Messages

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Off-Topic Discussion / Re: The Celebrity Obituary Thread

« on: Yesterday at 11:28:25 PM »

R.I.P., HAL the Robot (or his voice):

https://variety.com/2018/film/news/douglas-rain-dead-dies-2001-a-space-odyssey-hal-9000-voice-1203025809/

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/obituaries/douglas-rain-dead.html

Douglas Rain, who performed for 32 seasons with the Stratford Festival in Ontario but was perhaps most famous for one faceless movie role — the voice of the HAL 9000 computer in Stanley Kubrick’s landmark 1968 film, “2001: A Space Odyssey” — died on Sunday in St. Marys, Ontario. He was 90.

The Stratford Festival announced his death.

“Douglas shared many of the same qualities as Kubrick’s iconic creation,” Antoni Cimolino, the festival’s artistic director, said. “Precision, strength of steel, enigma and infinite intelligence, as well as a wicked sense of humor. But those of us lucky enough to have worked with Douglas soon solved his riddle and discovered that at the center of his mystery lay warmth and humanity.”

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/ARJ8cAGm6JE" target="_blank" class="new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/ARJ8cAGm6JE</a>

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The CEWB Movie Club / Re: North By Northwest (1959)

« on: Yesterday at 11:18:37 PM »

It's a long story, AKA. I hope I'll get a chance to tell it here, but I'm a little short of time just now. I had to interrupt my viewing of Psycho just when Janet Leigh has had a chat with that nice Tony Perkins and has made up her mind to give up her life of crime and return with the loot to Phoenix. Now for a nice refreshing shower ...

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The CEWB Movie Club / Re: North By Northwest (1959)

« on: Yesterday at 08:27:34 AM »

It's pretty hard to miss.

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The CEWB Movie Club / Re: North By Northwest (1959)

« on: November 12, 2018, 11:43:10 PM »

It's the shape of the field of stars. The 48-star field had all straight lines, 8 across and 6 down. The 50-star flag has 'em staggered, to quite a different visual effect.

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The CEWB Movie Club / Re: North By Northwest (1959)

« on: November 11, 2018, 04:00:59 PM »

It would, I don't think I've ever seen it on the big screen. Lucky you!

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Clint Eastwood Westerns / Re: Fistfull of Dollars on the big screen

« on: November 08, 2018, 11:34:27 PM »

Enjoy, exit00!

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The Dirty Harry Films / Re: Sudden Impact fails because it removes Harry from SF

« on: November 07, 2018, 08:06:43 PM »

Hocine, I edited the first of your two posts above just to show where the quote from AKA23 ended and your post began.

In Sudden Impact, unlike Clint's other films where rape features in the plot, rape is really central to the story, specifically the effects of rape on the survivors. True, it's a commercial vehicle for Clint, and "rape and revenge movies" were fashionable at the time (I haven't seen the two you mention). But among Clint's own movies, Sudden Impact still stands out because of how it portrays the devastating and indelible effects of a rape on one of the main characters. Jennifer is shown as a bitter, vengeful caricature of the vibrant young woman she once was (as we can see in the flashbacks, and in her self-portrait), while the same act has virtually ended her sister's life, reducing her to a catatonic shell. (Similar, interestingly, to one of the perpetrators: the police chief's son, who couldn't live with his own guilt and was crippled and brain-damaged in a suicidal car accident.)

This is a large part of the movie, along with the punch lines and more typical "Dirty Harry" kind of action scenes.

I can still sympathize with Aline's opinion that the rape didn't need to be shown so graphically. But I can understand why it was done that way.

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The CEWB Movie Club / Re: CEWB Movie Club - Who wants in?

« on: November 04, 2018, 09:37:06 PM »

Oh, please, do add Notorious!

I'm running about a week behind, but I do intend to see them all.

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The CEWB Movie Club / Re: North By Northwest (1959)

« on: November 03, 2018, 08:19:26 PM »

I would say another comparison between North by Northwest and The Gauntlet is the grandiose over-the-top climactic scene of each film.  You can't go much bigger than Mt. Rushmore for a final chase scene -- unless you're driving down a Phoenix street with hundreds of cops trying to shoot you down. They're not just "huge" over-the-top endings, they're hilariously over the top, huge endings. 

That's a great point, too.

