TCM: The Greatest Movie Channel

[Tom Holmberg]

On 2/5/2022 at 10:03 AM, Charlie Baker said:

 there's Allan Arbus, one-time husband of noted photographer Diane Arbus.  He had a long career as a character actor, and is probably most recognizable for a recurring role on TV's M*A*S*H. 

 

"Putney Swope" was only his second acting job (in movies or TV). On "MASH" he memorably played army psychiatrist Sidney Freedman.

[Fool to cry]

1 hour ago, Tom Holmberg said:

"Putney Swope" was only his second acting job (in movies or TV). On "MASH" he memorably played army psychiatrist Sidney Freedman.

"IT WAS A BABY!!"

[StatisticalOutlier]

Okay, I bitched about this a couple of years ago, and I know that TCM Imports doesn't have a lot of traction here, but dang.  Alicia Malone introduced a movie by Wong Kar-wai, and referred to him as "Kar Wai."  "Wong" is his surname. 

They shouldn't get that wrong. 

Also, while I'm complaining, I can't stand the moving camera in the new intros.  I keep waiting to see where it's going to stop and go back the other direction.  Is it an "I'm old" thing to be comfortable just being talked to by someone standing there?  I'm glad they're not interjecting jump cuts or other nonsense, but it's still annoying.

Oh, and they didn't letterbox the Wong Kar-wai movie she introduced, even though the one you can stream is letterboxed.  And I know it wasn't just my TV doing some thinking of its own because the WKW movie after this one was letterboxed.

Grrrrr.

[Charlie Baker]

Good points, @StatisticalOutlier. I'm glad I'm not alone in finding that pendulum camera work annoying.  I guess it's meant to add visual interest, or dare I say it, "edge"?  Of course filmmakers' names should be referenced/pronounced correctly.  And hasn't TCM made a point of the channel showing films as they were made, correctly formatted? 

While this observation is not exactly fault-finding, I think I am noticing a greater percentage of more recent films (80s and 90s, if one might call that recent) on the schedule as well, as a regular occurrence, not just for special themes,  Maybe in line with some of that marketing they were doing that focused on balancing past and more past?

 

[Bastet]

3 hours ago, StatisticalOutlier said:

Alicia Malone introduced a movie by Wong Kar-wai, and referred to him as "Kar Wai."  "Wong" is his surname. 

They shouldn't get that wrong. 

I agree; that drives me nuts (I didn't see this instance, but I've come across it elsewhere).  Any random person not knowing how East Asian names are formatted, fine.  But those paid to publish content need to be accurate, and that script passed through more than one such person before it appeared on her teleprompter. 

[Rinaldo]

On 2/7/2022 at 10:45 PM, Charlie Baker said:

And hasn't TCM made a point of the channel showing films as they were made, correctly formatted? 

Yes, and almost always that's what they do. But once in a great while there's an incorrectly formatted one. I've posted here about this on occasion, when it happens to be one I've seen. I've speculated (without really knowing) that it's a film not in their own library, and somewhere in the pipeline some employee sent the wrong format. When it's a title likely to have been shown on TV or issued on VHS (in the "old" days), I always hope that that cropped version isn't the only one that survives -- examples that come to mind include Tender Is the Night and All of Me, which I was disappointed not to see in their original format.

As we ourselves move, so to speak, further into the future each year, it seems fair enough to me that the dividing line from "the past" creeps up correspondingly. I haven't done a statistical analysis, but it seems to me that the overwhelming majority of what TCM shows still dates from before 1980.

Edited February 9, 2022 by Rinaldo

[StatisticalOutlier]

6 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

I've speculated (without really knowing) that it's a film not in their own library, and somewhere in the pipeline some employee sent the wrong format.

I don't know anything about TCM's film library, or even how movies actually show up anywhere, but here's a data point:  In the case of In the Mood For Love, the version TCM showed on TV a couple of nights ago was not letterboxed, but the one available that same day as streaming on TCM's website was letterboxed.  The one available for streaming on HBO Max's website on the same day was letterboxed, as well. 

I guess they have more than one "copy" in their library?

