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| Befade |
 Posted: Sat Nov 23, 2013 11:54 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
Location: AZ
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Gromit...a coincidence.....I have been watching. vol. 2. I like everything I've seen so far:
Night Nurse....Barbara Stanwyck is caring for a child whose alcoholic mother is involved with the villainous Clark Gable
The Divorcee......Norma Shearer isn't going to stand by when her husband cheats on her. She's going to get some for herself, too.
Female....Ruth Chatterton runs a car company and enjoys bringing men from work to her mansion where she plies them with vodka, uses them, and then tosses them aside.
Three on a Match....Bette Davis is one of three school friends who renew their acquaintance years later when the most popular and privileged among them leaves her husband and child to live a life of debauchery.
These films make me wonder..... What if the code never had taken effect? Would free love and feminism and divorce have occurred much earlier in this country? |
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Lost in my own private I dunno. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2013 2:29 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9008
Location: Shanghai
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Volume 2 never turned up here.
Sometimes the good pirates of China just aren't as thorough as one would like.
Vol. 2 always sounded intriguing, especially Night Nurse and Female, while I've never seen the comparatively well-known Three on a Match either.
Well, easy to remember that all the odd numbered volumes are good.
Along with Vol. 2 as well. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2013 6:16 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12889
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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The Red and the White is a Hungarian film about Hungarian troops fighting on the side of the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. Prisoners are executed, cavalry charges from both sides, and it becomes difficult to tell one side from another. At one point nurses from a neutral hospital are taken out into the woods and forced to waltz to a White military band.
The White army has a tendency to strip prisoners of their shirts and give them fifteen minutes to escape. If the prisoners don't get away, or get caught again, they get shot. One apparent avenue of escape is blocked by a ten-foot tall wooden fence. A lot of prisoners get shot there. I thought the shirtless thing had something to do with a shortage of fabrics, but then I decided the armies were playing Shirts and Skin.
It all goes to show what people can achieve in film if they ignore such frivolous things as plot and characterization. 5.5 of 10 at best despite some very good scenes. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2013 11:46 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12889
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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carrobin wrote: Yes, I loved the idea of killing a shark in one's living room after it breaks through the window. Doesn't happen every day. (In fact, it doesn't happen.)
TCM showed "Manhattan Murder Mystery" this afternoon, which I recalled as being lightweight but entertaining, and have now decided it's one of his best. Putting aside the facts that I tend to identify with Diane Keaton and love New York and am intrigued by murder mysteries, it has some of the best movie references (echoes of "Rear Window," the great "Lady from Shanghai" climax), lovely performances by Alan Alda and Anjelica Huston, and some of Allen's best dialogue ("There's nothing wrong with you that a little Prozac and a polo mallet couldn't fix"). Oh yes, and the funniest threatening phone call ever recorded.
I liked "Ted has a mind like a steel sieve." My impression was the same as your original one, but then I've only seen it once. There's one joke that Larry took Carol for "Last Year at Marienbad" for a first date, and she had to explain it to him for the next six months. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2013 12:59 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12889
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Terry Gilliam hinted that he was capable of it for years, and in 2005's Tideland he finally succeeded in making one of the worst films I've ever seen. We have a girl whose mother dies in the opening scenes (the girl is happy because she can eat all the chocolate her mother hoarded), they go to her father's mother's house which has obviously been abandoned for many years (although the father thinks his mother is still alive), he dies of a drug overdose and spends most of the movie decomposing. (Jeff Bridges is much better as a corpse in this movie.) The girl starts having conversations with her collection of severed doll's heads and...
Oh, what's the use. It's not just a bad movie, but loudly and aggressively bad, with little to recommend it except some nice shots of wheat fields and some good scenes by Jodelle Ferland as a potential young schizophrenic. You even get suggestions of child molestation, just to round out the rest of the ugliness, and weirdly canted angles just to remind us that Gilliam's seen "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and learned all the wrong lessons. |
Last edited by Syd on Sat Nov 05, 2016 10:30 pm; edited 1 time in total
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2013 9:26 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6944
Location: Black Hills
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Quote: Terry Gilliam hinted that he was capable of it for years, and in 2005's Tideland he finally succeeded in making one of the worst films I've ever seen.
