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| whiskeypriest |
 Posted: Fri Nov 29, 2013 8:17 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 6916
Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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billyweeds wrote: whiskeypriest wrote: Well my two favorite Christmas movies are The Apartment and The Lion in Winter.
I actually prefer The Apartment to Miracle on 34th Street, but I don't consider it a Christmas movie. It's more of a New Year's movie, since the money scene happens then. It's my favorite Billy Wilder film and features my two favorite perfs from both Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine. They are both simply great, as is Fred MacMurray. What a movie!
Don't remotely like The Lion in Winter, especially the wildly overrated performance by Katharine Hepburn.
I admit a weakness for Peter O'Toole going over the top. |
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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Fri Nov 29, 2013 8:23 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 6916
Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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Joe Vitus wrote: I knew a guy whose favorite Christmas movie was Nashville. Now Nashville is one of my all-time favorite movies. But a Christmas movie it is not.
Once upon a time I would have put A Christmas Story at the top of my list. But I've seen it way too many times to enjoy it anymore, and TBS (is that the right station?) has ruined it by running it nonstop for twenty-four hours every year. No movie can really handle that much exposure.
Maybe Meet Me in St. Louis.
The house they used for the exterior shots in Christmas Story is now a museum in Cleveland. I have never warmed to it that much, though it is a pleasant enough movie for the holidays. Just, well, over shown. |
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I ask you, Velvel, as a rational man, which of us is possessed? |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Nov 30, 2013 12:51 am |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| It's odd, but I like Same Time, Nine Years from Now, part deux (Before Sunset) quite a bit more than Before Sunrise, which I was somewhat indifferent to. I particularly like the opening scene when Jesse's signing his new book (which is about the events in Before Sunrise) and starts telling us about next book, visualizing Celine in it, and looks up at Celine, as if all times are compressed into one, as described in the story he's reciting. Paris looks beautiful, and we're not seeing all the usual tourist stops. I'll be watching Before Midnight in a week or two, and I suspect it won't be quite as happy, because you can see frustrations developing here. A lot of the script was written by Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, drawing on their own experiences. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sat Nov 30, 2013 1:03 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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Any fan of Jean Shepherd's Christmas Story should listen to Charles Mingus's jazz story The Clown, where Shepard provides semi-improvised narration. It's really about the best example of the jazz tone poem.
I love the way he says "Pittsburgh, real fine town Pittsburgh" in such an insincere deadpan manner. And the mock praise of "this was bigger than DuBuque" is always a favorite.
Bill Bryson carries on the tradition, with his The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006). Hell, he even grew up in Des Moines, which is just Ohio West. |
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| yambu |
| Posted: Sat Nov 30, 2013 10:23 pm |
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Joined: 23 May 2004
Posts: 6441
Location: SF Bay Area
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Shepherd interviewed at WOR AM in NY. The story is that there was some miscommunication. The station folks said,
"We're sorry, Mr. Shepherd, but we just don't think anyone can talk about nothing for two hours a week."
"Two hours? I thought it was two hours a night."
And so it was, four or five nights a week for years. I had the radio under the sheets.
He took me from the Bronx into the world. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Sat Nov 30, 2013 10:54 pm |
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| Shepherd was one of the best radio night men. I listened to him whenever I could get WOR on the radio. He also wrote articles in The Realist. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sun Dec 01, 2013 4:54 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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Odd Man Out is an odd film.
A gang of Irish nationalists rob a factory of its payroll in order to finance their organization. During the escape, their leader, Johnny (James Mason) gets into a tussle with a security guard and shoots him dead. Johnny gets plugged in the left shoulder, has trouble getting into the getaway car and falls out on a turn. Some indecision ensues among the three others and Johnny is left on his own wounded.
All that is maybe the first 20 or 30 minutes, and the rest of the film, the leader and mastermind staggers around weakly at the mercy of folks who run across him, while he seeks safety or at least rest. So most of the film the main character shuffles around in a daze. The film is largely about how others react to him. Maybe because this is a British film, he doesn't run into any sympathizers with the cause -- and the police are explicitly praised as decent -- but he does run into some who sympathize with a fellow human who is badly injured. Most folks seek to be neutral, but more fearful of the Irish underground organization than of the police response if they offer mild help.
There's a weird slightly surreal episode where Johnny is taken to a dilapidated mansion -- I like the snow falling into the foyer from a hole in the domed ceiling -- inhabited by a squirrely beggar, an almost-doctor on the skids, and a slightly deranged painter. They all have rather selfish motives with regard to Johnny, and Johnny hallucinates to make things even odder.
I've seen this film a couple times before and was glad this time that the sub-plot with the painter didn't dominate as much as I recalled. It's a rather loud and hammy part, and I was glad to see it was more limited/contained than I had thought. And F. J. McCormick is a stand-out as the beggar who looks and acts something like an Irish Chaplin.
