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Post by kijii on Jul 8, 2018 16:27:49 GMT
The Captive City (1952) / Robert Wise Rented for streaming from Amazon Prime
At first, this has the look and feel of a corny B film with a little overacting. There are things in this movie that are hard to relate to today. Yet, it is a TRUE story with a testimony, in the movie's epilogue, by Senator Estes Kefauver (who ran for vice president with Adlai Stevenson in 1956) that it is true.
Sometimes it is better to use someone else's review to describe a movie...which I do here. I see no spoilers in this review even though the IMDb reviewer warns of them:
Here is the full TCM synopsis of the movie with Spoilers: Newspaper editor Jim T. Austin and his wife Marge race into a Midwestern police station to escape the gangsters following them, and beg the sergeant to help them reach the capital safely. When the sergeant cannot hail the captain, Jim begins to record his story on a police tape machine: Weeks earlier, in a nearby mid-sized town, Jim is contacted by investigator Clyde Nelson, who insists they meet in secret at the local library. There, Nelson reveals that when he investigated an alimony suit brought by Margaret Sirak against her ex-husband, insurance magnate Murray Sirak, he uncovered what appeared to be a massive gambling ring run by Sirak and involving police chief Gillette. The police then began a campaign of threats against Nelson, from issuing traffic tickets to tapping his phones to following him. Recently, his investigator's license has been revoked, and Nelson, who fears for his life, urges Jim to break the story of police corruption in his newspaper. Jim is doubtful, but when he sees policemen outside the library, his curiosity is piqued. He visits Gillette, who assures him that Nelson is unstable and that they have been tailing him only to make sure he does not spread any more rumors. Jim is reassured until a few weeks later when he gets an urgent call from the investigator, who begs Jim to meet him. Jim refuses, but when he later hears that Nelson has been killed in a hit-and-run accident, he races to the morgue. There, Mrs. Nelson tells him that a car with Florida license plates had been following them for days, and blames Sirak for her husband's death. Over the next days, Jim runs a series of editorials questioning why the police are not investigating Nelson's death more thoroughly. When Gillette chastises him, Jim responds that he will look into the death himself, and visits laundress Margaret. She refuses to answer his questions, so he searches Nelson's office and discovers a note written by Margaret listing all the bookies in the area. Although he receives no information from the bookies he contacts, he begins to notice a police cruiser following him. Jim then visits the warehouse of the last bookie on the list and finds a familiar-looking man running a business in the back. Looking through press clippings, Jim realizes that the man is actually powerful mob gangster Dominick Fabretti. Jim stations young reporter Phil Harding at the warehouse to report on Fabretti's actions, and when Phil finally sees the gangster come out, he contacts Jim. The two take a photograph of Fabretti, and after the eager reporter develops it that evening, he is savagely beaten by gangsters, who also steal the film. Later, Sirak visits Jim at his office and offers him a bribe to stop investigating. Jim's partner, Don Carey, hears Jim turn Sirak down and urges him not to try to reform the world. Soon, Jim notices a car with a Florida license plate parked outside his house, and realizes his phone has been tapped. In addition, the paper's advertisers, many of them bookies on the side, cancel their ads and threaten to retaliate. At home, just as Marge tells Jim that she cannot continue to live in fear, Margaret appears. She sobs drunkenly that her ex-husband was forced to go into business with mobsters, and when Nelson found out, the gang had him killed. She agrees to Jim's request to sign a deposition, but the next day, she does not show up at the lawyer's office, and Jim finds her dead in her apartment. The police rule her death a suicide, and although Jim writes a scathing editorial against them, Don refuses to print it because there is no proof of murder. Quitting in anger, Jim confronts Gillette, who accompanies him to the warehouse. They find it already cleaned out, however, and the police chief tells Jim that they are powerless to stop mobster involvement in bookmaking. Jim then turns to Reverend Nash and the other local ministers. Although they are alarmed at the extent of the problem, they decide that the corruption is too widespread to stop. That night, Jim is sitting in his darkened office drinking dejectedly when he sees a memo from Senator Estes Kefauver about the Special State Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, and realizes that he must get to the committee in the capital at once. Although Sirak shows up and offers one last opportunity to take money in return for stopping his search, Jim refuses, and he and Marge leave at midnight for the capital. On the way, however, they see the Florida car trailing them and are forced to flee to the nearest police station. There, Jim finishes his story just as policemen arrive to escort him to the capital. Although a threatening note is slipped to him as he is in the doorway of the committee, Jim bravely enters the room.
