ratgirlagogo
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8 hours ago, AnnaCody said:
They hang on every word we say, like we are the smartest people in the world. .
I feel like my cat Nadji hangs on every word I say like I was the most loveable, but dumbest, person in the world.
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15 hours ago, StatisticalOutlier said:
I watched The Honeymoon Killers yesterday, without knowing anything about it. Yikes!
I have it on DVD and I watched it anyway. It's really a mesmerizing film for me - Shirley Stoler is not just scary but unexpectedly sensually beautiful, and vulnerable, which makes her even scarier. The black and white cinematography makes it seem like a documentary, or even an Investigation Discovery show. Frightening in the same way as Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer or Man Bites Dog. It also reminded me of Female Trouble, esp. since TCM Underground ran that recently, and I'd think it must be a favorite of John Waters.
15 hours ago, ruby24 said:I watched My Darling Clementine (1946) last night, and sad to say I wasn't as into it as I thought I'd be, considering the reputation this has as one of the greatest westerns, etc. I don't know what it was, I just didn't find it all that interesting. Henry Fonda was really good. I don't know, maybe it's just the Wyatt Earp story that I'm not into.
My favorite John Ford movies continue to be Stagecoach, The Quiet Man, The Searchers and The Grapes of Wrath. I've been making my way through his cavalry trilogy and I haven't been crazy about those either, yet (Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon- still need to see Rio Grande). I don't dislike them exactly, they're just...fine.
As somebody with a long love-hate relationship with John Ford, I feel you. Wyatt Earp's story, in general, was kind of bullshit. He lived long enough to write his autobiography in the 20's, IIRC, and to hang out and become friends with John Ford, Raoul Walsh etc. in Hollywood because he remained a handsome charismatic man even late in life, and obviously a tremendous storyteller. But sheriffs then as now are hired to do the same thing the Sheriff of Nottingham was hired to do - collect debts for the county, not to drive thugs and gunslingers out of town. Earp pocketed a percentage of all the tax debts etc. that he collected - thus his need for a gun and also the reason sheriffs are generally elected officials rather than appointees - because otherwise it's a plum job where you get to collect cash on every encounter. I'd recommend Jeff Guinn's great book The Last Gunfight on this subject, or Casey Tefertiller's Wyatt Earp.
Ford's cavalry Westerns are interesting to me for several reasons. One, they are part of his attempt to work out his World War II experiences (even as part of the film unit, he experienced shots fired, as they say, in anger). Also, as I have said before, probably in this thread somewhere, Westerns always, always attempt to explore/explain American history in a way that no other American film genre does. They always ask and answer the two questions, how did we become the United States? and do we DESERVE to be the United States? The really fascinating thing about the cavalry films, is that they are about, you know, the cavalry. Wagon trains and homesteaders and cowboys and gunmen were not enough to claim the West as part of the USA. It required the force of the military and yet most Westerns don't deal with this. (More recent spaghetti-inspired bullshit Westerns focus entirely on individual grudges and rivalries and revenge - which is why I can barely consider them Westerns.) I prefer Stagecoach to any of the cavalry Westerns myself - but I'm so interested in what he's trying to do.
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Since there has been some discussion of the idea of medical triage on A Certain Thread, here's some info that some of you know very well and some of you may not.
When the Nazis carried out their euthanasia (of people deemed mentally or physically unfit) and genocide (of the racially unfit, i.e. Jews, Gypsies; as well as socially unfit, i.e. homosexuals, sex workers, communists, anarchists) programs, the live or die decisions were in every case made by medical doctors based on the concept of TRIAGE. This is a great book on this very disturbing subject:
https://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Doctors-Medical-Psychology-Genocide/dp/0465049052
You may wonder why doctors, who have all sworn an oath to do no harm, could come to the point of standing in the death camps and doing the selections of those who would die (very young and very old people, physically unfit of middle age) and those who would live (old enough and strong enough to work) and the answer is obviously complicated - but very simple in another way. The murder was always carried out in a relatively clean, bloodless, "medical" way. The mentally and physically disabled were killed via injections, rather than, say, being shot in the head. The camp inmates were sent into gas chambers to be mass euthanized like puppies and kittens, as opposed again to being shot or something. In every case the idea of triage was used to justify murder since there was, of course, a war on, and Professional Experts needed to make decisions about whose lives were worth spending scarce resources on preserving.
