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Post by topbilled on Feb 18, 2024 22:15:47 GMT
I am glad you had a chance to watch LIFE FOR RUTH, Andrea...and I appreciate the comparison you made between the mother in this story with the one in THREE ON A MATCH.
I suppose it might have been different for Janet Munro's character to go back to her husband, if they had other children besides Ruth...since she wouldn't want to break up the family. But in this case, Ruth was the first born and so-far only child for them...which means she will sacrifice part of her own belief system to reconcile with him, which seems wrong.
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Post by Fading Fast on Feb 22, 2024 11:01:28 GMT
Assault on Precinct 13 from 1976 with Austin Stoker, Laurie Zimmer, Darwin Joston and Tony Burton
Assault on Precinct 13 is a good movie because it doesn't try to be more than it is: a low-budget film about a Los Angeles gang's assault on an almost-closed police precinct. It's an action film with a few characters and no real message, but it's entertaining as heck.
Director, writer and the composer of the movie’s soundtrack John Carpenter kept it simple. It opens with the LA Police killing several gang members in an ambush that turned into a turkey shoot. Surviving gang members swear a blood oath of revenge.
At the same time, a just-promoted police lieutenant is assigned to "command," for the evening, a police precinct that is all but shut down. When he takes over, it's just him, two secretaries and some scattered furniture, files and other detritus.
After a man's young daughter is killed by the "blood oath" gang, the man shoots one of the gang members. Stunned from it all, he runs into the precinct for protection. Also arriving at the station is a prison bus with a few cops and prisoners looking for a police doctor.
That's the set up that leads to the first gang attack on the precinct. Using guns with silencers, they kill the cops from the prison bus, one of the prisoners and one of the secretaries, while shooting the place up and then attempting their first raid.
The police lieutenant, played by Austin Stoker, along with the surviving secretary, played by Laurie Zimmer, and two of the prisoners from the bus, played by Darwin Joston and Tony Burton, unhandcuffed by Stoker, hold off the gang with the few guns they have.
The gang retreats into the perimeter's shadow while Stoker and his "team" access the body strewn and shot-up precinct. With little amo left, Burton tries to escape through the sewer to get help, leaving the remaining three to defend the precinct.
There is incredible tension now as Stoker and his tiny team see a large number of gang members hiding in and behind the bushes and trees just across the street. The gang doesn't know it, but it greatly outnumbers Stoker's small and under-armed force.
The final assault has Stoker, Zimmer and Johnson hold up in the basement with an audacious plan for survival. It's a heck of a battle made better because the small budget and no CGI gives it a realism lacking in today's action movies.
We don't learn a lot about any of the characters. Stoker, the police lieutenant, proves to be a quick-on-his-feet thinker and Zimmer is an impressively cool woman who fights shoulder to shoulder with the men.
Joston, who is a convicted killer, is a very able fighter and team player, which makes you wonder why this smart, capable and seemingly loyal man had committed murder. Other than the never explored sexual tension that develops between him and Zimmer, that's it.
The movie works because, like the characters involved, we're just thrown in the middle of an extreme situation and respond as the characters do. They don't know much about each other, but they work together because they want to survive.
Stoker is excellent playing the officer whose first command assignment becomes a fight to the death. Joston is good, too, as the convicted killer who seems to relish having a chance to fight for his life even if he knows nothing will really change for him.
Zimmer is outstanding as a quiet female hero. She often looks scared, but never wavers in battle nor does she boast. She's more impressive than today's, often, swaggering feminist heroes as she's a realistic character. It's a shame she had a short acting career
As hard as it is to believe, just like today, the country appeared to be ripping appart at its seams in the 1970s. Then it was crumbling inner cities, gang violences, drugs and a breakdown of the traditional culture, but it felt very real, prompting movies like this.
For modern audiences, Assault on Precinct 13 is time travel to that challenging era as you sense the cultural and social breakdown even if it isn't explained. Plus, it's just a darn good action-adventure picture from a time before they became cartoonish.
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Post by intrepid37 on Feb 22, 2024 17:16:16 GMT
Assault on Precinct 13 is a great cult movie - kind of a combination of Rio Bravo and Night of the Living Dead.
Fun.
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nickandnora34
Junior Member
Just a grease spot on the L&N
Posts: 77
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Post by nickandnora34 on Feb 23, 2024 1:14:32 GMT
Bonjour Tristesse (1958): no thanks.