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Post by kijii on Jul 9, 2018 5:42:22 GMT
Helen of Troy (1956) / Robert Wise Rented for streaming from Amazon Prime
The Robert Wise movies continue with this well-presented Homeric story. This movie is centered around the love affair between Helen and Paris, but it still has appearances by the usual characters. It surely moves along much better than Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida. Here is the complete synopsis with Spoilers:In 1100 B.C., Paris, son of King Priam and Queen Hecuba, rulers of the wealthy city of Troy, desires peace, despite his reputation as a skilled warrior. Believing Troy must reconcile with the war-loving Greeks, Paris proposes to serve as ambassador to the various Greek kingdoms. Despite the prophecies of his sister Cassandra, who is haunted by visions of disaster, Paris sets sail to his first destination, Sparta, the war-mongering nation that invaded Troy years before. During the voyage, a violent storm erupts, causing Paris to fall overboard. Believed drowned by his companions, Paris washes ashore on a Spartan beach and is found by Helen, wife of brutish Spartan king Menelaus. To Paris, Helen seems like the embodiment of his favorite goddess Aphrodite, and he becomes enamored of her. Helen returns his affection, although she does not, at first, reveal who she is. She hides the injured Paris and secretly arranges for his care with her former nurse. After his recovery, Paris approaches a council of bickering Greek kings, unaware they have met to discuss war against Troy. The leaders, among them Achilles, Agamemnon and Ulysses, covet Troy's treasures, but know that the walls surrounding the city, which were built after Sparta's invasion, are impregnable. When Paris introduces himself, the leaders force him to prove that he is the great warrior by defeating the warrior king Ajax in a hand-to-hand fight. Then, after pretending to listen to his proposal, they consider how to use his presence to further their war plans. When Helen learns that Menelaus plans to torture Paris, she sends her slaves, Andraste and deaf-mute Adelphous, to help the Trojan escape to a cove where a ship will take him home. At the shore, Helen says goodbye, but when soldiers arrive, Paris takes her with him when he escapes. Throughout their voyage to Troy, Helen worries about the far-reaching consequences of leaving Sparta. Meanwhile, the Greek kings are delighted to hear about Helen's "abduction," which gives them an excuse to build an enormous army and unite for war. When Paris returns to Troy, the citizens are grateful to Helen for saving his life, until they realize that she is the queen of Sparta. Their warmth then turns to anger against the lovers, and everyone prepares for a long war. Later, a thousand Greek ships approach Troy's shores. After disembarking, the Greeks approach the walls of Troy and the battle ensues. Although the Trojans win the first skirmish, their mightiest warrior, Paris' brother Polydorus, is killed and a funeral is held for him. During the following years of stalemate between the two armies, the Greeks loot and rape the surrounding villages, while the Trojans make night raids on the Greek camps. The Greek leaders bicker among themselves and Agamemnon, tired of Menelaus' debauchery and incompetence, threatens to leave with his troops. When the Trojans consider banishing Paris from Troy, Helen, wishing to stop the war and restore Paris' reputation, volunteers to return to her husband. Paris' family, without his knowledge, negotiates her return with the Greeks and takes her to their camp. However, after she is reunited with Menelaus, the Greeks, who had planned to double-cross the Trojans all along, demand treasures and a fight commences. Paris, who has learned of Helen's sacrifice, arrives in time to rescue her, and kills the Greek Patroclus as they escape. The Trojans, now realizing that the Greeks are fighting for wealth, not for Helen, forgive her. To avenge the death of Patroclus, Achilles demands a hand-to-hand combat, which Hector, another brother of Paris, accepts. Outside the Trojan gate, the combatants meet, and after a struggle, Achilles kills Hector. Disrespectfully, Achilles drags Hector's body from his chariot and then proudly parades before the mourning Trojans. Seeing his brother dishonored, Paris tries to shoot Achilles, but his arrows bounce away from the seemingly invincible Greek. Then, praying to Zeus, Paris aims again and the arrow hits his enemy's heel, causing Achilles to fall and fatally strike his head on a rock. The Greeks feel defeated, until Ulysses shares with them a plan he has devised. Later, the Greeks present a statue of a giant horse at the gates of the Trojan wall, and then pretend to sail away, secretly leaving behind an army hidden in the woods. Seeing the ships depart, the Trojans rejoice and, despite the misgivings of Cassandra, Helen and Paris, bring the statue into the city. In an ensuing celebration, the wine flows freely as tensions of war are released. Consequently, few Trojans are conscious later, when Greeks waiting patiently inside the horse quietly open its secret door and roam the city freely. They open the gates, allowing more Greeks to flood the city. Before the slumbering Trojans are fully awake, the city has been overtaken. In chaos and panic, the Trojans fight in the streets. Priam commands Paris and Helen to flee, but Menelaus finds the lovers. Before Paris can defeat Menelaus in an honorable fight, a Greek soldier fatally stabs Paris in the back. Once Troy is destroyed, the Greeks sail home with Trojan wealth, and Helen is forced to return with Menelaus to an uncertain future.
