What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[M Brown]

We saw the re release of Lawrence of Arabia on Sunday. It was a special cinema presentation in 70mm. What a great film!

 

[Fading Fast]

Today, with the sound off and only catching bits and pieces when I looked up from work, I saw 1940's One Million BC, followed by 1966's One Million Years BC as it was kind of TCM to conveniently run the original and remake back to back.

I don't think I really missed much watching them on mute nor did I miss much catching only parts of them.

In either version, it's fair to say that the ratio of super-attractive women to the overall population of women was much higher in caveman times than today. And cavewomen seemed to wear a lot less clothing in 1966 than in 1940.

Also, my opinion of the advancements of modern dentistry is going down as everyone seems to have had nearly perfect teeth back in caveman times - probably the lack of refined sugar or something.

And the improvement in special effects was not impressive for twenty six years, especially compared to the advancements in special effects from 1993 to today. In some ways, 1940's version - and the B&W cinematography helped, I think - had more verisimilitude or, more accurately, less cheese than the 1966 version.

I'll close with some heresy. While there is no wrong answer, given the choice of Carole Landis or Raquel Welch, I'd choose Landis as I prefer some subtlety and, I think, Welch might have broken me - literally, physically broken me.

And so concludes my review of these two movies.

Carol Landis

Raquel Welch

 

[belfastboy]

Today, with the sound off and only catching bits and pieces when I looked up from work, I saw 1940's One Million BC, followed by 1966's One Million Years BC as it was kind of TCM to conveniently run the original and remake back to back.

I don't think I really missed much watching them on mute nor did I miss much catching only parts of them.

In either version, it's fair to say that the ratio of super-attractive women to the overall population of women was much higher in caveman times than today. And cavewomen seemed to wear a lot less clothing in 1966 than in 1940.

Also, my opinion of the advancements of modern dentistry is going down as everyone seems to have had nearly perfect teeth back in caveman times - probably the lack of refined sugar or something.

And the improvement in special effects was not impressive for twenty six years, especially compared to the advancements in special effects from 1993 to today. In some ways, 1940's version - and the B&W cinematography helped, I think - had more verisimilitude or, more accurately, less cheese than the 1966 version.

I'll close with some heresy. While there is no wrong answer, given the choice of Carole Landis or Raquel Welch, I'd choose Landis as I prefer some subtlety and, I think, Welch might have broken me - literally, physically broken me.

And so concludes my review of these two movies.

Carol Landis
View attachment 183133



Raquel Welch
View attachment 183131

I turned on the TV today to record the BlueJays/Braves game on later today and caught the final few minutes of the 1966 version. My first thought was I did not realize the mullet was one million years old.....not a good look even back then. I was also impressed that the women wore fashionable bikini bottoms under the fur pelts.

 

[Tiki Tom]

My wife went to bed early last night. So, I watched the documentary about Bob Lazar that is on Netflix. Well done documentary, if a bit slow moving at times. Bob Lazar's story CANNOT be true. And yet ...he comes across as very believable. Seemingly normal people who know him well do not hesitate to say they believe him. More importantly, some small-but-telling aspects of his original story that were thought to be pure fiction have turned out to be true over the years. One or two big things also now seem to have more than a germ of truth in them. And yet ....Bob Lazar's story CANNOT be true. Can it?

 

[LizzieMaine]

The 1940 "One Million BC" benefitted from the long years of experience the Hal Roach Studio had in creating special effects -- the same guy that used to do goofy animation effects and trick photograpny in the "Our Gang" comedies, Roy Seawright, was in charge of effects for this film. It's a small world.

 

[Seb Lucas]

My wife went to bed early last night. So, I watched the documentary about Bob Lazar that is on Netflix. Well done documentary, if a bit slow moving at times. Bob Lazar's story CANNOT be true. And yet ...he comes across as very believable. Seemingly normal people who know him well do not hesitate to say they believe him. More importantly, some small-but-telling aspects of his original story that were thought to be pure fiction have turned out to be true over the years. One or two big things also now seem to have more than a germ of truth in them. And yet ....Bob Lazar's story CANNOT be true. Can it?

I'm not familiar with that name.

 

[Trenchfriend]

The legend of Paul and Paula (1973).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Paul_and_Paula

Totally overrated. But a nice try of New Hollywood-cinema.

 

[Tiki Tom]

I'm not familiar with that name.

Understandable, Seb. He's the guy who first "outed" Area 51.

"In 1989, a then-anonymous Bob Lazar put Area 51 on the map when he came forward with his unbelievable story. Lazar said that he studied captured alien technology at a site called S-4, near the desert test facility. Almost 30 years later, Lazar’s story hasn’t changed, but our collective capacity for incredulity has certainly been tested. And Bob Lazar has been patiently waiting for us."

https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-did-the-fbi-raid-the-home-of-the-biggest-alien-truther​

TF, "The Legend of Paula and Paula" sounds interesting, if only as a window into a vanished society.

