WHAT FILMS HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

[Rita Hayworth]

Heck I want to watch The Dambusters again now, my first memory of the film was the dog that gets killed before his master sets off, how cruel, that lost the film for me age 9, I had to wait until I was older to watch it in it's entirety.

Same here ... Allison.

New Information

I was checking all the major cable and movie channels to see whether Dambusters/Dam Busters will be playing and I discovered that their is is a remake in the works - that is scheduled to come out next year and China is building 10 Lancasters - full sized replicas of the British World War II bombers for this movie/remake. I was shocked to see this in the internet and its every where - there are over 40-50 webpages devoted to this subject matter and according to initial reviews its supposed to be just as good as the original. I just can't believe what I was seeing here and its beyond description.

Wow ...

[moira finnie]

The original film of The Dambusters (1954) can be seen in its entirety here on this site too, (unless there is some restriction on UK members seeing this movie posted on youtube due to a copyright):

http://silverscreenoasis.com/oasis3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1563

[charliechaplinfan]

I watched The Unbearable Lightness of Being this afternoon, I haven't watched this since it was made, I remember reading the book and really enjoying to too so revisiting it was interesting. Daniel Day Lewis and Juliette Binoche very early in their careers. I'd forgotten the start of this movie and I'd forgotten how long it was, today it seems a bit too long and a bit too involved with the Sabine story. Juliette/Teresa's character is so sweet and niave yet starved of affection and very attracted to Tomas, who in turn is sttracted to anything in a skirt. His love for Teresa, who's niavete and lack of guile means she never moves out and takes his life in a different direction, to marriage. Teresa realises that Tomas isn't faithful but tries to tell herself that he loves her and that should be enough but it isn't, she escapes him and runs into the Communists uprising in Prague. A photographer she gets some excellent pictures but is arrested, soon she fleas with Tomas to Geneva only to flee Geneva because she feels she is nothing in Switzerland, coming home she surrenders her passport. Tomas realising she has left him, follows her. Soon she flees again after commiting an indiscretion to get back at Tomas for his many. They finally come to work together on a farm, seemingly the happiest they've been for them to attain the 'lightness of being'

Tomas is a brain surgeon when the film opens and he and Teresa go through a political battle as well as their personal ups and downs. The footage of the uprising is very powerful, with Teresa snapping her pictures. What I remembered the film for when it was made is the multitude of sex scenes which now seem very tastefully done between Tomas and Teresa and the ones between Tomas and Sabine show the other side of his needs. It is ultimately the love story between Tomas and Teresa that makes the story so memorable, from what I remember Lewis, Binoche and the director caught the mood of the book.

I did have to skip the death of Karenin, I coludn't watch him put his own dog down, even if it was integral to the script.

[Birdy]

I've always wondered if I wanted to read or watch this...you just answered my question! We send it out constantly on interlibrary loan.
B

[JackFavell]

The book is fantastic and so is the movie - you will miss the wonderful way Kundera writes, but I would recommend both the movie and the book.

[MikeBSG]

I haven't seen "Unbearable Lightness of Being" since it came out. (Was that 1988?) I really enjoyed it then.

Whatever happened to Philip Kaufman, the director of "Unbearable Lightness of Being" and "The Right Stuff"? He made that NC-17 film at the start of the 90s, "Henry and June" (???) and then seems to have vanished from my radar.

[MikeBSG]

Yesterday, I watched "Kontroll," a Hungarian film from 2004 about the woes of ticket inspectors on a subway system. (Their job is to catch and fine people who ride the subway without tickets.)

I started out liking the film a lot as it showed the (exaggerated) woes of these people. (It isn't a realistic film but allegorical.) I really liked the group spirit of the team of ticket inspectors, but then the film dropped that and focused on the redemption of the leader of the team, and I felt the film became predictable at that point. (I knew what the last shot of the film would be about 40 minutes before the film ended.)

Still it was worth a look, and other people might like it more than I did.

[charliechaplinfan]

I haven't seen "Unbearable Lightness of Being" since it came out. (Was that 1988?) I really enjoyed it then.

Whatever happened to Philip Kaufman, the director of "Unbearable Lightness of Being" and "The Right Stuff"? He made that NC-17 film at the start of the 90s, "Henry and June" (???) and then seems to have vanished from my radar.

I thought the same myself about the director. I too hadn't seen it since it came out, at the time of it's appearing in cinemas I wolud have been an impressionable young teen, probably why the love scenes were the thing I remembered the most. This time I've been wondering more about Tomas, I'm sure the book brings him out more, as Daniel Day Lewis plays him he's an enigma, there's part of him hidden, perhaps this is the way he is written. Take the first meeting with Teresa, the first time we see her we think she is just another attractive woman who he's seen, yet she's niave and somewhat gauche and being suffocated in a backwater spa in Czechoslovakia, Tomas treats her partly with disdain. From this uncertain young woman who arrives in Prague banging on his door she becomes a good photographer, I think the second meeting of Tomas and Teresa is so funny, the way she literally jumps on him when he thinks he's the one in control, perhaps this is what is different about her, completely unpredictable, trusting and niave. She's almost like a cat who has no one to feed it so you give it a meal and it never leaves, I get the same kind of protective feeling from Tomas to Teresa. I did think there were too many scenes with Sabine, especially the sideline about her lover but it's a monir quibble in a very good film.