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Post by kijii on Jul 9, 2018 16:47:52 GMT
The House on Telegraph Hill (1951) / Robert Wise Rented for streaming from Amazon Prime
This is a spooky thriller, set in a Victorian mansion in San Francisco's Telegraphy Hill, that I had seen before but forgot. But, Richard Basehart and William Lundigan are easy to get mixed up. They are both handsome and have a similar appearance, often playing similar type roles.
Full TCM synopsis with Spoilers: The imposing Victorian house on San Francisco's Telegraph Hill, where Victoria Kowelska once thought she would find peace, is now up for sale. Victoria remembers how her story began, eleven years earlier in 1939, when the German army left her home near Warsaw, Poland in ruins: Her husband died in the siege, and Vicky became one of thousands herded into concentration camps. At the camp at Belsen, Germany, Vicky becomes friends with another Pole, Karin Dernakova, a sickly, frail woman, who shares her life story with Vicky. Karin doubts that she will ever again see her son Christopher, whom she smuggled out of Poland to the United States just before the war began. After Vicky protects Karin from another prisoner's attempted theft, Karin invites her to San Francisco to live with her and Chris in the big house belonging to her aunt Sophie, a Polish noble who emigrated to the United States in 1904. Karin dies three days before the camp is liberated, however, and because Karin had not seen her aunt since she was a little girl, Vicky decides to impersonate her. At a displaced persons camp, Vicky sends a cable to Sophie, but receives a reply from Joseph C. Callahan, an attorney in New York, informing her that Sophie is dead. Although her hopes are diminished, Vicky perseveres, and in 1950 reaches New York on a United Nations refugee ship. At Callahan's office, she meets Alan Spender, a relative of Aunt Sophie by marriage, who adopted Chris after her death, believing that Chris's parents also had died. Callahan reveals that Sophie left her valuable estate to Chris, with Alan as guardian, and says he has doubts concerning Vicky's claim to be Karin. When Vicky vows to fight, Alan, admiring her resolve, invites her to dinner and during the next two weeks, woos her. Feeling that her best chance for safety is to be married to an American, Vicky accepts Alan's proposal and goes to San Francisco as his wife. Vicky soon suspects that something is wrong in the house, although she is comforted by the friendship of estate lawyer Marc Bennett, who recognizes Vicky as a refugee he questioned years earlier when he was in the army. While playing catch with Chris one day, Vicky discovers an abandoned, damaged playhouse. Vicky then searches for Margaret, Chris's governess, to ask about the playhouse and, not finding her in her room, is examining a locked album when Margaret enters. Margaret states that Aunt Sophie gave her the album and calls Vicky an intruder. Vicky gives Margaret notice to leave, but when Alan returns home, he refuses to fire her. At the playhouse, Vicky discovers an extremely dangerous hole in the floor leading to a steep drop to a street below. When Alan enters and chillingly questions her, she backs up in fear and falls through the hole, but he rescues her. Although he tries to comfort her, her suspicions about him increase. One day, as Vicky prepares to go out with Chris, Margaret stops them, saying that Chris has not cleaned his room. Vicky drives off by herself, and when she steps on the brake while on a steep hill, she discovers she cannot stop her car. Vicky barely manages to save herself, then calls Marc and tells him that Alan tried to kill her and Chris in order to get control of the estate. Marc doubts