TCM: The Greatest Movie Channel

[Rinaldo]

I didn't know that, but I'm pleased to hear it. Yes, I can imagine both sides being true. I can also imagine (despite some reading about Christie's life, I'm not knowledgeable on this point) that despite being dismayed that this was going to be the worldwide image of her Jane, she could come to enjoy Rutherford's portrayal in its own right, as well as the greater recognition and income (not that she really lacked on either count) the series brought her, including new readers who picked up her books and stuck with them.

Edited May 11, 2015 by Rinaldo

[Coffeecup]

I had a ball watching Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple today. Love her. Those Miss Marple films are little jewels; they can stand alone, and people can enjoy them independently from the Christie stories.

 

"The Alphabet Murders," also shown today, was interesting because Tony Randall played Hercule Poirot. I just couldn't get into his performance, though, because I'm so spoiled by David Suchet's wonderful Poirot portrayal. But I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Robert Morley. He's always so good.

 

Also enjoyed seeing Anita Ekberg, who passed away in January 2015.

[bmoore4026]

Otoh,  while Christie did not like what the movie makers had changed in the stories and Marple herself, she and Margaret Rutherford were supposed to have been friends.  The novel The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side  was dedicated "To Margaret Rutherford in admiration".

 

Well that's nice.  The quote I mentioned earlier must have come from an earlier time.

 

Funny that you'd mentioned The Mirror Crack'd, because I read on Wikipedia it was partially inspired to something that happened to Gene Tierney.  She worked one night at the Hollywood Canteen and, supposedly, a fan of her's that had measles  snuck out of the army infirmary and met her.  Gene let this person kiss her cheek, unaware of 1) of the measles and 2) that she herself was pregnant.  She ended up getting the measles and later gave birth to a child with severe mental retardation.  Very sad.

 

Also, the movie version of The Mirror Crack'd is very underrated.  Great stars, great acting, and Elizabeth Taylor is radiant.  My mother told me not to long ago that Liz Taylor had violet colored eyes.  Never knew someone could have violet colored eyes.  One of the reasons she looked so radiant, I suppose.

[aradia22]

Ah! I finally had the chance to watch another movie. I put on Funny Lady because I wasn't really in the mood for anything else. I didn't think I'd watch the whole thing but I did. It's surprisingly not bad. It doesn't live up to the original and it's not a great sequel but it's not a bad movie in and of itself. A tad long and indulgent. A bit unfocused. But there are some fantastic, lavish big-scale musical numbers. Shoutout to Ben Vereen. His dancing was so fluid and fast it was almost like a cartoon character. That is, if it was one of those animated Disney movies that they were going to adapt for Broadway, I would have said that a human being couldn't possibly live up to the animation. Speaking of animated Disney movies I was going to say that I think this is the first musical sequel I've ever seen. Then I realized it's not. The one this allies with most closely I think is the Pocahontas sequel where they tried to sell you on a romance with John Rolfe. Like the first Pocahontas, part of Funny Girl's strength was withholding that satisfying happy ending. It's part of what makes My Man so good in the movie. I'm not so attached to the original but I can certainly see why this would have been disappointing to fans of the original. First of all, unlike the original, if you're not a fan of Barbra I can only imagine that this would be excruciating. The story here doesn't stand on its own and it's even more of a celebration of her, here in full diva mode for the most part. But back on track, like that Pocahontas sequel it unnecessarily trots out the first love interest (John Smith/Nicky Arnstein). I thought it was going somewhere good for a while with her feeling more settled and friendly with Billy and then growing to need/love him. But they kept bringing back Nick and then almost as an insult to fans of the original she had to go 'I never loved you. I was in love with those 7 toothbrushes.' What? No. It's a much more sophisticated idea to allow a person to have more than one love. The end of her second marriage also came across as rather awkward. It just didn't feel internally consistent. She totally loved Nick. And Billy totally loved her. Hearing that she no longer loved Nick and was willing to put his infidelity aside there was no reason (with what we had been shown prior in the film) that he would have chosen someone else because she loved him if he didn't love her in return. There had to be a better way of breaking them up. And the ending with them aged up was just ridiculous. 

 

Because of the songs and spectacle I do think this one is worth watching. There were points when it dragged a little but it held my interest pretty well for a 2 hour 30 minute movie.

