A lightweight Hitchcock knockoff? No.
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 23 February 2019 15:09 (five years ago) link
I like at least two of the musicals better than Singin'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbzJtP75NqM
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 23 February 2019 15:10 (five years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgAmXb5UZlY&fbclid
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 23 February 2019 15:12 (five years ago) link
I should've known a Morbs-started poll thread would ultimately just be an opportunity to shit on things commoners like.
― Johnny Fever, Saturday, 23 February 2019 15:12 (five years ago) link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=nNUq4IAuzGU
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 23 February 2019 15:15 (five years ago) link
dude, it's just very clearly not what he did best.
Love Letters is not the Jamie Lee Curtis movie but a TV movie with Laura Linney, I'm just learning
― Josefa, Saturday, 23 February 2019 15:22 (five years ago) link
One of the innovators of American film.
― a Stalin Stale Ale for me, please (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 23 February 2019 15:23 (five years ago) link
I recently in quick succession bought Saturn 3 for myself and The Little Prince for my gf without realizing (at the time) that they shared a director or that the director in question was Donen.
― Choose Your Own Disaster (Old Lunch), Saturday, 23 February 2019 15:24 (five years ago) link
Two duds that just about finished him!
I've seen 11 of these. Really curious to see the Burton-Harrison gay dramedy sometime.
Made a lion comedy the same year as Singin'.
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 23 February 2019 15:30 (five years ago) link
Arabesque, beloved by PBS in the early nineties, has a bat shit NxNW rip where Gregory Peck does his best imitation of being on an acid trip.
― a Stalin Stale Ale for me, please (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 23 February 2019 15:31 (five years ago) link
so he made TWO NxNW ripoffs.
Have you seen any of the 3 Grant movies he did before Charade?
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 23 February 2019 15:36 (five years ago) link
I like Charade a lot and has more balletic movement than you're giving it credit for, particularly when Cary Grant's in action.
I can't pick one, actually, but Funny Face I'd watch today if I could.
― a Stalin Stale Ale for me, please (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 23 February 2019 15:36 (five years ago) link
Yes, Indiscreet, a dud. Reminds me of Renoir's own Ingrid picture: the rhythm of the thing stops so we can admire her in every frame.
― a Stalin Stale Ale for me, please (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 23 February 2019 15:37 (five years ago) link
oh GOD I'd no idea he directed Kiss Them for Me. I've endured it too.
― a Stalin Stale Ale for me, please (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 23 February 2019 15:38 (five years ago) link
I don't hate Charade; it's just fluff.
I thought about marking the ones co-credited to Gene Kelly. Obviously they had a symbiotic partnership, but it's significant that Kelly didn't get untracked as a solo filmmaker.
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 23 February 2019 15:43 (five years ago) link
I have a hard time imagining Grant and Jayne Mansfield in the same universe, let alone the same movie.
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 23 February 2019 15:46 (five years ago) link
That's what I mean. His titanic passivity in his late movies is also boredom.
― a Stalin Stale Ale for me, please (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 23 February 2019 15:47 (five years ago) link
that one is '57 though; not that late.
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 23 February 2019 15:51 (five years ago) link
exactly!
I haven't seen The Grass is Greener; the cover art is terrifying.
― a Stalin Stale Ale for me, please (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 23 February 2019 15:53 (five years ago) link
Even though Bedazzled seems like Cook & Moore's project as writers-performers, he helped them deliver the goods blissfully. That trampoline scene...
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 23 February 2019 16:02 (five years ago) link
Charade is a better Hitchcock movie than Topaz or Torn Curtain, but not otherwise.
Had to be Singin' in the Rain - I highly recommend the Peter Wollen/BFI book on it btw, tho' irrc Wollen doesn't take a particularly auteur-centric approach (he's very good on the centrality of dance - duh - to the Kelly/Donen films).
― Ward Fowler, Saturday, 23 February 2019 19:56 (five years ago) link
its hard to look past singing in the rain from any list but i think seven brides is the one for me
― cristiano ornaldo (darraghmac), Saturday, 23 February 2019 20:03 (five years ago) link
i rewatched some clips from the little prince a while back, that is really a strange movie. probably better appreciated by watching scenes on youtube than actually trying to sit through the whole thing -- bob fosse's scene as the snake is wonderful.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Saturday, 23 February 2019 23:10 (five years ago) link
Donen's NY Times obit has a touching tribute to his native Columbia, S.C.:
"I hated it and got out as fast as I could."
