TCM: The Greatest Movie Channel

[EtheltoTillie]

Guys, let’s get back to Blanche Fury!   It's on YouTube. What a wacko melodrama. No likeable characters, plot made no sense.  Poor little girl taken right from Gone With the Wind.  Blanche also wears a green velvet dress like Scarlett's.  I guess Blanche redeems herself at the end.  Thanks for the recommendation.  

Edited September 23, 2023 by EtheltoTillie

[EtheltoTillie]

On 9/21/2023 at 11:17 PM, Rinaldo said:

But yes, in Great Expectations she's a very poor trade for the incandescent young Jean Simmons when Estella grows up (I'd much prefer if Simmons had continued into the adult character, even alongside the boys changing actors as they age).

So after watching Hobson and Stewart Granger in Blanche Fury this afternoon, I looked up the actors and realized Granger was married to Jean Simmons at that time LOL.  Granger played very reptilian in this movie.  The scenes where he is whipping horses and Roma are disturbing. 

Edited September 23, 2023 by EtheltoTillie

[Rinaldo]

On 9/23/2023 at 5:24 PM, EtheltoTillie said:

So after watching Hobson and Stewart Granger in Blanche Fury this afternoon, I looked up the actors and realized Granger was married to Jean Simmons at that time

Valerie Hobson herself had an interesting spousal connection, as she was married to John Profumo, whose extramarital dalliance created such a scandal in British politics in 1961, leading to resignations (including the Prime Minister) and the defeat of the Conservative party in the next UK election. (Nevertheless, Hobson stayed married to Profumo until her death in 1998.)

[EtheltoTillie]

36 minutes ago, Rinaldo said:

Valerie Hobson herself had an interesting spousal connection, as she was married to John Profumo, whose extramarital dalliance created such a scandal in British politics in 1961, leading to resignations (including the Prime Minister) and the defeat of the Conservative party in the next UK election. (Nevertheless, Hobson stayed married to Profumo until her death in 1998.)

Yes, I saw that too!  I enjoyed the 80s movie about the scandal. 

[Tom Holmberg]

On 9/23/2023 at 2:56 PM, Bastet said:

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner has some problems (it's too often simplistic,

It's a product of its time.  It wouldn't be made that way today.

[Rinaldo]

2 hours ago, Tom Holmberg said:

It's a product of its time.  It wouldn't be made that way today.

From my undergrad perspective at the time (and that of my circle of admittedly like-minded know-it-all friends) it was a product of a little before its time. We had fun sneering at its obviousness in advance, and when we actually shelled out the money to see it, it was clear that made not for us but for our parents, from the already old-fashioned choral rendition of an old song as theme music to its use of racial terminology that had become a little out of date. (To be clear, I don't fault any movie for using the vocabulary that was available when it was made, but the late 1960s were a time of rapid change in this respect, and the movie fell on the "out of touch" side by the time it was released, which didn't help with college audiences.) And to us whippersnappers, the presence of Hepburn and Tracy meant very little. That said, we had to admit that it still had moments that worked and were affecting or amusing as intended; we couldn't entirely dismiss it as we'd hoped.

I mention all this not because there's any great merit to my recollections, but to "place" it a bit in terms of its impact on release. To some younger viewers like us, and also to many of its original critics, it was a bit retro and simplistic from the start, already a representative of "old Hollywood."

Edited September 25, 2023 by Rinaldo

[Tom Holmberg]

5 minutes ago, Rinaldo said:

From my undergrad perspective at the time (and that of my circle of admittedly like-minded know-it-all friends) it was a product of a little before its time. We had fun sneering at its obviousness in advance, and when we actually shelled out the money to see it, it was clear that made not for us but for our parents, from the already old-fashioned choral rendition of an old song as theme music to its use of racial terminology that had become a little out of date. (To be clear, I don't fault any movie for using the vocabulary that was available when it was made, but the late 1960s were a time of rapid change in this respect, and the movie fell on the "out of touch" side by the time it was released, which didn't help with college audiences.) And to us whippersnappers, the presence of Hepburn and Tracy meant very little. That said, we had to admit that it still had moments that worked and were affecting or amusing as intended; we couldn't entirely dismiss it as we'd hoped.

