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Author Topic: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.  (Read 428105 times)

Offline gattaca

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #915 on: July 14, 2019, 08:24:28 AM »
Educational.  I'd never heard of her and it's clear that most of Hollywood had never heard of Alice Guy Blanche. Her story is revealing and almost unbelievable.  The fact that so many people supposedly "in-the-know" really didn't know is a great journey. It's refreshing that someone with as many films to her name as well as many "firsts" is being saved from being a small footnote in history is encouraging in today's toxic environment.  The first woman producer, first director, first to use people of color, first to really see the power of film in telling stories, first to integrate sound, first to cross-dress male/female characters, ... with more than 1000 films from her work!

This lady was amazing and to have been doing all this in 1896 - 1940's and then just vanish from the scene and then almost be written outta history?  What a crime!  The film left me with a few questions too... such as her relationship with the man named Pin and what was really in all those letters.. but that's all I'll say.  I strongly recommend this film if it gets near you.  It may only be showing in smaller "art" theaters.  It's only showing about 4 times this weekend here and then it's gone.

NYT ->  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/movies/be-natural-untold-story-alice-guy-blache-review.html
Rotten -> https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/be_natural_the_untold_story_of_alice_guy_blache
Variety -> https://variety.com/2018/film/reviews/be-natural-the-untold-story-of-alice-guy-blache-review-2-1202826198/#!
Ebert's site -> https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/be-natural-the-untold-story-of-alice-guy-blach%C3%A9-2019

IMDB -> https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0349785/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1

Cinema Buffs - highly recommended!  V.

Offline Lyle (Mooska)

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #916 on: July 14, 2019, 02:30:55 PM »
^^^

Just curious if any of you know who Dorothy Arzner is?

Offline gattaca

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #917 on: July 14, 2019, 05:05:54 PM »
No.  It seems AGB pre-dated even her.  So many untold stories. V.

Offline Lyle (Mooska)

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #918 on: July 15, 2019, 01:42:41 PM »

And Dorothy was a friend of Dorothy.

Offline Lyle (Mooska)

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #919 on: July 15, 2019, 02:47:29 PM »

--Captain Marvel

I keep watching these superhero films...why I don't know. While I like some of them, it's beginning to feel like eating a whole bag of Doritos. This one had a few good moments...there's a cat in it that is a hoot. I'm getting tired of Samuel Jackson in all these things, he has two voices, loud and screaming. I also thought it was too darkly filmed. Wasted were Annette Bening and Jude Law. It was shorter than most of these films.

At some point while watching this I remembered a talk show host talking to one of the cast and saying how "great" the film was and I then remembered when I was in college and a lot of us would be talking about the movies we'd see and there was the rare comic book superhero movie. The movies we were talking about were made for adults and about real people and such, movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Dog Day Afternoon, The Conversation, Network, The Godfather, All the President's Men or honest to goodness comedies like What's Up, Doc? and Young Frankenstein. Now it seems all anyone talks about is a Disney remake or Marvel superhero film. It's a steady diet of mind-numbing action films or superhero effects movies. Honestly, if you were an actor, why would you want to be a movie actor, when all you're faced with are these kinds of movies to make. These movies are junk food. Really good junk food. But a steady diet of them wears at your soul and you long for some nourishment, something that matters.

I guess those movies are out there, it's just that they used to be easy to find. They were the main courses on the menu, not a special of the day or a side order.

Offline Lyle (Mooska)

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #920 on: July 15, 2019, 04:30:46 PM »

--The Sniper

I saw this film noir movie from 1952. I like the film noir genre, but many movies are labeled film noir that aren't really. It's because people like the genre and some places/companies etc. use the term to sell their product or make you take notice. It also doesn't help the term film noir itself is somewhat ambiguous. It's a type of film with notable attributes, but there are also subsets of the genre.

The DVD I rented from NetFlix had some extras, one of which was audio commentary from a noted film noir scholar, Eddie Muller, so I figured I was in safe territory. One of the basic tenets of film noir is that the protagonist is usually a character who gets involved in some situation that isn't of his making or intention. (That's why many film noirs have private detectives in them. Their clients get them involved in stuff!)

