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Post by berkley on Jan 28, 2023 1:58:52 GMT -5
I loved the original Jesus Christ Superstar album when I was a kid in the early 1970s but have never heard any of Andrew Lloyd Webber's other musicals all the way through, whether in album form or in the stage or film versions. I have heard a few isolated tunes that sounded nice, though - for example, Another Suitcase and Another Town from Evita, or the main theme from Phantom. I'm sure I'll get around to hearing or watching that one and probably Phantom one of these days. Not sure about Madonna in Evita, that might be one reason why I never got around to seeing that one.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 30, 2023 17:08:44 GMT -5
Rewatched the 1923 version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame starring Lon Chaney and Patsy Ruth Miller as Quasimodo and Esmeralda. Obviously silent movies are almost and entirely different ballgame from talkies and I hadn't seen this one in a long long time. This was a very big and expensive film from Universal, a studio that was known to be pretty cheap. The look of the film is outstanding. The sets were huge and very well done. They did a lot of filming at night rather than putting a filter on the camera and that was a good effect. The film is great as long as Chaney or Miller are on screen. Chaney is simply amazing as Quasimodo, being able to really convey incredible emotion without sound and while covered in amazing amounts of make-up. And his athleticism is just insane with the amount of braces and padding that he wore. Miller quite lovely as Esmeralda. At only 19 years of age and with very little experience she was well able to hold the screen. Apparently Chaney worked with her on her performance much more than titular director Wallace Worsley. The problem really comes when neither of these two are on the screen. The rest of the cast just isn't interesting enough to hold ones attention. Norman Kerry is particularly uninteresting as Phoebus. One wonders what it would be like to actually be able to see the actual original film. There is not a 35mm version in existence and the movie has been sourced from 16mm versions that were sold for home viewing. It's not quite known, because there isn't an editors log in existence, but it's presumed that there are at least a few lost scenes.
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Post by Hoosier X on Feb 1, 2023 0:32:28 GMT -5
I’m watching Lover Come Back (1961).
I love Doris Day. But she made some really bad movies. And this is one of them.
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Post by berkley on Feb 1, 2023 1:03:40 GMT -5
I’m watching Lover Come Back (1961). I love Doris Day. But she made some really bad movies. And this is one of them.
I don't have a good impression of her, but it's more to do with the squeaky clean image than her look or her singing. Also, I've never really liked Rock Hudson much and many of her most successful movies were done with him. I love the song Que Sera Sera, though, as cheesy as it may seem.
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Post by berkley on Feb 1, 2023 1:21:43 GMT -5
watched The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), mostly for the Ray Harryhausen Beast, a dinosaur, or "prehistoric monster" as they call him in the movie; but as it turned out, I liked the two leads as well, Paul Christopher and Paula Raymond. And a bonus to see Lee Van Cleef as the army sniper who finally shoots and kills the Beast with a radioactive bullet (or something) near the end. Based on a Ray Bradbury story, but very loosely, though they do at least include a brief lighthouse scene. One of those movies that makes you wonder how such a situation would be handled if it really happened today - I think not at all like in the film. A fortuitously resurrected dinosaur would be such a precious scientific specimen, the authorities would evacuate the entire city rather that trying to kill it.
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Post by Hoosier X on Feb 1, 2023 1:34:58 GMT -5
I’m watching Lover Come Back (1961). I love Doris Day. But she made some really bad movies. And this is one of them.
I don't have a good impression of her, but it's more to do with the squeaky clean image than her look or her singing. Also, I've never really liked Rock Hudson much and many of her most successful movies were done with him. I love the song Que Sera Sera, though, as cheesy as it may seem.
Pillow Talk is really awful too. The Doris Day movies I like are: Calamity Jane Julie Midnight Lace The Man Who Knew Too Much The Glass-Bottom Boat
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Post by codystarbuck on Feb 1, 2023 12:41:04 GMT -5
I agree on Lover Come Back, but don't think Pillow Talk is bad. For my money, the best of the Doris day/Rock Hudson movies is Send Me No Flowers. Tony Randall was the reason to watch these things, anyway (which is why he steals the film in his cameo for Down With Love).
The Glass-Bottom Boat is a great one, directed by Frank Tashlin, who excelled at screwball comedies (thanks to his background directing Looney Tunes cartoons). He also directed The Girl Can't Help It, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter; and, for my money, the best of Jerry Lewis' solo movies (The Geisha Boy, Who;s Minding the Store, Cinderfella, The Disorderly Orderly).
Rock I like better in Man's Favorite Sport, with Paula Prentice, directed by Howard Hawks. It also features Aquaman, himself, Norman Alden, as a con artist Native American, who does the Tonto routine for the tourists, but drops it with Rock.
It's not the greatest film in the world, but I have a sentimental spot for With Six You Get Eggroll, with Doris Day. Some amusing spots and it has some real heart, at the center of things.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 4, 2023 8:28:46 GMT -5
Released thirty years ago today, directed by Harold Ramis: You know the plot, but a recap never hurts: Phil Connors (Bill Murray) is a TV weatherman covering the annual Groundhog Day event in Pennsylvania, but he gets stuck in his own personal time loop, which forces him to repeat the same day again and again. And again… Okay, I’ve never understood how, in any work of fiction, a person can be stuck in a time loop that only affects them. If they’re experiencing the same day again and again, then shouldn’t everyone be experiencing it? If somehow a time loop affects just one person, what are the people around him experiencing? Best not to think too hard about it, eh? The Star Trek: TNG episode “Cause and Effect” at least had everyone caught in the time loop. That aside, Groundhog Day is a fun comedy, which makes good use of the premise - and it does feature some LOL moments, but also some poignant ones.