her, but promises to investigate, and after he confesses his love for her, she reveals her real identity. Having seen Belsen himself, Marc understands her attempt to seek a better life, but feels that her guilty conscience has led her to distort events into unwarranted suspicions about Alan. Later, while home alone, Vicky pries open the album in Margaret's room and finds Aunt Sophie's obituary, stating that her death occurred a few days after the date of the cable sent to her in 1945. Alan surprises her, and later that night, takes the phone off the hook in the library, then fixes a glass of orange juice for Vicky in the bedroom. When she starts to go to the library for a book, he goes instead, and upon returning, encourages her to drink the juice. When she says that earlier it tasted bitter, he pours himself a glass from the pitcher and drinks it, then says it tastes fine and she drinks hers. After Vicky accuses him of killing Aunt Sophie, in addition to trying to kill her and Chris, Alan reveals he has put a large dose of a sedative into her glass of juice. Aghast, Vicky informs Alan that he has drunk the contaminated juice himself, for when he left to get her book, she poured herself a different glass and poured the juice from the first glass back into the pitcher. Now sweating profusely, Alan tells Margaret that Vicky has poisoned him and asks her to call a doctor, explaining that the receiver in the library is off the hook. When Alan confesses to trying to kill Chris, but says he did it so they could be together again, Margaret, who loves the boy, informs him the line is dead. The police arrive and find Alan dead, and although Vicky tries to defend Margaret for not calling a doctor, the police take her away for questioning. Marc takes Vicky and Chris from the house to his mother's home, but before leaving, Vicky stands in front of Aunt Sophie's portrait. Marc asserts that Aunt Sophie would approve of her, and Vicky replies that all she can do is thank her for everything.
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Post by ZolotoyRetriever on Jul 10, 2018 2:15:35 GMT
Midnight Express (1978). Directed by Alan Parker, with Brad Davis, Randy Quaid, John Hurt, Irene Miracle. DVR'd off of recent TCM telecast.
This is probably the 4th time I've seen this one, though the last time I saw it was some years ago, so it was nice to revisit it. Basically it's the based-on-true-events story of a young American guy (Brad Davis) who gets busted at a Turkish airport trying to smuggle a bunch of hashish out of the country. He winds up in a Turkish prison where, after some hope that his sentence won't be terribly long, it turns out that a higher Turkish court has handed down a very harsh life sentence for smuggling. Things were bad enough for him up to this point; from then on, it just gets worse, and he slowly descends into a sort of Turkish prison hell.
Oddly enough, the entire movie was filmed in Malta, not Turkey. I'm assuming that the Turks would not approve this film due to the way it clearly doesn't show them in a terribly favorable light.
It's a captivating and at times frightening story, one that should stick with you for a good while after watching it. If nothing else, it'll really make you think twice about trying to smuggle illegal drugs out of a foreign country that may or may not have as lenient an attitude towards drugs as some Western countries seem to have. Incidentally, when I was in the Navy, this movie was shown as mandatory viewing to those of us who were about to go to overseas ports of call - sort of a "word to the wise" infomercial, so to speak.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Jul 10, 2018 3:39:17 GMT
My only excuse is that I had been out in the sun too long.
