txfilmfan wrote: ↑February 2nd, 2023, 2:58 pm
There's also the 1958 Robert Mitchum film, Thunder Road, about a bunch of southern moonshiners evading the revenuers...
Yeah, there are older examples, like Lil Abner or Tobacco Road and even silents like Sparrows.
By the way, another name for them that I forgot is "Hicksploitation" or "Hixploitation".
What's amusing is when movies set outside the South or the South Midland feature "hicks" speaking with pseudo Southern or Southern Appalachian accents.
As if "hick" was a universal accent!
I know it's just "movie shorthand" but still . . .
Sorry, not any real genre or category. Just my description of Muscle Car Chase type entertainment popular in the 70's-80's like Smokey & The Bandit '77 and Dukes Of Hazzard.
The heroes all come across as crackers- light on brains, heavy on testosterone. My generalization is completely from outside impressions, having never actually seen any.
I love "Smokey and the Bandit." I've seen that movie at least two dozen times and never tire of it. I even saw it in the theater last year.
I planned to watch SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT (for the first time) when it was available on Watch TCM last month, but I missed it.
It looks like fun movie even though I'm not a big fan of Burt Reynolds or Jackie Gleason.
Jackie Gleason is what makes the movie! Sally Field and Burt Reynolds have great chemistry and started dating after this film--though ultimately it doesn't sound like it was the best relationship.
txfilmfan wrote: ↑February 2nd, 2023, 2:58 pm
There's also the 1958 Robert Mitchum film, Thunder Road, about a bunch of southern moonshiners evading the revenuers...
Yeah, there are older examples, like Lil Abner or Tobacco Road and even silents like Sparrows.
By the way, another name for them that I forgot is "Hicksploitation" or "Hixploitation".
There are many older examples like the Ma and Pa Kettle series and the film Murder, He Says (1945).
50s T.V. westerns also featured a lot of hillbillies, often with Peter Whitney (who was in Murder, He Says), now older, as the head of the clan. I often find these westerns not-so-funny since the hillbillies are cruel, mean, sexist, etc... typically resulting in the harming of good-folks. At the start of the episode, their actions are played-for-laughs until it is clear what they are doing isn't so funny, and thus the ending are rather dark.
I love "Smokey and the Bandit." I've seen that movie at least two dozen times and never tire of it. I even saw it in the theater last year.
I planned to watch SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT (for the first time) when it was available on Watch TCM last month, but I missed it.
It looks like fun movie even though I'm not a big fan of Burt Reynolds or Jackie Gleason.
Jackie Gleason is what makes the movie! Sally Field and Burt Reynolds have great chemistry and started dating after this film--though ultimately it doesn't sound like it was the best relationship.
Yeah, from the clips I've seen of SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT, it looks Jackie Gleason is hilarious as the police officer.
RE: Burt and Sally
I think Burt Reynolds identified Sally Field as the love of his life (the one he let get away) in his autobiography.
I read that Sally Field said that she was grateful that Burt Reynolds died before her autobiography was released because she wanted to write truthfully about the relationship, but she knew that doing so would hurt Burt
Re: I Just Watched...
Posted: February 3rd, 2023, 1:16 pm
by Detective Jim McLeod
Coquette (1929) Youtube 7/10
A southern belle (Mary Pickford) wants to marry a man from a lower class and her father objects.
Since we are now around Academy Award time, I decided to seek out some early Oscar winning performances I never saw. Pickford won Best Actress for this and I thought it was a surprisingly good little melodrama and I believe she deserved the award. It was her first sound film and she does pull some exaggerated faces at times. However I thought she gave some very good emotional scenes toward the end. The story takes a violent turn and makes this one very interesting. The supporting cast is OK but I was not that familiar with many of them. Louise Beavers (in her younger and thinner days) plays a maid and has a touching scene with Pickford.
This film generated some controversy at the time, the reviews were mixed and box office disappointing. Pickford cut off her long curly locks and longed to ditch her "America's Sweetheart" label. She also actively campaigned for the award, courting the Academy judges by inviting them to her mansion for tea. All this means nothing to me, since I was just judging the film on it's own merits.
If anyone has seen it, what do you think? If you haven't I recommend it for film buffs.
I've seen it a couple of times. I thought it was creaky and primitive, but warmed to it a little more the second time around.
I remember thinking Johnny Mack Brown gave one of the worst performances I ever recall from an "A" Hollywood film. He later went on to a successful career in B westerns. I only recently learned that he had been a huge college football star before getting into movies.