I don't disagree with this. At this time romantic relations between the races was still controversial (to the adult world). This was a movie for my parents, not me.  1967 was the cusp of a new, franker era, GWCTD fell in the pre-change zietgeist. 

[jah1986]

So I just caught The Birds last night and realized I had never seen it from the beginning before they get to Bodega Bay. It is such an inferior Hitchcock movie, in my opinion. The mystery of why the birds attack and stop is just frustrating. What was interesting is that Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren were the same age, Jessica Tandy, in a rarity for Hollywood, was actually old enough to be Rod Taylor's mother and young enough to be Veronica Cartwright's mother. Rod Taylor was 19 years old than Veronica. it's a huge age gap but not an impossible one for siblings. Poor Suzanne Pleshette got the short end of the stick with this movie, she was great. 

[Sarah 103]

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/david-mccallum-ncis-beloved-ducky-213000713.html

Although he is better known for TV than movies, I hope TCM will do some kind of tribute. I saw Violent Playground on TCM years ago. I had never heard of the movie before, but I the plot summary looked like it was something worth watching and I thought it might be fun to see a young David MacCallum. They really captured the intensity of his eyes in black and white. The movie goes way over the top at the end, but it was great until then.

Also, I liked him in The Great Escape. 

For a younger person, it was strange seeing the elderly Dr. "Ducky" Mallard as a young man. I can see why The Man from U.N.C.L.E made him a teen idol/heartthrob/someone girls would put pictures of in their locker or bedroom. 

 

[EtheltoTillie]

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner:  I was about 12 when it came out. It was one of those movies parents would see and congratulate themselves for not being racist. 
 

You want to see a bad Hitchcock movie?  Try watching Sunday’s silent offering Downhill. I’d never heard of it.  So tedious. I did not watch all of it, I skipped ahead and watched the middle and end. 

[BooksRule]

I checked the list of David McCallum's movie and TV appearances on imdb, and was surprised that I had mainly seen him in a few TV guest appearances.  I knew about 'The Man From U.N.C.L.E', of course, but I've never seen any episodes.  I primarily remember him from his role as Dr. Henri Clerval in the two-part made-for-TV 1973 movie 'Frankenstein: The True Story'.  He was excellent in it.

On the TCM topic, I'm hoping that there are some 'new' (meaning not shown before or rarely shown) movies for the Halloween season scheduled for October.  But, my TV on-screen guide has already let me see through the first half of the month and although there are a few movies I plan to re-watch, I haven't seen anything that really stands out.  Yet.

Edited September 29, 2023 by BooksRule

[voiceover]

3 hours ago, BooksRule said:

I primarily remember [David McCallum] from his role as Dr. Henri Clerval in the two-part made-for-TV 1973 movie 'Frankenstein: The True Story'.

Ohhhh maaaaaaannnnnnnnn!!!  Thanks for the flashback!  I hadn’t thought about that in years.  If memory serves (I’m definitely rewatching this weekend), it was an intriguing take on the Frankenstein mythos.  To begin with: the Creature (Michael Sarrazin) was a beautiful, gentle, man; but Victor (Leonard Whiting) didn’t realize that the method he used to bring his experiment to life would end up reversing itself (and so the Monster was born).

McCallum’s Henri — who was Victor’s colleague — made that hideous discovery, but suffered a fatal heart attack while recording his findings.  When Victor found the notes, he assumed Henri was trying to finish the sentence as “the process is ready to begin”, when in fact Clerval was writing “the process is reversing…” when he died.  Yikes.  All these years and I still remember that.  Plus the story’s sad conclusion on a ship at the North Pole.