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Post by teleadm on Jul 10, 2018 17:40:20 GMT
Inspired by the Jon Voight thread... Runaway Train 1985, directed by Andrei Konchalovsky, based on a screenplay by Akira Kurosawa, starring Jon Voight, Eric Roberts, Rebecca De Mornay, Kyle T. Heffner, John P. Ryan, T.K. Carter, Kenneth McMillan and others. Action drama thriller about a hardened convict (Voight) and a younger prisoner (Roberts) escape from a brutal prison in the middle of winter only to find themselves on an out-of-control train with a female railway worker (De Mornay) while being pursued by the vengeful head of security (Ryan). I've seen it before and I still like it, even if there hardly is any sympathic characters except De Mornay's. The action is a train going wild in a wintry Alaskan landscape, beautifully shot. Both Voight and Ryan plays the same kind of crazy hardened maniacs on boths side of the law, and especially Voight is great, and so is Roberts as Voights pea-brained accomplice. The real star is offcourse the runaway train-set, made before CGI so they are extra amazing. Nominated for 3 Oscars, Best Actor in a Leading Role (Jon Voight), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Eric Roberts) and Best Film Editing, but Voight at least grabbed a Golden Globe award. Most outdoor scenes were filmed in Alaska, exept the prison and railroad yard scenes that was filmed in Montana. Made by Golan-Globus and their Canon Films, that year they tried to play with the big boys.
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Post by kijii on Jul 10, 2018 21:19:59 GMT
Star! (1968) / Robert Wise Viewed from DVD with commentary track
It's hard to imagine that Robert Wise, Saul Chaplin, and Julie Andrews would want to follow up Sound of Music with a 3-hour musical flop like this, but they did just that! (Wise and Chaplin had also worked together on West Side Story). This is an overblown musical biopic of Gertrude Lawrence. The movie is more one to be suffered through than entertained by. Yet, there was a lot of talent used to make it. Evidently, it was made as a "road show" to be opened in only a few select theaters around the country and to run for only limited engagements, with seats sold in advance. The movie contains 14 different musical production numbers tracing Lawrence's life from the London's West End to Broadway and back again. All musical works were shown as if there were on a stage (either in performances or rehearsals). As Wise says in the commentary track, this was not a movie where people just suddenly break out into song as part of a story line. With regard to Gertrude Lawrence, she seemed to have had a lot of love affairs, but had trouble with forming long-lasting relationships. "She couldn't sing, she couldn't dance, but people LOVED her." From childhood til the end of her life, Noel Coward was always there to pick her up whenever she was down. Lawrence's last Broadway show was the original production of The King and I.
Here is a link to her Broadway Shows: www.ibdb.com/broadway-cast-staff/gertrude-lawrence-49117Here's the movie's Trailer to give an idea of its flavor: www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLWYgdDz7ME(One stage production after another with thinly-placed dialogue to orient the audience a bit.) Noel Coward : Close personal relationships are bloody difficult, my darling but they do get easier with time. Loneliness gets harder.
Noel Coward : You can't decide what you want until you decide who you are.
Noel Coward : Unfortunately, my darling, you can't take a whole audience home to bed without being accused of immorality on rather a grand scale.
The movie seemed to lack either critical or popular success. Yet, it received 7 Oscar nominations, including one for Daniel Massey as Best Supporting Actor. Massey played Noel Coward and Coward (himself) chose Massey for the role.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Jul 11, 2018 1:23:50 GMT
For those familiar with the Terrific Series from the UK it's odd seeing someone else being Father Brown BUT it works because Guinness is aces in everything. The blurb: Works of art are disappearing, stolen by a master thief, a master of disguise. Father Brown has two goals: to catch the thief and to save his soul. Many regulars from the British films of the 50's and a youngish Peter Finch (took me a while to find him …. that was a D'oh moment in itself.) Recommended ~just because it was fun.
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Post by teleadm on Jul 11, 2018 18:03:29 GMT
Voulez-vous danser avec moi aka Come Dance with Me 1959, directed by Michel Boisrond, based (uncredited) on Kelley Roos novel "The Blonde Died Dancing", starring Brigitte Bardot, Henri Vidal, Dawn Addams, Darío Moreno, Georges Descrières, Serge Gainsbourg and others. Don't be fooled by the title of this movie, this is actually an entertaining detective murder mystery about a young couple who after having had a row, the husband (Vidal) is nearly having a fling with another woman (Addams), unknown to him is photgraphed, those photos will later be used to blackmail the husband. The wife (Bardot) becomes suspicious and follows him to a dance studio, and when she frankly walks into the room where her husband is, the blackmailer lays dead on the floor and her husband has a pistol in his hand... She believes that her husband is innocent of the murder and begins her own investigataion to find the real murderer, while the police is on their trail. The movie starts like a Hudson-Day comedy but once the murder occure it movie over to Nick and Nora Charles territory in keeping it light and entertaining and being a good locked room mystery too. I liked that the police was not used as comic foils, and I especially liked the change of pace role by Bardot, as she here plays a resourceful yet beautiful character that tries to keep a few paces in front of the police to solve the case, using her charm and having read tons of detective stories, and not playing her usual men destroying nymphs. There are homosexual characters involved in the story, and I liked how they are portrayed as something rather natural in society if a little peculiar, not as something strange, demeaning and dangerous. I had 90 entertaining minutes and the solution was a good one, I won't say more. Henri Vidal who played the blackmailed husband died suddenly in a massive heart attack shorty after completing this movie. Sylvia Lopez had begun playing the blackmailer but after a few days of shooting became too ill with terminal leukemia to continue. She was replaced by Dawn Addams and scenes had to be reshot.
