Good (or bad) Movies

[jimv]

Harry Morgan who played the judge later became the Col. on the TV series "Mash."  He was a very good character actor for a long time.

I have a collection of 20 Tracy movies, including his two Academy Awad films "Captains Courageous" & Boys Town."  They're worth seeing.  Plus ANY movie in which he's paired with Katharine Hepburn.  Special favorites of mine are "Woman of the Year," Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo," "The Seventh Cross," "Adam's Rib," "Father of the Bride," "Pat and Mike," "Bad Day at Black Rock" and "Desk Set."

[squibber]

Thanks, Jimv.

[LennG]

 To be honest, I was never a big time fan of Kate Hepburn, so most of the movies with Tracy and Hepburn were good, but never turned me on, as they say. I just couldn't stand the sound of her voice. Even in the African Queen, I wish they ahd some other actress opposite Bogey, but it was not to be, so Bogey ahd to do it by himself (just kidding)

 As fro Tracy, he was and still is one of my favorite actors from years gone by. he could play comedies as well as drama's and even f ew action hero's thrown in. he was truly the  consummate actor.
 I loved him in Father of the Bride, Bad Day at Black Rock has become a classic, Captain Courageous. He was a joy to watch.

[squibber]

A Guy Named Joe with Spencer Tracy is on Sunday morning at 8:00AM on TCM.  Sounds interesting.  He plays a ghost.

[jimv]

Good movie, squib.

[LennG]

 I agree

[LennG]

 Last nite was once again Friday Nite at the movies and watched another recently released DVD. It was an independent movie, made on a smallish budget for the type of movie it was.
"MOON" was the name of it. It was an hour and a half movie with ONE person in it for the majority of the movie. If it sounds weird, it wasn't. In fact it was very interesting,and we liked it very much. If no one has really heard of it, that's fine, because we also had heard of it, but not much more. It didn't get the big publicity release of many other movies, and this should have.
 It is OK to describe the movie. An astronaut is on the moon, working for an energy company. The moon is supplying most of the energy Earth now uses. he is alone, except for a robot, voiced by Kevin Spacey. he is on a 3 year mission there, and he is nearing the end of it (2 weeks left). He is imagining things and I won't say much more.
 It ids NOT scary and is very thoughtful movie, more for adults,a s there is little action. I would recommend this movie, because it all comes together near the end.

We also watched parts of the movie over, with the director and some of the writers talking about why and how they did  many of the scenes. It was very interesting and shed a lot of light on some parts that were a bit confusing. If you do rent this movie,after watching it, try it with the director speaking about it.

[jimmyz]

Hurt Locker

This is a movie with an unknown cast.  It takes place in Iraq but it is not your typical War movie.  It is about a soldier whose job is to diffuse Improvised Explosive Devices.  He has two guys with him who watch his back while he diffuses the bombs.  It is very good and there is a lot of tension in the scenes.  It is not a quick cut action packed movie with a musical score to help the pacing...it doesnt need it.  A guy trying to diffuse an IOD while there are potential hostiles watching is built-in tension.

[squibber]

I recently saw Book of Eli and Legion.  I think the key with fantasy or supernatural movies is being imaginative but that could be a tricky thing because you could end up with something silly.  Book of Eli was imaginative but Legion was silly.

I'd give the Book of Eli an 8 out of 10.  Denzel Washington plays a survivor of an apocalypse that killed nearly everyone on the planet.  Survivors of the apocalypse decided that religion was a bad thing so they went out and destroyed all the bibles that they could find.  Denzel Washington has the only copy of the bible in the world.  He believes God chose him to deliver the bible to the west coast where there is a purported colony of people who know what to do with it.  On the way to the west coast, Denzel Washington encounters a bad dude who wants the bible so he could use it to gain power over the remaining population.

Legion is an apocalyptic movie too.  God becomes fed up with mankind so he sends his angels to exterminate them.  The angels possess the bodies of the weaker, more vulnerable, people.  Then they go around killing the non possessed people.  The possessed people are told to kill a pregnant woman in a remote diner because the child she is bearing could end up saving mankind.  A good angel doesn't agree with God's plan so he sets out to protect the pregnant woman.  The actor who plays the good angel makes the movie at least watchable.  He's the guy that played the imaginary room mate in A Beautiful Mind.  Overall, I thought it was a weak story that the director tried to jazz up with some scary scenes.

[squibber]

I just watched a mini series that was excellent!  It's called The Lost Room.  If you like Twilight Zone kind of stuff, you would love this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhAGrJW2Tos

[LennG]

Squib

 I also wrote a short review of the Book of Eli. I felt about what you did, but I would have knocked the stars to a 6 1/2 maybe.I thought the story was good and the action good also.

 I didn't see Legion. My paper gave it 1 star, and that alone will keep me away. Not my type of movie.

Get ready for some great oldies on TCM this coming month. Whenever the Academy Awards get close, these stations break out some of their best.

