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Author Topic: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.  (Read 428093 times)

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #870 on: June 11, 2019, 04:33:56 PM »
Glad you were eased into Elizabethan drama so pleasantly, Jeff!

Thanks.  :)

Somewhere along the line in school, I saw Olivier's film of Hamlet, but I can't remember exactly when that was.  :">

Someone has given me DVDs of Kenneth Branagh's Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing, but I've never gotten around to watching them.  ::)

I will always remember a comment made by a reviewer of Much Ado About Nothing in The New Yorker magazine: "Sometimes all you ask of Shakespeare is Denzel Washington in leather pants."  ;D

Offline Lyle (Mooska)

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #871 on: June 16, 2019, 11:03:59 AM »

--The Crimes of Grindelwald

A sequel to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. This was a lot less enjoyable than the first one. What happened to having a little enjoyment for the characters along the way. I was rather bored with it. Having said that, if you watched a few scenes out of context you'd be amazed at the visual effects, but there are just so many in this film (and it's not just this film, lots of films suffer from this lately) you don't have time to appreciate them and after awhile you just don't care. "Oh there's another effect."  I've often said lately that they used to call these "special" effects. They aren't special anymore. They're just effects. Just like the occasional animated film used to be greeted with high anticipation. Now it's: here comes another one.
______

I'll continue just a bit because I have an example. When we used to see visual effects in movies we understood these were often really hard to do, but they did them for us, the audience. And, if they took the time, and expense, to do them they were important to the story. Now because of computers almost anyone can do them so they do.

I am interested in the upcoming Tarantino film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I'm hoping it's a good story as well, but to recreate Hollywood from fifty years ago, Tarantino had them dressing Hollywood Blvd. to look as it did in 1969 and also recreated that look in other parts of the city so it was shot in camera and not added later as a digital effect. He also tries to do any visual effects required in his films in camera, which means they are shot when the scene is happening and not added later. As a filmgoer, it's why I have appreciated his films over the years, even though many of them just aren't my cup of tea. It's harder to do things this way, but I feel it's worth it. So many films it seems i can just tell they did things on a computer. For backgrounds they used to use matte paintings, which were inserted wholly or partially into scenes. A cinematographer explained that matte paintings were almost always painted on glass, which gave them a 3-D effect, because the glass is various thicknesses and the light refracts in the glass when filmed. Digital images don't have that aspect to them and they look flatter. It's why I always seem able to tell if something doesn't look right in a film. I fear matte paintings are becoming a lost art.



Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #872 on: June 17, 2019, 07:35:46 AM »
I am interested in the upcoming Tarantino film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I'm hoping it's a good story as well, but to recreate Hollywood from fifty years ago, Tarantino had them dressing Hollywood Blvd. to look as it did in 1969.

Hard to believe that "fifty years ago"--half a century--is now 1969.

Offline Lyle (Mooska)

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #873 on: June 17, 2019, 11:56:14 AM »
^^^

Crazy isn't it?  Then I think that fifty years previous to 1969 it was 1919 which makes it seem crazier!

Offline Lyle (Mooska)

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #874 on: June 17, 2019, 11:57:49 AM »

--Shall We Dance

Astaire and Rogers pleasantry from 1936!  Highlight is their dance together on roller skates and all those art deco sets to look at!


Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #875 on: June 17, 2019, 12:25:48 PM »
^^^

Crazy isn't it?  Then I think that fifty years previous to 1969 it was 1919 which makes it seem crazier!

Of course, when I was a kid, "a hundred years ago" meant horses and buggies, kerosene lamps, the telegraph, and so forth. Now "a hundred years ago" means automobiles, electricity, telephones. and so forth.

And when I was a very small boy, "a hundred years ago" meant the Civil War!

I might as well say it, it doesn't seem possible that on July 9 of this year, it's fifty years since humans first set foot on the moon.