Besides the gorgeous trio of McCallum, Whiting, and Sarrazin, the cast included James Mason, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Michael Wilding, Tom Baker, Agnes Moorhead, Margaret Leighton, Nicola Padgett, and Jane Seymour.

Damn.  Definitely rewatching this ASAP.

[EtheltoTillie]

PSA:  don't waste your time with Mrs. Soffel.  What a misfire.  I didn't feel any attraction between the leads or see how it was supposed to develop.  I fast forwarded through a lot.  Young Mel Gibson and Matthew Modine were both easy on the eyes, however. 

[Milburn Stone]

I join you Birds non-lovers. Although there's something about Hitchcock that, to me, makes his movies endlessly rewatchable. (I may rewatch and say "this mostly sucks" just like I did all the other times, but I still rewatch.) 

To me, the very best part of the movie is the beginning, basically everything in San Francisco. The single best scene in the whole darn thing is the one with a vaguely menacing Richard Deacon as an apartment neighbor. That's good Hitchcock. And I like all the scenes with Rod Taylor and Tippi in the bird shop. Both of them actually manage to be charming and/or interesting in the meet-cute, and not the stiffs they come off as in the rest of the film.

All the Hitchcockian San Francisco scenes remind of his San Francisco of Vertigo--I even get mixed up sometimes between the bird shop and the flower shop--and that's no bad thing.

@Rinaldo, do you find Valerie Hobson dull in Blanche Fury? I've not seen her in other films, so I believe you that she's dull in those, but I found her anything but dull as Blanche. Thanks for reminding me that she was the Anna of the OLC ofThe King and I. I wonder if there's an audio recording of that production. Seems like good casting.

 

Edited October 1, 2023 by Milburn Stone

[EtheltoTillie]

I got in two more Dirk Bogarde movies.  Victim, an absolute masterpiece, if I may be excused for the hyperbole.  Then I watched Cast a Dark Shadow, where Bogarde plays a deranged wife killer.  Interesting, at least.

I have yet to see any of the movies that supposedly made Bogarde a "matinee idol," as Ben Mankiewicz keeps saying, where supposedly he appealed to teenage girls. 

Edited October 2, 2023 by EtheltoTillie

[Rinaldo]

On 10/1/2023 at 8:02 AM, Milburn Stone said:

@Rinaldo, do you find Valerie Hobson dull in Blanche Fury? I've not seen her in other films, so I believe you that she's dull in those, but I found her anything but dull as Blanche. Thanks for reminding me that she was the Anna of the OLC ofThe King and I. I wonder if there's an audio recording of that production. Seems like good casting.

I haven't seen Blanche Fury, so I can't comment on that. There is indeed an audio recording of her in The King and I -- as far as I can tell, it's available only through British sources (like Amazon.uk), as audio entities enter public domain earlier there than they do in the US.

I happened to turn on the TV Sunday morning just 10 minutes into the Noir title Whiplash. I watched to the end, entertained but not buying a moment of it, and I was glad to see Eddie Muller in his post-film appearance concede that he'd deliberately not mentioned beforehand how ridiculous it got, culminating in Zachary Scott's wheelchair rolling into traffic to get immediately flattened. I was glad to catch up with Dane Clark, someone I'd heard of over the years (from Broadway as well as movies) but never actually seen. He's fine ("a poor man's John Garfield" is a fair enough description as long as one takes it in a positive as well as negative sense), but what a role! -- a California neighborhood painter who decides to cross the country and just, I don't know, be a boxer in order to pursue Alexis Smith. And poor Ms. Smith, once again a plot-function girlfriend. This time she has to spout some plot-function art criticism, then zip back to NYC to stand by Mr. Scott and warble (dubbed) in a nightclub -- I'm reminded of Christopher Durang's quip "In old movies, the leading lady can always get a job singing in a nightclub, whether or not she ever sang before." I was grateful to hear Eddie remark that she finally got her revenge for the way Warners wasted her, when she won acclaim and awards for her star turn in Follies two decades later.

