Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to In The Balcony. We hope you enjoy your visit.

You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Plus, you'll be eligible for the monthly $1 million prize. (Not really.)

Join our community!

If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
This Week's Dvds
Topic Started: Mar 2 2006, 04:59 PM (54,685 Views)
Stony Brooke da Mesquiteer
Member Avatar
Sapient Balconeer
[ *  *  * ]
BTW, while I was at Wal*Mart this morn, one of the associates told me that Gone With The Wind is coming next month. I'm not a big fan, but I bet that that puppy will look too cute in Blu-Ray.
It's like Rodney King used to say, "Can't we all get a bong."
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Laughing Gravy
Member Avatar
Look for In The Balcony on Facebook!
[ *  *  * ]
Yes, and Warners has a bunch of different versions of THAT coming, too, including a giant "Gone with the Wind" box that I think comes with a slave.

British movies. Well... Mr. P.... Hmmmm... No junk? The Film Forum in NYC just did a highly-regarded retrospective of British noir, not the stuff VCI's been putting out. I have some British crime films of the 1960s that I like VERY much, very suspensful stuff. Hitchcock's 1930s films sometimes reach greatness. And the Will Hay films of the '30s and early '40s are the equivalent of our slapstick features and are quite humorous.

Added later: Okay, I went and found Mr. Kehr's article on postwar British noir: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/movies/02dave.html

Edited by Laughing Gravy, Oct 4 2009, 07:23 AM.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
panzer the great & terrible
Member Avatar
Mouth Breather
[ *  *  * ]
"Highly regarded" by whom?

All I know is, those British "noir" pictures put me to sleep when my local movie house ran them as B's. ;) I read Kehr's piece when it came out, and laughed. Those movies are too polite and timid to be noir -- except of course for the Losey pictures, which were directed by an American best known for his stage work with Charles Laughton, Bert Brecht, and Nicholas Ray, not to mention Orson Welles). The great British director Cy Endfield happens to be American too.

While we're on this, every puff piece in the New York Times is not gospel. The guys who write that crap are English majors who know zip about movies. Back in the day, the Times' main film guy was Bosley Crowther, the jackass who panned Bonnie and Clyde. Bottom line, the Times may be the newspaper of record, but it ain't the voice of God.

Not everybody who writes for Rolling Stone can carry a tune, y'know.

Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Frank Hale
Balcony Gang, Foist Class
[ *  *  * ]
I probably shouldn’t get in the way of this avalanche of invective, but in defense of Pygmalion:

Maltin: “Superlative…Edited by David Lean.”

Halliwell: “Perfectly splendid Shavian comedy of bad manners, extremely well filmed and containing memorable lines and performances…One of the most heartening and adult British films of the thirties.”

Not that those two walk on water, either, but in this case I happen to agree with them.

Shaw did have control of the script, but he shrewdly agreed to change the ending. And it is stagey, but here I think that works to the film’s advantage.

Now that I’ve stuck my neck out on this, I suppose Gravy will hate it.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
panzer the great & terrible
Member Avatar
Mouth Breather
[ *  *  * ]
I take it as a compliment, Frank. Vitriol isn't easy to pull off. Every so often I have to explain that Jon Hildreth is a gentle, easygoing guy, loved by dogs and children, but Paul Panzer is the First Villain of the Silent Screen. He tends to go over the top on a regular basis, like Yosemete Sam. I love it when people think he's real.

Truthfully, I didn't like Pygmalion because I thought it was miscast. The play sparkles on the page, but for me, Wendy Hiller's an actress without sparkle. She's kinda stodgy, like baked beans at teatime. Leslie Howard isn't my idea of Henry Higgins and shouldn't have tried to direct himself (nobody should ever do that unless their first name is Orson, Charlie, or Buster). Wilfred Lawson is no cockney, and they're all too old. Nobody ever really decided if they were making a romantic comedy or not, so it isn't much of anything except a Shaw play with a silly new ending. My Fair Lady builds to its ending, but this movie doesn't.

What they ought to do is remake it with Michael Caine as Doolittle -- it would be his greatest part ever. Maybe one of our English friends would suggest somebody for 'Enry and Eliza.

News flash -- they're talking about remaking My Fair Lady, possibly with Kiera Knightley as Eliza. Please, please, please Mr. or Ms. Producer -- Michael Caine as Doolittle! Hugh Jackman as 'Iggins! Kenneth Branagh as Pickering, and that cool Nazi from Inglourious Basterds as Kaparthy!