Offline Sara B

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #876 on: June 17, 2019, 02:17:21 PM »
^^^

Crazy isn't it?  Then I think that fifty years previous to 1969 it was 1919 which makes it seem crazier!
When I was fifty I thought, this half century seems in a lot of ways like almost no time, and then if you started adding on the half centuries of my husband, my sister and my friends etc, you were back to Shakespeare, the Norman invasion, King Alfred, and the Romans and beyond, as easy as anything! And of course I can now do this in units of rather more than half centuries. :)

Offline Gazapete

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #877 on: June 17, 2019, 10:53:08 PM »
I saw "The Dead Don't Die" yesterday and I am still trying to understand what I saw  :laugh:

Not for everyone, but I liked it, I loved its caustic, deadpan sense of humour and it's always a pleasure to watch Bill Murray being himself. Adam Driver was a positive surprise too, I had only seen him in Star Wars.

Offline brianr

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #878 on: June 17, 2019, 11:16:29 PM »
I might as well say it, it doesn't seem possible that on July 9 of this year, it's fifty years since humans first set foot on the moon.
Is it really? I remember it vividly, my 4th year as a teacher, classes were suspended and as the school did not have enough television sets, teachers drove some pupils to their home to borrow portable TVs (still large) so there would be enough to go around. Today it would be live streamed to probably every student's personal Ipad or laptop. And it must be about 10 years almost to the day since I last stood in front of a class of students.

Offline CellarDweller115

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #879 on: June 18, 2019, 04:05:57 PM »
I saw "The Dead Don't Die" yesterday and I am still trying to understand what I saw  :laugh:

Not for everyone, but I liked it, I loved its caustic, deadpan sense of humour and it's always a pleasure to watch Bill Murray being himself. Adam Driver was a positive surprise too, I had only seen him in Star Wars.


I've started to see commercials for this the past few days.  Looks interesting.

Offline morrobay

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #880 on: June 21, 2019, 04:02:15 PM »
It's time for another #FilmFactFriday!

In honor of Jane Russell’s birthday, born on June 21, 1921, what better way to celebrate than with fun facts about her film debut, “The Outlaw” (1943).

A bit of a “code-breaker” in the eyes of the Motion Picture Production Code, the film was regarded as so scandalous that theater owners could be arrested just for showing it! The original director of the film was Howard Hawks; however after leaving the project after only two weeks, Howard Hughes stepped into the role of director.

Bonus fact: Hughes and a team of aircraft engineers specially designed a bra to augment Jane Russell’s figure. On Hughes’ invention, Russell mentioned, “Yes, Howard Hughes invented a bra for me. Or, he tried to…But I never wore it...and he never knew.”

Bye, Felicia

"What a maroon."  Bugs Bunny

"I try to be good...I only manage it in streaks."

Offline Lyle (Mooska)

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #881 on: June 22, 2019, 11:05:26 AM »

She never wore the famous bra?  :o

I didn't know she was born two days after my Mom was!

Most of the following is something I posted on a quite recent blog about the new Blu-Ray release of a Jane Russell film:

--The Revolt of Mamie Stover

I had purchased a book once in the 90's titled Made in Paradise: Hollywood's Films of Hawaii and the South Seas.
There was a chapter in it of a Jane Russell film titled "The Revolt of Mamie Stover."

It intrigued me and I wanted to see it, but for years I couldn't find it anywhere, so I read the novel it's based on. The title character is most likely based on an actual woman who lived in Hawaii during those years, Jean O'Hara. I don't know if it's available anywhere, but there was an excellent program first aired as a 3 part segment on the History Channel program "The XY Factor" focusing on the role sex played in WWII on three fronts: the Pacific, Europe and the Home Front. I believe it was also aired on A&E as Sex in World War II.

The "Pacific" episode corresponded to the novel quite a bit and was really fascinating. Two of the interviewees on the program had written a book about how so many different people and races were mixing in Hawaii during the war years. So, not being able to find the film anywhere, I bought and read that book, too. It's called "The First Strange Place: Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii by Beth Bailey and David Farber."

