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Post by Primemovermithrax Pejorative on Nov 28, 2018 8:20:11 GMT
VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA 1961--I forgot there was a movie before the tv show. There's three things I am wondering. 1)What happened to Michael Ansara's dog? 2)How is it that the observation deck just so happened to have a grenade on a shelf which he could access? and 3) why was the railing on the observation deck where Peter Lorre's sharks were kept so low? That was presumably the only route to the nuclear room, you would think they would have some higher rails, especially if someone was walking on it when the sub hit some turbulence. Despite those questions, it holds up pretty well. Irwin Allen, like George Pal, is one of those movie names who don't seem to get all that much attention anymore while Ray Harryhausen's name has increased.
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Post by nostromo on Nov 28, 2018 12:58:32 GMT
'Blindspotting' (2018) Very interesting movie about life choices and race in modern america. Comedic elements combine to make a really tight film. Looks nice too. Suffers from a few histrionics at the end but recommended.
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Post by teleadm on Nov 28, 2018 19:12:49 GMT
The Black Cauldron 1985, directed by Ted Berman and Richard Rich, based on the first two books in "The Chronicles of Prydain" by Lloyd Alexander, voices by John Huston, John Hurt, Grant Bardsley, Freddie Jones, Susan Sheridan, Nigel Hawthorne, Arthur Malet and others. Animated Disney adventure. Centuries ago, in the land of Prydain, a young man named Taran is given the task of protecting Hen Wen, a magical oracular pig, who knows the location of the mystical black cauldron. This is not an easy task, for The Evil Horned King will stop at nothing to get the cauldron. Known both as the movie that nearly killed Disney, and the movie that Disney tried to bury, as from purchase of the rights in 1971, to pre-production in 1973 it wasn't ready until 1985. There is eighteen (!!) credited persons involved with just the screenplay alone, and there were trouble in creating the characters, Tim Burton was involved for awhile, and the whole project was shut down for awhile, while others were finished instead, The Rescuers and The Fox and the Hound. The whole production story in itself is actually worthy of at least a book. Seeing it and knowing about it's troublesome story, it feels a bit as a what could have been, but isn't. It isn't bad, but isn't memorable either. It's surpricingly dark for a family movie. My guess is that it came out in the wrong era, since it belongs more in time of the Lord of the Rings movies and could had worked much better then. It was the first anminated Disney movie that didn't have any songs, something at least I'm thankfull for. Elmer Bernstein, though composed some wonderful musical themes for the soundtrack.
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Post by Lebowskidoo 🦞 on Nov 29, 2018 13:36:07 GMT
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Post by Lebowskidoo 🦞 on Nov 29, 2018 13:56:36 GMT
I've moved on to Bedtime Story (1964), not realizing it was the original basis for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), with Brando/Niven in the Martin/Caine roles...this is gonna be FUN!
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Post by Lebowskidoo 🦞 on Nov 29, 2018 18:14:20 GMT
I'm having a grand ole movie day, now viewing Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972). Jon Finch looks like Rock Hudson during his McMillain & Wife period. Does for potatoes what Psycho did for showers!