[HelenBaby]

I lost interest very quickly in The Alphabet Murders because Randall, who I think was a really good actor, just didn't do it for me as Poirot. I never had watched Suchet until the last few, so my references were Peter Ustinov, who did a few movies back in the 80's and Albert Finney, who was in Murder on the Orient Express. But I do love Rutherford as Miss Marple. We only watched Murder Ahoy today but I've seen the others on TCM a few times. She's so funny. I love at the beginning of Murder Ahoy where the dress maker removed her uniform from the dress form and it had saggy boobs. Lol.

[Rinaldo]

I remember when Funny Lady came out, I was quite a Streisand fan, so I thoroughly enjoyed it. But even at the time, a corner of my mind was saying "But it really isn't very good, is it?" and in fact some bits were downright ludicrous. (Maybe the height of nonsense reached when Fanny is getting Billy to streamline and simplify the revue he's producing for her, leading through a montage to her rendition of "Great Day." Which will therefore be a simple tasteful number, right? -- nope, it's the most overproduced, excessive few minutes ever. All sense flies out the window at that point. It's hard now to recall how and why I was so taken with it all.

 

That Gene Tierney story is terribly sad, and I must admit that it's the one time that my knowledge of an actor's personal life colors my reaction to her performances. Apparently Christie never confirmed that it was her inspiration for that story, but the scenarios are identical, adding only the detail that the fan in question returns years later and brags about what she did.

[aradia22]

I just watched today's Daytime Jeopardy. I taped it while I was at work. Ben gave one of the clues for a movie category all about his family's contributions. No one got the name of the actress who played Eve in All About Eve. One guy said Crawford. For shame.

[Julia]

After watching Beetlejuice, I'm kind of heartbroken that Sylvia Sidney didn't get more of a chance in talkies.

[aradia22]

Today's Celebrity Jeopardy featured a clue that was basically to identify Gregory Peck based on a photo (probably around To Kill a Mockingbird/Roman Holiday... not older or younger). No one even guessed. Sigh...

[Crisopera]

Sylvia Sidney had quite a career in the early talkies, but just kind of faded out by the end of the 30s.  It's too bad - she was an terrific actress, with an interesting face.  She did have a second career later, as an old lady.

[Rinaldo]

She turned to the theater for some time (partly, one commentator has said, because she became aware that moviegoers came to see her as "the one who's always crying"). Her husband from 1938 to 1947 was Luther Adler, one of the mainstays of the Group Theatre, and she became valuable to that high-minded company because her name made her a draw for theatergoers.

[elle]

Movie Alert!

 

A must watch for all Airplane! fans, Zero Hour is on the schedule tonight - check TCM.com for actual time (6pm or 8pm depending on your time zone)

 

Also, for ballet lovers and leaning to the slightly odd side of things is Dr. Coppelius.  It is always fun for me to see Walter Slezak in a "nice" role.  Warning - there is no dialogue in this movie.

[Rinaldo]

Does TCM ever show pure ballet films? There was a theatrical film (Pauline Kael wrote about it when it was released) of Balanchine's Midsummer Night's Dream ballet which I would love to see again. I saw it once in a chewed-up, pan-n-scanned 16mm copy in a classroom, and to see a clean full-scale showing would be a treat. There are videos around from La Scala and Pacific Northwest, but not the NYCO one with Edward Villella, Suzanne Farrell, and Arthur Mitchell.

 

There were also wonderful videos shown on PBS in the 1980s of some of Balanchine's later ballets, like Who Cares? and Vienna Waltzes. I don't expect a movie channel to show those, but again they've never been available for purchase and I long to see them again.

[Milburn Stone]

Does TCM ever show pure ballet films?

 

If you count "pure dance" films in the category, they have shown Gene Kelly's Invitation to the Dance.

[henrysmom]

Well, she supposedly killed her lesbian lover.  This was when she was running a flophouse in New York and was well after she severed ties with Gypsy and June.  She also had they guy June ran off with arrested and then showed up at the police station waving around a loaded gun.  That's what I've heard, at least.

 

 

Chiming in a couple of days after this post to add a little more.  The "Gypsy" story just fascinates me for some reason.  Why a grossly dysfunctional relationship between a monstrous mother and two helpless daughters who are unable to escape her even when they are adults interests me I don't know.  But it does.  Unfortunately I've never been able to see the show live but I have both the movies on DVD and watch them often, and love to listen to the various soundtracks one after the other and compare the differences.

