spiderwort
Junior Member
@spiderwort
Posts: 2,525
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Post by spiderwort on Jun 7, 2020 16:12:41 GMT
spiderwort Somewhere in the back of my head, I think I've heard about an Arthur Godfrey incident, that one of his regulars got too popular, a singer named Julius La Rosa had managed to get a recording contract behind Godfrey's back. Once Godfrey found out, and on live TV said something like "that's the last time You ever see him" , though the remark might not have been too harsh it destroyed Godfrey's television persona. Trying to remember were I've read it, or it's maybe something I just heard somewhere Does it ring any bell?
Sorry to say it doesn't, teleadm, though your story would make sense. I wish I knew more. I probably shouldn't even have brought it up without being able to verify it. Not something I normally do.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Jun 7, 2020 16:33:17 GMT
More on the power and popularity of Arthur Godfrey .... An aunt from the hinterlands came to visit us in NYC. MomBat tried to take her to see "the sights" in Manhattan BUT AuntieBat didn't want to bother because she had already seen them on Arthur Godfrey. Seems he had a sightseeing segment on The AG SHOW ! I dunno because I avoided his show as often as I still avoid Lawrence Welk ... <erk!> She missed out on The Empire State Building AND Radio City Music Hall and The Statue of Liberty. ya ya ... digression ....
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Post by Doghouse6 on Jun 7, 2020 16:45:02 GMT
ya ya ... digression .... Sort of a George (H) Of the (Concrete) Jungle.
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Post by kijii on Jun 7, 2020 17:19:35 GMT
Anatahan (1953) / Josef von Sternberg I rented this rare movie for streaming on Amazon Prime. This seems to be a movie narrated by von Sternberg, himself, but acted out by some Japanese people.The story is based on a real event of finding some isolated Japanese on a remote Pacific island who were never informed about the end of WWII. The story and situations in the movie are fiction. At the beginning of the movie, we feel like we are watching a documentary, by the end, we realize that it is relating a story.
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Post by hi224 on Jun 7, 2020 21:58:01 GMT
Casino.
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Post by kijii on Jun 8, 2020 16:57:34 GMT
Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) / Mike Leigh After remembering 7-time Oscar nominated Mike Leigh's movies, Secrets & Lies (1996) and Vera Drake (2004), I decided to go back and concentrate on some of his other films. This one, for which Mike Leigh received and Oscar nomination for his Original Screenplay, was first on the list. One thing I notice is that, for me, his films should be watched with the captions option "O N" since I don't always pick up the everyday British humor going on within the dialogue. In Happy-Go-Lucky, 2-time Oscar nominee Sally Hawkins--for Blue Jasmine (2013) and The Shape of Water (2017)--gets her first starring role after playing supporting roles in other Leigh films: All or Nothing (2002) and Vera Drake (2004). No doubt about it, she has a winning personality!!! This movie is about the everyday life of Poppy (Sally Hawkins), an optimistic primary school teacher surrounded by other people who are not always that optimistic. She is in her early 30s and still living single with a flatmate, Zoe (Alexis Zegerman), who might be her lover, yet the relationship is open and we are sure whether she is lesbian or not. In any case, Poppy is happy living from day to day without any set long-term goals in her life... Scott: Bear with me. Poppy: Is there? Where is he?
Helen : You want a baby though, don't you Poppy? Poppy : No thanks, I just had a kebab!
Zoe : You can't make everyone happy. Poppy : There's no harm in trying that Zoe, is there?
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Post by kijii on Jun 9, 2020 4:11:02 GMT
Another Year (2010) / Mike Leigh Mike Leigh received an Oscar nominated for his Original Screenplay of this movie. Unlike most American movies that must have action, adventure and/or a plot, Leigh approaches his movies in a different way. He takes a "normal" aging middle-class British couple and exposes the layers of interactions of characters that this couple come in contact with. The result is a slow-moving movie that ends up as a very rewarding experience in the end. To me, this movie is about aging and the dignity of a life well lived as opposed to the dearth of a life wasted on fantasy or dreams. The movie follows the friends and family of the aging couple over one year (four seasons) and, in the end, covers the characters' lives with subjects ranging everything from birth to death, all seen from the aging couple's point of view. Mary : I'm very much a glass-half-full kind of girl. But it's tricky, because... I meet these older men who want somebody younger, and that's great, because I fit the bill. But... when they find out that... you know, I'm not as young as they thought, they don't want to know. My looks work against me.
Gerri : Life's not always kind, is it? Mary : No, it isn't Gerri.