Not knowing anything in advance, I was pleased to see two valuable contract players turn up to do their thing: S.Z. Sakall to be wise and supportive, and (once we travel east) Eve Arden to be acerbic and witty -- even when her lines weren't, she made them sound that way anyway.

It's on Watch TCM for the rest of the month, complete with the Muller commentary, for those intrigued.

[Charlie Baker]

Whiplash is fun, and as @Rinaldo says, beyond far-fetched.  Dane Clark is a solid actor, very good with Ida Lupino in Deep Valley, an offbeat Noir Alley selection from a while back. And as Eddie Muller says, Eve Arden is a Warner Bros. MVP.

[SomeTameGazelle]

I had not realized when we were discussing Jessie Matthews dancing on the ceiling that she is Russ Tamblyn's mother in Tom Thumb. I know she sings in it but does she dance?

[Rinaldo]

On 10/4/2023 at 12:10 AM, SomeTameGazelle said:

I had not realized when we were discussing Jessie Matthews dancing on the ceiling that she is Russ Tamblyn's mother in Tom Thumb. I know she sings in it but does she dance?

I haven't seen the movie recently enough to report on the dancing, but after a quick online check I can ruefully report that she doesn't even sing in Tom Thumb. Her voice is dubbed by Norma Zimmer, famous as Lawrence Welk's "Champagne Lady" though I discover that she was a busy freelance vocalist for decades (e.g. the White Rose in Disney's Alice in Wonderland).

[Tom Holmberg]

On 10/3/2023 at 11:10 PM, SomeTameGazelle said:

I had not realized when we were discussing Jessie Matthews dancing on the ceiling that she is Russ Tamblyn's mother in Tom Thumb. I know she sings in it but does she dance?

For those interested, Russ Tamblyn has his autobiography due out next year.

[SomeTameGazelle]

10 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

I haven't seen the movie recently enough to report on the dancing, but after a quick online check I can ruefully report that she doesn't even sing in Tom Thumb. Her voice is dubbed by Norma Zimmer, famous as Lawrence Welk's "Champagne Lady" though I discover that she was a busy freelance vocalist for decades (e.g. the White Rose in Disney's Alice in Wonderland).

Thanks for the correction. TCM aired it recently and I have been watching bits and pieces and didn't even think to check when I saw the character singing. The mother hasn't had anything to do for quite a few scenes now but I will persevere.

[Charlie Baker]

A couple things I meant to  note here this week: Charlton Heston is Star of the Month as this is his centennial.  They started the tribute with Ben Hur.  And Mario Cantone is back for more Creepy Movies with Ben. They started with Shadow of a Doubt and Dressed to Kill, which was rated TV-14 (Really?). Next week Robert Mitchum at his creepiest, which is pretty darn creepy, Cape Fear and Night of the Hunter. 

This week's Noir Alley is Deception, where Bette Davis as a musician/kept woman and Paul Henreid as the love she thought dead are quite good. But the movie is not stolen but owned by Claude Rains, as a composer who is Bette's benefactor. A good melodramatic wallow, though some noir devotees might not take to it.

[EtheltoTillie]

I finally caught Whiplash and it was just as hysterical as you all said. Now on to watch Mario Cantone’s convos. 

[Milburn Stone]

14 hours ago, Charlie Baker said:

They started with Shadow of a Doubt and Dressed to Kill, which was rated TV-14 (Really?)...

This week's Noir Alley is Deception, where Bette Davis as a musician/kept woman and Paul Henreid as the love she thought dead are quite good. But the movie is not stolen but owned by Claude Rains, as a composer who is Bette's benefactor. A good melodramatic wallow, though some noir devotees might not take to it.

Yeah, that rating for DtK is crazy! I'd give it an NC-17! I adore the movie and DePalma in that period, but I'm glad I didn't see it as a 14-year old. Or even a 24-year old.

