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mariah23

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Rinaldo

Rinaldo

(edited)

In the years I've been keeping close track of TCM's programming, this is the first time I've noticed them programming Hangover Square, a movie I've long wanted to see because of its profound impact on young Stephen Sondheim, who was knocked out by Bernard Herrmann's score (he has said that his music for Sweeney Todd owes a great deal to it). So of course I had to see it. Eddie Muller gave it the full "Noir Alley" treatment, though as he remarked, some might resist its legitimacy as such, given (among other things) its Edwardian setting. He provided a lot of helpful and pertinent information, in fact, as he reliably does.

Herrmann's music is indeed the element I'll take away from this experience. Full of variety and motivic focus, it culminates in the 11-minute "Concerto Macabre" toward which the whole story has been building. I loved it. 

I'm less sure about the movie as a whole. And leading man Laird Cregar in particular. He has his advocates, I've discovered, but I didn't find him expressive in a role that calls out for communication of what the character is feeling. It's not his much-mentioned weight issues, but his face. It's a cliché to say "the camera doesn't love him," but I confess that's what I kept feeling; his eyes don't speak to us, his agonies start to feel like amateurish mugging. Others in the cast are good, including Linda Darnell as a shallow music-hall performer and George Sanders as a sympathetic doctor. The atmosphere is nicely achieved too. But it's the music I'll remember.

I see that this Wednesday will be Classical Music Day, either starring actual classical singers (Lily Pons, Mario Lanza) or showing composer biographies (Chopin and Schumann from old Hollywood and then Ken Russell’s typical trashing of Liszt and Mahler) plus a swoony concert-pianist story (The Seventh Veil). Thursday is lots of Alexis Smith. Despite the music stuff being my territory, there's not much there that I'll be watching (either because I've already seen it or I never want to).

Edited by Rinaldo
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Rinaldo
Rinaldo

Never have I valued TCM as much as I did Sunday afternoon, after a tense visit to the ER Saturday afternoon and the OR Sunday morning. (Spoiler alert: the surgery solved everything, I got sent home Mo

Charlie Baker
Charlie Baker

An item I copied from a Hollywood Reporter news round-up: Carol Burnett, 90, Proves You’re Never Too Old to Pitch At the Paley Center premiere of the Bob Mackie bio-doc Naked Illusion in May

Rinaldo
Rinaldo

He had mixed feelings about it for a while; he had a genuine fondness for Julie Andrews, for instance, but (as with many performers) he got annoyed that he was known to the world for one popular movie

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EtheltoTillie

EtheltoTillie

On 2/5/2023 at 10:03 PM, Rinaldo said:

In the years I've been keeping close track of TCM's programming, this is the first time I've noticed them programming Hangover Square, a movie I've long wanted to see because of its profound impact on young Stephen Sondheim, who was knocked out by Bernard Herrmann's score (he has said that his music for Sweeney Todd owes a great deal to it). So of course I had to see it. Eddie Muller gave it the full "Noir Alley" treatment, though as he remarked, some might resist its legitimacy as such, given (among other things) its Edwardian setting. He provided a lot of helpful and pertinent information, in fact, as he reliably does.

Herrmann's music is indeed the element I'll take away from this experience. Full of variety and motivic focus, it culminates in the 11-minute "Concerto Macabre" toward which the whole story has been building. I loved it. 

I'm less sure about the movie as a whole. And leading man Laird Cregar in particular. He has his advocates, I've discovered, but I didn't find him expressive in a role that calls out for communication of what the character is feeling. It's not his much-mentioned weight issues, but his face. It's a cliché to say "the camera doesn't love him," but I confess that's what I kept feeling; his eyes don't speak to us, his agonies start to feel like amateurish mugging. Others in the cast are good, including Linda Darnell as a shallow music-hall performer and George Sanders as a sympathetic doctor. The atmosphere is nicely achieved too. But it's the music I'll remember.

Well, that was some kind of crazy movie.  Cregar came off as bizarre to me, with his facial expressions as you described.  How could he think he was in the running for leading man parts after playing this wack job?  What a sad end he had. 

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Bastet

Bastet

2 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

and my fave, Holiday.

Such an underrated gem!  Bringing Up Baby is one of my favorite films, period, so it's my favorite of the Hepburn-Grant collaborations, but Holiday is a very close second.  I enjoyed Lew Ayres in general, and especially as Ned. 

(Although I know TCM is the only network that will air Holiday, any time I am scrolling through my program guide and come across The Holiday, there's a split second where I get all excited thinking it's Holiday instead - even though I have it on DVD to watch any time, it's cool to stumble across it.)

