I Just Watched...

[kingrat]

Speaking of Dracula: the first ten minutes of Kevin Spacey's performance as Hickey in The Iceman Cometh are available on YouTube. This is simply some of the best acting I have ever seen.

[ziggy6708a]

in honor of ROGER CORMAN's passing....
here's one of his I never knew about....



"The Intruder" (1962) full movie. AKA "Shame" is a low budget Roger Corman film that deals with early integration in the south. William shatner portrays a carpet bagger from the North? Who just shows up to cause trouble. The film is way ahead of its time when you consider the strife we are encountering .....

"...The film's cast features a number of writers. Charles Beaumont, George Clayton Johnson and William F. Nolan were all working screenwriters and novelists; all three of them make their only acting appearance in a feature film in The Intruder. Leo Gordon was also an established screenwriter, writing several novels and films, and over 50 teleplays for various shows, while maintaining a concurrent acting career. Star William Shatner would, years later, also write numerous novels and memoirs. ..."

"Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic, after praising the film's camerawork, editing, and most its performances wrote: "The Intruder forcefully reports a contemporary ugliness, but that report is no longer news. Its lack of context, its irrelevant sexual excursions, its final falseness, its air of a daring descent into moral slums, insure that it will have little helpful effect on the appalling situation it depicts so vividly"...

see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intruder_(1962_film)

[CinemaInternational]

In times though of actually hating a film at the very moment it was the "it" film, there were the following:

Don't Look Up/2021 (I actually used these GIFs of Elaine to voice how I felt about the film)
Spenser/2021

to be fair, I don't think you were in the minority by not liking those two.
WOOF!

PS- i was thinking about those stupid pearls in the soup just the other day.

Just came across something on a modern movie website. We have another ridiculous "pearl" like scene coming in one of this year's would be Oscar contenders. A film due for release in November called Nightbitch has Amy Adams as a woman who goes crazy and thinks she is a dog, going so far as leaving, ahem, bodily deposits in her neighbor's front yards. Can we say, train wreck?

[Hibi]

I came across this article about David Manners. Very strange his star was removed. Has that ever happened before? I know some have been removed over the years at the Chinese, but they have limited space, while the Walk of Fame does not.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hollywoo ... _b_4254602

Odd, because the Hollywood Walk of Fame didn't even start until 1960, as an attempt to revive what was fast becoming a derelict neighborhood. Manners had been out of the Hollywood spotlight for a quarter century by then.

According to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, which manages the scheme, stars cannot be removed. They may be vandalized, however, or stolen. I believe they attempt to replace these. I wonder if this is confusing some earlier "star" award with the current one started in the 1960s?

The star "honor" is a pay-for-play operation. Someone has to pay a fee to have one installed. It's currently $75K.

Thanks for clarifying. I wasn't sure when they started the Walk of Fame. Another mystery. I know you have to pay a fee now (and don't you have to show up for the ceremony?) Maybe they are confusing it with the Chinese? But then he wasn't a huge star back then so probably not likely. Weird. Wonder how they choose who to honor now?

[Hibi]

In times though of actually hating a film at the very moment it was the "it" film, there were the following:

Don't Look Up/2021 (I actually used these GIFs of Elaine to voice how I felt about the film)
Spenser/2021

to be fair, I don't think you were in the minority by not liking those two.
WOOF!

PS- i was thinking about those stupid pearls in the soup just the other day.

Just came across something on a modern movie website. We have another ridiculous "pearl" like scene coming in one of this year's would be Oscar contenders. A film due for release in November called Nightbitch has Amy Adams as a woman who goes crazy and thinks she is a dog, going so far as leaving, ahem, bodily deposits in her neighbor's front yards. Can we say, train wreck?

OMG!!!!!!!! Speaking of dogs, my nephew was in a play over the wknd that had a dog in the cast. He decided to drop one during the scene!!! The leading lady was a pro and didn't break up!

