What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Formeruser012523]

I've been a huge Keaton fan for over forty years!

I was a fascinated by silent comedy from early on, and had seen some Keaton on pre-PBS educational TV as a teen - The General, at least. When I was 20, my film collecting/making buddy and I went into NYC every Wednesday night over the summer for a Keaton retrospective (*) at the old Elgin revival house (now the Joyce Dance Theater) - a different feature and two or three shorts every week. We saw nearly all the then-known Keaton silents, and it was an astounding experience, even for already hardcore Chaplin and Laurel & Hardy buffs like us. I devoured Rudi Blesh's Keaton biography - still the best book on Keaton, IMHO - around the same time, and I began acquiring Keaton shorts in Super 8: One Week, The Blacksmith, The Balloonatic, etc. Soon after, I got 16mm prints of more Keaton shorts: The Boat, The Scarecrow, The Goat... And yeah, I eventually collected some Keaton films on VHS and DVD.

(* This was 1975, when Raymond Rohauer [boo!] had just made his new prints of the Keaton films available for rental.)

We ended that summer making our own b/w two-reel silent comedy in Super 8 (complete with fake Blackhawk Films informational titles) that was totally inspired by the immersion in Keaton... I starred (since I'd just essentially taken a masterclass in silent comedy) and co-wrote/co-directed. In terms of how swiftly we shot it, and how well it has always gone over with an audience, it's the most successful movie we ever made! Thanks, Buster.

What a great story! I own the Blesh book, as well as a first edition of My Wonderful World of Slapstick which basically reads like he was talking into a tape recorder. Love how he still has a lasting impact on people to this day. Very cool that you got to see them on the big screen.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Keaton was wonderfully frank about the mechanics of comedy -- unlike Chaplin, he had no pretenses about art whatsoever, and viewed the construction of gags the same way a carpenter views the construction of a house. The Brownlow-Gill documentary series "Buster Keaton: A Hard Act To Follow," which came out in the late '80s, explores his methods in detail, and includes quite a bit of footage of him talking about technique. There's a clip from behind-the-scenes on the making of a Canadian tourism film he was in in the '60s where he's vehemently arguing with the director about the timing of a particular gag, and you can see just how dedicated he was to the precise mechanics of what makes a gag work. I can't think of anyone who would have been a better comedy teacher.

 

[Fading Fast]

Keaton was wonderfully frank about the mechanics of comedy -- unlike Chaplin, he had no pretenses about art whatsoever, and viewed the construction of gags the same way a carpenter views the construction of a house. The Brownlow-Gill documentary series "Buster Keaton: A Hard Act To Follow," which came out in the late '80s, explores his methods in detail, and includes quite a bit of footage of him talking about technique. There's a clip from behind-the-scenes on the making of a Canadian tourism film he was in in the '60s where he's vehemently arguing with the director about the timing of a particular gag, and you can see just how dedicated he was to the precise mechanics of what makes a gag work. I can't think of anyone who would have been a better comedy teacher.

"Art," like "class," "bourgeoisie" and many others have become words so loaded with social, political, philosophical and ideological meaning that they are good for little else than being thrown like Hammers of Thor at their verbal / written opponents.

But here's the thing. There are people who are good at hammering, good at sawing, good at - you get it - they are talented, they work hard and they accomplish a lot. There are people who are good at seeing how things, systems, process work together in a rational or aesthetic way - they are talented, they work hard and they accomplish a lot. Stephen Hawking is a good example of the latter.

Most people possess some combination of both skills. Not only that, but different people approach the same thing differently. Some look at a problem / a job / a task / a process and see that if they hammer enough nails, they'll build a house; others see a house to be built and back into how many nails they'll have to hammer.

Is there an art to designing a house - most would say Frank Lloyd Wright was an artist. But so is the contractor who "sees" how by building the wall higher here and moving the porch there, he will bring in the southern light while creating a more balanced aesthetic. He might not even sketch it out, he might laugh at the word "artist," but he's doing something more than hammering a nail. There's a parallel between the "artist" who doesn't want to be thought of as a "contractor" and the "contractor" who doesn't want to be thought of as an "artist:" they both are wrapped up in the ideology and identity of the words, versus the value of what they do.

Sounds to me like Keaton thought more like a carpenter with a strong sense of the construct of humor - and he identified with the carpenter; whereas, Chaplin had a different view of his skills, but they both accomplished a similar thing - humor, art, entertainment?

 

[Worf]

Went a little "sub happy" last week.

