I Just Watched...

[Lorna]

personally, I think CRONENBERG or TERRY GILLIAM would've been the best fits for the material,

Dude, I'm holdin' out for Chantal Akerman!

it could've definitely used a feminine perspective.
I wonder if LINA WERTMULLER was one of the 27 directors approached.
PROBABLY NOT LENI REIFENSTAHL THO

[Lorna]

this mentioning of WILLIAM HURT has reminded me of an amusing anecdote from my childhood in NORTH CAROLINA.

In the year 1985, I would have been about 8 years old, and I was a child with who was VERY VERY VERY INTO SPOOKY STUFF[/b], especially CAMPY SPOOKY STUFF and when I saw the title and newspaper ad** for KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN, my heart skipped a beat.

**remember the newspaper ads for NOW PLAYIN??? Hell, remember newspapers?

Going off that title and florid little ad with THE LIPS and THE WEB, my warped little 8 year old brain envisioned the film to be something like a cross between a LIVE ACTION version of CHER'S ANIMATED VIDEO for the song DARK LADY and the SATAN'S ALLEY FINALE from STAYIN ALIVE.

(A BEST PICTURE CONTENDER IF EVER THERE WAS, AMIRITE???!}

So, I begged my parents to take me and was firmly told "no"- between what seemed to me were escaped chuckles of barely repressed laughter

And then I found out THEY went to see KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN and I was furious, just sitting on the steps SEETHING when they got home that night because my parents wouldn't let ME see KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN and but THEY HAD THE GALL TO GO SEE KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN!!!!

I WAS A BALLERINA BARBIE! GRACEFUL. DELICATE. They had to GO.

and MY FATHER- just sat down and leveled with me, and was like:

"Son, it's about a guy in prison who wears women's clothes."

and 8 year old me was like:



and he was all "no, I'm being completely serious. Now go to bed."

And I went upstairs to bed- seriously confused, but no longer angry.

[Allhallowsday]

^ KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN is an original and bold story, even today. WILLIAM HURT is heartbreaking as Molina, and RAUL JULIA... wow... a force of nature.

[CinemaInternational]

For a time in the 1980s William Hurt was considered one of the best, possibly even the best, actor working in film. He had a run of good films.

I remember, quite well. That's why I was surprised that when he died, it made barely a blip in the news. I think it occurred while YE OLDE MESSAGEBOARDS were down, so I got no concensus from the folks here on their feelings, but I recall news of his passing ran below the main headlines on the websites that did mention it (cnn and huffpost come to mind distinctly), compare that to when PAUL REUBENS (PEE WEE HERMAN) died and he got THE BANNER HEADLINE at multiple sites and a large public reaction.

**EDIT- not saying PEE WEE HERMAN didn't deserve it, he did, just- y'know- HURT was one of THE actors of the 80's, even though I have not seen many of his movies, I know they were HUGE.

Fame, she is a fleeting creature.

***EDIT EDIT: CORRECTING SOME SYNTAX ABOVE- I'm NOT SAYING PEE WEE HERMAN deserved death, I'm saying his tragic death merited the level of public reaction it got.

I was surprised when I imdb'd HURT and saw that he worked really steadily even though his LEADING MAN DAYS where over by the early nineties (I remember THE DOCTOR was supposed to be his BIG "RETURN" but it fizzled out, he appeared in a BUTT TON OF MARVEL MOVIES though.

William Hurt did pass away before the TCM messageboards closed (about eight months before), in a bit of timing that was kind of ironic. Hurt died shortly before the infamous 2022 Oscars (the one with the slap seen round the world), and that happened to be the year where the Best Picture winner was Coda, which co-starred Marlee Matlin, whose history with Hurt onscreen and offscreen was well documented. So naturally, a lot of old stories got bandied about quickly and that quickly put a chill to any real "tribute" to him, although I do recall the general take on the TCM boards was generally one of respect for being a great actor onscreen , whereas the opinion in one Facebook group I was in was reminiscent of 17th century Salem, Massachusetts. [I will say though that of recent celebrity passings, few went under the radar so much as Piper Laurie. I didn't even know until she was gone for a month]

But then again, Ryan O'Neal just died, and his offscreen behavior was even more widely known and checkered than Hurt, and while said Facebook group still felt like old Salem about him, the overall press and public seemingly mourned O'Neal's passing in a way that Hurt never got, even though Hurt was definitely considered a great on-screen actor while O'Neal, outside of a few productions, never did get that high overall reputation.

