I Just Watched...

[Fedya]

If you haven't seen a young Abby Dalton in Stakeout on Dope Street before, I highly recommend the movie.

[HoldenIsHere]

The reason why I haven't posted anything this week is hI e went into one of my television phases, currently juggling two massive series, Knots Landing and Peyton Place. Plenty of soapiness in both, but both are high quality TV shows with top-notch acting and writing, and both are extremely habit forming

I discovered KNOTS LANDING when it used to air on SoapNet. They used to run marathons. It was a very addictive show.

KNOTS LANDING was a pseudo-spin-off of DALLAS. I say "pseudo" because David Jacobs basically worked the characters of Gary Ewing and Valene Ewing from DALLAS into a series concept that he'd presented to CBS before DALLAS but was rejected.
There were a few crossovers from DALLAS to KNOTS LANDING throughout the years. The "death" of Gary's brother Bobby Ewing from DALLAS was even worked into the storyline of KNOTS LANDING. Of course, Bobby's death later turned out to be "just a dream" on DALLAS. I don't think KNOTS LANDING ever addressed that.

[Masha]

Alone (2020) with Summer Spiro and Tyler Posey.

An outbreak of zombie-ism traps a man in his apartment.

I normally post only about the first few minutes of a movie so that I am not giving spoilers but it is with this movie that that simple sentence encompasses approx. the first half of the movie. There are zombies. The man can not leave his apartment because there are zombies. Repeat day after day after day after day after day ad infinitum ad nauseam.

I had to post the stars of the movie in the top line because there is a quite different movie of the same name released in the same year. I will not comment on how this reflects on the lack of creativity among today's filmmakers.

The script for this movie was recycled for the movie: #Alive (2020) but that movie was completed and released first. Reports and reviews say that movie is much better but I feel that it would not require much effort for that to be true.

I admit that I made a serious mistake while watching this movie. I allowed myself to fall asleep for a short while. To rewind to the point which I last remembered was impossible because it was so repetitious that I could not tell whether I had watched a scene or had watched the same scene shown earlier or the same scene shown earlier than that and so had to go back to nearly the start to ensure that I had not missed an important item.

3.4/12

[TikiSoo]

Masha- I like you're watching within a genre. While I hate violence & gore, can usually "take" zombie movies & actually marvel at the artistry.
I have friends in the special effects biz & it's fun seeing their creative work.

[jamesjazzguitar]

Masha- I like you're watching within a genre. While I hate violence & gore, can usually "take" zombie movies & actually marvel at the artistry.
I have friends in the special effects biz & it's fun seeing their creative work.

I always find realistic violence & gore to be a lot more harder to take (watch), than made-up fantasy violence & gore (E.g. zombies, monsters, Jason, of course being fantasy). The latter is often camp.

(and what is it with the & sign????).

[txfilmfan]

Masha- I like you're watching within a genre. While I hate violence & gore, can usually "take" zombie movies & actually marvel at the artistry.
I have friends in the special effects biz & it's fun seeing their creative work.

I always find realistic violence & gore to be a lot more harder to take (watch), than made-up fantasy violence & gore (E.g. zombies, monsters, Jason, of course being fantasy). The latter is often camp.

(and what is it with the & sign????).

Originally, that symbol was pronounced as et, Latin for "and." The modern ampersand derives from the ligature of the two letters, e and t. I would often write just an epsilon (ε) for "and" instead of a modern ampersand, because I find it easier to write. Sometimes I'd add a vertical line through it.

[jamesjazzguitar]

(and what is it with the & sign????).
[/quote]

Originally, that symbol was pronounced as et, Latin for "and." The modern ampersand derives from the ligature of the two letters, e and t. I would often write just an epsilon (ε) for "and" instead of a modern ampersand, because I find it easier to write. Sometimes I'd add a vertical line through it.
[/quote]

Thank for that info. I can't recall the last time I have written anything by hand, that wasn't just for my own usage, other than musical notation.

[Masha]

Masha- I like you're watching within a genre. While I hate violence & gore, can usually "take" zombie movies & actually marvel at the artistry.
I have friends in the special effects biz & it's fun seeing their creative work.

I came to watch: Zombieland (2009) and: Alone (2020) for quite different reasons and not due to their genre.