Deception has a great Korngold score including a cello concerto. I guess it's kind of a film noir? The inevitable has happened with Noir Alley, which is that the number of films noir in the universe is finite. So if Eddie doesn't want to keep running the same ones over and over, yet wants to keep the franchise going, he has to expand to films that are "arguably" noir as opposed to actually. No problem as far as I'm concerned. Noir or not, his intros and outros are worth the price of admission.

Edited October 7, 2023 by Milburn Stone

[mariah23]

15 hours ago, Charlie Baker said:

A couple things I meant to  note here this week: Charlton Heston is Star of the Month as this is his centennial.  They started the tribute with Ben Hur.  And Mario Cantone is back for more Creepy Movies with Ben. They started with Shadow of a Doubt and Dressed to Kill, which was rated TV-14 (Really?). Next week Robert Mitchum at his creepiest, which is pretty darn creepy, Cape Fear and Night of the Hunter. 

This week's Noir Alley is Deception, where Bette Davis as a musician/kept woman and Paul Henreid as the love she thought dead are quite good. But the movie is not stolen but owned by Claude Rains, as a composer who is Bette's benefactor. A good melodramatic wallow, though some noir devotees might not take to it.

Actually, they did 24 hours of Heston movies starting that morning because October 4 was the 100th anniversary of his birth.  

[Rinaldo]

1 hour ago, Milburn Stone said:

Deception has a great Korngold score including a cello concerto. I guess it's kind of a film noir? The inevitable has happened with Noir Alley, which is that the number of films noir in the universe is finite. So if Eddie doesn't want to keep running the same ones over and over, yet wants to keep the franchise going, he has to expand to films that are "arguably" noir as opposed to actually. No problem as far as I'm concerned. Noir or not, his intros and outros are worth the price of admission.

No problem for me either. In addition to your good points, I imagine that Eddie is looking ahead -- even if he isn't running out yet, he will eventually, so it's best to start mixing in the arguable/borderline cases now and get us thinking in (and accepting) those broader terms while there are still classics remaining to be shown. And... I would venture to guess that he also doesn't want to truly scrape the bottom of the barrel of strict films noir; nobody wants to introduce a movie that they can't make some kind of case for (which could of course be the "it's preposterous, but it's a good time" sort of case we talked about with Whiplash). That always becomes a delicate balancing act with any long-running series presentation like this.

A longtime friend (who's in the same musical racket as I am) has a sideline as a wide-ranging TV blogger, and he recently wrote a column about "The 25 Best Film Noirs" (each paired with an honorable mention, so there are actually 50). It makes for absorbing reading, because he goes back to the original 1930s French definition, focusing on "films about everyday people facing what the French called 'destined tragedy'." (Though he limits himself to American films.) So his list is unlike most such lists, as it doesn't much care about the presence of hard-boiled detectives or femmes fatales: he includes Detective Story and gives first place to The Lost Weekend, while excluding Double Indemnity, The Maltese Falcon, and Out of the Past. (His blog includes a similar essay on screwball comedies, which is equally iconoclastic.)

[SomeTameGazelle]

19 hours ago, SomeTameGazelle said:

Thanks for the correction. TCM aired it recently and I have been watching bits and pieces and didn't even think to check when I saw the character singing. The mother hasn't had anything to do for quite a few scenes now but I will persevere.

I found it a bit of a slog but can confirm that Jessie Matthews does not dance in Tom Thumb, although there is a bit of swaying from all parties during the final wedding scene. 

[Rinaldo]

Further notes on film noir: Criterion's online magazine (which is available, with email alerts, without a subscription) this month features an article on what the author calls "gaslight noir" -- examples of the genre with a late-19th-century setting. The author mentions Eddie Muller's YouTube posts on the topic, so I dare say the various experts have been talking to each other about this notion, and its emergence on TCM (as just discussed here) isn't coincidental. Examples cited include Hangover Square (which TCM showed a year ago, and which I adored), Dragonwyck (just aired this week -- I recorded it but haven't watched yet), and Blanche Fury. But those with an interest in the subject should definitely follow the link and read the whole piece.