I went on in my paper to point out all the differences, but I won't bore you with that now.

If you have the DVD, don't miss the "making of" featurette that's included. It's hosted by Eva Marie Saint, and includes great insider stuff from Ernest Lehman, Martin Landau and the director's daughter, Pat Hitchcock. I'm sure there isn't anyone watching this film who could be under the illusion that they really did shoot that final chase sequence on the face of Mt. Rushmore, but it's fascinating to see how they really did do it.

The featurette is from 2000, and I was curious as to whether Pat is still with us. From what I can find on the web, she is, and she turned ninety this year.

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The CEWB Movie Club / Re: Psycho (1960)

« on: November 03, 2018, 12:40:35 AM »

That's it, Aline. The ghost of Rebecca, the first Mrs De Winter, haunts Manderley and everyone who enters there ... just as the ghost of "Mother" haunts Norman and the Bates Motel. 

Very well done. 

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Off-Topic Discussion / Re: The Photographers thread: Show us your stuff!!

« on: November 01, 2018, 06:46:46 PM »

I don't think they're too big, at least not on my computer screen. 

If you want to make them smaller, you can do that with a bit of code.

The URL for an image goes between tags like this: [img ]https://i.imgur.com/NHRYhJM.jpg[/img ] (without the space before each "]").

If you put width= and a number, say about 700 for a nice convenient size, before that first "]", like this ...

[img width=700 ]https://i.imgur.com/NHRYhJM.jpg[/img ] (again, without the space before each "]")

... it will come out smaller, like this:



I hope that helps. And what a nice excuse to post a smaller version of that pic of that adorable kitty! 

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Off-Topic Discussion / Re: The Photographers thread: Show us your stuff!!

« on: October 31, 2018, 08:01:53 PM »

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!

And just in time for Halloween, too!

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The Dirty Harry Films / Re: Sudden Impact fails because it removes Harry from SF

« on: October 30, 2018, 10:22:19 PM »

Thanks once again for your insight, Hocine!

There isn't actually a rape in Unforgiven though, is there?

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The CEWB Movie Club / Re: Psycho (1960)

« on: October 29, 2018, 10:49:05 PM »

Funny, I turned on the TV tonight to see what was on my "favorite" channels ... and Psycho was on one of them! I watched it for a minute or two, then I shut it off. I'll watch the whole thing in its time!

Meanwhile, inspired by one of the features on my Rebecca DVD ... anyone see any similarities between Rebecca and Psycho?

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The CEWB Movie Club / Re: North By Northwest (1959)

« on: October 29, 2018, 07:15:53 AM »

Those are some interesting similarities, KC. And I guess Clint the actor would be a favorite of Clint the director.

Yeah, that was sly of me, wasn't it!

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Off-Topic Discussion / Re: 2018 Baseball

« on: October 28, 2018, 09:52:28 PM »

Bah, humbug.

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The CEWB Movie Club / Re: North By Northwest (1959)

« on: October 28, 2018, 09:51:25 PM »

I'm planning to watch (or rather, re-watch) it in the next couple of days. Meanwhile, I hope nobody will mind if I post here the beginning of a paper I wrote for a film course I was taking back in the 90s, shortly before I got involved in the Hitchcock project I've mentioned before. The paper was titled Hitchcock’s North by Northwest and Eastwood’s The Gauntlet: A Comparison. Maybe it will inspire some of you to watch North by Northwest! 

Although North by Northwest, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 masterpiece, and The Gauntlet, Clint Eastwood’s underappreciated sixth directorial effort (1977) might not strike the average filmgoer as having much in common, a closer examination reveals a surprising number of similarities.

Both films are apparently basically genre films of the action/thriller type (North by Northwest belongs to the subgenre of espionage/intrigue and The Gauntlet to that of the cop/chase picture); both, not too far under the surface, are essentially romantic comedies in which the main point of the plot is not for the hero to solve the intrigue or slay the malefactors, but to win the girl.

Both feature a major male star and a lesser known female star; in both cases the male star is a favorite with the director and the female star is of a “type” the director is known to favor. In both films, the male star’s well-established persona is both challenged and reasserted by events and circumstances in the film; both stars are allowed moments when they allude to past roles and exploit their familiar image and/or off-screen celebrity in somewhat nondiegetic ways.