Pickford's Oscar was seen more as a career nod, and a show of love and respect for one of the biggest figures in the industry at the time.
Re: I Just Watched...
Posted: February 3rd, 2023, 2:00 pm
by Detective Jim McLeod
[/quote]
I've seen it a couple of times. I thought it was creaky and primitive, but warmed to it a little more the second time around.
I remember thinking Johnny Mack Brown gave one of the worst performances I ever recall from an "A" Hollywood film. He later went on to a successful career in B westerns. I only recently learned that he had been a huge college football star before getting into movies.
Pickford's Oscar was seen more as a career nod, and a show of love and respect for one of the biggest figures in the industry at the time.
[/quote]
I thought William Janney, who plays Pickford's brother was pretty bad too, one of the worst southern accents I ever heard.
I hope to check out some of Pickford's silent classics.
Re: I Just Watched...
Posted: February 3rd, 2023, 10:57 pm
by Swithin
Love and Friendship (2016) Written and directed by Whit Stillman, based on Jane Austen’s novella Lady Susan (1794)
Source: Amazon Prime (free with Prime)
Having recently rewatched Whit Stillman's Metropolitan (1990), one of my favorite films, I thought I should see Love and Friendship (2016), his most recent film, which I had never seen. It makes sense that Stillman would adapt Jane Austen, since two of the main characters in Metropolitan discuss her work at length.
Love and Friendship takes place in England in the 1790s, i.e. the Georgian period. Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale), a youngish, impoverished, widowed aristocrat, has no home of her own, so, as she says to her daughter Frederica, “We don’t live, we visit.” Lady Susan has been having an affair with Lord Mainwaring, which leads to her being thrown out of his house by Lady Mainwaring.
Lady Susan then goes to visit her late husband’s brother, Charles Vernon, who lives with his wife Catherine. Catherine has a handsome younger brother (Reginald, played by Xavier Samuel) who stays with them as well. Lady Susan has an American friend, Alicia Johnson (Chloe Sevigny), whose husband Mr. Johnson (Stephen Fry) disapproves of his wife’s friendship with Lady Susan, since he knows that Lady Susan is a scheming, manipulative b_itch. He threatens that if she persists in seeing Susan, they will move to Connecticut, where he has business. He makes his threats obliquely: “The Atlantic crossing is cold this time of year.” Lady Susan says to Alicia, who is younger than her husband, "What a mistake you made marrying Mr. Johnson. Too old to be governable, too young to die.”
Jemma Redgrave and James Fleet are excellent as Mr. And Mrs. DeCourcy, who become concerned that their son Reginald is getting too close to Lady Susan. (All these families live in stately homes, beautifully filmed).
I have a friend who hates this movie, because the main character is so unlikeable. But one might almost forgive Lady Susan for her ways, because a woman of that time was at the mercy of her husband, and as a widow, she had to survive on her wits. But her affair with Lord Mainwaring continues, driving his wife mad. Ultimately, Lady Susan marries Sir James Martin (brilliantly played by Tom Bennett), a kind of idiot, whom she originally intended for her daughter. At the end of the film, when Sir James is told that his wife is pregnant (the day after the wedding), he rejoices, not realizing that they’ve never had sex and that the baby is Lord Mainwaring’s! (One of the many hilarious moments in this film features Sir James discovering green peas for the first time.)
As you would expect from a Whit Stillman film, the script/dialogue is key, and it is brilliant. I watched the film twice, back to back. This is a comedy of manners where everyone acts dignified, but you can see the seething below the surface. The acting and production values are quite perfect, even down to the supporting role of the Young Curate, played to perfection by Conor MacNeill. The music, whether original or of the period (Boyce, Handel, Mozart, Purcell, Vivaldi) perfectly matches the look and period of the film, which received excellent reviews. The film has been called the best filming of a Jane Austen novel.
There is a beautifully choreographed dance scene.
Here's the trailer and the original review from The Guardian in 2016, as well as a more recent piece by another Guardian writer in 2022.
Swithin wrote: ↑February 3rd, 2023, 10:57 pmLove and Friendship (2016)
This looks like a bit of fun. Nice post.
I think you would like it.
Re: I Just Watched...
Posted: February 4th, 2023, 11:19 pm
by LawrenceA
I just watched Ramona (1936). Now I'm going to jump into a volcano.
Re: I Just Watched...
