Tcm

[Johann]

I consulted Queen Pauline about Lady Sings the Blues:
"I LOVE IT. Factually it's a fraud, but emotionally it delivers."

[Johann]

"You look Great, with an apple in your Gob..."



Richard Lester's first Beatle movie, and what an awesome pic it is...
If there's one movie you can label as "Carefree", it's this musical treat.
With great cinematography from Gil Taylor (Dr. Strangelove, Star Wars), how can anyone hate this one?
John, Paul, George and Ringo play themselves, having a blast. They are exuberance personified and they're the band
that launched a thousand bands. They're probably the best rock band of all-time, with no bad songs in their catalog.

All you can do is smile, laugh and try to keep up with the rapid-fire speech of "The Lads"...
This was part of "The Essentials" series with Brad Bird, hosted by Ben Mankiewicz and it most definitely
IS essential.

[Johann]

Yes, those Lennon and McCartney songs are golden...
And the only thing you can fault them for in Hard Day's Night is smoking cigarettes.
(And playing in front of giant pics of real beetles at Twickenham studios! WTF was that noise?)

Who is the funniest Beatle? Tough call, but I say Ringo. He cracked me up with his "Mocker" quip and can take a ribbing.
John is also funny AF.
Paul's "Grandfather" should amuse you too.
All in all A Hard Day's Night is black and white Joy.
I have most of their records, and I love the early stuff just as much as the psychedelic stuff.

[Johann]

This is a snapshot into Bob Dylan's world, circa 1965.

It's candid, and sometimes it's hard to like Bob in it.
He denies being folk, there's scenes of him being impatient and impudent if not rude, and if it weren't for his musical genius he could be written off as a punk.
The scenes with Donovan piqued my interest- he really stuck it to Bob, and it was caught on film.
Bob even says at his Royal Albert Hall show: "I looked in my closet and saw Donovan..."
The final scene in the car where Albert Grossman tells him that the British press called him an anarchist was revealing.
See it, if you can handle shaky camera cinema verite!

[Chris Knipp]

You must see RIFIFI (1955). Metascore 97 - that gives you an idea. Dassin got blacklisted, moved to Paris, and made RIFIFI, his masterpiece.

Do you rent movies or antyhing? Only this way now?
In the past, one could access so many classics on tape or DVD. Now there are no more video stores. And I cannot find RIFIFI on the web.

Here is a scene, part of the preparation for the elaborate jewelry store robbery that is the centerpiece of this superb Frencch noir by Jules Dassin, who was French-American, and married Greece's most famous actress of the time, star of NEVER ON SUNDAY, Melina Mercouri.

The ringing of that alarm cuts through you like a knife.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cchdVmuL2fk

CRITERION COLLECTION has RIFIFI on DVD and Blu-ray. Here is their intro: https://www.criterion.com/films/654-rififi

After making such American noir classics as Brute Force and The Naked City, the blacklisted director Jules Dassin went to Paris and embarked on his masterpiece: a twisting, turning tale of four ex-cons who hatch one last glorious robbery in the City of Light. Rififi is the ultimate heist movie, a mélange of suspense, brutality, and dark humor that was an international hit, earned Dassin the best director prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and has proven wildly influential on the decades of heist thrillers that have come in its wake.

[Johann]

Many thanks for the link! That one sure does look fantastic.

I don't rent movies or watch them on the net- TCM is my main source now, and I collect dvd's.

[Johann]

5 films tonite in tribute to Ray Harryhausen, genuis animator.
His work is among the first I ever saw: Clash of the Titans, when I was six years old.
I HAD to have the toys, more than Star Wars!

[Johann]

This a great fantasy film, even though it's melodramatic in extremis.

Ray Harryhausen (born today in 1920!) did the stop-motion effects, and if you can suspend disbelief, you'll have a great time.
Capt. Sinbad (a very handsome and white Kerwin Mathews) must rescue his "shrunken" princess Parisa (a gorgeous Kathryn Grant) from baddies and fantastic creatures.
There's a genie in a lamp, a Cyclops, giant two-headed bird, a Dragon-dino-lizard and a sword fight against a skeleton.
What more do you need?
Just a big bucket of hot-buttered popcorn, Kids!

[Chris Knipp]

DON'T LOOK BACK.


