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Post by Hoosier X on Sept 6, 2021 14:46:19 GMT -5
I've never seen any of the King Kong remakes but I remember the di Laurentis one getting a lot of hype when I was a kid in the 70s - and also Jessica Lange being criticised for being a model rather than an actress. In the things I've seen her in from later in her career I think she's been really good, so either the criticism was unfair or she must have put in a lot of work subsequently to improve herself. Jessica Lange was the least of that movie’s problems.
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Post by codystarbuck on Sept 6, 2021 15:48:27 GMT -5
Want to really appreciate a classic even more? Watch a remake that just drops a turd on the whole thing. I watched the Dino De Laurentis King Kong (dirt cheap at Walmart) Hard to believe the two leads were going to be future Oscar winners, based on what they do here (more Lange than Bridges, but he has some bad moments). Even Charles Grodon is off. I've read that the director was a shouter and got into it with De Laurentis' son, and the producer nearly fired him off the picture. Lange was in her first major acting role and can be forgiven how stiff she is, in some scenes. It really made me appreciate the original Cooper one all the more. Far more successful in capturing a compelling story, with more primitive technology. Peter Jackson's is better than the De Laurentis, but I find it a bit bloated and it drags in sections. The original may be a bit broader and stagey in the acting, but it captures the wonder and spectacle far better.
I don't think that "bad" even begins to describe this film. I was unlucky enough to see it in the theatre during its initial run.
I still want my $2.00 back.
I saw the second half of it, when it played on network tv, over two nights and was bored then. I spent more time marveling at the size of the mess and showers and quarters, on a ship that didn't look that big, compared to the frigate I served on. I shared a stateroom with another ensign and one of us had to climb into our bunk for the other to get to their locker. I also laughed at the food sliding around, when they are sailing through a storm. We had plates and things on rubber mesh matting, which produced enough friction to keep things from sliding around in all but really bad seas. I also marveled at Grodin's very short haircut, especially for 1976, though he compensated for it with very long sideburns! Rene Aubergenois was, by far, the best actor out of the cast. Quite a change from his Father Mulcahy, though, and his ensuing Clayton Endicott, on Benson.
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Post by codystarbuck on Sept 6, 2021 16:10:57 GMT -5
I've never seen any of the King Kong remakes but I remember the di Laurentis one getting a lot of hype when I was a kid in the 70s - and also Jessica Lange being criticised for being a model rather than an actress. In the things I've seen her in from later in her career I think she's been really good, so either the criticism was unfair or she must have put in a lot of work subsequently to improve herself. Lange isn't bad in scenes without dialogue, as her model background helps her in a physical performance. She is stiffer in dialogue scenes; but, the part isn't very well written (and it's Lorenzo Semple Jr, who wrote good material, like Three Days of the Condor, though he also wrote stuff like Fathom, the silliness that is Flash Gordon, and the Batman tv show. Think he went too campy for this, while the actors were trying to go dramatic. A lot of money is spent in the wrong areas and it is typical De Laurentis excess, with campy touches, yet serious marketing. It also tries to make the relationship between Lange and Kong into something Freudian. Lot of familiar tv faces, too, like John Randolph, as the captain of the ship, Ed Lauter, as First Mate, Jack O'Hallaran and Julius Harris, as crew members. All had done films (Randolph was a character actor who did both, playing businessmen, and authority figures, O'Halloran was Non, of the Kryptonian villains, and Harris was in Shaft and Live and Let Die, as Tee-Hee); but they did a ton of tv and tended to play the same types, over and over. It's not spectacularly well shot, either. Director John Guillerman had done things like The Towering Inferno, but that was an Irwin Allen picture and visuals were always center of his stuff, regardless of director. There are some good scenes, but you never get much of a sense of Skull Island and the city stuff looks like weak Toho copies. You also have African people on a South Pacific island, though that is there, in the original. Didn't even go for a New Guinea aboriginal people. Not quite as bad as King Kong vs Godzilla, where you have Japanese actors in blackface, as the natives on Skull Island. Personally, I would have liked to have seen what Toho could have done with $24 million and technicians like Rick Baker and Carlo Ramboldi. I always got the sense that Dino De Laurentis' personal overhead had a lot to do with where money got spent on his films, vs what you see on the screen, in many of them. Wouldn't be the first producer to have some "creative accounting."
