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| Joe Vitus |
 Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2013 9:05 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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Syd wrote: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Finally saw this and it's even better than I was expecting. It's amazing how all the weird sets, skewed perspectives, acting, makeup, etc. all work together to make an effective, mad film. Directors have been borrowing from this for almost a hundred years, and will be borrowing for a hundred more.
Been watching this movie repeatedly since I was about 14. Love it. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2013 9:21 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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I tend to doubt Lovelace was abused on the set of Deep Throat. Chuck Traynor, her husband/manager, was fairly repugnant and essentially a pimp, and insanely jealous despite being involved exclusively with women in the sex industry, but I don't think anyone else reports hearing or seeing abuse during the shoot, including Harry Reems. They would have to send Traynor on errands so the sex scenes could be shot. After Lovelace, Traynor moved on to Marilyn Chambers. Don't know if she ever claimed he abused her or not. It would help to know if she did, since usually there is a pattern.
Lovelace is a fascinating but depressing subject. Perpetually accident prone (she'd been in a major car accident before meeting Traynor, would die in one decades later), not bright, and seemingly willing to mold her personality around anyone who would ever pay any attention to her, she went from prostitution and loops to the first major porno to feminist who maligned her sex industry past, to a senior citizen who did porno shoots in her later year. Apparently she couldn't keep an ordinary job because whenever employers found out about Deep Throat, they'd fire her.
She wasn't even pretty. But she apparently had an amazing sexual technique, according to Reems among others. That wasn't just a fantasy or a clever phrase. She was unique in the blow jobs she gave. Insulting as it is to say, it's difficult to figure out is she had a personality of her own, or if she was such a dependent person she became what anyone wanted her to be. As far as I'm concerned, Gloria Steinem took as much advantage of her--using her and discarding her--as anyone else did. |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Fri Sep 27, 2013 12:47 pm |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
Posts: 8424
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| Based on Weeden's recommendation, Mirgun and I saw DISCONNECT and were blown away by it. Timely, powerful stuff. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri Sep 27, 2013 1:47 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Marc wrote: Based on Weeden's recommendation, Mirgun and I saw DISCONNECT and were blown away by it. Timely, powerful stuff.
So glad you liked it. I was particularly impressed with the performance by an actor I was completely unfamiliar with, Frank Grillo, as the detective father Mike Dixon. Grillo achieved a lot of complexity. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sat Sep 28, 2013 9:52 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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| Just reserved it on Redbox. Seems to have been an overlooked film that didn't get much distribution last Spring. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sat Sep 28, 2013 10:13 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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Yeah, always good to have a second or third mention of a newish film. I tend to forget the titles that get referenced just once.
I'll look for Disconnect when it gets here.
Hopefully I'll get to Mud tonight. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Thu Oct 03, 2013 8:57 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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Saw Disconnect and chatted briefly....over in Current? Looks like I quoted BW's comments from last Spring made in Current, which automatically puts your reply in the same thread....should have moved it over here.
More catching up on Spring releases with "This is the End," which seems, in its deep commitment to gross jokes about dicks and jerking off, aimed at the teen boy audience. Danny McBride and James Franco have a lengthy shouting session about jizz, its trajectories, and how they will jerk off on each other - just to give you a sample. There's also a group discussion of how no one is really making "rapey" comments about Emma Watson. Etc. That said, the film does get some comic mileage out of all the movie rapture/apocalypse cliches and has its moments. Very funny spoofs of The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby. Unfortunately, the amount of actual plot derived from this would only fill a half-hour comedy sketch. That half hour would be a tour de force of profane humor, were it not for the 90 minutes of bodily fluid improv that is injected to bring it up to feature film length. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Fri Oct 04, 2013 7:47 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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Picked up a 4 disc set of Warner 30's crime films.
G Men was all right.
A bit of an add framing device -- at FBI training they show a film, and it's ... G Men. Mostly a good vehicle to watch Cagney. He's good at the physical stuff, as part of the training he gets.
The story itself is fairly lame. Cagney was a street punk who gets sponsored by a bootlegger and put through law school. Then when his law school buddy becomes a G Man and gets killed by mobsters, Cagney joins up too. But then the Feds find out about his connection to the mob, and mistrust him even though he's really straight. But Cagney knows quite a bit about the gangsters so is quite useful. His supervisor/trainer rides him even before they find out about his mob ties, etc.
Ballots or Bullets is fairly similar, with Edward G. as a tough NYC policeman, who infiltrates the mob. The mob boss likes him but others are wary. Not the most believable storyline. Edward G. acts tough and knocks people down or out with a quick 1-2 combo. Mostly interesting for Bogey acting tough as a junior mob boss.
It's kind of interesting how Cagney and Edward G portray tough guys and often have brief fistfights, even though they are wee little guys. Bogey too, though he's a little taller than the other two I believe.