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, 25 February 2019 19:53 (five years ago) link
"Bedazzled" for me
― Carly Jae Vespen (Capitaine Jay Vee), Monday, 25 February 2019 19:58 (five years ago) link
As a comedy person, that might be the one that gives me the most pleasure, but the earlier musical stuff is landmark.
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, 25 February 2019 20:02 (five years ago) link
The one time I saw Donen speak was at a Q&A at a Lincoln Center retro in fall 2010 (I had to look that up)... It was conducted by the critic Scott Foundas, after a screening of Movie Movie (1978), which is a cute double-feature pastiche of Golden Boy and 42nd Street (George C Scott is quite funny in both halves; written by Larry Gelbart). It was a non-hit, but it probably got the most respect of Donen's last six movies (the rest of which cratered).
Anyway, it was unmemorable except for one moment. Donen was 86, but he seemed reasonably sharp for his age in his answers. Then he suddenly asked Foundas, "Excuse me, but this movie... It was after Singin' in the Rain, correct?"
The whole audience kinda sucked in air, and Foundas nodded somewhat calmly. An intimation of mortality.
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, 25 February 2019 20:12 (five years ago) link
Holy Shit, didn't know Donen directed the "Dancing On The Ceiling" video!
― a large tuna called “Justice” (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, 25 February 2019 20:25 (five years ago) link
yes, it's a riff on the Fred Astaire sequence in Royal Wedding, otherwise a minor film. Astaire's love interest is played by Churchill's daughter Sarah.
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, 25 February 2019 20:29 (five years ago) link
presumably Richie wanted to get the OG director
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, 25 February 2019 20:35 (five years ago) link
“[Gene Kelly and I] really worked as a team. We didn’t say, ‘I do this and you do that.’ No, not a bit. Even through rehearsing the numbers, when everything would really get complicated I would be with him. When there was real pressure to get a lot done in terms of rehearsal, I would rehearse in one hall and he would rehearse another number, but then we would switch and I would go supervise his number and he would come to do mine. So it really was a collaboration. There was no question about it.”
https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/in-memoriam-stanley-donen/
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 26 February 2019 16:52 (five years ago) link
If you're a fan of this director for the love of God do not ever watch Blame It on Rio
― Nhex, Tuesday, 26 February 2019 18:50 (five years ago) link
I have only seen Singin' in the Rain! wow! Love it though
― flappy bird, Tuesday, 26 February 2019 19:01 (five years ago) link
What an odd duck The Grass is Greener is. Loquacious, brittle, and improbable, it also benefits from Donen's long takes. Three of the four leads are miscast: Jean Simmons can't play a gin-soaked airhead, Deborah Kerr isn't Irene Dunne, and Cary Grant, subbing for Rex Harrison, plays a British stuffed shirt. Grant can't play Englishmen -- he's Cary Grant, no less and certainly more. Robert Mitchum, snappy in a tux, is almost in peak form, though; he and Grant should've made a dapper buddy comedy.
― Let's have sensible centrist armageddon (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 27 February 2019 00:39 (five years ago) link
obit roundup
https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6217-stanley-donen-s-movie-magic
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 27 February 2019 06:57 (five years ago) link
donen's kind of an interesting figure b/c he was around for the end of the heyday of the studio system, part of the MGM Freed unit etc., making some of the most well-regarded studio musicals ever.... but he was young enough to want to hop on the new wave bandwagon, taking cues from resnais and godard in his somewhat later films, like two for the road and the little prince, etc. so he's one of the few bridges between two modes of american filmmaking that are often expressed in terms of changing generations.
― affects breves telnet (Gummy Gummy), Saturday, 2 March 2019 19:47 (five years ago) link
and donen went a bit farther out on the new wave limb as, say, richard fleischer or robert wise, slightly older directors who likewise bridged eras and who kept apace with changing trends , but without making anything as flashy/odd as two for the road.