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Post by intrepid37 on Feb 23, 2024 13:26:53 GMT
I just watched His Girl Friday as I'm now having a boo at the films of Rosalind Russell (who I have recently developed a fixation upon).
I could have watched it from a TCM broadcast - and recorded it to DVD-R for my home collection, but I elected to borrow the disc from my public library.
This is always the case when I copy a film for my collection as I have a strong dislike of screen bugs. It's why I don't bother copying anything from normal TV broadcasts anymore - they all use ever-present screen bugs now. TCM is the least of the offenders as it limits the presence of the screen bug to a fairly minimal duration - for 30 seconds every 20 minutes throughout a movie. I am sorry they've chosen to embolden the bug to a greater degree than it used to be since the big change last year, but for a collector on a budget such as myself - well, sometimes beggars can't be choosers, and that's that.
To my annoyance, the disc I borrowed from the library had a screen bug present throughout the entire film! This has never been the case before. The bug was very faint - much less eye-capturing than TCM's - but it was always there.
I'm thinking I may replace this in my collection with a TCM version the next time it's run so that I'll have a copy with only a part-time bug.
But I'm wondering - does TCM also have the DVD's bug ever-present?
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Post by Fading Fast on Mar 1, 2024 12:50:12 GMT
Butterflies Are Free from 1972 with Edward Albert, Goldie Hawn and Eileen Heckart
Stagey, contrived and dipped in 1970s flower-power gobbledigook, Butterflies Are Free is all those things, yet still enjoyable, entertaining and, at times, emotionally moving owing to smart writing and three outstanding performances.
Edward Albert plays a young blind man who has taken his first big step toward independence from his overprotective and, often, overbearing mother by moving into an apartment in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco.
Blind or not, he gets to realize every young man's dream when his free-spirited and, more importantly, free-love neighbor turns out to be blonde and cute Goldie Hawn.
It takes a bit to unfold, but everyone is fighting his or her own demons and challenges. Albert's is the obvious and noted attempt at independence as he wants to become a singer songwriter. He fights hard to not define himself, or let others define him, by his blindness.
Hawn appears all happy hippy-dippy, but from her six-day marriage to her "I'm free" speechmaking, we see she's afraid of rejection, so she never gives anyone the chance to get close. She's an outwardly happy, inwardly lonely person - tears of the clown and such.
Albert's mom, played by Eileen Heckart, comes off as a snobby, domineering mom whom you will not like at first. Yet underneath her hard shell, she's a mother who feels guilty and heartbroken over her son having been born blind.
She's handled it poorly, but she wants what is good for her son. Unfortunately, her good intentions have warped into an overprotectiveness that won't allow him to go through the normal emotional ups and downs all young adults have to on the path to maturity.
She's passive aggressive with her son and he is sarcastic toward her. Those appear to be well-established relationship grooves that will be challenged as they each learn a bit more about the other, mainly through change-agent Hawn.
That's the set up as these three smash into each other in a run-down San Francisco apartment. Hawn helps to draw Albert out into the world and gives him his second sexual adventure. Whatever happens with them, he needs to experience life.
Hawn, at first the teacher in the relationship, begins to learn something about herself when, later, Albert makes her see the downside to her "I'm free" philosophy. It's the reality crash of the free-love movement writ small.
The surprise in all this is Heckart. It takes Hawn, whom Heckart, of course, doesn't like, to show her that her son needs to live his own life. But Heckart scores her own points when she enlightens Hawn to some of the real challenges of being blind.
Nobody's initial ideological framework or emotional walls withstands the verbal bombs they throw at each other. By the end, everyone has grown and your opinion of all three will change, mainly for the better.
The fun in all this, though, is how it gets there. Director Milton Katselas didn't stray far from the story's stage-play roots. Almost all the action in this very talky movie takes place on one set - Albert's ramshackled apartment, which becomes a fun fourth character.
The movie itself feels more like a theater experience with Hawn and Heckart "popping" in on Albert again and again. Hawn and Heckart's initial meeting wonderfully takes place while Hawn is still in her underwear after a night of shagging Albert.
The performances are uniformly impressive. Albert, quite believably, plays a blind man, while Hawn is in her sweet spot playing a ditzy kindhearted blonde. It was practically her acting brand back then.