So, what it seemingly gets down to is simply the difference in how movie critics and historians treat the films of the seventies as opposed to the eighties, combined with what films play the most on television and streaming. The seventies are treated as though they were the golden age of cinema (even though they were emphatically uneven and really decayed in the back half of the decade), whereas the eighties and maybe even the first few years of the nineties are dismissed as being bland and boring, never mind the fact that filmmaking in the 21st century is puerile and vapid in a way far beyond anything seen before, to the extent that years that left a lot to be desired like 1997 and 2001 look pretty good compared to the last fifteen years. So, someone who was big in the 70s will always be treated better in the press than someone who was big in the 80s, even if said actor (Hurt) appeared in a succession of films that included some truly excellent ones. (Although their number does not include 1981's Eyewitness, which has a great cast, but also has a berserk script that feels like an explosion at the plot factory) However, it should be noted that Hurt in the 80s was kind of like Laurence Harvey in the early 60s in that his films were watched, but the public didn't fully warm to him.

Anyway, meanwhile, the eighties are now synonymous to a generation or now two who wasn't there at the time as being synonymous with only Spielberg sagas, John Hughes teen opuses, slice-and-dice horror, Stallone/Schwarzenegger/Willis action sagas, and kiddie films, while largely neglecting the era's many adult oriented dramas and comedies (hence why there was vast more affection and attention for Pee-Wee's passing, since his movies still make the rounds a lot and because a lot of 80s kids now have big jobs in entertainment). True, the decade sags in a few parts (1981 and 1985 especially), but there are striking films at the start of the decase, and the last 3 and a half years of the decade (plus the first four years of the nineties) were a uniquely strong and underappreciated period that stands to this day as the last period of true blooming for movies. [The 80s also had a high number of terrific television series but that's another story, although I am confused as to how there was so much hoopla about Moonlighting joining the Hulu platform this year, but novody noted that that platform also added the full run of LA Law this year]

But getting back to Hurt, he did fine work in Body Heat, The Big Chill, Gorky Park, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Children of a Lesser God, Broadcast News, The Accidental Tourist, The Doctor, Second Best, One True Thing, and AI: Artificial Intelligence. That's enough to make him a formidable force in acting, moreso than some since then given public adulation these days (*cough*, Leonardo DiCaprio, *cough*)

As for his leading man days ending abruptly in the early 90s, there are a few notes:

A) He was beginning to go bald and lose his matinee idol looks [Paul Rudnick, under his Libby Gelman-Waxner penname, wrote around 1989/1990, that Hurt, who once had "Dream Date" potential "now seems more like the weird, 40-year-old graduate student your aunt Rivka would fix you up with")

B) After Accidental Tourist in 1988, he took 1989 off, and his two 1990 roles were unsympathetic character actor roles: as the cheating husband of Mia Farrow in Woody Allen's Alice and as a dimwit hitman who failed to bump off Kevin Kline in Lawrence Kasdan's I Love You to Death, neither of which set the box office on fire. So, even before 1991, he was being eased down the cast lists.

C) The Doctor actually was a wonderful movie, with Hurt excelling as the cild doctor who becomes a better man following his own cancer diagnosis and learning about life from a terminal patient (Elizabeth Perkins, never better, and robbed of an Oscar nomination....and I still admit I am pained by the Oscar nods that year for De Niro and Juliette Lewis in Cape Fear). The Doctor actually posted relatively good box office sums too, on a par with Thelma and Louise, which has remained a modern classic and Soapdish, which has remained a cult classic. So what happened to The Doctor? Simple. Despite critical praise for the film, Disney/Touchstone refused to give in any awards backing, giving all their strength to Beauty and the Beast (a great film) that year, presumably in part to make people try to forget how the Touchstone branch bled out over Billy Bathgate. So, it didn't get the backing of its own company and it barely made the rounds on TV since adult dramas rarely had an in on them, so it ended up disappearing.

D) Hurt's next film, Until the End of the World, ended up getting the "Once Upon a Time in America" treatment from WB, hacked to pieces and then barely released . Something like that will put an end to one's starring career, and that was the final nail in his (although he was fine again in the melancholy Second Best as a painfully shy bachelor Welsh postmaster who ends up taking in a deeply troubled youth, in need of guidance). So after that, he was mostly a character actor, usually going around without much notice, save for his six minute bit as a very nasty gangster toward the end of 2005's A History of Violence, which brought him one last Oscar nomination.

(It's strange but this is the second time I thought of Hurt today. I was watching a 90s sitcom episode earlier, and in the episode, the father was outraged that his 15-year-old daughter had watched and was hiding a rental copy of Body Heat in her bedroom. I was left thinking that that would have been a film a bit too wild for a girl that age)

[Lorna]

it's been long enough since RYAN O'NEAL passed (two weeks?), I'll post this now:

[Lorna]

IN RE: FILMS OF THE 1970'S V. FILMS OF THE 1980S

I was born in 1978 and came of age in the 80's and 90's, where i went to the movies verrrry regularly. when i became a classic movie fan, I SPECIFICALLY BYPASSED FILMS OF THE 1970S and instead gravitated towards the 30s and 40s and 50s...

it wasn't until 10 years ago that i got to a point where I had seen A LOT of those decades and was looking for something new, SO I figured I'd take a deeper dive into FILMS OF THE 1970's and I really got to see why people got excited about the 1970's- largely because the PRODUCTION CODE WENT KAPUT and FINALLY, you were allowed TO THROW ALL KINDS OF GOD KNOWS WHAT AT THE WALL AND SEE WHAT STUCK, and some stuff stuck and some stuff didn't- and in both cases, the results can be fascinating.

so don't give the 1970s complete short-shrift- there's fun to be had there, although it's understandable to prefer to overall output of the 80s or even 90's to the decade.

