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| Joe Vitus |
 Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2014 9:53 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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| Way back when I was an actor, I wanted to be William Daniels. So bad. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2014 11:54 am |
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billyweeds wrote: marantzo wrote: Billy, your current picture looks like Don Francks. In the Canadian TV series Le Femme Nikita, Don Francks wears a band around his forehead also.
It's my 4th of July headband, also known as my Springsteen drag. I love it. Also tend to love Don Francks, so that's a compliment for me. Thanks!
A guy, Ken, came to Winnipeg from Toronto to go to the U of Manitoba Art School, and we became good friends. A very good artist, also. He still is. He would tell me about his life in Toronto. He and his friends were hippie types. Francks was one of his friends. He told me about a time when he went boating with Francks off an island of Toronto. They talked to each other about the things they wanted to do. Francks said that he only had one thing that he wanted, to be an actor, and he was going to be a known actor even if it was going to be a extremely hard to get there.
Ken never forgot that, and when he told me about it, Francks had never acted in anything we knew about. He was also a singer and musician. About a year later, I saw him in a TV series and then some other TV series (Canadian). I forget the names of the series.
When I saw that he got a major role in Finian's Rainbow, I figured that it would have put him on the Hollywood track, but the movie didn't get very good reviews. I saw it and liked it, especially Francks. Oh well. He's done many many roles after that. Mostly in Canada, unless I'm mistaken.
My artist friend, Ken, lives in the Maritimes (Nova Scotia, I think) now and is a well liked artist. |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2014 12:21 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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| I remember when Don Francks was a summer host of a variety show when Perry Como was on vacation (that's also how I discovered Peter Cook & Dudley Moore). He was one of those guys who seemed to be an all-around entertainer--I also saw him onstage when I first moved to New York, because he co-starred in a romantic comedy with my fave rave at the time, David McCallum. (Carole Shelley and Gwyda Donhowe were the women involved.) I also had a Francks record album--I may still have it somewhere. He was one of those good talented performers who just never got the right big break, I think. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2014 7:22 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Francks played the title role in a legendary Broadway flop, Kelly!, based on the life of Steve Brodie, who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge and survived.
Finian's Rainbow was (IMO) a simply terrible movie, but Francks may have been the best thing about it. Coppola was not cut out to direct musicals, as his later One from the Heart confirmed. |
Last edited by billyweeds on Tue Jul 08, 2014 11:04 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2014 10:44 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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| All this about Francks reminds me of Robert Lindsay, an actor beloved by my British friend Jane; he was terrific in "Me and My Girl" (which I saw in London and again on Broadway). Then Carl Reiner tried to make him a movie star in "Bert Rigby, You're a Fool," which was a total flop. He never made it in the movies, but at the moment he's doing the Michael Caine / John Lithgow role in "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" on stage in London and getting raves. He just never caught on in the USA. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2014 4:53 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| Out of the Furnace (2013) is a powerful revenge story/family drama with amazing performances by Christian Bale and Woody Harrelson. Casey Affleck, also excellent, plays Bale's brother, back from Iraq and in psychic torture, who gets into bare-knuckle fighting to make money. Harrelson is as black a villain as has ever darkened a silver screen, and he's the redneck promoter of these fights. To tell any more would constitute a spoiler, but let it be said that the story is poignant, suspenseful, and satisfying. THe supporting cast is aces--Willem Dafoe, Forest Whitaker, Zoe Saldana, Sam Shepard. Definitely one to see. |
Last edited by billyweeds on Thu Jul 10, 2014 7:44 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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| Befade |
| Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2014 4:53 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
Location: AZ
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| It's waiting on my Netflix streaming, Billy. Thanks for the recommend. Lately Netflix is my main go to. |
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| yambu |
| Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2014 6:20 pm |
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Joined: 23 May 2004
Posts: 6441
Location: SF Bay Area
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Belleville is a hilly blue collar quarter in Northeast Paris. In this totally mute animation, A club-footed grandmother is raising her grandson to be a Tour de France contestant. They are dedicated to her unconventional training methods. They and an a wonderful aging dog make it happen. Along the way there are cameos of Django Reinhardt and Fred Astaire.
The mob kidnaps the biker, and his grandmother is aided by a most unlikely pair of elderly sisters in getting him back. They dynamite frogs out of a pond, and professionally perform a music routine - a sophisticated 6/8 rhythm - with crumpling newspaper supplying the base, and bicycle spokes for the riff.
