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| carrobin |
 Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2014 10:25 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: NYC
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| She was no Garbo, but she had an interesting kind of beauty. I knew she'd won two Oscars and disappeared from view, but I didn't know (or didn't remember) what she won them for. (And she's 105? Eleven years older than my mother!) |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2014 11:21 am |
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billyweeds wrote: gromit wrote: Are you aware that Luise Rainer is still alive?
Coming up on 105 ...
And she made 5 more films after her B2B Oscar wins.
and then a 6th a few years later to finish off her contract.
Yes to all of the above. Unfortunately, none of her other films were any good. She won the two Oscars pretty much as a result of a huge publicity push by MGM to make her the next Garbo. Well, at least she won two Oscars while neither Garbo, nor Hitchcock, nor Keaton (Buster), nor Chaplin ever won any.
Chaplin did win an Oscar, for the score of Limelight twenty years after the movie came out. Some fluke made it eligible. |
Last edited by Syd on Mon Nov 17, 2014 2:14 pm; edited 1 time in total
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2014 12:26 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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Syd wrote: billyweeds wrote: gromit wrote: Are you aware that Luise Rainer is still alive?
Coming up on 105 ...
And she made 5 more films after her B2B Oscar wins.
and then a 6th a few years later to finish off her contract.
Yes to all of the above. Unfortunately, none of her other films were any good. She won the two Oscars pretty much as a result of a huge publicity push by MGM to make her the next Garbo. Well, at least she won two Oscars while neither Garbo, nor Hitchcock, nor Keaton (Buster), nor Chaplin ever won any.
Chaplin did win an Oscar, for the score of Limelight twenty years after the movie came out. Some fluke made it elegible.
That's like a Lifetime Achievement Award, only not as hot. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2014 1:14 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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Whiskey's earlier comment about movies creating their own reality - was reminded of this when me bonnie lass said she had ne'er seen Bravehearggghhhht, so we watched the massive blood-spattered epic and it struck me how completely in the genre of mythology it lies.
Little is known about the actual William Wallace, but once senses it is unlikely he said things on the battlefield like "Scotland's terms are that your commander present himself in front of our army, put his head between his legs and kiss his ass!" And his constant harping on, and bellowing of, "freedom," strikes me as something probably not done around 1300, when the concept of freedom was not well-developed in quotidian, or political, life. The movie is not terribly complex or nuanced, and there are moments when I almost expect Michael Palin or John Cleese to leap out of a bush and clarify that this is all a grandiose joke about the Middle Ages, but the battle scenes are beautifully done, with an unusual clarity such that you can follow the tactics and maneuvers amidst the bloody chaos. And there are some good moments, as when Patrick McGoohan, as an impatient and annoyed Edward I, tosses his son's boyfriend out a castle window for talking too much. Getting back to my original point, this works in a film where the reality is invented and we are entirely in the realm of mythology. I have no idea if Ed I ever did such a thing, but it's fun to think maybe it happened. |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2014 1:50 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: NYC
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"Braveheart" was a ripping yarn, and if Wallace was no Mel Gibson, I think Edward I must have been something like McGoohan. (Let us hope that if Isis sees the film, they won't decide that drawing and quartering looks like more fun than beheadings.)
I've just received a Barnes & Noble e-mail offering 50% off their "Criterion Collection," a bunch of old movies that nobody ever heard of (though "Inherit the Wind" and a couple of other classics show up on the list). I was surprised to find a few obscure British flicks, including John Hurt's "Sinful Davey," the weird but fascinating "The Bed-Sitting Room," and Spike Milligan's "Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall." And there are several I haven't seen since I was a teenager staying home from school and watching Palmetto Playhouse, our local midday 1950s version of TCM. I'm pretty sure I'm going to order "Cry of the City"--Richard Conte and Victor Mature, shooting it out in a neighborhood I would later be living in. I loved it back in 1956. |
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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2014 2:53 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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bartist wrote: Whiskey's earlier comment about movies creating their own reality - was reminded of this when me bonnie lass said she had ne'er seen Bravehearggghhhht, so we watched the massive blood-spattered epic and it struck me how completely in the genre of mythology it lies.
Little is known about the actual William Wallace, but once senses it is unlikely he said things on the battlefield like "Scotland's terms are that your commander present himself in front of our army, put his head between his legs and kiss his ass!" And his constant harping on, and bellowing of, "freedom," strikes me as something probably not done around 1300, when the concept of freedom was not well-developed in quotidian, or political, life. The movie is not terribly complex or nuanced, and there are moments when I almost expect Michael Palin or John Cleese to leap out of a bush and clarify that this is all a grandiose joke about the Middle Ages, but the battle scenes are beautifully done, with an unusual clarity such that you can follow the tactics and maneuvers amidst the bloody chaos. And there are some good moments, as when Patrick McGoohan, as an impatient and annoyed Edward I, tosses his son's boyfriend out a castle window for talking too much. Getting back to my original point, this works in a film where the reality is invented and we are entirely in the realm of mythology. I have no idea if Ed I ever did such a thing, but it's fun to think maybe it happened. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2014 3:05 pm |
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Stirling in the movie resembles Bannockburn more than the actual battle, Stirling BRIDGE, in which the Scots used the time-honored tactic of letting part of the English army across the bridge, then attacking while the English were divided.
