TCM: The Greatest Movie Channel

[Rinaldo]

8 hours ago, bmoore4026 said:

After GwtW, there The Adventures of Robin Hood.  Flynn's Robin could kick Crowe's and Costner's asses, but I don't think he could hold is own again Elwes', Disney's, or Duck's. 

What's "Duck's"? The Daffy Duck short? There are two Disney treatments of the story, and I imagine (maybe wrongly) that the animated one is meant here, but I want to put in a word for the live-action Story of Robin Hood from 1952 (one of several such tales made in the UK under the Disney name in that period), which I've always found a lively enjoyable telling of the story, with Richard Todd as Robin.

[Milburn Stone]

55 minutes ago, Rinaldo said:

I want to put in a word for the live-action Story of Robin Hood from 1952 (one of several such tales made in the UK under the Disney name in that period), which I've always found a lively enjoyable telling of the story, with Richard Todd as Robin.

All the Disney live-action movies of the 40s, 50s and first half of the 60s were at least good, with uber-competent story-telling. And I've always figured the reason was that the studio was so steeped in the storyboarding discipline imposed by the full-length animated features. I wouldn't be at all surprised if those live-action films were fully storyboarded the same way. Which can tend to make you see where your story is going astray, if it is. Also, the vivid characterization in the animated films seems to find its analog in the vividness of the live-action character portrayals.

[prican58]

Love all the great Olivia films that have been talked about but right now I'm watching The Irish In Us (1935). A programmer? Probably qualifies. But the cast is a knockout! Cagney, O'Brien, McHugh, Olivia and the ever wonderful Allen Jenkins. Olivia hardly looks like herself. When I first saw it I didn't recognize her. Very pretty but there wasn't that instant moment of recognition.

[ratgirlagogo]

14 hours ago, bmoore4026 said:

After GwtW, there The Adventures of Robin Hood

Featuring the screen debut of Trigger in a key supporting (literally) role.  Even performing with the likes of  De Havilland and Flynn you can see his star quality.:)

Edited July 2, 2016 by ratgirlagogo

[Sharpie66]

FYI, the reason Disney made those live-action films in the UK post-war was financial. Apparently, any proceeds made in the UK after the war couldn't be brought back to the states but had to be spent in the UK without paying some outrageously high tax/fee on it, so they made movies there.

[jjj]

I love "The L-Shaped Room" and most films that include Leslie Caron.  I first saw this on television pre-cable, and a similar film about an unwed pregnant young woman in England starring Sandy Dennis (under several titles), so for years they blurred together in memory.  Each time I re-watch "The "L-Shaped Room" (which is every few years; don't want to memorize it) I am struck again by how much of it is about the other characters in the boarding house, rather than the situation of Leslie Caron.  I have never read the fiction source (novel?), so perhaps it is more of a series of vignettes.  And the doctor in what I assume is a Harley Street surgery (first appointment we see) is the epitome of British supercilious mansplaining.  The claustrophobia of the boarding house, the decorations on various walls, and almost the smell coming out of the various rooms and people is very skilfully conveyed. 

[PaulaO]

I've seen GWtW 12 times in the theater and many times on TV. You might call it PaulaO's family's favorite movie. I hadn't seen it more than 10 years because It was the movie I was watching the night before I moved out of my married house.  I figured enough time has passed for me not to associate it with my ex.  I settled in last night and God, that movie is still brilliant.  I never could figure out if Ashley really did love Scarlett. I say no, he was just physically attracted to her.  And I don't listen to talk of "the movie shouldn't be shown because it says slavery is o.k."

[bmoore4026]

7 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

What's "Duck's"? The Daffy Duck short? There are two Disney treatments of the story, and I imagine (maybe wrongly) that the animated one is meant here, but I want to put in a word for the live-action Story of Robin Hood from 1952 (one of several such tales made in the UK under the Disney name in that period), which I've always found a lively enjoyable telling of the story, with Richard Todd as Robin.