So, I had a lot of historical research in my head after the Hawaii film book, novel, documentary and history book, before I ever saw the film. On a cloudy Saturday, November 12, 2005, [just a week after I'd seen Brokeback Mountain for the first time at a BAFTA screening, I just thought!] I was looking at movie listings, probably in the L.A. Weekly, and I happened to see that at the Egyptian Theater (American Cinematheque) that very evening, only a short time from when I saw the notice, they were airing a double feature of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes AND The Revolt of Mamie Stover!

The only question for me was, did I want to see Gentlemen Prefer Blondes again? I'd seen it so many times. But it's not a long movie and it's very enjoyable and I had never seen it in a theater, so I hurried to make my way there for this unexpected double feature. I was going to see The Revolt of Mamie Stover at last!

What I did not know until the Cinematheque host told us right before the Blondes screening was that JANE RUSSELL herself was in the house! She'd be doing a Q&A between the films, but was introduced beforehand...and she looked just like you'd want a noted Hollywood Movie Star to look like. She was made up to the nines and had on a sparkly green sequined dress and was greeted with a long standing ovation as she was escorted to her seat where she stayed to watch Gentlemen Prefer Blondes!

So, after the film and the Q&A, I'd say 75% of the audience left! So I got to move to a really great seat and enjoy my first viewing of Mamie Stover. It was a gorgeous looking film and I couldn't have been introduced to it in a sudden and more glorious fashion.

So, a few notes and impressions about the film and screening:

--First, I was really excited about the widescreen and the cinematography. It was superb.

--I happen to think, as an actor, Richard Egan is kinda dull. He was appropriate for his role, and part of his character is to distance himself from "Mamie," but there should've been more chemistry between them.

--All the chemistry in the film is with Jane Russell and the audience...a good thing!
Jane sings "Keep Your Eyes on the Hands!"

--I only learned recently that this was the last film Joan Leslie made in her career.

--From all that I knew about the Hotel Street life and brothels beforehand, some of the film's treatment of that was really quite comical to me. I mean, I knew the film was made in 1957 and wouldn't deal with it explicitly, but the brothel depicted in this film was more of a bar/nightclub and the girls who work there all "hostesses" whose primary mission was to get the guys to buy more drinks. When individual guys were escorted to a room with their "girl of choice" it seems they were there to talk, play cards, drink more, or maybe write a letter back home...LOL! There was no sign of a bed or even a cot anywhere for the real purpose of these places. In actuality hundreds of servicemen lined up at these places daily to spend three minutes having sex with a female. I was wondering...did most people in the audiences at the time not realize what was really going on there? It all semed so wholesome!

--Though I had known about the movie, I hadn't researched it much and so it was a surprise to me that Agnes Moorehead, a blonde Agnes Moorehead, was in it and she's a favorite. She played the house Madame, with a mundane title in the film, and she was quite excellent. There's one scene where she fires an employee and on his way out he starts to call her "an old..." and I'm pretty sure in the context of the scene he was going to say "dyke," but she interrupts him with "...don't say it."

--I really love the musical score to this film and am glad it's a separate extra on the release.

--The Time Tunnel is a favorite 60's program and I knew that some footage used for historical purposes in many episodes came from Fox films set in those periods, but I had not known what film the Pearl Harbor footage they used came from until seeing it in this film.

Has anyone else seen this film?

Offline Lyle (Mooska)

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #882 on: June 22, 2019, 11:24:22 AM »


Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #883 on: June 24, 2019, 04:26:54 PM »
Saturday night there was nothing "on" that interested me, so I played my DVD of the best buddy movie ever, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Offline Gazapete

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Re: What Movie Did You Watch This Weekend? The Third.
« Reply #884 on: June 24, 2019, 11:04:23 PM »
I love it, Jeff. I always thought of it and Thelma and Louise as twin movies, and for both of them I imagined a different ending! My uncle always said that T & L's car lands softly in Mexico after the fly, that was his version and he stucked to it.