It's Heckart, though, she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance here, who gives the movie its necessary friction. She convincingly goes from unlikable to sympathetic in a slow arc that catches you by surprise.
Today, the movie's San Francisco hippie culture with its wild clothes and period music - Albert's music is folk-singer style - is a time capsule. The few on-location street scenes catch Haight Ashbury toward the end of its iconic flower-power moment.
Butterflies Are Free, despite being contrived as heck and dated in ways, is still a moving and entertaining picture with something surprisingly relevant to say about handicaps, mother-son relationships and commitment. Plus, it has the era's crazy hippy culture on full display.
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Post by topbilled on Mar 1, 2024 13:14:53 GMT
I just watched His Girl Friday as I'm now having a boo at the films of Rosalind Russell (who I have recently developed a fixation upon).
I could have watched it from a TCM broadcast - and recorded it to DVD-R for my home collection, but I elected to borrow the disc from my public library.
This is always the case when I copy a film for my collection as I have a strong dislike of screen bugs. It's why I don't bother copying anything from normal TV broadcasts anymore - they all use ever-present screen bugs now. TCM is the least of the offenders as it limits the presence of the screen bug to a fairly minimal duration - for 30 seconds every 20 minutes throughout a movie. I am sorry they've chosen to embolden the bug to a greater degree than it used to be since the big change last year, but for a collector on a budget such as myself - well, sometimes beggars can't be choosers, and that's that.
To my annoyance, the disc I borrowed from the library had a screen bug present throughout the entire film! This has never been the case before. The bug was very faint - much less eye-capturing than TCM's - but it was always there.
I'm thinking I may replace this in my collection with a TCM version the next time it's run so that I'll have a copy with only a part-time bug.
But I'm wondering - does TCM also have the DVD's bug ever-present? HIS GIRL FRIDAY is in the public domain...so chances are, your library bough a cheap public domain copy where the manufacturer was free to stamp its logo on the film. This may be a time when you save up to buy the nicely restored print from Criterion, as that has no such logos.
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Post by topbilled on Mar 1, 2024 13:33:05 GMT
Butterflies Are Free from 1972 with Edward Albert, Goldie Hawn and Eileen Heckart
Stagey, contrived and dipped in 1970s flower-power gobbledigook, Butterflies Are Free is all those things, yet still enjoyable, entertaining and, at times, emotionally moving owing to smart writing and three outstanding performances.
The play was wildly successful and ran for over 1100 performances on Broadway from late 1969 until mid 1972. The original cast included Heckart with Kier Dullea and Blythe Danner. Danner (and her replacements) didn't have box office clout, and it's understandable why the filmmakers gave the role to Hawn, since she'd won an Oscar for CACTUS FLOWER.
My guess is that Dullea didn't get the chance to transfer his performance to the screen because he was older than Edward Albert and would not photograph so youthfully...and because he was too identified in movies with his role in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.
Heckart and Danner left the Broadway production in 1970. Heckart was replaced in the role of the mother by Rosemary Murphy, who was then replaced by Gloria Swanson. Danner was replaced by Kathleen Miller, followed by Pamela Bellwood. Dullea was the original cast member who stayed the longest, from the opening night in 1969 until early 1972, when he was replaced by Dirk Benedict.
While the first production was still running on Broadway, there was a touring production across the country from 1970 to 1971. The road version starred Eve Arden as the mother, who was eventually replaced by Gloria Swanson, before Swanson replaced Murphy on Broadway.
I do agree that Heckart was perfect in the role of the mother. She nailed the part, and I am sure that Murphy, Swanson and Arden were all highly competent, but probably put slightly different spins on it.
Incidentally, the 1972 movie adaptation was filmed between September and November 1971. That was right when Swanson had taken over on Broadway. Perhaps Murphy quit when she didn't get hired for the movie, passed over in favor of Heckart. The movie did not hit screens until July 1972, the same week the Broadway production finally closed. Often the producers of hit Broadway shows had contract clauses that prevented the movie adaptations from opening in theaters until the Broadway run had finished, because they did not want their live show to compete with the movie.
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Post by BunnyWhit on Mar 2, 2024 0:57:06 GMT
I do agree that Heckart was perfect in the role of the mother. She nailed the part, and I am sure that Murphy, Swanson and Arden were all highly competent, but probably put slightly different spins on it.
