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Post by AD on Jul 31, 2011 23:29:49 GMT -5
What happened to the increase in activity we were supposed to get in the summer?
Anyway...
Select one actor (male) and watch at least one film in which he appears and review it before the end of the month.
Based on the results of last month's poll there should be at least three people participating this month, right? Either way, I've decided to stick with this through September, which would make it one full year since it began. After that, we'll see.
Also, vote in the poll.
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Post by Her 69 Eyes on Aug 1, 2011 1:03:35 GMT -5
This is a great month to be doing this because it coincides with TCM's Star of the Month series. Each day, TCM has a marathon of many of the highlights of a specific star's career. They, as always, do a nice job of mixing up the big names with some of the more obscure, overlooked stars. -- Some of my recommendations from the TCM marathons would be: Charles Laughton (August 7th): My favorite male performance of all time is Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Hobson's Choice and The Canterville Ghost are a lot of fun. Lon Chaney (August 15th): I've only seen one of these films ( The Unknown), but my silent film teacher was crazy about the guy. He's one of the more unique stars in Hollywood history in that his draw was his versatility and the way he morphed his body. He often played amputees and the sort, and would tie limbs up uncomfortably or even put sticks in his face (most famously for The Phantom of the Opera). The Unknown is fucking wild and, if you haven't seen many silent films, you'll be surprised by it. Very perverse and violent. I'm really excited about these screenings. Jean Gabin (August 18th): I've only seen Grand Illusion, which is a masterpiece. It's an essential day, however, if only because most of these films won't be screened again on television anytime soon. Burt Lancaster (August 25th): Sweet Smell of Success and Brute Force should speak for themselves. A great physical presence and famous for his athleticism. Hugely intense and magnetic. Finish the day with The Leopard for a somber performance where Lancaster is nearly unrecognizable in an Italian film. And then there's some of the more obvious choices: Marlon Brando, Orson Welles, James Stewart, Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, etc. --- I watched less movies last month than I did any month in about four years (24 in total... which is probably high by the standards of normal, rational people). The excuse I will give is both the hours of work on the main site and my recent obsession with A Song of Ice and Fire thanks to Game of Thrones (i'm already about a hundred pages into the third book).
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Post by AD on Aug 1, 2011 15:50:39 GMT -5
Yes, TCM is going to be great this month!
Jean Gabin is great! Touchez Pas au Grisbi and Pepe le Moko are essential French films.
Burt Lancaster is also the man! Just saw Brute Force last week and enjoyed the hell out of it. The Killers is also essential film noir. And, even though TCM isn't airing it, The Professionals is a great western, with Lancaster as part of an all star cast, that people should seek out.
Montgomery Clift (spotlighted on 8/20), is another actor with whom everyone should familiarize themselves.
Oh, and I forgot to point out that if you only review one movie, it can literally be any movie with a man in it. So that's a pretty wide selection to choose from.
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Post by Harry on Aug 1, 2011 15:51:11 GMT -5
I'm going with Paul Newman, and I'll start my reviewing this week. I've had a few of his films on my to-see list for a while. I'll also more likely than not be revisiting a couple classics.
I promise to be active in this thread for once!
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Post by Her 69 Eyes on Aug 1, 2011 23:03:12 GMT -5
I've decided on my actor: John Garfield (August 5th on TCM). I've only seen him in The Postman Always Rings Twice. He is often discussed as being one of the better leading men of 1940s noir.
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Post by AD on Aug 5, 2011 14:52:19 GMT -5
I've finally settled on Tyrone Power as my actor. I've known him by reputation since before I ever started watching classic films, but strangely I've only seen him in one movie (Nightmare Alley). I've always enjoyed a good swashbuckling adventure, so I should enjoy his work.