 

To add to the info about Rose's murderous tendencies.  In addition to the two mentioned, supposedly Rose pushed a hotel manager out a window when Baby June was still headlining in vaudeville.  One of the writers of Gypsy heard this rumor and built the "Mr. Goldstone" scene around it (without having the hotel manager hit the pavement).  This is mentioned in the episode Biography did on Gypsy.

 

And remember the scene in the show where the Hollywood Blondes are camping out because they can't afford a hotel?  Rose and Louise actually did that as they were struggling to get by after June left them.  One night Rose heard noises and shot "something".  In Gypsy's memoir she says it is a cow.  But rumor also says it was a man, who Rose and Louise then buried quietly to avoid trouble.

 

And adding to the info about Rose's lesbian lover.  The woman did die of a gunshot wound from a rifle, but this was in a house owned (or rented) by Gypsy and used by Rose.  The young woman was named Genevieve Augustine, who was incredibly troubled. She had a history of suicide attempts and wasn't particularly stable.  Her father accepted that she committed suicide, but her mother didn't and she pushed for an inquiry.  Gypsy wasn't at the house, WItchwood Manor, at the time but being the famous name she was, she got dragged into it.  It was eventually written off as a suicide but the doubt lingers.

 

Of course all of this is rumor but you have to imagine the kind of person Rose must have been to inspire such a reputation.  Anybody interested in Rose should check out the book Mama Rose's Turn by Carolyn Quinn.  Fascinating stuff.  I think Quinn went overboard trying to paint Rose sympathetically--I really don't think that is possible.  But she certainly did her research and does a great job in showing the troubled relationships between mother and daughters, and between the sisters.

[elle]

Disaster movies on the small screen today - daytime: How we, with the help of the BOMB, will destroy ourselves - tonight: the Earth takes its revenge! (with a little help from a notorious, but much maligned cow in one movie)

Edited May 14, 2015 by elle

[Julia]

We finish our move tomorrow, and It turns out that unlike my unlamented current cable system, my shiny new cable system has a deal with TCM so I can finally watch the west coast feed and the archives online. (tl;dr yay!)

Edited May 14, 2015 by Julia

[bmoore4026]

Today, they showed British Sci-Fi.  Missed Village of the Damned.  Did catch They are the Damned.  Talk about Children of the Atom.  Yeesh.  Plus, it had a downer ending.  That's something American Sci-fi, at the time, tried to veer away from.  Pretty bold.  Also, Oliver Reed is in it.  A plus because I find Oliver Reed strangely attractive.  What?  Oliver Reed is a bear.

 

Tonight, we got more disaster movies.  I've seen In Old Chicago.  Highly recommended though the burning doesn't occur until the last 30 or so minutes.  I'll catch the Scandal season finale OnDemand.  Or just switch back-and-forth.  And then Earthquake is on.  Come for the disaster, stay for the camp.  (Good Lord, that afro.)

[elle]

We finish our move tomorrow, and It turns out that unlike my unlamented current cable system, my shiny new cable system has a deal with TCM so I can finally watch the west coast feed and the archives online. (tl;dr yay!)

Yay! :0)

 

Today, they showed British Sci-Fi.  Missed Village of the Damned.  Did catch They are the Damned.  Talk about Children of the Atom.  Yeesh.  Plus, it had a downer ending.  That's something American Sci-fi, at the time, tried to veer away from.  Pretty bold.  Also, Oliver Reed is in it.  A plus because I find Oliver Reed strangely attractive.  What?  Oliver Reed is a bear.

 

Tonight, we got more disaster movies.  I've seen In Old Chicago.  Highly recommended though the burning doesn't occur until the last 30 or so minutes.  I'll catch the Scandal season finale OnDemand.  Or just switch back-and-forth.  And then Earthquake is on.  Come for the disaster, stay for the camp.  (Good Lord, that afro.)

Like I said, first we attack Earth, then the Earth attacks!   If you can stay up late enough San Francisco follows Earthquake.*  It would be interesting to do a side by side comparison of the quake f/x.  My vote would go to San Francisco with its quick cuts for capturing that feeling of chaos and terror.

 

*TV affecting movie viewing - I can not see this movie without thinking of "Quantum Leap" and the episode where Sam plays a stunt man in the movie (AL: "Hey, that's Lorne Greene!).