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Post by teleadm on Nov 29, 2018 18:47:27 GMT
The Miracle Worker 1962, directed by Arthur Penn, based on a play by William Gibson and he also wrote the screenplay, staring Anne Bancroft, Patty Duke, Victor Jory, Inga Swenson, Andrew Prine, Kathleen Comegys and others Drama, The story of Anne Sullivan's (Bancroft) struggle to teach the blind and deaf Helen Keller (Duke) how to communicate. Having seen this movie mention here and there on Classics board on different threads I became interested in it. I remember as a kid seing a picture of Helen Keller in a book sometime in the late 1960s, I don't remember the name of the book, but her name have stuck in my mind ever since then. This was a very tough movie to watch, as it differs very much in style and storytelling in how biography movies are or used to be, it's very raw and direct in the upproarious violent ways Sullivan tries first to break down Keller to later force her to understand, conect and communicate with the world around her. There is a long dinner table scene that shockingly violent but is understood later when the reasons pays off later in the story, during that scene there is only sounds, nearly no words and no music. There is another scene near the end when Keller suddenly begins to understand and conect, running around touching things, that scene gave my shivers of joy in my spine, a sort of relief that all the hard and tough work finally payed off. Both Bancroft and Duke are great in their roles. Victor Jory was unusual to see in this kind of role, as Keller's father, as I've somehow only seen him in villain and ethnical roles. If there is any doubts, this was a very positive review. Both Anne Bancroft (Best Actress in a Leading Role) and Patty Duke (Best Actress in a Supporting Role) won acting Oscars, and the movie was also nominated for Best Director, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium and Best Costume Design, Black-and-White categories. The real Helen Keller (1880 - 1968), in Stockholm ca 1957, the dove that landed on her hat is said to have been totally incidential.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Nov 29, 2018 19:39:18 GMT
I'm having a grand ole movie day, now viewing Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972). Jon Finch looks like Rock Hudson during his McMillain & Wife period. Does for potatoes what Psycho did for showers! Hitchcock's last truly great film. After nearly a decade in critical and box office wilderness, he returned to his roots, both creative and biographical: a quiet murder or two, a wrongly accused man and some civilized humor on his home turf of London and the wholesalers of Covent Garden. A modest undertaking with no cross-country chases or climactic set pieces staged on national monuments, Frenzy echoes the answer to similar circumstances in which Hitchcock had found himself roughly two decades earlier: with his previous three films having under-performed both critically and financially, he had revisited those same London roots in 1949 for an equally modest man-on-the-run thriller leavened with droll British humor, Stage Fright (1950), and returned to the U.S. with his batteries fully recharged (his phrase) to embark on what many consider his richest creative period. Alas, this second renaissance came too late in life, and the master completed only one film thereafter, the lightly comedic caper, Family Plot, which this viewer had found something of a letdown upon its release, especially after the promise of roaring back to creative life that Frenzy had suggested, but in which I've found much to appreciate in the intervening 40+ years. For pure, basic Hitchcock that's at once vintage and forward-looking, you can't do much better than Frenzy.
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Post by Lebowskidoo 🦞 on Nov 29, 2018 19:45:12 GMT
I'm having a grand ole movie day, now viewing Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972). Jon Finch looks like Rock Hudson during his McMillain & Wife period. Does for potatoes what Psycho did for showers! Hitchcock's last truly great film. After nearly a decade in critical and box office wilderness, he returned to his roots, both creative and biographical: a quiet murder or two, a wrongly accused man and some civilized humor on his home turf of London and the wholesalers of Covent Garden. A modest undertaking with no cross-country chases or climactic set pieces staged on national monuments, Frenzy echoes the answer to similar circumstances in which Hitchcock had found himself roughly two decades earlier: with his previous three films having under-performed both critically and financially, he had revisited those same London roots in 1949 for an equally modest man-on-the-run thriller leavened with droll British humor, Stage Fright (1950), and returned to the U.S. with his batteries fully recharged (his phrase) to embark on what many consider his richest creative period. Alas, this second renaissance came too late in life, and the master completed only one film thereafter, the lightly comedic caper, Family Plot, which this viewer had found something of a letdown upon its release, especially after the promise of roaring back to creative life that Frenzy had suggested, but in which I've found much to appreciate in the intervening 40+ years. For pure, basic Hitchcock that's at once vintage and forward-looking, you can't do much better than Frenzy. This movie seems to have flown under the radar for me, no one ever seemed eager to suggest it much, but now, I wish I'd seen it much earlier. It's such a Hitchcockian Hitchcock movie! I always assumed it would be some snore of a movie, but it's really not!
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Post by BATouttaheck on Nov 29, 2018 20:41:38 GMT
The Peter Jackson film that claims to be KING KONG but is actually Juraissic Park with a rather large furry creature added.
Two "what were they thinking ? "s stand out (other than the primary WHY MAKE IT AGAIN ? )
1> Adrien Brody as the "romantic lead" 2> "Kong on Ice" a la Bambi and Thumper.
