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Post by dash on Apr 22, 2015 14:22:06 GMT
This sounds fascinating, particularly in the depiction of local color. I'm always fascinated to see differences between the storybook place and the actual place. To me, that is one of the most interesting things that film of that age can provide. I guess that is particularly so with the West, with so many layers of stylization having been built onto it through popular fiction, TV, movies, etc., through the decades. If I remember, I think one of the things you like about the Hart films is their authenticity, isn't it?
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Post by rmichaelpyle on Apr 22, 2015 16:21:37 GMT
This sounds fascinating, particularly in the depiction of local color. I'm always fascinated to see differences between the storybook place and the actual place. To me, that is one of the most interesting things that film of that age can provide. I guess that is particularly so with the West, with so many layers of stylization having been built onto it through popular fiction, TV, movies, etc., through the decades. If I remember, I think one of the things you like about the Hart films is their authenticity, isn't it? Yes, one of the major things of Hart films I love is the idea of a kind of authenticity, something Hart himself appreciated and strove for, though, of course, he was a great storyteller, too, meaning 'authenticity' was based on his idea of being a good actor and staging something that audiences would watch with wonderment.
The authenticity of "Ammunition Smuggling on the Mexican Border" is remarkable, and a really good lesson for the modern viewer, especially if the modern viewer is only schooled in John Wayne and the like.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 22, 2015 21:59:46 GMT
Took a break from K-dramas to watch a Van Heflin film I had never seen before - always liked him. Got the DVD through Netflix and the print sure is nice and re-mastered, wide screen, HD. Very pleasurable to watch on a big screen TV. Film almost seemed like it could have been a stage play, written by Nunnally Johnson, called Black Widow (1954), starring Ginger Rogers (she had the best lines in the film and kept me laughing out loud), Van, Gene Tierney, Reginald Gardiner, George Raft, and Peggy Ann Garner all grown up. Peggy plays a newbie writer trying to make it big in NYC, but she ends up dead. It looks like a suicide, she is found hung in the bathroom of Van Heflin's character's apartment. He had been nice to her and allowed her to use his apartment while his wife, played by Gene Tierney, was away visiting her mother. Of course when she dies in his apartment suspicion naturally falls on him, but he pleads his innocence. Things get even more serious when an autopsy reveals Peggy's character had been pregnant. Ginger and Reginald are married, she is a famous actress in a play written by Van, and they happen to live in the same apartment building, and seem to get involved in the situation out of sympathy. Gene Tierney is Van's wife and comes home to find the girl dead, and though she doesn't want to at first she eventually begins to suspect her husband might have been romantically involved with the girl. She leaves him and Van spends a lot of time trying to track down who might be interested in framing him for murder. George Raft is the police chief on the case. The story had some twists I wasn't expecting and had me talking back to the screen -- always a good sign that I am paying attention to a movie and not nodding off. LOL.
Anyway, I recommend it for those who like murder mysteries. Here are some screen caps I grabbed from the DVD. Look how nice and sharp and clear the images are. Mmmm...... not a single artifact, splice mark, etc.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 23, 2015 21:37:44 GMT
I finally got around to watching The Theory Of Everything (2014) which I got on DVD from Netflix. I only watched it for actor Eddie Redmayne whom I had loved in Les Miserables (2012). The film was rather excruciating to watch, I was squirming uncomfortably through a lot of it, though of course his performance as Stephen Hawking was phenomenal. My mother-in-law died of ALS, so his increasing incapacity to do the simplest things reminded me of her horrible struggles. People would assume she was brain damaged because her motor skills were decaying, but she was still smart as a whip and cognizant of everything going on around her. Stephen was given 2 years to live but his wife no doubt was behind him living decades past that diagnosis. They eventually divorced but remain friends and now have grandchildren. The line "where there's life there's hope" was not exactly original at the end, but I counter that there is hope in death too when you believe in Jesus Christ. You know it's not over when you take your last breath. "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." - Philippians 1:21 KJV
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Post by Fritz on Apr 23, 2015 22:56:28 GMT
I finally got around to watching The Theory Of Everything (2014) which I got on DVD from Netflix. I only watched it for actor Eddie Redmayne whom I had loved in Les Miserables (2012). The film was rather excruciating to watch, I was squirming uncomfortably through a lot of it, though of course his performance as Stephen Hawking was phenomenal.