I did mean Daffy.

[Rinaldo]

On July 1, 2016 at 9:03 AM, Crisopera said:

Does anyone still think Red Skelton is funny? 

I remember he had a weekly TV show (live comedy) when I was a kid, and it wasn't one my family watched. I tried it a couple times, but it didn't do anything for me (I didn't know about anybody's past or careers then, of course), so I just figured when I thought of him in my adult years, different strokes and all that.

So today I watched my DVR'd Panama Hattie. Hoo boy, did he get featured (starred actually, over the ostensible male lead Dan Dailey) as if his bumbling-meathead shtick was irresistible. So I suppose it was, at the time, but it was more off-putting than I expected. In fact the whole business (a Cole Porter musical adaptation, with Ann Sothern in for Ethel Merman and [as usual] most of the Porter songs gone in favor of new ones) was pretty off-putting. I see that the IMDb forum has some "worst ever!" threads, but for once, they're not very wrong. Perfunctory romance, unfunny comedy, an annoying moppet, a trio of sailors in which none of them is the likable or handsome one, and a dull collection of songs. Bright spots include Sothern in a singing role (which didn't happen as often as her gifts deserved), Virginia O'Brien doing her amusing expressionless-singing bit, and Lena Horne and the Berry Brothers (once each separately and once together). But those are rare oases.

Edited July 3, 2016 by Rinaldo

[mariah23]

Bugs Bunny "borrowed" a lot from Red Skelton including the broke arm bit and the "ain't I a stinker?"

 

Also, another to add to TCM Remembers: Michael Cimino (who's Heaven's Gate will be shown as part of the Westerns festival) died today at 77.

[MissT]

8 hours ago, prican58 said:

Love all the great Olivia films that have been talked about but right now I'm watching The Irish In Us (1935). A programmer? Probably qualifies. But the cast is a knockout! Cagney, O'Brien, McHugh, Olivia and the ever wonderful Allen Jenkins. Olivia hardly looks like herself. When I first saw it I didn't recognize her. Very pretty but there wasn't that instant moment of recognition.

My favorite film with Olivia is The Heiress.   I have it on DVD and every once in a while I get a hankering for it.   I like all her movies, but this one is just the best for me.  Montgomery Cliff looked so handsome and I always admired Miriam Hopkins.

[bmoore4026]

3 hours ago, mariah23 said:

Bugs Bunny "borrowed" a lot from Red Skelton including the broke arm bit and the "ain't I a stinker?"

 

Also, another to add to TCM Remembers: Michael Cimino (who's Heaven's Gate will be shown as part of the Westerns festival) died today at 77.

It's too bad Heaven's Gate essentially ended his career.  I saw The Cinema Snob's three part review of the movie and, from some the scenes he showed, it was clear the Cimino had an eye for grand, wide shots.  The scene showing everyone waltzing at the beginning of the movie is absolutely gorgeous.

And I did see the first "Russian Roulette" sequence from The Deer Hunter.  Cimino did a very good job getting the tension across.  I wonder if they'll show that on TCM?

[Crisopera]

4 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

Bright spots include Sothern in a singing role (which didn't happen as often as her gifts deserved), Virginia O'Brien doing her amusing expressionless-singing bit, and Lena Horne and the Berry Brothers (once each separately and once together). Both those are rare oases.

All I could think watching this terrible (except for the bright spots you mention) movie was, considering how long the Horne and Berry Brothers sequences were, this movie could only have run about an hour in the South at the time...

 

And the moppet was spectacularly annoying, wasn't she?

[voiceover]

Ugh, not a fan of the E! guy.  

And, uh, the 7 Brides stage show hit the road in 1978 -- a friend who was a classic film FREAK dragged me to KC's Starlight Theater, and I got to see Jane Powell & Howard Keel reprise their roles.  Then I got to meet them backstage.  She was so tiny and he was so big!  That's about all I remember.