Have 3 hrs and 7 minutes to spend on seeing a movie ? watch the original a few times instead.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Nov 29, 2018 22:34:57 GMT
This movie seems to have flown under the radar for me, no one ever seemed eager to suggest it much, but now, I wish I'd seen it much earlier. It's such a Hitchcockian Hitchcock movie! I always assumed it would be some snore of a movie, but it's really not! I'm delighted to hear you've been enjoying Frenzy. It really doesn't seem to get the attention I feel it deserves (and certainly not that of so many of his others). Even before it was released, I was geared up for it, as the advance buzz was that Hitchcock was back on his game after the disappointments of Marnie, Torn Curtain and Topaz, all of which I'd seen when they came out. I'd recently acquired the book, Hitchcock/Truffaut, for which the two directors had surveyed and discussed each of Hitchcock's films in chronological order, and with promotional appearances he'd been making, including a 90-minute interview with Dick Cavett two weeks before Frenzy's release, June of '72 was Hitchcock heaven. If it's neglected, I daresay that its absence of familiar "name" players - true of most of them even to this day - may contribute to the idea that the film itself is negligible. Although there are accounts that Hitchcock had approached Michael Caine for the role eventually played by Barry Foster, I'd say the end result with no star players works in its favor, allowing viewers to fully immerse themselves in the atmosphere and characters. Another aspect that Frenzy has in common with the aforementioned Stage Fright is a truly surly and disagreeable male protagonist; sympathy for Blaney is generated entirely by our knowledge of his innocence, and he's nowhere near as cheery and ingratiating in his normal interactions as the real killer. Forcing viewers into identifying with characters they otherwise wouldn't is a device with which Hitchcock had played on multiple earlier occasions; Notorious, Strangers On A Train and Dial M For Murder are among the several other examples, with Psycho being the most notable of them (and with which Frenzy has in common disturbing onscreen brutality; something that was getting harder to pull off in the wake of then-recent films like The Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs). In spite of 46 ensuing years of "anything goes" graphic screen mayhem, Frenzy still retains its boldness for those elements, having developed emotional investment in the characters upon which that mayhem is inflicted rather than upon mere stick figures existing only for that purpose, and for the contrasting civility that surrounds it: the two unnamed men casually discussing the murders in a pub; Inspector Oxford's unfailingly cordial gentility, greeting those assembled at a murder scene with a genial, "Good afternoon, one and all," while a corpse lays obscenely splayed just beyond the open door of the next room; his analytical discussions of the case with his wife at the dinner table (over meals nearly as ghastly as the crimes themselves). It all distills Hitchcock to his dark yet humorous essence: mayhem and mischief. And in the end, without big names, big budgets or big action, that's all you need.
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Post by ZolotoyRetriever on Nov 30, 2018 3:56:31 GMT
I watched the following two silent films, courtesy of recent TCM telecast on their "Silent Sundays" night:
The Wizard of Oz (1925). Directed by Larry Semon, with Dorothy Dwan, Josef Swickard, Charles Murray, Oliver Hardy, Larry Semon, Spencer Bell.
Very uneven telling of the Frank Baum classic, done with lots of 1920s-vintage "special effects" and physical slapstick comedy - perhaps a bit too much, if you ask me, as it gives the film an overall silly vibe. Bogs down in some scenes, too, which quite frankly go on for way too long. But, it's an interesting film for classic film buffs, if only to compare it to its much better known (and loved) relative, The Wizard of Oz of 1939 fame. This film flopped at the box office, and pretty much spelled the end of the Hollywood career of its star and producer/director, Larry Semon, who died just a few years later.
The Magician (1926). Directed by Rex Ingram, with Alice Terry, Paul Wegener, Iván Petrovich, Firmin Gémier.
I liked this one much better than the previous one. This one tells the dark tale of Haddo, a pseudo-scientist magician - well-portrayed by a very creepy Paul Wegener - who believes he has found an ancient secret formula for creating life, using a batch of odd ingredients, the most crucial one being the heart blood of a virgin woman. For a black & white film from the 1920s, without all the special effects technology we now have, this one is actually pretty creepy and a bit unsettling. Nicely filmed in various European locations, with a nice soundtrack of a variety of snippets of classical music, too.