 

[Hat and Rehat]

A couple of nights ago we turned on TCM to see them celebrating United Artist's beginnings.
Little Annie Rooney was the prime time feature, and my wife and I were in stitches. I swear, that movie showcases every ethnic stereotype you are no longer allowed to mention!
They even nailed us Swedes (my surname is Pearson) with a serving of herring! Holy Moley! Ole!
At one point the collected street urchins are all claiming responsibility for getting a horse off its feed. Annie (Pickford with full braids in all their glory) drags "Buckwheat" back by his hair, then they all join in his confession. Confession leads to reparations, and the kid with frizzy hair and a long nose steps forward. I winked at my wife .... The Jew Boy.
Printed dialog placard;
"We can write them an IOU. My dad does it all the time."
OMG! Red wine blew out of our noses!
The obviously missing character was a professional shyster, which may be why everybody got along so well despite the stereotyping.


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[bluesmandan]

First Kill with Bruce Willis and Hayden Christianson. What a stupid movie. Like when the mother is being held kidnapped at gunpoint and her son has the opportunity to shoot the bad guy, so she starts crying No! because she’s worried about the psychological trauma he’ll have... if he shoots his mother’s kidnapper and would-be killer. What?! Way to tap into the complexities of the male psyche, Hollywood!


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[Hat and Rehat]

I turned on the TV today to record the BlueJays/Braves game on later today and caught the final few minutes of the 1966 version. My first thought was I did not realize the mullet was one million years old.....not a good look even back then. I was also impressed that the women wore fashionable bikini bottoms under the fur pelts.

I really hope you hit record.

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[Hat and Rehat]

We saw the re release of Lawrence of Arabia on Sunday. It was a special cinema presentation in 70mm. What a great film!

It is a wonderful film, in part, because it shows how and why the sun never set on the Empire.

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[Fading Fast]

A Kiss Before Dying from 1956 with Robert Wagner, Joanne Woodward and Jeffery Hunter

The original Star Trek TV series was of unimpressive quality - the sets were slapdash, the dialogue often cheesy, the acting often mediocre and the budget reminded one of a father grudgingly handing out an allowance to a child, but the ideas and philosophy were fresh and challenging as were some of the special effects / sci-fi "stuff."

Now, picture all the bad production quality of Star Trek in a movie lacking the philosophical challenge and sci-fi fun of it and you'd have A Kiss Before Dying.

The plot: a young man of modest means schemes to marry the daughter of a wealthy industrialist to advance himself socially, monetarily and career-wise, but she gets pregnant and wants to marry him without her father's approval (and all the advantages the young man wants).

Up to this point, the movie is an okay soap opera despite its two-cent budget, but after this, all heck breaks out as unbelievable events and actions pile up one after another - murders, ridiculous explanations, beyond-sloppy police investigations, a second daughter to court and so on.

It's silly but kinda holds your attention; however, you can't help noticing the low budget as, for example, there are few extras even in scenes calling out for them. The quad - a beehive of activity at most colleges - is all but empty (except for the same kid in a pink sweater vest who seemed to be in the background of every other scene).

It reminds you of when Kirk and Spock would beam down to a city described as populated by seven million, but the streets would seem to have the same five people walking around. Even the awkward dialogue and stilted acting will remind you of Star Trek. Poor Joanne Woodward, an acting pro, tried hard, but struggled to make this material not seem amateurish.

There is some good time travel to the '50s - clothes, cars, architecture and a coffee shop - but it is hard to recommend this one other than in a kitschy, I-have-time-to-kill way. And finally, you have to assume that budget constraints explain why Robert Wagner got the preppy-ish dressing, dreamboat college-kid role screaming out for Tab Hunter or Troy Donahue.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Fading, I must take issue with your characterization of the original Star Trek!

There was nothing "slapdash" about it, at least not until its budget was decimated in the third season to hasten its demise. It was the most expensive series on TV at the time it was made. Compare it to any other late sixties show: it's got more impressive sets, better photography, move inventive effects work, continuously creative costumes, etc. Apart from the gangster planet and Nazi planet episodes (etc.), EVERYTHING onscreen had to be designed from scratch every week, not just rented from Western Costume. It was incredibly ambitious at a time when most TV shows were just the same old dreck designed to please advertisers.

And remember that it was being watched by nearly everyone on b/w TVs with fuzzy antenna reception. Don't judge it by the way it looks today on a 50-inch 1080 display. Remember that compared to the formulaic westerns and cop and doc dramas of the time, it dared to do something different. Heck, just compare it to its "more successful" contemporaries... like Lost In Space.

No comment on the film you're reviewing here, but I am really tired of seeing Star Trek constantly trashed for bad production values. Sure, there are plenty of things about it that haven't aged well - the bombastic music and acting, the overwrought use of color (but even there, recall that 1966 was the year that the networks transitioned to mostly color shows, and filming in spectacular color was all about selling more of those primitive color TVs), the visual effects, the sexual politics - but please show some respect.

