What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Zombie_61]

I love that Ann Harding is in it as she seemed to be one of several pre-code stars - and a fantastic one at that - who all but disappeared once the code stopped movies from lucidly showing what people really do. If memory serves, in "It Happened on 5th Avenue," she shows, once again, that she is a real actress handling an small role with understated professionalism.

Harding has what would be considered the "female lead" role in the movie so I'm not sure I'd say it's a small role, but it's really an ensemble piece so I wouldn't say it's an extensive role either. But, except for some obviously fake piano playing, she's quite good in it and definitely stands out in the crowd.

 

[Bushman]

It's A Wonderful Life (again). What can I say? I love this movie!

 

[BobHufford]

It's A Wonderful Life (again). What can I say? I love this movie!

+1

I even teared up in the final scene (again). This film is a seasonal tradition for me. The rest of my family ... not so much.

 

[MisterCairo]

It's a Wonderful Life in the wardroom with, sadly, only a couple of colleagues, as we were prepping to enter port.

I missed watching it last year at home (!) but saw it at sea!

It's a wonderful but STRANGE life at times!

 

[AmateisGal]

Christmas in Connecticut (again).

 

[Fading Fast]

Christmas in Connecticut (again).

I've watched it one and half times this month already. Sydney Greenstreet is a ridiculously good actor - he brings credibility to a lot of the silly dialogue they gave him. Barbara Stanwyck has the same skill - she elevates the quality of the material.

 

[LizzieMaine]

We showed "A Christmas Story" on the big screen over the weekend to an audience of almost 250 people, some of whom had obviously never seen it before -- you could tell from the sudden whoops of laughter or recognition from random spots in the audience.

Watching it again myself I was impressed yet again with its attention to detail -- although it's specifically intended to be nebulously set in the "late thirties-early forties" without being pinned down to a specific year, within that framework it's very true to the period. The color palette of the Parkers' house is dead-on mid-to-late thirties, with a lot of browns and reds and dark blues, and there's a run-down frowsiness to it all that really feels like a just-out-of-the-Depression working-class/lower-middle-class neighborhood, and on the big screen you really notice how distressed everything is -- the window frames in the kitchen are roughly painted with green enamel, without having scraped the paint underneath, giving it that lumpy chipped look that you get when someone painted without really knowing what they were doing. The linoleum in the kitchen floor is dirty and battered-looking, the doors on the kitchen cabinets don't close right. It feels like a real house, lived in by real people, and you rarely see that in movies, least of all low-budget movies from the eighties.

 

[Worf]

"Krampus" - Funny and fun... a decent "anti-Christmas" movie for the holiday season... At least the floor wasn't sticky with drool from Star Wars Fanbois. Some great lines in it too Kathy Bates as the drunken, uninvited Aunt was hilarious!

Worf and a Bah Humbug to youse all!

 

[2jakes]

We showed "A Christmas Story" on the big screen over the weekend to an audience of almost 250 people, some of whom had obviously never seen it before -- you could tell from the sudden whoops of laughter or recognition from random spots in the audience.

Watching it again myself I was impressed yet again with its attention to detail -- although it's specifically intended to be nebulously set in the "late thirties-early forties" without being pinned down to a specific year, within that framework it's very true to the period. The color palette of the Parkers' house is dead-on mid-to-late thirties, with a lot of browns and reds and dark blues, and there's a run-down frowsiness to it all that really feels like a just-out-of-the-Depression working-class/lower-middle-class neighborhood, and on the big screen you really notice how distressed everything is -- the window frames in the kitchen are roughly painted with green enamel, without having scraped the paint underneath, giving it that lumpy chipped look that you get when someone painted without really knowing what they were doing. The linoleum in the kitchen floor is dirty and battered-looking, the doors on the kitchen cabinets don't close right. It feels like a real house, lived in by real people, and you rarely see that in movies, least of all low-budget movies from the eighties.

The Red Ryder BB-gun in the story & the movie as well, only existed in Jean Shepard’s world.
There was never a Red Ryder BB-gun as described in the movie.
Daisy made a special one as detailed by Shepard for the movie.
I have a copy of this Red Ryder as shown in the movie.

Daisy did make a BB-gun with a compass in the wood stock along with a sundial.
It was known as the “Buck Jones” Model 107 Pump BB Gun first produced
in 1934. My favorite!

