AmateisGal
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What Was The Last Movie You Watched?
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XMen Origins: Wolverine
Julian Shellhammer
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We started our Christmas movie watching with Elf on a couple weeks back (yeah, I know, that's a while ago, but I haven't been able to post for some time), followed by Miracle on 34th Street last week, and A Christmas Story this past weekend. I started the 1922 Douglas Fairbanks Robin Hood, but what with work, grand-kids, Christmas prep and shopping, time is sparse.
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Sound City, again.
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As did I which is why I thought it was going to be a comedy. Pitt's accent was too much for me to take him in any way seriously.I actually thought Brad Pitt was too much of a caricature. But then again, aren't all the characters in this film some form of caricature? I did like that all of the top Nazis got wiped out in one fell swoop.
AmateisGal
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I've been watching some Christmas movies this week, too. Going to save The Bishop's Wife for Christmas Eve, though.
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I think he was channeling Warren Oates....Pitt's accent was too much for me to take him in any way seriously.
Doctor Strange
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What We Do In The Shadows - an interesting little comedy, a faux-reality show following a quartet of vampires in New Zealand. Quite funny in places, and definitely worth a look if you know your movie vampire lore.
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I've been watching some Christmas movies this week, too. Going to save The Bishop's Wife for Christmas Eve, though.
We are doing the same. We've watched "Christmas in Connecticut," "Desk Set" (a bit of a Christmas movie) and "Holiday Affair" (my favorite "under the radar" Christmas movie) so far, but are saving "The Bishop's Wife" (probably my favorite of all the Christmas movies) and "A Christmas Carol" for Christmas Eve or Day. And we'll sneak a few more in like "Remember the Night," "Holiday Inn," and "Love Actually" (shut up, we like it) time permitting.
AmateisGal
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I still need to watch Holiday Affair and Holiday Inn, too. Plus Meet John Doe which is sort of a Christmas movie (toward the end, anyway). I watched Remember the Night last week. It's such a nice little story, though it ends somewhat too abruptly for me. I've never watched Love Actually all the way through. I think I watched the last hour of it, so I need to remedy that at some point.
Worf
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I've seen that one twice. Not Serling's best work but if you need a different take it's something to watch. The Peter Sellers episode I could've done without...
Worf
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I love "Holiday Affair," but acknowledge it is only a good movie, but so much of it - the NYC setting, the model train, Mitchum and Leigh's chemistry, Leigh's apartment - work as Christmas iconography and time-travel that I just love it. "Holiday Inn," has some fun parts but it also has a horribly racist blackface scene that was, I guess, acceptable at the time, but is jarring to us today. It diminishes the movie for me, but it is of its time, so I try to enjoy the other parts of the movie (just wanted you to be aware). And "Love Actually" is my favorite Christmas movie of the last three or so decades (judge me all you want).
Re "Carol for Another Christmas," I don't remember it well, but my vague impression is that it was interesting as a kind of Twilight Zone take on Christmas, but its execution didn't really work and, ultimately, it only had a sort of curio value. But again, I haven't seen it in a long time and don't remember it well.
AmateisGal
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Yeah, the blackface scene in Holiday Inn is a bit jarring.
Same. It's pretty much what everybody wanted to happen at the end of the War, but Hitler beat us to it.I did like that all of the top Nazis got wiped out in one fell swoop.
I watched Elf a few weeks back, too. It's probably my favorite Will Ferrell movie. I've also got It's A Wonderful Life fully recorded on the DVR, and I have Shop Around the Corner set to be recorded Christmas Eve. Since I'm hosting family that night, I'll probably save it for Christmas Day to watch.
MisterCairo
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SANTA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I KNOW him!
I KNOW him!
LizzieMaine
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Just finished previewing "Trumbo," which we start for a week's run tomorrow. As a picture, it's excellent -- and if Cranston doesn't win the Oscar, it's a frameup. Helen Mirren ought to at least be nominated, as well, for her repellently reptillian turn as Hearst columnist Hedda Hopper.
But as a historical document of the blacklist period, I've got some issues with it. The foremost of these is the way Edward G. Robinson was portrayed -- in the picture, EGR is blacklisted, can't find work, and out of desperation agrees to "name names" before the HUAC. In fact, EGR was blacklisted, couldn't find work, testified before HUAC twice, and did *not* name names. He did debase *himself* before the Committee, allowing them to make him grovel and beg for forgiveness for his ideological deviations, but he at no time "named names." Robinson seems to be used here as a surrogate for others who did name names -- his rationale for doing so in the movie is exactly that of actor Lee J. Cobb, who was probably too obscure a figure to be invoked in the film. It's unfair to Robinson's memory that he's portrayed this way, but from a movie point of view, it makes sense.
The film also glosses over the fact that two of the Hollywood Ten themselves also named names before HUAC, Edward Dymtryk and Frank Tuttle. Both are portrayed, but their fate is not discussed at any length.
As far as period detail goes, it's neither better nor worse than the average Hollywood product of the moment. I was pleased to see 48 star flags used in scenes where they would have been appropriate, and I chuckled out loud at the scene where Trumbo's little girl is studiously reading a copy of the Daily Worker, with the period-correct masthead and page design, but I'm really getting tired of scenes where you see a group of news reporters chasing their quarry thru corridors with hand-held microphones extended. This simply did not happen in the late forties, and didn't become common until the late fifties. And as foul a creature as Hedda Hopper was, I doubt she actually lived in a sleazy little walkup apartment with a Western Auto brand TV.
But as a historical document of the blacklist period, I've got some issues with it. The foremost of these is the way Edward G. Robinson was portrayed -- in the picture, EGR is blacklisted, can't find work, and out of desperation agrees to "name names" before the HUAC. In fact, EGR was blacklisted, couldn't find work, testified before HUAC twice, and did *not* name names. He did debase *himself* before the Committee, allowing them to make him grovel and beg for forgiveness for his ideological deviations, but he at no time "named names." Robinson seems to be used here as a surrogate for others who did name names -- his rationale for doing so in the movie is exactly that of actor Lee J. Cobb, who was probably too obscure a figure to be invoked in the film. It's unfair to Robinson's memory that he's portrayed this way, but from a movie point of view, it makes sense.
The film also glosses over the fact that two of the Hollywood Ten themselves also named names before HUAC, Edward Dymtryk and Frank Tuttle. Both are portrayed, but their fate is not discussed at any length.
As far as period detail goes, it's neither better nor worse than the average Hollywood product of the moment. I was pleased to see 48 star flags used in scenes where they would have been appropriate, and I chuckled out loud at the scene where Trumbo's little girl is studiously reading a copy of the Daily Worker, with the period-correct masthead and page design, but I'm really getting tired of scenes where you see a group of news reporters chasing their quarry thru corridors with hand-held microphones extended. This simply did not happen in the late forties, and didn't become common until the late fifties. And as foul a creature as Hedda Hopper was, I doubt she actually lived in a sleazy little walkup apartment with a Western Auto brand TV.
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This is the one thing that bothers me about movies that are allegedly "based on a true story" or some such--the way they often play fast-and-loose with facts and present them as gospel. I realize they're trying to tell an entertaining story, but people walk out of the theater thinking they've just seen a documentary and, most of the time, don't bother to learn the truth on their own. I'm still waiting for the day when I hear someone wonder aloud why they weren't taught in school that Abraham Lincoln hunted vampires; sadly, I won't be too surprised.
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^^^ I can't stand that they can say something like "based on a true story" to give something verisimilitude and then trash someone's reputation like Edward G. Robinson. That is wrong. I don't care how long he has been dead - that is wrong.
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