Ken : Young people, young people. Everything's for young people. Those bars, you know, they're full of young people shouting about nothing. Tom : I seem to remember you got banned from a number of pubs in Hull for shouting about nothing when you were a young person. Ken : [retelling the event] "Ken, we like you. You're a good bloke, you're good on the darts, but if you talk about politics again,
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Jun 9, 2020 13:51:38 GMT
Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) - 'Unseen Edition'.
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Post by Feologild Oakes on Jun 10, 2020 0:16:28 GMT
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Post by Prime etc. on Jun 10, 2020 8:28:05 GMT
THE TREASURE OF SAN GENNARO 1966 - Right after I watched this Italian comedy off youtube in a terrible print I learn there was a WS version available in the depths of the internet. Well I did the only logical thing for a Senta Berger fan with too much spare time--I watched it again. An innocuous comedy that moves fast enough to not overstay its welcome. With Harry Guardino and Mario Adorf as Sciascillo.
Mamma assunta: Your mother was Austrian, and a whore as well!
Sciascillo: Mine too.
Armandino Girasole: Your mother was an Austrian?
Sciascillo: No, a whore.
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Jun 10, 2020 19:20:29 GMT
Fifty Shades Darker (2017) - 'Unmasked Edition'.
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Post by Nalkarj on Jun 10, 2020 21:02:21 GMT
Over the weekend I watched 36 Hours (1965, writ-dir. George Seaton), with James Garner, Eva Marie Saint, and Rod Taylor. For about an hour, it seems like it’s going to be great. Garner is an Army major right before D-Day, and the Germans come up with a plan to get the location of the landing out of him—by kidnapping him and then convincing him he’s gotten amnesia for which he’s recovering in a military hospital, the war is over, the year is 1950, and the Allies won, and he should reminisce with his “old buddy” Maj. Gerber (Taylor) about D-Day. (Not a spoiler. We’re in on the con from the get-go, for obvious reasons.) It’s an ingenious plot, cleverly extrapolated from “Beware of the Dog,” a Roald Dahl story that’s intriguing but little more than an anecdote. Most ingeniously, the Germans come up with an elaborate scenario of what happened after “the Americans won,” with a still-living Franklin D. Roosevelt and—bravura!—a President Henry Wallace. Almost as ingenious is how they make the con work, which somewhat makes the plot a mirror-universe version of Mission: Impossible. Again, we’re in on it from the beginning, so we’re constantly in suspense as to whether or not Garner will figure it out and we can constantly chuckle about how the plotters “got it wrong” from our perspective. Taylor chief plotter is so convincing that even though we know beyond any doubt he’s lying, we like him and enjoy his “friendship” with Garner, and don’t laugh at how wrong the “history” is. It’s a great role, and a great performance. (The often-underrated Garner is equally good and emotionally effective. Saint as Garner’s “nurse” is, unfortunately, less so.) Though the comparison may seem a bit odd, some of it struck me as proto-Philip K. Dick: alternate universe (more or less), what is real?, friends and loved ones who may not actually love you (or even be real), mental illness. (MAJOR SPOILER) Halfway though, Garner does figure it out—in, again, a way I can only call ingenious. Right before the Germans kidnapped him, he got a paper cut. When he’s putting salt on his food at the “hospital,” the salt gets in the cut, which starts stinging. 6 years and he has the same paper cut in the same place? Alas, after that it all goes to blazes, becoming a pretty basic, and dull, escape-from-POW-camp movie. There is one mildly clever twist, but it won’t be too surprising if viewers think about it for a minute. Taylor and Garner are just as good, but the whole thing falls apart, even becomes deathly dull. Not that that’s a huge surprise: I can’t imagine how on earth to follow up that brilliant first hour, but the drop in quality is so precipitous that all in all the movie cannot be considered the masterpiece it originally seems to be. Even Seaton’s capable direction, which suggests Hitchcock (and, in some shots, Carol Reed) more than Stanley Donen and Peter Stone did in their more on-the-nose Hitchcock imitations ( Charade and Mirage, respectively), soon falls apart. Again, Saint isn’t that great here, but she’s fine. Dimitri Tiomkin’s music sounds good during the credits but can be a bit ugly during the film itself. Though the plot prefigures The Prisoner, Some early scenes reminded me of the Roger Moore Saint. All in all, that first hour is brilliant stuff. If only the rest of the movie lived up to it. I recommend the movie—sort of. For the first hour, at least.
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Post by kijii on Jun 11, 2020 16:03:08 GMT
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Post by Prime etc. on Jun 12, 2020 6:41:58 GMT
HELL BOATS 1970 - There were a few of these UK-made WW 2 films which have an interesting approach in that they involve personal dramatic situations against the war, where it usually ends on a sad note for the characters, as well as above average use of miniatures for the combat sequences. The war story seems more like a backdrop for the personal conflicts. This was true of 633 Squadron, Attack on the Iron Coast, The Last Escape. This one stars James Franciscus and is set in Malta. Better than I expected. Similar in romantic plot to Casablanca, except Rick is the one who gets rejected instead of doing the rejecting. The message of these films tends to be "war is hell, and so are relationships."
