Razzberry

Thanks for the tip about Letterboxd, Ms Blue Jay. I'll definitely check it out. I'm not sure what qualifies as noir either, so I tend to have a liberal view. Some people are very specific, but others are not.

He Walked by Night, 1948 Richard Basehart, Scott Brady This innovative L.A. noir is in my top ten favorites. It obviously influenced other filmmakers from L.A Confidential to Carol Reed's The Third Man and Jack Webb's Dragnet. Even Basehart's clever, ghost-like quality and self-doctoring of wounds reminded me of Anton Chigur from No Country For Old Men. Full movie.

Grahame shows up in a lot of old films I like. She's very appealing in a certain type of role, and I loved her as the "good wife" in The Bad and the Beautiful (though her screen time was the shortest on record for an Oscar nom, if I'm not mistaken). Now that I hear who her competition was, her win seems even more baffling.

I have to wonder why Gloria Grahame was cast in Oklahoma at all, since she can't sing or dance. She also caused problems on the set, from what I understand.

Dream casting for F.A.R.T. II, The Sequel?

This Monday night, May 3, TCM will air Crossfire at 6:30 pm Pacific time, followed by Night of the Hunter at 8:15! Yay. Also I think it's only a matter of time until someone monetizes these great Fritz Lang films now free on YouTube. Human Desire had been pulled and now has a new url. (posted elsewhere but they belong here too) The Woman In The Window, 1944 Edward G. Robinson, Dan Duryea, Joan Bennett Scarlet Street, 1945 Edward G. Robinson, Dan Duryea, Joan Bennett The Blue Gardenia, 1953 Anne Baxter, Raymond Burr, Richard Conte Human Desire, 1954 Gloria Grahame, Glenn Ford

Crossfire, 1947 Highly rated film-noir about a hate crime of religious intolerance, but could be about any intolerance. Nominated for 5 Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Writing, Best Supporting Actors Robert Ryan and Gloria Grahame as Ginny. (Grahame was also related to co-star Robert Mitchum - her sister was married to Mitchum's brother).

That's a perfect description, a Good Bad Flick. Even bad movies can be entertaining if they're bad enough to be funny, and that's what I liked about The Nesting. Unfortunately Speed Kills with, once again, John Travolta, is just bad. Very amateurish direction, and the speedboat footage looked like someone's home movies without any excitement whatsoever. Apparently.

I have to wonder if John Travolta has a huge IRS tax bill he's paying off, or perhaps his 'church' has no retirement plan for their biggest earners. Another in his string of flops is The Fanatic. He plays Moose, a mentally challenged #1 fan of a Hollywood-based action hero. Moose breaks into his house and uses his toothbrush.

Unlike Laughton I'm not throwing in the towel yet. lol Some good ones can be seen free on You Tube or Amazon Prime. Don't Bother To Knock Weird Hotel where Marilyn Monroe is the babysitter from hell, the elevator operators are sketchy, the guests horny, and the bar features the song stylings of Anne Bancroft nightly. The Stranger Orson Welles, Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young Robinson is an investigator from the War Crimes Commission who suspects Welles is actually an infamous Nazi hiding in plain sight. Suspenseful and unique ending. Full movie. Criss Cross Burt Lancaster, Yvonne DeCarlo, Dirty Dan Duryea, and Tony Curtis in his first role as DeCarlo's dance partner. I love the music and energy in this scene.

I liked 3 Billboards and thought it was a fine addition to Frances' collection of angry, rigid, self-righteous roles, but no more than that.

The Sandpiper Strike two for Vincente Minelli. Even the gorgeous scenery in Big Sur and Liz Taylor's big breasts couldn't compensate for the dreary plot, terrible writing, and laughable casting in this lame soap-by-the-sea. Liz is supposed to be an artistic beatnik and Burton is cast as a married man of the cloth drawn to her free-spirited breasts. That's my guess, anyway, since I can't see any other attraction. This is Minelli's idea of a beach beatnik. Charles Bronson is cast as an artist who's made a life size sculpture of Liz out of a giant redwood stump. The minister is in love all of a sudden. He's married to the beige and small breasted Eva Marie Saint, in a thankless nothing role.

Any fans of film noir, even if it's just a movie or two? One of my favorites is The Night of the Hunter, directed by Charles Laughton in 1955. Now considered one of the greatest films ever made, at the time it opened to mixed reviews and was completely ignored for any award nominations. Laughton was so disappointed he never again directed a film, much to our loss. Starring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish, Billy Chapin Official synopsis: A religious fanatic marries a gullible widow whose young children are reluctant to tell him where their real daddy hid the $10,000 he'd stolen in a robbery. The following may contain spoilers. It was loosely based on the true story of Harry Powers, who was convicted for the murder of two widows and three children in West Virginia in 1932. The children here are let down by just about every adult they know and have to go on the run. It's a nail-biter, and the cinematography by Stanley Cortez is sharp and gorgeous. Robert Mitchum is the despicable Harry Powell, a fake preacher with a madonna/whore complex or maybe just hates women. Here he's shown snarling through a burlesque show while playing with his switchblade, which ends up popping open and cutting through his pants pocket. Paging Dr. Freud... I think Shelley Winters was miscast as a timid southern woman, but she doesn't last long. The kids take off in a boat and spend the night in a barn. They're taken in finally by a woman who won't be intimidated by Powell and sees right through him. The Coens borrowed a saying for The Big Lebowski from this film.

