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Syd

Posted: Sat May 10, 2014 10:55 pm

Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12895 Location: Norman, Oklahoma

Odd thing about Hobson's Choice. I had problems with all three of the lead performances, sometimes I have trouble with the editing, but I love the movie anyway. It has some scenes that couldn't be done better, and it has an amazing bit of physical comedy where Charles Laughton, playing totally drunk, pulls back, and runs up a flight of stairs, staggering all the way. This film is what might happen if David Lean directed a Ealing comedy. (He did direct; it's one of his few pure comedies. It's miles better than Blithe Spirit, which, amazingly, is a David Lean film.)

If you're not familiar with it, Hobson (Laughton) is a successful boot shop owner who tries to run his three daughters lives and dominate his employees. Things come to a head when he tries to find husbands for his two younger daughters and discovers he has to pay dowries. And he is sure as hell not going to pay dowries. The oldest daughter, Maggie (Brenda De Banzie), is thirty, and obviously is over the hill and has to keep running the shop.

Maggie is having none of this. A great reason for the shop's success is Will Mossop (John Mills), who is illiterate, meek, and the most adept bootmaker in Manchester. Maggie decides that her way out is to marry Mossop, and pretty much browbeats him into marriage. (No dowry needed, either.)This is less difficult than it should be, but it takes a while for the easily dominated Mossop to realize that perhaps he's fallen into a good deal, and a bit longer for Maggie to make him into a man. It takes a lot of education, but well before the end, you realize that perhaps these two are the salvation of each other, and Hobson as well.

Major themes are feminism, or what passed for it around 1900, and the temperance movement. (Hobson is a chronic alcoholic, which plays a major role in the film.)

The film is in the Criterion Collection, and, if you get it from them, I recommend you view it again with the commentary, which was very well done.

_________________
I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament

Syd

Posted: Sun May 11, 2014 3:58 am

Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12895 Location: Norman, Oklahoma

Rewatched Saving Mr. Banks,, which I'm more convinced was one of the best films of last year.

_________________
I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament

gromit

Posted: Sun May 11, 2014 12:20 pm

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9008 Location: Shanghai

Hobson's Choice was pretty enjoyable. I could do with a re-watch of that.

And speaking of Duke, everyone should listen to Duke's Place, a reworking of C-Jam Blues with vocals by Louis Armstrong, from the one album where Duke and Satch worked together. Really a great piece.

_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.

gromit

Posted: Sun May 11, 2014 1:16 pm

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9008 Location: Shanghai

Continuing with the WB Noir Vol 5 set:

Backfire did indeed stink.
A ridiculously contrived plot, iffy acting (including one fella pulling a Bogey impersonation, or just stuck in a Bogey role), and really nothing to recommend it.

I was pretty impressed with the set up til now, so one total clunker isn't bad. It's watchable, but just a mess.

_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.

yambu

Posted: Mon May 12, 2014 1:42 pm

Joined: 23 May 2004 Posts: 6441 Location: SF Bay Area

In Hud, the duets between Patricia Neal and Newman are the best of their kind. Behind his charm and flirtatiousness is a self-hatred and a hatred for all women. She sees it, and so her graceful parries to him look like sport but are more. And yet she's attracted to him. He knows what she knows and feels, and so what you have is likened to a double mirror experience.

_________________
That was great for you. How was it for me?

marantzo

Posted: Mon May 12, 2014 3:12 pm

Guest

It's time I saw Hud. A movie that was always said to be very good by my friends who saw it, but I never got around to see it. Patricia Neal was a big favourite of mine. Sadly, I saw The Fountainhead because of her, even though I read the book and it stunk, and so did the movie.

Kate Mulgrew always reminds me of her.

Joe Vitus

Posted: Mon May 12, 2014 3:24 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston

There's all sorts of things wrong with it, and Larry McMurtry himself pointed to Pauline Kael's review as the final word on the subject, but it's got some good dialogue and some good performances and the cinematography is neat.

_________________
You've got a great brain. You should keep it in your head.

-Topher

billyweeds

Posted: Mon May 12, 2014 4:21 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City

I pretty much love Hud, even though Patricia Neal won the Oscar as Best Actress when her (absolutely marvelous) performance was clearly supporting.

Ghulam

Posted: Tue May 13, 2014 1:36 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 4742 Location: Upstate NY

.
The Palestinian movie "The Attack" (2012) is the story of a very successful Arab surgeon, working in a top Tel Aviv hospital, praised, honored and loved by all. His wife, to whom he has been married for 15 years, is the love of his life. But there are some dark secrets about her that she keeps from him. One day her dead body arrives in the hospital where her husband works. He is told by the Israeli police that she was a suicide bomber who killed 17 people in her suicide attack. First he refuses to believe that, but when he sees the proof of her involvement, he decides to go after the people who had set her up. He follows the lead to Neblus, a Palestinian town in the West Bank.

Excellent location shots of Tel Aviv and Neblus. Israeli warmth and Arab rage are well depicted. A taut and coherent drama which got three international awards for best direction.

.

gromit

Posted: Sat May 17, 2014 1:18 pm

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9008 Location: Shanghai

Rather disappointed in my recent viewings:

Assayas' Summer Hours (2009).
It looks lovely, especially the country house and the museum pieces.
And he makes interesting choices to set up potential conflicts and just let them let away or get easily dissolved.
But the family characters just seemed too sketchy and banal for me.
So I didn't care about them or their 1st world problems -- how to divide an estate of valuable art works and a big house.
Okay, so modern France is elitist and globalist -- news flash.
Just seemed one of those films where they spent so much time and effort on the museum pieces and the look of the film and the unresolved problems, that they didn't bother to do more than make sketchy stereotypes of the characters.

