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swanstep and ecarle:
Please do not correspond further with movieghoul. These are his adult children. He is blogging during a busy worktime, and he will get himself fired.
Thank you.
Saw MPR Wednesday night at a reglular theater, which was about 75% empty. Also a shame to see how it got trouced by Aquaman in the weekend BO, but I guess that's to be expected when a film aimed at young children opens the weekend before Xmas, when parents are too busy to drop everything and go. WIll be interesting to see how it does the week following.
I don't recall the details but Merrick stuck to his guns for a long time, and Fox eventually gave him a large settlement to open the film in New York.
Yes, Lockin did come to that tragic end.
Well I've seen it and I think both the good and the bad reviews had valid points. On the good side, it's a great nostalgia trip, for one thing, just seeing those expansive opening credits (remember when movies used to have them?) with the orchestral sweep and if you listen closely, you can pick out bars from the earlier songs. And the comfort of knowing that you're going to get a new version of every scene you remember from the original, and if you're patient, two beloved nonagenarians will turn up as deus ex machinas.
But on the bad side, the songs just don't compete with the original, and eventually there's a "paint by numbers" feel to the whole thing, plus a need to overdo some of the production numbers. For example, the number that stands in for "super....docious" plays well enough and gives Miranda the chance to do a tongue twisting rap, but no one's going to be able to leave the theater humming or singing it, it's just too complex. And while no one would claim that Ed Wynn was abetter actor than Meryl Streep, I much preferred his version of the dotty ceiling dwelling relative.
SO a pleasant enough couple of hours, but the original's reputation is safe.
Streisand won the Oscar in April, 1969 and I'm fairly sure that not only was she cast in DOlly but that most of the filming was complete. The studio had to sit on the film while negotiating a yearend release with David Merrick, the producer of the stage show. Merrick's contract when he sold the film rights stipulated that no movie version could be shown in the same city where the stage version was still playing, meaning that they couldn't book the film into a New York theater. In fact, Dolly was the first stage to screen where the movie opened while the Broadway run continued, since the assumption was that the release of the movie would hurt the BO for the show, but with the savvy casting of Ethel Merman, the show ran through most of 1970 very successfully. It also helped that Danny Lockin who was so great as Barnaby in the film joined the Boradway cast.
CHanning was unfortunately one of those stage stars who couldn't adapt well to films, always playing to the second balcony instead of the camera. Her scenes in THoroughly Modern Millie were difficult to watch. Ginger ROgers and Betty Grable followed CHanning on Broadway and were certainly age appropriate but considered too ancient for a big budget film.
Didn't know about Maclaine, but I wonder if Debbie Reynolds was considered? Still iin her 30s but could probably play older convincingly. SHe had a big hit with Unsinkable Molly Brown, and I seem to recall she had worked before with director Gene Kelly.
I agree the editing in Peck's head makes Mirage special. Best is a long shot of two men in a country setting where they're so far from the camera you can barely see them - a shot that's repeated several times. It's something Peck sort of remembers but doesn't remember very clearly. Then when Peck sees two men standing and talking in Central Park, the enigmatic shot reappears with a remarkable forward tracking movement so we can see the two men in Peck's memory clearly.
I agree the editing in Peck's head makes Mirage special. Best is a long shot of two men in a country setting where they're so far from the camera you can barely see them - a shot that's repeated several times. It's something Peck sort of remembers but doesn't remember very clearly. Then when Peck sees two men standing and talking in Central Park, the enigmatic shot reappears with a remarkable forward tracking movement so we can see the two men in Peck's memory clearly.
Always happy to see Hugh Grant come up a winner, but for Paddington 2? Is it possible some of the voters got confused with Richard E who won the NYFCC award for Can You Ever Forgive Me?
And, by the way, ROma was not snubbed for BP, the Globe rules (for some strange reason) only allow English language films to be BP noms.