― affects breves telnet (Gummy Gummy), Saturday, 2 March 2019 19:49 (five years ago) link
he also seems like he was a hep cat, which wise and fleischer were not. which explains a fair bit.
If you're a fan of this director for the love of God do not ever watch Blame It on Rio.
fixed
― A is for (Aimless), Saturday, 2 March 2019 20:00 (five years ago) link
well, Donen was a decade younger than Wise and 7+ younger than Fleischer; he started at MGM when he was 19.
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 2 March 2019 23:49 (five years ago) link
right, i make that point ("slightly older directors") but he began directing at roughly the same time, late '40s and their careers all extended into the 1980s.
― affects breves telnet (Gummy Gummy), Sunday, 3 March 2019 00:04 (five years ago) link
right. I kinda glided over that, sorry. Didn't he date Elizabeth Taylor at one point? I'm sure he moved in fab circles.
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 3 March 2019 00:58 (five years ago) link
i've never heard that taylor story, though i wouldn't doubt it.
as someone in a long-term non-married relationship his multi-decade partnership w/ elaine may is very moving.
i remember as of maybe 15 years ago donen was making noise about wanting to direct another film but that never came to pass.
― affects breves telnet (Gummy Gummy), Sunday, 3 March 2019 18:51 (five years ago) link
i rewatched to for the road and basically liked it, although everything is a little bit too on the nose for me, including finney's stentorian performance.
eleanor bron and bill daniels make a very inventively annoying couple though i can see some people running for the exits b/c of it.
― affects breves telnet (Gummy Gummy), Sunday, 3 March 2019 18:53 (five years ago) link
*two
― affects breves telnet (Gummy Gummy), Sunday, 3 March 2019 18:54 (five years ago) link
he directed some of May's theatre work since the late '90s.
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 3 March 2019 18:54 (five years ago) link
did he do much theatre in general?
― affects breves telnet (Gummy Gummy), Sunday, 3 March 2019 18:56 (five years ago) link
Started there as a chorus boy; infamous '90s Broadway flop of The Red Shoes.
https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-production/the-red-shoes-4591
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 3 March 2019 19:23 (five years ago) link
To be clear, you're saying you were a chorus boy in The Red Shoes?
― A is for (Aimless), Monday, 4 March 2019 02:58 (five years ago) link
We regret to inform you that tonight Dr. Morbius has taken ill and will not be able to perform his role as a chorus boy in The Red Shoes.
― Theorbo Goes Wild (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 4 March 2019 03:03 (five years ago) link
Rewatched Bedazzled last night, still one of the saucier '60s comedies and the only pure movie expression of the Cook-Moore sensibility. Main flaws are the first couple "wish" sketches are OK rather than hilarious, but all the Pete-Dudley scenes have zip, and the guilt-ridden love scene in the car between Dud and Eleanor Bron is a scream, as is Cook playing the "saintly" cuckold. And then, of course, there are the B&W dueling pop stars -- "LOVE ME!" "I don't care" -- and the Leaping Order of Beryllians.
In the trailer, Donen is trumpeted only for his recent hits, Charade, Arabesque, and Two for the Road, I guess so no one went in expecting MGM numbers. Cook does work in a Seven Brides for Seven Brothers reference.
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Friday, 22 March 2019 16:59 (five years ago) link
"You fill me with inertia..."
― a large tuna called “Justice” (C. Grisso/McCain), Friday, 22 March 2019 17:01 (five years ago) link
I wonder if they had anyone particular in mind with that parody...
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Friday, 22 March 2019 17:04 (five years ago) link
have you seen the remake with Brendan Fraser and Elizabeth Hurley?
― flappy bird, Friday, 22 March 2019 17:07 (five years ago) link
When it came out I did. It wasn't a disgrace, and Fraser was good, but y'know, so-so. Harold Ramis does an interview on the DVD of the Donen original; obv a big Cook-Moore fan.
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Friday, 22 March 2019 17:08 (five years ago) link
Me too, I barely remember any of it. Bizarre that Fraser had a career as a leading man, however brief. I need to revisit Monkeybone.
― flappy bird, Friday, 22 March 2019 17:11 (five years ago) link
I love the original Bedazzled.
