Return Of The Film Corner Thread

[GA Russell]

On 7/4/2019 at 11:34 AM, medjuck said:

No.  But I do know Any Davis who directed the film of The Fugitive.  I'm seeing him Saturday and I'll ask him if he  did. 

Great!  I have the eBook of The Double Take, which was the basis for 77 Sunset Strip.  One day I'll get around to it.

https://www.amazon.com/Double-Take-Roy-Huggins/dp/1627553681/

[kinuta]

Eat Drink Man Woman - Ang Lee (1994)

[medjuck]

On 7/6/2019 at 9:24 PM, GA Russell said:

Great!  I have the eBook of The Double Take, which was the basis for 77 Sunset Strip.  One day I'll get around to it.

https://www.amazon.com/Double-Take-Roy-Huggins/dp/1627553681/

Wow I didn't realize what a long prolific career he had.   Andy Davis said he'd met with him before shooting the film and he was very gracious.  After the film came out he wrote a very nice congratulatory letter to Andy.  

[JSngry]

[kinuta]

Nashville - Robert Altman (1975)

[GA Russell]

18 hours ago, medjuck said:

Wow I didn't realize what a long prolific career he had.   Andy Davis said he'd met with him before shooting the film and he was very gracious.  After the film came out he wrote a very nice congratulatory letter to Andy.  

My first thought of Huggins is always as the creator of Maverick.  I once saw him say that he had a love-hate relationship with James Garner.  "I love him, and he hates me!"

Thanks for asking your friend about him!

[Matthew]

10 hours ago, JSngry said:

For me, Bette Davis is an acquired taste, and I haven't acquired it yet! Too mannered in my opinion, very off-putting. Of course, YMMV

[JSngry]

1 hour ago, Matthew said:

For me, Bette Davis is an acquired taste, and I haven't acquired it yet! Too mannered in my opinion, very off-putting. Of course, YMMV

Well, here she's an old-ish widowed librarian in a small town who gets Red-Baited out of her gig and then quietly suffers the resultant indignity. And then this kid who used to love her burns down the town library because all those books she encouraged him to read drove him nuts, that and his asshole dad who is adamant that books are the tools of Commies.

Not exactly a typical Bette Davis role and/or film, but not a particularly good one either. Not sure if there's a correlation there or not.

[Brad]

One of the great films, in my opinion. 

[kinuta]

Rocketman - Dexter Fletcher (2019)

 

Messy kaleidoscope of high energy song and dance clips loosely connected by events from his life.

Felt a bit Ken Russell like on occasion. Admired some of the film making but can't honestly say it was satisfactory.

McCabe & Mrs Miller - Robert Altman (1971)

Edited July 8, 2019 by kinuta

[jlhoots]

52 minutes ago, kinuta said:

Rocketman - Dexter Fletcher (2019)

 

Messy kaleidoscope of high energy song and dance clips loosely connected by events from his life.

Felt a bit Ken Russell like on occasion. Admired some of the film making but can't honestly say it was satisfactory.

McCabe & Mrs Miller - Robert Altman (1971)

McCabe & Mrs. Miller is an all time favorite. Leonard Cohen songs fit well.

I was also underwhelmed by Rocketman.

[gmonahan]

Interesting reaction to "Rocketman." I thought it was better than "Bohemian Rhapsody." I liked how they took the music out of its original chronological order and used the themes to tell the story, and I thought Egerton did a fine job singing. But, to each his own!!

 

 

gregmo

[kinuta]

The Deer Hunter - Michael Cimino (1978)

[Matthew]

Grand Prix

[Brad]

42 minutes ago, Matthew said:

Grand Prix

Fabulous movie. 

[Dmitry]

Watched the Broken Flowers again, first time after I saw it in the theater on its first run. Love Mulatu Astatke's music, but the film is pretentious, empty dreck, imho.. 

[Matthew]

1 hour ago, Matthew said:

Grand Prix

 

41 minutes ago, Brad said:

Fabulous movie. 

I thought I was the only that liked it! Never hear it mentioned anymore.

[Brad]

1 hour ago, Matthew said:

 

I thought I was the only that liked it! Never hear it mentioned anymore.

I saw it when it first came out. I used to be a Formula i racing fan at the time. I then saw it a few years ago when TCM was running their Days of Oscar and thought it was still great. 

[Bluesnik]

1 hour ago, Brad said:

I used to be a Formula i racing fan at the time.