This is one of the most disturbing but crucial books I've ever read in my life. You ought to be able to get it from your library system, probably in e-book form as far as that goes. If not it's available on archive.org:
https://archive.org/details/nazidoctorsmedic0000lift/page/n5
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White-throated Sea Porcupine.
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On 2/23/2020 at 7:46 AM, cynicat said:On 2/22/2020 at 5:44 PM, VCRTracking said:Read more
I didn't know where to put this post, but he makes a valid point about lead actresses on shows needing time to relax in their weekly schedule and that's why they can't be in EVERY scene!
Boo fucking hoo. Lots of people work 12+ hour days without a break because they have a family to support or even just themselves. All while making minimum wage, and without someone watching out for their well-being. Cry me a river.
Aside from just, nobody should have to work 12 hour+ days for minimum wage w/o anyone watching out for their well-being (I mean for christ's sake!), one of the reasons people do it (as I did in struggling times when I was younger) is because people who work jobs like that are instantly replaceable by other equally desperate people, so you just put up with it since for the moment you need the money and the boss has no need to negotiate.
Actors and actresses in hit shows are CARRYING the show and ensuring its success, meaning the jobs of all the other people who work on it. It's stupid not to make sure the star doesn't break down from exhaustion. It's not just her/him, it's everybody else that the show employs that will be affected.
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Sister Nightmage of Emerald City. Eh.
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9 hours ago, BooksRule said:
I do want to check out a book about Bonnie & Clyde from my library that is supposed to be fairly factual and was very well-reviewed ('Go down together: the true, untold story of Bonnie & Clyde' by Jeff Guinn).
That's a startlingly good book. Highest possible recommendation from me. Doesn't romanticize the crimes, but also gets across the real pathos of these people - Clyde Barrow's desperate poverty, the horror of Bonnie's untreated injuries in the last few weeks of her life. Jeff Guinn also wrote an excellent book on the history/mythology around the OK Corral (The Last Gunfight) and a biography of Charles Manson that shockingly had new information about an exhaustingly over-reported subject.
As for the film, I have seen it a few times and at this point I admire it more than I ever feel like watching it again.
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14 hours ago, xaxat said:
The thing that struck me most when I first watched Stagecoach is the fact that it dealt with so many social issues. Racism, gender roles, wealth inequality and substance abuse.
Oh, but Westerns ALWAYS do. The only genre that actually tries to come to terms with American history. Every Western good or bad always asks and answers two questions: 1) How did we come to be the United States? and 2) Do we actually DESERVE to be the United States?
Whatever the answer the movie comes up with, and whether it is positive or negative, Westerns whether they are A-Westerns like Ford's or B-Westerns like Autry's are always always interesting for just that reason.
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3 hours ago, PennyPlain said:
Are there really that many serial killers roaming the streets?
No. Only the minds of lazy Hollywood screenwriters.
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On 1/15/2020 at 7:41 AM, Milburn Stone said:
And what's the story with Howard Duff? I loved him, and he even was a TV star at one point (co-lead with his wife Ida Lupino in Mr. Adams and Eve, which, as a 7 and 8 year-old, I had the discerning taste to realize was pretty good), but he should have been a movie star too.
One major problem is that he was blacklisted in Hollywood after being listed in Red Channels.
http://www.radiospirits.info/2016/11/24/happy-birthday-howard-duff/
Always important to remember that when obviously good actors don't seem to have many movie credits, they likely have extensive stage or radio credits. I hope y'all do read the linked article. Duff was huge on the radio (he played Sam Spade) and was really developing a solid movie career when he was blacklisted and scrambled to get whatever TV roles he could.
