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| mo_flixx |
 Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2006 4:03 pm |
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Joined: 30 May 2004
Posts: 12533
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Joe Vitus wrote: They All Laughed has a reputation for being a very good, underrated movie. It is also the film that is supposed to show that Dororthy Stratten could act. It was, along with Saint Jack, Bogdanovich's attempt to break away from the Studio Era Hollywood-inspired movies he'd been making, and do something purely his own.
I've never seen it, wanted to for years. I'm really glad it's available.
Another one in this category was MASK with Cher. There was also a movie about young singers trying to break into country music ("The Thing Called Love") - Bogdanovich discovered Sandra Bullock in this one, I believe.
One thing about him - he did seem to have an knack for uncovering talent - look at "The Last Picture Show" with Burstyn, Leachman, etc. (people who had been around for awhile but got a huge break on that movie). |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2006 4:08 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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I'm essentially a Bogdanovich fan. I think The Last Picture Show is one of the best, and most beautiful, movies ever made. I happen to think What's Up, Doc? is funnier than Bringing Up Baby (which, shoot me, but I find unfunny and forced). Paper Moon is very entertaining. Even Nickelodeon is very funny at times, even if in many ways it's worthless.
I have to admit, I don't like Mask. (Are you sure it's not Laura Dern you're thinking of, Mo). I don't know why I don't like it. The soundtrack thing is frustrating (it needs Springsteen and doesn't have him, due to legal bullshit). But it's more than that. Cher? I'm not sure. |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2006 4:09 pm |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
Posts: 8424
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| mo_flixx |
| Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2006 4:14 pm |
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Joined: 30 May 2004
Posts: 12533
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Good for BORAT!
I'm glad to see that ALI G is also practically unavailable at Taos rental stores. The ALI G film has been checked out for days at Mondo Video...and was also out at Marc's competition.
It's great that Bruno will star in the next feature. He epitomizes Euro-trash and makes me laugh. |
Last edited by mo_flixx on Sun Nov 05, 2006 9:57 am; edited 1 time in total |
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| mo_flixx |
| Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2006 4:20 pm |
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Joined: 30 May 2004
Posts: 12533
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| You're both right about MASK. I just checked the imdb.com. Laura Dern also appears but was not the lead. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2006 5:13 pm |
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Guest
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| I was also undewhelmed by Bringing Up Baby, but I saw it again this last year and liked it better than my initial viewing. |
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| ehle64 |
| Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2006 6:32 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 7149
Location: NYC; US&A
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"I can't give you anything but love, baby"
I absolutely adore every second of Bringing Up Baby. If that's forced humor, then I like it. Makes me laugh everytime I see it, and I'm sure that's been over a dozen times. |
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It truly disappoints me when people do something for you via no prompt of your own and then use it as some kind of weapon against you at a later time and place. It is what it is. |
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| yambu |
| Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2006 9:12 pm |
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Joined: 23 May 2004
Posts: 6441
Location: SF Bay Area
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gromit wrote: ....The FBI Story - Mervyn LeRoy
I'm not much of a fan of James Stewart and already him squinting on the cover bothers me a little. But in some roles he's very good, in his way. I know nothing about this film. |
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| yambu |
| Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2006 9:27 pm |
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Joined: 23 May 2004
Posts: 6441
Location: SF Bay Area
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ehle64 wrote: I absolutely adore every second of Bringing Up Baby. If that's forced humor, then I like it. Makes me laugh everytime I see it, and I'm sure that's been over a dozen times.[/color][/b] |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2006 9:39 pm |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
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| I find BRINGING UP BABY unfunny, strident, hectic. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2006 11:33 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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| Wow. I've always been embarrassed that I didn't enjoy Bringing Up Baby. It's kind of like saying you think Hamlet is a mediocre drama. So I feel better that other people here had the same response. |
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| jeremy |
| Posted: Sun Nov 05, 2006 12:38 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 6794
Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
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| I'm not sure the Hamlet analogy is valid, but put me down in the ambivalent about Bringing Up Baby camp. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Nov 05, 2006 1:29 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Titanic
This is of course one of the classic stories of romance amid tragedy, arrogance vs. heroism, integrity vs. greed, and until I saw this story, I never realized the crucial role the heroism of the German first officer and his German/Russian love played in the rescue of the passengers. If only the captain had listened to his first mate...