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Post by brutalis on Sept 19, 2021 11:15:58 GMT -5
Another thank you to MoviesTV network for showing old classics. Yesterday afternoon was a pair of crime movies. 1st up was 1960 Murder, Inc with Stuart Whitman (always been a favorite of mine) and Peter Falk well before his Columbo days. Boy does he chew up the scenery being a quite mean spirited ugly demon of a killer. Not once did I ever see or think hey, that's not a mob guy, it's Columbo.
2nd up is the 1931 Little Caesar providing Edward G. Robinson a star making role he will always be remembered for. He is truly full on mesmerizing and oozes charisma as the powerful slick criminal.
A very well spent late afternoon relaxing with a pair of memorable hard hitting movies.
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Sept 19, 2021 11:21:48 GMT -5
Key Largo is my definitive Edward G Robinson movie. There's nothing not to like in that movie..everyone shines. One of my favorite movies of all time.
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Post by The Captain on Sept 20, 2021 10:49:45 GMT -5
Took my wife out on a date for her birthday yesterday to see Citizen Kane on the big screen.
Yeah, it was even more awesome up there than it was watching it on TV at home. The scale of it, especially towards the end when they shift the focus to Charles and Susan living at Xanadu isn't done justice on the smaller screen, such as when Kane is practically enveloped by the gigantic fireplace.
It was a real treat to get to see it like that.
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Post by berkley on Sept 20, 2021 12:35:13 GMT -5
Took my wife out on a date for her birthday yesterday to see Citizen Kane on the big screen. Yeah, it was even more awesome up there than it was watching it on TV at home. The scale of it, especially towards the end when they shift the focus to Charles and Susan living at Xanadu isn't done justice on the smaller screen, such as when Kane is practically enveloped by the gigantic fireplace. It was a real treat to get to see it like that. Yes, it played here a few mnths ago and I too was able to see it on the big screen for the first time. Great experience. I always try to take advantage of these opportunities.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Sept 20, 2021 13:16:11 GMT -5
Took my wife out on a date for her birthday yesterday to see Citizen Kane on the big screen. Yeah, it was even more awesome up there than it was watching it on TV at home. The scale of it, especially towards the end when they shift the focus to Charles and Susan living at Xanadu isn't done justice on the smaller screen, such as when Kane is practically enveloped by the gigantic fireplace. It was a real treat to get to see it like that. I envy you. The closest place it played to me was in Boise and I just couldn't really make it happen. I think it played at the Egyptian Theater, which is an Egyptian themed theater that was built in 1923. It would absolutely have been the perfect venue.
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Post by profh0011 on Sept 23, 2021 6:12:03 GMT -5
GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT (1973) This is the 3rd time in only a year I've watched this. I got it on a DVD-R from a seller in England who specializes in rare, out-of-print films. This one's a nice, sharp fullscreen copy recorded off some UK cable movie channel. I just had someone over the weekend tell me, with the new film " THE GREEN KNIGHT" coming out this year, he doesn't understand how it is this older version is so hard to find. The strangest thing is, director Stephen Weeks made the same film TWICE, 10 years apart. This one features Nigel Green as the mysterious, supernatural figure. A decade later, Sean Connery played the part. Both films totally distort the original classic folk story in the same ways, but this one is played more straight and serious, and, frankly, nearly every part of it MAKES MORE SENSE than the 1983 film. GO FIGURE. An amusing element of this film is... it's apparently the film MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL was done as a parody of. NO, REALLY. If you've seen HOLY GRAIL, it's probably impossible to watch this without getting a massive case of deja vu. In my case, I just watched the 1983 and 1973 films back-to-back. Some scenes are so similar it's spooky. Many play quite differently, and as I said, this one just makes more sense. Also, this one has a BETTER ending. And, dare I say it, BETTER music. The casts both include a nice range of terrific English character actors. Among them is Ronald Lacey... who, insanely, plays the SAME part in BOTH movies. He dies much earlier in the earlier film (heh). Right after getting his hand BURNED by a magic talisman. (Sound familiar??) Overall, both films (especially the later one) play out like extended DREAM SEQUENCES. Logic is not the driving force here. I recently joked the '83 films might make a good double-bill with The Monkees' movie HEAD, for that very reason. Both have the logic one finds in vivid dreams. They don't make much sense... but you can't take your eyes off them. I understand there's an early-90s TV version which hews CLOSER to the classic story than any of the others. Which makes me want to get my hands on it. The way things are right now, I'm more likely to get the new version on disc than to actually GO SEE IT in a theater.