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15 minutes ago, PennyPlain said:24 minutes ago, biakbiak said:
My grandmother was so pissed when they named the baby on Mad About You, Mabel saying it was a horrible name to give a child. Her name of course was Mable!
I always wondered if the writers were trying to see if they could get that name trending. I don't think that happened!
My grandmother's name was Mabel! Her actual baptismal name was Julia but back around the end of the 19th century/beginning of the 20th century, apparently Mabel was a hot young girl's name so that's the name she went by. When my mom and her sisters and brothers were trying to give their mom a hard time they'd call her Julia. Her parents had tried to get her baptized as Mabel but the priest wouldn't go for it since he said it wasn't a saint's name (which is bullshit- it's yet another variant of Mary) so he baptized her as Julia because that was his mother's name.
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On 1/12/2020 at 10:51 PM, tennisgurl said:
Has there ever, in the history of media, been a time when someone says that someone "looks like you've seen a ghost" and the person they are talking to/about didnt just see a ghost/someone they thought died/someone who died in a previous timeline or universe/someone who came back from the dead?
Can we just retire that line, please?
That can't happen until human beings stop seeing ghosts - which I think will happen NEVER.
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20 hours ago, OmegaX123 said:
hat I do remember is that it centered around a woman who, if memory serves, was either going somewhere new or just taking a new route to somewhere she typically went, drove by an old house, and started having deja vu sensations/vivid memories of having lived there before. Something along those lines.
This sounds EXACTLY like the third episode of season one of Night Gallery.. The House, with Joanna Pettet. Written by Rod Serling, but based on a story by Andre Maurois.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0660797/?ref_=ttep_ep4
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55 minutes ago, AuntiePam said:
Did anyone else catch The Late Show
I watched Harry and Tonto since it been a longer time since I had seen it. What a sweet humanist movie. I noticed this time how much it is like Umberto D which I just had rewatched a few months ago. The older intellectual man with the devotion to the cat or dog. The cruelty of modern cash nexus life, but the kindness of younger people to the old (not presented often enough in TV/film).
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17 hours ago, Silver Raven said:
Edd Byrnes has died, age 77. Early teen idol from 77 Sunset Strip.
AHEM!. He was 87. If he'd been born in 1942 he'd have been 18 when he started playing Kookie.
https://www.tmz.com/2020/01/09/77-sunset-strip-grease-star-edd-byrnes-dead-at-87/
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On 1/9/2020 at 10:58 PM, Sharpie66 said:
i love seeing movies that are filled with early-in-their-careers future stars.
Just keep watching TCM, and steer yourself a little earlier in the timeframe than you normally would do. One hundred percent of your movie viewing will be filled with earlier-in-their-careers future stars. Also check out the many retro TV channels for the same reward.
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1 hour ago, Moose135 said:
It's Jake the Christmas Aussie!
I love that you have the 3 pics showing that even a very serious guy can crack a smile at Christmas......
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So COZI's ditching The Rockford Files, Magnum PI, McCloud, and MacMillan and Wife? Sigh.
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Tomorrow as part of the remakes series they'll be showing two versions of the great Christmas themed Western Three Godfathers - the one from 1936 and the one from 1949. Three bad men end up doing a noble, unselfish thing, against their own practical cynical better interests. I love them both but the one to watch is the 1936 version, which is really the superior movie. Chester Morris as the bad-guy leading man, Lewis Stone (yes, Judge Hardy himself) as an Eastern intellectual gone West and gone wrong and Walter Brennan as a cheerfully opportunistic criminal. Darker in tone than John Ford's 1949 remake (the bad guys seem more bad, for one thing) and the redemptive ending thus feels more painful, and more earned.
I like the Ford version too but it shows on other channels because it's John Wayne and John Ford - whereas this earlier version never shows anywhere but TCM. I know a lot of you are "yuck, ugh, Westerns" but I do recommend you giving these a try - they aren't formulaic Westerns by any means, and like I said, they are great Christmas movies.