Posted: February 5th, 2023, 11:51 am
by CinemaInternational
LawrenceA wrote: ↑February 4th, 2023, 11:19 pm
I just watched Ramona (1936). Now I'm going to jump into a volcano.
That was based on a book published in the late 1800s, that still is popular in some areas. I remember because I had to do the book for a book report in high school, and while this film is faithful to the book, it certainly does not drag the story out quite as long. Definitely not a story for everyone though.
Re: I Just Watched...
Posted: February 5th, 2023, 12:11 pm
by LawrenceA
CinemaInternational wrote: ↑February 5th, 2023, 11:51 am
That was based on a book published in the late 1800s, that still is popular in some areas. I remember because I had to do the book for a book report in high school, and while this film is faithful to the book, it certainly does not drag the story out quite as long. Definitely not a story for everyone though.
Oddly enough, I was curious about Fannie Hurst after seeing this, being familiar with the name but not much else, so I read up on her a bit last night. She seemed like a good person, and was hugely successful in her time, but then apparently became a source of ridicule and synonymous with bad or hack writing. Her most famous book seems to have been Imitation of Life.
Re: I Just Watched...
Posted: February 5th, 2023, 12:20 pm
by CinemaInternational
Went back to the world of films with some titles from the late 70s (and very early 80s). I had much neglected the last few years of the 70s last year, so I decided to tackle some loose ends from that period.....
The Wanderers (1979) feels like a fusion of The Warriors with American Grafitti, in telling the tale of a group of rough and tumble teenagers in an Italian-American neighborhood in New York circa 1963. There is no real plot per se, just a series of vignettes, but they are handled so well that the film becomes very striking, and it is helped by typically assured direction by Phillip Kaufman in between his remake of Invasion of the body Snatchers and the 1983 epic The Right Stuff.
I know I was far kinder to Bloodline (1979) than I should have been. The snuff movie subplot is entirely perverse and disgusting (and quite frankly shoehorned into a film it really does not feel like it belongs to; ditto the insanely bad idea of the opening credits being played against still photographs of a strangled corpse), the scripting is paper thin and really sloppy at the end, and it has always been regarded as a debacle. But my heart still melts every time Audrey Hepburn is in a film, and given that she is on screen a good 70 to 75% of the time here, I couldn't help but give in. She's still as wonderful as ever, and the film comes with classy photography and a full bodied musical score too. Good supporting cast too, even if they mostly have very little to do (Ben Gazzara, James Mason, Gert Frobe, Beatrice Straight, Irene Papas, Omar Sharif, Michelle Phillips). I went in with rock bottom expectations though, so maybe part of my more positive than most reaction is due to being pleasantly surprised that there are good elements here to work with.
Used Cars (1980) is a comedy from Robert Zemeckis that could never be made today. It revels in bad taste, in its story of completely amoral car dealers. But it is amusing and zany in its own particlar way. The story starts with two car lots across a busy road from each other, owned by two long feuding twin brothers (Jack Warden). The more polished one belongs to the nastier sibling, whereas the ramshackle one is owned by the kinder one with a weak heart. When the kinder brother dies 20 minutes in, the one lot is taken over by top salesman Kurt Russell who will employ any number of dirty tricks (including commercials with frontal nudity and strong language) to drum up business. The film is outrageous, but it is put over by a game cast and a script that knows to keep popping from one incident to the next without lingering too long on things.
CinemaInternational wrote: ↑February 5th, 2023, 11:51 am
That was based on a book published in the late 1800s, that still is popular in some areas. I remember because I had to do the book for a book report in high school, and while this film is faithful to the book, it certainly does not drag the story out quite as long. Definitely not a story for everyone though.
Oddly enough, I was curious about Fannie Hurst after seeing this, being familiar with the name but not much else, so I read up on her a bit last night. She seemed like a good person, and was hugely successful in her time, but then apparently became a source of ridicule and synonymous with bad or hack writing. Her most famous book seems to have been Imitation of Life.
Part of the issue with Hurst and the reception to her work was likely the big sea change in what the public liked after WWII. If you look at what was popular before that time, there was great public affection for sentimental, soapy tearjerkers, and after the war, general interest in such material went down considerably, with the rare exception of some of the Douglas Sirk films in the 1950s. The same held true for music as well. Last year, i watched 1954's Deep in my Heart, with Jose Ferrer playing the composer of many sugary-sweet operettas, and it was almost remarkable to me that the film was made when it was, because most of that music ended up getting erased from the public's memory after the Rock and Roll revolution which began apoximately at the same time the film was made.
