Richard, if I'm lecturing, then I'm lecturing about personal experience of introducing these comediens to others. Like I said, I've tried to expose people over 25 or so (who importantly have never seen them before) to, for example, the Marx Brothers and had zero luck. I hope you've had better succe...

And I like Bowers and he was way before my time. Humor can be something like 'what's your favorite color?' But generally speaking, for most people, I think age is extremely important, and not just how old you are in terms of the times and culture, it may be even more important how old you were the ...

Then you force me to guess. If you were younger than 20 then you weren't around in his prime and have exactly the issues that Richard so clearly described. If you were older than around 20, then he's truly not your cup of tea. I disagree. Age has absolutely nothing to do with it. I was not even ali...

Ah, what a glorious day. The unfunniest of the unfunniest. How he got away with it for song long is astounding. Are you joking? If not, I'm curious, how old are you? Old enough to remember when he died. Never found him the slightest funny. Then you force me to guess. If you were younger than 20 the...

Lokke Heiss wrote What I remember was that Das alte Gesitz was the real jewell of the festival and showed how arbitrary film books (and let's face it, history itself is).. Couldn't agree more, it's an absolutely stunning film, and in Pordenone it was helped immeasurably by a wonderful accompaniment...

LouieD wrote:Ah, what a glorious day. The unfunniest of the unfunniest. How he got away with it for song long is astounding.

Are you joking? If not, I'm curious, how old are you?

The years around 1975 are often used as the watershed mark for a division of an era, and Benny's death fits together with Nixon's resignation, the end of the Vietnam War and for final proof: That's the year the British Library marks as the differenc between their 'old collection' and their 'new coll...

A person liking The Enchanted Cottage used to be a litmus test for me to know whether I was going to like them or not.

But let's face it, time has gone by, and nowadays, just even KNOWING there is a film called The Enchanted Cottage has become the test.

The following is culled from a longer essay titled: Crazy Rays and Scattered Shadows, if you google that and my name, you'll got the entire discussion. Outstanding. Very surprized, considering the times, to learn of a German-made picture sympathetic to Jews, Das alte Gesitz . Did it provoke signifi...

"You can't top pigs with pigs." Walt Disney, responding to someone who asked him why he didn't immediately do a sequel to The Three Little Pigs Actually, Walt did do a sequel to THE THREE LITTLE PIGS and it tanked. That's why he said, "You can't top pigs with pigs." What he meant, I believe, was th...

Reg, Richard's quote from Everson is right on the money. Kracauer's book is a classic case of Post hoc ergo propter hoc, Latin for "after this, therefore because of this," an extremely common mistake in logic that happens around us all the time. The idea is that there is a natural tendency to connec...

On a more serious note, people keep talking about particular roles as if they are the performers' first. Audrey Hepburn was in six movies before Roman Holiday and Lugosi had been making films for a decade and a half before Dracula . Likewise, none of the actors in Star Wars was new to the screen. I...

Here's an obvious one: Sylvester Stallone, in Rocky.

I think this was more of an issue in the 50s onward, since the studio system was collapsing and couldn't build up a rep company like it had in the 30s and 40s. Then you could get cast for type and then afterward spend a long time finding such a good role. I'm a huge Audrey Hepburn fan, but I don't t...

_______________________________________________________________________________________________ "You can't top pigs with pigs." Walt Disney, responding to someone who asked him why he didn't immediately do a sequel to The Three Little Pigs [/size][/b] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSsmewSAVS8 Ha h...

I'm a big fan of Ruskin, and I also like the PRB art movement, at least their early stuff. So can you tell me 'who I am''? Admiration for both Ruskin & the Pre-Raphielites no doubt includes very many; for ex., myself. But of whom in particular were you thinking? You mean who in the PRB? That would ...

It was Jean Paul Sartre who said that the quickest way to ascertain a person's character is to ask them which dead people he/she most admires. If you agree with that statement (and I do)... As do I also; but an authority far more congenial to me, Ruskin, advised a different approach to the same end...

My guest on this week's "Commentary Track" podcast is the great Joe Dante. We talk about cartoons, Roger Corman, the Alamo and killing Leonard Maltin with gremlins. If you have half as much fun listening as I did talking with him, you'll have a grand time indeed. Get it on iTunes or straight from t...

...to paraphrase Spencer Tracey on the other (Katherine) Hepburn: "not much meat on the bones--but what's there, is sure cherce. Not merely a line of dialog, but for him personally, we may with hindsight surmise, his true attitude; choked the first time I heard it. To pursue the Hepburn/Hepburn con...

Some studios (can you hear me, Paramount?) don't really seem to care much about their older films and in many cases do not even have film elements. They probably don't know they own them. No, Paramount can't hear you. The Paramount collection (1929-1947) is owned by Universal, which explains why th...

I came across this line in a novel by Jeffrey Eugenides the other day; "She held herself very straight, like Audrey Hepburn, whom all women idolize but men never think about." Yep, that just about sums up my attitude also. Any views to the contrary? I find a lot of comments on this thread hilarious...

Nice but incomplete. No pictures of you up there.

By the way, this movie has mediocre to terrible reviews. What did you think?

alistairw wrote:I take your point Lokke but are even they as cookie cutter as the WH films?

Not QUITE as cookie-cutter, but WH never thought people would be talking about these films a year after they were made, let alone 80 years...

There was an interesting comment in the book (it's Anthony Holden's 1991 bio) from someone who worked with Olivier at the Hollywood end - it might have been Sam Spiegel - who said that the great theatre actors are able to take on characters because they're essentially hollow people, and it was the ...

And he would have been terrific. I always felt that he was better playing the anti-hero roles, in other words, he was more a character actor than a straight lead. Funny, but in a strange way Errol Flynn was a better actor than Olivier, at least better in the sense he could do a straight heroic lead ...

Uh....just hit the imdb movie list for Adam Sandler.

A lot of people agree with you...I think if he'd lived longer, he would have easily moved over to character roles similar to what happened to Spencer Tracy when he got older. After watching him for years in his makeup roles, watching him in Tell it to the Marines was a real pleasure.

How much would it cost for MoMA to copy its current print to one that can be exhibited?

Seems like this would be a great film for a fund-raising, 'Make a Beau Geste for Beau Geste!'

Ha ha...perhaps not Boardman's best 'presentation' as Catherine, but you work with what you have. Appreciate the effort.