2 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

Maybe it’s Cary Grant night. There’s also His Girl Friday. 

Yeah, and My Favorite Wife.

I like a lot of his films (and he was my first celebrity crush as a kid), but I never enjoy him more than with Katharine Hepburn.  I like the Hepburn-Tracy pairing as much as the next person, but I have a massive soft spot for Hepburn-Grant.  Their chemistry is one of the things that saves The Philadelphia Story, making it not just watchable but somehow overall enjoyable despite the utterly ridiculous and offensive premise that Tracy is the problem, period, including with respect to her father being a philandering jackass.

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ekelks

ekelks

On 2/7/2023 at 10:35 PM, EtheltoTillie said:

Well, that was some kind of crazy movie.  Cregar came off as bizarre to me, with his facial expressions as you described.  How could he think he was in the running for leading man parts after playing this wack job?  What a sad end he had. 

He had a fascinating face and a sad life. 

I mean towards the end... painful death. I love craggy faces, they're interesting.

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Milburn Stone

Milburn Stone

On 2/7/2023 at 4:35 PM, EtheltoTillie said:

Cregar came off as bizarre to me, with his facial expressions as you described.  How could he think he was in the running for leading man parts after playing this wack job?  What a sad end he had. 

This reminds me of when I saw the remake of M, with David Wayne as the child murderer. (And who knows what else.) I love him, but I kept thinking, "how did this guy ever work again after this?!" Let alone return to light comedy! The guy could do anything.

But Laird Cregar couldn't.

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EtheltoTillie

EtheltoTillie

On 2/8/2023 at 2:04 PM, Sarah 103 said:

One Valentine's Day a movie theatre had a double feature of Bringing Up Baby and The Philadelphia Story. I think of it fondly as the Valentine's Day I spent with Cary Grant. Also, I love His Girl Friday. It's the rare remake that's better than the original. 

My version of this is that many years I went to a long gone NYC repertory theater to see Holiday for the first time in a double feature with Suddenly Last Summer.  Holiday was first and I loved it so much I stayed and sat through it again.  Come to think of it, no one shows SLS anymore. 

Charlie Baker

Charlie Baker

The Noir Alley premiere is Kiss the Blood Off My Hands. Some title.  I enjoyed Hangover Square--but those wide-eyed close-ups did Laird Cregar no favors. I thought the finale was pretty spectacular and the Herrmann music even more so.

The Beatty thing I happened to catch and it's simply weird.  It's mentioned that if a new movie is made, perhaps a younger actor would play Tracy.  Does WB really want to make a new one? One can only shrug.

I love Holiday.  It's become my favorite Katharine Hepburn performance, Grant is at peak charm and skill, and Lew Ayres deserved a Supporting Actor nomination.

 

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ekelks

ekelks

5 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:
  Reveal spoiler

There seems to be a TCM premier 

There seems to be a TCM premiere in Noir Alley tonight. I will be checking it out. I can’t recall the name right now and can’t look it up right now n

Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948). There's always a TCM Noir around midnight Saturdays, repeats 10 am Sundays. Excepting Oscar month and maybe another. 

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Charlie Baker

Charlie Baker

(edited)

RIP Raquel Welch, We've discussed here how she held her own in the high powered cast of The Last of Sheila. She was fun in Three Musketeers and Four Musketeers.  And IIRC, she developed the entertaining Kansas City Bomber for herself, which would probably have been a feisty little B picture in the Golden Age.

Edited by Charlie Baker
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Sarah 103

Sarah 103

On 2/15/2023 at 5:02 PM, Charlie Baker said:

RIP Raquel Welch, We've discussed here how she held her own in the high powered cast of The Last of Sheila. She was fun in Three Musketeers and Four Musketeers.  And IIRC, she developed the entertaining Kansas City Bomber for herself, which would probably have been a feisty little B picture in the Golden Age.

As an odd/unusual testament to her celebrity status, she's name-checked in the lyrics to the theme to Fall Guy "The Unknown Stuntman." 

Crashcourse

Crashcourse

3 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

Did anyone watch To Sleep With Anger?  With Danny Glover?  I have not as I’m a little scared to watch it. Seeking opinions. Someone mentioned it on another thread where one of the actors appeared. 

I don't want to spoil it, but I'd definitely recommend watching the entire movie.  Danny Glover was quite intriguing.    