I also never realized Titanic was in 88 minutes long, black and white, and in German. Well, not till six months ago. This is the German 1943 version that was banned in its mother country, then again, shortly after its 1949 release, in the Western zones of Germany (but not in East Germany, for reasons that will become clear). The film originally was so strongly against the British ruling classes that it was cut after the War. Kino recently restored it in its entirety, including the closing title card condemning the British eternal quest for profit. If you trim it slightly, it becomes a pretty good Socialist film too, which is why the Communists liked it.
The director, Herbert Selpin, frustrated by delays shooting in Danzig, made some anti-Army remarks and was reported to the Gestapo and imprisoned, where he died in an apparent staged suicide. Werner Klinger completed the film. The film was released, but it was decided that with all the Allied bombings that a disaster film was not a good way to build up morale, so it was banned.
In this version, the blame for the Titanic disaster is played on the shoulders of Sir Bruce Ismay with an assist by John Jacob Astor. White Star Line's stocks are falling, so Isney gets a bright idea how to prop it up: have the Titanic break the transatlantic speed record. What he doesn't realize is that Astor is selling his stock to lower the share price, intending to buy up the shares at the lower price and take over White Star. The more the stock drops, the more Ismay is obsessed with the speed record, demanding that the Titanic continue full speed despite ice warnings. The warnings of the first officer Petersen are unheeded, his attempts to recruit wealthy Sigrid Olinsky (with a name like that I'm not sure what nationality except her family lives in Russia) . Her efforts are of no avail and you know what happens.
The result of all this is a very entertaining film. I have the advantage that, since I don't speak German, it becomes more difficult to tell the Germans and British apart, so I can just enjoy the film and not worry about the propaganda. Making greed the cause of the tragedy works very well. The movie is full of interesting characters, not the least of them Petersen, Olinsky, Ismay and Astor. Not surprisingly, there are no Jewish characters. I really liked the interiors of the ship and the costuming. All in all, it's the triumph of a good story over the intentions of the people who commissioned it. It's well worth checking out both for historical reasons and as a good film. |
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| lady wakasa |
| Posted: Sun Nov 05, 2006 8:28 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 5911
Location: Beyond the Blue Horizon
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That Titanic story sounds pretty good.
I first saw Bringing Up Baby (several times) as a kid, so I will always have a soft spot for it. Have no reason to dislike it, although I haven't seen it in quite a while.
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I'm reading Akira Kurosawa's biography, Something Like an Autobiography. I really like the tone and how he just discusses his life without a lot of added flourish.
One really interesting thing: Kurosawa lists the movies he remembers watching as a kid (his brother was a benshi, and sparked his interest in movies). Looking at the list, I understand a little more about his filmmaking and where he was coming from (I've even seen a lot of them). The dates may be slightly off, since this was done in later life and he didn't have Japanese release dates, but he evidently did see these movies.
