Last Movie You Watched

[Karl Henning]

This one has more grit than P12 sandpaper.

A classic.  Just ask our Cato!

[Cato]

This one has more grit than P12 sandpaper.

A classic.  Just ask our Cato!

Oh yes!  I saw it several times in the 1960's.   Great movie and a great play for television by Rod Serling, who had tried boxing in his youth. 

The third time I viewed it was in 1966 at a religious retreat (part of my education at an all-boys Catholic high school).   We were supposed to discuss the moral aspects of the characters, along with the moral aspect of professional boxing itself, which the Catholic Church has traditionally condemned as completely immoral.  I recall quite distinctly a priest saying that anything beyond 3-round Olympic boxing with headgear was a serious sin, since deliberately attempting to injure the brain and cause unconsciousness placed the opponent one step away from death.  To do this for money was contemptible.

What then to make of all those (seemingly Catholic) Hispanic boxers making the Sign of the Cross before they enter the ring?  0:)

On topic: thanks to cable channel FXM I caught this Brian DePalma classic a few days ago:



One of my all-time faves: psychic powers, secret government agencies, and never a dull moment!  One of the greatest and funniest scenes has Kirk Douglas practically doing Frank Gorshin's impersonation of himself: after terrorizing a policeman ( a young Dennis Franz) via a car chase, the Kirk Douglas character - about to go his way - releases the policeman and says:

"Ask Childress (the villain) how he likes his arm now!"
"Wha- wha- what did you do to his arm?"

"I KILLED it!"   And with his teeth clenched he drags the word "KILLED" across the bottom of his throat, exactly like Frank Gorshin's exaggerated imitation!

Yesterday we went to a theater to give this movie a chance:



After about 20 minutes I feared we had spent money on a bomb.  But then some family scenes started up and injected life into it: oddly, the "stand-up comic" main character is either not funny or only mildly amusing, with the usual comedy-club shtick ( a la "So I buy Grape Nuts and open up the box: guess what?  No grapes, no nuts, what is this?!").  When Holly Hunter and Ray Romano finally appear, things really improve.

Imagine an early Woody Allen movie, except Woody is a not particularly funny Pakistani Muslim whose parents are old-country immigrants. and who wants nothing to do with Pakistani women.  In fact the movie has been criticized for trashing Pakistani women, e.g.:

...The message is clear: to marry a Pakistani woman would, for Kumail, be a surrender, a backwards step.

Jewish women are used to this schtick, thanks to the many, many love stories in which Jewish men are portrayed as exotically desirable while blond non-Jewish women represent the romantic ideal. Woody Allen and, latterly, Judd Apatow have both worked in this vein for decades, and it has long been implied in movies starring Jewish comedians such as Ben Stiller (Meet The Parents) and Adam Sandler (The Wedding Singer). Jewish women are represented as nasal, nagging or simply non-existent – someone to move on from as quickly as possible...

See:

https://www.theguardian.com/global/2017/jul/15/the-big-sick-funny-sweet-original-leave-me-furious

[drogulus]

     That's a shallow interpretation. Kumail is not objecting to any nationality, he is objecting to an arranged marriage. The religious ethnocentrism comes from the parents. Neither is he bound by identity politics that reinforces the same prejudices. On the subject of women, one might ask how they view these arranged marriages. I consider that question asked and answered.

[Cato]

     That's a shallow interpretation. Kumail is not objecting to any nationality, he is objecting to an arranged marriage. The religious ethnocentrism comes from the parents. Neither is he bound by identity politics that reinforces the same prejudices. On the subject of women, one might ask how they view these arranged marriages. I consider that question asked and answered.

True:  he says that he is no longer a Muslim, and not a Pakistani.  He is an American who believes in finding the love of his life on his own.

[SonicMan46]

This one has more grit than P12 sandpaper.