"Torpedo Run"

"Run Silent, Run Deep"

Both films are essentially the same story, U.S. Submarine Commanders obsessed with sinking a particular Japanese ship. In the former it's a Carrier that led the attack on Pearl, in the latter, it's a Destroyer that sank his first command. Glenn Ford plays the first Captain, Clark Gable the second. Each has an Exec that questions their Ahab like obsessions, Ernest Borgnine for Ford and Burt Lancaster for Gable. The only difference between the two is that Ford's wife, captured in the Philippines, is in a freighter used as a screen the first time he gets a shot at the Carrier and Ford winds of taking a shot that kills her. With Gable he gets konked on the head, but both Captains are incapacitated for days and each has to beg for one more shot at their personal White Whales. Cracking good stories both.

Worf

Funny thing is both films came out in '58 and while the former is in glorious Technicolor, Lancaster's is in gritty B&W. Don Rickles is great in "Run Silent, Run Deep" as Quartermaster "Ruby".

 

[green papaya]

FLOWER DRUM SONG (1961)

Flower Drum Song was the eighth musical by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. It was based on the 1957 novel, The Flower Drum Song, by Chinese-American author C. Y. Lee.

Storyline
Chinese stowaway Mei Li (Miyoshi Umeki) arrives in San Francisco with her father to meet her fiancé, wealthy nightclub owner Sammy Fong (Jack Soo), in an arranged marriage, but the groom has his eye on his star singer Linda Low (Nancy Kwan). This film version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway musical is filled with memorable song-and-dance numbers showcasing the contrast between Mei Li's traditional family and her growing fascination with American culture.

 

[Fading Fast]

"Tora! Tora! Tora!' 1970.

This is one of the first movies I remember seeing in a movie theater - I was six at the time.

This also concludes my Memorial Day movie recordings for this year.

I'm just going to say it: it's a big giant messy movie that starts off with a reasonably tight narrative but then struggles as it bit off more than it could chew. There are so many story lines around Pearl Harbor - the geo-political context, code breaking, on-going negotiations, radar, fleet movements, squadrons coming and going - and so many institutions and individuals involved in the military and civilian government, in both countries, that telling the full story even in this two-plus hour movie is impossible.

A tighter story would have dropped some of the threads, focused on a few key ones, and kept the narrative controlled. But instead you get a lot, a whole lot, of moving pieces that, if you didn't already know the basics of Pearl Harbor, would leave you gasping. (It was released 29 years after it happened, so it's like telling a story today about something that happened in 1988). That said, if you have an rough outline in your head of what happened going in and aren't looking for an education, but a decent re-enactment - then this works and the opened threads that aren't closed won't bother you too much.

And heck, if nothing else, it highlights how absolutely horrible 2001's "Pearl Harbor" is other than as a comic book version of the event.

Also, there's so much star power that it's fun just to see one big, or at least familiar, name after another pop up.

Last thought, I didn't have my modern-day political/cultural meter turned on - and, of course, the of-the-period American comments about the Japanese jar a bit - but it seemed to present a more nuanced and thoughtful look at the Japanese perspective than I would have expected.

 

[Benzadmiral]

"Tora! Tora! Tora!' 1970.

This is one of the first movies I remember seeing in a movie theater - I was six at the time.

. . .

I remember hearing about it when it came out, but I've never seen it. Invariably, when I hear or read the title, I recall Valerie Harper as Rhoda Morgenstern on The Mary Tyler Moore Show:

Rhoda: "I saw the movie on TV. A miniature TV. The title read 'Tora! Tor' ! "

 

[Doctor Strange]

They were aiming for accuracy in Tora! Tora! Tora!, having an entire Japanese production team and cast besides the English-language side. But despite the all-star cast and sterling model work (I saw one of the aircraft carrier filming models somewhere once - the Intrepid Museum? - and it was beautiful!)... I've always thought it's kind of a dull, overlong, dragged-out film. It wanted to be the Pearl Harbor equivalent of The Longest Day, but it's just nowhere near as entertaining.

Pearl Harbor is a pretty terrible movie, but even with all its sins, it's not dull. To my mind, the only great Pearl Harbor-related movie remains From Here To Eternity.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

The Voice of the Turtle, released also under the title One For the Book. 1947, with Ronald Reagan, Eleanor Parker, Eve Arden, and several other recognizable faces. GI on leave in wartime NYC is kindly offered a place to sleep by aspiring actress, and emotions awaken. Based on a play by the same name, it doesn't stray far from it stage roots.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Voice of the Turtle, released also under the title One For the Book. 1947, with Ronald Reagan, Eleanor Parker, Eve Arden, and several other recognizable faces. GI on leave in wartime NYC is kindly offered a place to sleep by aspiring actress, and emotions awaken. Based on a play by the same name, it doesn't stray far from it stage roots.

