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ohtani's jacket

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    50s WATCHING THREAD

    in MOVIES: BEST OF...

    Posted

    I WANT TO LIVE! (Robert Wise) -- setting aside the fact that as a factual true story it's all bullshit, this is a quality bit of noir with a commanding performance from Susan Hayward and some solid directing from one of Hollywood's most reliable hands in the 1950s. I actually thought it would be a bit campier, but nope.

     

    A STAR IS BORN (George Cukor) -- personally I found the use of stills and outtakes a bit jarring even if they were necessary to piece back together the plot, and some of that stuff should have been cut in the scripting not on the editing floor. Still, what's left is a tour de force from Garland. The film seems to epitomise her. You've got the drugs, the weight issues, the illnesses real and imagined, all the warts there on the screen to go with the immense talent and idiosyncratic singing style. It was quite mesmerising at times. Mason plays second banana, but he's not a bad second banana. I usually hate Cukor films, but this time I didn't really notice I was watching one. This will be a contender for my ballot because of Garland.

     

    THE PROWLER (Joseph Losey) -- takes a while to get going, but when it does it's as compelling a noir as any other from the decade and a nice twist on Double Indemnity. A really decent attempt at fleshing out the psychology behind the crime too. I fucking love Van Heflin. 

     

    DEATH OF A SALESMAN (Laslo Benedek) -- filmed stage play, bladdy blah blah... I kind of thought Fredric March's performance in this was a bit dated or maybe it was just the way Benedek handled the hallucinations/flashback scenes. The climax was good, especially the confrontation between father and son, but otherwise this was very stagey. 

    A Better Comeback than the 2004 Red Sox..

    in SPORTS

    Posted

    It was pretty cruel since Team New Zealand had the Cup won a week ago with a 1500m lead but couldn't complete the race in the 40 min time limit due to low winds. There were a couple of other races called off where TNZ were in the lead and then postponements of races that gave Oracle time to spend millions of dollars to make their boat go faster. Mind you, if TNZ had won, Oracle would have probably dragged the whole thing through court.

    [Best of] THE TOP 330 MOVIES OF THE 1990s

    in MOVIES: BEST OF...

    Posted

     

     

     

    273) CENTER STAGE (THE ACTRESS)

    1992 - 137 Points - 2 Votes (Highest Vote: #24 Execproducer)

     

    I'm frankly amazed this made the cut. Who's my partner in good taste?

     

    Moi.

     

    Regarding Paris is Burning, I watched as many documentaries as I could from this decade with any rep. I basically like a documentary that teaches me something and Paris is Burning was about a sub-culture I would have otherwise had no clue about whatsoever. I found it intensely interesting.

    50s WATCHING THREAD

    in MOVIES: BEST OF...

    Posted

    I watched A STAR IS BORN with Judy Garland and James Mason.  They were both very good.  It's about Mason's Norman Maine's fall in Hollywood intersecting with the rise of Garland's Vicki Lester.  That's a common theme in the movies about show business.

     

    There were a couple of elements of the movie that stood out to me.  The first was that they panned in different directions on still photographs while dialogue was going on.  It reminded me of a Ken Burns documentary.  I thought that was unique.  

     

     

    I'm watching this at the moment and the still photographs weren't part of the original film. Warner Brothers execs made over 40 minutes of cuts to the original version because they were afraid the running time would limit the number of daily showings. In 1983 the film was "reconstructed" with surviving audio and the still photos. It's kind of annoying but there's some obvious plot holes in the Warner edit. Some of the audio must have been missing as well as you never see her screen test. She's on her way to the test and the next thing you know she's signed a contract. 

    50s WATCHING THREAD

    in MOVIES: BEST OF...

    Posted

    All right, back into the fray...

     

    NO WAY OUT (Joseph L. Mankiewicz) -- one of the first films to deal with racial discrimination directly. Comes on strong with its message, but doesn't pull any punches when it comes to bigotry or violence. Notable for giving Sidney Poitier his first starring role. I thought Richard Widmark misfired a bit in his role as the bigot, but I've seen his performance praised elsewhere. Will caution that it's not really the noir it's made to be despite some swank photography. More of a social message, 50s melodrama. Probably more interesting as a pioneering film than a timeless classic.

     

    THE HARDER THEY FALL (Mark Robson) -- Bogie's last film before he died and not a bad one to go out on. Boxing melodramas suit the film noir style to a tee and this one uses the Primo Camera scandal to expose the sordid underbelly of prizefighting. Bogie plays an out of work sportswriter hired by a bent promoter, Rod Steiger, to put over an Argentinian lump whose fights Steiger is fixing to create a draw card. Wrestling fans ought to identify with that immediately and Camera himself went into wrestling as I'm sure a few of you are aware. The contrast between Bogie and Steiger's acting styles is intensely fascinating whenever they're on screen together.

     

    ATTACK (Robert Aldrich) -- I can't remember if I wrote about this on the old board, but a Robert Aldrich war film with Lee Marvin and Jack Palace? Totally B grade and doesn't really click, but fuck it if Palace doesn't have some cheesy monologues and he takes on a tank all by himself. Check out the trailer:

     

     

    MURDER BY CONTRACT (Irving Lerner) -- existential hitman noir that's like French New Wave before the French New Wave. This was really fucking cool. Awesome soundtrack, awesome low budget, quirky noir. You must check this out.

     

     

    MISTER ROBERTS (John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy) -- this is kind of disappointing given the cast of Henry Fonda, James Cagney, William Powell and Jack Lemmon, but once you get over that it's a decent enough story of life on a US Navy cargo ship during the waning days of the war. As a comedy-drama it didn't really hit all the buttons for me and how much you enjoy it depends on how much you like a really Henry Fonda, Henry Fonda performance, but It was pretty harmless and the ending was effective if not completely Hollywood-ish.

     

    DEVDAS (Bimal Roy) -- continuing my journey through classic Bollywood. This was long. It took me a couple of weeks to finish it, to be honest, as I watched it in chunks. Probably the most interesting thing about 50s Bollywood is how unimportant the songs are compared to what Bollywood would become. This was more like classic Hollywood drama with a real focus on literary adaptions. The story here didn't really move me much, but the photography was gorgeous. 

     

    ASHES AND DIAMONDS (Andrzej Wajda) -- I watched this a long time ago when I was first introduced to foreign films through Bergman and Kurosawa and so on. Decided it needed a rewatch since I was wondering if it was top 10. I was kind of torn on this. It's interesting and exquisitely shot given the space it uses to tell its story, but without really understanding how the Polish people felt at the end of the war a lot of the prevailing sentiments were lost on me and the main relationship was Hiroshima Mon Amour in its distance and aloofness from the audience. But I still really liked it. That's a good thing, I guess. 

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