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Post by MrFurious on Jul 12, 2018 18:44:13 GMT
Cash on Demand(61) Really impressed with this one, a Hammer movie with Peter Cushing and its not a horror. Was funny and kept me guessing right till the very end.
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Post by teleadm on Jul 12, 2018 18:51:45 GMT
To Catch a Thief 1955, a re-watch, that I don't think needs any closer presentation. This is Hitchcock Light, and the story is a very light soufflé, but it's a delicious and beautiful soufflé, that I think is enormously entertaining. Cary Grant and Grace Kelly makes a wonderful couple, in their cat and mouse games.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Jul 12, 2018 22:04:19 GMT
^^^^^ Quickly sums up If you are creeped out by buildings exploding in New York and other cities .. skip it ... Academy Awards winning impressive effects or no AAW impressive effects.
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Post by ZolotoyRetriever on Jul 12, 2018 22:06:04 GMT
The Sea Gull (1968). Directed by Sidney Lumet, with a cast of fine actors: James Mason, David Warner, Simone Signoret, Vanessa Redgrave, Harry Andrews, Denholm Elliott. DVR'd off of TCM a while back. First-time viewing for me.
This one is rather long (141 minutes), and quite talky (an action picture it ain't), but I found it to be rewarding - at times even captivating - viewing. It's adapted from the famous Anton Chekhov play, The Seagull (1896).
Several of the actors - in particular James Mason, David Warner, and Vanessa Redgrave - had parts that called for long monologue-type deliveries. They all came across so smooth and flawless, like you were seeing and hearing a great work of Russian literature played out before you. That's who I would most recommend this film to: people who have at least a smattering of Russian lit background. You will love this film. It has some great comments on the arts - in particular writing, and acting - some so striking that I felt compelled to add nearly a dozen memorable quotes to the IMDb quotes page for this film.
It was filmed in the countryside of rural Sweden beside a lake. The cinematography is top-notch. One thing of note is the casting of French actress Simone Signoret as Irina Arkadina, a character who is a fading Russian actress. The sheer Frenchness of Mme. Signoret totally obliterates any Russian vibe that you would expect to emanate from that character. Some critics have called it a bad casting choice. I haven't fully made up my mind about that... to be honest, I think the actress did a great job with her role, and her French, rather than non-Slavic, aura is just a distraction one has to adjust to.
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Post by kijii on Jul 13, 2018 15:41:18 GMT
So Big (1953) / Robert Wise
Re-watched this from recording on TCM (2nd viewing of 2nd version)
Just as Ferber wrote family sagas about timber (Come and Get It), cattle and oil (Giant), expansion (Cimarron & Ice Palace), riverboat entertainment, (Showboat), she wrote this one about truck farming (So Big) in which "cabbages is beautiful" and the important things are the ones you do yourself. (Important people are either "emeralds" and "wheat" - both are needed.)