[Milburn Stone]

On 2/7/2022 at 9:45 PM, Charlie Baker said:

Good points, @StatisticalOutlier. I'm glad I'm not alone in finding that pendulum camera work annoying. 

One more "annoyed" vote from me.

I'm not even sure that background is real. Half the time I wonder whether it's digitally created and then green-screened. The pendulum-like action is too smooth. This is not what I should be thinking about when a host is telling me about a movie. Robert Osborne didn't need no stinkin' pendulum!

[StatisticalOutlier]

2 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

I'm not even sure that background is real. Half the time I wonder whether it's digitally created and then green-screened. The pendulum-like action is too smooth.

I don't think getting a smooth camera movement would be an issue. 

I've noticed that the host looks straight into the camera the entire time, and wonder if they're standing on a lazy susan that's tethered to the camera.  That seems crazy, but it's the only way that would work, right?

That said, I was looking at the edges of Alicia Malone's sleeves on a purple dress, and it looked a little "unnatural," like green screens can do.  I had Mr. Outlier look at it, and he said if you watch the pillow on the couch as the image moves, you can tell it's not a 2D background.  But it might be some sort of fancy 3D graphics thing that they're using.

Whatever they're doing, it's a lot of effort for something that's annoying. 

[Milburn Stone]

6 hours ago, StatisticalOutlier said:

I've noticed that the host looks straight into the camera the entire time, and wonder if they're standing on a lazy susan that's tethered to the camera.  That seems crazy, but it's the only way that would work, right?

Unless the camera and presenter are static, and only the background is moving. (Through the magic of green-screen.)

That host-looking-straight-at-camera thing is definitely one of the things that cries out green-screen.

It wouldn't be a terrible thing if the background moved once, slowly, and found a position to settle. It's the regular back and forth--which no cameraman or director would call for in real life--that's maddening.

Edited February 10, 2022 by Milburn Stone

[Charlie Baker]

Douglas Trumbull, Visual Effects Master, Dies at 79

2001, Close Encounters, Blade Runner, etc.

 

[xaxat]

5 hours ago, Charlie Baker said:

Douglas Trumbull, Visual Effects Master, Dies at 79

2001, Close Encounters, Blade Runner, etc.

 

And director of the cautionary ecological tale, Silent Running.

 

 

[Fool to cry]

16 hours ago, xaxat said:

And director of the cautionary ecological tale, Silent Running.

 

 

I havent seen it yet but a few nights ago they showed two sci-fi movies I have seen, the original Planet of the Apes and Logan's Run. I love those pre-Star Wars dystopian movies with the serious themes but kitschy costume and production design.

[benteen]

I'm also a big fan of pre-Star Wars sci-fi.  I remember seeing many of those on TNT Monster MonsterVision hosted by Joe Bob Briggs back in the 90s.  Also saw Soylent Green that way.

Last night they had on Westworld to go along with Apes and Logan's Run.  I like Westworld but Soylent Green should have been on that block.

[Mindthinkr]

Settled in to watch one of my favorites.  The Ghosts and Mrs Muir. 
I forgot it included a young Natalie Wood. I haven’t seen it in years. I hope it’s as good as I remembered. 

[Rinaldo]

I've seen it so many times, I own the DVD, but I had to watch at least the start tonight: David Raksin's haunting music playing while we look at the painting of unearthly beautiful Gene Tierney, and then that opening line: "I shall never forget the weekend Laura died."

Some director once said, "It's the greatest mystery, isn't it, why one movie works and another doesn't." Laura shouldn't work, really: the murder-mystery aspect gets rather mislaid as we go along; the police investigation is conducted in the most preposterous manner ever (and that's saying something, in the history of noir); almost all the characters are theatrically outsized if not actually campy. And yet Laura just works, right from its first moment.

Edited February 18, 2022 by Rinaldo

[wilsie]

@Mindthinkr I love The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.  I can watch it over and over, no matter where in the movie it is.  I love Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison was amazing in this. 

@Rinaldo I'll also watch Laura and Leave Her To Heaven over and over.  So many good actors in both and interesting stories.