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StatisticalOutlier

StatisticalOutlier

Late Sunday night (early Monday morning), TCM is showing a couple of Wong Kar-wai movies.  One thing that Wong is known for is the soundtracks.  Happy Together is set in Argentina, with some tango figured in.  The music is dreamy, and combined with Christopher Doyle's cinematography, it makes me swoon.

At the end is a cover of The Turtles' "Happy Together" that is positively cathartic.

In fact, I just saw a current Australian movie, Of An Age, that has the music from Happy Together as part of the plot.

Also of note is that the two leads in Happy Together, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai (there are two Tony Leung Hong Kong actors; this one's cuter) and Leslie Cheung, were huge Hong Kong movie stars at the time, and Leslie had previously been a massive Cantopop star.  They both worked with Wong in his early films.

Tony went on to get notice in the U.S. for his role in Shang-Chi and the Legend of Ten Rings.  Leslie ended up killing himself by jumping out of a high-rise hotel window.

(WTH?? According to IMDb, Leslie's father was William Holden's tailor.  I'm assuming back when Hong Kong was famous for tailors.  Of course it's just a statement made on the internet, so who knows if it's true, but I didn't see that coming.)

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EtheltoTillie

EtheltoTillie

(edited)
On 2/23/2023 at 10:18 AM, Crashcourse said:

I don't want to spoil it, but I'd definitely recommend watching the entire movie.  Danny Glover was quite intriguing.    

So I did watch it, last night, making sure to catch it before it disappeared from Watch TCM.  It was totally worth it, so thanks.  Very intriguing film and not as scary as I'd feared. The picture of Danny Glover on the movie poster looks like the Joker--creepy.  Here he was really a trickster character, very subtly so. 

Really wonderful performances by everyone.  Great writing--Chekhov's knife, dead body on the floor, folk remedies (putting lard on a cut?) vs. modern thinking.  A bit of magical realism.

Sheryl Lee Ralph and Richard Brooks play husband and wife on Abbott Elementary.  That's how this convo got started on that thread. 

Edited by EtheltoTillie
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EtheltoTillie

EtheltoTillie

I watched/sampled three more movies last night.  I liked the noir selection, Hunt the Man Down, with Gig Young as a young defense lawyer.  It played, as Muller noted, like a pilot for a Perry Mason type show.  It had some preposterous convoluted plotting, but it was still fun to watch. 

Two Black History Month features:

Watermelon Woman, about a Black lesbian filmmaker making a film about being a Black lesbian filmmaker, was terrific, but I still only watched the first half.  The star/writer/director is a big talent, and she was so winning a character/personality. 

The other one, Losing Ground, was kind of draggy, and I tuned it out. 

 

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Rinaldo

Rinaldo

Tomorrow, March 1, begins TCM's annual 31 Days of Oscar. The schedule can be found here. (The downloadable PDF to which I've linked is much more helpful than the online one.)

This year they're grouped by genre/theme. (These are given on the PDF but not online.) Many titles are familiar on TCM, but a few haven't been seen there much. One to which I'm looking forward is part of "Hollywood on Hollywood" on Monday March 6: The Oscar from 1966. This is, by all reports, the rare so-bad-it's-good movie that was perceived as such almost instantly. (I remember Time magazine slamming gleefully into it, for instance, in a way it never otherwise did.) One of those stories purportedly taking us into the real blood battles that happen behind the scenes, with some celebrities playing themselves as background color, and a famously unfortunate "protagonist's best friend" performance by poor Tony Bennett (who's a deserved legend in his own realm, of course). I'm going partly by the extended parody sketch "The Nobel" from the glory days of SCTV, in which Joe Flaherty took Bennett's role to the Nth degree.

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roseha

roseha

Thanks so much for the PDF list @Rinaldo!  I will definitely be circling some films on the list that I haven't seen.    I seem to remember that I haven't see Laura in its entirety for some reason, and I haven't seen it showing up on any streaming service or on TCM recently so I will watch for that one.  A lot of other good prospects as well of course.

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EtheltoTillie

EtheltoTillie

3 hours ago, Sarah 103 said:

I looked at the TCM 31 days of Oscar Schedule. Which version of Mutiny on the Bounty should I watch? I have never seen either version before. 

There are actually three versions, and one should watch all three at some point. They are all interesting in different ways. It’s such a great story. 

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EtheltoTillie

EtheltoTillie

5 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

Tomorrow, March 1, begins TCM's annual 31 Days of Oscar. The schedule can be found here. (The downloadable PDF to which I've linked is much more helpful than the online one.)