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Post by Maf on Aug 11, 2011 18:38:58 GMT -5
I've picked Sylvester Stallone since I'm planning on watching all the Rocky movies. First up though: The Expendables (2010)
I had fun watching this but I will say it was a big disappointment. At times it just seemed like a repeat of a billion other action movies. The holes in the story also really bothered me. I wasn't seeing this for the story though and I wasn't expecting a good one when I went in. I was expecting some cool explosions and some snazzy special effects. I didn't really get them. The special effects didn't look all that great in this. When watching the movie, what really took me out of it was the fact that I could tell when the computer generated stuff kicked. I hate that. It just looks so fake and completely takes me out of the movie. The explosions while nice couldn't really make up for the entire movie. It was really cool seeing a bunch of action stars together in one movie though. There seemed to be a lot of chemistry between them and something that really struck me is that they looked like they were all really having fun. They all seemed to have enjoyed themselves making the movie and that's something really hard to translate on screen. ____________________________________________________ Rocky (1976)
I'm going to start off by saying that that is one of the ugliest movie posters I've ever seen. The head isn't even the same color as the body. That's just some really bad photoshop work there. Anyways, I thought this was just great. Stallone really played his role perfectly here and by the end of the movie I was really rooting for him (Even though I already knew how it was going to end). I didn't really think much of the love story at first, I felt it was just an unnecessary sub plot. Once the movie progressed though, I began to really get enthralled by it and it made for a great story at the end. Speaking of the end, that fight itself was just done beautifully I feel.
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Post by AD on Aug 12, 2011 0:01:49 GMT -5
You should check out Cop Land. Stallone alongside Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Roy Liotta and others. I haven't seen it in like 10 years, but I remember liking it a lot back then.
Also First Blood (the first Rambo movie) isn't bad.
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Post by Maf on Aug 12, 2011 16:08:02 GMT -5
Thanks for the suggestions, I'll be sure to check them out. Rocky II (1979) I think I'm in the minority in thinking that this sequel was better than the original. This movie was every bit as fantastic and more as the original. One thing I just love in this is that it starts off right after the first one left off. It truly felt like the continuation of the story. I also liked that unlike the first movie, the fight became a sort of sub plot in this. How Rocky treated the sudden fame he got and the problems that came with it became the centerfold in the movie. The last fight sequence wasn't as well done as the first movie though, it felt a little too cheesy with the double count.
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Post by AD on Aug 13, 2011 14:47:11 GMT -5
THE MARK OF ZORRO (Rouben Mamoulian, 1940) Netflix description: I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I loved every minute of The Mark of Zorro. Much of it is far too cute for its own good, the women don't have much to do but act shallow or look virtuous, and the romantic sub-plot is about as unconvincing as it can get. But this is also a film that is rife with a sort of nostalgic simplicity that I think makes it slightly irresistible. There’s nothing even remotely complex or subversive about it. You meet the good guys, you meet the bad guys, and then you watch some rousing horse chases and swordfights. What more could you want from a swashbuckling adventure story? Though I will say that I find it sort of amazing that this was directed by Rouben Mamoulian, who also made the classic 1931 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, one of the more perverse films to come out of pre-code Hollywood. The film’s greatest strength is it’s brisk pacing, which doesn’t allow the viewer to sit around thinking about how silly the whole plot really is. However, this also leads us to the films greatest weakness, which is a lack of character development and pathos. For example, Don Diego becomes Zorro far too suddenly. He hears about some injustices happening to the peasants, acts like he doesn’t care, and then in the very next scene he’s riding around in a black mask doing his best Robin Hood impression. This is obviously a lighthearted film made for the matinee audience, so you don’t expect character development to get in the way of the adventure. I don’t require a Batman Begins type of epic origin story, but I can’t help but feel a few details about how and why the character devised his heroic plans might’ve paid off in the long run. Tyrone Power can’t match Douglas Fairbanks (the original silent-era movie Zorro) in acrobatic skill, but he makes up for it with charm, charisma, and outstanding swordsmanship. These were the days when an actor couldn’t rely on heavy editing to make it look like he knew how to handle a sword. If one was to play a character like Zorro, one would have to know enough about fencing to at least convince the average viewer they were a legitimate master. Power and his opponent in the climactic swordfight Basil Rathbone must’ve really known what they were doing, because their duel is one of the finest of it’s type I’ve ever seen. They come at each other with such speed that it really looks like they’re trying to kill one another. Nothing about it looks staged or rehearsed. The scene contains only a small number of cuts, and the actors are almost always photographed from head-to-toe. There’s no faking that, and it’s worth the ninety-or-so minutes it takes to get there. Note: There's a colorized version of this film available on DVD, avoid it if you can. See it in black and white as it was intended to be seen.