[Charlie Baker]

Gene Tierney was much underrated.  She even managed to make a thankless part in the whodunit misfire Black Widow interesting.  And in the classic films you mentioned, she could not be bettered, 

[Fool to cry]

13 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

I've seen it so many times, I own the DVD, but I had to watch at least the start tonight: David Raksin's haunting music playing while we look at the painting of unearthly beautiful Gene Tierney, and then that opening line: "I shall never forget the weekend Laura died."

Some director once said, "It's the greatest mystery, isn't it, why one movie works and another doesn't." Laura shouldn't work, really: the murder-mystery aspect gets rather mislaid as we go along; the police investigation is conducted in the most preposterous manner ever (and that's saying something, in the history of noir); almost all the characters are theatrically outsized if not actually campy. And yet Laura just works, right from its first moment.

Clifton Webb's character is the key.  You're not got gonna get the stoic tough guy cop played by Dana Andrews to admit he's fallen in love with what he thinks is a dead woman so have Webb say it instead and mock him for it. There are all these stories of a possessive, controlling man mentoring a young woman like Svengali, Pygmalion, A Star is Born and either he dies(which makes her feel guilt)or she dies or they both die or they end up together and none of them are ideal endings. Laura is like "eff that guy" and has the woman be free of him 

Edited February 18, 2022 by Fool to cry

[Milburn Stone]

21 hours ago, Fool to cry said:

Clifton Webb's character is the key.

I choose to believe the key is screenwriter Samuel Hoffenstein. As a child, I discovered in the basement his book called Poems in Praise of Practically Nothing. In doing so, I discovered what wit was.

Some years ago, I acquired a copy to treasure now.

 

[Tom Holmberg]

R.I.P. Sally Kellerman

Hopefully TCM will have a Sally Kellerman day and run "Slither" a goofy, Coen-esque road picture that isn't as well known as it should be.

[Rinaldo]

4 hours ago, Tom Holmberg said:

R.I.P. Sally Kellerman

Hopefully TCM will have a Sally Kellerman day and run "Slither" a goofy, Coen-esque road picture that isn't as well known as it should be.

Ah, Slither. I'd forgotten that. Howard Zieff directed, making his move from commercials. With a cast of folks who usually spent their movie time as second leads to bigger names: Kellerman, James Caan, Louise Lasser, Peter Boyle, Allen Garfield, Richard B. Shull. "Goofy" is a good word for it.

Of her other movies, MASH and Brewster McCloud have turned up often enough. And Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins didn't work for me, despite a Kael boost, and Serial deserves its forgotten status. How about The Big Bus?

[Tom Holmberg]

51 minutes ago, Rinaldo said:

How about The Big Bus?

I actually like "The Big Bus" too.  A precursor to "Airplane" and similar movies.

"Look out! He's got a broken milk carton!"

 

Edited February 25, 2022 by Tom Holmberg

[Tom Holmberg]

1 hour ago, Rinaldo said:

Ah, Slither. I'd forgotten that. Howard Zieff directed, making his move from commercials.

Also W.D. Richter wrote it (he directed "Buckaroo Banzai" and had a hand in the screen play for "Big Trouble in Little China").

[Charlie Baker]

Another somewhat obscure one: Sally Kellerman was part of a fairly impressive ensemble in Alan Rudolph's Welcome to L.A.  (Keith Carradine, Harvey Keitel, Sissy Spacek, Lauren Hutton, Geraldine Chaplin, Viveca Lindfors). It's a Robert Altman-esque (he produced it) look at a circle of dissatisfied privileged people in La La Land.   Even at the time I saw it when it was released, I knew it was pretentious and overwrought, but I also thought then it had a cool, existential vibe and I was into it.  (It was the 70s, OK?) I would check it out again, if only for the time capsule quality. 