My thoughts exactly. Heckart is my favorite part of the entire film. Her Oscar was well-deserved.
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Post by Fading Fast on Mar 5, 2024 16:13:01 GMT
The V.I.P.s from 1963 with Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Louis Jourdan, Rod Taylor, Maggie Smith, Margaret Rutherford, Orson Welles and Elsa Martinelli
At his best, Terence Rattigan wrote plays and screenplays exposing many of the hypocritical aspects of English "fair play," while also exploring the emotional damage done by the surface equanimity demanded of England's middle and upper classes.
Even not as his best, as in The V.I.P.s, screenwriter Rattigan still scores some direct hits on those hypocrisies and suppressed emotions as the full force of the 1960s had yet to completely do away with the English "stiff upper lip" Rattigan's works assail.
In The V.I.P.s, Rattigan "traps" a bunch of socialites, dignitaries and high-profile businessmen in a fog-bound Heathrow. He then tells several somewhat intertwined melodramatic tales showing all the struggles these much-envied people have in life.
The main storyline has Elizabeth Taylor playing a well-known socialite married to Richard Burton playing a successful tycoon. Despite Burton lavishing Taylor with luxuries, she feels unneeded and is planning to leave him for an aging playboy, played by Louis Jourdan.
Burton, used to getting his way, spends the movie trying to understand why his adored wife would leave him for a "gigolo," while Jourdan spends the movie trying to keep Taylor from going back to Burton.
It plays particularly well if you are familiar with Burton and Taylor's very public real-life romantic travails that saw them marry and divorce twice.
Orson Welles plays an independent filmmaker who has to get out of England by the end of day or face a massive English tax bill, something his wily business manager is trying to find another way around.
Welles is also traveling, movie mogul like, with his new "discovery" played by Elsa Martinelli - she's young, pretty and wants to star in his next movie. We all get what is going on here.
Rod Taylor plays a CEO fighting to save his tractor company from a hostile takeover. With his trusted and quietly pining-for-him secretary, played by Maggie Smith, he spends all his time attempting to raise the funds to cover a check he wrote to save his company.
Last up is Margaret Rutherford, a tax-impoverish Dutchess on her way to Florida to whore out her peerage to an American resort as an "ambassador" in a last ditch effort to save her estate from the tax man. High British taxes were clearly buffeting the rich in the 1960s.
Stuck in the fog-bound airport and obsequiously catered to by BOAC's much-harried V.I.P.'s representative, played by Richard Wattis, these stories all come to a crisis in a twenty-four hour period.
This is all harmless but delicious fluff. Taylor and Burton go several rounds as Jourdan just tries to hold onto his meal ticket. Whatever they had in real life, and they had something, Taylor and Burton translated it into movie gold as their on-screen fighting is epic.
Welles' character, too, is about his real life being limned on screen as his struggles trying to finance his movies were almost as legendary as Taylor and Burton's love-hate relationship.
Maggie Smith brings some sincere romance to the picture as the super-efficient executive secretary who's fallen in love with the boss who only sees her as a professional. This storyline would never, ever be written today, but it did happen sometimes.
Rutherford was a beloved older actress at the time who is here to provide her special brand of comic relief amidst all the other angsty stories. It works with a fun twist at the end.
Rattigan wraps these stories up, not that believably, by weaving a few together with a couple of last-minute saves. But you don't watch The V.I.P.s for its realism, you watch it for the melodrama, for the stars and for the occasional good Rattigan barb or insight.
On that scale, The V.I.P.s is a success. With several stories in motion, it's a bit long, and it has some cringeworthy moments, but it's still an enjoyable guilty pleasure movie. Plus, the time travel to the golden age of flying is fun for us "Zone Four" people today.
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Post by Andrea Doria on Mar 5, 2024 16:32:06 GMT
In "Butterflies are Free" Eileen Heckart gave me one of my favorite lines, good for when anyone defends the overly dark and graphic moments in movies and books with, "But it's realistic!"
" So is diarrhea, but I wouldn't classify it as entertainment."
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Post by BunnyWhit on Mar 5, 2024 16:37:33 GMT
I n "Butterflies are Free" Eileen Heckart gave me one of my favorite lines, good for when anyone defends the overly dark and graphic moments in movies and books with, "But it's realistic!"
" So is diarrhea, but I wouldn't classify it as entertainment."
That. Is. Priceless!
