Tcm

[Johann]

GRAND HOTEL (1932)


Opulent MGM movie, the first "All-Star" film for the studio.
You might want to sip some cognac while watching this classic, while checking into Berlin's "Grand Hotel".

The story weaves the stories of the hotel guests into an interesting and satisfying whole.
Starring:
John Barrymore (as a debonair tragic thief Baron von Geigern), Greta Garbo (as an over-the-top dancer Grusinskaya), Lionel Barrymore (as an unforgettable bookeeper/dying man Kringelein), Wallace Beery
(as a gruff and overbearing Mr.Preysing), Joan Crawford (as a cutie that shines Flaemmchen), and Lewis Stone (as a drunk pessimistic doctor).

Johann Strauss' "The Blue Danube" can be heard onscreen for the first time here, some 36 years before Kubrick's 2001!
I enjoyed this movie- it moves at a stately pace, slowly revealing it's charms/twists.
Garbo is gorgeous, and so is Joan Crawford.
Worth seeing.

[Chris Knipp]

Grand Hotel: grand stuff.
I love this movie and I adore the magical Garbo.
Classic line spoken by the manager: "People come, people go. Nothing ever happens."

[Johann]

Grand Hotel is grand indeed...
Garbo shows us why she's adored- her acting is superb.
IMDB reviews talk about the fact that this is a pre-WWII film, and a historically interesting one at that.
World War I is referenced, and Wallace Beery's character was a typical German art monger of the times, not just a fat cat.

[Johann]

BULLITT (1968)


Steve McQueen is Bullitt, a San Francisco cop hired to protect a witness for a mob trial.
He's hired by Robert Vaughn, and when the witness is shot dead, Bullitt suspects Vaughn was behind it.
The rest of the movie is Bullitt tracking down the kingpin who may have done it, and there are two great chase sequences-
one with the famous Dodge Charger, the other on an airplane tarmac- you decide which is better.
Great music score by Lalo (Starsky & Hutch) Schiffrin!
This is a slow movie, some might even say boring. I found it gripping and worth watching.
Late 60's gritty police drama.

[Chris Knipp]

1968.
Peter Yates directed. IMDb tells us that "Peter Yates started out as a professional racing car driver and team manager - albeit briefly - before turning his attention to film."
Steve McQueen was an icon without equal today. These days, there's a different Steve McQueen, a black British filmmaker (originally an artist who made short art film videos) who's been featured in the NYFF since 2008, who clearly likes to browbeat the audience. People who like punishment admire his work. He's featured again this year with three one-hour films, part of a TV miniseries of five such films. Drawing from a TV miniseries for the festival's opening night film is a departure from former standards.

Of Bullitt all I remember is the cars racing over the hills of San Francisco. Those sequences were unique, avery exciting, hard to believe but fun. I wound up driving over those hills for many years myself, but usually at a more measured pace and not in that kind of big American car, in British or German cars.

[Johann]

I hadn't heard of the other Steve McQueen. Every day in August TCM is highlighting an actor: "Summer Under The Stars".

Bullitt is really only remembered for the car chases- the acting is rudimentary, the story is kinda stock and plain.

[Johann]

AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951)



Gene Kelly is Jerry Mulligan, a struggling painter in Paris. He sells some paintings to a bourgeois lady who is attracted to him.
But Jerry's attracted to Lise (Leslie Caron) and complications develop. That's the plot. The rest is musical, musical, MUSICAL.

Vincente Minnelli directs this Oscar winner, which I enjoyed more than Gene Kelly's other celebrated musical Singin' in the Rain.
Both are exuberant movies, but this one feels more real.
I loved the Gershwin songs, incredible tap dancing, and the finale ballet sequence is amazingly well done.
The "romance" of Paris is all over this picture, even tho it was filmed in Hollywood.
This is a classic musical, and some may say it's the best ever, like they do for Singin' in the Rain.
Gene Kelly has massive dance talent, and he holds down the movie with ease.
Either you give it up for musicals or you don't...
This was another "Essential" film, hosted by Ben Mankiewicz & director Brad Bird.

[Chris Knipp]

GIGI (Minelli 1958) was filmed in Paris, at least street scenes.

The new black British Steve McQueen is very big in the festival world now. Armand White's vocally negative reaction to the group's awarding the new McQueen's 2013 12 YEARS A SLAVE "torture porn," got him expelled from the New York Film Critics Circle, which in turn eventually got him two better jobs, movie critic for OUT and NATIONAL REVIEW, and the American Book Award for Anti-Censorship, I've watched a new movie today called THE 24TH, about a black army division in 1917, which seems to me racism porn. As palate cleansers I watched a typically light film by Eric Rohmer I'd apparently never seen, THE AVIATOR, and Maurice Pialat's GRADUATE FIRST/PASSE TON BAC D'ABORD (1981, 1978). I'd like to see what White says about THE 24TH.

[Johann]

Thanks Chris for the heads-up on The 24th.
You’ve been very prolific during this pandemic, and we’re all grateful.
Hope life’s being good to you.

I’m resurrecting this TCM thread.
I love that channel.

[Chris Knipp]

My pleasure, thank you!
Doing what I can...

[Chris Knipp]

By the way in spite of my negative remarks about Steve McQueen the director, his recent "Small Axe" anthology is really good and I included LOvers Rock from it in my Ten Best Movies of 2020, as did others.

[Johann]

Duly noted.

Not being able to see films in an actual movie theatre has been one of the travesties of this pandemic. I really miss that.
TCM has been a godsend, and so have DVD’s, which are practically obsolete now.

[Chris Knipp]

I was watching a lot on screeners anyway so it's not a complete change even if I do miss going to movie theaters and seeing films on the big screen with a powerful sound system, as at Lincoln Center, or anywhere really, with buttered popcorn, American style (you won't catch people munching on popcorn at a Paris cinema!).

I disagree a bit with the idea that a format (vinyl records, cassette tape, DVD's, CD's) becomes "obsolete." They hang around, and I was just reading that vinyl record prices were going up, while other sound formats weren't, and vinyl was gathering prestige with young people. (I have some laser discs, by the way, and a Pioneer Elite laser disc/CD/DVD player to play them on). DVD's are admittedly less necessary for everyday use now because of the convenience of internet watching of new films via Vimeo and other platforms. That's a lot faster and easier for reviewing films because you don't have to mail a physical disc back and forth and wrestle with a player, though you do have to have good internet speed.

But I was just rewatching Albicocco's La fille aux yeux d'or/The Girl with the Golden Eyes (1961), or taking hits off its lush black and white visuals anyway, on a copy disc I ordered a few years ago from https://www.moviedetective.net/ ("The last bastion of arthouse cinema"), a source for rare public domain foreign films. For a cult film like Girl with the Golden Eyes you have to track down a DVD.

It's sad not to be able to go to movie theaters but it's wonderful how many movies we can gain access to online.

[Johann]

Yes, where there’s a will, there’s a way to access films...

Lovely poster.
Never seen that one, and didn’t know Parisiennes don’t munch popcorn at movies.
Why is that? A cleanliness thing?

I just got new 32-inch Sony Bravia monitor and will be buying a 4K blu-ray DVD player.
I want Stanley Kubrick films in the highest resolution possible.
Keep cranking out your great reviews- you are clearly the man here.

[Chris Knipp]

I didn't know the poster either. But it's all over the place - seems to be the only one for the film.
Europeans don't have the habit of eating between meals. That rules out snacks at the movies.
I've had Europeans observe to me that Americans "never stop eating." I'm afraid that is observably true.