Hello Dolly is based on an earlier 50s play by THornton Wilder which in turn is based on a EUropean plan from the 30s, so that may explain or excuse the complete opposites attract concept.
Nothing, however, explains the casting a=of a 20-something actress as a widow returing for the first time in many years to a restaurant she frequented with her first husband!
I had even bigger problems with the ending of Pretty Woman.
Swanstep, when you say that Roma and FR got little love elsewhere, I assume you're referring to the Globes only. These two films dominated the New York Film Critics awards.
And they wouldn't be the Globes without controversy over Drama/COmedy/Musical. First, I haven't seen Star is BOrn, but it's NOT a musical?? Some critics have noted that while Green Book has a fair amount of humor with the concept of a white guy chauffering a black in the pre-Civil Rights South, that doesn't make it a comedy. And a DIck Cheney biopic is a comedy? Sure, Dick is one of the funniest men alive, remember all those WHite House parties where he got wasted and danced around with a lamp shade over his head (NOT!).
And wouldn't you know that while 4 out of 10 BPs are black themed, there's still a lot of complaints abbout how Widows get shut out proving an anti-black bias by the nominating committee.
And I haven't heard much about the score of MPR, they're keeping under wraps how much of it is original, how much of the original film's score is reprised, or even whether they interpolated any songs that were written for the stage musical. It's possible that the best songs in the new film are from the original so no Best Song nominee.
I don't see it in this thread, but "bird" is a Britishism for an attracctive woman. So the scene is telling us visually what we don't actually learn till the end, that Norman knocked off the bird.
This can also be applied to The Birds. Bodega Bay is subject to a number of bird attacks, but the serenity of the Brenner family is attached by one particular invding bird: Melanie.
THe great space race movie of the '10s was Hidden FIgures which told a great previously untold story.
Yes, we did just barely make the deadline, but my understanding is that JFK was advised by NASA scientists that a moon landing could be viable as early as 1967 (ie, during his second term as President). As it happens, the fire that killed the crew of Apollo 1 caused a 2 year setback but the deadline was still made, although it was Nixon, not JFK or LBJ who got to make the phone call to the moon.
ecarle, I'm referring only to the autnenticity of the THorwald building, not the entire courtyard complex most of which came from the imaginations of Hitchcock and his set designers. And in the film, the T building does seem somewhat out of place compared to the more funky VIllage-type architecture of the Miss Torso building to the left and the composer's to the right.
There was nothing particularly creative about Ferro's titles for A Clockwork Orange, simply two title cards: "A Stanley Kubrick Production" and one with the title.
However, Ferro did fantastic work designing the trailer for ACO, which consisted of a barrage of quick cut images from the film with adjuectives like "SATIRICAL" and "POLITICAL" superimposed, all to the tune of The WIlliam Tell Overture.
Of course there was no second unit filming on Rear Window, but there were certainly photos of the Christopher Street red brick building where the THorwalds lived,and which is still standing. The mockup on the RW set sure looks like it.
TO me the most interesting shooting chronology for a Hitchcock film is on Rear Window which was filmed totally in the studio but in two halves. First, all of the courtyard shots and then everything in the apartment. So Stewart, Ritter and Corey didn't even show up until well into filming.
THis schedule was necessitated because of the sheer size of the courtyard set which needed to be constructed, used and demolished in short order. But think of the demands this schedule put on Hitchcock's creative process: he needed to be sure he had all of the courtyard shots he wanted before filming the reaction shots in the apartment; essentially he had to have the entire film edited on paper before any filming was done. A less meticulous and prepared director would have struggled with this handicap.
TO pay the bills, many New York based stage actors regularly landed "day jobs" either in soap operas or more recently in one or another Law and Order.
As far as keeping two scripts in your head, consider the astounding feat of Cynthia Nixon, who in 1984, appeared simultaneously in two Broadway plays in small parts (she was about 20 at the time). Maybe she should have stuck to acting!