Trek was a visionary trailblazer that was as well done as network TV could manage at the time. I don't see you describing films from the thirties and forties as being slapdash just because they were made with the technology and budget limitations of their time.

 

[LizzieMaine]

All you have to do is stand TOS next to any of the contemporaneous Irwin Allen shows -- Lost in Space, Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea, Land of the Giants, etc -- and you'll see in an instant the difference between a program produced by people who cared about what they were doing and one just ground out for the day rate.

Not that there isn't plenty to criticize in the show -- I've written here before how utterly retrograde its sexual politics could be, even by the low standards of 1966 -- and Gene Roddenberry himself really was kind of a piece of work. But its production values were as high as anything television was capable of producing in the 1960s, and quite a good deal bit higher than anything else in the science fiction/fantasy genre made up to that time.

I think in a lot of ways TOS holds up better, visually speaking, than TNG -- looking at the early Next Generation episodes now, they really do look even more dated than the earlier show -- the Enterprise-D interiors remind me of something you'd see at an endocrinologist's waiting room in a suburban office park in 1987. DS9, on the other hand, with its grubby Cardassian decor, looks as good today as it did twenty years ago.

 

[Doctor Strange]

They really had no idea how to light the sets in the first season of TNG, everything is too bright and garish. There's too much use of wide angle lenses and the actors look terrible. And those hotel-lobby set designs are so blah. By the second season they did better with the lighting and shooting, and the costumes/sets/makeup had all been tweaked as well.

Then there's the problem of TNG's principal photography being done in 35mm, but the editing and effects compositing being done on lower-resolution video, as the show was distributed to stations on videotape (vs. TOS on 35mm and 16mm film). But even with still being shot in 35mm, it was on eighties/nineties film emulsions that weren't the slower, fine-grain formulations used in the sixties. And TOS had been lit and shot by folks who'd spent most of their careers on theatrical films; by the time of TNG, that generation had been replaced by guys who'd come up in TV, with its characterless flat lighting.

So there are legit reasons why much of TOS looks better - more dramatic, more cinematic - than much of TNG.

Sorry to be hijacking the movie thread to talk about Trek!

 

[belfastboy]

View attachment 183779
A Kiss Before Dying from 1956 with Robert Wagner, Joanne Woodward and Jeffery Hunter

The original Star Trek TV series was of unimpressive quality - the sets were slapdash, the dialogue often cheesy, the acting often mediocre and the budget reminded one of a father grudgingly handing out an allowance to a child, but the ideas and philosophy were fresh and challenging as were some of the special effects / sci-fi "stuff."

Now, picture all the bad production quality of Star Trek in a movie lacking the philosophical challenge and sci-fi fun of it and you'd have A Kiss Before Dying.

The plot: a young man of modest means schemes to marry the daughter of a wealthy industrialist to advance himself socially, monetarily and career-wise, but she gets pregnant and wants to marry him without her father's approval (and all the advantages the young man wants).

Up to this point, the movie is an okay soap opera despite its two-cent budget, but after this, all heck breaks out as unbelievable events and actions pile up one after another - murders, ridiculous explanations, beyond-sloppy police investigations, a second daughter to court and so on.

It's silly but kinda holds your attention; however, you can't help noticing the low budget as, for example, there are few extras even in scenes calling out for them. The quad - a beehive of activity at most colleges - is all but empty (except for the same kid in a pink sweater vest who seemed to be in the background of every other scene).

It reminds you of when Kirk and Spock would beam down to a city described as populated by seven million, but the streets would seem to have the same five people walking around. Even the awkward dialogue and stilted acting will remind you of Star Trek. Poor Joanne Woodward, an acting pro, tried hard, but struggled to make this material not seem amateurish.

There is some good time travel to the '50s - clothes, cars, architecture and a coffee shop - but it is hard to recommend this one other than in a kitschy, I-have-time-to-kill way. And finally, you have to assume that budget constraints explain why Robert Wagner got the preppy-ish dressing, dreamboat college-kid role screaming out for Tab Hunter or Troy Donahue.

Yes, we watched it last week and were underwhelmed. I did however love the clothes that Wagner wore. A very small wardrobe ...same jacket scene after scene but damn it was a great one.

 

[Fading Fast]

Yes, we watched it last week and were underwhelmed. I did however love the clothes that Wagner wore. A very small wardrobe ...same jacket scene after scene but damn it was a great one.

It was a definitely an of-the-period collar on the shirt he wore (as in the pic I posted).

Did you happen to notice the kid in the pink vest that popped up as an extra in several of the college campus scenes? Once I noticed him, I couldn't not notice that he popped up quite often.

 

[belfastboy]

It was a definitely an of-the-period collar on the shirt he wore (as in the pic I posted).

Did you happen to notice the kid in the pink vest that popped up as an extra in several of the college campus scenes? Once I noticed him, I couldn't not notice that he popped up quite often.

No, missed it completely.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Once upon a time in the West