I Just Watched...

[Masha]

The Ghost and the Guest (1943)

A man wants to go to California for his honeymoon. His bride-to-be wants to spend their honeymoon on a farm. They compromise by going to the farm.

This is a comfortable little movie. It does not tax the viewer's intelligence nor does it in any way risk a viewer having a heart attack by being frightened. It is very much of its class as a "couple honeymooning in a haunted house" B-movie from a poverty row studio.

The plotting is a bit thinner than usual but the dialogue is much snappier. This is due to it having been written by: Morey Amsterdam who is likely best know as: Buddy Sorrell on: The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1966). It is unusual in that every character has some good lines rather than only the leads getting the laughs. That is not to say that there are many laughs. It is more of comfortable witty banter that brings smiles.

6.4/11

This movie is available for viewing with commercials on: TubiTV.

[Allhallowsday]

EXECUTIVE SUITE (1954) Again. I ended up watching the usually boring KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER on MeTV last night because NINA FOCH played a significant role... (plus LARA PARKER)...
EXECUTIVE SUITE has many wonderful performances! Not just NINA FOCH.

[jamesjazzguitar]

EXECUTIVE SUITE (1954) Again. I ended up watching the usually boring KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER on MeTV last night because NINA FOCH played a significant role... (plus LARA PARKER)...
EXECUTIVE SUITE has many wonderful performances! Not just NINA FOCH.

I was about to go to sleep, but decided to stay up late and watch Kolchak once I saw that Nina Foch was the guest star.

[Allhallowsday]

...I was about to go to sleep, but decided to stay up late and watch Kolchak once I saw that Nina Foch was the guest star.

That show is typically dull, but I like that one because of the guest stars.

[TikiSoo]

Again, based on a recommendation here I just watched WE THINK THE WORLD OF YOU, a 1988 film that centers around two friends and a German Shepherd dog. It stars Alan Bates who I last seen in the 60's Georgey Girl and Far From The Madding Crowd. He was excellent as was Gary Oldman, who in contrast, much younger since I had last seen him - the dog was beautiful.

I don't know what dialects they were speaking, but entire sentences were missed due to some of the the accents!

It's a pretty simple sweet story of a mature man (Bates) who watches a dog while the other man (Oldman) serves time in prison. The younger guy's family doesn't care about the dog and the friend is first reluctant, then enjoys his time with the dog. It's a very sweet movie with basically just a story line of shifting & contrasting responsibility: for others, ourselves and the world.

[Allhallowsday]

THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1973) on TCM this afternoon. one of RICHARD LESTER's best.

[Masha]

Gideon of Scotland Yard (1958)

A typical day in the life of an English copper.

I found this movie to be unconventional police procedural. Many movies of this type focus on the solving of a single crime while this portrays a variety from running a red light to murder. A corrupt officer, protection of a snitch and remembering to buy a salmon for supper because relatives are visiting are only a few of the challenges which Chief Inspector Gideon faces.

The pacing is brisk and even throughout. It is a ninety minute movie but it contains more than most movies which are much longer. The rare scenes focusing on a character's face while viewers reflect on what they must be thinking are all the more poignant for being very short. Dianne Foster as a femme fatale and Jack Watling as a parish priest are the only ones who show any great degree of histrionics.

Jack Hawkins is in perfect form as the Chief Inspector. This is Anna Massey's first theatrical movie. She adopts her role well and exhibits more ability than most her age.

It was fun to see Ronald Howard as a criminal and Howard Marion-Crawford as Gideon's boss because I know each of them mostly from their performances as Holmes and Watson in the television series: Sherlock Holmes (1954–1955).

They dug out of the unemployment line some guy named: John Ford to direct. I must wonder if he had any success in the industry.

I am left to wonder why a person would be cited by an officer for: "permitting his dog to follow the footway." This was not presented as mysterious in any way and so I must assume that my unfamiliarity with crime in England as the cause of my not understanding what the offense constituted or why some person would be given a ticket for it.

7.6/12

This movie is available for viewing for free with commercials on: TubiTV.

[Cinemaspeak59]

Sinners in Paradise (1938) James Whale directed this neat story about passengers on a flight to China who end up shipwrecked on an island inhabited by a mysterious loner (John Boles), and his trusted assistant. The characters are a diverse lot: underworld type; senator; hard-boiled dame; munitions dealer; female industrialist; and a virtuous humanitarian (Madge Evans). Lessons are learned and outlooks are changed from the experience.