[txfilmfan]

I came across this article about David Manners. Very strange his star was removed. Has that ever happened before? I know some have been removed over the years at the Chinese, but they have limited space, while the Walk of Fame does not.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hollywoo ... _b_4254602

Odd, because the Hollywood Walk of Fame didn't even start until 1960, as an attempt to revive what was fast becoming a derelict neighborhood. Manners had been out of the Hollywood spotlight for a quarter century by then.

According to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, which manages the scheme, stars cannot be removed. They may be vandalized, however, or stolen. I believe they attempt to replace these. I wonder if this is confusing some earlier "star" award with the current one started in the 1960s?

The star "honor" is a pay-for-play operation. Someone has to pay a fee to have one installed. It's currently $75K.

Thanks for clarifying. I wasn't sure when they started the Walk of Fame. Another mystery. I know you have to pay a fee now (and don't you have to show up for the ceremony?) Maybe they are confusing it with the Chinese? But then he wasn't a huge star back then so probably not likely. Weird. Wonder how they choose who to honor now?

Believe you are correct that you have to appear for the unveiling. Anyone can nominate a person or group (or animal, or cartoon character), but how they go about deciding who gets it and who doesn't - I don't know.

[Hibi]

Odd, because the Hollywood Walk of Fame didn't even start until 1960, as an attempt to revive what was fast becoming a derelict neighborhood. Manners had been out of the Hollywood spotlight for a quarter century by then.

According to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, which manages the scheme, stars cannot be removed. They may be vandalized, however, or stolen. I believe they attempt to replace these. I wonder if this is confusing some earlier "star" award with the current one started in the 1960s?

The star "honor" is a pay-for-play operation. Someone has to pay a fee to have one installed. It's currently $75K.

Thanks for clarifying. I wasn't sure when they started the Walk of Fame. Another mystery. I know you have to pay a fee now (and don't you have to show up for the ceremony?) Maybe they are confusing it with the Chinese? But then he wasn't a huge star back then so probably not likely. Weird. Wonder how they choose who to honor now?

Believe you are correct that you have to appear for the unveiling. Anyone can nominate a person or group (or animal, or cartoon character), but how they go about deciding who gets it and who doesn't - I don't know.

MYSTERY SOLVED!!!!!!

https://www.vvdailypress.com/story/ente ... 060676007/

Sad, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce official contacted had never heard of him!

[Hibi]

Hundreds of Beavers (2022)

Get your mind out of the gutter--it's about a mild-mannered applejack distiller who is ruined by marauding beavers. He responds by reinventing himself as a backwoods fur trapper.


LOL!!!!!






It's a live-action film (the beavers and other animals are played by adult-sized humans in blatant mascot costumes) inspired by video games (which meant that certain elements didn't impress me as much as they did younger audience members). But one made by people clearly familiar with Looney Tunes physics, silent comedy (especially Buster Keaton), and the subgenre of films of life in trapping/hunting societies. This really amused me.

If you have a chance to see this in a theater, with an audience able to appreciate these elements, don't delay. Pregaming with your mind-altering substance of choice isn't necessary but definitely doesn't hurt. (AFI Silver was offering a Hundreds of Hangovers cocktail, based on applejack.)

[Hibi]

Perry Mason again!

Perry Jr. was on again over the wknd. How many episodes was he in? According to imdb, the actor (Karl Held) is still with us at 92! He was a cutie (if a little bland in the show). I watched one episode he was in recently where he Indian wrestled some wharf rat type in a saloon and won! Hilarious.

[Hibi]

Found this about Karl Held on Perry Mason!

https://www.metv.com/stories/perry-maso ... vid-gideon

[jamesjazzguitar]

I was just watching Have Gun Will Travel. The local farmers didn't welcome and were thus mean to foreigners, that were also farmers, who came from southern eastern Europe. Well, these local farmers wheat crops were dying due to disease. The two end up getting along, and the show ends with Paladin telling the local farmers that these foreigner's wheat crops didn't suffer the same disease to their crops because they used seeds from their homeland, Crimea. The foreigners decide to give the local farmers free seed as a way to make them part of this American community.