I saw the former listed in the menu of movies newly available on: Freevee. I have not watched it in many years and remember it as quirky and fun. The director, writer and stars are not of particular interest to me but the wonderful depiction of a man in an apocalyptic wasteland on a quest for a Twinkie found a place in my heart. I have been in bed a minimum of twenty hours per day for going on two weeks and have watched every enlightening, educational and socially significant movie reasonably available and so was particularly vulnerable to a bit of silliness.

I found the latter movie during a search for: Donald Sutherland. He is one of my favorite actors and could with ease gush for paragraphs and paragraphs how wonderful he is. I did not realize that he had only a cameo in this when I selected it.

I find it amusing that you mention the artistry of the makeup. It is a spoiler which I usually avoid but there is a scene in: Zombieland (2009) wherein Bill Murray appears to be a zombie. He explains: "I do it to blend in. You know. Zombies don't mess with other zombies. Buddy of mine, makeup guy, he showed me how to do this. Corn starch. You know, some berries, a little licorice for the ladies. Suits my lifestyle, you know. I like to get out and do stuff. Just played nine holes on the Riviera. Just walked on. Nobody there."

[LawrenceA]

I came to watch: Zombieland (2009) and: Alone (2020) for quite different reasons and not due to their genre.

I found the latter movie during a search for: Donald Sutherland. He is one of my favorite actors and could with ease gush for paragraphs and paragraphs how wonderful he is. I did not realize that he had only a cameo in this when I selected it.

I watched Alone because of Donald Sutherland, as well, although I'll sit through most horror movies. I saw #Alone first, and thought the Korean film was much better.

[Masha]

I watched Alone because of Donald Sutherland, as well, although I'll sit through most horror movies. I saw #Alone first, and thought the Korean film was much better.

It seems to be the consensus that: #Alive (2020) is much better. It is one of those rare instances that the remake is better than the original. The fact that it was released first only confuses the issue.

[TikiSoo]

Last night I finished A SUMMER PLACE '59 after all the conversation on that other board, I just had to give it a try. In all honesty I avoided popping it into the DVD player thinking that damn easy listening theme song was going to play incessantly & get stuck in my head- courage rewarded, my fears were groundless.

This movie was a long drawn out soaper concerning adult love, lost love & teen love and starred Richard Egan & Dorothy McGuire and Sandra Dee & Troy Donahue. The story was written, produced & directed by Delmar Daves and is well told, very well acted.
There aren't many films where the music actually adds to the story as much as this one; the tempo slows & changes key to fit the dialogue, the familiar theme deviates to sour notes as the situation sours, etc.
The photography is the star of this film: the lighting & photography of the actors -especially Sandra Dee- is scrumptious and the landscapes, especially the ocean crashing on the shore to symbolize their love; the pulling tides, the strength of nature that can't be harnessed.

Those are the conventional high points of the movie. Then add a sprinkling of over the top drama (not unlike Mildred Pierce movie) for some delightful LOL moments. Of course, this was my favorite-



Also notable was a "Dr Scott Brad Janet Rocky Ugh" scene with quick cuts of all the charactors seeing each other after many years apart. And I LOL when Troy Donahue walks in on his parents talking with the ominous music cue "Dum dum DUUUMMM".
But the very funniest is when the parent's affair is uncovered, a line of newspapers bearing headlines like "Pine Island Scandal! Love Trysts of Millionaire Revealed! Spurned Wife Tells All!"

Despite the laughs, the movie was a sensitively told story about a very taboo subject of the 50's. It was great to see the parents show their own mistakes, vulnerabilities and evolution. And when the kids were "in trouble" the only ones they could turn to were their parents. The story supports young love as possibly everlasting and illustrates the work involved for a truly successful pairing.
I liked that the Father, perfectly played by Arthur Kennedy gets the final speech & redeems himself in the end & the evil Mother also deftly played by Constance Ford does not.
I wish we could have watched this as a family when my kid was a teen, she may have realized she wasn't the first to feel that way, it's an age old story.

If I ever cross paths with Lorna again...THIS is what we're going to watch!

[Detective Jim McLeod]

& the evil Mother also deftly played by Constance Ford does not.

I like this one a lot too, probably my favorite of the glossy 1950s color soapers. And Constance Ford was the memorable part of it. She was such a nasty old prude and horrible wife and even worse mother. I have seen her in other movies and TV shows but cannot get this character out of my mind when she shows up.