I also have the original Red Ryder BB-guns from the ‘40s & 50’s.
I never shot my eye out & I never shot birds, my primary
victims were tin cans.
Also, I never shot at glass soda bottles because I could get
money back from the deposit which I happily used to buy
my 1¢ bubble-gum baseball cards or 10¢ comic books.

The guns are still made, but as most things today, the qualify is not
the same.

And for the most part, the snow was “created” for this film.
Nevertheless, this movie is one of my top favorites for the holidays.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think an important aspect of "Christmas Story" is that it was never intended to be a perfectly-accurate replication of the period -- the setting is the late thirties/early forties as remembered by a man who was a child then, with the same sense of foggy generality that any middle-aged person has looking back on their childhood. The whole tone of the book the film was based on -- Shepherd's "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash" -- is along that line.

The director has stated in interviews that this was a big part of why they didn't want to tie the film down to an exact year. They deliberately inserted various bits of ambugity in the settings to throw off anyone who'd try to pin it to a specific, exact date, and the overelaboration of the gun was another aspect of this. Adult Ralphie was remembering it as being better and more impressive than it ever actually was, because that's how people tend to remember the things they loved most as kids, whether it's a Christmas present, a best friend, or a parent. Indeed, the "Old Man," as portrayed in the movie is a lot more likeable, by any account, than Shepherd's actual father.

Interestingly, Jean Shepherd himself didn't grow up in the period in which the film is set. He was born in 1921, so he would have been Ralphie's age about 1930, a world with a popular culture very different from that of ten years later. The idea of kids' adventure shows on the radio was only just beginning then -- Little Orphan Annie didn't start on the air until 1931 -- and Red Ryder didn't yet exist at all. If young Jean had a cowboy hero it would have been a movie cowboy like Hoot Gibson, Buck Jones, or Ken Maynard.

 

[ChiTownScion]

I think an important aspect of "Christmas Story" is that it was never intended to be a perfectly-accurate replication of the period -- the setting is the late thirties/early forties as remembered by a man who was a child then, with the same sense of foggy generality that any middle-aged person has looking back on their childhood.

...............................................................................................


Interestingly, Jean Shepherd himself didn't grow up in the period in which the film is set. He was born in 1921, so he would have been Ralphie's age about 1930, a world with a popular culture very different from that of ten years later. The idea of kids' adventure shows on the radio was only just beginning then -- Little Orphan Annie didn't start on the air until 1931 -- and Red Ryder didn't yet exist at all. If young Jean had a cowboy hero it would have been a movie cowboy like Hoot Gibson, Buck Jones, or Ken Maynard.

I had wondered about that. Shep had a show on PBS in the 70's long before the movie came out, and he related stories of him serving in the Army during the Second World War. You got the impression that he was drafted- and it clearly would have been unlikely that Ralphie would be sleeping with his Red Ryder BB gun one month and learning how to field strip an M-1 Garand the next. His bio, indicating the 1921 birth date you mentioned, also didn't fit with the notion that Ralphie portrayed Shepherd as a kid for the reasons you mentioned.

Of course, if I view such a film with my wife and I note aloud such inconsistencies as Toronto PCC streetcars running in Shepherd's hometown of Hammond, I'm told to just shut up and enjoy the movie... so getting too OCD over this sort of thing anywhere except amid fellow Loungers isn't too prudent.

 

[2jakes]

Jean Shepard’s
Ollie Hopnoodle’s Haven of Bliss (1988)

On PBS.
For me, this movie was like opening a family album from the '50s when the perfect vacation was only a few hours drive
and cars could be fixed by kicking the tires.


And I still have a couple of
“1¢" baseball bubble-ball gum cards from the ‘50s.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Jean Shepard’s
Ollie Hopnoodle’s Haven of Bliss (1988)

On PBS.
For me, this movie was like opening a family album from the '50s when the perfect vacation was only a few hours drive
and cars could be fixed by kicking the tires.

The Star-Crossed Romance of Josephine Cosnowski did it for me.

 

[Fading Fast]

...Of course, if I view such a film with my wife and I note aloud such inconsistencies as Toronto PCC streetcars running in Shepherd's hometown of Hammond, I'm told to just shut up and enjoy the movie... so getting too OCD over this sort of thing anywhere except amid fellow Loungers isn't too prudent.