 

Boy, I've not seen Requiem... for a while - only have the film on a burned DVD-R from the TCM channel - just checked Amazon, a commercial DVD is available but no BD - Dave

[SonicMan46]

Last night, a couple of new BDs for my 'commercial' collection - had these films on DVD-R only:

Great Expectations (1946) w/ John Mills, Valerie Hobson, Alec Guinness, et al; David Lean, director - excellent AV presentation, as shown by the ratings below w/ glorious B&W cinematography - rated in the Top Ten of 20th century British films by the British Film Institute - highly recommended.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) w/ Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier, Katherine Hepburn, et al; Stanley Kramer, director - I've always had an ambivalent attitude toward this film for many reasons - many and more discussed well in this 1968 Roger Ebert Review - 50th Anniversary release arrived as an inexpensive Digipak (w/ Amazon credit, my cost was just $4) - despite its flaws, dated presentation, and Ebert's reservations, the film remains entertaining and Tracy in his last role was a joy to watch for me.  Dave

 

[Cato]

Boy, I've not seen Requiem... for a while - only have the film on a burned DVD-R from the TCM channel - just checked Amazon, a commercial DVD is available but no BD - Dave

The original television play with Jack Palance, Keenan Wynn, and the latter's father comedian Ed Wynn, is also worthwhile.

https://www.youtube.com/v/_el9xm6pxW4

The Wynn's generated another television drama about their performances in this play!   The Man in the Funny Suit is about Ed Wynn being given a chance to revive his career, and needs to learn how to be an actor quickly.   They play themselves, and Rod Serling plays himself, as does Red Skelton!

https://www.youtube.com/v/o6Q7OWSdS4I

Rod is great!  Wait until you hear him growl: "He's going to stink and 70 million people are going to smell 'im!"

[Karl Henning]

Rod is great!  Wait until you hear him growl: "He's going to stink and 70 million people are going to smell 'im!"

Did they break the mold after Serling, or what?

[Bogey]

Did they break the mold after Serling, or what?

He has to be on my Rushmore for story tellers.

[Karl Henning]

Separately, oh lawd:  how did I not know that was Christopher Lloyd, in (erm) The Search for Spock?

[Jaakko Keskinen]

I partly dislike that 1946 version of Great Expectations. The actor of Jaggers, my favorite character in the book, was not good.

[SonicMan46]

I partly dislike that 1946 version of Great Expectations. The actor of Jaggers, my favorite character in the book, was not good.

Just looked up the actor mentioned above - Francis L. Sullivan (1903-1956) - he has an impressive film/TV credit listing on IMDB, right up until his early death; interestingly, he played the same character in a 1934 film of the same name - I've not seen the earlier movie.  Dave

 

[Cato]

Concerning Dunkirk, apparently one reviewer dislikes the nearly complete absence of historical context, and really dislikes the absence of Winston Churchill from the story:

From today's (July 21, 2017) Wall Street Journal :

Salient excerpts:

...Director Christopher Nolan...has said he wanted to avoid making a film "not relevant to today's audiences" and that he didn't want to get them bogged down in "politics."

This says more than Mr. Nolan intended about his estimate of today's moviegoers—whose capacities, he fears, would not be equal to a film involving images of a historic figure. There were other worries. Mr. Nolan didn't want to make a film that could be seen as old-fashioned, he informed his interviewer. It appears further that the director wanted to avoid taxing today's film audiences with any specifics about the foe that had the British Expeditionary Force fighting for its life on those beaches. ...

...  Mr. Nolan explained.  "We don't see Churchill. We barely glimpse the enemy." All true. Though there are quite a number of enemy planes, bombers smashing the troops on the beach. The bare glimpse Mr. Nolan mentions is of the insignia identifying the nation to which those planes belong. Who could it be?

For, as Mr. Nolan has told us, he considers Dunkirk "a universal story . . . about communal heroism." Which explains why this is—despite its impressive cinematography, its moving portrait of suffering troops and their rescuers—a Dunkirk flattened out, disconnected from the spirit of its time, from any sense even of the particular mighty enemy with which England was at war...