In both films, the hero is presented in a brisk expository prologue, during which he walks and talks with a colleague, as a man with a drinking problem who has failed to establish a stable romantic relationship. In both films the hero will be plunged repeatedly by events beyond his control into situations of melodramatic peril, sometimes occurring in scenically spectacular settings, and featuring a lavish use of special effects. In both films, these situations include an extended one in which the hero is on the ground and is being fired at from an airborne vehicle; both of the air-to-ground chase scenes conclude with the airborne vehicle exploding spectacularly.

In both films, the hero is falsely accused of committing a murder that was actually perpetrated by the malefactors; in both, he cannot expect help from the police in clearing himself. In both films, he embarks on a journey, traveling variously by taxi, train, bus, purloined private vehicle, police car, plane, and ambulance; in both, most of these rides will be obtained in unorthodox ways.

In both films, in the course of the journey he meets a sexually forward blond woman who will attempt to seduce him for reasons unrelated to her feelings for him; in both films, she will prove to have been a sex partner of the chief malefactor, who turns against her and seeks her death. In both films, the hero and heroine will quarrel, but fall in love; triumphing over all obstacles, internal and external, they will be united at the end, but not before a scene in which the hero will fall at the heroine’s feet, apparently shot to death.

Finally, to make the closure complete for the action genre as well as the romantic comedy, the intrigue will be solved in the one film, the malefactors slain in the other.

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The CEWB Movie Club / Re: Rebecca (1940)

« on: October 28, 2018, 09:34:35 PM »

Am I really the only other one who watched Rebecca? I know it might not be possible to find it streaming, but it's really worth buying the DVD. Or get it from your library! They should have it.

I can endorse just about everything Matt says above. In particular, watch the closeups of Joan Fontaine in the scene of Laurence Olivier's unexpected "reveal." Amazing mixture of emotions.

Does "the second Mrs. De Winter" have father issues? She tells us (it's almost all we know about her past) that she had just lost her father, and Maxim looks old enough to move into that role.

I noticed two things in the story that Hitchcock elided. One was the honeymoon, apparently a time of unblemished happiness for both of them, which we catch glimpses of in Maxim's home movies (again, as in Sabotage, a movie within a movie!) This was partly cut just for purposes of shortening the story, but also it prevents us from seeing "her" happy in her new life, as it takes the audience abruptly from the proposal scene ("I'm asking you to marry me, you little fool" is one of the great lines from the whole romance/gothic/innocent-heroine-brooding-mysterious-older-man genre, on a par with "Reader, I married him" from the genre's original, Jane Eyre) to the gloomy arrival at Manderley, where rain is pouring outside and an army of servants is lined up to confront her as she enters.

The second elision is at the end, where we don't get to see what happens between the shot with Mrs. Danvers approaching "her," who has apparently dozed off by a fireplace, with a burning candle ... and the shot when a frantic Maxim arrives back home to find Manderley ablaze! This, of course, was done to heighten the suspense for the audience about the fate of "her" ... and the dog, who was with her in the previous scene. But Maxim finds them both outside on the grounds, safe and sound. This time, unlike in Sabotage, where not only a little boy but a cute puppy got blown up, the dog was saved!

All the small parts are well cast. George Saunders was a standout as the oily lover. But of course, Judith Anderson practically steals the movie. One of the all-time great villainesses ... or is she, too, just a woman hopelessly in love?

I know there were some changes from the Daphne Du Maurier novel. Has anybody read it? I'm thinking it might be a worthwhile read, if only to compare it with the movie. I know a friend of mine, who liked the movie a lot, used to complain that the ending was different from the book.

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Off-Topic Discussion / Re: THE ENDLESS, POINTLESS thread

« on: October 28, 2018, 02:49:20 PM »

Looks like somethnnig I wloud type! I wouldn't buy it! 

Hey, they spelled "Power" right, so presumably it goes on, at least!

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Off-Topic Discussion / Re: THE ENDLESS, POINTLESS thread

« on: October 28, 2018, 10:04:07 AM »

Would you buy this radio? Should I? What's wrong with this picture?



Bigger version:
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1916/2507/products/COBY-CR201SL_013e606c-9c2a-4937-b1d4-0673b3f2bcbc.jpg?v=1503527006