying in character instead of bursting out laughing).
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