[Rinaldo]

On 2/25/2022 at 7:39 PM, Charlie Baker said:

Another somewhat obscure one: Sally Kellerman was part of a fairly impressive ensemble in Alan Rudolph's Welcome to L.A.  (Keith Carradine, Harvey Keitel, Sissy Spacek, Lauren Hutton, Geraldine Chaplin, Viveca Lindfors). It's a Robert Altman-esque (he produced it) look at a circle of dissatisfied privileged people in La La Land.   Even at the time I saw it when it was released, I knew it was pretentious and overwrought, but I also thought then it had a cool, existential vibe and I was into it.  (It was the 70s, OK?) I would check it out again, if only for the time capsule quality. 

Ah... to me, Welcome To L.A. summons up a Movie Discussion forum exchange from 1976. (Before the internet there was the PLATO Educational Network; before email there were pnotes; and I forget what we called forums.) A member announced that as far as she was concerned, the most overrated director in the world was Robert Altman; and as evidence she offered Welcome To L.A. I replied (probably not civilly, in retrospect) that while she was entitled not to like Altman, she should restrict her argument to movies he had actually directed. She didn't give up, and insisted that he was still responsible for the awfulness of this movie and undoubtedly made everything in it just the way he wanted. At that point I'm sure I was uncivil but I really wanted to convince her (I was young and stupid). It was not my finest hour, and I wasn't even a great fan of the movie.

[Simon Boccanegra]

I've never seen Welcome to L.A., and now I want to. I went through an Alan Rudolph phase years ago, when I saw and loved Choose Me on television. Then I also saw Trouble in Mind and The Moderns. (So it was a Geneviève Bujold phase too.) Those were not quite at the same level as Choose Me, but stylistically the same sort of thing. I never sought out the earlier Rudolphs, though.  

I lost sight of him after Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle and Afterglow. There were others between that were not as memorable, such as Love at Large and Equinox. 

[Milburn Stone]

14 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

(Before the internet there was the PLATO Educational Network; before email there were pnotes; and I forget what we called forums.)

[TANGENT] I googled PLATO Educational Network but couldn't find anything that related to pre-internet days. How did you communicate? Chain letter? [/enquiring minds want to know]

[Rinaldo]

2 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

[TANGENT] I googled PLATO Educational Network but couldn't find anything that related to pre-internet days. How did you communicate? Chain letter? [/enquiring minds want to know]

This is the Wikipedia article about it, and it'll serve as well as anything. It had many functions now common: touch screens, dedicated discussion groups, a programming language allowing the creation of "applications" as we'd now call them, for educational or recreational purposes. When I was first hired at my university, only half my job was teaching music; the other half was being a PLATO programmer/editor (I had learned the language while in grad school, which was also on the system). And before that, after completing my coursework, the only job I could get was as a PLATO programmer/editor for a book publisher, which had visions of putting some of its textbooks online. I stayed there only 2 years, and the whole system started to become archaic in the mid 70s, when personal computers and commercial software appeared. (And I was transitioned solely into music teaching, fortunately.) It's funny what seemed high-tech to us then: the floppy disks were a foot in diameter!

[Inquisitionist]

On 2/5/2022 at 1:47 PM, Crashcourse said:

Regarding bad dancing:  As much as I loved Sidney Poitier (he was my heart throb), this scene broke my heart.

Apparently Poitier was tone-deaf as well.  That's not him singing A-a-a-men in Lilies of the Field -- but he sure convinced us he was!

Edited March 1, 2022 by Inquisitionist
Typo

[EtheltoTillie]

I tried to watch Pride of the Yankees early this morning, but I couldn't make it through.  What an embarrassing spectacle.  Forty-year-old Gary Cooper pretending to be a college student!  He looked fifty!  His aw-shucks mannerisms were at their worst.  

Lou Gehrig was such a beloved figure, so I suppose this was popular.  I wonder if that was how he was in real life. 

[Rinaldo]

3 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

What an embarrassing spectacle.  Forty-year-old Gary Cooper pretending to be a college student!  He looked fifty!

The issue of an audience's willingness to accept actors playing characters much younger than themselves is interesting to me -- it seems to vary so much, depending on the era and the actor. My impression is that audiences used to be much more indulgent about this. I think of Ginger Rogers in The Major and the Minor; I know she was playing an adult only pretending to be a teenager, but even the pretense looks preposterous to me now. Or Irene Dunne in Show Boat (the story is always a challenge for an actress, because she must age from 16 to 40); when she broke into dance in an early scene, my students would invariably burst into hysterics at the sight of this matron doing an awkward shuffle. There was no way they were believing her as a girl cutely copying what her elders taught her. No doubt others can think of even better examples.