Jessica Lange revises Cora in The Postman Always Rings Twice, opposite Jack Nicholson. They gave that butcherblock a buffing that Garfield and Turner neglected. She just naturally dominates, and her male leads have to be strong to prevent fading into the background. In Frances, opposite Sam Shepard. Frances never actually had a lobotomy, but the director said he didn't want facts to get in the way of a good story.

Across The Bridge Rod Steiger at his sweaty, diabolical best in this fast-paced noir crime thriller. The film is actually in B&W, not color, but it's a gem.

And yet her Instagram is under MiaThreapletonWinslet.

Jessica Lange and her Oscar winning role in Blue Sky, OMG! I love this film and don't know how it slipped my mind. She plays Carly, the sexy flirtatious Army wife of Tommy Lee Jones, who seems to get transferred more than usual because of her behavior. Never mind that they're finding high levels of radiation, his commander wants to know - As their teen daughters say, "He's blind and she's crazy. They're made for each other." Another transfer finds them in Alabama, and Carly isn't happy, but his new commander Johnson, played by Powers Boothe, seems delighted with the new arrivals. Right away Carly causes quite a stir at the officer's club dance. Commander Johnson sends Jones to Nevada for two weeks to eliminate any interference with his designs on his wife. There's a whole other story about a nuclear testing cover-up... but what is Jones job again? That's right, I forgot. I kind of think Commander Johnson's wife's explanation to their son was more accurate.

The Company She Keeps Forgettable and silly, except for the little dude who was Jeff Bridges in his first film role. Laidback even as a baby, he wouldn't cry on cue so his mother told Jane Greer to pinch him, which apparently worked.

I can't get enough of Peter Seller's "Normal guy" scene from Lolita. Mason was right to worry that he was stealing the movie.

I'm all for anything that will keep Harrison Ford on the ground and off "Air Disasters". Thankfully the LA Times is monitoring his near misses and garbled tower transmissions on their website. https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-harrison-ford-close-call/

I hear actors saying this as well, and can imagine how unromantic the setting actually is. On the other hand, Hitchcock said that, without exception, he never filmed a love scene that wasn't continued on "after hours". This seemed to delight and amuse him to no end.

I watched King's Row for the first time last night and was impressed. The subject matter isn't something you see every day in these older movies.

Cary Grant had a UO about Method acting that he shared back in the day. "I have no rapport with the new idols of the screen, and that includes Marlon Brando and his style of Method acting. It certainly includes Montgomery Clift and that God-awful James Dean. Some producer should cast all three of them in the same movie and let them duke it out." That still makes me laugh. Clift had been signed to do Sunset Boulevard but pulled out because he couldn't do a love scene with someone as old as Norma Desmond, he said. Isn't that basic acting? William Holden had no such problem, thank God.

Rebel Without a Cause is overrated, benefiting from the death of James Dean right before it opened. There, I said it. The kids are cliche, the parents cardboard cutouts with no depth. Director Nicholas Ray partly based these troubled youths on a "gang" of ex child actors from Hollywood High who neither smoked nor drank but allegedly had a lot of "teen angst". Right off the bat I had issues identifying with or caring about them, starting with Plato the Puppy Killer. If he had shown some remorse or even interest in the question, I may have cared. But he doesn't, so I don't. Jimmy looks like he's been held back a few grades in school, but blames his parents for everything. There's not a tear in his eye in this scene, so how torn up could he really be? We learn that Jimmy is so troubled that his family is on the move constantly, presumably whenever Jimmy gets overly dramatic. Something to do with his Dad wearing an apron. Look under 'H' for Hamilton, Alexander and Son. Meanwhile, Natalie Wood is creeping out her father, who's emotionally distant. News At 11:00. According to Nicholas Ray's biography, the almost 50 year old director was banging the underage Wood at the time. Dennis Hopper was grossed out and had words with him about it, to no avail. You'd think if Dennis Hopper is concerned about your behavior, perhaps it's time to dial it back, but no.

River of No Return Directed by Otto Preminger and starring Robert Mitchum and Marilyn Monroe, who sings a couple of songs and is tolerable when deglamorized and speaking in a natural voice. Monroe claimed River of No Return was her worst film. I disagree, not her worst by a long shot. I actually enjoyed it. Beautiful scenery, river raft road trip, Robert Mitchum and Rory Calhoun as well.