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Post by Fading Fast on Mar 5, 2024 17:08:37 GMT
I n "Butterflies are Free" Eileen Heckart gave me one of my favorite lines, good for when anyone defends the overly dark and graphic moments in movies and books with, "But it's realistic!"
" So is diarrhea, but I wouldn't classify it as entertainment."
It's a very funny line. It was part of Heckart's much-deserved takedown of a pompous director played by Paul Michael Glaser. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the movie, especially because I had all but never heard a peep about it.
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Post by Fading Fast on Mar 5, 2024 17:13:28 GMT
I n "Butterflies are Free" Eileen Heckart gave me one of my favorite lines, good for when anyone defends the overly dark and graphic moments in movies and books with, "But it's realistic!"
" So is diarrhea, but I wouldn't classify it as entertainment."
The whole we must see and talk about every bodily function and smell in movies, TV shows and books has hopefully reached a peak. It's been ten or so years of that tic, which pretends to be realism, but is just another voguish thing that, hopefully, will pass. There are times it truly is integral to the story, but for the past decade, it's been forced into movies, TV shows and books almost as proof of "seriousness" or something. I'm so tired of it.
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Post by Fading Fast on Mar 7, 2024 13:00:57 GMT
The Thomas Crown Affair from 1969 with Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway and Paul Burke
If you suspend a little more disbelief than usual and just soak up the 1960s cool factor and style, The Thomas Crown Affair is an enjoyable fairytale of crime, money, luxury, sex and fashion.
Steve McQueen plays a super wealthy Boston businessman who plans and executes an elaborate bank heist just for the sport of it. He doesn't need the money, but gets off on the thrill of the crime. After the heist is successful, his "I did it" happy dance is sheer joy.
The police are baffled, but it's not their money. The insurance company is a bit more miffed. It sends in an investigator, a Vogue-attired blonde, played by Faye Dunaway. She's whip-smart and motivated by morality money, she gets ten percent of whatever she recovers.
Dunaway, in theory, is working with the police detective on the case, played by Paul Burke, but this very quickly becomes a Dunaway-McQueen mano-a-mano thing, with Burke looking on.
Proving we're not in the land of gritty realistic crime-drama, Dunaway, almost immediately, tells McQueen she knows he did it. She's bluffing, based on a very smart hunch, but it sets off a movieland game of cat and mouse and tousled sheets.
The fun is watching these two pretty people - dressed to the nines, driving expensive cars, moving between mansions and beach houses - play a somewhat noirish battle of wits over glasses of champagne and tête-à-têtes at polo matches.
Their relationship is almost an updated and edgy version of Nick and Nora from The Thin Man. Those movies are no more real than The Thomas Crown Affair, but you love them for the stars' banter and style.
Director Norman Jewison, working from a spirited screenplay by first-timer Alan Trustman, struck a perfect balance between tension and joie de vivre. While the latter dominates, there's enough "will he be caught" threat to keep you just a bit on edge.
Look for the wonderful late-night prelude-to-sex chess match McQueen and Dunaway play. There is an element of "this is a surrogate for our real battle over the crime" so it feels tense, but it is also just one long game of foreplay.
You, of course, don't want to see McQueen get caught. "It's only insurance company money," he did it for sport and his life is so much fun that, in movie morality, you want him to get away with it.
You even get a bit peeved at Dunaway for persisting in her investigation, especially after they fall in love. Leave the guy alone, go live with him and tell the faceless insurance company you didn't find its money.
McQueen is outstanding playing a bored rich guy who masterminds crime for thrills. It's a neat extension of his acting brand. He's so good at it, he even manages to look rugged and not precious playing polo, the ultimate trust-fund-kid sport.
Dunnaway, whose on-screen beauty peaked in Bonnie and Clyde, is the second prettiest person in the movie, which she makes up for with a fashion magazine wardrobe and a confidence in herself that matches McQueen's.
Poor Paul Burke is good as the old-school Boston detective put off by Dunaway's unconventional approach. Plus he develops an itch for Dunaway, but with a detective's salary and personality, he's no match for rich, handsome and oh-so-cool McQueen.
The Thomas Crown Affair is not comedy and it's definitely not camp, but it's not a hard-boiled crime drama either. It's that wonderful movie-land invention where cool, stylish criminals, think French film noir with less angst, make crime look sexy and fun.
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