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Post by nostromo on Nov 30, 2018 9:34:37 GMT
'American Animals' (2018)
Good enough premise with some nice camerawork to transition scenes etc But some of the documentary style segments are over the top. I had trouble believing the real Warren wasn't completely acting with a defined script infront of him. The film should also be called "4 idiots". I had zero sympathy for any of them, although maybe that's not the point. I think I'd rather have watched a full blown documentary. 6/10
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Post by sostie on Nov 30, 2018 15:50:07 GMT
How To You Murder Your Wife (1965)
Whilst it's sexual politics/attitudes seem (at least) a little dated, it does in it's favour star Jack Lemmon and Terry Thomas, and is one of those glossy 60s comedies that I always seem to find enjoyable. As an added bonus Thomas says the word "shower", which is always a joy.
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Post by kijii on Nov 30, 2018 18:29:29 GMT
I'm having a grand ole movie day, now viewing Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972). Jon Finch looks like Rock Hudson during his McMillain & Wife period. Does for potatoes what Psycho did for showers! Ah yes, the necktie killer. I always remember Jon Finch as sleeping in a flop house then waking up itching from the bed-bug or flea-ridden (lice?) blanket.
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Post by Lebowskidoo 🦞 on Nov 30, 2018 18:44:09 GMT
Doghouse6 kijiiFrenzy, while suspenseful, also had lots of humour sprinkled throughout. Hitch was in fine form when he was out to prove himself again. And it's true how the good guys seemed bad, and the bad guys seemed good!
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Post by teleadm on Nov 30, 2018 19:26:13 GMT
Airport 1975 1974, directed by Jack Smight, based on a novel by Arthur Hailey (actually nothing is, except the title), screenplay by Don Ingalls, staring Charlton Heston, Karen Black, George Kennedy (reprising his role from the earlier film, and the only link to the earlier film), Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Susan Clark, Hellen Reddy, Gloria Swanson, Linda Blair, Dana Andrews, Sid Caesar, Myrna Loy, Nancy Olson, Larry Storch, Martha Scott (she played mother to Heston in both Ten Commandments and Ben Hur), Jerry Stiller, Norman Fell, Beverly Garland, Guy Stockwell, Erik Estrada, Sharon Gless and many others. Disaster movie-drama, about a 747 jumbo-jet in flight collides with a small plane, and is rendered pilotless. Somehow the control tower must get a pilot aboard so the jet can land. How many clichés can you fill a movie plot line with? This movie proves that there is no limits to how many clichés you can fill a movie with. All characters are so totally cardboard. One wonders if the producers and the screenwriter took a few drinks and tried to come up with as many clichés as possible, and threw all aerodynamic laws out of a window and had one big laugh. Kennedy at least gives some heart into his role, as did Dana Andrews as the small plane pilot that would later crash. The others seems to be there awaiting for the payrolls. The initial crash between the planes is by today's eyes horribly done. In a wry way it's entertaining thanks to the stars, familiar faces and aged stars, even if nothing is believable and that it is awfull as a whole. Helen Reddy was actually nominated for a Golden Globe Best Newcomer Award. (Her song was really crummy) This was screen legend Gloria Swanson's last screen appearance
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Post by Doghouse6 on Nov 30, 2018 19:39:05 GMT
Airport 1975 The initial crash between the planes is by today's eyes horribly done. It wasn't as bad as the one done for The Crowded Sky in 1960. And how's this for payback? In that one, Efrem Zimbalist's plane crashed into the airliner piloted by Dana Andrews.
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Post by teleadm on Nov 30, 2018 19:46:10 GMT
Airport 1975 The initial crash between the planes is by today's eyes horribly done. It wasn't as bad as the one done for The Crowded Sky in 1960. And how's this for payback? In that one, Efrem Zimbalist's plane crashed into the airliner piloted by Dana Andrews. Was that some insider joke? Just like Myrna Loy's character being able to handle heavy drinks, hints to Nora Charles..
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Post by Doghouse6 on Nov 30, 2018 20:01:46 GMT
It wasn't as bad as the one done for The Crowded Sky in 1960. And how's this for payback? In that one, Efrem Zimbalist's plane crashed into the airliner piloted by Dana Andrews. Was that some insider joke? I've always assumed it had to be. Someone at Universal must have known about the earlier one and thought, "Won't this be fun?" At any rate, Andrews and Zimbalist certainly did. That's funny. I never made that connection (I'm so ashamed).
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