[Padma]

Olivia De Havilland certainly looks wonderful at 100: https://www.yahoo.com/news/ap-interview-havilland-breaks-silence-sibling-feud-141118875.html

The above interview also contains some interesting bits about her conflict with Joan--and her feelings don't seem to have mellowed through the years. (And I didn't realize that they were both up for Oscars the year Joan won for "Suspicion".)

[Rinaldo]

Meant to mention this earlier: I do enjoy Michael McKean and Annette O'Toole as hosts, they're unabashed fans who are pretty knowledgeable in terms of history. I'd welcome them back any time. BUT if (as I'm deducing) they're writing their own material or just speaking off the cuff, they do need a fact checker on hand, lest misinformation get perpetuated on the air. Michael was speaking of the select group of people who have won a Tony and Oscar for the same role, beginning with Joel Grey whom we were about to see in Cabaret. He correctly added Yul Brynner (The King and I) but then incorrectly mentioned Barbra Streisand (Funny Girl) -- she never won a competitive Tony, and that year lost to Carol Channing (Hello, Dolly!).

The other name he might have mentioned from musicals is Rex Harrison (My Fair Lady), plus as a different case Lila Kedrova (uniquely her Oscar came first, then a Tony for its musical stage adaptation Zorba). If we cross into nonmusicals, the other names are José Ferrer (Cyrano de Bergerac), Shirley Booth (Come Back, Little Sheba), Anne Bancroft (The Miracle Worker), Paul Scofield (A Man for All Seasons), and Jack Albertson (The Subject Was Roses).

[3pwood]

18 hours ago, mariah23 said:

Bugs Bunny "borrowed" a lot from Red Skelton including the broke arm bit and the "ain't I a stinker?" ...

But it was funny when Bugs did it.  

[Rinaldo]

Matter of opinion. I guess it's not my kind of humor in the first place. But there's room for all kinds, and as I said before, there must have been a general liking for Skelton's routine for him to gain the position he did.

[ratgirlagogo]

15 hours ago, voiceover said:

Ugh, not a fan of the E! guy.  

So THAT'S what he was!  Ugh,me neither.  Just caught his little bit at the end of Seven Brides and was annoyed that he mentioned the 1982 Seven Brides for Seven Brothers TV show but not the 1968 Here Come the Brides which was also based on this film and a considerably bigger hit.  TCM needs to make it a priority to come up with better presenters, since we (sadly) all know Robert Osborne isn't going to live forever.

[jjj]

Seattle always understood that "Here Comes the Brides" was derived from the Asa Mercer project to bring women to Seattle for potential marriages; "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" was based on the short story "The Sobbin' Women", by Stephen Vincent Benét, which was itself based on Roman legend.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercer_Girls 

1 hour ago, ratgirlagogo said:

he mentioned the 1982 Seven Brides for Seven Brothers TV show but not the 1968 Here Come the Brides which was also based on this film and a considerably bigger hit.

Edited July 3, 2016 by jjj

[bmoore4026]

It's Stanley Kubrick night tonight.  For anyone who needs a cure for insomnia, be sure to watch.

[Bastet]

At least they're not showing Eyes Wide Shut.  I went to a pre-release screening of that, and although it was an industry crowd, many audience members audibly expressed their frustration.  By the time it was over, I would have sworn the film had been half a day long.

[bluepiano]

5 hours ago, bmoore4026 said:

It's Stanley Kubrick night tonight.  For anyone who needs a cure for insomnia, be sure to watch.

The younger Kubrick who made striking and original movies like The Killing and Lolita was very different from the older Kubrick who made a string of bloated and/or pretentious snooze fests.

On ‎7‎/‎2‎/‎2016 at 0:19 PM, jjj said:

I love "The L-Shaped Room" and most films that include Leslie Caron. 