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Post by Hoosier X on Feb 4, 2023 11:56:23 GMT -5
A couple of nights ago, I watched Send Ne No Flowers, with Doris Day and Rock Hudson.
I liked it a lot better than Pillow Talk and Lover Come Back.
The great supporting cast includes Tony Randall (of course), Clint Walker, Edward Andrews and Paul Lynde.
Paul Lynde’s scenes are especially funny.
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Post by Hoosier X on Feb 4, 2023 11:58:15 GMT -5
And then last night, I watched Killdozer! Which is very amusing, mostly because the actors, which include Clint Walker, Neville Brand and Robert Urich, take it so seriously.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 4, 2023 17:31:36 GMT -5
Random Golden Age of Hollywood musings:
As I watch more movies with Eleanor Powell dancing in them, I'm amazed just how great she was. I just saw Broadway Melody of 1940 which paired her with Fred Astaire, and much as his films with Ginger Rogers will always be my sentimental favorites (the onscreen chemistry is unmistakable), Eleanor truly seems as virtuosic a dancer as Fred. And Fred apparently felt the same, to a fault so to speak, once saying she was "a bit too powerful for me".
Speaking of Ginger, I've really grown to appreciate her non-dancing roles as a leading comedic actress, she had a wonderful career well beyond those dancing classics with Astaire.
Also on a random note, anybody remember the hilarious deadpan singing performances in various roles by the actress Virginia O'Brien (like in the Marx Brothers film The Big Store)? She cracks me up every time, it was a brilliant bit.
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Post by codystarbuck on Feb 4, 2023 17:31:45 GMT -5
And then last night, I watched Killdozer! Which is very amusing, mostly because the actors, which include Clint Walker, Neville Brand and Robert Urich, take it so seriously. Hey, killer animated heavy machinery is serious business! Still remember watching that in prime time, when it debuted, on ABC. Can't be a Richard Matheson teleplay.
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Post by berkley on Feb 5, 2023 2:02:49 GMT -5
Random Golden Age of Hollywood musings: As I watch more movies with Eleanor Powell dancing in them, I'm amazed just how great she was. I just saw Broadway Melody of 1940 which paired her with Fred Astaire, and much as his films with Ginger Rogers will always be my sentimental favorites (the onscreen chemistry is unmistakable), Eleanor truly seems as virtuosic a dancer as Fred. And Fred apparently felt the same, to a fault so to speak, once saying she was "a bit too powerful for me". Speaking of Ginger, I've really grown to appreciate her non-dancing roles as a leading comedic actress, she had a wonderful career well beyond those dancing classics with Astaire. Also on a random note, anybody remember the hilarious deadpan singing performances in various roles by the actress Virginia O'Brien (like in the Marx Brothers film The Big Store)? She cracks me up every time, it was a brilliant bit.
I liked all the Broadway Melody movies as a kid and inspired by the Favourite Movie of Year X thread, I've recently started watching a few things from the 1930s and 1940s, along with the 1950s, the decade I was already concentrating on, so if I can find the Broadway Melody movies I think I'll watch them again, along with some stuff I haven't seen yet (e.g. the Astaire/Rogers films).
The non-dancing Ginger Rogers movie I remember best is the one she did with Cary Grant ... Monkey Business (had to look up the title). The dancing ones, 42nd Street and Gold Diggers. I'll probably watch those again soon, now that I'm getting in the mood for this era.
Don't think I've seen The Big Store, will add that to my list.
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Post by berkley on Feb 5, 2023 2:23:32 GMT -5
Been watching so many old movies the last few months it's hard to list them all, let alone talk about them in depth, but the one that's made the biggest impression the last few weeks is Kurosawa's Ikiru (1952): basic premise, if you don't know already, is a dying man trying to find some meaning to life in his last few months. This sounds like a depressing subject and it does get pretty deep and emotional but it's also much more playful and even comical at times than I had expected - one of the best and most true to life drunk scenes I can remember, for example (for those who have seen the film, I'm thinking more of the wake at the end than of the earlier sequence with the protagonist and the writer on a spree). Also some really, really good use of music (especially during the aforementioned spree) - in fact, some of the best I've ever seen/heard in movies, in terms both of being good in itself and of how it fit in with the story and its underlying themes.
In one way I'm sorry I put off seeing this for so many years as I did, but in another I'm glad I waited until now because it's so good to 'discover' something this good: for some reason - mainly, I suppose, the haphazard nature of my movie watching and general knowledge - I hadn't been aware until quite recently of this very famous Kurosawa film that routinely makes almost every 'Greatest of all time' list you'll find out there. Speaking of which (lists, I mean), I only the other night saw Martin Scorcese's "39 foreign films every young film-maker should see', so now I have a bunch more to look for.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 8, 2023 9:10:58 GMT -5
Blackbeard’s Ghost, directed by Robert Stevenson, was released 55 years ago today: Dean Jones, perhaps history’s most underrated actor (IMO), plays a high school coach, Steve Walker, who inadvertently resurrects the ghost of Blackbeard, forcing the two into a most inconvenient pact, at a time when Walker has a lot to contend with. This appeared to get a regular airing here in the UK, either at Christmas or Easter. I understand reviews of it have been mixed. Personally, I find it a lot of fun. There was a comicbook adaptation:
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