I've seen a lot of documentaries about Stephen Hawking. Eddie Redmayne was so convincing in the role that I kept forgetting he wasn't the real Stephen Hawking. It was truly a remarkable performance.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 24, 2015 5:43:55 GMT
Omo, I saw a total bomb late at night when I couldn't sleep, but at least it was good for a few snickers. Bedside (1934) with Warren William as a fake doctor, Jean Muir as his lover nurse who thinks he got a real medical degree, and David Landau as the drug-addicted doctor on skid row who hands him over his medical degree for bribe money (he changes the name and date on it). I couldn't believe the nonsense in this film: people who all stand around when x-rays are taken (today they all leave the room!), doctors with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths, misdiagnosis that put patients at risk, the "doctor" refusing patients he doesn't know how to treat, his planning on operating on people who aren't sick, etc etc. Finally his nurse lover starts to catch on that he's a phony, but who will have to die before he is revealed to be a fake? His craving for publicity becomes his undoing.
I hope real doctors don't watch an old turkey like this one, they might throw hypodermic needles at the TV set! LOL!
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Post by rmichaelpyle on Apr 24, 2015 11:30:19 GMT
Yep! "Bedside" is pretty bad, but isn't Warren William still fun to watch?
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Post by rmichaelpyle on Apr 24, 2015 11:30:31 GMT
Yep! "Bedside" is pretty bad, but isn't Warren William still fun to watch?
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Post by rmichaelpyle on Apr 24, 2015 13:32:59 GMT
I watched "The Lady of the Dugout" (1918) with Al and Frank Jennings, Corinne Grant, Ben Alexander, Joseph Singleton, and Carl Stockdale. The two main stars, Al and Frank Jennings were genuine outlaws of the latter part of the nineteenth century, both of them bank robbers of note. Al was sentenced to life imprisonment; his brother Frank to five years. William McKinley commuted their sentences; Theodore Roosevelt pardoned them. Al became an itinerant preacher and writer - and, supposedly, a noted liar! Anyway, Al ended up writing about his adventures as an outlaw. He also formed a film production company (where'd he get the money??) and made several films about his exploits. This is one of them. Really fascinating show, whether there's an iota of truth in it or not; at least one gets to see how some of the exploits were done. The object lesson of this film is actually more like a sermon. A lady has a husband in the Texas desert, and they live in [literally] a dug out area of the desert (has to be seen to be believed, although I've seen nearly the same kind of dugouts in Scotland where crofters lived in the sixteenth through the early twentieth centuries), and the lady's husband is a drunk and uses all money for only drink for himself. Meanwhile, the child and the wife are starving. Husband awakes from a stupor; is hungry; finds there's no food; goes into town. Here come Al and Frank Jennings after they've robbed a bank... Story really gets going here, and it's a corker... Well worth the watch. I'd seen this before on a DVD I have with several of the Jennings' films, but this one that I watched last night is on disc #3 of the Treasures 5: The American West, 1898-1938. Silent with music score.
Also watched what's left of "Passing of the Oklahoma Outlaw" (1915), originally a six reel feature length docu-drama made by participants of the group who captured "The Wild Bunch". Groups leader, E. D. Nix, was upset by Al and Frank Jennings exploiting their banditry on film for a profit and for the fun of it, as they thought, so a company was formed to show how bad genuine bank robbers and killers were. This was an example. It's interesting, what's left of it, but only 13 minutes remain, so you don't get a lot to look at. Too bad.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 24, 2015 13:44:43 GMT
Yep! "Bedside" is pretty bad, but isn't Warren William still fun to watch?
Not this time, since he was putting patients at risk by all his lies. The fact that the three docs on staff he worked with didn't turn him over to the police was RIDICULOUS! He gets to go on with his life as if he did nothing seriously wrong, and have the nurse lover love him again. Yikes!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 24, 2015 23:19:15 GMT
Thanks to Netflix again I watched another oldie, from 1953 (the year my parents got married), called Dangerous Crossing, starring Jeanne Crain, Michael Rennie, Max Showalter, and Carl Betz. A newlywed couple (Jeanne and Carl) go on a transatlantic ocean voyage for their honeymoon and soon after they arrive on the ship her husband disappears. She wanders the ship trying to find him and then consults the purser, the captain, the ship's doctor (Rennie), and other people in authority trying to track down where he might have gone. However there is no evidence that this husband ever existed and everyone starts to think she's crazy! Only the ship's doctor tries to believe in her, ingratiating himself to her to win her trust. Her husband calls her twice on the phone -- which cannot be traced -- and tells her they are both in danger and that she shouldn't trust anyone. Soon the whole ship thinks she's crazy when they try to keep her in her cabin and she cuts loose, creating a disturbance in the dining room. Could she be nuts after all?