Saw it back in April and enjoyed it. My review here, if you care: http://www.thefedoralounge.com/thre...ovie-you-watched.20830/page-1162#post-2235733

 

[Worf]

They were aiming for accuracy in Tora! Tora! Tora!, having an entire Japanese production team and cast besides the English-language side. But despite the all-star cast and sterling model work (I saw one of the aircraft carrier filming models somewhere once - the Intrepid Museum? - and it was beautiful!)... I've always thought it's kind of a dull, overlong, dragged-out film. It wanted to be the Pearl Harbor equivalent of The Longest Day, but it's just nowhere near as entertaining.

Pearl Harbor is a pretty terrible movie, but even with all its sins, it's not dull. To my mind, the only great Pearl Harbor-related movie remains From Here To Eternity.

I disagree...... "I Bombed Pearl Harbor" a Japanese film released in 1960 with Toshiro Mifune is pretty damn good. "From Here to Eternity" is NOT the only great Pearl Harbor related movie. I like Preminger's "In Harms Way" and "Air Force" as well and both start at Pearl. An event that big is gonna have multiple tellings, some good some bad.

Worf

 

[2jakes]

One of my favorite scenes has always been the “dueling banjo”.
I never knew the name of the kid that played the banjo until now.

 

[Fading Fast]

"Rhubarb" 1951 (If you don't care about the movie, skip to the underlined section below for two Fedora Lounge gems from this movie.)

Not quite a screwball comedy, but a quirky comedy about a cat inheriting a baseball franchise and a bunch of screwball things that sets in motion. There's an angry disinherited daughter, a publicist in charge of the cat whose fiancee is allergic to cats, a skeptical team that eventually embraces the cat as a good luck charm when they start winning, a cantankerous manager and, then, gangsters (kidnapping the cat to rig the illegal book they are running), cops, crazy fans - you get it.

It's too silly, really, but Ray Milland as the publicist and Jan Sterling as his fiancee are fun to watch. And based on this movie and "It Happens Every Spring," I'm guessing Ray Milland was a big baseball fan as he kept doing these goofy little baseball movies. But, unfortunately, he wasn't in the best one of these that I've seen, "Angels in the Outfield."

That said there are two things in the movie that are absolute Fedora Lounge Gold:
First, there is a long segment on how integrated in the community bookmaking was as you see regular folks making small bets at delis, grocery stores, barber shops and tobacconists where those bets are consolidated and then called into to the main bookmaking office. And we see that office later and it's set up like a modern day sports book where betters are there making bets, listening to the games and following counts on blackboards. And the numbers referenced are for total books in the hundreds of thousand for one game and millions for the series (and these are in '51 dollars).

It's all mob run and there's even a reference to "laying off" the risk to Chicago (all the money is coming in on one side) and multiple references to odds, risk, horse racing, etc. And while the guys running it at the upper levels are all gangsters, the regular "bookies" are, as noted, just shop workers who pass the bets along and there is not really a negative tone toward all of it - which surprised me. This is the best look at how common gambling was in the GE that I've seen in a movie not centered on gambling.

And the second fantastic thing in this movie is a late cameo from Paul Douglas, star of "A Letter to Three Wives," where he's sitting on a park bench and sees three clearly different cat litters run by and the apparent father cat and he says, "there's a litter from three wives." What an incredible quirky joke to throw in a movie that Douglas isn't even in and that is referencing a movie two years old at the time (i.e., it wasn't a promotion for his movie). I was floored that they put this in - it's one of the best inside-joke cameos ever.

 

[LizzieMaine]

And leave us not forget the exceptional performance of the real star of the picture -- Rhubarb the Cat, who was a year old when the film was made, and who went on to enjoy a very long and successful career in movies, continuing to perform in both theatrical features and television, well into the 1960's.

His real name was "Orangey," which like many show-biz figures, he changed for screen purposes. He's also well known for his role in "Breakfast at Tiffany's," where he showed great restraint in not attacking Mickey Rooney.

