Calling all Classic Film Lovers!

Monterey Pop ran on PBS a while back. I watched it but did not make a page. Damn.

Also, it seems that One-Eyed Jacks is a stub with not a single trope on it. I hope that's one of the ones TCM airs tonight.

Tonight on TCM:

And One-Eyed Jacks is on Amazon Prime so I'm working on saving that page right now.

I've always been oddly interested in people who only directed one movie. Brando, Charles Laughton, Morgan Freeman, Jack Lemmon, Bill Murray. James Cagney directed a movie called Short Cut to Hell and I've always wanted to see it.

Edited by jamespolk on Dec 12th 2018 at 2:17:21 AM

Found out the reason One-Eyed Jacks was on Amazon Prime. Seems that it fell into the public domain which was why the version I just watched looked not so crisp.

The film, as it happens, is terrific. Marlon Brando is his usual anti-hero, a bank robber who goes to jail when his partner Karl Malden betrays him. Five years later he breaks out and goes hunting after Malden, only to find that Malden has become the sheriff of Monterey, CA. He's all set to get his revenge when he's distracted by Malden's beautiful stepdaughter.

It's good. Brando brings that brooding intensity of his to a role as a desperado. Karl Malden is way meaner than I've ever seen him. And having seen Slim Pickens only in Dr. Strangelove and Blazing Saddles, it was a little disorienting to see him playing an actual rapey villain and not a comic one.

I made the big, big mistake of watching Three Smart Girls.

Now, I know, this is an innocuous piece of fluff movie, but, oh, how I loathed it. Mostly because I hate "getting our divorced parents back together" plots. They left for a reason goddammit stop meddling, you children who don't know how adulting works!!!

I also hated the three goddamn times we are assaulted by Deanna Durbin's singing. Three times. Three bloody times. Please STFU, Durbin and your prepubescent singing. Please God, stop it.

I think I watched this in the wrong mood or it rubbed me the wrong way but can this movie be atomic bombed out of this universe?

Edited by LongTallShorty64 on Dec 13th 2018 at 5:56:41 AM

I wasn't aware that "getting our divorced parents back together" was ever a common movie plot. The only one I ever saw that in was The Parent Trap (and, admittedly, every other take on that film and the novel it was based on).

I guess it kind of falls under the umbrella of prepubescent children meddling in their parents' love lives. See also Sleepless in Seattle.

That has to be a trope, right?

Edited by LongTallShorty64 on Dec 13th 2018 at 6:36:08 AM

That's one part of the classic movie era I've never really been able to get into, all the cute little musicals of the Deanna Durbin ilk. Like I can't really get on board with Jeanette Macdonald movies except for the naughty pre-Code ones she made with Lubitsch.

In other news, TCM's decision to run their National Film Registry slate on the day they are announced without putting the titles in an onscreen guide, and the fact that I had to work a night shift and didn't have access to my DVR, means I missed Monterey Pop. Goddammit. It's cool that they do it but I wish they'd wait another day so it would show up in the cable guide.

...and in other news, seriously, One-Eyed Jacks was really good.

Edited by jamespolk on Dec 13th 2018 at 3:43:34 AM

Common enough to be mentionned in Divorce Is Temporary.

Watching Buster Keaton talkie Sidewalks of New York. It isn't terrible. I imagine the later Keatons when he was paired with Jimmy Durante are terrible as Jimmy Durante was just unwatchable, but the early Keaton talkies are perfectly cromulent. I've read that the Keaton talkies actually did better at the box office than the brilliant silent movies that he was making, and the real reason MGM let him go was that his drinking problem had gotten so bad he was unemployable.

The next movie I'll be watching is Holiday Affair with Robert Mitchum and Janet Leigh. Leigh wears just about the most extreme Sweater Girl ensemble imaginable, because Howard Hughes wanted her to.

Found a Foreign Language Film nominee called Blood on the Land on Amazon. But it's so obscure that people can't even agree on what it's called; Amazon calls it Blood & Soil.

Edited by jamespolk on Dec 20th 2018 at 9:03:08 AM

I was debating going to the yearly screening of It's a Wonderful Life on December 24. I watched this film a million times and it wrecks me everytime I see on the big screen. Then I found out they're not even screening in my city's theatre.

Uggghhh.

Though I can't complain because I'm pretty psyched that I have tickets for a screening in February of Casablanca with a full symphony orchestra playing the score. That's gonna be cool. Y'all ever done that? My biggest dream would be to see a silent film like that.

It's a great experience...I was able to do that with The Adventures of Prince Achmed, in a Theatre which already existed pre-war (got bombed out though, but still, has the charm of being half a cinema and half an actual theatre, with stage, a curtain which opens to the movie aso).

It's truly the only way to watch silent movies. They aren't made to be watched at home on a small screen.

I've never been so lucky to see a silent film with an orchestra, but I did see a Buster Keaton film once with someone playing accompaniment on a Wurlitzer.

I've never seen a silent film with an orchestra, but I've seen them with live musical accompaniment. I went to the Silent Movie Theater in Los Angeles back when it was still a silent movie theater; they showed films with a pianist providing accompaniment. Saw The Black Pirate at the Castro Theater in San Francisco with a band playing music. That was really sweet.

I once watched a series of early silent Shakespeare adaptations with live musical backing. It was very trippy because they made a point to be as experimental as possible with the music. Made the experience quite unique and unforgettable.

I love Shakespeare and I love silent movies but those two things don't go together well.

The great thing about The Adventures of Prince Achmed is that there actually is a specific score written for the movie. So you don't run into the question if the music fits or not (that's the problem with Nosferatu, some of the DVD releases have just terrible music added to it).

The Shopworn Angel. The third film I've seen pairing Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart (there were a total of four) and the third to be quite good, although just a bit behind all-time classics The Shop Around the Corner and The Mortal Storm. Sullavan is a hard-drinking party girl actress in New York in 1917, and Stewart is an aw-shucks country boy from Texas who has joined the Army because we're at war. Can you guess how it ends?

It struck me that Sullavan really was quite lovely. Then I realized that in all her other movies that I've seen, the ones above as well as Cry 'Havoc', she's de-glammed. In this one she's playing a stage actress and she's all dolled up and quite luminous.

Sullavan also had a lovely voice. Husky but feminine like Jean Arthur.

After all these years, I finally got around to watching Seven Samurai. No wonder why this movie is considered among one of the all time best Japanese movies. Aside from its length and some effects, it still holds up.

Up next, The Searchers and The Magnificent Seven.

Edited by dRoy on Dec 24th 2018 at 12:46:54 AM

It does still hold up. Has there ever been a better Battle in the Rain?

This is also the first time I've seen where people actually fall into puddles and slip on the mud during rainy battle scene. Talk about an example of Unbuilt Trope. XD

Although the Plot Hole regarding the bandits continuing to attack the village until they're all killed has always bothered me. Why not just move on to the next village after they see that this one is being defended?

I assumed it boiled down to two things:

Perhaps...

1) it was the only village that they could pillage, maybe it was the only one nearby or other villages were even poorer.

2) the bandit chief seemed like he had a pretty sizable ego, so he just couldn't stand the idea that they were defied a bunch of peasants and cheap samurais they hired. Hell, who knows, maybe the bandit chief himself was a fallen samurai.

Just my guesses.

Can be an example of Japanese Spirit.

One may also wonder why this village has no feudal lord to turn to. Don't they ever pay taxes? And then maybe other villages do have lords.

Edited by gropcbf on Dec 24th 2018 at 2:01:44 PM