I have a hard time telling those women apart, tbh.
I also like to look at the progression of movie trailers. They seemed to change their style in the mid 90s from kind of a matter of fact description of what the movies would be like with clips to being like a mini movie in of itself.
Also, they really liked to used this song in the early 2000's.
Honestly, I think one of the Airplane’s biggest strengths is that it presents everything with a straight face. It’s not in-your-face with the jokes, nor does it constantly wink and nudge at the audience, it’s just really straightforward and serious with its joke delivery, which makes it funnier.
Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack and Peter Graves' entire schtick in the movie is playing their roles completely straight faced and deadpan. It's great how it meshes the serious stuff with madcap zany shit like Johnny in the control room.
Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack and Peter Graves' entire schtick in the movie is playing their roles completely straight faced and deadpan. It's great how it meshes the serious stuff with madcap zany shit like Johnny in the control room.
Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack and Peter Graves' entire schtick in the movie is playing their roles completely straight faced and deadpan. It's great how it meshes the serious stuff with madcap zany shit like Johnny in the control room.
The film marked Nielsen’s transition from straight drama (see Forbidden Planet, which is a great sci-fi film in itself) to comedy. He was basically hired to spoof the roles he played in the early part of his career, turned out to be really good at deadpan comedy, and a star was reborn.
On the subject of old-school comedy, I'm a big fan of Some Like it Hot. The premise is that a couple of musicians (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon) pose as women in order to escape gangsters and get in a series of scrapes involving gangsters, suitors and Marilyn Monroe. The whole cross-dressing-confusion premise has been done to death, but Curtis and Lemmon really make it work. There are also a few jokes that definitely skirt the edges of what was considered acceptable in 50s Hollywood.
Doctor Strangelove is another favourite of mine. I have a fascination with Cold War politics and the arms race, and this movie satirises the whole thing brilliantly. Everyone rightly talks about Peter Sellers' three roles in it, but I'm very fond of Slim Pickens as the cowboy bomber commander. My favourite joke is this bit (look out for a young James Earl Jones):
Speaking of great comedies starring Slim Pickens, Blazing Saddles is probably my favourite comedy of all time. Written by Richard Pryor and Mel Brooks, it spoofs classic Hollywood Westerns with a mixture of very smart jokes and very silly jokes. I can watch it over and over again and still laugh out loud. Here's my favourite scene:
I don't know why, but for some reason out of all the jokes in that sequence, I find the exchange, "What'd he say?" "The Sheriff is near!" to be absolutely pant-wettingly hilarious.
There's a pretty nice comedy film where Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline play "siblings" who rob a bank and try to screw over their co-conspirators and lawyer, it's called Fish Called Wanda
Goddamn it....I have so many recommendations I dont even know where to start
Alright I will start with the obvious, Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy is a goddamn masterpiece matched only by his Once Upon a Time in the West. Visually its fucking stunning, in terms of sound design you have Ennio Morricone at his absolute prime, and casts filled with cinematic legends giving their all.
Personally I start with Once Upon a Time in the West and then watch the Dollars trilogy in reverse order* whenever I feel the need to marathon them**, since this lineup both has a spectacular opening and gives a fairly coherent evolution to Clint Eastwood's character*** especially if you are a sperg like me and interpret Charles Bronson's character in Once Upon a Time in the West as being the same character as Eastwood's due to various visual/personality cues.
* The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly first, A Few Dollars More second, and A Fistful of Dollars last
** Happens more often then you'd think
*** though Leone probably had little intention of any such broader character arc
I will go to my grave holding steady to the fact that 2001: A Space Odyssey is the greatest sci-fi movie ever made. Not a single sci-fi movie before or after it has managed to be nearly as good as 2001. This also extends to television.
I have a fondness for the Astaire/Rogers movies. I get that long dance sequences aren't considered interesting nowadays, but even as someone with two left feet, it's amazing to see the talent and time that went into performing and filming them. Plus, their on-screen romances were always so sweet.