[Tom Holmberg]

On 10/7/2023 at 10:06 AM, mariah23 said:

Actually, they did 24 hours of Heston movies starting that morning because October 4 was the 100th anniversary of his birth.  

I watched Khartoum, which I had seen in more than 30 years.  People complain about Sean Connery in The Wind and the Lion, but Laurence Olivier didn't come off any better in this movie. It was probably more embarrassing than Connery's portrayal

[Tom Holmberg]

Tomorrow 10/10 features a great triple feature: Leopard Man, Cape Fear, and Night of the Hunter

[chessiegal]

My husband wanted to watch Ipcress Files last night. I wasn't that into it to begin with, but when the torture started, I was out.

[Tom Holmberg]

14 hours ago, chessiegal said:

My husband wanted to watch Ipcress Files last night. I wasn't that into it to begin with, but when the torture started, I was out.

When this came out I was a teenager obsessed with everything spy related.  It wasn't Bond, much more realistic.  Plus it had Michael Caine starring.

[chessiegal]

Michael Caine was the only reason I lasted as long as I did.

[EtheltoTillie]

TIL that The Parent Trap, with Hayley Mills, is a remake!  The original is a trifle called Twice Blessed, starring two real twins, the Wilde Sisters.  One plays a jitterbug dancer and the other is an academic grind. I watched about 20 minutes. 

[Rinaldo]

1 hour ago, EtheltoTillie said:

TIL that The Parent Trap, with Hayley Mills, is a remake!  The original is a trifle called Twice Blessed, starring two real twins, the Wilde Sisters.  One plays a jitterbug dancer and the other is an academic grind. I watched about 20 minutes. 

This is an interesting case. I had to look it up because I had always understood that the source of The Parent Trap was a German children's book, Lisa and Lottie, by Erich Kästner (best known for Emil and the Detectives, which itself became a Disney film in 1964). That is indeed the case, but the premise of Twice Blessed (new to me) is so close that one has to wonder: could the Disney people really have been totally unaware of an MGM movie (even a B-picture) only 15 years before? Still, I doubt that Kästner had that movie in mind when he wrote his book in 1949, so it's probably all above board.

After some drunken confusion by James Brolin, it has been clarified today that Barbra Streisand is creating an extended cut of The Way We Were to be released on Blu-Ray this month for its 50th birthday, restoring long-missing important scenes. Normally I would be against such messing around with an established film, especially by someone other than its director, but in this case both versions will be included, so nothing is being replaced. And the cuts have long been regretted, not just by me but by the participants (the studio didn't want to let the romance get too political) -- screenwriter Arthur Laurents went to the length of writing a novelization so as to get his work into print. Others can ignore this if they feel otherwise, but I'm delighted and have already ordered my copy.

Edited October 12, 2023 by Rinaldo

[EtheltoTillie]

@Rinaldo Thanks for that dogged research.  I also remembered hearing that the 1964 movie was based on a book, but I took absolutely no time to look it up LOL.

After watching the first 20 minutes of the movie, I cannot believe there is no influence.   However, the difference as I recall from the Hayley Mills version is that the sisters show up at camp and don't know about each other.  That never made much sense to me.

  In the movie I was watching this morning, the sisters know each other and miss each other and the other parent. 

[Rinaldo]

1 hour ago, EtheltoTillie said:

However, the difference as I recall from the Hayley Mills version is that the sisters show up at camp and don't know about each other.  That never made much sense to me.

Yes, that turns the parents into vindictive jerks beyond possible redemption-in-the-end. Of course, a kid watching doesn't think about any of that because it's all a big childhood fantasy about (1) finding out you always had a twin, and (2) getting divorced parents back together, by hook or by crook.

