What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Harp]

I may not be an expert in geography, but Israel borders the Med. Having sailed with the RCN on 2007 in the eastern Med, and having been lit up by an Israeli fighter, I'd say Mediterranean was not an inappropriate descriptor, if not what is traditionally thought of (Italian, Greek, etc.).

FYI - Jewish describes a religion, not a geographic origin.

It was my understanding she was Israeli, which borders the Mediterranean.

Guys: Did Moses ask God to part the Mediterranean or the Red Sea?
Didn't say Mediterranean was an inappropriate descriptor, but place-to-show on the exacta locale Red Sea more so.
Jewish describes a religion: understood, but post was a secular comment in keeping with more temporal lingo.
Israelite, Jewish, Hebrew, Israeli, Sabra. Gal Godot is Jewish, Israeli Sabra, origin Israel.

I made two jumps with Sayeret in the Negev while in Special Forces '76; and team treated to a Tel Aviv romp.
Forget Vegas, go to Tel Aviv.

And I think Gal will make a fantastic Cleo.

 

[belfastboy]

"The Devil All the Time"...billed a an American Gothic it did not quite measure up. It was Gothic (ish). Good performances from a very good cast. Worth a watch but def not a wow.....it just somehow missed the mark.

 

[Edward]

Hollywood hasn't been shying away from 3hr movies as much in the last couple years, though their need to re-adopt the intermission is pressing.

True. The original LIz Taylor version was 4hrs and about 20 minutes. It could only have been longer if they'd thrown in a few hobbits and six extra DVD commentaries. Definitely one to remember to go before the start!

FYI - Jewish describes a religion, not a geographic origin.

Funnily enough, here in the UK being Jewish can be by law both an ethnicity and a religion. One of those odd quirks of context that probably wouldn't have turned out that way if the whole area had been planned out from the start rather than a twenty year evolution.

 

[MisterCairo]

True. The original LIz Taylor version was 4hrs and about 20 minutes. It could only have been longer if they'd thrown in a few hobbits and six extra DVD commentaries. Definitely one to remember to go before the start!



Funnily enough, here in the UK being Jewish can be by law both an ethnicity and a religion. One of those odd quirks of context that probably wouldn't have turned out that way if the whole area had been planned out from the start rather than a twenty year evolution.

They cut the Hobbits from Cleopatra???

And -

Whether religion or ethnicity, both in Canada, if not legally, one thing Jewish is not is a specific geographic reference!

 

[Harp]

Funnily enough, here in the UK being Jewish can be by law both an ethnicity and a religion. One of those odd quirks of context that probably wouldn't have turned out that way if the whole area had been planned out from the start rather than a twenty year evolution.

Rabbinic halakha strict construction under Beth Din, civil arbitration and proximity to marital stricture is an
interesting facet of UK, but imagine that other faiths within British society must stir a caldron of some tension.

 

[Zombie_61]

...The Ten Commandments from 1956 with a cast that includes almost every actor in Hollywood at the time...

Never seen it, probably never will simply because the big Biblical epics just aren't my thing. But, allegedly, somewhere in the "parting of the Red Sea" scene there's a not-too-tall man with a balding head leading a horse through the divide who was also one of my high school math teachers, Mr. Johnson.

 

[AmateisGal]

I'm a huge fan of The Ten Commandments. I used to watch it every single Easter. But since I've left religion, I haven't watched it since, but still love it.

Been watching a lot of TCM with my daughter. She is getting into classic movies and it warms my heart!

 

[Edward]

Whether religion or ethnicity, both in Canada, if not legally, one thing Jewish is not is a specific geographic reference!

I think the UK is an outlier on that front in the English-speaking world, though it obviously is rooted in the obvious, historical events that differ across cultures. It's also true that anti-Semitism ran deep in the UK both before and after WW2, though it's not generally the done thing to recognise it was a problem on the Allied side. England was fortunate indeed that it didn't have a PM in the 30s or 40s who sought to exploit it as happened with that Austrian guy who ran Germany for a while back when.

 

[Edward]

Rabbinic halakha strict construction under Beth Din, civil arbitration and proximity to marital stricture is an
interesting facet of UK, but imagine that other faiths within British society must stir a caldron of some tension.

We tend not to have faith-based problems so much as individual idiot based problems. There's not a single faith-group, or lack of faith group for that matter, that seems to come anywhere close to having a monopoly on those.

 

[MisterCairo]

I am not convinced on that last point Ted...

 

[Fading Fast]

Primrose Path from 1940 with Ginger Rogers, Joel McCrea, Mamie Adams and Henry Travers


"We live, not as we wish to, but as we can."
- Meander, Greek Poet, 342 - 290 BC


How they somehow snuck this one past the censors is the first question. Ginger Rogers plays the daughter and granddaughter of prostitutes (that "word" is never spoken, but it is clear what they are/were - grandmother is "retired"). Why this very good movie isn't more well known is the second question.

Rogers' mother, Mamie Adams, is a decent woman who does what she has to, to put food on the table for, not only daughter Rogers and herself, but also her ten-year-old daughter, alcoholic husband, Miles Mander, and her complaining mother.

Dad, Miles Mander, is an educated man who can translate Greek, but is now a broken alcoholic. Yet, wife Adams is the philosophical one who understands without resentment that some people are put on this earth to provide for others who can't. It's a thoughtful view of a broken family living in wrong-side-of-the-tracks Primrose Path.

Daughter Rogers (who looks adorable in her tomboy clothes while she's softly grifting to augment the family's modest income) meets nice guy Joel McCrea who owns a diner/gas station with his dad, the wonderful Henry Travers. Later, she tells McCrea she ran away, so as to hide her background from him while she kinda maneuvers him into marrying her.

