Calling all Classic Film Lovers!

I guess booze ages you greatly. In those early films, he looks very much in his twenties, and ten years later, he looks like he's in his forties.

And ten years after that he looks like he's in his sixties. Yes, the drinking did him no favors.

Made a work page for My Cousin Rachel, starring Richard Burton, the Large Hammiest Large Ham that ever Large Hammed. I don't know, did the man even have a lower gear?

Also the comeback role for Olivia de Havilland, who made the disastrous decision to take three years off from the movies, at the height of her career. Got a series of lesser roles in the 1950s.

Good flick overall, although the obvious comparison to Rebecca does it no favors.

In one of the Medveds' bad movie books, they said that when Richard Burton was in a good film, he could use his talent to its best effect; in a bad film, he inevitably went down with the ship.

Such was his acting talent. It didn't help that after about 1966, the majority of his films were stinkers - anyone want to vouch for the quality of Bluebeard or Exorcist II: The Heretic? Luckily, he went out on top as O'Brien in 1984.

The Medveds are not even writers, let alone film critics.

Burton was obviously a moody and difficult man but he could act well, like in Bitter Victory by Nicholas Ray, Mankiewicz's Cleopatra, and my favorite performance by him is a little after 1967, but its in a film by Joseph Losey and he plays Leon Trotsky.

Now obviously the Medveds would hate the latter movie because it's about a Communist and a movie where a Communist is not shown as a demon godless hating America is not acceptable to them.

The Medveds are not even writers, let alone film critics.

Burton was obviously a moody and difficult man but he could act well, like in Bitter Victory by Nicholas Ray, Mankiewicz's Cleopatra, and my favorite performance by him is a little after 1967, but its in a film by Joseph Losey and he plays Leon Trotsky.

Now obviously the Medveds would hate the latter movie because it's about a Communist and a movie where a Communist is not shown as a demon godless hating America is not acceptable to them.

He was horrifically hammy in The Robe as well, which was part of why The Robe is so bad.

I think Richard Burton may just have been a terrible movie actor, although I don't want to say that for sure until I've seen The Spy Who Came In From The Cold or 1984.

1984 is pretty good, actually. Burton gives a good performance as O'Brien - and it was one of his last roles, so he went out on top.

Much better than the thread-appropriate, but absolutely awful 1956 CIA-funded film version that changed the ending. Unlike the CIA-funded Animal Farm, however, it didn't work in the least.

What happened?

I thought Burton was great in Becket.

Behold the strange-but-true story of the CIA-funded Animal Farm.

I think he means "what happened with the CIA-funded 1984." Unlike in the book, and the 80s film version, where at the end Winston has been broken by the Party and he loves Big Brother, in the 1956 version he goes out still resisting.

You can see why it hasn't endured, unlike the Halas and Batchelor Animal Farm.

Oh yeah, I have that movie. It's one of my favorites. :)

Started a page for The Rules of the Game, could use help filling it out.

Watching A Shot in the Dark, found to my surprise that there is no work page for the original The Pink Panther, so I have to make a work page for it. Anyone who wants to pitch in with tropes, be my guest.

Is the cartoon of the animated panther that we know and love more famous than the actual live-action movie? Did the movie come before it? Or was the cartoon first?

The Pink Panther cartoons were produced in response to the success of the title sequence.

Fun fact: the title music for A Shot In The Dark was also used as the theme for the Inspector cartoons.

The panther was part of the Animated Opening Credits, designed by Fritz Frelend of the Looney Tunes. The first film's title sequence was so iconic that the pink panther became a cartoon character.

The Pink Panther is actually the name of a Diamond that's the MacGuffin in these films and the main character is Peter Sellers' Jacques Clousseau

I had a hunch that it was that way. Thanks for the confirmation.

Page created: The Pink Panther

Any film with a place in the National Film Registry should have its own work page. Unless it's too short—Star Theater pretty much only has one trope.

I think I already mentioned that I made an index, Academy Award For Best Live Action Short Film. A couple entries already existed, and I have created a few more. Here's what's on the index so far from our time period:

• The Music Box (Laurel and Hardy)
• Tit for Tat (Laurel and Hardy again)
• Bored of Education (The Little Rascals)
• Sons of Liberty (directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Claude Rains, unfortunately it's terrible)
• Siege (documentary of the 1939 siege of Warsaw)
• Jammin' the Blues (a jam! Of blues!)
• The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film (Peter Sellers)
• An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (excellent)
• Time Piece (Jim Henson!)

I don't think I'll be making an exhaustive effort to fill up that index with work pages as there are just too many. So far I've been looking for films that either have creators with their own work pages, or are in the National Film Registry.

edited 19th Mar '17 10:59:34 AM by jamespolk

This is a small point, but the Pink Panther character was actually designed by Hawley Pratt, who was also a veteran of Looney Tunes, and was at the time working for Friz Freleng at Depatie-Freleng (as were a lot of the Looney Tunes animation vets; WB had closed down their in-house animation department at that time and elected to contract with Depatie-Freleng, who hired most of their old animators anyway). If I remember right, though, Freleng himself did direct all the animated openings/closings in the live action Pink Panther films.

Ah, okay. My mistake, then.

edited 19th Mar '17 9:49:02 PM by Robbery

Richard Williams directed one or two at his animation studio.

There's a page for Beyond the Forest, King Vidor's 'film maudit' which I happen to think is a masterpiece, and I got Billy Wilder agreeing with me.

You know Vidor is a surprisingly popular film-maker on TV Tropes which I am happy about but a little taken aback...nearly all his major films have pages here...the exceptions are The Stranger's Return, The Wedding Night, An American Romance, Ruby Gentry and his final two experimental films Truth and illusion and his documentary with Andrew Wyeth made in 1980, that's more or less him and Vidor discussing The Big Parade and its influence on Wyeth's paintings. Wyeth said he had seen it 170 times!!!

Just watched the 1955 Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis musical comedy Artists and Models.

It has probably the most cringeworthy Unintentional Period Piece moment I've ever seen: A US general proclaims "We can safely predict our nation will be the first to break through the Earth's gravitational pull and establish a space station."
Let's examine that prediction:

• "break through the Earth's gravitational pull" can mean one of two things:
  • Reach orbit around the Earth. The USSR did that first, in 1957.
  • Reach escape velocity from the Earth. The USSR did that first, in 1959.
• "establish a space station". The USSR did that first, in 1971.

Yikes.

edited 21st Mar '17 2:57:49 PM by TompaDompa