That would really be something. Besides, I'd love to see a less opulent My Fair Lady. Warners spent too much on it IMO -- it's too pretty and too perfect, and when Sherlock Holmes sings "On the Street Where You Live" I always near about wet my pants laughing.
Edited by panzer the great & terrible, Oct 4 2009, 09:19 PM.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Frank Hale
Balcony Gang, Foist Class
[ *  *  * ]
Hmmm.

Love you like a brother, Mr. P, but you need to stop editing your posts after someone responds to them. It’s intellectually deceitful and unworthy of you.

Worst of all, it puts me in the position of agreeing with Ed (whom I also love like a brother!)
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Laughing Gravy
Member Avatar
Look for In The Balcony on Facebook!
[ *  *  * ]
Dave Kehr knows more than I do about movies, and writes well. I never thought of him as gospel, but I always thought if you find somebody who knows more than you do, shut the hell up and listen. Ya might learn something, so I thinks. Same with YOU, Mr. P. You know more about a LOT of stuff than anybody I know. We don't share the same taste but heck, I like listenin' to ya.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
panzer the great & terrible
Member Avatar
Mouth Breather
[ *  *  * ]
Frank, the idea isn't to be intellectually deceitful. My problem is, I'm a perfectionist, and when I figure out a better way to get my idea across, I can't resist changing my posts. Sometimes it does happen that I delete something that somebody wants to respond to, and the only reason I do it is because I don't think it's good enough, which is most likely what the other poster noticed too. So I can't promise to change. My goal is to write better, and that's all I care about after a lifetime of writing for newspapers, where you only have time to do one draft.

I didn't know Pygmalion was edited by Lean -- that's interesting. I haven't seen it in 40 years, but I must say the editing wasn't what I noticed back then (and I was editing my own shorts in those days).

Thanks very much for the friendly words, Mr. G. I have always depended on the kindness of strange people.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Stony Brooke da Mesquiteer
Member Avatar
Sapient Balconeer
[ *  *  * ]
panzer the great & terrible
Oct 4 2009, 09:09 PM
Thanks very much for the friendly words, Mr. G. I have always depended on the kindness of strange people.
And Mr. G is certainly strange ;)
It's like Rodney King used to say, "Can't we all get a bong."
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
panzer the great & terrible
Member Avatar
Mouth Breather
[ *  *  * ]
In a good way.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Laughing Gravy
Member Avatar
Look for In The Balcony on Facebook!
[ *  *  * ]
Arrived today: Karloff, Lugosi & Kabibble Horror Classics, and Kino's educational film compilations How to be a Man and How to be a Woman.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Stony Brooke da Mesquiteer
Member Avatar
Sapient Balconeer
[ *  *  * ]
I went to the local Barnes & Noble to pick up the Karloff & Lugosi set, because their website said they had it on hand, but the copy on hand was being held for somebody not named Stony. Since I had a 15% off coupon burning a hole in my pocket, I bought the Fox Horror Classics Vol.2. The set with: Dr. Renault's Secret; Dragonwyck and Chandu The Magician. I haven't seen any of these, so... I'm glad one of our Balconeers is in a film, and I hope it's the one where he goes salmon fishin'!
It's like Rodney King used to say, "Can't we all get a bong."
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Chandu
Member Avatar
Champeen of Justice and Seeker of Knowledge, but rascal at heart!
[ *  *  * ]
Sorry Stony, but that film was made long before I even knew salmon had been invented.
Edited by Chandu, Oct 10 2009, 03:37 PM.
Not plane, nor bird, nor even frog. It's just little ol' me...
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Laughing Gravy
Member Avatar
Look for In The Balcony on Facebook!
[ *  *  * ]
Arrived today from Germany: Roger Corman's Not of this Earth (1957).
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
panzer the great & terrible
Member Avatar
Mouth Breather
[ *  *  * ]
That's the one Bill Roerick's in isn't it? What a wild man he was. Very respectable looking, but Oh. My. God. I spent one of the strangest evenings of my life with that guy.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
ZetaBoards - Free Forum Hosting
Free Forums. Reliable service with over 8 years of experience.
Learn More · Register for Free
Go to Next Page
« Previous Topic · Balcony Banter · Next Topic »
Add Reply