This year they're grouped by genre/theme. (These are given on the PDF but not online.) Many titles are familiar on TCM, but a few haven't been seen there much. One to which I'm looking forward is part of "Hollywood on Hollywood" on Monday March 6: The Oscar from 1966. This is, by all reports, the rare so-bad-it's-good movie that was perceived as such almost instantly. (I remember Time magazine slamming gleefully into it, for instance, in a way it never otherwise did.) One of those stories purportedly taking us into the real blood battles that happen behind the scenes, with some celebrities playing themselves as background color, and a famously unfortunate "protagonist's best friend" performance by poor Tony Bennett (who's a deserved legend in his own realm, of course). I'm going partly by the extended parody sketch "The Nobel" from the glory days of SCTV, in which Joe Flaherty took Bennett's role to the Nth degree.

Rinaldo, The Oscar is every bit the hoot they say it is and more. I saw it as a kid, and I wanted to see it again, so I bought a DVD last year with comic commentary by Patton Oswalt, who is obsessed with the film, and two other film buffs. Makes it even better. 

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wilsie

wilsie

16 hours ago, Sarah 103 said:

I looked at the TCM 31 days of Oscar Schedule. Which version of Mutiny on the Bounty should I watch? I have never seen either version before. 

I've only completely watched the Gable one and I like that a lot.  IMDB has scores for movies.  Their rating which comes from users on IMDB  was 7.6 for the Gable version.  7.2 for the Brando version.  The big difference was the Metascore which is made up of professional critic reviews.  87 for the Gable version, 48 for the Brando.  If you have the time and inclination, watch both, but maybe those numbers can help decide.

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EtheltoTillie

EtheltoTillie

57 minutes ago, wilsie said:

I've only completely watched the Gable one and I like that a lot.  IMDB has scores for movies.  Their rating which comes from users on IMDB  was 7.6 for the Gable version.  7.2 for the Brando version.  The big difference was the Metascore which is made up of professional critic reviews.  87 for the Gable version, 48 for the Brando.  If you have the time and inclination, watch both, but maybe those numbers can help decide.

And don't forget the Mel Gibson/Anthony Hopkins version, which I guess is not on TCM.  7.0 on IMDB.  Mel was not yet the crazy person he later became.  He was then the People Magazine Sexiest Man Alive.  I reiterate, watch all three at some point in your life if you're a film buff, as I guess most posters here are.  Metascore 62. 

To explain the low Brando scores, I recall the Brando version being made, and it got the kind of opprobrium that also went to the big epic Cleopatra, with Liz Taylor.  But seeing it much later I thought it was very well done and good job by Brando. 

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Tom Holmberg

Tom Holmberg

27 minutes ago, EtheltoTillie said:

To explain the low Brando scores, I recall the Brando version being made, and it got the kind of opprobrium that also went to the big epic Cleopatra, with Liz Taylor.  But seeing it much later I thought it was very well done and good job by Brando. 

I remember at the time comedians made a lot of fun of the movie, parodying Brando.

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mariah23

mariah23

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23 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

Tomorrow, March 1, begins TCM's annual 31 Days of Oscar. The schedule can be found here. (The downloadable PDF to which I've linked is much more helpful than the online one.)

This year they're grouped by genre/theme. (These are given on the PDF but not online.) Many titles are familiar on TCM, but a few haven't been seen there much. One to which I'm looking forward is part of "Hollywood on Hollywood" on Monday March 6: The Oscar from 1966. This is, by all reports, the rare so-bad-it's-good movie that was perceived as such almost instantly. (I remember Time magazine slamming gleefully into it, for instance, in a way it never otherwise did.) One of those stories purportedly taking us into the real blood battles that happen behind the scenes, with some celebrities playing themselves as background color, and a famously unfortunate "protagonist's best friend" performance by poor Tony Bennett (who's a deserved legend in his own realm, of course). I'm going partly by the extended parody sketch "The Nobel" from the glory days of SCTV, in which Joe Flaherty took Bennett's role to the Nth degree.

Wait, The Oscar was nominated for an Oscar?!

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Rinaldo

Rinaldo

(edited)
1 hour ago, mariah23 said:

Wait, The Oscar was nominated for an Oscar?!

Two -- art direction and costumes. It won neither.

4 hours ago, Tom Holmberg said:

I remember at the time comedians made a lot of fun of the movie, parodying Brando.