Full Synopsis with Spoilers: In the late 1890s, Selina Peake, a student at a posh boarding school, is informed of the death of her wealthy father, who has left her penniless as a result of a botched business deal. Since the proud Selina refuses all offers of charity, August Hempel, the kindly father of Selina's best friend, Julie, obtains a teaching position for Selina in New Holland, a tiny Dutch farming community outside Chicago which has remained virtually unchanged for seventy-five years. In New Holland, Selina takes a room in the home of Klaas Pool, a crude farmer who scoffs at Selina's idealism and eye for beauty, and his overworked and miserable wife Maartje. Selina finds a kindred soul in Klaas and Maartje's son Roelf, a bright, but troubled adolescent who is unable to attend school because he must work on the farm. After discovering that Roelf has a talent for music, Selina gives him nightly piano lessons and encourages his artistic leanings, gradually leading him away from juvenile delinquency. At a charity auction, Selina catches the eye of the town's most eligible bachelor, Pervus DeJong, and later accepts his proposal of marriage. Roelf is devastated to learn that Selina, who represents to him the beauty of the world outside his hated hometown, is to marry a lowly truck farmer. However, Selina consoles him by explaining that she needs both "emeralds" and "wheat" in her life, emeralds being those people, like Roelf, who appreciate and create beauty, and wheat, those who work the land, providing the necessities of life. Selina settles into the laborious routine of a farmer's wife and gives birth to a son Dirk, who, as he grows, earns the nickname "So Big." Dirk soon displays signs of being an emerald in the rough, and although Pervus, who has never fully understood his wife, is mildly disapproving, Selina encourages her son's nascent artistic talent. Maartje dies and, shortly after, Klaas makes plans to wed the simpering Widow Paarlenberg. The grieving Roelf decides to leave New Holland forever and tearfully bids Selina goodbye. When Dirk is eight years old, Pervus dies from the strain of his hard work, and Selina, refusing offers of help from her neighbors, labors to keep the farm going on her own. Much to the shock of the denizens of conservative New Holland, Selina and Dirk travel unescorted to the Chicago Haymarket to sell their produce, but no one will buy from a woman. When all seems lost, Selina runs into her old friend Julie, now a divorced mother of two, and August, who offers to invest in Selina's proposal to grow exotic vegetables. Selina's "DeJong" asparagus is a huge success and, ten years later, she proudly sends Dirk off to college to study architecture. After college, Dirk begins work as a draughtsman in an architectural firm and maintains his involvement with his childhood sweetheart, Julie's spoiled daughter Paula. Paula, a manipulative social climber, pushes Dirk to earn more money and later convinces him to forgo his dream of becoming an architect in order to attain more immediate financial success. Dirk accepts a job in sales and promotion arranged for him by Paula, greatly disappointing Selina, who demonstrates her dismay by no longer referring to him as "So Big." Later, Dirk falls in love with talented artist Dallas O'Mara, who cares nothing for money and social status, and proposes marriage. Although she is fond of him, Dallas refuses, declaring that she could never marry a man whose hands are unscarred by real work. Roelf, now a renowned composer, has a triumphant return to Chicago, where he visits Dallas, an old friend from Paris. Accompanied by Dirk, Roelf takes Dallas to his reunion with Selina, and the two women, very much alike, become friends. After Roelf and Dallas leave, Dirk, fearing that he has lost both of the women he loves, expresses his dismay at how his life has turned out. However, Selina takes him in her arms and, calling him "So Big," reminds him that it is never too late to pursue his dream of creating beauty.
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Post by teleadm on Jul 13, 2018 17:08:36 GMT
Le peuple migrateur aka Winged Migration 2001, directed or documented by Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud, starring ducks, geese, swans, storks, owls, parrots, pelicans, seagulls, albatroses, penguins and many more of our winged friends. Documentary about birds that migrates and a little about those who stays, both from the cold north and the cold south of the equator. It's not so much about why they migrate it's more about documenting birds migrating. Birds flying in formations is absolutly absorbing to watch in close-ups. Though it states in the beginning that no camera tricks was used, I still think that a few must have been staged to get better close-ups, or how else would they have known that a flock of geese would land on a military ship to pause and spend the night, they must have put out something that attracted them, even if it was four years in the making. Still it's fascinitaing to watch the migrating birds along the Seine river in Paris, or rounding The Statue of Libery in New York (World Trade Center was still standing). It should also be said that it shows that nature is cruel, some birds eats other birds, think about that before showing it to children! When penguins have their kids there is a bird that walks around and eat their kids, that must be one of the ugliest birds I have ever seen. Without making a pun, time flied away (85m minutes). Non of these pics can make the movie any justice:
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Post by ZolotoyRetriever on Jul 13, 2018 20:11:46 GMT
kijii: re So Big (1953), have you seen the 1932 version with Barbara Stanwyck? That's the only one I've seen, and I thought it was very good.
