Ace in the POLL!! BILLY WILDER DIRECTS

cmon, A Foreign Affair can't be the BEST: John Lund.

Curtis & MM had allegedly had a thing years before SLIH.

Anything is possible. But are you sure he wasn't confusing her with someone else, like Yvonne De Carlo?

cmon, A Foreign Affair can't be the BEST: John Lund.

Not a single film that Crowe didnt defend in that hagiography.

i appreciate 123's energy and setting, but the humor is really stale to me.

I've never looked at the Crowe book. He annoys me.

Much as he obviously wanted it to be, that Crowe Wilder book is no Hitchcock/Truffaut. No Objects of Desire either.

It's more interesting for the anecdotes and observations he pulls out of a still-sharp Wilder, but even my contrarianism stops at the gates of Fedora and the remake of The Front Page.

Wazzabout Buddy Buddy?

I saw The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes in a beautiful 35mm print last night. Have to rate it an honorable miss (I think it might 'play shorter' if we had the full 5-episode 165-minute version, if we had it). Robert Stephens' excessive makeup took some getting used to, and while I like dopey sidekicks Colin Blakely's Watson began to grate after the first 30 mins. Good non-fanged Christopher Lee; nice brief work from Clive Revill as the ballet impresario (nothing like a protracted 1970 gay-ppanic sketch) and the old broad who played Queen Victoria.

despise that movie, but i'm v protective of watson. hardly the only movie to violate him but at least the guys directing nigel bruce towards banana peels didn't think they were so goddam clever.

Superb long feature on the Brackett-Wilder partnership: http://thedissolve.com/features/movie-of-the-week/635-charles-brackett-billy-wilder-and-the-rise-and-fal/

Just took a look and read the beginning. Wow, thanks for posting. Always wanted to know about that, looking forward to the publication of those Brackett memoirs.

http://image2.findagrave.com/photos250/photos/2004/292/6295551_109825082512.jpg

The guru has laid another egg.

Lemmon and Matthau planted close by, Marilyn about 50 yards away.

Nobody's perfect.

Joe E Brown's in Glendale

Double Indemnity... kind of a fake film noir, really? Sort of what High Noon is to non-watchers of westerns.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/double-indemnity

I'm sympathetic to claims that it's drab and uninteresting and once you get it the first time it doesn't keep resonating (and Kael was right about the other supporting actors, so bad they're unbelievable); but in the novel Phyllis and Walter aren't much crazy about each other either.

not my favorite noir. it's good but there is something perfunctory about it.

I think it's pretty damned good but a definite step below a lot of other classics (and even a bunch of films not considered to be classics.)

Stanwyck playing not-as-smart-as-he-thinks-he-is MacMurray holds my interest more than the Robinson scenes ... they're both repellent characters, but that doesn't make the proceedings any less noir

part of the problem is probably Raymond Chandler, who couldn't quite write a screenplay

it's certainly one of Wilder's best films.

Double Indemnity > High Noon

jeez Gary Cooper is a pretty cowgirl than Grace Kelly.

is High Noon really liked by non-fans of Westerns? i didn't know this! i thought the default Westerns for non-Westerns fans were the Spaghettis.

Confused here too, High Noon seems like a pretty hardcore Western to me

It's the kind picked as the favorite by people (eg Bill Clinton, ugh) who don't know from Budd Boetticher, Peckinpah, Anthony Mann et al.

morbs otm. shane's kinda like that also.

iirc Farber hates on High Noon for similar reasons

I don't hate the movie anymore than I hate DI, but if you stack them up against say My Darling Clementine and Out of the Past, respectively, you see what's what.

every time Brandon de Wilde said "SHAAAAAAAAANNE" I hoped he'd get stung by hornets.

Noel Murray reviews the new Blurays of Witness for the Prosecution and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes

http://thedissolve.com/reviews/938-witness-for-the-prosecution-the-private-life-of-sh/

Saw Fedora for the second time -- a really sincerely bitter funeral for Old Hollywood, side AA of Sunset Blvd. It'd have been claimed as a gay classic if he'd succeeded in casting Dunaway and Dietrich in the Keller and Knef roles.

Holden is so vital to making any of it work; Jose Ferrer very funny as the mice-and-monkey-fiddling cosmetic butcher.

Weirdest of all, Mario Adorf and Gottfried John showing up as a comic hustler hotelier and a strong-arm chauffeur. You can hear the German producers telling him, "Hey, hip to Fassbinder? Use these guys."

isn't Kevin Bozelka a fan?

he would be!

Did you dine at the Fedora restaurant afterwards, Morbius?

dont know it

OK, this was very good, maybe great, both a love letter to and exposé of Classic Hollywood, which he had to go to Germany to make because "the boys with the beards" had taken over. Recommended even if you are not a Friend of Fox.

i'm fine with Detweiler's rant bcz hey, he's talking about DePalma.

Detweiler? You mean "Dutch"?

btw Olive Films releases a Fedora BD on Oct 28.

Read about it.

Did you read about the dubbing of the actresses voices on Wikipedia?

*potential spoiler*

yes! halfway through I wondered "why does Knef sound like Keller? who's dubbing who?"

there is a great Lost Weekend gag in the Bugs Bunny cartoon Slick Hare.

review of the Brackett diaries, he didn't like many people

http://blog.vincekeenan.com/2015/01/book-ready-when-you-are-cb-charles.html

NYers can see both The Apartment and 1,2,3 in 35mm on Friday, which would be exhausting

http://www.bam.org/film/2015/black-and-white-scope

Fedora available on DVD.

like, for five months?

Kiss Me, Stupid Bluray out. The vile, smutty thing!