Actually, Isabella was the ripe old age of 10 when Wallace died (she was two when Stirling Bridge was fought), and the child she's carrying in the movie would have born after seven years of pregnancy. |
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2014 10:11 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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| I've never seen Braveheart, The Shawshank Redemption or The Sixth Sense. All of them I've had a low-level interest in watching for years, but never made the effort. Probably have them all on Dvd here somewheres. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2014 8:27 pm |
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I'm in a movie challenge on another forum that requires (1) watch a movie for each decade from the 1920s through 2010s--I'm going to see if I can find one I haven't seen from the 1910s, five films in a theater, a documentary, two films from genres (specifically film noir, sf and western), and a film from each of three different foreign languages. A film can count in more than one category, so if someone hasn't seen "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," he can watch it and count it three times. I calculate it takes a minimum of 14 films and a max of 21 if you don't want to count any film twice. I have to the end of the year, so it shouldn't be difficult.
So far I have The Temptress (1926), Princesse Tam-Tam (1935, French), A Hard Day's Night (1964), Kill! (1968, Japanese) and Particle Fever (2013, Documentary), all of which are good except the last, which is just okay. Princess Tam-Tam and Kill! are excellent films.
In Princesse Tam-Tam, Josephine Baker plays Alwina, a poor Tunisian shepherd girl who seems to acquire her animals with a bit of thievery. Max (Albert Préjean) is a blocked writer, partly because his wife Lucie (Germaine Aussey) is trying the scream-and-denigrate technique of of writer inspiration. Robert Arnoux is Coton, Max's secretary and collaborator.
Desperate for inspiration, Max and Coton where Max meets and is charmed by Alwina and decides she would be a great character for a novel about the civilizing of a Tunisian "savage." Meanwhile, Lucie is hanging out with a Maharaja. Coton gets the interesting idea of having Alwina masquerade as an Indian Princess in love with Max, in order to make Lucie jealous and teach her a lesson. Thus, as Robert Osborne points out, this is a cousin of "Pygmalion."
Baker, of course, sings and dances, and I found her charming as an actress. More likeable than super sexy. I was surprised when an hour into the film, we suddenly get a Busby Berkleyesque dance routine (which leads into Baker's big dance number). At the time, the film was blocked by Hays Office (although black audiences still managed to see it). Nowadays, it's not all that scandalous and has a PG rating, and is a lot of fun. |
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2014 10:17 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Kill! (1968) First rate samurai semi-comedy, starting off from the same novel as Sanjuro, but having fun with samurai conventions, not to mention spaghetti westerns. Tatsuya Nakadai is playing a former samurai who is 180 degrees removed from the killing machine he played in Sword of Doom; in this one, he's trying to stop a town from ripping itself to shreds. (He saw a similar town do that a few months earlier and is haunted by the memory.) Etsushi Takahashi is his dullwitted sometimes partner/sometimes enemy with a fetish for whores who smell like the earth. You see, he grew up on a farm...
This is one of Nakadai's finest roles, which is saying something considering he was one of the world's great actors. Or is, since he's still alive and acting at the age of 81. Don't be misled by the title. Although there's a fair amount of bloodshed, this movie isn't any bloodier than most Kurosawa samurai films, and positively restrained compared with Sword of Doom, which was going after some sort of record. |
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2014 7:37 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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gromit wrote: I've never seen Braveheart, The Shawshank Redemption or The Sixth Sense. All of them I've had a low-level interest in watching for years, but never made the effort. Probably have them all on Dvd here somewheres.
You're missing some fine cinema there. Shawshank in particular is borderline great. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2014 10:54 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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I looked for all of those and turned up Braveheart.
Found it pretty disappointing.
The pacing is terrible and it really drags at times.
The romance stuff with his wife and then the English princess felt rather forced and like a blatant attempt to get females to watch a war film.
All the talk about freedom did seem a tad modern.
The women all seem to have rather modern makeup, which was mildly distracting. And I'm never a fan of one man outfighting/eluding multitudes, which happens a few times. And the slow-mo effects were kind of cheesy and ill-considered, imo.
There also seemed to be an odd humor throughout the film.
Not only do the Scots moon the English troops but then when the arrows start flying we see one Scotsman get an arrow in his exposed rear. When the prince's gay lover is defenestrated, it's kind of done in a black humor way. And Mel rolls his eyes and makes faces at times throughout that seems a bit ironic. I think that's part of why at times one expects Monty Python routines to break out.
The scale of the battles is impressive. I liked how the Scots are all in drab colors, as though they are too poor to afford colors. While the English have much more colorful and fancy uniforms and outfits.
There are good scenes, but my belief in the film's reality really came and went. It really needed to be edited down too. |
Last edited by gromit on Sun Nov 23, 2014 2:40 am; edited 1 time in total
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| knox |
| Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2014 12:34 am |
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Joined: 18 Mar 2010
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Location: St. Louis
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good to hear others have detected monty python in braveheart.
can't imagine the 6 sense would be able to be watched unironically now, given the years of spoilering and parodies and beating the catchphrase to death - yeah, shawshank would be much better choice,of thse three.
regrets, kn a mobile at momnt |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2014 6:24 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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| I agree that Shawshank is much the best choice of the three, and also that Braveheart (despite a lot of good stuff that gromit obviously didn't appreciate) leaves a lot to be desired. I did, however, watch The Sixth Sense again fairly recently just to check out whether it held up, and it did, it did. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2014 9:43 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
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| Believe it or not, but I've managed to avoid knowing the spoiler/twist in The Sixth Sense. I can be fairly oblivious when I choose to be. And I didn't even know there was a catchphrase related to the film ... |
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