James Mason does an admirable job of looking pained and fatigued and staggery. There's a lot of good dialogue, which sounded to my ears like authentic Irish talk (Granny: "Dennis O'Leary, he wanted to marry me -- so he did."). Much of the supporting cast was recruited from Dublin's Abbey Theatre. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sun Dec 01, 2013 8:09 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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The print being shown on TCM of The Searchers (1956, John Wayne, John Ford, American Film Institute "Best Western ever") is absolutely awesome. The color hits you like a laser beam. It's stunning beyond description.
That said, the movie has never been a favorite of mine. Not only is it not as good as my favorite Westerns (High Noon, Shane, TGtBatU), it perpetuates the myth that in the Old West there was a bloody Comanche raid around every corner. This is bullshit and the way Hollywood promulgated the idea was borderline immoral. |
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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Sun Dec 01, 2013 9:38 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 6916
Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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The Searchers remains one of my all time favorite movies, despite having some of the worst acting ever in a great film - Patrick Wayne, Ken Curtis are two great arguments against nepotism. And while far from enlightened by today's standards, it has the virtue of offsetting the raid by Comanche with the murderous raid against a harmless village by the cavalry and the vicious bigotry of the settlers. The initial attack is necessary for the story; from that point on the similarities between Scar and Ethan are highlighted. Hatred for hatred, right up to the moment where Ethan chases Debbie down to kill her, and picks her up in his arms and takes her home instead, which chokes me up every time.
The sequence where the Rangers get ready to go out to chase the Comanche down is one of my favorites; a great example of how much can get said without saying anything at all.
Also, last fall I went to Monument Valley. I got to stand out on the tip of John Ford Point - in the movie, it is the cliff they lower Marty down from before the attack on the Comanche camp at the end of the movie. Fucking magnificent. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sun Dec 01, 2013 10:36 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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The Searchers mostly bores me.
They should make an Audience Cut and edit out about 40 minutes. |
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| yambu |
| Posted: Sun Dec 01, 2013 6:18 pm |
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Joined: 23 May 2004
Posts: 6441
Location: SF Bay Area
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gromit wrote: Odd Man Out.....James Mason does an admirable job of looking pained and fatigued and staggery. There's a lot of good dialogue, which sounded to my ears like authentic Irish talk.... |
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| Befade |
| Posted: Sun Dec 01, 2013 9:29 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: AZ
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Whiskey..... When I saw Monument Valley I was underwhelmed......flat land with a few spikey rocks sticking out of it. I have not yet been to Canyon de Chelly but expect to be more impressed there.
I do recommend the national parks in Utah......Zion, Bryce, and Arches. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Mon Dec 02, 2013 12:07 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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Odd Man Out (1947) is pretty terrific. A Carol Reed film for all you Third Man fans. After the first act, Mason hardly speaks, and when he does it's mostly in a whisper (except when he shouts a few Bible verses). For me, the other actors speaking with real Irish accents hid Mason's accent. But I could see how it could make Mason's accent stand out more for others.
Utah is gorgeous.
And the mountains in Colorado are spectacular.
It also blew my mind to drive right through the mountains and pop out of the tunnel on the other side of the continental divide, and have a completely different weather system. That kind of concept doesn't exactly exist in New Jersey/ |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Mon Dec 02, 2013 3:26 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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| Love, love, love The Searchers. John Wayne was better at playing anti-heroes. This and Red River are his best performances. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Tue Dec 03, 2013 4:23 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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Picked up a quartet of post-war films.
Lady in the Lake (1947), and three form 1951 -- His Kind of Woman, The Racket, and On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray).
I'd been meaning to see Lady in the Lake for so long that I had forgotten why. A couple minutes in, you realize this is a/the first-person point-of-view film. A unique approach which has been quite influential ... at least in pornography and video games.
It's interesting, but all of Robert Montgomery's dialogue sounds like it's been dubbed in later, which undoubtedly it was since he isn't on camera and was directing the other actors who are left to play to a camera. It's not a bad film, even if Montgomery can't really pull off the tough guy dialogue/role, while Jayne Meadows late arriving femme fatale is rather a weak link, and the plot convolutions aren't that believable. But Audrey Totter is interesting with her facial contortions and quick changes in manner. More a curiosity than a good film, but I like seeing the different approaches to Philip Marlowe out there. And the POV gimmick is worth checking out as well.
Will probably go with On Dangerous Ground next for Nic Ray.
Also snagged Manhattan, a Jean-Pierre Melville film from 1959 I'd never heard of. And The Pervert's Guide to Ideology, since I enjoyed the earlier Pervert's Guide to Cinema. |
Last edited by gromit on Tue Dec 03, 2013 9:22 am; edited 1 time in total
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