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Post by Her 69 Eyes on Aug 14, 2011 3:01:05 GMT -5
MVZ MMC: August 2011 Four Daughters (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1939) Four daughters and an old-fashioned patriarch live together in a boarding house. As the audience is introduced to them, the girls seem eerily joyous while performing a classical piece for their composer father in the living room. As things progress effervescently and one bland suitor after the other is introduced, one thinks that they have the rest of the film pegged from there on. Then, in walks the game-changer: a debut performance in a role that would establish his lasting screen persona. John Garfield, his tie crooked, hair unkempt, and a day's worth of stubble, offsets not only the audience's expectations given the tone that had been established thus far in the picture, but he completely exposes the repressed desires lingering underneath the seemingly healthy bourgeois household. This is the sort of film that you might expect from Douglas Sirk in the 1950s, magnifying the cracks within a post-war middle-class American household. It's a tradition held even today by directors like David Lynch and Todd Solondz. Once the embittered Garfield arrives, his presence is felt in every scene - often, in a shot in which he is unacknowledged, you can see his silhouette slightly out-of-focus in the background. Later in the picture, he reveals to one of the sisters that the eldest of her siblings is in love with her husband-to-be, claiming, "I guess when you're used to standing on the outside looking in, you can see a lot of things that other people can't." Playing three of the titular daughters are the Lane Sisters, real life sisters that rose to popularity in the 20s and 30s as a musical act. Priscilla Lane, the blonde of the group, gets the meatiest part in the film as the object of Garfield's desire, and she commendably portrays the disillusionment thrust upon her by the ever-cynical bad boy. In some respects, Four Daughters is no different from a standard-issue Warner Brothers melodrama from its period. Replace Garfield with Bette Davis and it might feel entirely too familiar. But Curtiz deftly handles the tonal changes and builds to a potent, memorable climax. My MMC History:08/14: Four Daughters (Curtiz, 1938): 4/5 06/30: Don't Look Now (Roeg, 1973): 4/506/28: The Spirit of the Beehive (Erice, 1973): 4.5/505/25: Le cercle rouge (Melville, 1970): 4.5/505/24: Le samouraï (Melville, 1967): 5/505/18: Le deuxième souffle (Melville 1966): 3.5/505/02: Le doulos (Melville, 1962): 2.5/505/01: Bob le flambeur (Melville, 1956): 5/503/07: Jigoku (Nakagawa, 1960): 3.5/503/07: Black Narcissus (Powell & Pressburger, 1947: 4/502/25: A Damsel in Distress (Stevens, 1937): 3/502/25: Alien (Scott, 1979): 4.5/502/22: Manhattan Melodrama (Van Dyke, 1934): 4/502/11: The Matrix (Andy & Lana Wachowski, 1999): 3/501/12: My Dog Tulip (Paul & Sandra Fierlinger, 2009): 4.5/512/31: Easy Rider (Hopper, 1969): 2.5/512/31: Head (Rafelson, 1968): 3.5/512/31: Le bonheur (Varda, 1965): 5/512/31: Au Hasard Balthazar (Bresson, 1966): 4.5/512/31: Alphaville (Godard, 1965): 2.5/512/16: Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (Aldrich, 1963): 3/512/14: The Birds (Hitchcock, 1963): 3.5/510/30: Blood for Dracula (Morrissey & Margheriti, 1974): 4/510/30: Flesh for Frankenstein (Morrissey & Margheriti, 1973): 3/510/30: Eyes Without a Face (Franju, 1960): 3.5/510/30: Peeping Tom (Powell, 1960): 5/510/29: Onibaba (Shindô, 1964): 4/510/14: Near Dark (Bigelow, 1987): 3.5/5 [/url] 10/13: Vampyr (Dreyer, 1932): 5/5[/url] 10/06: Daughters of Darkness (Kümel, 1971): 3.5/5[/url][/spoiler]
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Post by Harry on Aug 18, 2011 13:14:33 GMT -5