Fraser has a couple of funny bits in the remake, but the original is so obviously a Pete & Dud vehicle that you wonder why they bothered at all. And I remember being deeply unimpressed with Hurley's comic chops.
― Helel Cool J (Noodle Vague), Friday, 22 March 2019 17:35 (five years ago) link
"You fill me with inertia."
I was gonna cite this line.
― recriminations from the nitpicking woke (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 22 March 2019 17:43 (five years ago) link
i had forgotten P&D kept going as a team up til Moore's breakthrough to solo stardom. They hosted SNL in '76.
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Friday, 22 March 2019 18:10 (five years ago) link
The first Derek & Clive record didn’t come out until ‘76.
― steven, soda jerk (sic), Friday, 22 March 2019 18:20 (five years ago) link
dont think ive ever heard em
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Friday, 22 March 2019 18:22 (five years ago) link
Me neither. Only read about.
― Theorbo Goes Wild (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 22 March 2019 19:24 (five years ago) link
See how much of this you can stand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI8cVdbP73c
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 22 March 2019 21:34 (five years ago) link
absolutely do not attempt that
― steven, soda jerk (sic), Friday, 22 March 2019 22:13 (five years ago) link
(the first Derek & Clive LP, which is just a bunch of different tapes of them riffing for themselves, rather than a dedicated session of edgelording for an audience that wanted to hear them being "offensive", is good)
― steven, soda jerk (sic), Friday, 22 March 2019 22:16 (five years ago) link
What about the legendary crunchy frog bit?
― Theorbo Goes Wild (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 22 March 2019 22:40 (five years ago) link
^ the part where Derek falls through the bar is funny
― steven, soda jerk (sic), Friday, 22 March 2019 22:44 (five years ago) link
do you mean The Frog & Peach, Redd? They did that on SNL.
Shame we don't have a Cook-Moore thread. Not much Donen content here.
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Friday, 22 March 2019 22:55 (five years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.
― System, Tuesday, 9 April 2019 00:01 (five years ago) link
Indiscreet is a real drag in the first half, picks up a little when the worm turns
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 9 April 2019 02:17 (five years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.
― System, Wednesday, 10 April 2019 00:01 (five years ago) link
fn hate singing in the rain, gene kelly is such a sleazeball
― plax (ico), Wednesday, 10 April 2019 07:04 (five years ago) link
the dancing tho
― blokes you can't rust (sic), Wednesday, 10 April 2019 07:17 (five years ago) link
I'd like to object to the age gap between Audrey and Fred in Funny Face, or the script's cheap shots at Beats and philosophy, but I don't (much). Think pink.
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 26 June 2019 11:14 (four years ago) link
Like Silk Stockings the age gap undermines the credibility of the romance but i'm not watching those films for their realism so the casting just functions as another expression of artificiality i.e. yeah it doesn't bother me, i'm watching for the expressive aspects anyway
― Rory end to the lowenbrow (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 26 June 2019 11:46 (four years ago) link
i mean, he's the only Astaire they had.
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 26 June 2019 11:55 (four years ago) link
You think maybe it would have been better with Adele?
― If I were a POLL I’d be Zinging (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 26 June 2019 12:04 (four years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVC6nvXTt6s
― If I were a POLL I’d be Zinging (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 26 June 2019 12:06 (four years ago) link
Nowadays a Hollywood lead in his late 50s would look about half the age Astaire looks in those movies
― Rory end to the lowenbrow (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 26 June 2019 12:23 (four years ago) link
coulda Benjamin Buttoned him
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 26 June 2019 14:35 (four years ago) link
most pro-union musical?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w4mVycaC_o
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 8 September 2019 13:36 (four years ago) link
I wondered during the first 30 minutes of Two for the Road why i had found it so irritating 20+ years ago... then in the last 80 minutes i remembered why. It def has one of the more charming Audrey H performances, and Albert Finney is prickly and tumbledown, but there are way too many cutesy "matched cuts," Eleanor Bron and William Daniels (both normally delightful) are around about twice too long, and while there are some funny lines it lapses into becoming a Statement on Marriage. It's very pretty of course.
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 18:59 (four years ago) link
haven’t rewatched so still on your first impression
― Don’t Slander Meme (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 19:02 (four years ago) link