[txfilmfan]

Watched Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) on The Criterion Channel (!) yesterday for the first time in many years. It once was a staple of late-night movie shows on local TV, but doesn't pop up much these days. I always watched it as a kid (I ended up being a software engineer, so computers were always of interest to me).

It's part of their AI collection. They "curate" titles under various collection topics (Kay Francis is one of the newest ones, BTW). It's also strangely listed under "Hollywood Hits." I say strangely, because I thought this film was never a big box office draw when released, but maybe I'm wrong.

Colossus is a more lethal version of HAL 9000, and viewing the film from the recent perspective of advances in A.I. technology is rather chilling.

The "future" technology is firmly rooted in its era, with CRT screens, bulky TV cameras and the like, but there are a few "future" touches, such as voice synthesizers for Colossus, and videophone technology (again, using CRTs). The audience of the day would have seen it as something perhaps plausible in the next few years (though computing power in 1970 was woefully inadequate to implement such a system), as opposed to the more fantastical aspects of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The film is about the US, at some near-future date, developing a computer system (Colossus) to take over the US nuclear arsenal. On the day it's announced to the public, and goes operational, it informs us that there is another system, which we learn, of course, is in the USSR. The lead of the project, Forbin, ominously states that the system may be better built than we thought. Colossus later demands that it be linked to its counterpart in the USSR, named Guardian, and its human caretakers comply. Colossus then begins tutoring Guardian to its level of intelligence, and both are communicating in mathematics that no human understands.

Eventually, the systems become one, and set out to control the world through their combined nukes. Several attempts in the interim by humans to intervene (including introducing what would become known in the Internet world as a Denial of Service attack), but they fail. Forbin, and the world, eventually become hostage to the computer systems.

A remake, originally announced with Ron Howard as director, in 2007, is currently in development hell.

[TikiSoo]

Forbin, and the world, eventually become hostage to the computer systems.
A remake, originally announced with Ron Howard as director, in 2007, is currently in development hell.

Because any remake has already become reality-

[Detective Jim McLeod]

Torpedo Run (1958) TCM On Demand-5/10

A WWII submarine captain (Glenn Ford) worries about his wife and child who were captured by the Japanese.

First time viewing for me, I saw it to add to my list of Ernest Borgnine films. He is good as Ford's second in command, though it is not much more than a faithful sidekick role. The first half hour has some taut sequences as Ford must decide to torpedo a Japanese destroyer even though he knows his wife and child are being held on another ship used as a shield. However the rest of the film doesn't quite measure up to that beginning. Ford gives a pretty good performance but I find him a rather bland actor. I like him better in edgier films like The Big Heat (1953) and Blackboard Jungle (1955).

[Lily Garland]

Platinum Blonde (1931)

with Jean Harlow, Robert Williams and Loretta Young. Currently available on YouTube, I had never seen it before. Terrific performance from Robert Williams, who died shortly after it was released - he would have had a great career I'm sure. A witty script by Robert Riskin and a precode ending.

[laffite]

Unconscious (2004) Spanish - Psychoanalysis and Freudian-ism get a send up in this farce (I had first perceived it as a sophisticated screwball comedy, if that even exists but in any case it is hilarious.) In the opening the wife of a psychoanalyst is suspicious and even a bit frightened when her husband flees their house in a paroxysm of fear. She enlists the help of her brother-in-law, who is also a psychoanalyst and who knows the husband. They discover a treatise that the husband wrote regarding four case histories of women who are suffering from Hysteria, seeking possible explanations for the sudden departure. It becomes a sort of procedural but without the staid connotation. It is zany and funny as hell. Plot twists aplenty and at breakneck speed. You will be engaged enough to keep up. The story is set in 1913 and is framed in the a silent-screen sort of way. Even the acting can suggest that. I am in awe of how movies like this get conceived and realized to the screen with such utter competence. It doesn't strike me as an easy project at all. It is farcical yes and thankfully avoids the pitfall of being too silly.

Netflix DVD

[Cinemaspeak59]

The Princess Comes Across (1936) starts as a romantic comedy but halfway through takes a turn into Agatha Christie-style whodunnit (and a good one at that). An added delight: it takes place on an ocean liner. Everything works quite nicely thanks to Carole Lombard as a struggling Brooklyn actress impersonating a Swedish princess (Hello, Greta Garbo!), and Fred MacMurray as a concertina-playing passenger who joins Lombard in detective work.