Brando was going through an odd career phase right then, perceived as taking unworthy roles just for the money, or not giving promising roles his full attention. He became a popular punching bag, and Mutiny on the Bounty was perhaps the most inviting target because everybody knew the earlier movie and Laughton's performance. (Only around the end of the 1960s did he come through on some interesting opportunities, generally in movies not widely seen.) When he was cast in The Godfather, fans of the book were apprehensive and there were predictions that he would wreck the movie. When it turned out otherwise, it was a real career revival for him.

Edited by Rinaldo
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roseha

roseha

Speaking of multiple versions of stories, I see that the Bette Davis version of The Letter is playing; it would have been great if TCM could have obtained the 1929 version with Jeanne Eagels.  I believe it has onlyy recently been restored so perhaps it is not easy to obtain but I know I did see it once on TV somehow (whether on TCM or a streaming or cable channel I don't remember).  Anyway Eagels is absolutely brilliant in the courtroom scene where she is lying on the stand and the viewer knows it.  And she was the first person to be posthumously nominated for an acting award as she unfortunately passed away soon afterwards.

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Rinaldo

Rinaldo

1 hour ago, roseha said:

Speaking of multiple versions of stories, I see that the Bette Davis version of The Letter is playing; it would have been great if TCM could have obtained the 1929 version with Jeanne Eagels. 

TCM has shown this version, on several occasions pairing it with the Bette Davis film. I caught it one of those times, and Jeanne Eagels is indeed extraordinary in it.

I could wish that TCM would also seek out the telefilm aired by ABC in 1982. (So many of these movies-of-the-week were made from the 1970s through the 1990s, and there's no venue for them to be seen any more. TCM has occasionally dug into live broadcasts for e.g. Sweeney Todd, The Glass Menagerie, Wuthering Heights -- maybe they could expand in this direction on rare occasions too.) The Letter was a perfect vehicle for Lee Remick's gift for hiding a smoldering undercurrent behind an icy facade, and the cast also included Ian McShane, Christopher Cazenove, Wilfrid Hyde-White, and Soon-Tek Oh. That would give us a triple bill, such as TCM gave us a while back with triple versions of The Prisoner of Zenda, Seven Keys to Baldpate, and High Sierra.

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voiceover

voiceover

On 2/27/2023 at 7:20 AM, Tom Holmberg said:

 

Watched one of my guilty pleasures, which I haven't seen in a few years, "The Wind and the Lion."

 

Ohhhh maaaaannnnn…a John Milius film that very well could’ve been made by John Huston, only Huston was in this one.  Sean Connery and Brian Keith (as Teddy Roosevelt) never meet, but their combative admiration, one for the other, drives the film.  That coda! with Connery’s v.o., and Keith’s Roosevelt covering one eye, the better to read the great pirate’s letter, just guts me (“I, like the lion, must remain in my place; while you, like the wind, will never know yours.”) Probably Keith’s best performance, and I’d say the same for Candice Bergen’s Eden.  Her formidable matron, “bloody but unbowed”, is a match in many ways for Connery’s Raisuli, and her teary-eyed, wordless farewell at the movie’s climax is as romantic as any fade-out kiss.

Tonight’s The Man Who Would Be King  (also from 1975; this one actually directed by Huston) is a great bookend.  Another Sean Connery masterwork; this time with his perfect partner, Michael Caine, whose retort to a British civil servant is one of my favorite speeches in cinema: “‘Detriments’ you call us? ‘Detriments’? Well I want to remind you it was detriments like us that built this bloody Empire, *and the Izzat of the bloody Raj!”  Bonus points for Christopher Plummer’s understated Rudyard Kipling, trying so hard not to laugh in that moment. 

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EtheltoTillie

EtheltoTillie

I must see that Jeanne Eagels version of The Letter!  Wow. 

I have never seen The Wind and the Lion.  That was another film I remember being the butt of jokes back when it came out.

I watched some of Dillinger this morning.  It was Gangster Day.  I also watched the last half of Mighty Joe Young, which is such a sweet story.  The happy King Kong.

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Tom Holmberg

Tom Holmberg

18 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

I have never seen The Wind and the Lion.  That was another film I remember being the butt of jokes back when it came out.

 

They made fun of Connery's Scottish accent, but he's actually very charismatic as the Raisuli.  And they should have made a Teddy Roosevelt movie with Brian Keith he does such a great job.

You definitely should watch it.

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roseha

roseha

6 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

A bad print of the Jeanne Eagels version of The Letter is available on YouTube.  I will watch later.  It is not available on disc and isn't set to be shown on TCM anytime soon. 

The film was just shown at MoMA as part of the series To Save and Project so hopefully a better version will be released eventually.  It's well worth seeing for Eagels' performance.

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