[CinemaInternational]

it's been long enough since RYAN O'NEAL passed (two weeks?), I'll post this now:

Ha. I know the film. Tough Guys Don't Dance, a film that had some of the most purplish dialogue this side of Valley of the Dolls. I laughed my way through much of that film. I think it was meant to be a deadpan spoof of an outrageous neo-noir. It wasn't just this line reading that was off, I mean you also had Isabella Rossellini in the film saying that her husband made her "happy" (you know what I mean) seven times a night, thus calling him "Mister Seven"

[Lorna]

SEVEN????
Lord have mercy.

[HoldenIsHere]

this mentioning of WILLIAM HURT has reminded me of an amusing anecdote from my childhood in NORTH CAROLINA.

when I saw the title and newspaper ad** for KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN, my heart skipped a beat.



Going off that title and florid little ad with THE LIPS and THE WEB, my warped little 8 year old brain envisioned the film to be something like a cross between a LIVE ACTION version of CHER'S ANIMATED VIDEO for the song DARK LADY and the SATAN'S ALLEY FINALE from STAYIN ALIVE.

YES!!!!!!

[txfilmfan]

it's been long enough since RYAN O'NEAL passed (two weeks?), I'll post this now:

The script doesn't help matters much either....

[Bronxgirl48]

I know a lot of people like WHITE CHRISTMAS but I prefer HOLIDAY INN. It's got more charm, plus Bing is better paired with Fred. I can only take Danny Kaye in small doses, lol.

I agree. Holiday Inn is the better film. The blackface scene is regrettable, but otherwise it is a complete charmer.

Yes, they just couldn't give up that vaudeville minstrel thing during the "Abraham" song.

Remember the scene where Crosby and Astaire are hiding behind a dressing room chair waiting for Bing's jam jars to explode? When one did, Bing supposedly adlibbed "The dawn patrol" and Fred could barely contain his laughter (indeed, you see him trying to look serious but failing miserably) which of course wasn't part of the script, lol.

[Grumpytoad]

Earlier this year watched two excellent movies, Fail Safe (1964) and On the Beach (1959). So yesterday decided to go for the trifecta with a movie that uses the same general subject matter as the others for its plot.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

Quick background. Tried to watch it as a child. Rejected it quickly because it was unpleasantly weird.

Absolutely a great movie. Black humour is a favourite kind of plot for me. But like any genre, it can be overdone or weakly attempted. Properly written and performed, it is special.

To start with, the casting was right on target.

Peter Sellers has three roles, and was recognized professionally for his efforts. I enjoyed his performances well enough, but for me:

George C. Scott did the best job in the movie. Without giving away too much, his character is best described as complex. As great as he was playing General Patton years later, I think this is equally well done.

Am a fan of Sterling Hayden. He is darkly good as a man with questionable viewpoints. Just before watching this film, I watched another one of his. In that one I thought he was let down by clichéd dialogue (Crime Wave, from 1954). These two performances highlight the importance of good writing aligning with good acting.

Nice decision choosing Slim Pickens for the role of a military officer. He fit in perfectly for portraying a sort of good ole boy for whom duty is the ultimate reward.

Keenan Wynn has an important smaller role as a skeptical soldier who nevertheless ultimately understands the gravity of the odd situation he stumbles on.

I am making this all sound like a very serious motion picture.

Truth is, it is INSANELY FUNNY.

Wildly exaggerated personalities.
Hilarious character names.
Repeated showings of an ironic catch phrase.
Even a brief but amazing pratfall. Still not sure whether it was written in, or just an accident by the actor while performing his lines.
One more thought. Although it likely had an influence on future moving making, I noticed two things from it that showed up in a later Mel Brooks movie. And before you guess, am not referring to Slim Pickens work for Mr. Brooks.

686cfeed9690d7dd72e9845a72d29492--dr-strangelove-canvas-art.jpg (50.04 KiB) Viewed 683 times

[BagelOnAPlate]

There were a quite a few extremely unpleasant posters (I am being kind in describing them) at the TCM message boards.

LOOK, I'M VERY SORRY ABOUT THE TIME I KILLED CAROL LYNLEY, (in my defense, I couldn't let her off easy- she just sucks that bad in RETURN TO PEYTON PLACE.)

For a while I wondered if somehow I had something to do with Ann Reinking's death.
I watched Annie and then the next day I learned that she died.