Calling all Classic Film Lovers!

Which film?

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

A few, actually, that one, A Day at the Races, A Night at the Opera...what was the one where they were fighting a war in some Ruritania kingdom? She'll watch silent movies with me too, the comedies with Chaplin and Keaton and Lloyd.

---

After recording it and deleting it at least five times I'm finally watching Cactus Flower. Pretty charming, if you can get past a hot young thing like Goldie Hawn in love with lumpy Walter Matthau. But the best reason to watch it is Ingrid Bergman, who still had such on-screen presence a quarter-century after Casablanca.

Duck Soup?

Bergman just sparkles in that movie. It's really enjoyable. Now, if you want to see someone take that premise and make it horrible, watch Just Go with It. Because Adam Sandler likes taking classics and taking a big ol' dump on them.

"It's true that we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman."

Of course it's Duck Soup. The best movie they made.

This is good parenting; very good parenting indeed.

(Now, if you'd shown your daughter the later MGM films - especially The Big Store - it would be very bad parenting.)

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

Watched Blonde Cobra, an experimental short film from 1963 that variously features singing and storytelling, touching upon topics such as nations, death, religion, sex, and evil. That might sound interesting, but it's so poorly made that it's really not. It reminded me a bit of Hold Me While I'm Naked, which is not a good thing.

---

I also watched the documentary Chronicle of a Summer (1961), which I liked quite a bit. It's basically just a bunch of Parisians talking about things on their minds, with an added layer of discussion about how "true" or "real" this is with the presence of the camera. I was especially amused when one of them said that the then-ongoing Algerian War would make good material for a film in one, two, or perhaps ten years. Considering The Battle of Algiers was released in 1966, I say that has to count as being spot on, since that film is excellent.

Edited by TompaDompa on Aug 28th 2018 at 12:44:28 PM

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

Blonde Cobra is on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list. You should make a page!

I've already exhausted all I had to say about it. I have a fairly high threshold for making pages for movies, so I mostly do ones for movies I have much to say about and that I really liked. It's available on YouTube if someone else wants to do it, though.

Anyway, I watched Dark Passage, a 1947 Film Noir starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. It's mostly known for its use of P.O.V. Cam (which I had forgotten about by the time I got around to watching it), but it's also a fine suspenseful thriller with an interesting plot that has quite a few twists and turns. I highly recommend it.

---

I also watched Son of Frankenstein from 1939. Basil Rathbone plays the titular character, Baron Wolf von Frankenstein, with Bela Lugosi as Ygor and of course Boris Karloff as the Monster. I liked it more than the 1931 Frankenstein, but my favourite of the three Frankenstein films I've watched is Bride of Frankenstein from 1935.

---

Watched Il deserto rosso from 1964, and as with Michelangelo Antonioni's three preceding films, the appeal escapes me.

Edited by TompaDompa on Aug 30th 2018 at 11:44:36 AM

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

Finally, what y'all been all waiting for... Mandalay!

At least watch it for Kay Francis in this hat!!◊

Edited by LongTallShorty64 on Sep 1st 2018 at 9:29:02 AM

"It's true that we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman."

Bridge to the Sun, a 1961 movie about a white American woman who marries a Japanese diplomat, and gets to spend World War II in Japan when the diplomat is sent home after Pearl Harbor.

Pretty good flick. I don't know if it's the first movie to show a white woman in love with an Asian man without using Yellowface, but I can't think of an earlier one. Also a pretty rare example of an English-language film showing World War II from the Japanese perspective. Had the guy who played Mr. Takagi in Die Hard starring as the Japanese diplomat.

Finally found an illicit website that had Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?.

It was funny, a sex comedy with a lot of double entendres. One can see how Jayne Mansfield's career went down the pooper, though. That whole Marilyn Monroe imitation act doubtless got old pretty quick.

Son of Frankenstein is such a bore. Bela Lugosi's good in it, but having the Monster be bedridden for almost the entire movie was a huge mistake, Wolf von Frankenstein was just unlikable, and I hate that they went back to the "criminal brain" explanation for the Monster after Bride of Frankenstein tried to distance itself from that horrible idea.

Though, I will say, having only seen Son of Frankenstein after having seen Young Frankenstein, there were quite a few scenes (particularly the game of darts) that proved quite unintentionally funny.

