like max
― velko, Sunday, 11 April 2010 22:42 (fourteen years ago) link
he's quite sexy in Trouble in Paradise.
― Throwing Muses are reuniting for my next orgasm! (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 11 April 2010 22:56 (fourteen years ago) link
Looks like the guy was married five times!
― A Century Of Elvin (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 11 April 2010 23:18 (fourteen years ago) link
max?
― Throwing Muses are reuniting for my next orgasm! (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 11 April 2010 23:22 (fourteen years ago) link
Are you imitating Tony Roberts in Annie Hall, Alfred?
― A Century Of Elvin (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 11 April 2010 23:48 (fourteen years ago) link
so apparently Warners has screwed up the cropping on The Best Years of Our Lives BR?
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/dvdcompare/bestyearsofourlives.htm
http://www.hollywood-elsewhere.com/2013/10/gregg-tolands-ghost-is-pissed-off/
― eclectic husbandry (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 31 October 2013 15:04 (ten years ago) link
ok, carry on.
― eclectic husbandry (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 31 October 2013 16:19 (ten years ago) link
Saw this doc the other night (not sure if I had before), intro'd by Mark Harris re his Five Came Back WW2-Hollywood book. Some amazing footage, apparently no fakery as with some contemporaneous efforts (like Huston's gritty, recreated San Pietro). One of Wyler's cameramen died on a bombing run. WW was unhappy about the inclusion of Their Royal Majesties near the end, partly cuz the Queen just wanted to talk to him about Mrs Miniver.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm1_D5crgPk
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 11 June 2014 14:13 (nine years ago) link
i keep forgetting you ppl don't give a shit abt anything but Best Years (which i saw again tonight)
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Friday, 13 June 2014 05:11 (nine years ago) link
I screened How To Steal A Million the other week. So much fun.
― Damnit Janet Weiss & The Riot Grrriel (C. Grisso/McCain), Friday, 13 June 2014 05:15 (nine years ago) link
(xpost) Roman Holiday is my favourite romantic comedy from the '50s.
― clemenza, Saturday, 14 June 2014 14:19 (nine years ago) link
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius)
who are you growling at now?
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 14 June 2014 14:36 (nine years ago) link
whoever's around
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 14 June 2014 14:47 (nine years ago) link
the solipsist quadrille
― no matter how crabby of a mood I’m in because of the New World Order (WilliamC), Saturday, 14 June 2014 14:56 (nine years ago) link
i just read a James Baldwin essay where he casually calls Best Years a "fantasy." I essentially agree, and it's why i consider it a pretty good film rather than a great one. (JB had no use for "socially concerned" liberal art in general.)
― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 29 September 2015 10:50 (eight years ago) link
did you finally read The Devil Finds Work?
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 29 September 2015 10:54 (eight years ago) link
no, i have it though; soon. That mention (along w/ his evisceration of Carmen Jones) is in Notes of a Native Son.
― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 29 September 2015 10:55 (eight years ago) link
It's been ages since I've seen it, but is Best Years "socially concerned" liberal art? The whole thing felt like a distinctly conservative melodrama to me, what with its vilifying of the anti-war guy and all.
I'm not a huge fan of the film, by the way. Some affecting moments--almost all of them courtesy of Harold Russell--but for a piece of socially concerned art of whatever affiliation, making light of March's alcoholism always struck me as quite powerfully dickish.
― The New Gay Sadness (cryptosicko), Tuesday, 29 September 2015 14:20 (eight years ago) link
putting any hint of Our Boys' suffering/trauma in a '46 Hollywood film counts as a lib move, yes
― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 29 September 2015 15:41 (eight years ago) link
My favorite Wyler films
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 14 August 2017 01:45 (six years ago) link
Is The Big Sleep on that list too?
― Lucas With The Lydian F (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 14 August 2017 02:43 (six years ago) link
I saw Detective Story a lot on TV in my teens, rewatched this morning. Like Dead End it's based on a Sidney Kingsley 'social realism' play (and just those two plays of his are remembered, for Wyler's movie versions). It's sort of a proto-Barney Miller as a tragedy, set in a NYPD detectives' room in one day, with Kirk Douglas as a Dirty Harry with a father complex at the center. Some clumsy speechifying for sure, but Wyler and the cinematographer Lee Garmes make it dynamic and dirty, and the ensemble cast has a lot of good and/or showy players -- Lee Grant as a shoplifter, Horace McMahon, William Bendix, and Joseph Wiseman as a psychotic burglar (he and his crony were gay in the Broadway version). Douglas melts down 2 or 3 times in the third act, and it's effective even if you chuckle at some of his over-the-top lines. With George Macready as an abortionist Kirk likes to beat up on.
― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Monday, 26 March 2018 16:07 (six years ago) link
is Mrs. Miniver really that bad? i watched The Little Foxes tonight and it was a boring mess, i have Mrs. Miniver because i'm trying to watch everything teresa wright was in.
― flappy bird, Thursday, 12 April 2018 04:38 (six years ago) link
hard to say, i liked TLF more; i mean Davis is more compelling than bleedin' Greer Garson
― the ignatius rock of ignorance (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 12 April 2018 06:42 (six years ago) link
― The New Gay Sadness (cryptosicko
eek, not otm. I agree with this: https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2017/07/the-best-years-of-our-lives/
― recriminations from the nitpicking woke (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 2 May 2019 20:59 (four years ago) link
Wuthering Heights playing in town tmrw, any good?Saw Toland shot it
― flappy bird, Monday, 20 January 2020 06:20 (four years ago) link
as long as you don't expect... the entire story
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, 20 January 2020 08:34 (four years ago) link
The Westerner is among the best, best-looking (dp Gregg Toland) and funniest of the classic Gary Cooper westerns. His bromance with Judge Roy Bean (Walter Brennan) starts off with them waking up entangled in bed the morning after, and ends with a gunfight in an empty auditorium meant for a Lily Langtry touring show. Cooper has a S/M fistfight with Forrest Tucker that anticipates The Big Country.
Fun that it was made the same year as The Letter.
― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 28 June 2020 15:01 (three years ago) link
Think that’s about to expire from Criterion
― Two Spocks Clash (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 28 June 2020 15:30 (three years ago) link
must be better than The Big Country, two and a half hour bore from the mid-50s with nothing going on, as if he has no idea what to do in the west
― flappy bird, Tuesday, 30 June 2020 06:26 (three years ago) link
The Westerner is a crisp 100m
― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 30 June 2020 12:34 (three years ago) link
Watched and loved that one right after it showed on the channel.
― Irritable Baal (WmC), Tuesday, 30 June 2020 13:38 (three years ago) link
The Heiress on Criterion Channel, and, boy, is it as masterful as ever. Use of deep focus, the unerring interior design, de Havilland's never coming across as gauche -- wow. And I still can't believe a Hollywood film from the late '40s allowed the park bench scene ("Too late, Mariah...").
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 4 September 2020 01:26 (three years ago) link
one of his best
― flappy bird, Friday, 4 September 2020 04:11 (three years ago) link
We watched The Little Foxes on TCM last night and thought it was pretty good. Always funny seeing such an evil, old movie.
The shot of Davis illuminated by the lamp in front of the window near the beginning was awesome. Apparently the cinematographer was the same as Citizen Kane.
The scene where (SPOILERS) Davis attempts to cause her husband's death by not helping him get his medication as he struggles up the stairs is really good.
― Jimi Buffett (PBKR), Monday, 18 January 2021 22:42 (three years ago) link