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| Befade |
 Posted: Mon Nov 23, 2015 1:03 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
Location: AZ
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| Thanks Gromit. I knew you'd remember it. I haven't seen Catfish and there was a tv show with that name. This American Life has a podcast about a catfish incident. I'm going to watch Talhotblond again. |
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Lost in my own private I dunno. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Mon Nov 23, 2015 2:44 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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gromit wrote: Not only was O'Neill an alkie (and he does shows himself as a steady imbiber in LDJIN)...
Eugene's alter ego in LDJIN is Edmund, right? I'd forgotten that Edmund was a heavy drinker. I know that Jamie is (the older brother) but that's not the Eugene stand-in. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2015 3:23 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
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Yes, Edmund is the Eugene O'Neil stand-in. In real life Edmund was the name of the middle son who died at age 2, and Eugene was the youngest son. For the play, O'Neil transposed the names.
Some of the black humor in LDJIN is that everyone agrees that Edmund shouldn't drink because of his health problems (TB), but at various points each of the family members offer him more to drink. The difficulty/unlikelihood of Edmund quitting the booze parallels the mother's struggles and failings with morphine.
Edmund isn't the raging alcoholic his older brother is -- Edmund comes home earlier and only moderately soused when the two go out. But it is referenced several times that Edmund drank too much while at sea. And he keeps saying that he'll go on the wagon the next day or when in the sanitarium, but he keeps drinking and taking up every offer of drink the whole night. And earlier, Jamie catches Edmund sneaking some whiskey from the father's bottle. He's not as out of control as his brother Jamie or as steadily persistent ashis father, but he's definitely in the same mode. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| inlareviewer |
| Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2015 2:46 pm |
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Joined: 05 Jul 2004
Posts: 1949
Location: Lawrence, KS
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billyweeds wrote: ... and another in 1987. The latter starred Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey, Peter Gallagher, and the lesser-known but estimable Bethel Leslie. I've never seen either one, sharing with inlareviewer a basic disaffection with O'Neill.
Well, my antipathy has been to known to alleviate somewhat depending on the production -- the Anna Christie revival with the late, great Natasha R. and Mr. Neeson is one such example, because their chemistry upended the quaint tedium of the script -- and I actually liked the '87 LDJIN you cite (it used to be up complete on YouTube) mainly because it's geared toward modern-day conversational attack that makes some of those lengthy speeches much easier to take. |
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"And take extra care with strangers/Even flowers have their dangers/And though scary is exciting/Nice is different than good." --Stephen Sondheim |
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| inlareviewer |
| Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2015 3:05 pm |
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Joined: 05 Jul 2004
Posts: 1949
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Relayed Deaction Dept.
billyweeds wrote: inla--Btw, who is Dorothy P.? Having a lapse, I guess.
Or is Dorothy Parker a big fan of Lili? Just not getting the allusion.
Lili is on my top 20 list of all time. I not only cry at the fadeout, I cry from almost the first scene. Caron is one in a million.
Yes, I meant Ms. Parker, who once in a theater review said the play made her cry, and she couldn't possibly love anything more than that, and so for years have re-purposed it where applicable. |
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"And take extra care with strangers/Even flowers have their dangers/And though scary is exciting/Nice is different than good." --Stephen Sondheim |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2015 7:55 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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inlareviewer wrote: billyweeds wrote: ... and another in 1987. The latter starred Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey, Peter Gallagher, and the lesser-known but estimable Bethel Leslie. I've never seen either one, sharing with inlareviewer a basic disaffection with O'Neill.
Well, my antipathy has been to known to alleviate somewhat depending on the production -- the Anna Christie revival with the late, great Natasha R. and Mr. Neeson is one such example, because their chemistry upended the quaint tedium of the script -- and I actually liked the '87 LDJIN you cite (it used to be up complete on YouTube) mainly because it's geared toward modern-day conversational attack that makes some of those lengthy speeches much easier to take.
And never forget the late and very great Anne Meara as Parthy. Anne (I can't call her "Meara") was a close friend of mine, and I miss her a lot. |
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| inlareviewer |
| Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2015 8:16 pm |
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Joined: 05 Jul 2004
Posts: 1949
Location: Lawrence, KS
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billyweeds wrote:
And never forget the late and very great Anne Meara as Parthy. Anne (I can't call her "Meara") was a close friend of mine, and I miss her a lot.