[prican58]

Saturday has some gems for me.

Things To Come 1936 with Raymond Massey, Sirs Cedric and Ralph.

 

D: William Cameron Menzies. Raymond Massey, Cedric Hardwicke, Ralph Richardson, Maurice Braddell, Edward Chapman, Ann Todd. Stunning visualization of H. G. Wells' depiction of the future. Massey portrays leader of new world, Richardson despotic wartime ruler. Aloof but always interesting, enhanced by Menzies' sets. Vibrant music by Arthur Bliss; Wells himself wrote the screenplay

 

.

 

I love the feel of this movie somehow. It's why I love the 30's films most of all. There is this sense of history in many of them, especially those that hint at future generations and times. Massey is just one of my fave character actors and that started when I first saw Abe Lincoln In Illinois back then as a kid. So imposing and you just can never take your eyes off him! And don't get me started about his performance as John Brown in Santa Fe Trail! He played menace like nobody's business.

 

 Also airing is 3 Godfathers with John Wayne and the usual Ford team of character actors. I particularly like Pedro Armendariz who was a huge Mexican cinema movie star. I'm a sucker for Wayne westerns and Wayne in general. Yes, I fell for the American Hero Icon himself and I love it. He is like comfort food to me. He reminds me of an America that never really was.  His politics did not coincide with mine but I give not one shit about that.

[elle]

Saturday has some gems for me.

Things To Come 1936 with Raymond Massey, Sirs Cedric and Ralph.

 

 Massey is just one of my fave character actors (snip) He played menace like nobody's business.

Why, you'd think he was Boris Karloff!  ;0)

 

Also airing is 3 Godfathers with John Wayne and the usual Ford team of character actors. I particularly like Pedro Armendariz who was a huge Mexican cinema movie star.

Love that movie!  I agree with you about Pedro Armendariz.  I am a sucker for the way the movie pulls you in as a standard western and then turns convention on its head.  Also have to make sure to mention Mildred Natwick!  A great actress what ever she was in!

[aradia22]

I tried to watch The Tales of Hoffman the other day. From the phrasing of that sentence you can tell I didn't succeed. I fast-forwarded to the Olympia section which is my favorite in the opera and I couldn't even get through that.

 

We got a new DVR installed today so I can record more shows at the same time and don't have to compete with my parents. However, that means EVERYTHING IS GONE. You Can't Take It With You, The Blue Angel, A Raisin in the Sun, Casablanca, To Have and Have Not, The Paleface, The Outlaw, They Met in Bombay, China Seas, Libeled Lady, A Place in the Sun, Irma La Douce, Flamingo Road, Penny Serenade, The Women, The Thin Man, Gilda, Pride and Prejudice, Cat People, The 39 Steps, Mogambo, Red Dust, Raintree County, La Strada, Bringing Up Baby, Cabaret, Calamity Jane, High Society, The Philadelphia Story, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, You Were Never Lovelier, Show Boat, Kismet, Thoroughly Modern Millie

[RedheadZombie]

I saw The Best Years of Our Lives this weekend.  I just love that movie.  I read that Sam Goldwyn read an article in Time in 1944, that discussed the difficulties that soldiers have upon returning home.  He hired a war correspondent to write the script.  I think the movie is just amazing in how well it represents PTSD, before anyone really knew what it was.

 

Of course Homer always breaks my heart, and it's just amazing that he is portrayed by a real soldier, who is not a professional actor.  The scene where Wilma tucks him into bed, and the camera focuses on the one tear ...... sigh.  I love that the actor received a best supporting Oscar, as well as an honorary Oscar - he was really that good.  Sad trivia - he had to later sell one of the Oscars to pay for his wife's medical bills.

 

My only quibble is Peggy.  I guess she's around twenty years old, and I can't see her announcing to her parents that she plans on breaking up a man's marriage.

[Julia]

I enjoyed Teresa Wright and her all-american pluckiness in most things. I wasn't as crazy about her in that one.

 

Virginia Mayo, on the other hand, was all kinds of round-heeled tough broad awesome.

Edited May 18, 2015 by Julia

[bmoore4026]

Today, Arsenic and Old Lace was on!

 

"There is a Happydale, far, far away." Never fails to crack me up every time, along with "Cousin Teddy" and his antics.  Cary Grant may not have liked doing the movie, but, goddamn, he was awesome!