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Post by kijii on Jul 13, 2018 20:55:12 GMT
kijii : re So Big (1953), have you seen the 1932 version with Barbara Stanwyck? That's the only one I've seen, and I thought it was very good. Hi ZolotoyRetriever--- Yes, I had seen both versions before, but it has been a while since seeing either. As I recall, Stanwyck was very good in the Wellman version too. The scene that I remember the most was when Selina and "So Big" first went into the market in Chicago to sell their vegetables and had to sleep in the wagon overnight.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Jul 13, 2018 23:33:45 GMT
Well, I finally did it: got around to seeing The Magnificent Seven (1960 version).
As a pre-teen in the early '60s, this was one of two films every one of my male contemporaries had seen multiple times, loved and could cite and quote prodigiously (the other was The Great Escape). Despite my firm belief that all anyone needs to create moments of stirring cinema is a camera and some horses (and I've indeed seen many such moments and even grew up around horses), Westerns have never been my thing. One has to offer something that gets off the routine dusty trail to lasso me. The Magnificent Seven wasn't it.
While it's a thoughtful and intelligently executed example of the form and generally maintained my interest if not especially grabbing me, its 128-minute running time lacks the taut pacing and construction of others of director John Sturges's films that I greatly admire (Mystery Street and Bad Day At Black Rock, for instance). In their place is a sense of imparting epic scale to a small story. This is nothing new to films; from Gone With the Wind to Dr. Zhivago and beyond, epic events have served as backdrops in counterpoint to intimately-scaled human stories. What doesn't work for me here is the stylistic device of making the small story epic. In a somewhat similar film like The Wild Bunch (a western that did grab me), there's an elegiac quality that thematically connects the fate of a group of men with no future to the passing of an entire era, and it's from their fatalistic attitudes toward that fate that resonance with the theme emerges.
What The Magnificent Seven provides instead is attitude; indeed, it may have been the first western that was meant to be cool (in vernacular that survives from "the beat generation" to this day). Various characters' perfunctory examinations of the emotionally isolated existence of the itinerant gunfighter serve only to fuel the laconic and steely-eyed macho posturing that's the order of things for our heroes and the film itself. What's missing is a credible foundation for the sacrifice they're willing to make, beyond a very simple white hat/black hat sense of justice that's the stock-in-trade of too-good-to-be-true heroes going all the way back to William S. Hart. An exception to this is the extravagantly drawn role of Chico, exuberantly performed by Horst Buchholz, who wants only to prove his mettle and make a name for himself, and which is given unusual emphasis by both script and director.
These criticisms aside, its a beautifully produced and photographed film that's drenched with atmosphere, and Elmer Bernstein's iconic score is legendary. The broadcast dub on TCM's On-Demand HD service was gorgeous, looking as though it was shot yesterday. About the work of Brynner, McQueen, Wallach, Coburn, Bronson, Vaughn and others, little needs to be said; those figures have established their own iconography. I'm afraid that, for me, they remained just that: figures. A commanding standout worth mentioning is Vladimir Sokoloff, the Russian-born actor who became typecast in Hispanic roles, as the sage village elder.
I'm willing to admit that my inherent difficulty in engaging with westerns may be obscuring my view of content and craft that's richer than what I discerned, or that it's possible that "attitude" is enough, in much the same way that songs and dances in Astaire/Rogers films or gadgetry and derring-do in James Bond films supply their raisons d'être: it's all about style rather than substance. If the latter's the case, then a failure to appreciate The Magnificent Seven's own sense of style is entirely my own: my appetite simply requires something not quite so lean and dry to satisfy it.
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Post by kijii on Jul 14, 2018 5:45:25 GMT
All the Way Home (1963) / Alex Segal Suggested by Pulizer thread James Agee's A Death in the Family might be conveyed through several movie posters. Life, death, and God's wishes from a child's point of view after his father dies.
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Post by them1ghtyhumph on Jul 14, 2018 6:15:22 GMT
Major League. I love this fucking movie.
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