 

[niv]

D-Day, the Sixth of June, with Dana Wynter, Robert Taylor, and Richard Todd. Mind you, I could cheerfully watch Dana Wynter read a phone book (and look forward to the next page!), but Taylor and Todd are very good in this picture, too. Edmund O'Brien is good in it, too.

 

[Fading Fast]

And leave us not forget the exceptional performance of the real star of the picture -- Rhubarb the Cat, who was a year old when the film was made, and who went on to enjoy a very long and successful career in movies, continuing to perform in both theatrical features and television, well into the 1960's.

His real name was "Orangey," which like many show-biz figures, he changed for screen purposes. He's also well known for his role in "Breakfast at Tiffany's," where he showed great restraint in not attacking Mickey Rooney.

Everybody in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" showed great restraint in not attacking Mickey Rooney's horrible characterization and acting in that movie.

"Rhubarb" and "Breakfast at Tiffany's" is quite a career by itself for a cat. "Cat" is a central character and key to the symbolism at work in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" narrative.

Lizzie, weren't you amazed at the way "Rhubarb" almost morphed into a different movie in the second half when it became predominantly a movie about bookmaking? And what a great window into GE bookmaking.

And, equally, how crazy great was Paul Douglas' cameo?

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'm a sucker for baseball movies, and cat movies, and for H. Allen Smith, so yep, that one was a big hoot on every level. Smith was what you call an old-fashioned New York Character himself, and he knew the world of smalltime gambling rather intimately, so it's no surprise that it comes across so honestly in the film.

Paul Douglas firmly belongs in such a movie. Before he got into pictures, he'd been a prominent radio announcer and sportscaster in New York, who was best known for doing the nightly baseball wrapup on WEAF.

The director of "Rhubarb," Arthur Lubin, had a real affinity for animal pictures -- he was the man behind the "Francis The Talking Mule" series, and went on to cap his career as the house director for "Mister Ed." And Rhubarb's agent, Frank Inn, was the king of the animal-actor business in the 1950s and 1960s, numbering among his clients no less a personage than Arnold the Pig!

Rhubarb was very much a multi-media star in the 1950s -- he even starred in his own comic book!

I bet Walter F. O'Malley was jealous.

 

[Fading Fast]

I'm a sucker for baseball movies, and for H. Allen Smith, so yep, that one was a big hoot on every level. Smith was what you call an old-fashioned New York Character himself, and he knew the world of smalltime gambling rather intimately, so it's no surprise that it comes across so honestly in the film.

Paul Douglas firmly belongs in such a movie. Before he got into pictures, he'd been a prominent radio announcer and sportscaster in New York, who was best known for doing the nightly baseball wrapup on WEAF.

The director of "Rhubarb," Arthur Lubin, had a real affinity for animal pictures -- he was the man behind the "Francis The Talking Mule" series, and went on to cap his career as the house director for "Mister Ed." And Rhubarb's agent, Frank Inn, was the king of the animal-actor business in the 1950s and 1960s, numbering among his clients no less a personage than Arnold the Pig!

Rhubarb was very much a multi-media star in the 1950s -- he even starred in his own comic book!

I bet Walter F. O'Malley was jealous.

As mentioned, of those (let's call them what they are) silly baseball movies of that period, I thought "Angels in the Outfield" was the best of them. Douglas and Janet Leigh - two actors I would never have thought to pair up - had outstanding chemistry which carried the goofy plot right along.

Douglas is one of those actors that you don't see today. He was not classically handsome, but could play the leading man. He could also play the good-hearted sidekick, sleazy businessman and several other "characters" with nuance and conviction. I'm always happy when he pops up in a movie.

That said, I can't think of any other cameo of that big a star that was just put in there for the one inside joke. Glad but surprised they did it.

 

[2jakes]

As mentioned, of those (let's call them what they are) silly baseball movies of that period, I thought "Angels in the Outfield" was the best of them. Douglas and Janet Leigh - two actors I would never have thought to pair up - had outstanding chemistry which carried the goofy plot right along.

Douglas is one of those actors that you don't see today. He was not classically handsome, but could play the leading man. He could also play the good-hearted sidekick, sleazy businessman and several other "characters" with nuance and conviction. I'm always happy when he pops up in a movie.

That said, I can't think of any other cameo of that big a star that was just put in there for the one inside joke. Glad but surprised they did it.

Early favorite baseball movies with Joe.E. Brown.

Mostly because of the time period.
Like opening a video album of times when folks dressed up
and those beautiful buildings and cars of a bygone era.

 

[AmateisGal]

Currently watching The Long, Long Trailer. Hilarious!