After they marry, all is going well with the happy young couple. Along with McCrea's Dad, Travers, they run the diner/gas station. But then, Rogers' mother just happens to pop into the station one day. With the cat out of the bag, Rogers then has to take McCrea to meet her family.

There he realizes what Rogers' mom and grandmother do/did for a living and that her dad, instead of being the scholar Rogers implied he was, is a drunk. McCrea feels duped and bolts from the house and Rogers.

Rogers desperately tries to save her marriage, but McCrea's pride is having none of it despite his really wanting to take her back. Here is where real Motion Picture Production Code subversion sets it as the prostitute stuff was just a warm up.

Dad Travers tries to get his son to see that sometimes people lie for reasons that aren't easy to understand nor should you blindly condemn them. Meanwhile, Rodgers' super-cool prostitute mom tells her daughter to denounce the family if it will help her get a truly good-guy husband back.

What? Lying is okay and not just in service to a greater good, but also because, sometimes, decent people are too weak to admit everything in their past? And it's okay to toss your sketchy family overboard if they are more of a hindrance than a help to a better life?

This is a lot of realpolitik family stuff that doesn't fit inside the usually obdurate Motion Picture Production Code, but there it is. Maybe the censors were drunk the night they approved this one. Drinking seems to be one vice the code overseers were pretty much okay with.

For modern audiences, the "shock" value of Primrose Path is tame or not even there anymore. The joy today is Roger's pitch-perfect performance as the girl from the very wrong side of the tracks trying to make something of her life.

Equally impressive is Mamie Adams as the believably not-bitter prostitute just trying to hold her family together. Rounding out the strong cast is McCrea's dad, Henry Travers, who sees what really matters amidst the messiness of everyday life.

Somehow, RKO Radio Pictures studio, in the tightly circumscribed movie world of 1940, got a movie made about a prostitute's daughter marrying a man under false pretense where the prostitute mother is portrayed as a hero and Roger's deception is dismissed as understandable. God only knows how this one made it to the theaters in 1940.

 

[Harp]

I'm a huge fan of The Ten Commandments. I used to watch it every single Easter. But since I've left religion, I haven't watched it since, but still love it.

Been watching a lot of TCM with my daughter. She is getting into classic movies and it warms my heart!

Edie Munster's mom is in The Ten Commandments.

 

[Bushman]

For me, it's not even a faith thing. I used to love to watch it every Easter. I love the old classic epics like Cleopatra and The Ten Commandments. My issue with it is that it's a nearly four hour movie that gets turned into 6 when you add in broadcast commercials. And I just don't have the interest to sit around for 6 hours watching Charlton Heston ham it up.

 

[Fading Fast]

For me, it's not even a faith thing. I used to love to watch it every Easter. I love the old classic epics like Cleopatra and The Ten Commandments. My issue with it is that it's a nearly four hour movie that gets turned into 6 when you add in broadcast commercials. And I just don't have the interest to sit around for 6 hours watching Charlton Heston ham it up.

I agree completely, which is why I recorded it (and, then, didn't get to it for a couple of months). That said, my thumb got tired holding the fast-forward button down through the endless commercials. It really is crazy how many commercials they put in. Just another reason why TCM is the greatest channel on earth, ever.

 

[MisterCairo]

Edie Munster's mom is in The Ten Commandments.

A Canadian babe!

 

[Harp]

For me, it's not even a faith thing. I used to love to watch it every Easter. I love the old classic epics like Cleopatra and The Ten Commandments. My issue with it is that it's a nearly four hour movie that gets turned into 6 when you add in broadcast commercials. And I just don't have the interest to sit around for 6 hours watching Charlton Heston ham it up.

I liked Edie Munster's mom, and made allowances. Of course, Cleo with Liz or CL needed no allowance.
And her bath scene with the Egyptian ship model just floated my boat.

 

[Fading Fast]

I liked Edie Munster's mom, and made allowances. Of course, Cleo with Liz or CL needed no allowance.
And her bath scene with the Egyptian ship model just floated my boat.

More than a decade before she played Eddie's mother, she was a femme fatale in the outstanding noir "Criss Cross."

Comments on movie and De Carlo here: #27595

Super Femme fatale Yvonne De Carlo in "Criss Cross"

 

[Harp]

^^^Saw a WWII USO documentary in which Yvonne De Carlo did a harem girl dance for a packed
audience of Marines, and at the conclusion with all the applause and catcalls she demurely smiled
and said, "I don't know anything more I can do for you guys."
Place erupted. She knew how to capture a man's heart-and-soul.

 

[Zombie_61]

Yvonne De Carlo wasn't Universal's first choice for Lily Munster, and an unaired test episode was filmed with Joan Marshall cast as Phoebe Munster. Studio executives saw the test episode and decided "Phoebe" was too similar to Morticia Addams (not Miss Marshall's fault), so the character was redesigned, renamed "Lily", and recast with Yvonne De Carlo. Fred Gwynne (Herman) and Al Lewis (Grandpa) voiced their objections to De Carlo's casting simply because she wasn't known as a comedic actress; they didn't think she'd fit in and would likely be a "diva". Gwynne and Lewis met with De Carlo for a short time during her first visit to Universal while the show was being fine-tuned, and immediately after revoked their initial objections and instead supported the casting decision, feeling she would be just the right person for the role.

 

[Harp]

^^^Watched The Adams Family, loved Carolyn Jones. An exquisite beautiful rose.