This applies to so much in my life. Much of the trivia, the history, the details we discuss with great passion on this site, does not translate well in the "civilian" population. If you try to generate enthusiasm for an old freight car you spy from the road, how cool the bathroom in an old bar is because the sink dates back to the 1920s ("and is in great shape!") or, as you did, you point out historical inaccuracies in period pieces, most of the time, your passion is met with a yawn or, as your wife did, with an even more direct expression of their annoyance. I hold back so much as I don't want to be "that person," the one no one wants to talk with.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I had wondered about that. Shep had a show on PBS in the 70's long before the movie came out, and he related stories of him serving in the Army during the Second World War. You got the impression that he was drafted- and it clearly would have been unlikely that Ralphie would be sleeping with his Red Ryder BB gun one month and learning how to field strip an M-1 Garand the next. His bio, indicating the 1921 birth date you mentioned, also didn't fit with the notion that Ralphie portrayed Shepherd as a kid for the reasons you mentioned.

Of course, if I view such a film with my wife and I note aloud such inconsistencies as Toronto PCC streetcars running in Shepherd's hometown of Hammond, I'm told to just shut up and enjoy the movie... so getting too OCD over this sort of thing anywhere except amid fellow Loungers isn't too prudent.

I grew up listening to Shepherd's radio show over WOR -- it conveniently came on just as the night's ballgame was ending and it was the work of an instant to twist the dial to the left -- and what always struck me was that his stories were wildly inconsistent in terms of dates and places and the characters he met. With his shows now easily accessible on the internet, this is even more obvious.

Years later I heard him in an interview where he got quite put out with a question about whether all those things he'd talked about had actually happened -- he insisted they were *all* fictitious, that he was a storyteller not a memoirist, and that he had made up all of it. This doesn't *quite* jibe -- he really did have a little brother named Randy, there really was a Flick, a Schwartz, and a Brunner, and Schwartz actually died in WW2, Miss Shields really was his teacher, he really did grow up on "Cleveland Street" -- but it's reasonable to believe that he heavily fictionalized over a basic framework drawn from his actual life.

It's hard to say exactly what he fictionalized and what was real, though -- I've read one interview where he talks about what a great guy The Old Man was, and another where he bitterly condemns his father for running off with a blonde and abandoning the family. Maybe both are true, maybe neither is. Shepherd was one of the most enigmatic celebrities of his time, and I doubt the real truths of his life will ever be known.

 

[Benzadmiral]

This is one of my favorite "doesn't get a lot of mention" movies that is outstanding. The cast is excellent - I wish Margaret Sullivan had made more movies, and this one shows that Frank Morgan is way more of an actor than just the Wizard of Oz - the story powerful - you feel the fragility of normal life under a dictatorship - and the cinematography is gorgeous B&W. It's also interesting to see how the studio wasn't ready to say Germany or Nazis yet, but it was very, very clear what they were referring to.

Startling, too, to see Dan Dailey (known best as a song and dance man) and Robert "Marcus Welby" Young as ferocious young Nazis, and the very early Robert Stack as a follower of Hitler who by the end starts to question the new regime.

I'm pretty sure the dialogue actually references Germany as well as Austria -- but you're right, Hitler's party is not named.

 

[Benzadmiral]

It's A Wonderful Life (again). What can I say? I love this movie!

The weird thing is that I first saw this film at a science fiction and fantasy convention in the late summer of 1979. So it was completely divorced from the Christmas season, and stood on its own as a great fantasy film. The entire alternate "Pottersville" scenes really worked (and still do); they're as disturbing as a production of 1984.

 

[Fading Fast]

Startling, too, to see Dan Dailey (known best as a song and dance man) and Robert "Marcus Welby" Young as ferocious young Nazis, and the very early Robert Stack as a follower of Hitler who by the end starts to question the new regime.

I'm pretty sure the dialogue actually references Germany as well as Austria -- but you're right, Hitler's party is not named.

Good points - in particularly, seeing Robert Young change from happy young man to fervent nazi is chilling and I'm sure you're right on Germany and Austria being mentioned.

 

[LizzieMaine]

For more "what's the deal with Robert Young" fun, enjoy Eddie Cantor's "The Kid From Spain," where Young appears in brownface as the caper-cutting college-age son of a Mexican grandee. Ay caramba.

 

[ChiTownScion]

The Big Short, dealing with the mortgage investment meltdown of 2008. If this plays at Lizzie's theatre, I'd love to hear her review. There are some in this world who make those Boys From Marketing look like choirboys.