Edited May 18, 2015 by bmoore4026

[ratgirlagogo]

 

I think the movie is just amazing in how well it represents PTSD, before anyone really knew what it was.

I agree, except that I think people did know what it was - they just gave it different names.  After the Civil War it was called Soldier's Heart and after WWI they called it shellshock.  Probably there is lots more on this from people who know the history better, but those are the two I know about.

It is amazing though, how honest a film it is about how unbearable it is to go through a war, even a Good War.  It certainly hit a nerve with the postwar audience.  Plus, as I discovered recently, William Wyler, the director, had lost most of his hearing as a result of his own service in the Army film unit during WW2 - he was himself a disabled veteran who was deeply afraid he wouldn't be able to return to his prewar job either as a result of his injuries.  

[Bastet]

Arsenic and Old Lace was one of my favorite movies as a kid.  I love Jack Carson in it (and Cary Grant -- even though he didn't).

[ratgirlagogo]

I just wish Boris Karloff had been able to play the Boris Karloff role.  Other than that, it's hard to find fault with it.

[RedheadZombie]

Today, Arsenic and Old Lace was on!

 

"There is a Happydale, far, far away." Never fails to crack me up every time, along with "Cousin Teddy" and his antics.  Cary Grant may not have liked doing the movie, but, goddamn, he was awesome!

 

Insanity runs in my family.  It practically gallops.  Love that movie.  I have it on DVD.

[elle]

Insanity runs in my family.  It practically gallops.

 

Just the ladies?

 

Love Edward Everett Horton! :0)

[Milburn Stone]

I could be remembering this wrong, but I've got this recollection that Pauline Kael called Cary Grant's performance in this movie "the only bad performance he ever gave," or something like that. I love her, but whatever!

Edited May 20, 2015 by Milburn Stone

[Julia]

I could be remembering this wrong, but I've got this recollection that Pauline Kael called Cary Grant's performance in this movie "the only bad performance he ever gave," or something like that. I love her, but whatever!

So I glean from this that Pauline Kael never got around to Kiss Them for Me or that one where Betsy Drake is determined to marry him?

Edited May 20, 2015 by Julia

[Rinaldo]

I do rather agree that Grant overdoes it badly in Arsenic. Farce works best (IMO) when grounded in human behavior, and I would say that he's hamming and mugging without any real impulse behind it.

 

And I would say that Kael probably saw his whole oeuvre; she wasn't one to miss much in the way of studio movies. But she also wasn't one to let a sober evaluation get in the way of a rhetorical point she wanted to make. Her Cary Grant article, though interesting and a fun read, has a number of questionable points for me.

Edited May 21, 2015 by Rinaldo

[Milburn Stone]

And I would say that Kael probably saw his whole oeuvre; she wasn't one to miss much in the way of studio movies. But she also wasn't one to let a sober evaluation get in the way of a rhetorical point she wanted to make. Her Cary Grant article, though interesting and a fun read, has a number of questionable points for me.

 

I have to go back and re-read it. Which shouldn't be a problem, since every word she ever wrote is on my bookshelf. :)

[Julia]

And I would say that Kael probably saw his whole oeuvre; she wasn't one to miss much in the way of studio movies. But she also wasn't one to let a sober evaluation get in the way of a rhetorical point she wanted to make. Her Cary Grant article, though interesting and a fun read, has a number of questionable points for me.

I have to go back and re-read it. Which shouldn't be a problem, since every word she ever wrote is on my bookshelf. :)

Longform recently posted a link to Renata Adler's piece on Pauline Kael. I had no idea she was such a contentious subject.

Edited May 21, 2015 by Julia

[Milburn Stone]

Yeah, Kael and Adler basically hated each other's guts.

[Rinaldo]

I have to go back and re-read it. Which shouldn't be a problem, since every word she ever wrote is on my bookshelf. :)

On mine too. The books about her (including interviews with her), as well.

 

Longform recently posted a link to Renata Adler's piece on Pauline Kael. I had no idea she was such a contentious subject.

Don't take one insane, absurdly inaccurate piece by Adler as evidence of any general opinion.

 

Yeah, Kael and Adler basically hated each other's guts.

 

Adler certainly hated Kael's guts; I'm sure Kael had no love for her after that article appeared, but as far as I'm aware, she refrained from saying anything or responding in any way. 