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Jun 12, 2020 6:58:58 GMT
Fifty Shades Freed (2018) - Unveiled Edition.
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Post by kijii on Jun 12, 2020 17:49:50 GMT
All or Nothing (2002) / Mike Leigh Mike Leigh's movies are not for everyone. With his experience in TV, he is independent enough to have made several films regardless of popular norms. In fact, in my opinion, he seems to make films the way he wants to without regard to public approval: his films attract us rather than bowing down to our standards. Yet, his brightly-lite, inexpensive, British interpersonal movies seem to have attracted the Academy over and over simply by being original or different to our eyes. Hollywood may have been attracted to Secrets & Lies (1996)--with 5 Oscar nominations--simply because of the unusual nature of the story. . But that, in turn, led to some unusually great performances and performers: Brenda Blethyn and Marianne Jean-Baptiste both received Oscar nominations for their performances here. Likewise, Hollywood may have been attracted to Vera Drake (2004) for actually showing us the ends people will go to get an abortion and that providing abortions can be an act of love, even if it is illegal. It also shows us that abortion, if not legal, is illegal and has its effects on real people wanting to help other people. Mr.Turner (2014) may have been noticed due to the way is told the life of JMW Turner though its visual effects, etc., because the story, per se, was not that great..most of will remember this film for the visual presentation of the art rather than the biographical story of Turner. However, All or Nothing seems to have no overlapping theme or great attraction. Yet, it does!!! With a minimum of scenery and/or special effects, Leigh takes us into a lower-class "family" living in public housing in South London. This family seems to survive with a minimum of conversation or interaction. There is a feeling of individual isolation and life-long social inertness. To overcome this inertness, something new--perhaps shocking--must happen to change it.... Then in this film, there is yet another level of storytelling going on too. Within this lower-class public housing project, there are other families going through the same things. Basically all the families in the project, merely exist to exist, without really being alive or reaching any sort of human potential. It's as if there was some sort of "familial dysfunction" going on--both within the family, per se and within the housing community--due to a lack of...Love? ....Direction?..Involvement with each other? A family--any family--needs some sort of parental direction supplied by both love and guidance (authority). Two out of three of the families, here, are families with single working mothers (one of whom is an alcoholic). The other family has an uninvolved father who is more like a child than a parent........... Phil (Timothy Spall): Funny, isn't it? Love. If you're not together, you're alone.
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Jun 12, 2020 21:53:14 GMT
R.I.P.D. (2013).
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Post by Prime etc. on Jun 13, 2020 6:54:49 GMT
ONE NIGHT IN THE TROPICS 1940 - these old comedies seem to age well, I find them funnier than some I have watched from the 1960s or later. A great dancing sequence in the last part.
Was surprised by Abbott and Costello being supporting characters.
And I was surprised by one line (at a bullfight arena)
"where's the bull?" "I think there's a lot of bull going on around here already."
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Post by kijii on Jun 13, 2020 17:17:59 GMT
Envy (2004) / Barry Levinson Though I am not a huge fan of comedy for comedy's sake, I really connected with this movie. OK, it's stupid, but it also fun and funny. Ben Stiller is always great as the straight man, as he is here opposite Jack Black. One can sense a slow simmer of jealousy brewing within Stiller's character as his friend, neighbor, and co-worker (Jack Black) becomes filthy rich because of a seemingly stupid idea. The idea is one that Stiller's character might have shared in with his friend, but instead, he turned it down from the onset. To make matters worse, his friend wants to continue living across the street (which rubs Stiller's nose into the comparison). Stiller watches and boils as Black and his family prosper right in front of him. Then, when Christopher Walken enters the picture, Stiller starts to openly manifest his envy (I'm not sure where Walken comes from or if he is even real. Maybe Walken is a personification of Stiller's green-eyed monster..)
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Post by Prime etc. on Jun 14, 2020 8:40:25 GMT
VALLEY OF MYSTERY 1967 -- tv movie that was a pilot for a tv show about a plane crashing in the jungle. With Richard Egan, Peter Graves, Lois Nettleton, Harry Guardino, Leonard Nimoy, Julie Adams, and Fernando Lamas as a serial killer. Unintentionally funny at times but entertaining for its ridiculous plot turns.
CASE OF THE SCORPION'S TAIL 1971 George Hilton Anita Strindberg. Decent if not very memorable giallo--although what a looker supporting player Lisa Leonardi is. And her IMDB is woefully spotty with credits.
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