The movie Grease is a more recent example. It was obvious to me at the time that these high schoolers ranged from their mid 20s to early 30s (Stockard Channing had been playing adults in movies for years), but it was a huge success and continues as a kind of classic, so I suppose its fans don't mind. And of course it was never intended as more than silly fun anyway.

[Sharpie66]

HBOMax is featuring a film every day this month for TCM’s 31 Days of Oscar. Today it’s Cabaret, which is one of my all-time favorites. I hadn’t seen the (rather old) documentary on the movie, The Musical That Changed Musicals, which is a good look at it and its impact on the genre. I was rather horrified when Kander talked about “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.” He gets requests for song usage and it’s obvious these people have no idea the context. The one he was absolutely floored by was when a Jewish summer camp asked if they could use it for the camp’s theme song!

[voiceover]

11 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

The movie Grease is a more recent example. It was obvious to me at the time that these high schoolers ranged from their mid 20s to early 30s 

I penned a piece for my hs 20-year reunion book, and my opening salvo was on this very subject (Grease premiered our junior year).  I wrote: “Don’t you remember how we said [of the leads], ‘Ohmygod they’re SO OLD!!’.  And now when I watch the rerelease honoring its 20th anniversary, all I can think is, ‘Ohmygod they were SO YOUNG!!!’”

Little Women is another example of how sometimes it works, sometimes it don’t.  With the notable exception of the most recent remake, I have loved every version of my favorite childhood book.  One of the things I like best about the 1994 film is the double-casting of the youngest March sister.  Kirsten Dunst was Amy as a child (book one), and Samantha Morton played the mature version (book two).  Waaaay more believable than watching Joan Bennett/Liz Taylor/Kathryn Newton/Florence Pugh trying to pass as 12.

[voiceover]

I had a professor once, who started the semester by expounding upon the most obvious difference between theatre and film.  The former, he said, emphasizes the words, while the latter was nicknamed “pictures” for a reason.  And yet! a handful of my favorite movies are all about writers: the least visual occupation ever (two hours of some shmuck staring at a blank page?  Hard pass).  

Of course, it’s not the *act of writing that’s at all interesting.  It’s the journey.  Therein lies the charm of Shakespeare in Love.

The joke, post-Oscar win, was that the Writers Guild had voted en masse to sweep Shakespeare to its Best Picture win over the heavily favored Saving Private Ryan (Hey Ben: next time maybe have Alicia or Dave introduce this one.  You’re entitled to your opinion but the only “best” about Ryan was the D-Day opener.  It was shocking and unforgettable, and then it turned into Every War Picture Ever.  Plus that coda was barf-making).  

But why shouldn’t that WGA story be more than urban myth?  It’s  one of the tightest-written Best Pictures ever, weaving real people (Christopher Marlowe, Richard Burbage, Queen Elizabeth I) into a made-up romance about how the title character got from the blank page to Romeo and Juliet.

The film opens with Will (Joseph Fiennes) suffering massive writer’s block over an unwritten play he’s just promised to not one, but two London theater owners.  He’s able to pluck a few good lines and character names from everyday life (one of the best of the running jokes), but is still confounded by the direction his new story should take (“Love and a bit with a dog is what they want!”).  On the other side of town is his biggest fan: Gwyneth Paltrow’s Lady Viola, who knows his plays so well her lips move while she watches them.  She tells her nurse that she wants “...poetry, adventure, and love![...]and to stay asleep my whole life if I could dream myself into a company of players.”

They finally meet when she sneaks into an audition (disguised as “Thomas Kent”), and the playwright is moved and impressed by his/her performance.  Searching for that “actor” leads Will, unawares, to the girl who’s playing him.  In the process, the words tumble & flow out of him and onto the parchment.

