Ace in the POLL!! BILLY WILDER DIRECTS

i cant believe the witness for the prosecution hate on this thread

― Ron Polarik, PhD (and what), Tuesday, December 9, 2008 11:48 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark

but the correct answer is SABRINA, what the hell is wrong with you communists

nobody threw a bone to Five Graves to Cairo? shame on yall

I saw Jonathan Rosenbaum introduce Double Indemnity in Toronto last night (followed by Q&A afterwards). One of my dozen favourite films. Never read the novel, but he was describing the original ending, and does it ever sound preposterous. Apparently the Dietrichson house still stands in California. And the Pacific All Risk office where Norton makes a fool out of himself trying to intimidate Phyllis was designed like the Paramount offices--which made me wonder if Norton was modelled on a studio head whom Wilder thought a buffoon. (Which in turn made Fred MacMurray wonder if I wonder.)

Probably Sunset Blvd, at this point. Maybe that would change with re-viewings.
I actually enjoy Witness for the Prosecution.

you can buy A Foreign Affair from TCM now

yes!

Black market,
Cuckoo clocks and bangles

Seem to have read today that BW was considering using Marilyn Monroe for another project after Some Like It Hot but can't remember what that might have been.

Kiss Me, Stupid I guess

Irma la douce. Liz Taylor was also considered.

Oh yeah, look at that, thanks.

I think it's amusing that a pre-"Faster Pussycat" Tura Satana is in Ild.

It's gotta be Foreign Affair. Or the Lost Weekend. Or the first 20 mins of Sabrina. Love in the Afternoon is genuinely awful though.

i was pretty disappointed in 'ace in the hole' when i finally saw it. haven't watched any of these in a long time but 'the apartment' still stands out to me as the best one.

I couldn't get through One, Two, Three. Two votes for that ahead of Sunset Blvd. or Double Indemnity is some outstanding contrarianism.

xp def agree on both

Voted One, Two, Three for incredible fast-paced funny and believable performance of Cagney as a hectic executive and its images of post-war, pre-wall Berlin. Almost voted A Foreign Affair for reasons stated above. Not conscious contrarianism, just think these New World meets Old Europe scenarios stress his strengths and help him steer clear of schmaltz.

Recently remarked that Tony Curtis wrote a book about the making of Some Like It Hot, but a perfunctory perusal seemed to indicate that it mainly consisted of him making stuff up, mostly about Marilyn.

^^I think I read an excerpt from that in VF when it came out. Apparently he was rocking a serious irl boner during the boat seduction shoot.

Would have killed an ordinary man.

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.