I do a movie night with some internet friends and one of them picked The Birds. I can kind of see why it's famous (the vast majority of zombie films should press F to pay respects) but man it doesn't really hold up very well. Bird hand puppets just aren't very scary, and the penultimate scene
where the main character goes into the room that birds broke into closes the door and starts moaning in the most halfhearted way while birds peck her almost to death
I liked Paper Moon its movie from 1973 its based on a book during the great depression. The ending will make you sad though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_Moon_(film) Here is some more information to go off of.
Because I watch shit older than your Great Grandparents, like Georges Méliès, Carl Theodor Dreyer, and D.W Griffith.
There's something magical about early cinema that I can't quite put my finger on. Maybe it's the Bigger than Life sets, the Pathos in the acting, or even the fact that the film industry wasn't as money grubbing.
There's something magical about early cinema that I can't quite put my finger on. Maybe it's the Bigger than Life sets, the Pathos in the acting, or even the fact that the film industry wasn't as money grubbing.
It seems that there was a lot more creative ideas that got made and not just the same thing over and over because it works.
The Man who Laughs is anther movie I enjoy. I know the look is the inspiration of the joker, but the make up is really good for the time. Here's what Conrad Veidt looked like with out it.
He played Cesare in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari also, he could really pull off unnerving well.
To Have or Have Not is literally one of my favorite movies of all time. It's also the film where Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall met, fell in love to eventually get married. The video below is probably one of the hottest scenes in the history of cinema - and keep in mind this film is from the Hays Code era:
Someone mentioned The Women above, and I highly recommend it. It's entertaining as hell and the dialogue is witty and really held well through the years.
Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack and Peter Graves' entire schtick in the movie is playing their roles completely straight faced and deadpan. It's great how it meshes the serious stuff with madcap zany shit like Johnny in the control room.
I remember hearing a story about the film (might have come from the director) where Peter Graves voiced his concern that there were no jokes in the script, and Robert Stack responded to him by saying "Peter, we're the joke". lol.
Just as a heads-up, my personal definition of an "old" movie is one made before New Hollywood.
Lately I've been watching more Nicholas Ray movies, and I think the reason why I like him is because he was basically the P.T. Anderson of the Fifties. They Live By Night, On Dangerous Ground and In A Lonely Place are all really good movies.
Occasionally my local art house theater shows old movies, I remember seeing Wild Strawberries and Eyes Without A Face there.
And for fellow Filmstruck users, The Criterion Collection's streaming service is now up and running.
Zulu is also a classic, since unlike most films before or since it doesn't take sides or preach politics. The Zulus aren't portrayed as mindless savages or noble warriors fighting the evil white man, it just shows you what happened (although most of the soldiers weren't actually Welsh).
John Huston did some fine, enduring work (filmography). He enjoyed crime and conniving, liked character-driven plots, and respected character actors. I particularly like Beat the Devil, which he made after defying the House Un-American Activities Committee and taking his projects to Europe.
It's kind of Maltese Falcon Ships Out On The African Queen with Bogart, Lorre, Jones (Jennifer), Lollobridgida, Morley, and - uncredited - Peter Sellers, who was hired to voice Bogart for a few days after Bogart broke his false teeth in a car accident. Huston himself fell off a 40-foot cliff during filming but, perhaps being more lubricated than Bogart had been, kept his teeth.
As filming began, Huston tossed the original script and pounded out segments each night with Truman Capote for the next day's shooting. If the characters seem edgy, it may be the actors' portrayal of seedy flightiness. Or it may be the actors groping through just-seen lines, unsure of how the others will play the scene. The plot seems to startle itself more than once.
Ebert called it the "first camp film." A box office flop that became a cult classic, it's mordant humor lived on in Huston's Prizzi's Honor three decades later.
Beat the Devil's all over YouTube for free right now. Three different channels in case a couple get taken down: YT 1 | YT 2 | YT 3 What's said to be an excellent 4K restoration is available through other means.
Let There Be Light - documentary he made for the government in 1946 on what we now call PTSD
OT for clarity: There is this other, non-Huston Beat the Devil - a criminally inclined and very funny Tony Scott 10-minute ad for BMW with James Brown, Clive Owen, Gary Oldman, and Marilyn Manson.
www.youtube.com