B.D. SAN FRANCISCO PRESS CONFERENCE STILL

YOu forgot to note the filmmaker: D.A. Pennebaker, who made MONTEREY POP and other iconic music films. An important documentary filmmaker, one of the most important American documentary filmmakers.
This is a chance to see Bob Dylan becoming Bob Dylan, his early stardom. A great film I've watched numerous times. And I saw it when it first came out.

Joan Baez was there too, and their romance was going sour.

Bob's mocking interrogation of the Time magazine correspondent is valid. He is channeling a kind of East Coast aggression and intelligence. But, at other times, like the long San Francisco press conference, show him being charming.

The trailer, opening, with the famous tossed down lyrics cards, and Allen Ginsberg in the background looking like a disputative rabbi. It was not the last time Ginsberg would follow Bob around on a tour. He was there in the seventies as you see in Netflix offering ROLLING THUNDER REVIEW: A BOB DYLAN STORY BY MARTIN SCORSESE.

DON'T LOOK BACK TRAILER

We're lucky to have the 1965 hour-long San Francisco press conference. I think we have Ralph Gleason to thank for that. He also made some precious films of Colttrane and other greats performing. Maybe by 1967 the talking to the press had gone sour.

[Johann]

Monterey Pop is Pennebaker's best work, but I don't want to give him too much credit, hence no mention of him.
He strikes me as an opportunistic filmmaker, sensing history and pouncing.
Don't Look Back was chosen for preservation for the National film registry, and it should be.
England criticized Bob as an anarchist because "He offers no Solutions".
Your points are well taken Chris, and I could've said more about it.

[Johann]

This is what I call Sci-Fi!
How this movie isn't more recognized than The Day The Earth Stood Still or Forbidden Planet is beyond me.

The military, scientists and doctors are all fighting U.F.O's here, and what B-movie glory it is...
Washington monuments are destroyed here (with animator Ray Harryhausen's help!) and the movie could've been called
WORLD WAR THREE because of it.
Melodramtic, ambitious and somewhat cheesy, it's still a watchable and thought-provoking flick.
The aliens are mysterious masters of magnetism and physics, and they try diplomacy before attacking earth.
See it.
Kubrick no doubt saw this, as I saw elements from it incorporated into Dr. Strangelove and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

[Johann]

Johann Sebastian Bach would probably disapprove of his "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" being used here, played by none other than Captain Nemo himself.
Yes, this is the sequel to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. (Kinda).

Ray Harryhausen's signature special effects are the star here.
Civil war POW's escape prison in an observation balloon, and end up on a mysterious island in the Pacific.
The island has giant oysters, giant squid, huge plants, giant insects, giant crab, giant birds and a giant volcano, which is about to erupt.
They are joined by two shipwrecked English ladies and eventually they find the Nautilus, and her famous Captain.
Nemo helps them get off the island before the volcano makes another Pompeii, and it's escapist entertainment at it's B-movie best.
Directed by Cy Endfield.

[Johann]

TCM ended their 100th birthday tribute to Harryhausen with his first and last Hollywood works.
Mighty Joe Young (1949) was the makers of King Kong trying to be family-friendly.
I guess it works, but all I could think while watching it was "WHY?? Kong is so much better!"
The final "fiery" sequence was worth watching tho- it was tinted in color.

Clash of the Titans will forever be my favorite Harryhausen movie, with a who's who of acting talent: Burgess Meredith, Clare Bloom, Maggie Smith, Ursula Andress and Lawrence Olivier.
The story of Perseus & Zeus of Greek mythology is timeless, and the appearances of Harryhausen's Kraken & Medusa are awesome.


Ray made his creatures out of wire and foam rubber, and while some may not like them, his pictures LAST.

[Chris Knipp]

Your disapproval of Pennebaker, whose DON'T LOOK BACK you acknowledge should be and is in the(United States) National Film registry, mystifies me. Why is "seizing history and pouncing" a fault? That would seem to be one of the essential things for a documentarian to do, to capture history.

More about Ray Harryhausen's materials and methods would be welcome. So CLASH OF THE TITANS was 1981? Much more famous actors, how come?

[Johann]

It's a fault when it's only done for posterity, as Pennebaker seems.
He doesn't care about the Monterey Pop festival OR Bob Dylan- he's capitalizing on the moment.
He even names the film "DON'T LOOK BACK"- because you might not like what you see.
He's no Ken Burns. Michael Wadleigh and Scorsese are better. They're more genuine...