As do we all, indeed, and yes, didn't mean to leave her out -- she really found some wonderfully spontaneous ways of playing that character. All in all, actually, it was one of the best O'Neill revivals of the previous century, right up there with the Robards/Dewhurst Moon for The Misbegotten and the aforementioned Electra on television. Deep sigh. |
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"And take extra care with strangers/Even flowers have their dangers/And though scary is exciting/Nice is different than good." --Stephen Sondheim |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2015 12:53 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12944
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| Netflix is streaming Rise of the Animals: Triumph of the Vertebrates, the most recent David Attenborough series, and, given his age, possibly the last. I was certainly surprised to see it. After a few qualms, I'm quite enjoying it. In some ways, this is an update of the chordate sections of Life on Earth with computer graphics and new discoveries, particularly from China. Sir David does falter a couple of times, most notably referring to an ancestral chordate, Myllokunmingia as the first known vertebrate. (A chordate has a cartilagenous rod, a notochord, at some stage of its development. In a vertebrate, this leads to the development of a spinal column containing, well, vertebrae.) Still, the notochord was something an animal could attach muscles to, and I was impressed by the animation on how this worked. |
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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: Thu Nov 26, 2015 8:17 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Idiot's Delight: Clark Gable plays Van a World War I veteran who has almost, but not enough, talent to make it in show business, so finds himself perennially either looking for work, or getting jobs with trained penguins or as part of a mind-reading act with a drunken mystic. As part of the latter, he meets with a beautiful starry-eyed acrobat (Irene, played by Norma Shearer), who has memorized a good part of the act, is more than half in love with him, and lies a streak of bullshit that is a wonder to listen too, including her world travels as a Russian emigree and parachuting into the jungle.
Well, the act breaks up with a couple of passionate kisses, they go their own way, and Van (Gable) goes through a number of acts, the one of which we see is Van and Les Blondes, six beauties who clearly look up to him as a father figure and, surprisingly, are a bit more than mere bimbos. (I wouldn't be able to resist the temptation.) They get stranded at a hotel near the Swiss border on the verge of World War II. Among the other strandees are a German munitions manufacturer and his companion, who is a Russian emigree who is an implausible blonde and who spews a streak of bullshit that is a wonder to listen to, including her many escapes from Russia accompanied by the dead (and often frozen) body of her father. That corpse has more exciting adventures than most anybody in the film. (Shearer acts a lot like Greta Garbo in these scenes, and it was an intentional parody. Quite good, too.)
War breaks out during the film, but, since it is based on a play from slightly before the war, the details are a bit nebulous. However, the hotel is above an airbase, the borders are closed, and when an air raid is called, the people trapped in the hotel know there's going to be a retaliatory raid on the airbase which can't help but hit the hotel. So everyone is desperate to get across the border, but there's this one person whose nationality is in doubt...
Good, not perfect, comedy-drama with a strong antiwar streak, and a great performance by Shearer whose Irene is a brilliant habitual liar who really lays it on thick. The play it's based on won a Pulitzer Prize, but it doesn't seem stagy at all, and it's full of good small performances, like Les Blondes. It also has a couple of scenes where Gable sings and you understand why this is the only movie in which he sang and danced. I love his grin of admiration as Irene spins her outrageous yarns |
Last edited by Syd on Fri Jul 11, 2025 10:27 pm; edited 4 times in total
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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: Thu Nov 26, 2015 8:26 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| By the way, the signs and local languages spoken in Idiot's Delight are Esperanto. In the play, they were Italian. |
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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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| carrobin |
| Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2015 3:27 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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| So I was switching around today looking for something to watch while I had my late breakfast, and one of the Showtime (still free at the moment) channels was showing something called "Alone for Christmas"--with talking dogs. The lead looked a bit like Mad Max's rugged hound, and there was a cute Boston bulldog as well, so I stayed with it. Basically it was "Home Alone" with a dog instead of Macauley Culkin, but there was one character that I'd watch it again for: a tough freelance dogcatcher named Quentin, called in when the three moronic burglars couldn't catch the wily dog that was booby-trapping the house. He was hilarious in his first scene, on the phone in his office turning down a prospective customer, but when he was telling the villains about his terrible confrontations with dogs, I was falling off the couch laughing. He showed them his scars, then described his most traumatic experience, crashing his plane in the ocean while smuggling 100 miniature French poodles, and how they circled the wreck, watching him with their dead-black eyes--I could go on, but all I can say was that he should get an Oscar. I'm now a big fan of Kevin Sorbo. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2015 8:11 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12944
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| Hm. I cracked up at your description. |
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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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| bartist |
| Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2015 10:19 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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The bit with the circling poodles sounds like a riff on Robert Shaw's story in Jaws.
will look for both films. not sure of ready availability of idiots delight. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2015 10:24 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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| From the IMDb entry, it seems that "Alone for Christmas" is video only. But Quentin's story was certainly inspired by "Jaws." (Note the character's name.) |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Nov 28, 2015 2:39 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12944
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| I'm now watching the 1937 Lost Horizon. Was there a class in film school that taught actresses to do that dreamy-eyed smiling face that made them look like their IQ dropped 50 points? Norma Shearer did it delightfully in Idiot's Delight and here Margo is doing the same face. |
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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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