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Post by Moe Howard on Nov 17, 2022 17:53:10 GMT
I like this movie [Michael Clayton] quite a bit, but I'm a sucker for court room dramas, which is what this movie boils down to despite the movie being sans court room. is on TCM today (11/17) 10:00 PM Pacific.  |
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Post by cineclassics on Nov 18, 2022 2:38:00 GMT
I've been MIA the last week, as my wife and I just returned from the TCM Cruise. I watched quite a few of the classics while onboard and hope to provide a synopsis and perhaps share a few pictures from the cruise with you all soon.
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Post by Fading Fast on Nov 18, 2022 9:05:03 GMT
I've been MIA the last week, as my wife and I just returned from the TCM Cruise. I watched quite a few of the classics while onboard and hope to provide a synopsis and perhaps share a few pictures from the cruise with you all soon. |
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Post by dianedebuda on Nov 19, 2022 3:52:15 GMT
Again, from my ToDo list: Cutter's Way (1981). An Ivy League beach bum (Jeff Bridges) and a one-eyed, one-legged Vietnam veteran (John Heard) flush out a killer oilman.
I like Jeff Bridges quite a bit, but the best thing I can say is that it went well with taquitos and a margarita. Saw on imdb trivia that:
He should have chanced being sued...
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Post by cineclassics on Nov 19, 2022 21:10:27 GMT
Most recently on the TCM Cruise I watched the following films and these are in order of preference as well:
The Roaring Twenties
The Thin Man
Rio Bravo
Design for Living
Adam's Rib
Woman on the Run
The Palm Beach Story
Holiday
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Post by dianedebuda on Nov 20, 2022 3:14:52 GMT
And another knocked off the list: Everything I Have Is Yours (1952). Pregnancy forces one half of a married song-and-dance tem (Gower Champion, Marge Champion) to find a new Broadway partner (Monica Lewis).
Can't decide if the Champions just didn't have much in the way of acting chops or the script was just that dreadful. Gower was involved in his choreography and he shines when dancing. What I find interesting here is that Marge seems to be just going through the motions and not invoved in their joint routines, but turns it on when she's solo. Sadly, I find this just to be a musical with nothing particularly special about it.
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Post by mrminiver on Nov 20, 2022 10:24:52 GMT
I could not agree more. I love this movie and believe it gets better with multiple viewings as you see character nuances you (or at least I) missed the first few times. Not just Grant and Arthur, but also Mitchell, Hayworth, Rugman and Barthelmess give moving performances. I'm still astonished that I missed this one. I feel I dismissed it based on its title and thought I had seen it before. Confused it with other angel and dead guy films. Can't wait to watch this again. TM as usual is brilliant. |
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Post by Andrea Doria on Nov 23, 2022 19:37:15 GMT
I just watched the documentary on TCM about the automats in New York and Philadelphia. They were owned by Horn and Hardart and existed from about 1905 until around 1970.
I just loved this! It combined my love for nostalgia and old movies.
I was never actually in an automat, but I saw plenty of movie scenes set there. I never guessed how beautiful they were from the quick black and white clips.
The first time I came across the word was in a book I was reading while in my teens. A young man was being scorned because he invited a girl to dinner and took her to the automat. My ignorant brain changed the word to laundromat and I pictured a girl being taken to a laundromat and treated to cokes and candy bars from the vending machines while watching the front loaders go around. See what the old movies taught me? Of course my mistaken version was pretty funny.
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Post by Fading Fast on Nov 25, 2022 11:07:47 GMT
The Thing from Another World from 1951 with Kenneth Tobey, Margaret Sheridan, Douglas Spencer and Robert Cornthwaite
Today, to fully fully appreciate The Thing from Another World, it helps to understand that the sci-fi/horror-movie genre, at the time, was inchoate. It also helps to understand that era's political and cultural context: the free world had just defeated two empires bent on global domination and a new "Cold War" against another totalitarian nation had just started.
All that "film study" insight is interesting (maybe), but the best thing about The Thing from Another World is you can ignore all the egghead stuff and just enjoy the movie as a ripping good action tale.
Director Christian Nyby and uncredited co-writer and director Howard Hawks packed a lot of sci-fi, philosophy, low-budget special effects, action and, even, romance into this fast-moving ninety-minute picture.