Klute (1972)
The pacing here was really stuck in the mud.
Every scene seemed drawn out to no purpose.
The main male character Klute is a complete cypher -- we know so little about him, that who cares what he does. When he sleeps with Bree, does he have a family back in whereversville? Is he single? Who knows.

Not to mention it often sounds like actors reading a script.
The writing was too apparent in most of dialogue.
And Jane's Fonda's hairstyle is terrible throughout.
Some of her outfits are quite good though.

There really is almost no suspense, as there are so few characters, and we see one guy acting somewhat creepy, it's really no surprise when it's him.
Then there is the most boring psycho-sexual killer attack scene ever. It just drones on for 5 or 10 minutes with nothing happening. Instead we get to listen to an audio tape of another attack/killing he did recently. Exciting. And in true Klute fashion, that starts with a bunch of small talk and nothing much and drags on. Then it all winds up with an ultra-cheesy finish.
A bunch of dreck really.

A Brief History of Time
There's something flat and boring about Erroll Morris films.
They always leave me dissatisfied.

_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.

carrobin

Posted: Sat May 17, 2014 8:32 pm

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC

This afternoon TCM showed "Scaramouche," with Stewart Granger and Mel Ferrer swaggering around in French Revolution-era gear. In his introduction, Ben Mankiewicz said that the swordfight at the end took three weeks to complete and is probably the best ever filmed, and as a swordfight afficionado, I was intrigued. The movie wasn't all that great, but the swordfight was indeed the best I've ever seen--taking place in a theater, from the balconies through the orchestra and on to the stage, a real masterpiece. Nice costumes, too.

Syd

Posted: Sat May 17, 2014 8:56 pm

Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12895 Location: Norman, Oklahoma

The book made me want to go out and join the French Revolutionaries.

_________________
I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament

carrobin

Posted: Sat May 17, 2014 9:05 pm

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC

I read the book when I was a teenager. When I was frustrated by having to go to church on Sunday nights when "Maverick" was on, I wrote a letter to the TV station and asked them to move the program to a later time, because I was such a fan of that "scaramouche." The station manager sent a reply saying that unfortunately he couldn't change the time slot, but my letter had sent him "running for the dictionary." My mother showed his letter to all her friends. I was already developing a reputation as a literacy geek.

marantzo

Posted: Sun May 18, 2014 7:40 am

Guest

I saw Scaramouche when I was 11. I remember liking it and saw it again (I think twice), on TV. I liked it, and yes, that sword fight was something to see.

jeremy

Posted: Tue May 20, 2014 6:59 pm

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 6794 Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)

If, like me, you had resisted the temptation to part with $15 dollars or so to watch the heavily promoted “World War Z” at the cinema, you may have caught the film for the first time this weekend on one of Rupert Murdoch’s movie subscription channels. Fortunately, my ‘no gym’ motel boasts a 50+ Sky Channel package. For those that are not so privileged: “World War Z” is the latest incarnation of the zombie film, which adopts the scarily fast-moving, pathogen-infected creatures from “28 Days Later”, but gives them the full, Hollywood, action-blockbuster treatment. Though, in doing so, the film and moves one step further away from the feel and social observation of George Romero’s genre defining films. On another occasion, I search for some subtext or speculate on the reasons for America’s current fascination with zombies, but I'm not sure the film warrants it and, for today, I’ll just settle for them not being vampires.

“World War Z” was shamelessly thin and formulaic, but at the same time it featured some bravura film making and was always watchable, probably because it didn’t overreach itself by going for unearned drama or unsustainable depth. It was content to work the tropes and stay on the surface; in fact it barely touched it. Regardless, a little more character or plot development or any sense of the personal wouldn’t have hurt.
The film seems to be part of growing trend, in that it was a supranational body, in this case the UN, that saved the day rather than the American military. Does this represent a sea change in American perception of the world as increasingly multilateral? Again, as something of a change, the UN’s 'saving the day' trouble shooter, Brad Pitt, was more of a thoughtful technocrat than an old school, action man. His acting was noticeably low-key; though far be it for me to suggest that he was drifting through a movie in which he was struggling to find any core around which to build a performance.

The film featured or rather consisted of four or five big action set pieces, which was probably one too many, but cleverly each brought something different to the film and were not entirely gratuitous. The thrilling siege of Jerusalem, followed by a tense stand-off in a bio-lab in Cardiff, of all places, was a nice change of pace and tone.

Though not out of keeping with the tone of the rest of the film, the pat resolution was risible. In its quasi-scientific, but barely credible simplicity, it reminded me of the almost deus ex machina solutions often provided out of the blue by white-coated scientists in 1950’s science fiction films or perhaps the ending of an episode of “Star Trek”.

Fry: Usually on the show, they came up with a complicated plan, then explained it with a simple analogy.
Leela: Hmmm... If we can re-route engine power through the primary weapons and configure them to Melllvar's frequency, that should overload his electro-quantum structure.
Bender: Like putting too much air in a balloon!
Fry: Of course! It's all so simple!

…

Leela: It's not working! He's gaining strength from our weapons!
Fry: Like a balloon, and... something bad happens.

I’m still glad I didn’t fork out $15 to see it.

A slightly generous *** (out of five)

_________________
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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