Did you see the recent TCM screening of Glory Alley? What a bizarre movie. Leslie Caron played a trained ballerina who secretly danced in a strip club to support her blind father, who thought she was a nursing student. And that's one of the movies more logical plot points. I've seen movies that have split personalities, but this one was Sybil. At different times it was a boxing movie, war movie, melodrama, film noir, musical. (There's a must-be-seen-to-believed scene of a room full of supposedly tough New Orleans barflys breaking into song). Very surprising that this mess was directed by the great Raoul Walsh.

Caron was the movie's one saving grace.

Edited July 4, 2016 by bluepiano

[jjj]

11 minutes ago, bluepiano said:

Did you see the recent TCM screening of Glory Alley? What a bizarre movie. Leslie Caron played a trained ballerina who secretly danced in a strip club to support her blind father, who thought she was a nursing student. And that's one of the movies more logical plot points. I've seen movies that have split personalities, but this one was Sybil. At different times it was a boxing movie, war movie, melodrama, film noir, musical. (There's a must-be-seen-to-believed scene of a room full of supposedly tough New Orleans barflys breaking into song). Very surprising that this mess was directed by the great Raoul Walsh. Caron was the movie's one saving grace.

No, I did not see it, but it is still OnDemand!  Will watch just to see Caron dance -- thanks for the tip! 

[Milburn Stone]

11 hours ago, bmoore4026 said:

It's Stanley Kubrick night tonight.  For anyone who needs a cure for insomnia, be sure to watch.

I must beg to (partially) differ. I saw the first 40 minutes of 2001 last night (apes, monolith, space-Strauss, Heywood Floyd, landing on Clavius) and was riveted once again by every single frame of it. (And that's 57,600 frames, if my arithmetic is correct.)

[Rinaldo]

You have plenty of company on that. Most of my generation (graduating from college about that time) were spellbound by it. Not I (but I was a heretic on The Graduate too; just a traitor to my people, I guess). That's the start of when Kubrick stopped speaking to me, apparently (and in his case it really does make sense to consider him the "author" of his films).

But I will certainly defend Spartacus, Lolita, and Dr. Strangelove any time.

[ratgirlagogo]

My own favorite for him is Paths of Glory.

[NewDigs]

Gotta be Dr. Strangelove for me.

Was bored by The Shining but was captivated by a 35 minute video Kubrick's then 17 year old daughter did behind the scenes, Making of the Shining.

[bmoore4026]

Well, it's The 4th of July today yet the annual showing of 1776 will be at midnight tonight.  Technically, that would be on July 5th.

[jjj]

1 hour ago, bmoore4026 said:

Well, it's The 4th of July today yet the annual showing of 1776 will be at midnight tonight.  Technically, that would be on July 5th.

Well, it will all air during July 4 on the West Coast!  But I agree -- not on July 4 in Philadelphia.  I was a little surprised that it was on so late.  I think there are enthusiasts for 1776 on this thread?  I have only seen parts of it. 

2 hours ago, NewDigs said:

Was bored by The Shining but was captivated by a 35 minute video Kubrick's then 17 year old daughter did behind the scenes, Making of the Shining.

I am not a Kubrick superfan, but I think The Shining is terrifying!

[Sharpie66]

Music Man is on now. Love this movie!

"This Rubi-hat of Omar Khay-yi-yi-I am appalled!!"

I've never realized that, even though it has a pretty standard musical comedy structure, it subverts it not just with the antihero hero, but the opening song does a great job of introducing him and his world of traveling salesmen without him saying a word or even showing us who the hero is until he's jumping off the train. 

[Rinaldo]

I've said my piece on 1776 here before; no need to again be a spoilsport for the many who adore it. Enjoy! (On a truly distant tangent, why is midnight considered to be the next day, rather than the end of a day? Shouldn't 12 p.m. be the one that comes right after 11 p.m.? Yes, I know I'm on to a loser's argument here.)