I decided to change my subject from Paul Newman to Jackie Chan: My review of Crime Story (1993)I've seen more than my fair share of action-packed cop movies over the years, and have loved far more than I've hated.It's hard to beat Mel Gibson's insanity in Lethal Weapon, or the badass aura of Bruce Willis in Die Hard, or the chase scenes in Bad Boys 2. They've pretty much made me a fan of the genre for life. That being said, Crime Story was the first foregin film I've seen that falls into the cop category. Until now, I had only seen Jackie Chan's American movies (which are usually good for some amazing stunt work, but not too heavy on the dialogue or story). I thought this was far and away the best Jackie Chan movie I've seen. The characters that needed depth had it in spades, and the nameless henchmen got what they had coming to them-nautral gas explosions and machinegun fire. I always look to the Mass State Police bust at then end of The Departed as the pinnacle of cinematic police awesomeness, but the Taiwan PD raid about halfway through this movie (where they tear down a wall with chains and explosives and immediately unleash hell on the henchmen) ranks up there pretty high. For me, the tone of the movie is set with the very first car chase. Amidst all the chaos and burning rubber, two unfortunate motorcycle cops are hit and killed by the cars of the criminals. The first hit creates an amazing visual, as the officer and his bike are simply crushed by the oncoming car. It's treated as a nusicance more than anything else. Hechman: "We killed a traffic cop!" Villan: "Fuck! This is turning into a big mess! You morons." At this point, I'm in the mindset that most action movies put me in: there's going to be a shit-ton of collateral damage on both sides before our hero gets the villan. Then something changes that. A second motorcycle cop is clipped by a henchman's car, and he spins out. Inspector Chan's car is clipped too, and he spins out. Inspector Chan sees another henchman (named Euroboy because of his love of BMWs) speeding towards the downed officer, with intentions of finishimg him off. Instead of following our villan, Chan gets his car in gear and takes the proverbial bullet for the fallen bike cop. While the villans get away, he tends to his fallen comrade and carries him to safety. What follows is an emotional scene at the hospital where the family of the first cop sees the body, and Inspector Chan gets into a mindset of revenge. He's more than your garden variety rogue cop, he's out to save the city. I'm not going to dive too far into the rest of the movie at risk of spoiling the fun, but I definitely recommend Crime Story if you're into action-packed cop movies.
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Post by AD on Aug 18, 2011 14:52:55 GMT -5
It's hard to beat Mel Gibson's insanity in Lethal Weapon, True... except maybe with Mel Gibson's insanity in real life. or the badass aura of Bruce Willis in Die Hard, Indeed. or the chase scenes in Bad Boys 2. That was a joke, right? Bullitt? The French Connection? The Driver? Mad Max? The Road Warrior? Raiders of the Lost Ark? Any of the Bourne movies? Death Proof? Do those titles mean anything to you? Alright, maybe that was a slight overreaction. But seriously... Bad Boys 2? That's like the low point of the action genre. Anyway... you should see Police Story 1 and 2. Jackie Chan at his best. Great stunt work, great chase scenes (including one the was ripped off practically shot-for-shot in your beloved Bad Boys 2), and great Buster Keaton style physical comedy (Jackie's greatest strength, in my opinion).
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Post by Harry on Aug 18, 2011 16:50:29 GMT -5
Haha, I can totally understand the overreaction to the Bad Boys 2 line, but it was one of the first action movies I saw as a kid. 12 year old me lost his mind watching a yellow Hummer drive THROUGH a mountain side shanty town in Central America. There are obviously better chase scenes out there, but I always have a place in my heart for Bad Boys 2.