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On 12/17/2019 at 3:15 PM, StatisticalOutlier said:
Maybe I'm not good at racial slurs--is this a real word? I can't noodle it out.
Suspicious. (sorry.) I don't think being good at racial slurs is a goal any of us are shooting for, LOL.
I like Holiday Affair a lot - Janet Leigh is so pretty but tough, like Barbara Stanwyck (and like her daughter Jamie Lee). Also, yes Mitchum was super-hot and it's a pleasure to see him play a romantic nice guy lead back when he was still mostly playing villains.
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23 hours ago, punkypower said:
My Wrestling Days:
The Rock
Randy Orton
Chris JerichoCHRIS JERICHO????!!!???
BACK OFF BITCH. 😊
Are you watching him on AEW on TNT? He is (deliberately) playing the mid-life crisis version of his younger character. God he is a genius. I will never not love him.
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On 12/11/2019 at 6:36 PM, Milburn Stone said:
The dialogue was being spoken fast and moving from one speaker to another at a rapid clip, and the human eye/brain can only process so many words per second.
With something like the 1949 Gigi that makes some kind of sense. With The Irishman, though, why couldn't the captioner be working from the written script? ETA: I know what you're saying about displaying that volume of text onscreen, but it seems to me that people talked fast and furious in a lot of old Hollywood films and I've seen things like Unfaithfully Yours for example fully captioned.
For some reason we can't get CC at all for TCM in recent months, although we have it for the rest of the channels.
Another funny thing about CC is the way in which it automatically censors words it detects as racial slurs, even when they occur innocuously within a word - e.g., "suxxxxious." This is especially true on the retro channels like MeTV and Antenna.
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On 12/9/2019 at 7:36 PM, StatisticalOutlier said:
Any idea why they do this?
Not really. But they do it a lot. As with the replaying Pink Panther and A Shot In the Dark last night after showing both within the last few weeks. They just do this.
I'm really enjoying the remakes program on Mondays. Today I watched the 1949 French non-musical version of Gigi, which I had never seen before. Directed by a woman (Jacqueline Audry), and while it is obviously the same story this version is much less focused on Honore the old roue and more on Gigi and her "aunties" and is thus a bit more bleak about what Gigi's prospects actually are. As in the original story it's hard to believe Gigi is really going to have the marriage she dreams of with Gaston - but ends before we remind ourselves that whatever may come as a legal wife she'll be taken care of in a divorce with more than just a diamond necklace, thus satisfying the cynical practical aunties Inez and Alicia.
However I have to mention that the subtitling was AWFUL - pure white, in a film which mostly was completely white at the bottom of the screen (white dresses/petticoats, white tablecloths, white curtains). I had to keep pausing the recording to squint. Plus the subtitles only covered about half the dialog, as in a Hong Kong or Bollywood film, forcing me to draw on my shitty high school French.
All this probably sounds like a pan, but I found this film fascinating, especially to fans of the musical ( or of Colette generally, like me).
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17 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:
Voice king Paul Frees dubbed most of Tony Curtis' Josephine voice in Some Like It Hot. I have a hard time fully accepting this, only because I'm very good at detecting voices, and Josephine sounded to me like Curtis in falsetto; but that could be because Frees was so darned good at his craft.
I have a hard time believing this one. If they were going to do that, they'd be even more likely to have gotten June Foray or some other voice actress to dub Marilyn Monroe's voice, since her anxiety and panic attacks famously kept holding up production. Josephine sounds like Curtis to me as well.
Adrian Messenger is one of those movie mysteries that are fun when you watch them and later you can't really remember the plot. I had not heard about the big stars being played by other actors in the earlier scenes but that I could believe.
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In Memoriam: Entertainment Industry Celebrity Deaths
in Everything Else TV
I also thought first of that one and Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town (a Vietnam war era classic):