I've said my piece on The Music Man here before too, but in this case I have to say again how I become more and more convinced that (popular as it is), it's still underappreciated as a genuinely great artistic creation: a central American myth (the fraud who unknown to himself could really do what he thought he was only pretending to do), a story of the power and omnipresence of music (if we'll only wake up and notice it) in the perfect medium for it (musical comedy), a cornucopia of American song types, and a dead-on perfect title. And perhaps the best screen adaptation of any stage musical: the most essential of the original elements retained (director Morton Da Costa, choreographer Onna White, Robert Preston, Pert Kelton, the Buffalo Bills), and all the new casting was right on the button (Shirley Jones, Paul Ford, Buddy Hackett, Hermione Gingold, Ronny Howard). I can't say a thing against it.

[Sharpie66]

For me, the appeal of 1776 is the fact that I grew up watching it annually, usually in several parts over the course of the first week of July. I probably first saw it when I was around 9 or 10, and it was the first time I ever thought of historical figures as real people, which has informed my love of history ever since. I hope that Hamilton will do the same for the current generation of young fans of that musical.

Edited July 5, 2016 by Sharpie66

[chitowngirl]

How does West Side Story fit into the theme of the July 4th movies?

[jjj]

2 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

I've said my piece on The Music Man here before too, but in this case I have to say again how I become more and more convinced that (popular as it is), it's still underappreciated as a genuinely great artistic creation: a central American myth (the fraud who unknown to himself could really do what he thought he was only pretending to do), a story of the power and omnipresence of music (if we'll only wake up and notice it) in the perfect medium for it (musical comedy), a cornucopia of American song types, and a dead-on perfect title.

I completely agree on the perfection of "The Music Man" -- I played in the pit orchestra for a community production when I was in high school, and was just entranced by it (and I had played in many musicals' pit orchestras).  "One Grecian urn."  "Two Grecian urns."  (Never fails to crack me up, just hearing the words.) And all those American musical styles, as you note.  The Wells Fargo Wagon!  (early Amazon delivery! "it could be something special for me!")  Ronny Howard. Zaneeta, "ye gods!". And somehow the film captures the magic of picking up an instrument for the first time, an instrument you have never held before and has so much potential.

It was years later that I learned that the song and exercise that had tortured us in grade school was written by Meredith Wilson and sung by Robert Preston -- "Chicken Fat!"  Every day for a year! 

1 hour ago, chitowngirl said:

How does West Side Story fit into the theme of the July 4th movies?

"I want to be in Amer-i-ca!"

Edited July 5, 2016 by jjj

[Sharpie66]

7 minutes ago, chitowngirl said:

How does West Side Story fit into the theme of the July 4th movies?

It's another part of life in America.

[chitowngirl]

Oh, Good Grief! That's a stretch when all the other movies of the day are American Revolution/Politics. I also question The Music Man! They could have moved up Yankee Doodle Dandy and 1776 and put WSS and TMM on after.

[bmoore4026]

22 minutes ago, chitowngirl said:

How does West Side Story fit into the theme of the July 4th movies?

Great Melting Pot where the young people are dissatisfied and rove about in amazingly choreographed gangs?

Fun Fact: West Side Story lost the Tony Award for Best Musical to The Music Man.

Anyway, after The Music Man is Yankee Doodle Dandy with James Cagney where he dances awesomely.  Was there anything that man couldn't do?

Edited July 5, 2016 by bmoore4026
Rebembered some things to add.

[Rinaldo]

15 minutes ago, bmoore4026 said:

Fun Fact: West Side Story lost the Tony Award for Best Musical to The Music Man.

And I used to get all huffy about that, in my pretentious-grad-student days. Now I just think, "Wow, what a great season, to have two masterpieces to choose between!" Both eminently belong on today's programming; all part of the picture of who we are.