This film turns that notion on its head a bit because the protagonist is a man who is stalking and murdering women, but the twist in this movie is that he does it from mental problems and he actually wants to be caught, he wants the police to stop him, hence he is caught in a situation that essentially "isn't of his making or intention." He's mentally ill. The police, of course are under pressure to find him.

This film has a lot of character actors in it that you'd recognize from a lot of 1960's television. The two leads are Arthur Franz, as the sniper and Adolphe Menjou as the police lieutenant. There's several women in the film that I don't really know, except Marie Windsor rings a bell. The film was directed by Edward Dmytryk, famous for many of these kinds of films and this was one of the first films produced by Stanley Kramer and his company.

A highlight of this film is that almost all of it was filmed on location in San Francisco. (Most of the interiors were not I don't think.) I listened to most of the commentary and there is one scene where Arthur Franz is stalking a woman who he feels disrespected him as she's on her way to work...she's a pianist at a club. She walks up and down several streets and finally reaches her work, which is a place called The Paper Doll Club. Franz has gotten onto the roof across the street from the bar.  In the commentary, Eddie Muller notes that The Paper Doll Club was the name of an actual place in San Francisco in 1952 and was noted in many contemporary sources as a gay bar. He says the building is still there, but is no longer used as a bar.

Offline Lyle (Mooska)

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #921 on: July 15, 2019, 04:32:35 PM »
Here's a screencap of The Paper Doll Club:



Some info I found says the club was open from 1949-1961, at 524 Union Street. It was a popular North Beach / Telegraph Hill watering hole, subsequently going through several name changes over the years:  524 Club, Russo's, Cadell Place, Manhattan Towers, Silhouettes and most recently The Field Restaurant & Pub. It's currently awaiting a new tenant.

A gay history blogger notes: The Paper Doll Club was owned by New Pisa restaurant owner and North Beach baseball legend Dante Benedetti.***  I lived around the corner on Grant and ate there frequently. The food was excellent. You could get a steak with all the trimmings for $1.65. I could even afford to tip at those prices. In the late 1950’s and early 60’s the Paper Doll held Halloween parties overflowing down Union and up to Grant. There was a contest held for the best costume and drag queens came from as far away as New York to compete for the crown. Dante got busted in the same purge of gay bars as Tommy Vasu. He pursued appeals but finally lost the battle in 1961.

***I looked up this guy, Dante Benedetti. Growing up he played baseball in San Francisco with Joe and Dom DiMaggio. He also coached teams at some colleges. The New Pisa Restaurant opened in 1927 by the Benedetti family and closed around 2013. Dante was not gay.

Here he is on the front of a 1978 University of San Francisco media guide in front of the restaurant with a few of his ballplayers. Just because the names were listed, I'm including them. L-R...Dennis Collier, Tom Lounibos, Dante Benedetti, Jerry Bloodshaw, Lindsay Yoshimura.



Offline Sara B

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #922 on: July 16, 2019, 04:14:35 AM »
And Dorothy was a friend of Dorothy.

May have posted this before, but a gay pianist friend of mine, together with three other musical ditto, have formed an ensemble which they were tempted to call ‘The Dorothies’. They resisted the temptation however (not sure how many people would have understood it anyway), but still call it that among themselves.

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #923 on: July 18, 2019, 10:25:07 AM »
Here's something nobody will believe.  :laugh:  Until it was shown on TCM last night, I'd never seen The Grapes of Wrath.  Even so, I missed a chunk of the picture perhaps a half-hour or so into it because I had a phone call I had to make.

It's really not my kind of movie. I do think Jane Darwell deserved her Academy Award. It was interesting to see John Carradine in the kind of role I don't ordinarily associate his name with. It was also interesting to see some of the usual "John Ford Stock Company" (I think I've heard that term used somewhere); could John Ford even make a movie without Ward Bond (he played a police officer)?  :laugh:  And it was neat to see the Route 66 signs.

(Not too long ago I tried to trace Route 66 on a map. Some parts still exist. Others seem to have been incorporated into Interstate highways.)

