Favorite Films (lists up to participating site members)

[YomRippur]

I just re-watched the "Scream" films, and noticed once again the killers' predilection for throat-cutting and "seeing the inside" of victims, which is very Ripper-esque to say the last. These are probably the most Ripper-esque films without actually using the JTR name nor referencing JTR anywhere. The killers all wear dark, cloak-like garment and they all have "mother issues" in one way or another. One killer is named Jill (Jill the Ripper?).

[YomRippur]

Just want to stay on topic by mentioning another Ripper-esque thriller: the 1996 Italian thriller "The Stendhal Syndrome," about a female police officer who is attacked by a prostitute-murdering serial rapist-strangler in Italy. This is the trailer, and a Blu-ray with newly restore picture just came out in the US. The killer is played by German actor Thomas Kretschmann, perhaps best known in the US as the Nazi officer who saves Adrien Brody's life in "The Pianist."

[YomRippur]

You must have inadvertently put the idea of M out on the social grid yomrippur bc, for all the inexplicables, i found myself looking it up on YouTube a week or two ago. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u3rWLm_PAbc
i got as far as the kids playing the man in black game; so at this rate, i should finish watching it by 2023.

Watching a bootlegged copy on Youtube is no way to watch a film properly, and should only be done as a last resort, such as when no home video is available. "M" happens to be readily available on Blu-ray/DVD (currently 50% off at Barnes and Nobles until Aug-11). These illegal uploads are made by converting from the original discs (assuming the bootlegger knows what he is doing), a process that degrades video and audio quality, which are further degraded by Youtube's own video conversion. Here is the difference between the version of "M" (top) you saw versus the Blu-ray:


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Look at the much higher detail of the ground, the shadows, clothing, etc. shown on the Blu-ray image, whereas the Youtube image is waxy, compressed, and murky. And this is actually one of the better-looking 720p Youtube videos. The bad-looking ones are atrocious, and of course you wouldn't know because you don't have the original, pristine image to compare to, like I did above. These things are for people who don't know any better. More tragic is that they compromise their love of the movies by not seeing them in their proper form. Even more tragic is those who don't know any better think this degraded form is how these films are supposed to look.

[Henry Flower]

"You poor man. fancy knocking around with women like that." (Aphrodite at the water hole)

The whole thing's an absolute joy.

Couldn't agree more. That film is a mug of hot cocoa on a cold winter evening for me. It makes me happy, cheers me up, gives me a cosy feeling.

[Robert]

"You poor man. fancy knocking around with women like that." (Aphrodite at the water hole)

The whole thing's an absolute joy.

[barnflatwyngarde]

I'm very glad someone else appreciates it!

My favourite scene is where Hancock goes into a cafe and demands a coffe with "no froth", much to the chagrin of the cafe owner.

"Eight hundred quids worth of frothing machinery here, and you don't want none".

Link below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXRLoJQK8f0

[Robert]

She was obliged to squawk and assume goofy expressions, but I think that was par for the course for comediennes in those days.

[Steadmund Brand]

Lucille Ball did have serious acting chops...as she proved in the aformentioned films....plus she was downright gorgeous in her younger days (very pretty in the I Love Lucy era as well don't get me wrong....in fact she was my first childhood crush)

Steadmund Brand

[Henry Flower]

Very interesting info, Jeff, thanks for that.

Lucille Ball!? I can't quite get my head around that...

[Mayerling]

Apocalypse Now is fantastic to be sure... and I love Heart of Darkness (the Novella it's based on) would love to have seen what Orson Wells would have done with it....Heart of Darkness was what he wanted to do for his first film....but due to problems ended up making a film nobody remembers called Citizen Kane hahaha

Steadmund Brand

Welles was studying (he claimed) how to make movies at RKO for nearly a year before he began to create the film "American" from a Herman Mankiewicz screenplay, that became "Citizen Kane". I say he claimed that, because we now know he made at least two small "embryonic" movies (both of which are on "You Tube") before "Kane" called, "Hearts of Age" (for his prep school project in 1933) and "Too Much Johnson" (which was really a set of shot sequences to be shown between acts of a 1938 revival of the play by William Gillette - oddly enough "Too Much Johnson" is Welles only real comedy. One of the cast of "Too Much Johnson" is a young Judy Holiday, which means she worked with three great directors in her brief but shining film career: Welles, George Cukor, and Vincent Minnelli.

Welles apparently studied "Stagecoach" by John Ford, to study the art of film cutting, claiming he ran it over forty times. By 1940 he had two projects in mind for possible filming. First was "The Smiler With A Knife", a political thriller about a fascist plot against Britain, that was written by Nicholas Blake (the pseudonym of the then Poet Lauriate, Cecil Day-Lewis, father of the famous actor Daniel). Welles actually started planning casting for this work, and wanted a young comedienne actress who was signed to RKO for the lead. The actress was Lucille Ball. It's hard to think that Welles made such an odd choice for the role, but Ball did demonstrate (in 1942) her ability as a straight actress in the film "The Big Street" with Henry Fonda, and later would do it again in the film noirs, "The Dark Corner" with Clifton Webb and William Bendix, and "Lured" with George Sanders, Cedric Hardwick, Charles Coburn, Joseph Calleia (later to be "Menzies" opposite Welles and Charleton Heston in "Touch of Evil"), Boris Karloff, and George Zucco.

But "The Smiler" did not get filmed. Instead, Welles turned to Conrad's study of imperialism and evil "Heart of Darkness". There are stills still in existence of Welles attempts at this film, in which he was to play both Kurtz (the central figure in the story - whom Marlon Brando played in "Apocalypse Now") and Marlowe, the narrator (Martin Sheen in the film). The film was to be shot with an "I-am-a-camera" point of view, like that used by Rouben Mamoulian for parts of "Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde" in 1931, and by Robert Montgomery in "The Lady in the Lake" in 1946. Difficulties in filming this work prevented it from being Welles' first movie.

Welles turned to the Mankiewicz screenplay, based really on the life of William Randolph Hearst, and edited and changed parts of it. He dropped some points in the screenplay (Emily was to hate Charles for writing, in his newspapers, an incitement to the killing of her uncle, the President of the U.S., based on an incident of Hearst columnist, poet, satirist Ambrose Bierce writing a quatrain that may have influenced Leon Czolgosz in deciding to shoot President William McKinley in 1901; later in the screenplay, Susan says that Kane's valet, Raymond, knows where all the bodies are buried - it turns out that Kane kills a man and the murder (known to Raymond) is covered up somewhat - this was supposed to be based on the death of Thomas Ince on Hearst's yacht in 1924). The finished script (that won Welles and Mankiewicz the only "Oscar" for the film), was shot and Welles real movie career began.

Jeff

[Henry Flower]

Wasn't Orson the person Mork used to talk to at the end of Mork and Mindy?

'Mork calling Orson, Mork calling Orson.'

Regards

Herlock

Mindy was cute. Nanu Nanu!

[Herlock Sholmes]

Wasn't Orson the person Mork used to talk to at the end of Mork and Mindy?

'Mork calling Orson, Mork calling Orson.'

Regards

Herlock

[Robert]

Wasn't Orion Wells in Beetlejuice?

[Henry Flower]

Orion? What a star he was

Awesome Wells was an Orion? I thought he was a Sagittarius!

[Sam Flynn]

I think Orion wells is awesome

Orion? What a star he was