 

For a sensibly balanced look at the whole affair, and other slime campaigns against Kael over the years, may I recommend Craig Seligman's Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me. I suppose this means in part that his view agrees with mine, but I do think he is better-informed than others who have dealt with the topic; he definitely did his research. (He knew her but he doesn't admire everything she said or did.) I found his book a great pleasure after other columnists who read Adler, Googled some "responses," and decided they had the whole picture, rather than reading all of Kael's output for themselves and really thinking about it.

[Julia]

Well, then, you guys will enjoy this (I'm going to spoiler it since this is generally a genteel thread:
 

To those in the business, in her business, Adler is known mainly for two whopping negatives. The first was her 8,000-word forensic obliteration of the film critic (and her New Yorker colleague) Pauline Kael in The New York Review of Books in 1980... The second was Adler’s 1999 memoir, Gone: The Last Days of The New Yorker, about the transition from the era of editor William Shawn (whom she loved, in her way) to the era of editor Tina Brown (whom she loved rather less)... In due course, nearly a dozen unfriendly articles about Gone appeared in The New York Times, and so another flame cycle was initiated: Adler versus The Times. She wrote a much-too-long article in Harper’s arraigning her former employer (“the arch-censor”) on charges of ideological stultification...

Are you feeling it, the whirling duality of Renata Adler? Lamenting a decline in standards, a falling-away from the great days, she goes off (in her beautiful prose) like a barbarian blogger. Like, how come nobody around here has any fucking manners?!

Edited May 21, 2015 by Julia

[bmoore4026]

Ah, The Poseidon Adventure!  You're one of the reasons I'm never going on a cruise ship.  That, and all the food poisoning and the ocean being filled with giant squid.

[Rinaldo]

By the way, the fact that I came to Kael's defense in the situation with La Adler doesn't mean that I'll defend everything she did or said. The fact that our tastes can differ, or that (especially as the years passed) I suspect her of mounting striking defenses or putdowns of basically negligible movies just to have an interesting article -- those don't matter (as she would stress, identity of taste is the least important thing about the relationship between a critic and a reader).

 

But she really did behave badly on occasion, if the information in the recent biography can be trusted (and it seems to check out). One instance is her appropriating of someone else's research for the Citizen Kane book without proper credit. Another is the way she turned her daughter into a convenient appendage for life, using her as a housekeeper/typist/chauffeur and denying her any life of her own. And there are other things. But most of the writing-related stuff that Adler and others chose to get worked up about (including the absurd charges of homophobia that Stuart Byron dreamed up) is, in my view, pretty much nonexistent.

[Milburn Stone]

On mine too. The books about her (including interviews with her), as well.

 

Same here. :)

[elle]

It may be Laurence Olivier day (and oh my he was beautiful!), but in Fire over England It is Flora Robson who holds my attention in every scene.  She is by far my favorite "Queen Elizabeth".

[Milburn Stone]

...(especially as the years passed) I suspect her of mounting striking defenses or putdowns of basically negligible movies just to have an interesting article

 

Possibly despite saying this you'll agree with me that when it comes to Kael, this was a feature, not a bug. A good essay is worth more than a bad movie. If a bad movie had to give up its life so that a Kael review might live, then that bad movie did not die in vain.

[Julia]

Possibly despite saying this you'll agree with me that when it comes to Kael, this was a feature, not a bug. A good essay is worth more than a bad movie. If a bad movie had to give up its life so that a Kael review might live, then that bad movie did not die in vain.

 

Well, though, it wasn't always a bad movie, or at least that bad a movie. Robert Benchley ended up feeling so guilty he found work for Guido Nazzo for the rest of his life because he couldn't resist that one good line.

[Rinaldo]

It may be Laurence Olivier day (and oh my he was beautiful!), but in Fire over England It is Flora Robson who holds my attention in every scene.  She is by far my favorite "Queen Elizabeth".

Flora Robson gave a great many memorable performances on film, often in classic roles which others have played (but not better than she did). I'm thinking of Ellen Dean in Wuthering Heights (with Olivier again), Queen Elizabeth (again) in The Sea Hawk, Ftatateeta in Caesar and Cleopatra, Juliet's Nurse, and the Queen of Hearts.