I don't particularly see Michael Rennie as a love interest but I guess he was handsome in his way -- ooh, those dimples. Major dimples. haha! He didn't even have to smile for you to notice them. I've always enjoyed Jeanne Crain and she does a good job here, almost carrying the whole show by herself by her intensity. I enjoyed the film to a point -- the most annoying part was the ship whistle, which seemed to blow heavily every five minutes of this picture. It was to the point that I was talking back to the screen: "THIS IS WHY I HATE CRUISE SHIPS! HOW DOES ANYONE SLEEP???" lol.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 25, 2015 3:01:16 GMT
Through my ROKU device I have that Warner Archive station and so I decided to watch a Bogie movie I haven't watched since I was a teenager in the 1970's -- Black Legion (1937). The station said it was High Definition print and boy, it sure was. Bogie looked so lifelike that I could see every pore in his face! I had forgotten how powerful the film was, and I cried at the end as he was led away out of the courtroom and took his last glance at his wife, played by delicate Erin O'Brien-Moore (the poor thing suffered a lot in real life when a few years after this film was made she was injured in a fire and needed years of rehabilitation). Supporting cast were all fine too, especially Dick Foran as Bogie's character's best friend, who ends up being killed by him for mocking the Black Legion. "You should be called the YELLOW Legion!" he shouts. The thugs couldn't let that charge stand.
This organization in real life had splintered off the Klu Klux Klan but was eventually shut down by the Feds. Bogie plays a factory worker who is unhappy that he was passed over for promotion and a Polish guy intellectual was given the job instead. He joins the Legion as a way to get back at the unfairness he sees in the system. It ends up costing him everything, including his wife and son (little Dickie Jones, who did the voice of Disney's Pinocchio) and best friend. At the end he does expose the Legion and gets life imprisonment along with all the other thugs, whom he calls out by name in the courtroom. Good scene and great performance by Bogie. Edward G. Robinson was originally slated for the role; thank goodness it went to Bogie instead.
I think the film still has something powerful to say to Americans today, since whenever economic times are hard these kinds of violent groups can easily form all over again by citizens disgruntled at the political system. It should be taken out of cinematic mothballs every few years and shown at film festivals -- to remind people of their history.
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Post by rmichaelpyle on Apr 25, 2015 11:01:26 GMT
"Black Legion" was recently re-released by Warner Archive Collection, so there must be plenty of people who feel as you do about the show. I think it must startle a lot of people when they see it when they realize how powerful and how really good it is! It gets shown on television periodically, but not like "Casablanca" or "Across the Pacific" or "Maltese Falcon" or "The Big Sleep". I remember the first time I saw the film: it made a huge impact on me, and to this day it remains one of my favorite Bogie films. The guy I think people might remember most from the film could be Joe Sawyer. Such a creep in the film. He had a way with that soft voice of his and that nice, but underneath-it-all, monstrous smile when he was being nasty.
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Post by alilechat on Apr 25, 2015 11:44:57 GMT
I have seen Dangerous Crossing and I disagree about Michael Rennie --I remember him as the man who won the heart of Jean Simmons' Desiree years ago so I always thought him attractive. Anyway, wanted to post that last night I watched the film Boyhood which was Oscar nominated for Best Picture and actually WAS a very good picture. There is not much plot, you just watch the boy's life and that of his mother, sister and father as they age over the years... filmed over 12 years you see the little boy grow up to a handsome, serious young man. I really enjoyed it, no real profanity or nudity, just a slice of life. Well done! I hardly ever enjoy the newer films anymore but this one is recommended.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 25, 2015 12:25:59 GMT
Alison for once we will have to agree to disagree. I always considered Michael Rennie bland. I am not sure I EVER saw him play a scene of REAL PASSION. Can anyone fill me in where he might have displayed one? In Desiree, who could pay attention to him when the flamboyant Marlon Brando was around as Napoleon? lol! When I think of Michael Rennie I think of his Apostle Peter in The Robe. He walked through that role about as passionate as a tree. heeheehee. R Michael, I was surprised how I cried at the end of Black Legion. That moment when husband and wife looked at each other for the last time? It hit me hard for some reason. All the longing and sadness in the ages was in their glances. Bogie should have won an Oscar for that role.
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