It's off to watch the Police Story movies next!
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Post by Her 69 Eyes on Aug 18, 2011 17:48:31 GMT -5
MVZ MMC: August 2011 They Made Me a Criminal (dir. Busby Berkeley, 1939) Busby Berkeley's name is etched into Hollywood history as a talented choreographer unparalleled in directing dancing spectacles. Here, in a fairly gritty melodrama, the feathers and fountains of his effervescent set pieces are replaced by car chases and boxing matches. At the beginning of the picture, Garfield, a prizefighter, is suspected of a murder committed by his now deceased manager and must relocate to the country in order to start a new life. He finds himself in an unlikely lush Arizonian fruit farm wherein he takes a liking to a group of young tramps and intends to help them raise enough money to open up a gas station. The ever-reliable Claude Rains gives what must be the only truly bad performance I've seen him in. The story goes that he had little interest in playing a New York cop, but the studio threatened suspension should he turn down the part. His inconsistent, implacable accent makes you sympathize for one of the era's most dignified screen presences. Garfield is most recognizable to audiences today while brooding in the gritty noirs of the 1940s, but here his character isn't quite as riddled with the same level of cynicism - in fact, he's nearly unrecognizable with a cheerful demeanor in the first act. Evolving as a patriarch on the farm, Garfield successfully plays a common-man hero with an affectionate, fatherly edge that was unseen in films like The Postman Always Rings Twice. Alongside Garfield are the Dead End Kids, a group of young actors who appeared in seven films between 1937 and 1939 before graduating to new monickers. There is an easy comparison to be made between this film and Angels with Dirty Faces (that film starring Jimmy Cagney, who Garfield was groomed to be the successor of) with the dramatic stakes of the second half of the picture revolving around whether or not the hero can prove to be a good role model for a group of impressionable youngsters. My MMC History:08/18: They Made Me a Criminal (Berkeley, 1939): 4/5 08/14: Four Daughters (Curtiz, 1938): 4/506/30: Don't Look Now (Roeg, 1973): 4/506/28: The Spirit of the Beehive (Erice, 1973): 4.5/505/25: Le cercle rouge (Melville, 1970): 4.5/505/24: Le samouraï (Melville, 1967): 5/505/18: Le deuxième souffle (Melville 1966): 3.5/505/02: Le doulos (Melville, 1962): 2.5/505/01: Bob le flambeur (Melville, 1956): 5/503/07: Jigoku (Nakagawa, 1960): 3.5/503/07: Black Narcissus (Powell & Pressburger, 1947: 4/502/25: A Damsel in Distress (Stevens, 1937): 3/502/25: Alien (Scott, 1979): 4.5/502/22: Manhattan Melodrama (Van Dyke, 1934): 4/502/11: The Matrix (Andy & Lana Wachowski, 1999): 3/501/12: My Dog Tulip (Paul & Sandra Fierlinger, 2009): 4.5/512/31: Easy Rider (Hopper, 1969): 2.5/512/31: Head (Rafelson, 1968): 3.5/512/31: Le bonheur (Varda, 1965): 5/512/31: Au Hasard Balthazar (Bresson, 1966): 4.5/512/31: Alphaville (Godard, 1965): 2.5/512/16: Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (Aldrich, 1963): 3/512/14: The Birds (Hitchcock, 1963): 3.5/510/30: Blood for Dracula (Morrissey & Margheriti, 1974): 4/510/30: Flesh for Frankenstein (Morrissey & Margheriti, 1973): 3/510/30: Eyes Without a Face (Franju, 1960): 3.5/510/30: Peeping Tom (Powell, 1960): 5/510/29: Onibaba (Shindô, 1964): 4/510/14: Near Dark (Bigelow, 1987): 3.5/5 [/url] 10/13: Vampyr (Dreyer, 1932): 5/5[/url] 10/06: Daughters of Darkness (Kümel, 1971): 3.5/5[/url][/spoiler]
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