At an Arctic military and scientific-research outpost, a spacecraft is discovered buried in the ice. When an attempt to uncover it destroys the craft, all that is salvaged is one believed-to-be-dead alien. The alien is brought back to the station where it's mistakenly thawed and, then, it goes on the attack.
The rest of the movie is the outpost trying to defend itself from the "monster." It's a perfect setup as the isolation of the base, including spotty radio communication with "headquarters," forces the captain of the small military force and the base's lead scientist to make decisions on the fly.
The military wants to destroy "the monster" as quickly as possible as military men are trained to kill existential threats. The scientists want to find a way to communicate with it as they are trained to spot opportunities to expand mankind's knowledge. It's not a stretch from there to see parallels to the, at the time, aborning Cold War.
As opposed to modern "message" movies, The Thing from Another World presents both sides of the argument quickly and reasonably fairly, which leaves you wanting to study the alien, but you don't want everyone to die trying.
It's a balanced view exposing the complexity of the decision: something today's agenda-driven filmmakers, despite all our modern "sophistication," rarely do.
The special effects - thermite bombs and electricity as weapons - were cool for the time. Today, despite feeling hokey, they also provide a neat look at 1950s technology.
Yet nothing matters in a movie if you don't care about the characters, so Hawks and team created several reasonably engaging ones. The captain of the military force, played by Kenneth Tobey, is in the mold of the square-jawed, courageous leader that ruled moviedom for several decades, but he brings enough self-doubt and modesty to have you rooting for him.
It doesn't hurt that Toby's character is also in the middle of a romance with one of the few women on the team's scientific staff, played by Margaret Sheridan with the smart sexiness you'd expect from a Hollywood-conceived woman working at an Arctic research base.
Her ability to simultaneously convey intelligence and prurience makes you wonder why Sheridan didn't have more of a career in movies.
Rounding out the leads are Douglas Spencer as a war-weary and humorously sarcastic news correspondent trying to get "the greatest story of our time" out to the public and Robert Cornthwaite as the conflicted head of the scientific research program.
The Thing from Another World raises questions of morals and ethics about alien lifeforms that have been debated by sci-fi movies and TV shows ever since, but it never loses sight of its primary mission to entertain.
So while it puts your brain to work a bit, you can also enjoy The Thing From Another World as simply a darn good action-adventure story. You really can't ask more of a sci-fi movie that, while dated in many ways, has also aged pretty well.
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Post by cmovieviewer on Nov 25, 2022 21:24:16 GMT
I just watched the documentary on TCM about the automats in New York and Philadelphia. They were owned by Horn and Hardart and existed from about 1905 until around 1970.
I just loved this! It combined my love for nostalgia and old movies.
I was never actually in an automat, but I saw plenty of movie scenes set there. I never guessed how beautiful they were from the quick black and white clips.
The first time I came across the word was in a book I was reading while in my teens. A young man was being scorned because he invited a girl to dinner and took her to the automat. My ignorant brain changed the word to laundromat and I pictured a girl being taken to a laundromat and treated to cokes and candy bars from the vending machines while watching the front loaders go around. See what the old movies taught me? Of course my mistaken version was pretty funny. I liked it very much as well. I also enjoyed Ben’s interview with the director that explained the background on how the film came about and how the celebrities and others got involved to share their recollections. A little sad that so many of them have passed away just since this film was made, but at least their memories were captured. |
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Post by cmovieviewer on Nov 27, 2022 6:28:17 GMT
I watched some of The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm. I say ‘some’ because TCM elected to show the film using the Cinerama ‘SmileBox’ format and I found it difficult to watch. Here is an example from the opening:  Later on in the evening there was a documentary about the making of the film where the same restored scene was shown using a conventional letterbox:  The intention of the SmileBox format is to simulate what it is like to watch the film in a Cinerama theater. But for me, I think this format tends to stretch and distort the outer edges of the image. It is especially noticeable whenever the camera pans horizontally. Personally I would have preferred to watch the film in the standard letterbox format. Following the documentary, TCM used Smilebox with How the West Was Won. The restored version of HTWWW has been shown in the past using a regular letterbox, so perhaps sometime in the future The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm will be shown with a regular letterbox as well. I do appreciate TCM presenting the new version of The Brothers Grimm, so I don’t want to be too critical. |
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Post by Fading Fast on Nov 29, 2022 14:02:47 GMT
The House of Mirth from 2000 with Gillian Anderson, Eric Stoltz, Dan Aykroyd and Laura Linney
Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth is one of the great American novels of the twentieth century, but its inside-baseball look at the social machination of the upper crust of fin de siècle New York society, where a slight head nod can carry great meaning, is hard to translate to the screen.