These are really bad guys, who blow some poor biker away. That lays to rest any illusions that this is a "cartoon". |
Last edited by yambu on Fri Jul 11, 2014 7:56 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2014 7:53 pm |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12929
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| Three sisters. They're The Triplets of Belleville. |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2014 8:53 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: NYC
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This morning TCM showed a couple of Bob Hope movies, and one was a film I'd never seen: "A Global Affair." It was a romcom/UN propaganda flick that struck me as a deeply ironic contrast to the day's news about the Central American children surging over our southern borders. Hope, a UN speechwriter, is ordered to take home a baby girl who has been found after a visitors' tour leaves the UN building, to keep her over the weekend while his superiors figure out what to do with her. (They don't want to hand her over to the police and Social Services for fear of an international incident.) Word gets out and it seems that every country in the world wants to claim the kid, and Hope is besieged by beautiful female representatives who try to coax him (or threaten him, in the case of the Russian) into sending the baby to their country. But he's developing a relationship with the beautiful Belgian brunette who found the baby in the first place, and when he makes his speech about which country should get the baby, he claims her himself, saying that she'll learn to be a global citizen as she travels with him and the woman he intends to marry very soon. And he gets a unanimous ovation (maybe the most unrealistic thing in the unrealistic movie--universal agreement at the UN!).
Evidently nobody tried to find the mother--then there wouldn't be a movie.
It was a fairly well done film, with some good supporting actors and a few amusing scenes, but it could never be made now. Especially considering that the baby was a girl--no Muslim countries, please. Not China. Not India. Certainly nowhere in Central America, these days. And what, I wonder, is the UN doing about the Central American refugee children? Or have they turned the Secretariat into a condominium? |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2014 7:31 am |
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I had seen The Global Affair before on TCM. Yesterday morning I watched it again while I was doing the weekend crossword puzzle. I wonder if Hope had a relationship with any of those good looking women. He didn't have much of a relationship with his ultra-religious wife, Catholic, who would never have a divorce.
I saw Hope a few times at the golf course my friend and I went to in Palm Springs. Not a fancy golf course. He was in his 90's. The last time I saw him was at the course's driving range. I watched him as he kept putting the golf balls on the tee for the guy who apparently took care of him and golfed with him. He also chauffeured for him. It was so strange watching him crouch down and tee up the ball for the guy.
I think I wrote this before...Hope played his first golf game in Winnipeg in the 30's. Strangely it was the same golf course that my friend and I who I golfed with in Palm Springs also used to play at the same course that Hope did in his first game of golf. We played there in the 50's. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2014 10:18 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
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Really like the Triplettes of Belleville.
Especially the dog's dream.
And the little lame mother who is indomitable. |
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| yambu |
| Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2014 12:50 pm |
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Joined: 23 May 2004
Posts: 6441
Location: SF Bay Area
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The Lunchbox. In Mumbai, there is a brisk citywide business of people having their hot lunches delivered to them. A woman lunch maker's meal is sent to the wrong man. The two correspond to straighten out the problem. Their notes gradually lead to other things in their lives.
The customer ever so gradually moves from being a tired, friendless bureaucrat to a wise and caring old man. And it's all in the eyes. Quite extraordinary.
A satisfying coda: It is well known that the lunch delivery service never, ever makes a mistake. |
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| Befade |
| Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2014 7:03 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
Location: AZ
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I was disappointed in the ending. First it went one way, then another.....SPOILERS: was he really too old for the young housewife whose husband was cheating? Does he leave town only to come back? Is he going back to work? Does she decide to leave town regardless? Why not together? What was the point of the separation?
Yambu? |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2014 1:26 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
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Picked up a Joan Crawford set.
Watched Mildred Pierce first and took me quite a while to realize I had seen it before. I can see why. It's convoluted and throws too much plot, I assume from the novel, into the film. So it jumps quickly and piles on complications. The flashback structure, in the police station, is rather creaky and ineffective. For the most part, people act in rather artificial ways and aren't believable characters, as they all seem to have just one trait they are honing. The class rifts between old and new money seems rather archaic at this point, as do all the good manners.
Then I watched Possessed, from two years later, which is essentially the same film. The Crawford character is rather different, but the rest of the characters are fairly familiar and the plot more or less the same. Again the characters are mostly one-note. The daughter is now a step-daughter -- and they look almost the same -- who falls in love with Joan's love interest. Van Heflin here mostly seems to be doing a Cagney impersonation, or maybe better to say playing a Cagney role. As in MP, he's not in love with Crawford and she makes a marriage for money, etc.
It shares a creaky flashback structure with MP, and not surprisingly one of the screenwriters was the same.
Both films are okay, but the 1D characters, the creaky structures and the melodramatic twists mostly kept me at a distance.
Oddly enough the other two films in the set are the earlier and early talkie Grand Hotel (1932) and the much later What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). Not sure why they were paired with these two mid 40's films. I would have preferred other immediate post-war Crawford films such as: Daisy Kenyon (1947), Humoresque (1946) or Flamingo Road (1949). I do have Humoresque around here somewhere, but might be hard to unearth it. |
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