I wonder why it took me twenty years to watch it again.

Birdy, I usually read the book then watch the film, it's my preferred way as books often give more than films but I really don't think it matters here. The film is very good on it's own merits but you may find yourself wanting to read the book to pick up more of the back story on the characters.

[feaito]

Yesterday I watched a film from my childhood, Hammer's production "The Gorgon" (1964) and spent a terrific hour and half watching Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Megeara (The Gorgon).

Today I saw one of Norma Shearer's best films: "Escape" (1940), a touching story in which she plays the American widow of a German Count who befriends an American of German descent, Bob Taylor (playing Mark Preysing), who's desperately trying to get in touch with her German mother -a prisoner in a Nazi Concentration Camp- who's been sentenced to death, Emy Ritter (Alla Nazimova), who used to be a very famous actress decades before...In spite of being 11 years Taylor's senior, Shearer didn't look older than him on screen and they make a fine couple. Conrad Veidt plays an ill German General, who's the Countess lover....Bonita Granville plays another of her nasty brats....Albert Bassermann, Blanche Yurka, Felix Bressart, Philip Dorn are part of the excellent supporting cast. A very good and absorbing picture. The film is not typical at all and has a good script.

[JackFavell]

I enjoy Escape very much, as you say, it's not typical in any way, and everyone in the film has their moment.

As for The Unbearable Lightness of Being, in the book I think you might find what's missing from the movie - which is the description of how Tomas changes, his feelings deepen and change with Teresa. The balance of these three people and their very different strengths is what I find so stunning. I like that each has power and is also denied it throughout the course of the film/book. There's an incredible description in the book of shared sleep, how it is possibly more important than sex. In the end, it is Sabine who is left as an anachronism, left behind by the couple, though I guess we know she will survive, as she always has. It's a very moving and terribly sad story to me. There are all sorts of layers, though, it is a wonderful thing that these people find one another.

[feaito]

and everyone in the film has their moment.

Yoiu nailed it Wendy...

And I liked Norma's restrained performance ( Iknew I would from what I read). The 11 years age difference between Bob Taylor and Norma is not apparent at all in the film...they look the same age!

BTW I posted on facebook a very interesting comparison I found on youtube between the film's last scene which was featured on a trailer on the film and the sequence that was included in the final cut....whereas in the first unused sequence Veidt's reaction is stronger and full of anger and Norma's reaction is quite over the top, full of intensity and melodramatics....the definitive sequence is much more honest and Norma's interpretation is more nuanced and restrained and Veidt's playing is more touching and human....odd though that a changed scene was included on a trailer of the film...

Check this link -I could not post it because the scene because the embedding is disabled....

[JackFavell]

That first clip is interesting - it looks like the focus is on Norma alone.... the actual ending is so much better! The two of them play so perfectly together, each getting their moment, doesn't it make you want to know what Mervyn LeRoy said to them in between takes to get this wonderful interplay? It's got so much depth - the whole history of the couple is in that scene.

[feaito]

Yes Wendy, superb! I'd like to know that....because the change is HUGE!!

[feaito]

Tonight I saw Bill Wellman's "Magic Town" (1947), a small gem of a film scripted & produced by Bob Riskin...I liked & enjoyed this unique film more than Capra's classic "It's a Wonderful Life!" towards which I've always had contardictory, ambivalent feelings (kinda love & hate relationship)...Jimmy Stewart plays an opportunist, cynical type, who finds in the small "magic" town of the title the exact replica of the whole USA (in terms of people's opinions for polls)....enter his sidekick Ned Sparks (priceless) and his collaborator Donald Meek, superb character actors whose last film this was....Jane Wyman plays the smart editor of the Magic Town's local newspaper (she's great)...Ann Shoemaker, Regis Toomey, Wallace Ford are among the supporting cast. Thoroughly enjoyable and full of vignettes. Loved this one!!

[charliechaplinfan]

I enjoy Escape very much, as you say, it's not typical in any way, and everyone in the film has their moment.

As for The Unbearable Lightness of Being, in the book I think you might find what's missing from the movie - which is the description of how Tomas changes, his feelings deepen and change with Teresa. The balance of these three people and their very different strengths is what I find so stunning. I like that each has power and is also denied it throughout the course of the film/book. There's an incredible description in the book of shared sleep, how it is possibly more important than sex. In the end, it is Sabine who is left as an anachronism, left behind by the couple, though I guess we know she will survive, as she always has. It's a very moving and terribly sad story to me. There are all sorts of layers, though, it is a wonderful thing that these people find one another.

I think I need to read the book again, I remember now the shared sleep aspect, which is depicted in the film. Amazon here I come.