Whatever small research I did was prompted by my remembering about the Kästner book -- and I remembered that mostly because we read his most famous book in my high school German class, so one brain cell still recalls him.

Edited October 12, 2023 by Rinaldo

[Charlie Baker]

I like a good list.  The Hollywood Reporter canvassed industry professionals, authors, critics, and academics to vote on this one.  We've discussed a number of these titles  here.

The 100 Greatest Film Books

Hayley Mills turned up in a small role in the recent season of the British crime drama series Unforgotten!

With Sydney Pollack and Arthur Laurents both gone, Barbra Streisand would seem a good choice to get those deleted TWWW scenes out there. I wonder if anyone else would have. 

Edited October 12, 2023 by Charlie Baker

[Bastet]

5 hours ago, Charlie Baker said:

I like a good list.  The Hollywood Reporter canvassed industry professionals, authors, critics, and academics to vote on this one.  We've discussed a number of these titles  here.

The 100 Greatest Film Books

I was going to stage a small uprising right here in my office if Molly Haskell's From Reverence to Rape was not highly ranked, so I'm glad to see that at #14.  I see from my search of the pdf list Myrna Loy's fantastic memoir Being and Becoming is not included, nor is Becky Aikman's exceptionally detailed and interesting Off the Cliff about the making of Thelma & Louise, so I'm still giving those 300+respondents a side-eye, but I will definitely come back to the full list for a read later (not to mention to the full list of voters, to study its demographics). 

[Rinaldo]

Apologies for returning to this, but I just discovered that Vanity Fair has a long excerpt (maybe a whole chapter) from Barbra Streisand's soon-to-be-published memoir, about The Way We Were. She goes into some detail about the script, the casting, the filming, and the last-minute cuts. And she talks about her wish, as the anniversary loomed, to provide an alternative version of the movie that included the missing scenes, and the process of getting it done and legally approved. I found it absorbing reading.

[EtheltoTillie]

11 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

Apologies for returning to this, but I just discovered that Vanity Fair has a long excerpt (maybe a whole chapter) from Barbra Streisand's soon-to-be-published memoir, about The Way We Were. She goes into some detail about the script, the casting, the filming, and the last-minute cuts. And she talks about her wish, as the anniversary loomed, to provide an alternative version of the movie that included the missing scenes, and the process of getting it done and legally approved. I found it absorbing reading.

Thanks for posting this.  It was a great excerpt.  Very informative.  I for one have always found The Way We Were to be flawed.  I didn't believe the connection between Redford and Streisand.  I never thought it was this great star-crossed love affair like Casablanca.  The song must have made the movie. 

I miss listening to commentary tracks on DVDs, but I don't buy them anymore except in a couple of cases where the film is not available for streaming.  I do purchase streamed versions--don't always rent--but I just wished they had a way to do commentary tracks (and that they would bother to get the personnel to do them).  Or sell the movies with extras.  I guess there aren't enough people interested. 

[EtheltoTillie]

Twice Blessed was part of Twin Day on TCM.  Still showing on Watch TCM are The Prince and the Pauper and Penrod's Double Take (both with the Mauch Twins), Dead Ringer, The Prisoner of Zenda, and Fiesta (where apparently Esther Williams fills in for her brother, a matador.  Bwa ha ha).

[Sarah 103]

4 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

I miss listening to commentary tracks on DVDs, but I don't buy them anymore except in a couple of cases where the film is not available for streaming.  I do purchase streamed versions--don't always rent--but I just wished they had a way to do commentary tracks (and that they would bother to get the personnel to do them).  Or sell the movies with extras.  I guess there aren't enough people interested. 

Same here. Disney+ does extras/special features on their streaming platform and I wish other platforms would do the same, especially when the commentary track and special features already exist.  