Another fun fact: Onna White (choreographer of The Music Man) and Susan Luckey (lead female dancer in The Music Man -- Zaneeta Shinn the mayor's daughter) were married in succession to the same actor, Larry Douglas. (Who was Robert Preston's standby as Harold Hill in the original Broadway production of The Music Man.)

[Pyralis]

I always have a soft spot for The Music Man after seeing many, many .... many years ago, a live outdoor production in the downtown park in the city where I live - complete with real horses pulling the Wells Fargo wagon. It was summer and they timed the last part to occur as it was getting dark so the "chase scene" went around the park and through the trees in a similar fashion to the film.

[chitowngirl]

"Linus! Play to me!" Never gets old!!

[jjj]

20 hours ago, bluepiano said:

Did you see the recent TCM screening of Glory Alley? What a bizarre movie. Leslie Caron played a trained ballerina who secretly danced in a strip club to support her blind father, who thought she was a nursing student. And that's one of the movies more logical plot points. I've seen movies that have split personalities, but this one was Sybil. At different times it was a boxing movie, war movie, melodrama, film noir, musical.

Wow, this is a bizarre film.  Thanks for the tip!  I did enjoy watching Leslie Caron dance en pointe on that tiny stage, and fast forwarded through most of the rest, but got the gist of it. 

[bluepiano]

Echoing the love for Music Man. I think of it as the most "American" of all the great musicals. Even though I grew up in New York City, it still makes me all misty eyed for turn of the century Iowa. But one of the great things about Music Man is that it shows the narrow-mindedness and prejudices of the small town folk, but plays it for laughs. (Although I still say that no matter how much he loved Marian, a man-of-the-world like Harold Hill could never have been happy living out his life in River City. Well, maybe he persuaded her to move to Chicago).

I remember reading on the liner notes for the cast album of Music Man that Meredith Wilson set out to write a musical that captured the American musical vernacular and also the personality of Americans, basing songs on the rhythm of how people spoke. I think he completely succeeded.

When I was a kid my parents had an album called "Music Man Goes Dixieland," with Dixieland jazz versions of the score. I loved that album, but unfortunately it disappeared over the years. The music really lent itself to a Dixieland interpretation.

[bluepiano]

1 hour ago, jjj said:

Wow, this is a bizarre film.  Thanks for the tip!  I did enjoy watching Leslie Caron dance en pointe on that tiny stage, and fast forwarded through most of the rest, but got the gist of it. 

That was a pretty high brow audience in that night club, to go nuts for ballet.  :)

[Willowsmom]

I always forget what a beautiful voice Ken Howard had.

[HyeChaps]

I lamented to my daughter that 1776 started at 1 a.m. (since the family knows I watch it every year on The Fourth). Her fiancé was not familiar with it. She told him it was "O.G. Hamilton. "

[it had to be explained to me that this meant "Old Gangsta."]

[Sharpie66]

Stagecoach is on tonight! I saw it for the first time just a few years ago and fell in love with it. It really is one of the Great Movies. 

[Rick Kitchen]

3 minutes ago, Sharpie66 said:

Stagecoach is on tonight! I saw it for the first time just a few years ago and fell in love with it. It really is one of the Great Movies. 

It is, indeed.  1939 is by far the best year ever for great movies.

[Julia]

On 7/4/2016 at 9:36 PM, chitowngirl said:

Oh, Good Grief! That's a stretch when all the other movies of the day are American Revolution/Politics. I also question The Music Man! They could have moved up Yankee Doodle Dandy and 1776 and put WSS and TMM on after.

It addresses what it means to be an american. A story about the children of relatively recent polish immigrants who were considered good american boys by the cops and the children of puerto ricans, whose families were considered foreign even though as Puerto Ricans they were already american citizens is actually pretty resonant these days, JMO.

[ratgirlagogo]

What happened to the serials and the Bowery Boys and the children's films showing on Saturday mornings?  I'm still waiting to find out how Ace Drummond defeated the Dragon.

Edited July 8, 2016 by ratgirlagogo