Lord I love this movie!  I love the truth of the writer’s journey (stealing from his own life and putting it on the page), I love the performances (Antony Sher has a hilarious cameo as Will’s Freudian shrink), I love the throwaway references (the ghoulish boy seeking revenge on Will turns out to be the young John Webster of ghoulish Duchess of Malfi fame).

And yes, Gwyneth deserved the AA for BA as the cross-dressing lovestruck heroine, whose sweet last line to her great romance is “Write me well!”  And yes, Judi was the right choice for BSA, for that scene at the climax alone. 

And *this movie’s coda — a Twelfth Night set-up — is a gorgeous visual sonnet.    

[Rinaldo]

6 hours ago, voiceover said:

Hey Ben: next time maybe have Alicia or Dave introduce this one.  You’re entitled to your opinion but the only “best” about Ryan was the D-Day opener.  It was shocking and unforgettable, and then it turned into Every War Picture Ever.  Plus that coda was barf-making

I skipped this airing (the movie's imminent DVD release was the reason I bought my first DVD player), and apparently it's good for my blood pressure that I did. The tearing down of SiL in favor of SPR is one of the most tiresomely predictable internet conversations there is -- apparently founded on the notion that war movies are automatically better than literary historical comedies. (Just last week I encountered a comment on a quiz site to the effect that "Can we all agree that SiL is the worst Best Picture choice ever?" And only the site's civility rules kept me from answering, "No, you pinhead, not while we have The Greatest Show on Earth and Crash, to name just two out of many.") Spielberg is of course a master of film direction, but he still needs a worthwhile subject and a good script. (Whose flashback is SPR again? And how?)

I'm afraid I would have been kicked out of that film class, @voiceover, as I can't believe that any dramatic medium is "essentially" anything. (Pauline Kael did an unforgettable takedown of this academic notion in her first book.) Movies can do whatever they're capable of doing, and plenty of good ones have focused on words. There's no preordained "essence" involved.

 

[Milburn Stone]

9 hours ago, voiceover said:

the only “best” about Ryan was the D-Day opener.

I almost agree. The other thing I thought "best" was the epilogue in the graveyard. I found that incredibly moving, thanks in large part to John Williams, who introduced a theme not previously heard in the movie ("Hymn to the Fallen"). Can music make a scene great? It can, just as surely as words can; movies (as I know you agree) are a collaborative art, and how the music works with the images in that sequence elevates the whole. 

[Charlie Baker]

Cyd Charisse, born 100 years ago today.

 

[Ms Blue Jay]

On 2/7/2022 at 7:31 PM, StatisticalOutlier said:

Okay, I bitched about this a couple of years ago, and I know that TCM Imports doesn't have a lot of traction here, but dang.  Alicia Malone introduced a movie by Wong Kar-wai, and referred to him as "Kar Wai."  "Wong" is his surname. 

They shouldn't get that wrong. 

Also, while I'm complaining, I can't stand the moving camera in the new intros.  I keep waiting to see where it's going to stop and go back the other direction.  Is it an "I'm old" thing to be comfortable just being talked to by someone standing there?  I'm glad they're not interjecting jump cuts or other nonsense, but it's still annoying.

Oh, and they didn't letterbox the Wong Kar-wai movie she introduced, even though the one you can stream is letterboxed.  And I know it wasn't just my TV doing some thinking of its own because the WKW movie after this one was letterboxed.

Grrrrr.

I can't stand her.

[EtheltoTillie]

I watched parts of some interesting oldies this morning (early Oscar winners--movie or acting).

1) Wings  Silent film with stunning visual sequences.  Many people seem to fault the drunken bubbles sequence, but I loved it.  An early psychedelia.

2) The Champ:  everyone knows this tearjerker story.  But I had never seen it.  What a brutal boxing match.  It did not seem believable that Wallace Beery

Spoiler

won after being knocked down so brutally.  Of course he really "lost."

3)  Viva Villa.  More Wallace Beery.   There was one battle scene where many horses must have been injured.  I almost thought I could see the wires tripping the horses. 

[Milburn Stone]

22 hours ago, Ms Blue Jay said:

I can't stand her.

