From I Wake Up Screaming (1941) on TCM tonight comes a description so fitting for me: “You’re an ink-stinking word slinger.” ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜 So now that’s my Twitter handle. ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
Category: Classic Cinema
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Movie Night: Red Dust
"The attraction here isn't really the cultural relic/curiousity value, it's the variation of the old man meets woman, they hate each other, they clash with sparkling dialogue and then end up together 'til death they do part. This bit has been done to death in Hollywood's 100+ year run, but it can be freshened and redeemed if the scriptwriter is up to the job."
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Movie Night: Born Yesterday
"Born Yesterday is pretty fabulous. At least until it sinks in that it's just as applicable today (especially today!) as it was in 1950. In that year, it could have been warning against the House Un-American Activities Committee, which ultimately wrecked lives, but failed. But today, the movie is depressing when you realize that Broderick Crawford's Harry Brock is in charge of the country, the Senate and the judiciary and is sitting in the White House tweeting."
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Movie Night: Strait Jacket
"The bonuses here are George Kennedy as a farmhand foreshadowing by 22 years Billy Bob Thornton in 1996's Swing Blade ("I like them French fried potaters."), all the Pepsi placement, and Lee Majors in pre-Six Million Dollar Man mode, along with his very hairy chest, fluffily rising and falling just before the axe falls."
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Movie Night: An American Tragedy
"Basically, amoral social climber from poor background seduces poor factory girl, gets her pregnant, wants to marry a rich socialite and so kills poor factory girl by smashing her in the head with his tennis racket and dumping her body in a lake, fakes a canoe accident, trips self up by being basically an idiot, dies in electric chair after mercy is refused by Governor Charles Evans Hughes."
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Movie Night: Thieves’ Highway
"Thieves' Highway is a classic Noir tale of truckers and apples and greed and sex and San Francisco and California and highways and death."
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Movie Night: Desk Set
"Not only is it hilarious, it has fabulous midcentury (ugh, that word) interiors, jokes only librarian/book/research nerds understand, an awesome supporting cast including EMERAC and Kate gets to get blotto and talk about the "Mexican Avenue Bus" (the Lexington Avenue Bus, that is)."
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Movie Night: Hot Millions
"There's a lot more than just smiles to recommend this one–ts droll English humor, its glimpse at fashions and designs and trends of 1968, the fantastic acting of everyone, including the performance of Bob Newhart, whose movie outings are often forgotten, the sarcastic wit and the satire–it's a long list and will need a second viewing to get it all."
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Movie Night: Die Brücke
"It's hard to think of a better illustration of the end of the European theater of war free of the pernicious and ubiquitous American boo-yah of so many countless war films."
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Movie Night: Ich War Neunzehn
"Konrad Wolf's 1968 feels like a real 1945; he takes us back to his youth and we're submerged in the fog that he had to navigate through once upon a time."
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Movie Night: Conquest
"The film itself is fairly representative of the period and shows how far ahead of her time Garbo was ... that she could shine in spite of rather stilted dialogue, in a non-native language shows just how great an actor she was at the height of her career. It wasn't bad, and I might have another look under certain conditions, but I probably wouldn't buy it for the DVD collection, unless Criterion gets hold of it."
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TCM Tonight: Summer Under the Stars – Joan Crawford
Of COURSE we had to watch some Joan tonight. Not taking time to behold the wonder that is our patron saint, Lucille LeSueur, would be anathema, blasphemy, time wasted! First up was 1952’s Sudden Fear — Joan with Jack Palance, Gloria Grahame, Bruce Bennett, Virginia Hudson and Mike “Touch” / “Mannix” Connors. David Miller directed. Playwright...
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Sunset Boulevard!
Seeing Sunset Boulevard on the big screen Sunday was pretty fabulous. Noticed many things you can’t see on the tee-wee…. Posted by Steve Pollock on Tuesday, May 15, 2018
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Casablanca, Here's Looking at You!
"Casablanca" is by far best on the big screen. Would have loved a cleaner print, but Ingrid is indeed luminous and… Posted by Steve Pollock on Sunday, November 12, 2017
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Fiery Marble
“I always knew I loved Maureen O'hara. Now I know why, thanks to this clipping from 1945.”
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Fiery Marble (FB 2017)
“I always knew I loved Maureen O'hara. Now I know why, thanks to this clipping from 1945.”