[mariah23]

41 minutes ago, Sarah 103 said:

Same here. Disney+ does extras/special features on their streaming platform and I wish other platforms would do the same, especially when the commentary track and special features already exist.  

So does the Criterion Channel 

[Rinaldo]

Commentary tracks still exist, sometimes, but you has to search for them, and of course they may not coincide with movies that interest you. In the last 5 years or thereabouts (and I really haven't been searching intently or anything, these are just flicks I liked and decided I'd like to own), I found that Mary Poppins Returns has a commentary track from the director, but you can find it online only after you buy the physical copy and then activate the digital copy. Everything Everywhere All at Once has commentary and lots of fun extras including many deleted bits. And after the Knives Out DVD included a standard director commentary on its DVD, for Glass Onion (which so far is streaming-only) Rain Johnson created and uploaded a commentary track that anyone can sync up while they watch it on Netflix.

We all like movies for different reasons, of course, and I never much cared about The Way We Were as a swoony romance (or because of the song). As I probably said in this topic a few years back (whenever TCM previously aired it), I find it really good dramatization of how the same opposite qualities that can attract people to each other will be the things that eventually drive them apart. He envies her passion and commitment, while she wishes for some of his easy charisma (and writing talent). But in day-to-day life, those qualities are eventually what they can't tolerate. (That's why the missing splitting-up denouement is so essential.) And for embodying those two personalities in 1973, it would have been impossible to cast better than Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand.

Edited October 13, 2023 by Rinaldo

[EtheltoTillie]

Only one more day to catch Deception, with Bette Davis and Claude Rains. I’m catching the end now. 

[mariah23]

TCM Remembers Piper Laurie who passed away this morning at age 91.

[EtheltoTillie]

Speaking of DVDs, Best Buy just announced they would stop selling them. 

[voiceover]

Watching A Fish Called Wanda for the first time in…decades…which reminded me that Kevin Kline looks to be having more fun than any actor in anything, ever.  Oh, that clapback to John Cleese’s snobby wife (“Oh, you English are so superior, aren't you? Well, would you like to know what you'd be without us, the good ol' U.S. of A., to protect you? I'll tell you. The smallest fucking province in the Russian Empire, that's what!… If it wasn't for us, you'd all be speaking German! [bursts into song] ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles…’..")!  It’s the funhouse version of James Garner’s speech in The Americanization of Emily (“You America-haters bore me to tears, Ms. Barham. I've dealt with Europeans all my life…The most tedious lot are you British…”).

Of course the abbreviated version of both rants popped up in Whit Stillman’s Barcelona (“…that doesn't mean Americans are more violent than other people. We're just better shots.”)

[EtheltoTillie]

Charlton Heston Day produced some gems.  The Hawaiians and Diamond Head.  Both about Hawaii, natch.  Both problematic in the way they reflect attitudes of another time.   Diamond Head is a great potboiler in that early sixties tradition.  Lots of yellowface, with George Chakiris and James Darren playing native Hawaiians.  Aline MacMahon plays their mother.  The story involves a lot of racism.  The Hawaiians tells the story from the second part of the James Michener book Hawaii; the first part was another movie.  I really enjoyed both, even though Heston was a nasty racist in both.  The performance of the native Hawaiian engagement dance by James Darren and Yvette Mimieu in Diamond Head is cringeworthy.  The costumes and sets are great.  

The history narrative in The Hawaiians was a bit choppy, as there would be huge time jumps that were incomprehensible as new actors played the same younger characters as they aged.  More yellowface.  Naomi Stevens plays Queen Liliuokalani.  You know, that Jewish actress who plays the doctor's wife/next door neighbor in The Apartment.

Still worth watching. 

The Private War of Major Benson is supposedly Heston's only comedy.  It's really kind of sweet.  Heston embarrasses his superiors, so as punishment he is sent to a kids' military academy run by nuns.  I enjoyed watching Heston try to toughen up the six-year-old cadets. 

Edited October 15, 2023 by EtheltoTillie