[Detective Jim McLeod]

The Boston Strangler (1968) TCM 8/10

Boston police search for the real life killer of several women in the early 1960s.

I have seen this many times before and watched it again on TCM last night. It is an engrossing film with some flashy direction by Richard Fleischer, with some great use of multi images. Tony Curtis gives one of his best performances as the killer Albert DeSalvo. There are many character actors in the cast. George Kennedy, just one year after his Cool Hand Luke Oscar win, plays the lead detective on the case. Henry Fonda is excellent as always as John Bottomly, a lawyer appointed by the Attorney General (William Marshall) as the head of a special Strangler Bureau. Murray Hamilton, Mike Kellin and James Brolin are other cops. English actress Carole Shelley, using an American accent, plays an undercover policewoman, this was the same year she was one of the Pigeon sisters in The Odd Couple. Hurd Hatfield The Picture Of Dorian Gray (1945) is a gay man accused of the murders by a spurned lover. George Voskovec (Juror #11 in Twelve Angry Men (1957) plays real life psychic Peter Hurkos, who leads police to a pathetic suspect (William Hickey) who has a fondness for ladies' handbags.

Now onto the bookend sequences with Eddie Muller and true crime journalist Paula Zahn. I watch her show On The Case often and looking forward to what she had to say about the case. However I was disappointed that she and Eddie spent most of the time talking about her show and not the real Boston Strangler case. The film ends telling us DeSalvo is still imprisoned but has not been indicted for the Strangler cases. Much has happened in the ensuing years. DeSalvo was stabbed to death in prison in 1973, yet Muller and Zahn do not mention this. They say that there is doubt that DeSalvo was really the killer, yet in 2013 DNA evidence from the last killing matched DeSalvo so we do know he did commit at least one of the murders. I was really surprised that they did not mention this either.

[speedracer5]

My Forbidden Past (1951).

Absurdist comedy starring Ava Gardner as a turn-of-the-century New Orleans belle from a family that's fallen like Blanche Dubois. She's fallen in love with a research professor at Tulane (Robert Mitchum, hilariously miscast), but her aunt (Lucile Watson) and cousin (Melvyn Douglas) want her to marry for money, so Douglas puts the kibosh on the relationship.

Then Gardner is in line to inherit money from Grandma, who is the one with the forbidden past, but aunt and cousin don't want that because the money comes from the wrong place and will cause scandal for them. Gardner takes the money, and when Mitchum returns from South America married, thinking Gardner jilted him, Gardner decides to use the inheritance to get Mitchum's wife out of the way.

This is supposed to be melodrama, bu it goes way over the top thanks to a ridiculous script. I found myself wondering whether Douglas watched Jack Carson in Mildred Pierce before taking the role. Douglas didn't get to play this sort of villain much, and plays it like smarmy, scheming Wally Fay from Mildred Pierce, running with the role for all it's worth and then some. Watson isn't quite to the level of Madam Konstantine in Notorious, but she's a decidedly menacing matriarch.

As a serious movie, My Forbidden Past isn't very good, maybe a 5/10 if I'm being generous. As unintentional comedy, however, it's a lot of fun, a 7 or 8 out of 10.

I didn't realize that this film was a comedy. Lol. Unintentional is right. I didn't mind the Ava Gardner/Robert Mitchum romance. But I hated Melvyn Douglas' character in this film. He was so creepy in this movie, he had the hots for his cousin. I also wished that the film had been a little more explicit in what horrible things Ava's mother had done to embarrass Lucile Watson. They alluded to her maybe being a loose woman?

[Cinemaspeak59]

A Night of Adventure (1944) Tom Conway, with his smooth, urbane air, plays Mark, a hotshot defense lawyer, whose busy schedule leaves little time for his wife, played by the lovely Audrey Long. Tired of waiting hours for him to show up for dinner, and other forms of benign neglect, the wife pursues a platonic relationship with Tony, an artist. Confrontations lead to someone getting killed, and Mark finds himself defending Tony against murder charges. Corrupt officials also figure into the mix. The court room proceedings have a nice blend of drama and humor. Plus, there’s the always amusing Edward Brophy. At 65 minutes long, this movie is hard not to like.