Thus, Ukrainians helping out Americans in the old west!

[Lorna]

I would watch PERRY MASON a lot more consistently if there was a viewing option WITHOUT SO MANY ADS.

it's on FREEVEE with ads and PARMOUNT + (unedited, I think) but with ads and some kind of weird religious-legal-family channel/Christmas movie outlet via HULU with SO. MANY. ADS.

I mute them or I wander off and when I get back to the episode, like 14 different plot points have unfolded.

Damned if some eps of PERRY MASON are not BAROQUE in their plotting

[HoldenIsHere]

LHF, do you (or does anyone for that matter) know why the story was changed in the 1931 movie DRACULA to have Renfield visit Count Dracula's castle at the beginning rather than Jonathan Harker (as happens in Bram Stoker's source novel)?

OMG AN UNSOLICITED DRACULA QUESTION!!!!!

(I am not exactly an expert, but damned if I'm not pretty well-versed in most things DRACULATED.)

The 1931 FILM(S) [including the SPANISH VERSION] are based on a STAGE PLAY by HAMILTON DEANE, why DEANE decided to make RENFIELD the agent visiting DRACULA and not HARKER, I don't know- BUT it's the only change he made to the story that was a good one- it totally works and it helps to keep HARKER as the "straight" romantic, un-corrupted and conventional 1930's lead. and it gives RENFIELD a more understandable and clear relation to the story and the plot.

i mean, I'm HONESTLY not picking on him, really I'm not, but DAVID MANNERS was gay enough as it was, a scene of BELA going in towards his neck would've blown people's feeble, malnourished minds in the GREAT DEPRESSION. [PERSONALLY, I think they would've made an adorable couple.]

in the novel, RENFIELD is just a random patient of the asylum, as I recall, there is nothing to explain his connection to DRACUlA; however there is a character named MR HAWKINS who is HARKER'S BOSS in ENGLAND and it is left open-ended as to whether he knows what he is sending his young employee in for- this dymanic was explored in the 1922 NOSFERATU and the 1979 version too- which kinda combines the HAWKINS and RENFIELD characters into one.

EDIT: JUST TO TACK ON, in the novel DRACULA there is a rather insensitive, but interesting, point established that DRACULA has a special grasp on THE MENTALLY ILL and can rest in the GRAVE OF A SUICIDE VICTIM as if it were his native soil- this last bit was explored in a GODAWFUL 2006(?) MASTERPIECE THEATER version of DRACULA that has some TERRIBLE ACTING.

Thanks for this information about the 1931 DRACULA movie being adapted from a play rather than being adapted directly from Bram Stoker's novel.
The 1931 movie (and the play) provide a back-story for Renfield that is not found in Stoker's work.
As readers, we are left to our own interpretation of the odd relationship between Renfield and Dracula.
The Count clearly has some kind of influence over Renfield, but we never learn explicitly what has happened between the two, although there is the implication of some kind of intimacy or at the very least a promise of intimacy.
In fact, the novel teases the reader with the possibility that Dracula will ultimately seduce and "penetrate" another male.
There is a clear sexual connotation to the bite of the vampire with one party penetrating and the other being penetrated.
Jonathan Harker is *almost* penetrated (pegged?) by Dracula's three wives, but this would have reversed the Victorina sexual norm of the active, penetrating male and the passive, receiving female.

[CinemaInternational]

I would watch PERRY MASON a lot more consistently if there was a viewing option WITHOUT SO MANY ADS.

it's on FREEVEE with ads and PARMOUNT + (unedited, I think) but with ads and some kind of weird religious-legal-family channel/Christmas movie outlet via HULU with SO. MANY. ADS.

I mute them or I wander off and when I get back to the episode, like 14 different plot points have unfolded.

Damned if some eps of PERRY MASON are not BAROQUE in their plotting

That's Great American Family. It's crazy how many ads they have during murder She Wrote as well.

[Allhallowsday]

WHEN MICHAEL CALLS (1972)