Director Terence Davies' version of The House of Mirth takes too long to kick into gear, but for those who stay with it, the second half, finally, catches some of the spirited dialogue, searing social commentary and emotional power of the novel.
Oversimplifying, The House of Mirth is the story of a young beautiful complex and conflicted woman, Lily Bart, who craves the acceptance and luxury of the upper class society of which she lives on the margin. Yet her moral code, which has much to admire and some elements to question, so warps her decision making at times that she becomes her own worst enemy.
The choice of Gillian Anderson, a nice looking actress, to play Lily Bart is an odd one as one of Bart's defining features is her arresting beauty. It's the gift that opens doors for on-the-edge-of-society Bart, but it's also an asset that she senselessly squanders.
If you didn't know all that coming into the movie, Anderson's casting would only confuse a viewer. That's just one of several reasons why, to appreciate Davies' movie, one needs to have read the book first as the story is too complex and nuanced for even a long movie to fully present.
But if you have read the novel and if you sit through the slow start - and, today, can endure the diminishing quality of the film print - there is much in the movie to enjoy, including its beautiful settings, its talented actors and Wharton's piercing dialogue.
The costumes, on-location footage, period details and architecture take you back over a hundred years to the world of the very rich. It's a world where everything physical is heavy and studied, much like the unwritten but restricting rules of this rarified society.
While miscast physically, Anderson delivers an engaging performance as Miss Bart, which requires her showing a range of emotions through facial expression and body English as what was said in that rule-bound society was often quite restricted.
Eric Stoltz is equally impressive as one of Anderson's love interests and her only confidant. The surprise in the cast, though, is Dan Aykroyd as Gus Trenor. He delivers a powerful performance as a man who knows the rules of "society" and is willing to enforce them harshly when he feels he's been deceived.
Laura Linney is also outstanding playing the vicious leader of her insular world, as she, like her husband Aykroyd, plays for keeps in this brutal game of societal chess.
There are several other outstanding performances including Anthony LaPaglia's. His, in particular, deserves note as he plays the outsider, a Jew, trying to break into this very Waspy "society" with a smart balance of aggression and discretion.
LaPaglia's scenes with Anderson capture the insight and power of Wharton's writing as LaPaglia's character sees the entire social game for exactly what it is and tries, time and again, to get Anderson, who also sees it, but can't step outside of it, to make smart decisions for herself.
Despite being about an exclusive and tiny sleeve of the population, The House of Mirth still holds timeless and universal lessons about morality, peer pressure, sexual relations and societal rules and conceits. Plus it's just a heck of a good story with a complex and flawed heroine you can't help rooting for.
The House of Mirth, the movie, falls well short of the book, but as a post-read amusement, it's a worthy effort with impressive acting and period details. It can be enjoyed as we wait for the still-to-be-made definitive movie version of Wharton's classic. |
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Post by cineclassics on Nov 29, 2022 22:44:53 GMT
I don't have much time to write a thorough review but I recently watched 1948's Letter from an Unknown Woman. This was a powerfully emotional film. While I haven't seen all of Joan Fontaine's filmography, it's hard to imagine she could top this performance. This is a hardhitting melodrama, the likes of which Hollywood just doesn't make anymore.
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Post by dianedebuda on Nov 30, 2022 1:53:52 GMT
I don't have much time to write a thorough review but I recently watched 1948's Letter from an Unknown Woman. This was a powerfully emotional film. While I haven't seen all of Joan Fontaine's filmography, it's hard to imagine she could top this performance. This is a hardhitting melodrama, the likes of which Hollywood just doesn't make anymore. |
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Post by topbilled on Nov 30, 2022 13:57:00 GMT
I don't have much time to write a thorough review but I recently watched 1948's Letter from an Unknown Woman. This was a powerfully emotional film. While I haven't seen all of Joan Fontaine's filmography, it's hard to imagine she could top this performance. This is a hardhitting melodrama, the likes of which Hollywood just doesn't make anymore. |
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