Edited by RavenWilder on Sep 2nd 2018 at 11:21:40 AM

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

You think that's bad? I doubt there are few people who can watch the scene with the blind man from Bride Of Frankenstein and not think of the line "I was gonna make espresso!"

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

So I finally got my hands on the 1948 The Winslow Boy. I think there are enough changes between this one and the 1999 version to warrant a wiki page.

Of course, the star of the '48 version is Robert Donat as Sir Robert Morton: he's cold, but deeply principled and wonderfully eccentric. I think it's a fine film, although I do find that the 1999 version trims the fat (probably because Rattigan wasn't writing the screenplay) but both versions are good. I found the 1999 version to do a lot of "characters explain what they just saw" whereas the '48 version has more courtroom scenes but doesn't over do them.

I think the biggest dislike with the '48 version is the attraction between Morton and Catherine is so subtle, it's very easy to miss. It seems more like he likes to bother her than actually likes her. The 1999 version is much more obvious with this.

"It's true that we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman."

I don't think it's ever wrong to make separate pages for different versions of a work. Actually it's mildly annoying when people don't do this and one has to read about multiple movies on one page.

---

Made a work page for The Last of Mrs. Cheney, a pleasant little romantic comedy with Joan Crawford as a society lady who is really a jewel thief. It doesn't take a genius to see the twist coming, as William Powell is her "butler" in what initially seems like an oddly small role. Not a particularly memorable work, but I liked it.

Now that you mention it, it bothers me a bit that 12 Angry Men contains a bunch of stuff about the 1997 version.

EDIT: Aaaand I made a separate page for 12 Angry Men (1997).

Edited by TompaDompa on Sep 6th 2018 at 12:59:19 PM

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

Good on you. One of these days I'm going to split the Miracle on 34th Street pages and the Ben Hur pages (the 1925 version is way better).

I recorded Son Of Sinbad, which is one of the weirder movies of the studio era.

So everybody knows that Howard Hughes was nuts. Some people know that he bought RKO and ran it right into the ground, mismanaging the studio so badly that it went out of business forever right around the time he got rid of it.

Anyway, Hughes had this habit of collecting hot young starlets like other people might collect stamps, putting them on the payroll, and then forgetting about them. Eventually he made this movie, Son of Sinbad, one of the terrible films he produced as RKO was dying, and he filled it with dozens of the anonymous starlets who otherwise never appeared in another film. If you look at the IMDB page you will find actress after actress after actress who appeared in Son of Sinbad as an anonymous harem girl, and was never heard from again...except for Kim Novak who did get some more movie parts.

I don't know if I'll make a page for it, but I'm looking forward to watching.

EDIT: Got through about 20 minutes of Son of Sinbad before I bailed. Godawful. Didn't have the intestinal fortitude to look for Kim Novak among the harem girls.

Edited by jamespolk on Sep 8th 2018 at 11:30:33 AM

Howard Hughes had, let us say, an incredibly basic taste in what he liked in movies. Most of the movies he produced can be explained by knowing that.

Edited by Aldo930 on Sep 8th 2018 at 12:53:34 PM

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

^He made some good films early. Hell's Angels is a legit good movie, and of course he also produced Scarface.

Yes, early on. Most of his later productions were emblematic of said basic taste of what he liked in movies - he liked films with action, about manly men and hot, big-breasted women...

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

I watched The Conqueror, and that's a So Bad, It's Good movie. You haven't lived until you've seen John Wayne say "My blood says, take this Tartar woman."

But man, Son of Sinbad was depressing.

---

In other news, I make a lot of articles about short films, and for the most part I don't discuss them here. But I'd like to recommend The Kiss, a charming 1958 silent movie about a lonely young man who starts going on lonely hearts dates but gets nervous. Really quite a fun little movie, with a surprise at the end.

I don't suppose you've heard about how The Conqueror was shot not far from nuclear testing grounds and, as a result, a lot of the cast and crew developed cancer?

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

I have heard that, and I think it's a crock of shit. John Wayne was a chain smoker all his life, don't have to look to nuclear tests to figure out why he got cancer.

But when 91 people in the cast and crew died of cancer... surely there's something to it?

(A physician who was asked about it noted that in a group of that size only about 30-something of the people in it would normally get cancer.)

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

Actually on the work page for The Conqueror I put a link to an article dissecting that story.