Do The Right Thing -- Stand Up For Excellence
September 25, 2024
I Would Have Preferred A More Challenging...Okay, A More Insulting Tone
September 25, 2024
Opposite Peas in Polish Travel Pod
September 25, 2024
The restored Rio Bravo, which premiered late last week at the TCM Classic Film Festival, is currently streaming on Max in 4K UHD. I just watched about a half-hour's worth, and there's NOTHING extra or bumpy about it. It looks fine, but it doesn't add any fresh clarity or deeper blacks or anything. Not to my eyes, it doesn't.
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…a friend passed along a Cinecitta anecdote from no less a personage than Charlton Heston. Heston had told him “that the majority of shots were taken from a single side of the set, to simplify camera placements.” Oh, for God’s sake!
HE reply: “Be that as it may…okay, fine. But why in heaven’s name would William Wyler build a full-sized stadium and arena with a huge middle island with those four kneeling warrior sculptures…a massive, full-sized stadium and chariot racetrack with acres and acres of room on all sides…why build this massive outdoor set if the plan was to mainly use one side of the racetrack for filmimg?
“Common visual logic (i.e., the attached photos) tell us there were no physical obstructions or logistical advantages to emphasizing one side or the other…talk about an illogical scenario.
1st AD to Wyler: “Uhm, Willy, we’ve taken a hard look at things and the ample size and massive scale of this hugely expensive outdoor set notwithstanding, we’ve figured it’ll be simpler to mainly shoot on just one side of the arena.” Wyler to 1st AD: “You’re fired.”
BTW: This morning I re-watched the chariot race sequence from the 1926 version of Ben-Hur, and there’s a great shot around the 2.25 mark that Wyler’s 1959 version didn’t have. It was apparently taken from inside a dug-in hole in the track, and shows several chariots thundering directly overhead.
I’m sorry but the two dance numbers in this clip from You’ll Never Get Rich are magnificent…pure joy. Not to mention the boogie piano.
Sometime in early 1941, the 22 year-old Rita Hayworth costarred with Fred Astaire in this film, which is commonly described as a “wartime” comedy even though the U.S. wasn’t in a war until the attack on Pearl Harbor (12.7.41) and didn’t go to war against Nazi Germany and fascist Italy until early ’43. The most you could say was that the country was on a wartime footing with very first peacetime draft in U.S. history having been enacted on 9.6.40.
On 8.11.41, the famous bedroom bodice photo of Hayworth was featured in an iconic LIFE magazine spread. (The photographer was Bob Landry.) You’ll Never Get Rich opened six weeks later on 9.25.41. Hayworth’s performance as headstrong dancer Sheila Winthrop was her first starring role.
Born on 10.17.18, Hayworth was 22 when the film was released. Astaire was 42.
SNL's Molly Kearney (plus-size, they/them) completely whiffed her 4.15 Weekend Update bit, which was basically about lecturing and sloganeering for trans rights and against trans haters. She wouldn't know funny if it bit her in the ass.
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Several years ago a guy suggested that a miniseries based on Steven Bach‘s “Final Cut: Dreams and Disaster in the Making of Heaven’s Gate” could be great. A sprawling, dialogue-driven, slow-motion calamity flick, set mostly in Hollywood and New York with occasional detours to the shooting set with fascinating, whip-smart dialogue and one of the most unusual villains of all time — director Michael Cimino.
The instant I heard this my brain spun around, clicked its heels and said “yes!” I’m still high on the idea. A sprawling six-episode Max or Netflix or Amazon series, I’m thinking.
I’m aware of what a complete friggin’ nightmare it can be to produce films about the making of this or that classic film/play/anything if any of the principals are alive. I don’t know if getting the rights to Bach’s book (which of course was legally cleared when it was published 30 years ago) would lessen difficulties or not, but I’m dead certain that the entire world would stop whatever it’s doing to watch a miniseries about this catastrophic Hollywood saga. I got so high on the idea that I ordered a paperback version of Bach’s book — I haven’t read it in over three decades.
Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid has been playing commercially since last Thursday night -- more than enough time for the NY and LA chapters of the HE community to have seen it. So what's the verdict?
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In yesterday’s “Strange Architecture” piece” I criticized the odd decision of Ben-Hur‘s production designer to build a large, visually obstructive island in the middle of the Jerusalem chariot-race stadium. The result was that a significant portion of the crowd was only able to see half the racetrack and therefore half the action.
This triggered a bizarre response from “Brenkilco,” who claimed that “they only built half the track with stands on one side,” and that “a lot of fancy editing was employed but the chariots were always racing down the same straightaway.” This “illusion,” he said, “concealed the fact that there was nothing on the other side.”
Poppycock, I replied, but I couldn’t find any smoking gun photos that proved that the racetrack was completely whole with two sides. And then “SlashMC” came to the rescue with two such photos. It makes you wonder which HE commenters besides “Brenkilco” are just talking out of their ass half the time. Thanks ever much to SlashMC.
I’ve mentioned before (and I’m saying this as a relatively fit guy with broad shoulders) that actors with small, rounded shoulders are looking at an uphill situation in terms of seeming physically attractive. It’s hard not to rate if you have broad shoulders, and it’s hard not to seem…well, underwhelming and diminished if your shoulders are narrow and smallish. Sorry — it may sound cruel to say this, but it’s true.
In the eyes of some straight women a guy with broad shoulders and a relatively trim waistline radiates the same allure that straight guys sense when regarding women with big breasts.
The other night I was watching Edward Dmytryk‘s Murder My Sweet (’44) and there’s a scene in which Dick Powell takes his shirt off, and it’s not a good look…I’m tellin’ ya.
What’s the female equivalent? Well, movie cameras rarely zero in on women’s feet, but those with beefy, oversized, somewhat indelicate feet (and I’m not saying that this is any kind of widespread trait) should feel…well, relieved. I’m not naming names. Okay, I’ll name one — Jean Simmons. I’m not trying to make something out of this, but everyone understands that Elvis Presley was known for being averse to women with big thick feet. He preferred Japanese geisha feet.
My poor mom had German feet and felt self-conscious about same, and so she wore too-small shoes during her early 20s and pretty much mangled her feet a a result. I always felt badly for her in this regard.
Posted earlier today on Reddit by u/NomadSound: I’ve studied a large version of this photo of the Deliverance crew and inspected each and every face, and the following actor/characters are missing: Bill McKinney (“Mountain Man” / hillbilly rapist…”weeeeeee!“), Herbert Coward (“Toothless Man”), original novel author James Dickey (“Sheriff Bullard”), Billy Redden (genetically deformed banjo boy) and Macon McCalman (sheriff’s deputy whose brother-in-law is missing). Not to mention the Griner brothers and the old hillbilly with the hat who asked Burt Reynolds “are you from the power company?”
The woman sitting behind (and to the left) of director John Boorman and the lead actors is Ned Beatty‘s wife, Belinha Beatty. She played Jon Voight‘s wife in the final scene.
I’d really like to find a photo of Beatty and McKinney posing side by side with shit-eating grins and their arms draped around each other’s shoulders.
As you're approaching Stockholm Arlanda airport you'll notice that it's waaay out in the country. No sprawling suburbs or congested business strips nearby -- just mile upon square mile of birch and pine trees, like you're flying into Savannah.
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I know the ruins of Rome’s ancient Circus Maximus quite well. This is where all the chariot races happened, of course, and where, according to the script of Ben-Hur, Charlton Heston rode to victory several times while he was still bunking at Jack Hawkins’ palazzo, prior to returning to Judea.
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