Just curious why. I find her an attractive, personable host. (And I like her accent.) I realize her knowledge of film history isn't all-encompassing (like most of us film fans, she has her areas of interest and probably knows a lot about those) and that she relies on the writing staff for some of her "fun facts"--but that's true of all the hosts, and was even true of Robert Osborne.

I know Eddie Muller likes her! :)

All of which is not to disagree with you. It's subjective, obviously. I'm just honestly interested in the reasons an "Alicia-hater" hates her.

[Ms Blue Jay]

Too much plastic surgery.

[EtheltoTillie]

On 3/7/2022 at 1:52 AM, voiceover said:

I had a professor once, who started the semester by expounding upon the most obvious difference between theatre and film.  The former, he said, emphasizes the words, while the latter was nicknamed “pictures” for a reason.  And yet! a handful of my favorite movies are all about writers: the least visual occupation ever (two hours of some shmuck staring at a blank page?  Hard pass).  

Of course, it’s not the *act of writing that’s at all interesting.  It’s the journey.  Therein lies the charm of Shakespeare in Love.

The joke, post-Oscar win, was that the Writers Guild had voted en masse to sweep Shakespeare to its Best Picture win over the heavily favored Saving Private Ryan (Hey Ben: next time maybe have Alicia or Dave introduce this one.  You’re entitled to your opinion but the only “best” about Ryan was the D-Day opener.  It was shocking and unforgettable, and then it turned into Every War Picture Ever.  Plus that coda was barf-making).  

But why shouldn’t that WGA story be more than urban myth?  It’s  one of the tightest-written Best Pictures ever, weaving real people (Christopher Marlowe, Richard Burbage, Queen Elizabeth I) into a made-up romance about how the title character got from the blank page to Romeo and Juliet.

The film opens with Will (Joseph Fiennes) suffering massive writer’s block over an unwritten play he’s just promised to not one, but two London theater owners.  He’s able to pluck a few good lines and character names from everyday life (one of the best of the running jokes), but is still confounded by the direction his new story should take (“Love and a bit with a dog is what they want!”).  On the other side of town is his biggest fan: Gwyneth Paltrow’s Lady Viola, who knows his plays so well her lips move while she watches them.  She tells her nurse that she wants “...poetry, adventure, and love![...]and to stay asleep my whole life if I could dream myself into a company of players.”

They finally meet when she sneaks into an audition (disguised as “Thomas Kent”), and the playwright is moved and impressed by his/her performance.  Searching for that “actor” leads Will, unawares, to the girl who’s playing him.  In the process, the words tumble & flow out of him and onto the parchment.

Lord I love this movie!  I love the truth of the writer’s journey (stealing from his own life and putting it on the page), I love the performances (Antony Sher has a hilarious cameo as Will’s Freudian shrink), I love the throwaway references (the ghoulish boy seeking revenge on Will turns out to be the young John Webster of ghoulish Duchess of Malfi fame).

And yes, Gwyneth deserved the AA for BA as the cross-dressing lovestruck heroine, whose sweet last line to her great romance is “Write me well!”  And yes, Judi was the right choice for BSA, for that scene at the climax alone. 

And *this movie’s coda — a Twelfth Night set-up — is a gorgeous visual sonnet.    

Thanks for posting.  This prompted me to rewatch after 24 years, and I loved it.  Gwyneth did deserve an award for her Victor/Victoria type performance.  I think she's quite talented and has unfortunately lost credibility with her silly Goop company. 

[Rinaldo]

On 3/8/2022 at 4:31 PM, EtheltoTillie said:

1) Wings  Silent film with stunning visual sequences.  

I had the good fortune to see this screened in a huge university theater, accompanied by one of the premier theater organists (a fellow music student but already nationally known for this kind of work). It was a stirring experience. And afterward he showed me his "score" -- it was a single page of motifs he had composed for characters and situations, out of which he wove a coherent musical experience that expertly matched the film.