Offline Lyle (Mooska)

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #924 on: July 18, 2019, 10:50:33 AM »
(Not too long ago I tried to trace Route 66 on a map. Some parts still exist. Others seem to have been incorporated into Interstate highways.)

I walk on Route 66 nearly every day! There are some historic Route 66 markers in West Hollywood on Santa Monica Blvd. as that is part of Rte. 66! THere's even one with the gay flag colors on it.



Here's something nobody will believe.  :laugh:  Until it was shown on TCM last night, I'd never seen The Grapes of Wrath.

I think we all have some movies people would think we'd have seen!

I do really like The Grapes of Wrath. I had to read the John Steinbeck novel for a 10th grade class and I hated every second of having to read that. I've often thought that grade school students are subjected to reading things that they just aren't ready for at their ages and that was the case with me. I didn't appreciate this at all.

So, over 15 years later when I had subscribed to a book club which sent you famous novels every month, when I got The Grapes of Wrath I reacted like one of Pavlov's dogs with eye rolling and disgust from my previous conditioning, but I opened the cover and thought I'd just read a bit of it and I immediately was intrigued and surprised myself. I subsequently realized what I said above about making students read "classics" they may not be ready for. (It might be said of various films, too.)

I also think the film is a great adaptation of the book. It would've been my choice to have won Best Picture, but there were several good choices that year. (1940 also had ten best picture nominees that year, like they do now.)

I was surprised once to find out the film was released in January of 1940. I've seen it twice in a theatre, once at AMPAS's Goldwyn theatre and Darryl Hickman (brother of Dwayne) who was one of the young children in the film (Winfield) was present and talked about his memory of working on the film.

Over the years I've seen so many films there and whenever there is a person present who was in or worked on a film it gives you a heightened sense of having a personal connection to it. There would be an occasional silent film from the 1920's that someone was in or worked on and it felt like you had a special glimpse into something from the past you ordinarily wouldn't have. The eyewitness account.
« Last Edit: July 18, 2019, 11:27:39 AM by Lyle (Mooska) »

Offline Lyle (Mooska)

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #925 on: July 18, 2019, 11:28:14 AM »
--Affair in Trinidad

A 1952 reteaming of Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth, who were in 1946's Gilda, and advertised as such at the time. The film is a bit dry and takes a long time to develop a plot you can follow, but it has a few good moments. The title is somewhat misleading, no one is really having an affair as most would interpret it. Overall I was disappointed with this one.


Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #926 on: July 18, 2019, 12:56:00 PM »
I walk on Route 66 nearly every day! There are some historic Route 66 markers in West Hollywood on Santa Monica Blvd. as that is part of Rte. 66! THere's even one with the gay flag colors on it.


I love that sign! When I did my map tracing, I think I lost Route 66 at or around the Arizona-California state line!

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I do really like The Grapes of Wrath. I had to read the John Steinbeck novel for a 10th grade class and I hated every second of having to read that.

I felt that way about Of Mice and Men. I forget what grade I was in when it was part of the curriculum.

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Darryl Hickman (brother of Dwayne) who was one of the young children in the film (Winfield) was present and talked about his memory of working on the film.

I wondered about that when I saw the name in the credits.

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Over the years I've seen so many films there and whenever there is a person present who was in or worked on a film it gives you a heightened sense of having a personal connection to it. ... It felt like you had a special glimpse into something from the past you ordinarily wouldn't have. The eyewitness account.

I haven't had the experience of actually being present with someone who worked on a film, but I think I get what you're saying. Recently I found a YouTube video of a kind of audience forum (I guess that's what you could call it) with Michael Pare and Matthew Laurence that was done in connection with the 35th anniversary of the release of Eddie and the Cruisers. It was very interesting to hear what they had to say about what it was like making the film, It was also nice to hear Matthew Laurence say that reviewers who criticized Michael Pare's lip-synching were basically full of crap. I agree with him.)