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Post by Mister Spaceman on Sept 23, 2021 8:37:50 GMT -5
I've never seen any of the King Kong remakes but I remember the di Laurentis one getting a lot of hype when I was a kid in the 70s - and also Jessica Lange being criticised for being a model rather than an actress. In the things I've seen her in from later in her career I think she's been really good, so either the criticism was unfair or she must have put in a lot of work subsequently to improve herself. Lange isn't bad in scenes without dialogue, as her model background helps her in a physical performance. She is stiffer in dialogue scenes; but, the part isn't very well written (and it's Lorenzo Semple Jr, who wrote good material, like Three Days of the Condor, though he also wrote stuff like Fathom, the silliness that is Flash Gordon, and the Batman tv show. Think he went too campy for this, while the actors were trying to go dramatic. When I interviewed Semple for my Batman book he had no interest in discussing his work on that show (even though he knew that was what I was calling about) and instead brought up and wouldn't stop talking about King Kong. He regarded his script as some kind of campy feminist broadside and was very proud of it. But that film is very bad, beginning with that script.
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Post by profh0011 on Sept 23, 2021 10:54:26 GMT -5
The earliest episodes of the Adam West BATMAN "worked" (3 of them were directed by Robert Butler, who later created the whole visual style of HILL STREET BLUES-- what a connection!). The real problem was when William Dozier, who I suspect felt the show was "still too good" and wanted it gone (no, really) replaced Lorenzo Semple Jr. as story editor with the worst writer on the show, Charles Hoffman. Hoffman's scripts weren't funny,-- just, "STUPID". and it seems he tried to make sure everyone else's were, as well.
Only Stanley Ralph Ross (who later developed WONDER WOMAN for TV) managed good work in the last 2 seasons, and mostly because his stuff was INCREDIBLY funny. He also has an amazing knack for structure. In many of his scripts, he would casually introduce some seemingly-minor point into the dialogue in part 1... and then, it would come back to bite you in the A** in part 2, turning out to be incredibly-important to the plot. I don't think anyone else on the show did that, or at least, not as regularly as he did. He was also bigger opn "continuity" than anyone else. I suspect he got a kick out of quietly doing a better job than his bosses expected of him, and just sneaking in good stuff when all they wanted was dreck.
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Post by Mister Spaceman on Sept 23, 2021 14:30:46 GMT -5
Agreed - Ross was great. His Catwoman episodes are particularly good. (He also wrote the two Archer episodes, which are not very good but that's because of Art Carney's lousy performance.)
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Post by Prince Hal on Sept 23, 2021 14:58:39 GMT -5
Agreed - Ross was great. His Catwoman episodes are particularly good. (He also wrote the two Archer episodes, which are not very good but that's because of Art Carney's lousy performance.) Wasn't Art Carney dead for about six years or so before Archer went on the air? (I've never seen the show, but I knew it had to have started long after Ed Norton of "The Honeymooners" went to the big sewer in the sky.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Sept 23, 2021 15:26:56 GMT -5
Agreed - Ross was great. His Catwoman episodes are particularly good. (He also wrote the two Archer episodes, which are not very good but that's because of Art Carney's lousy performance.) Wasn't Art Carney dead for about six years or so before Archer went on the air? (I've never seen the show, but I knew it had to have started long after Ed Norton of "The Honeymooners" went to the big sewer in the sky. You should definitely watch Archer. It's a hoot.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Sept 24, 2021 16:00:11 GMT -5
Based on The Captain's mention of Citizen Kane I went on a bit of a Kane binge of late. I haven't re-watched the titular movie (yet), but I watched 1999's RKO 281 and 2020's Mank. Oddly I found the lower budget made-for-TV (albeit for HBO) earlier film more enjoyable. Both play very fast and loose with the facts. And it's long since past time that people stopped believing anything that was in Pauline Kael's ridiculous "Raising Kane." There was good and bad in both films, but both left me generally unsatisfied...it's just that RKO was more entertaining. Mank was certainly lovely to look at. And its portrayal of Marion Davies was excellent (the poor woman has been vilified for far too long). On the other hand anything would be preferable to the caricature that was Melanie Griffith (who I mostly hate) in RKO. But Mank was so incredibly mannered, with a Hollywood sheen that made it feel like it was going to slide off the screen and end up in a pool of varnish, that it was a tough go. And the multiple inventions for...whatever reason they felt they needed to invent things...were incredibly distracting. Now I need to re-watch Kane and get the bad taste out of my mouth.
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