Nobody asked me my opinion of Alicia Malone, but (though I wouldn't go as far as not being able to stand her) I find her the least appealing of TCM's hosts. It seems to me that she's reading what's written for her without caring about the content. Now I'm sure that's not true; she must care a lot to be chosen at all. But to me (and I understand that it's personal) she gives the impression of a professional copy-reader, and one who's not in the top rank in terms of faking sincerity. All the others (including Ben, who can bug me) leave no doubt that movies are their passion.

Edited March 10, 2022 by Rinaldo

[EtheltoTillie]

@Rinaldo   Lucky you!   A few times in my life I've had the chance to see a silent film with live accompaniment, either at Museum of  Modern Art or a NYC repertory theater (all out of business now, sadly) or a college repertory presentation.  It never fails to add a special dimension.   Just before the pandemic I saw a silent movie at a local synagogue.  It was the same story as The Jazz Singer, but it was about an aspiring actor in a Russian shtetl.   There was a piano/violin duo who composed a new score for the movie and they were taking it on tour. 

[Rinaldo]

@EtheltoTillie I've only had that "live silent" experience one other time, and it was Gance's Napoleon at the Chicago stop of its early-80s tour with Carmine Coppola's new orchestral score. Very exciting indeed.

It belatedly occurs to me that there was no reason to conceal the organist's name. He's Dennis James, and as I said we were both graduate students at IU School of Music in the 1970s, when Wings was screened. (There were other silents shown in those years too, I think, but that's the only one I recall attending.) I didn't really know him except to nod and say hi while passing in the hall, but it was weird to think that a student a little younger than me was already a national name. Like having Mozart for a classmate, not great for the ego. 😉

Edited March 9, 2022 by Rinaldo

[Charlie Baker]

OK, it's been fifty years since The Godfather was first released.  I like it and admire it, with some reservations, but I don't have the strong feelings about it many do.  And after half a century, it's earned the label "classic." The New York Times commemorates with these:

Al Pacino on The Godfather

The Godfather Explained in Seven Quotes

 

[EtheltoTillie]

Ah,  @Charlie Baker, I admit to being a Godfather 1/2 superfan. 

As for Indiana University, @Rinaldo, I'm also a Breaking Away superfan. 

[Rinaldo]

1 hour ago, EtheltoTillie said:

I'm also a Breaking Away superfan. 

I have a feeling I've said this before, but I could have been an extra in Breaking Away! They were begging for extras, especially to sit in the stands for the climactic bike race. (If you can ever tear your eyes away from the racers in that sequence, you can see that the bleachers are far from full, and even so, they had to move people around when the camera direction changed.) I was sure it was going to be a bomb -- how good can a movie be if it's shooting in Bloomington? -- and I much regret my stupid choice. My main personal connections are that the girl who sings the national anthem was a student of mine (I was a grad assistant), and that one night, walking home from the music building, I could see night filming across the street; it was the scene where Dennis Christopher is "serenading" Robyn Douglass outside her sorority window.

After its release, it provided one of the 3 times I've seen a movie that showed the theater I was watching it in: I emerged afterwards and was right on the courthouse square we see in several scenes. (The other two times were seeing Alex in Wonderland in a theater on Sunset Boulevard, and Manhattan in the Little Carnegie Theatre -- whose interior is the setting for a brief moviegoing scene, so we all squealed together at the realization that we were in effect watching ourselves!) If I'd known the term "meta" in the 1970s, it would have applied to all three.

Edited March 9, 2022 by Rinaldo

[EtheltoTillie]

@Rinaldo  Great story, and I hadn't heard it before.  I had my own related brush with greatness, and I'll tell it here at risk of getting moderated for OT talk.

Barbara Barrie lives in my neighborhood, and I used to see her at the gym all the time.  But that gym went out of business, and she may be too old to go to a gym now.  She's 91.

I resisted fangirling and never spoke to her, as that's what you have to do in NYC, but I wished I could have.  Besides her appearance Breaking Away, she's responsible for a favorite bit in Private Benjamin.  Goldie Hawn is walking penalty tours in the pouring rain, and her parents come to see her at the military base.  Barbara Barrie pulls out the back of Goldie's rain poncho and swats off the water in the way that only a Jewish mother could do.  It's brilliant.