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #927 on: July 19, 2019, 08:01:56 AM »
Last night TCM showed The Train (1964). I knew of this film, that it was in black and white, that it starred Burt Lancaster, and that the basic premise was Nazis trying to steal French art treasures and transport them to Germany near the end of World War II. That was about it.

I knew this film had been shown on television before, and I'd always skipped it. I'm a train freak myself, especially steam trains, but I have to confess I'm a bit xenophobic when it comes to steam locomotives. To this American, European steam looks weird. (At least I'm honest about it.) Combine that with my general disinterest in World War II movies.

Last night, however, I decided to give it a shot. There was nothing else on that I wanted to watch, and I didn't feel like playing a video, so I shrugged and decided that any steam locomotive was better than no steam locomotive. Now I have to say that I'm very glad I watched it and I would watch it again. I found it quite gripping. I believe the running time is more than two hours (I haven't checked), but the time went by very quickly.

Before the opening credits, I thought I recognized the Nazi colonel, and I did: It was Paul Scofield (who surely had the role of his life in A Man for All Seasons, one of my great favorites). I did not know he was in it. I loved the way the French changed the railway station signs to fool the Nazis into thinking they had crossed the border into Germany when in fact they had never left France.

Something I've noticed about movies (or TV shows, for that matter) that feature steam locomotives. It takes water to run a steam locomotive, yet I guess, unless it is somehow essential to the plot, you never see the trains having to stop for water. (In some places water was "scooped" from pans located between the rails, so the locomotive could take on water "on the fly" and not have to stop.)

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #928 on: July 20, 2019, 09:13:51 PM »
This evening, The King and I on DVD. I bought it a couple of weeks ago when I realized I had almost none of my favorite musicals in my DVD library.

I guess I've said before that I think this film is one of the more successful dubbings, Marnie Nixon for Deborah Kerr. Kerr's speaking voice is a little high-pitched, in my opinion, so that Marnie Nixon's soprano went well with it.

Offline Lyle (Mooska)

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #929 on: July 21, 2019, 12:33:36 PM »

I have to say that if I am into a movie I never think about anyone's voice being dubbed or not. I believe I mentioned a couple weeks ago I watched Pal Joey and was asked if I knew if Hayworth or Novak's voice was dubbed and it never occurred to me. To me it doesn't matter.  It seems to have become an issue in the last 20 years or so for some reason. If someone is dubbed then it somehow makes a person less than. Less than what? I daresay if Marni Nixon had been cast in all those movies her voice was dubbed into we may not have liked them as much. Or at all. Who knows?

Besides, in most film musicals the voices are recorded and the actors lyp sync back to the recording when filming the scenes, so the performers aren't singing live anyway. Does it matter that Taron Egerton was coached to sing exactly like Elton John in Rocketman so that people could say you sounded exactly like Elton John? Or could they just have used Elton's voice? Would the movie be any less?

Jessica Lange was nominated for lead actress in 1986 for playing Patsy Cline and every song that the Patsy Cline character sang in the film was her actual voice that Jessica Lange lyp synced to.

To me I don't really care about it one way or another. No more than I care if someone in a film does their own stunts or not. Of course, all of these issues are brought up because the average person knows more and more about the movie making process than they ever used to. Hollywood was like a magician never revealing their secrets of how they did that. Now they offer them up like (a phrase came to mind that's politically incorrect now).

Sometimes even singers are dubbed. Noted singer Harry Belafonte was dubbed in the film Carmen Jones. (A spectacularly wonderful film with Harry, Dorothy Dandridge and Pearl Bailey, among others, if you haven't seen it before.) I had to laugh in an interview not too long ago about casting Natalie Wood in West Side Story where Rita Moreno had been talking in a negative manner about casting her and as an added dig talked about her having to be dubbed. No matter that there are a couple segments in West Side Story where Oscar winner Rita, herself, was dubbed.
Rita is also going to be in the new West Side Story film, I heard she playing a female version of the Doc character.

Marni Nixon trivia: Marni was married to film & TV composer Ernest Gold. Their son is Andrew Gold, singer/songwriter of "Thank You For Being a Friend", which you'll know was The Golden Girls TV series theme song.