I used to be one too in my teens, in the seventies. First reaction when I saw this I thought it was that movie about that fateful season with the Lauda accident and the great Lauda Hunt rivalry, 1975 or 76 IIRC. And that movie I've seen, in TV some years ago.

[medjuck]

I saw it at a preview screening at the  Cinerama Theater in Toronto.  It was shot in 70mm anamorphic which gave it almost the same aspect ratio as Cinerama and I think they did something optically to compensate for the curved screen. The main thing I remember about it is James Garner and a lot of split screen and multiple images.  

[ghost of miles]

4 hours ago, Matthew said:

 

I thought I was the only that liked it! Never hear it mentioned anymore.

My dad is a big fan of Grand Prix as well.  I've never actually seen it, but he would always watch it whenever it turned up on our local TV stations in the 1970s.

[Ted O'Reilly]

1 hour ago, medjuck said:

I saw it at a preview screening at the  Cinerama Theater in Toronto.  It was shot in 70mm anamorphic which gave it almost the same aspect ratio as Cinerama and I think they did something optically to compensate for the curved screen. The main thing I remember about it is James Garner and a lot of split screen and multiple images.  

The split-screen and multi images thing started for me at Expo 67 at the Ontario Pavilion, with Christopher Chapman's "A Place To Stand".  It's still impressive film making, I think.

...and a note about the music.  It's by Dolores Claman, a deft composer of commercial jingles and film music, including the unofficial anthem Hockey Night In Canada.  The orchestrations were by my friend Jerry Toth, a great musician and member of the Boss Brass, where he recorded this superb performance:  Autumn In New York, arranged for Jerry by Rob McConnell.  

 

Edited July 10, 2019 by Ted O'Reilly
addition

[kinuta]

John Wick 3 - Chad Stahelski (2019)

Big breathless action extrazaganza with a meagre storyline but oodles of badass fighting.

Never a dull moment when John Wick's in town.

Enjoyed it, especially the dogs.

[Dave Garrett]

5 hours ago, medjuck said:

I saw it at a preview screening at the  Cinerama Theater in Toronto.  It was shot in 70mm anamorphic which gave it almost the same aspect ratio as Cinerama and I think they did something optically to compensate for the curved screen. The main thing I remember about it is James Garner and a lot of split screen and multiple images.  

I might wet my pants if I ever got the chance to see a Super Panavision print of GRAND PRIX projected in a Cinerama theater. There are really no other racing movies that compare, with the possible exception of Steve McQueen's LE MANS.

I believe the optical compensation or rectification wasn't done for any of the Super Panavision films like GRAND PRIX, only for Ultra Panavision films. Instead of an anamorphic squeeze being applied uniformly across the frame, rectified prints had a gradient squeeze, with no anamorphosis at the center of the frame but applying it increasingly toward the edges of the frame. So when such a print was projected on a deep-curve Cinerama screen, the squeeze along the sides of the frame was offset by the curved sides of the screen and appeared to be unsqueezed. 

[medjuck]

1 hour ago, Dave Garrett said:

I might wet my pants if I ever got the chance to see a Super Panavision print of GRAND PRIX projected in a Cinerama theater. There are really no other racing movies that compare, with the possible exception of Steve McQueen's LE MANS.

I believe the optical compensation or rectification wasn't done for any of the Super Panavision films like GRAND PRIX, only for Ultra Panavision films. Instead of an anamorphic squeeze being applied uniformly across the frame, rectified prints had a gradient squeeze, with no anamorphosis at the center of the frame but applying it increasingly toward the edges of the frame. So when such a print was projected on a deep-curve Cinerama screen, the squeeze along the sides of the frame was offset by the curved sides of the screen and appeared to be unsqueezed. 

What was the difference between the two: Was Ultra Panavision anamorphic 65mm and Super Panavision just 65mm?  BTW As you might expect when I saw it the sound was terrific.  8 track I presume but I don't really know a lot about it.    As I remember it when I saw West Side Story on its first release the whistle that opened the film came from the very back of the theater.  Of course, what I remember, and the facts aren't necessarily the same thing. 

 

Just looked it up (Google is your friend): you're right Super Panavision is spherical  and does not have as wide an aspect ratio. Grand Prix was Super Panavision.  However according to Wikipedia the they also compensated for the curve when Superpanavison films were shown in Cinerama theaters.   What do you know about the sound? 

Edited July 11, 2019 by medjuck