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Lover COme Back was a much better film and a better script than PT. Especially given what we now know about the Rock: there's a gay actor playing a strraight character who poses as a guy questioning his sexuality to seduce a woman. WOw!
Interestingly, one of the nominees in 1962, the year of LCB, was TOuch of Mink, another Day entry into sex comedy, but this time with Grant and Gig Young in the Hudson/Randall roles.
Lover COme Back was a much better film and a better script than PT. Especially given what we now know about the Rock: there's a gay actor playing a strraight character who poses as a guy questioning his sexuality to seduce a woman. WOw!
Interestingly, one of the nominees in 1962, the year of LCB, was TOuch of Mink, another Day entry into sex comedy, but this time with Grant and Gig Young in the Hudson/Randall roles.
Yes, except if someone talked to you about a 20sfilm, they're talking silents in grainy BW. Movies simply haven't changed as much since the late 60s when the Production COde was abolished, except in the area of special effects.
Young people are missing out on a lot of treats by avoiding films from the 60s and 70s.
ecarle, don't get me started on the BOS nomination for NBN, because the Oscar went to .....Pillow Talk, an entertaining but thoruoghly pedestrian "sex" comedy of the time. THe other nominees, were Operation Petticoat, 400 Blows and WIld Strawberries, so there were 3 AMerican studio genre films, and 2 prestige foreign films (often nominated but rarely Oscered).
What especially gets my goat is that the 3 Hollywood nominees were all comedies of a sort, but I defy anyone to justify how either of the other two has a funnier script, line by line, than NBN.
Maybe studio politics hurt NBN's chances. 11 awards to MGM from just one film, Ben Hur, maybe the folks from Universal thought their studio should win SOMETHING.
East of Eden got around the length problem by dramatizing only the latter part of the book and filling in with exposition what's missing. THat approach might have worked with Giant where I find the first half does drag somewhat. But it wouldn't be the same film.
Two Best Pictures isn't a new concept either. In the very first Oscars in 1928, there was a Best Picture award that went to Wings, and something like a best artistic achievement which went to Sunrise, sort of the reverse of what's being proposed. With the studios dominating who would receive the P award, there was a presumption that it would go to a BO success, so a niche award was created to cater to arty films which were less popular.
I actually see a couple of benefits to the proposal.
The new award will not be relegated to films released at yearend; studios are not going to stop releasing popular big budget films year round just to be better positioned for the Oscar. As noted above, the initial award is likely to go to a film released way back in February.
Also, while Black Panther is clearly the frontrunner in the new category, of films released to date, SPike Lee's Black Klansman is the front runner for BP, and it would be a nice symmetry if they both won.
What's the deal with popular animated films, would they be eligible in both Best Popular and Best Animated? I could see something like the original TOy Story winning both.
And would Psycho have won in this category back in 1960? IMO absolutely, since I envision the award would be given to a film that's both a huge BO success and has artistic merit and has has a significant impact on popular culture, and Psycho certainly fits all of these. In more recent times, Blair WItch Project isan example of a small budget film that could be nominated in this category.
I'll have to go back and look at that scene again. FOr some reason I recall Joe falling before making the catch and the ball landing in his glove while he's flat on his back.
One of Holloywood's urban legends of the 70s is that the editor Verna Fields, not George Lucas, owns 90% of the credit for American Graffiti. This story does have some credibility when you consider the sort of randomness of the scenes in AG, it may have needed a master editor to make iit work.
Yes, those sound edits were pretty funny sometimes. Like James Caan in The GOdfather:" I don't want my brother coming out of the bathroom with just a stick in his hand."
THere was a godawful movie with Elizabeth Taylor and Mia Farrow about perverted goings on in a creepy house. For network TV, they actually reshot half the film focusing on Taylor's runaway daughter who doesn't appear in the original, since after the censors got through with it, they needed to fill a lot of time.
I remember when A Clockwork Orange came out speculating with friends about what a network showing would look like. Probably show the opening scene in the milk bar and cut to Alex in prison.
True, but a lot of people in their mid 60s today look and act a lot younger and engage in more strenuous physical activity than kicking a can.
In the book, Lola wasn't the ugliest woman, she was just a typical plain, old maid type. And the scene where she gets her beauty back at the end doesn't appear.
One change I love in the play/movie vs the book is how the Devil is conspiring against the Washington team in the climactic game, but divine intervention of another sort saves the game with Joe's near impossible catch. In the book, Washington wins the game because of a bad umpire's call, something which the author notes not even the Devil has the power to overcome.
My understanding is that the black band was not for censorship reasons but due to the fact that 16mm and TV prints of Psycho had a much different shape than the original 35mm and they couldn't frame it without showing a glimpse of Leigh's pasties in the squarer format. Obviously not an issue now when the wider 35mm shape is widely available.
THe problem with CE is that Spielberg doesn't seem sure whether the film is about a secret government project or one man's quest for enlightenment and ends up as a mishmash of the two. Still, I prefer it to SW which I found cartoonish, and also don't like its influence on Hollywood films since.
ecarle, Damn Yankees was my favorite film of 1958..... in 1958. I think I prefer Vertigo more recently.
I recall having read the book The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant (what a spoiler of a title!) and the film follows the story very closely but Broadway glitz is added and the gray, grim tone of the novel was deleted - the book emphasizes the emptiness of the lives Lola and Joe lived before their deal with the Devil, and which they return to in the end.
Yes, Suspense.
Shatner appeared in a classic episode of AHP The Glass Eye, but not directed by Hitch.
The gimmick with Hitchcock's epilogues on AHP is that the show would not pass the censors if anyone gets away with their crime. Which of course gave him the opportunity to add a dollop of humor. For example, after Barbara Bel Geddes has successfully clobbered her husband over the head with a frozen leg of lamb and got rid of the evidence by feeding it to the investigating cops, Hitchcock notes she was caught when she tried to do away with her second husband in the same way but a power failure had defrosted the lamb. I love that one because it doesn't really make any sense!
Yes, I was just goofing here, but the TV episodes do say "Directed by Alfred Hitchcock" and do show his need to keep his hand in while preparing his next feature.
ecarle, so you did get to see the last 2 films in 3 projector Cinerama. WHich were also the first 2 Cinerama films to play in general release on a flat screen after their Cinerama runs.
Starting with Mad, Mad world, they dispensed with the 3 projector system largely because audiences at non-Cinerama showings found the breaks in the film annoying. I recall people who saw Mad, Mad World early commenting that they had finally fixed this annoyance, but actually all they did was employ a Super Panavision camera to fill that big screen with a single image.
I wouldn't call Perchance to Dream underrated. I remember we would discuss Friday's episode Monday morning in school, and lots of ids were creeped out by that one.
Where's 22?
IWHYH was a very enjoyable, funny nostalgia trip (and that was back in the 70s!) and introduced two themes which Zemeckis developed in bigger, better films: The influence of ROck and roll on post WWII culture (see Back to the FUture) and encounters between ordinary folks and celebrities (see Forrest GUmp).