 The other day, I watched my all time favorite movie when I was growing up. The Charge of the Light Brigade, with Errol Flynn. When I was a youth, I just could not get enough of this movie. Great action, a stirring score and that charge at the end. Too bad the charge was the only thing that was true, as the entire movie was made up. Even the charge was made for false reasons.

 there was another version of the Charge of the Light Brigade in the 60's with David Hemmings in the lead. This movie was much more accurate as to the details of the fatal charge.

[squibber]

Thanks for the heads up on TCM, Lenn.  Good movies make the winter go by a little faster.

[LennG]

 Yesterday we watched the DVD of "Surrogates" with Bruce Willis.

I am a fan of Willis as I think I like most of his movies and the type of character he usually plays. This movie was a bit different for him. It is a sort of SciFi movie, that is supposed to be in the future, but was put in regular time (present day) to save costs. Just think future. the plot is pretty simple. In the future, EVERYONE has a surrogate (a robot who performs their daily activities) while the human is in a chair directing them though mind control. So, basically everyone you see in the movie, up to a point, is a robot (surrogate). They ahve made small 'camps' in most major cities for those that are/were against this sort of thing, and they are inhabited by only humans.
 So Willis is a cop, and some surrogate gets killed by this new weapon. To Make matters worse, when the surrogate gets killed, the human who was controlling him also dies because of this weapon. sound confusing,it's not. Willis the cop has to investigate the death, so his surrogate is the one who carry out the investigation. still with me??> I know it sounds confusing, but it really isn;t. Just remember, everyone you are watching is really robot, even the ones you think are humans.
 It was interesting. I can't say I loved it, but I did like it. It is a very short movie, less than 90 minutes, but it has some good action scenes (what would a Bruce Willis movie be without action scenes) and the surrogate of Willis is really Willis in some good makeup and phony wig)..
 

[LennG]

 Do not know if anyone is following my thread about some of the great movies that are being shown on TCM this month, (28 days till Oscar). Check it out if you haven't looked at it.

Well yesterday they had on another of my really all time favorite movies, "The Best Years Of Our Lives" with just an all star cast. But it is not the cast that makes this movie so great, it is the acting, the script and just the way it is presented. How can you not watch this movie and not have a tea well up in your eye when the guys meet their families for the first time after coming home, when Homer finally confides in Wilma. What a sheer joy it is to watch this movie. I copied it to DVD, but I happened to see a part at the beginning, and I was hooked all over again.

Many people consider this to be the best American movie ever made, better than Citizen Kane, Gone With the Wind and even the Godfather. That is debatable, but it is truly a remarkable movie.

[Sam56]

Lenn, I don't know how many times I've seen this fabulous movie, probably 4 or 5 times. One of the truly alltime greats.

Here are it's awards:

Awards and honors

1947 Academy Awards

The film received SEVEN Academy Awards. Despite his touching Oscar-nominated performance, Harold Russell was not a professional actor and the Board of Governors considered him a long shot to win, so he was given an honorary award "for bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans through his appearance". However, he was named Best Supporting Actor to a tumultuous reception, making him the only actor to receive two Academy Awards for the same performance. He later sold one of them for $50,000, first claiming it was to pay his wife's medical bills, but later admitting it was to finance a cruise for her. He often joked, "I can pick up anything but the check!"

Also Fredric March won his second Best Actor award after winning in 1932 for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (he shared with Wallace Beery in The Champ) and he was the second man to win Best Actor twice since Spencer Tracy won for Boys Town but it was his first outright Award.

Award Winners:
 
Best Motion Picture Won Samuel Goldwyn Productions (Samuel Goldwyn, Producer)
 
Best Director Won William Wyler
 
Best Actor Won Fredric March
 
Best Writing (Screenplay) Won Robert E. Sherwood
 
Best Supporting Actor Won Harold Russell
 
Best Film Editing Won Daniel Mandell
 
Best Music (Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture) Won Hugo Friedhofer
 
Best Sound Recording Nominated Gordon Sawyer (Winner was John P. Livadary - The Jolson Story)
 
Honorary Award Won To Harold Russell for bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans through his appearance in The Best Years of Our Lives (he lost both hands in a WWII training accident).

1947 Golden Globe Awards

Won: Best Dramatic Motion Picture
 
Won: Special Award for Best Non-Professional Acting - Harold Russell

1948 BAFTA Awards

Won: BAFTA Award for Best Film from any Source
 
Other wins:

National Board of Review: NBR Award Best Director, William Wyler; 1946
 
New York Film Critics Circle Awards: NYFCC Award Best Director, William Wyler; also Best Film; 1946.
 
Bodil Awards: Bodil; Best American Film, William Wyler; 1948.
 
Cinema Writers Circle Awards, Spain: CEC Award; Best Foreign Film, USA; 1948.
 
In 1989, the National Film Registry selected it for preservation in the United States Library of Congress as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

American Film Institute recognition:

1998 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies #37
 
2006 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers #11
 
2007 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) #37

Magnificent movie, and yeah, my tear ducts are normally activated when watching it all without interuption.