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| knox |
 Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 8:31 am |
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Joined: 18 Mar 2010
Posts: 1246
Location: St. Louis
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Quote: My own opinion is he probably drank himself to death, but that wouldn't make much of a movie.
"Leaving Paris"
I've heard Henry Fonda was lacking in warmth. His son, however, has warmth and charm to spare. Met him once when passing through the Black Hills and he was there for the Sturgis Rally. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 10:34 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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"Leaving Paris"
w/ Elizabeth Choux? |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2014 1:02 pm |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| And Then There Were None (1945). Rene Clair's version of Agatha Christie's novel, with the nursery rhyme turned into "Ten Little Indians" to avoid offending Americans. This version uses the more optimistic ending from the stage version which actually makes the title a lie, and doesn't mention another killing that takes place before the events on Indian Island. Lots of familiar character actors, including Mischa Auer, Barry Fitzgerald, C. Aubrey Smith (the grandfather from "Little Lord Fauntleroy and Walter Huston (who had been a lead a decade earlier). The movie is way too chipper considering these people are trapped on an island and they know they're probably doomed. It works fairly well, but I'd prefer a darker take. |
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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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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2014 1:42 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Asking that an Agatha Christie mystery be serious about death is asking too much. Though in truth the best Agatha Christie adaptation IMO is the underrated , rather dark, and sometimes grisly Death on the Nile, which came out after the somewhat overrated Murder on the Orient Express. Peter (Nile) Ustinov) was a more successful Hercule Poirot than Albert (Orient) Finney, and Angela Lansbury and Mia Farrow were expert in support.
The best Agatha Christie movie of them all is the superb and wildly under-appreciated The Last of Sheila, directed by Herbert Ross from a screenplay by Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins and featuring an all-star cast in which Dyan Cannon and Joan Hackett are standouts. Sheila captures on film the true essence of a Christie novel, something like a crossword puzzle but more fun. |
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| Befade |
| Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2014 2:31 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
Location: AZ
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Finally watched El Topo after reading the NYT Magazine article about the director's new film after 23 years. I watch a VHS tape Marc mailed me years ago. On my tv I couldn't see the subtitles.......so I watched it somewhat clueless. A very strange film. But the visuals were compelling. The changes so frequent and not understandable.
I know John Lennon and Kanye West and some others think it's the best film ever made.........but.......
Why so many animals? First the goats, then the pigs, then the rabbits, then the horses. And why so many people? Had to have been very expensive to make.
Why was the director's son naked on the horse behind him? Was it all to get our attention. OK. It got my attention. I was trying to do other things but had to stop and just glue myself to the film so as not to miss something.
If I understood it.........a man goes from avenger to savior to ineffective self emolator......... |
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Lost in my own private I dunno. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2014 7:35 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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| You would have remained clueless with the subtitles. It's that kind of film: Blow-Up Meets Dirty Harry Meets The Prophet. Not sure why people would watch all that slaughter and gore. It's got to be up there with The Passion of the Christ as Most Needlessly Violent Spiritual Movie Ever. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2014 9:11 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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| I wrote a review of El Topo....started searching here, then realized I'd posted it at the NYTFF, which seems not to be archived. Like Befade, I received a VHS copy (thanks, MARC, if you are out there anywhere!) in the mail. IIRC, I was able to feign a larger understanding of the film than I actually had. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| Befade |
| Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2014 2:23 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: AZ
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Bart. I remember that review and also searched and could not find. You liked it as I recalled. I never tried LSD or wanted those kind of fantastic freak out experiences thus the film was not groovy to me.
Joe. Certainly gratuitous violence. |
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Lost in my own private I dunno. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2014 7:02 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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I guess I liked it. It seem archetypal, which was the adjective I applied to all movies that baffled me, in those days.
Did anyone see the early 2013 release "Phantom" ? I like Ed Harris and Duchovny, so figure it might not be a total waste of time. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| knox |
| Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2014 11:32 am |
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Joined: 18 Mar 2010
Posts: 1246
Location: St. Louis
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| Phantom is well done thriller, mainly due to Ed Harris's disgraced Soviet captain who redeems himself when faced with a KGB agent (Duchovny) gone rogue. It has a realism, in its visuals, that comes from shooting the film in an actual Soviet sub that's docked at a maritime museum in San Diego. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sat Apr 05, 2014 8:45 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Surprisingly not-bad, in view of the extensively negative reviews, was Girl Most Likely, the movie filmed as Imogene but retitled (much for the worse) and starring Kristen Wiig and Annette Bening as daughter and mother. Wiig plays Imogene, a thirtyish wannabe playwright who was the recipient of a writing award almost a decade earlier but blew her chance at fame and has now drifted into an aimless existence. She fakes a suicide attempt in order to regain the affection of her sleazy boyfriend. That ploy doesn't work but it lands her in the custody of her long-estranged mother (Bening), who is a gambling addict and all-around crazy who lives in Atlantic City.