Possibly despite saying this you'll agree with me that when it comes to Kael, this was a feature, not a bug. A good essay is worth more than a bad movie. If a bad movie had to give up its life so that a Kael review might live, then that bad movie did not die in vain.

Of course -- up to a point (remember that I buried my comment in my "this stuff isn't a problem" preamble). The better I know the movie she's talking about when that happens, the more disconnected from her writing I feel. It works fine for some obscure foreign or independent item that I'll never see anyway, so at least I got a quarter hour of reading enjoyment out of it. But when I've seen a forgettable (not awful, just mediocre, as I originally said) genre programmer like Eyes of Laura Mars or The Fury and then see the elevated status she's building up for it... I almost wish I'd been one of her acolytes back then (maybe I could have been, had I written a compelling enough fan letter) so I could roll my eyes at our next encounter and drawl, "Oh, come off it, Pauline" ("girlfriend, please" would probably have been a bit much).

[Charlie Baker]

I enjoyed her writing a lot--but yeah, it was specifically the review of The Fury that caused me to think Ms. K. could be a bit much.

[ratgirlagogo]

I came to the conclusion some years ago ( partly because of my own involvement with  NYC public radio, and Pacifica in particular) that Pauline Kael took the tack she did because she started out reviewing films on the original Pacifica station KPFA in Berkeley, and a certain kind of KPFA listener and filmgoer just enraged her - the kind of people that would always tell you that Ten Days That Shook The World or Salt of the Earth were the greatest and most authentic movies ever made.  Not that they would know, really, since they were so opposed to commercial Hollywood filmmaking that they had in fact seen very few movies.  The kind of people that today, will make a big deal of telling you that they don't even OWN a television.  In most places in the US this is a really small part of the population but I could see that in Berkeley in the 50s they were a big percentage of it.  They're not really highbrow, just snobby.

[Charlie Baker]

I'm kind of glad that elitism about television is much diminished these days, when the best of TV can equal or maybe even surpass movies.

 

I DVRed The Late Show when it was part of the Robert Benton evening earlier this week.  This is a movie I cited in the the forgotten movie forums as one I admired a lot and hadn't seen for a while.  Got to watch it--and it does hold up. It's a 70s noir with a lot of humor and some poignancy, as by the 70s of course the world of the noir wasn't what it was in the 40s.   And Lily Tomlin was hardly your standard issue noir femme fatale. (Joanna Cassidy is more in the mold.)  Best of all in this movie is Art Carney, just great as a gumshoe; time is passing by and is catching up with him. 

 

I wonder as time goes by ( :-) ) if TCM will put more recent movie like this (70s not really that recent) in heavier rotation.

[elle]

Memorial Day - time for war themed movies

Air Force 1943 - one of those movies that we (I) have the luxury of watching after all the facts have been recorded.  Still, I believe that a great disservice was done to the people of Hawaii with the scenes of reports of sabotage.  It is one of those movies I feel should come with a disclaimer at the beginning and subtitles during those specific scenes noting that those reports were false.  They can show us bits of trivia about the movie, why not a little truth too.

[Rinaldo]

I DVRed The Late Show when it was part of the Robert Benton evening earlier this week.  This is a movie I cited in the the forgotten movie forums as one I admired a lot and hadn't seen for a while.  Got to watch it--and it does hold up. It's a 70s noir with a lot of humor and some poignancy, as by the 70s of course the world of the noir wasn't what it was in the 40s.   And Lily Tomlin was hardly your standard issue noir femme fatale. (Joanna Cassidy is more in the mold.)  Best of all in this movie is Art Carney, just great as a gumshoe; time is passing by and is catching up with him. 

I just love The Late Show. It's in a personal all-time top-20 movie list that I compiled a while back, and I own the DVD. One very minor regret about the DVD is that it doesn't include as extras the additional scenes that were used to pad it out to fill (with commercials) a 3-hour Sunday Night Movie timeslot for its big network showing. (Remember when that used to be a thing?) None were earthshaking, but it was nice to get additional glimpses of the characters.

 

And what characters! Art Carney and Lily Tomlin, an odd-couple match made in heaven. Bill Macy, Joanna Cassidy, Eugene Roche, John Considine, Howard Duff, and a lovely bit by Ruth Nelson as the landlady. All old-timer and contemporary 70s at the same time.

 

Damn, now I want to pull out that DVD and watch it again.