I guess we've had that with Pacino as Scarface and Tom Cruise as an action hero.
But Cagney and Edward G are often bare-knuckling it. They are also often a bit old for their roles.
Inception was notable for having a cast of midgets -- DiCaprio,
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, and the ever-slight Ellen Page. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Fri Oct 04, 2013 7:57 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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Just looked up G Men, and the FBI training prologue was apparently added for the 1949 re-release of the film. And is now on most prints.
Another interesting aspect is that the film laments how the FBI is restricted from carrying guns except with special authorization, and so they are outgunned by the criminals who kind of laugh at the G Men and use them as target practice. Which is how Cagney's buddy gets offed. I think by the end of the film the Feds are allowed to carry weapons, as new laws get passed.
It makes an interesting counterpoint to today where concealed carry laws are proliferating, there are almost as many guns as people in the US, and the S. Ct decides there is an individual right to own a gun. Seems awfully quaint FBI agents not being allowed to carry a gun.
And this poster is pretty bad-ass:
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Fri Oct 04, 2013 8:04 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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| One of the difficulties with watching Old Hollywood movies today is that we tend to evaluate them on a stand-alone basis. The studios relased new movies once a week. If people liked a Cagney crime drama, Warners made sure to have another on the way quick, and if that next one was only hit or miss in quality, it didn't matter because the moments people came for worked well enough. There would be another Cagney crime drama pretty soon. To take most of the movies of the era picture by picture of the era would be like evaluating a t.v. series episode by episode today. People placed them within the larger arc of reference. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Fri Oct 04, 2013 8:35 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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| Especially if you get a pair that click on screen, like Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell or Myrna Loy and William Powell (and Rogers and Astaire, Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, and later Joan Blondell). There were a lot of Gaynor/Farrell films that were popular in their day. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Fri Oct 04, 2013 9:11 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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Well I have a set of four I'm working through. I also have San Quentin and City of Conquest.
Well, G Men was one of the top grossing films of 1935.
And G Men was actually a response to criticism that Warners crime pics were glamorizing the criminal lifestyle. So they switched it up and made the Feds the focus and heroes.
Bullets or Ballots follows suit, with a policeman pretending to go bad and infiltrating the crime syndicate. Amusingly, most of the crime syndicate is portrayed as accountants and worker drones. The illegal businesses primarily skim off small amounts per transaction, including pinball machines depicted as bleeding poor kids out of their nickels and lunch money. Bogey, the top henchman, runs a produce and milk business for the syndicate. I kind of forget how it actually is illegal or makes extra profits. I think they monopolize by threatening any other business, thus dissuading competition. |
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| knox |
| Posted: Fri Oct 04, 2013 9:38 am |
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Joined: 18 Mar 2010
Posts: 1246
Location: St. Louis
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"B or B" sounds like a prescient rendering of today's medical insurance industry.
I consider the years I spent behind a pinball machine to be golden.
Not sure Cagney was that "wee" - he wasn't tall, but he was pretty solidly built.
"Disconnect" seemed almost too good to be true, in terms of how the fractured families came together. I'm somewhat averse to normal-length films that try to be triptychs....always get the feeling that each subplot needs a bit more time to work. But the ensemble acting was splendid and pretty much carried me along. |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Fri Oct 04, 2013 10:14 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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One of the hosts on TCM said that Cagney always wanted his adversary to be taller than he was.
I wish there were more movies in which Cagney danced. But I quite like "The Oklahoma Kid," in which he sang "I Don't Want to Play in Your Yard" in a saloon. Bogart was the villain in that one too. Funny that that hasn't shown up on TCM in my recent memory. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Fri Oct 04, 2013 4:19 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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Actually I don't think Joe's analogy holds much water.
First off, we do evaluate TV shows episode by episode.
But more to the point, Cagney's the wrong call. He played hardball with Warners, bucked the studio system, and threatened to quit acting. By 1933, he had a contract which called for no more than 4 films per year (and top billing). When he made 5 films in '35 and then didn't get top billing in one of them, he walked out and worked for Grand National for two years, and won a lawsuit against Warners. When he returned to the fold in '38, his contract called for just 2 films per year and a much much bigger salary. He was also involved in the formation of the Screen Actors Guild. So Cagney largely avoided the studio system grind.
Cagney was only 5'6" which is fairly small and not likely to knock down/out to many guys. I'd guess his weight at about 145 or so. I've never seen Taxi! which is the first film in which Cagney danced and also when he famously spoke a few sentences in Yiddish. Which film is it where Cagney comes into the nightclub, strips off his overalls to reveal a tux, grabs his girlfriend who is complaining about his lateness, and whips her out on to the dance floor with a huge flourish? Some real dynamic presence/dancing there.
George Raft at 5'7" was another little tough guy who portrayed gangsters. |
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