So without further do, here's The List:
1919 - Aged 9
- The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Weine)
- Passion (Ernst Lubitsch)
- Shoulder Arms (Charles Chaplin)
- Male and Female (Cecil B. DeMille)
- Broken Blossoms (D. W. Griffith)
1920 - Aged 10
- Von Morgens bis Mitternacht (Carl Martin)
- Die Bergkatze (The Wildcat, Ernst Lubitsch)
- The Phantom Carriage (Victor Sjostrom)
- The Last of the Mohicans (Maurice Tourneur)
- Humoresque (Frank Borzage)
- Sunnyside (Charles Chaplin)
1921 - Aged 11
- Way Down East (D. W. Griffith)
- The Kid (Charles Chaplin)
- The Three Musketeers (Fred Niblo)
- Over the Hill to the Poorhouse (Harry Millarde)
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Rex Ingram)
- Fool's Paradise (Cecil B. DeMille)
1922 - Aged 12
- Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang)
- The Loves of Pharaoh (Ernst Lubitsch)
- The Little Prince (Alfred Green)
- Blood and Sand (Fred Niblo)
- The Prisoner of Zenda (Rex Ingram)
- Pay Day (Charles Chaplin)
- Foolish Wives (Erich von Stroheim)
- Orphans of the Storm (D. W. Griffith)
- The Distant Smile (Sidney Franklin)
1923 - Aged 13
- The Pilgrim (Charles Chaplin)
- The Thief of Bagdad (Raoul Walsh)
- La Roue (Abel Gance)
- Kick In (George Fitzmaurice)
- The Covered Wagon (James Cruze)
- Kean (Alexandre Vilkoff)
- A Woman of Paris (Charles Chaplin)
- Cyrano de Bergerac (Augusto Genina)
1924 - Aged 14
- The Iron Horse (John Ford)
- He Who Gets Slapped (Victor Sjostrom)
- Die Niebelungen (Fritz Lang)
- The Marriage Circle (Ernst Lubitsch)
1925 - Aged 15
- The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin)
- Master of the House (Carl Dreyer)
- Feu Mathias Pascal (Marcel L'Herbier)
- Beau Geste (Herbert Brenon)
- Greed (Erich von Stroheim)
- Lady Windermere's Fan (Ernst Lubitsch)
- The Big Parade (King Vidor)
- The Salvation Hunter (Josef von Sternberg)
- The Last Laugh (F. W. Murnau)
- The Joyless Street (G. W. Pabst)
- Nana (Jean Renoir)
- Variety (E. A. Dupont)
1926 - Aged 16
- Three Bad Men (John Ford)
- So This Is Paris (Ernst Lubitsch)
- The Armored Vault (Lupu Pick)
- Tartuffe (F. W. Murnau)
- Faust (F. W. Murnau)
- Metropolis (Fritz Lang)
- Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein)
- Mother (V. I. Pudovkin)
1927 - Aged 17
- Seventh Heaven (Frank Borzage)
- Wings (William Wellman)
- Barbed Wire (Rowland V. Lee)
- Underworld (Jospeh von Sternberg)
- Sunrise (F. W. Murnau)
- Comedies with Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon, Wallace Beery, Raymond Hatton, Chester Conklin, Roscoe Arbuckle, Sidney Chaplin
- Chuji tabi nikki (Ito Daisuke)
1928 - Aged 18
- Docks of New York (Jospeh von Sternberg)
- The Dragnet (Jospeh von Sternberg)
- Therese Raquin (Jacques Feyder)
- Storm Over Asia (V. I. Pudovkin)
- The Wedding March (Erich von Stroheim)
- The Little Match Girl (Jean Renoir)
- Verdun, Visions d'histoire (Leon Poirier)
- The Fall of the House of Usher (Jean Epstein)
- La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (Carl Dreyer)
- The Seashell and the Clergyman (Germaine Dulac)
- Shinpan Ooka Seidan (Ito Daisuke)
- Roningai (Makino Masahiro)
1929 - Aged 19
- The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg)
- Asphalt (Joe May)
- Un Chien andalou (Luis Buñuel)
- Les Mysteres du Chateau du De (Man Ray)
- Rein que les heures (Alberto Cavalcanti)
- Kubi no za (Murata Minoru)
I'm amazed at how many of these still exist and are known.
Source: Akira Kurosawa, Something Like an Autobiography (New York: Vintage Books, 1983), pp. 73-74.
(My footnote format sucks, but so be it.) |
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| mo_flixx |
| Posted: Sun Nov 05, 2006 9:47 am |
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Joined: 30 May 2004
Posts: 12533
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| Kurosawa's list of movies seen during his youth is pretty amazing. Thanks, Lady, for some very interesting info. |
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