It is one of those "oh, no...please tell me he's not going there" films. I am unable to recall one redeeming feature of the film. Not even the Dude. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2013 9:50 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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bartist wrote: Quote: Terry Gilliam hinted that he was capable of it for years, and in 2005's Tideland he finally succeeded in making one of the worst films I've ever seen.
It is one of those "oh, no...please tell me he's not going there" films. I am unable to recall one redeeming feature of the film. Not even the Dude.
Had never read descriptions of this movie, but having done so now, I can guarantee I will never darken its doorstep. |
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| yambu |
| Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2013 1:49 pm |
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Joined: 23 May 2004
Posts: 6441
Location: SF Bay Area
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I read the nine-hundred page An American Tragedy, and then watched A Place in the Sun for the nth time.
Dreiser gets a bad rap for being clunky. You want clunky, see the movie.
"......A penny, George. What's the matter, darling, you seem so tired. Oh, what IS the matter, dear? I know what let's do. We'll go for a speedboat ride!....."
Unnoticed by the entire courtroom, Raymond Burr completely blows the prosecution's case. Too bad they didn't read the book more closely. |
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That was great for you. How was it for me? |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2013 6:45 pm |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
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| TIDELAND is a type of film I call "bad karma movies." They really have a soul-deadening effect on the viewer. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2013 6:57 pm |
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| I saw A Place In the Sun when I was in Paris. I caught up with with a slew of movies there that I'd never seen. I didn't dislike the movie but I didn't think it was any kind of classic. Clift was pretty good and Taylor wasn't much except gorgeous. The only excellent performance was the one that Shelley Winters gave. Never read the book. I lived on the West Bank and there were cinemas all over the place. The ticket price was 3 francs, 60 cents. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Wed Nov 27, 2013 12:07 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9008
Location: Shanghai
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You can see what Gilliam was going for in Tideland, but its all rather leaden and numbifying.
Just re-watched Bigger Than Life, a great 50's film by Nicholas Ray. It's really what many hope 50's films are/were: subversive takes on the perfect American family, complete with a real shaky happy ending.
James Mason is great and the script really ratchets things up.
Would encourage everyone to see this. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Wed Nov 27, 2013 2:50 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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yambu wrote: I read the nine-hundred page An American Tragedy, and then watched A Place in the Sun for the nth time.
Dreiser gets a bad rap for being clunky. You want clunky, see the movie.
"......A penny, George. What's the matter, darling, you seem so tired. Oh, what IS the matter, dear? I know what let's do. We'll go for a speedboat ride!....."
Unnoticed by the entire courtroom, Raymond Burr completely blows the prosecution's case. Too bad they didn't read the book more closely.
I've avoided the movie for this reason. Also, I can't shake the feeling it's going to be a stilted, glacially paced, self-consciously "important" Hollywood movie, of the kind Hollywood was big on in that era.
As for the book, I picked it up a couple of months ago, fitfully read it, got distracted by other things, and never returned to it. If you've read Maggie, A Girl of the Streets or Native Son or any of the other naturalistic novels, you know exactly what's going on here and where it's heading. All these "social problem" novels seem to avoid the principal interest in a work of fiction: unique, memorable characters. That's not surprising, since the basic premise is that all humanity is identical and only the circumstances of our upbringing vary: actions are the inevitable consequences of a specific stimulus. One or two of these things in one lifetime is enough for anybody. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Nov 27, 2013 3:10 pm |
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| I pretty well agree with what you wrote Joe. |
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| yambu |
| Posted: Wed Nov 27, 2013 5:51 pm |
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Joined: 23 May 2004
Posts: 6441
Location: SF Bay Area
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| [Edited] Thank you, Billy. |
Last edited by yambu on Wed Nov 27, 2013 8:22 pm; edited 2 times in total
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That was great for you. How was it for me? |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Nov 27, 2013 6:11 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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yambu wrote: I'm working through reading Babbitt, A Place in the Sun, Main St, Dodsworth, Sister Carrie, and Arrowsmith. . Unfortunately, only Main Street is on film, with Ellen Burstyn, which is reason enough to rent it.
The Main Street with Ellen Burstyn has nothing to do with Sinclair Lewis's novel of the same name. On the other hand, Babbitt, A Place in the Sun, Dodsworth, Sister Carrie, and Arrowsmith were all made into movies. |
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