Directed by the husband-and-wife team who gave us the brilliant American Splendor and the okay Cinema Verite, this is nowhere near as good as the former but (IMO) quite a bit better than the latter. Wiig is terrific and so is Matt Dillon as Bening's weird love interest. Bening is very miscast but does well, and Darren Criss, who apparently was a Glee regular, is very good indeed as Wiig's eventual b.f. It's worth a look. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sat Apr 05, 2014 11:19 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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knox wrote: Phantom is well done thriller, mainly due to Ed Harris's disgraced Soviet captain who redeems himself when faced with a KGB agent (Duchovny) gone rogue. It has a realism, in its visuals, that comes from shooting the film in an actual Soviet sub that's docked at a maritime museum in San Diego.
Thanks. Agree it's well-done. Harris creates layers, jumping between his dark past and the immediate crisis. He was so good in submarine mode in "The Abyss," and he didn't disappoint me in "Phantom."
And speaking of Annette B, looks like she and Harris are in a film romance this year, saw the trailer a couple weeks ago. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2014 4:40 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. It took me about 20 minutes to realize Colonel Blimp was never going to appear. He was a satirical comic strip character of the 1930s, and one of the film's themes is how the values of Blimp became obsolete between 1902 and 1942.
This is the story of Clive Candy (Roger Livesey), later Brigadier General Clive Wynne-Candy, taking him from the Boer War, through the end of the First World War (with a postscript in a prisoner of war camp) and the early years of World War II. In the process, he falls in love with several Deborah Kerrs, of whom there fortunately are enough to go around.
It begins with a hilarious sequence in which a group of soldiers, informed that a training exercise is to begin at midnight, decide to strike pre-emptively (as in Pearl Harbor) and capture the opposing general (Wynne-Candy) in a Turkish bath. A scuffle ensues, Wynne-Candy and the cocky young opposing lieutenant fall in a pool, and Candy emerges forty years younger.
It seems that German newspapers are printing scurrilous stories* about British behavior in the Boer War, as Candy is informed by a friend (Kerr) in Germany. He goes to Berlin, a cocky young officer himself, and since the situation is diplomatically delicate, he promptly manages to insult the German officer corps and finds himself in a duel. The Germans have to draw lots to find someone to scar this upstart.
The choice rejoices in the name Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff (a brilliant Anton Walbrook). The two promptly scar each other and they wind up in the same nursing home to recover, bonding with each other over bridge and becoming good friends and rivals for Kerr. The friendship is episodic, and lasts the length of the movie, during which Theo goes from two English phrases to eventually giving one of the most moving monologues in the history of movies. (The one where he explains why he fled the Nazis in Germany to England.)
In the duel, Theo is scarred on the forehead and Clive on the upper lip, which brings up another theme. This is also the story of a great moustache.
Well, there's still an hour and a half of plot to go. This is a long movie (163 minutes), but a grand and moving one, often very funny, with Livesey and Walbrook evolving over forty years. Kerr doesn't have to age because she keeps getting reincarnated. All are very good. The film was made in 1943, and is properly patriotic, but intelligently so. Putting the most profound speeches in the mouth of an expatriate German was somewhat controversial at the time, but plays well now.
Now listening with commentary on. (9 of 10)
*The scurrilous stories are actually true, although Candy and his friend don't know that. Winston Churchill allegedly hated this film, partly because he thought it would be an anti-military film, which it isn't, but he must not have appreciated this criticism of the war that made him famous. |
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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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| jeremy |
| Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2014 11:01 pm |
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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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Great stuff Syd.
The Boer War, bitter and hard-fought, was perhaps the first major, modern insurgency (once the Boer's realised they couldn't win by fighting pitched battles). The British used many tactics to try to quell it, including the use (and arguably invention) of concentration camps. The idea was to separate the insurgents from their support in the countryside. Conditions in the camps were poor and many died from disease and neglect. It was not a noble episode. Eventually, the use of overwhelming force by the British secured an uneasy peace...and the hatred of the Afrikaners. Many of the stories told about the British were scurrilous - they did not put ground glass in prisoners food, for instance - but that maybe misses the point.
The South Africa of the Boers was not the only nation whose identity was formed by opposition to the British. |
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I am angry, I am ill, and I'm as ugly as sin.
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking.
I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit.
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it. |
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| yambu |
| Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2014 12:47 pm |
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Joined: 23 May 2004
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Location: SF Bay Area
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jeremy wrote: ....The South Africa of the Boers was not the only nation whose identity was formed by opposition to the British. |
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