..."universal" (is) a tip-off—the warning bell that we're about to lose most of the important facts of that history, and that the story-telling will be a special kind—a sort that obscures all specifics that run counter to the noble vision of the universalist.

No wonder those German Stukas and Heinkels bombarding the British can barely be identified as such. Then there is Mr. Nolan's avoidance of Churchill lest audiences get bogged down in "politics"—a strange term for Churchill's concerns during those dark days of May 1940. One so much less attractive, in its hint of the ignoble and the corrupt, than "communal" and "universal"—words throbbing with goodness. Nothing old-fashioned about them either, especially "universal"—a model of socio-babble for all occasions...

...There was, for Churchill, no acceptable accommodation with Hitler. He knew the disastrous impact on British morale of any word of talks or arrangements with the Nazis. They would instead hear from their new prime minister only the iron determination to defeat the enemy, the confidence that it would be done—which had not a little to do with the strengthened spirit of the British public. They had been asked to fight for victory at all costs, and most knew why they must—among them those pilots of small boats braving German fire to rescue the army...

...Left out of this saga is any other sense of the importance of Operation Dynamo, the unexpectedly successful rescue of 338,000 soldiers who could, instead of being marched off to captivity by that barely visible enemy—call it Nation X—return to an England desperate for manpower...

...All this falls into the category of facts, irrelevant history, that Mr. Nolan would consider wrong for today's audiences. To the very end no image of Churchill defiles the sanctity of this film's safe space. One of the final scenes does present an exhausted evacuee returned from Dunkirk, reading aloud to himself from a newspaper of Churchill's most famous address, of June 4, 1940. The "We shall never surrender" speech is spoken by a young soldier, making it all reassuringly relevant—no trace of the man himself.... 

See:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dumbing-down-of-dunkirk-1500592065

I will be interested in hearing the opinions of our members from Europe, especially those in Great Britain.

[kishnevi]

Not having seen the movie of course, but if its focus is on the actual "Operation Dynamo" and the BEF, there would not be much room for Churchill. He was in London, and had been PM for barely two weeks, starting on May 10.  Before then he was in charge of the Admiralty, certainly important but not PM.

A completely different note:. I just stumbled over this rather curious parallel to that closing shot in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/06/23/six-nazi-spies-were-executed-in-d-c-white-supremacists-gave-them-a-memorial-on-federal-land/

[kishnevi]

Another review of Dunkirk, which suggests Nolan was not trying to narrate the story of Dunkirk, but to depict the actual experience of the soldiers.

http://reason.com/archives/2017/07/21/movie-review-dunkirk

If Nolan wanted to convey "the fog of war" those nebulous glimpses of German military power would fit in. 

[aligreto]

Bless the Child....

[Autumn Leaves]

Latest viewing:



Watched this today - I'm quite out of touch with the latest movie news/releases and didn't realize this sequel had been made until today.
Didn't have any expectations about the film (I guess I sort of assumed it wouldn't likely be up to the standard of the original) - After a bit of a slow start it kind of took off and I found this most enjoyable indeed.
All the original cast were roped in for the Movie and put in good performances.
I have the first movie in my collection and may break it out for a re-watch soon.

[aligreto]

Latest viewing:



Watched this today - I'm quite out of touch with the latest movie news/releases and didn't realize this sequel had been made until today.
Didn't have any expectations about the film (I guess I sort of assumed it wouldn't likely be up to the standard of the original) - After a bit of a slow start it kind of took off and I found this most enjoyable indeed.
All the original cast were roped in for the Movie and put in good performances.
I have the first movie in my collection and may break it out for a re-watch soon.

Good stuff. I have the original but I have not seen the sequel.

[Autumn Leaves]

Good stuff. I have the original but I have not seen the sequel.

It was much better than I expected! - worth a watch perhaps? .

[aligreto]

It was much better than I expected! - worth a watch perhaps? .

Will do; thank you