LET'S TALK ABOUT IT - SEPT 2023

0 chat in August. Consider going to quarterly beginning in Oct? (i.e., Let's Talk About It Oct-Dec 2023)

>1 featherbear: Sounds like a good idea. Maybe even extend it to the "what are we watching" topics?

>1 featherbear: You are doing a marvelous job with this group. Thank you, thank you, thank you, from the bottom of my heart! I was absolutely the last person in the world to EVER have a group that did anything but read a book!!!:) I believe that you may be on the right track to think about doing the site on a quarterly basis. You have some folks like >2 KeithChaffee: that are becoming more and more active. I DO read the posts here. May I suggest...and it is ONLY a suggestion and entirely up to you. You might want to start posting a question that would encourage folks to give their opinions. Like...What is your favorite type of program or movie and why? What bugs you the most about what is on your TV or movie screen? I have found that if people are lead, they usually will follow. I know I cannot resist answering a poll:) Something you may also want to explore, and I would be willing to do this if you don't have the time. There are 77 listed members of this group. What do you think of sending a message to each one, and asking what they would like to see in the group? I'm not sure if the group members are dropped off if they are no longer members of LibraryThing or have left a group...but it may be worth a try.

>3 Carol420: >2 KeithChaffee:
Shifting to quarterly in Oct would allow me to synch with my book review thread, which I restart quarterly. Also meaning to suggest restarting the RIP thread annually (quarterly updates might be a little too morbid!). The thread for books *about* movies (as opposed to the thread about movies based on books) currently is indefinite chronologically; since it doesn't get a lot of traffic, maybe restart annually as well? Opinion surveys can generate interest, but my experience with Twitter/X is surveys can get rather bloody minded if a particular topic strikes a raw nerve, so one must be careful.

PS I'm fine w/TV/movies Watched also shifting to quarterly.

I am generally one who prefers things to be clumped into a few big piles rather than divided into lots of little piles, so I'd almost always prefer that relatively slow topics be allowed to run however long they can before the mechanics of the system require them to be restarted (which appears to be somewhere around 250 posts or so?). Most of the topics in this group look like they could easily hold a year's worth of conversation.

I like Carol420's idea of a conversation-starter topic, something like the "Questions for the Avid Reader" topic in the Club Read group, where a new questions is put forth once a week or so. I'd be willing to take a shot at organizing such a thing if there were any interest.

>4 featherbear: As I said, you are doing a fantastic job...I am happy to leave it to you and perhaps >5 KeithChaffee: Would be a great helper if you need one. I will leave you to it and whatever you decide to do I'm sure it will be for the best of the group. If you should need me to do something, just ask. I am at your service:)

>5 KeithChaffee: >6 Carol420:
How does this sound?

New RIP thread beginning Jan 2024, restart Jan 2025 (if at least one administrator is still alive).

Use the current chat thread to include "conversation starters" which Keith is free to initiate, but I restart chat thread in 2024 (annual update) -- any other chat topic is fine of course; I tend to focus more on the intersection of economics & aesthetics. Topics can become dated would be my reasoning, so a broad timeline could be helpful.

Leave the "books about" thread open ended unless it gets unwieldly.

Currently the Movies Based On Books thread is updated monthly: change to open-ended in October; revisit if it gets unwieldly.

I'd like to do the What We're Watching thread as a quarterly beginning in Oct & revisit the quarterly experiment at the end of 2024 barring unexpected external disasters.

>7 featherbear: All sounds good to me. The "current chat thread" is the one we're in now, right?

I'll take a couple of days to come up with a good first conversation starter, then shoot for a new one once a week.

>7 featherbear: Perfect! Good planning.

>8 KeithChaffee: Correct, you're on it!

Joshua Keating. Atlantic, 09/03/2023: Confessions of a Netflix DVD Dead-Ender.

Not necessarily restricted to movie reviews & articles -- I notice this when checking out book reviews & other articles -- but I notice the practice of the online sites often following the date of posting with the estimated amount of time needed to read the article. As a slow -- rather, leisurely reader, it always makes me a bit uncomfortable -- also wondering if their AI robots keep track of my reading speed & adjust the estimated time to my click??

So, in the spirit of "if it works, steal it," we're going to borrow the concept of Club Read's "Questions for the Avid Reader" topic with a weekly discussion question about movies posed by yours truly(*), in the hopes of sparking conversation and maybe just a teeny bit of (always polite) controversy. We'll begin with an easy one:

(*I've taken on the job of semi-official interlocutor, but interesting questions are always welcome, so if you have suggestions or thoughts about possible questions, please do share.)

QUESTION #1: What's your favorite movie and why?

For most of us, it's probably more accurate to say "favorite movies," because it's so hard to pick just one, so if you're feeling torn, feel free to answer with two or three. And if you're in a different mood tomorrow, chime in again with that day's favorite.

And don't worry that your favorite is too obscure or too popular to be worth talking about. If it's obscure, then surely everyone would welcome hearing about it. And if it's popular, well, there's not a movie in the world that everyone has seen, and none of us have heard your thoughts about it. So whether it's Casablanca or that 1940s Romanian noir vampire musical you've always loved, share it with us!

>13 KeithChaffee: OH...I have really been looking forward to this. Thank you for taking this on...and good question. I used to watch a lot of movies...my mother lived with us, and she loved them. My absolute, all-time favorite is A Few Good Men Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, Demi Moore, Kevin Bacon, and Kevin Pollak. While the cast wasn't difficult to look at in their uniforms...I really liked the trial scene. It was rewarding to say the least to see the "top dog" put in his place.

I also liked Air Force One, Harrison Ford, Glen Close. Harison Ford was the ideal portrayal of what a "perfect President" should be. He got the job done in 125 minutes!...and was still smiling.

I also love any Stephen King book that was sever made into a movie...I own them all...but my favorite is Pet Semetary. I love being scared to death:) actually none of those types of movies or books eve scared me. My husband thinks there is something really wrong with me:))

My favorite varies from day to day, but there are two that are always near the top. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) is a magnificent camp festival. Bette Davis and Joan Crawford star; Davis is a former child star whose bitterness leads her to torment Crawford, her paraplegic sister. The movie's success kicked off a decade of "psycho-biddy" movies about murderous older women. "Older" is relative, of course. Davis and Crawford were both in their mid-fifties when the movie was made, or about twenty years younger than Meryl Streep is now, but were costumed and styled to look like decrepit women on the edge of death. Every few years, there is talk of a remake, and the rumors about casting are always fun, if only because there are so many possible combinations of actresses who would be glorious to watch in those roles.

And Disney's Beauty and the Beast -- the 1991 animated film, thank you very much; we will not speak of the 2017 "live-action" remake -- is a damn near perfect movie. Every time I see Belle come down that grand staircase in her yellow gown while Angela Lansbury starts to sing the title song, I get teary-eyed. I have always identified strongly with Belle. "What's that you say? You want to take me away from this closed-minded little town, lock me up in a gorgeous castle with a fleet of servants devoted to my every need and a massive library of all the books I could want, where I will meet the gorgeous man (well, eventually he'll be a gorgeous man...) of my dreams? Yes, please!"

Off the top of my head, 2 from childhood, both via TV: Seven Samurai (Honolulu TV had a lot of Japanese programming) & the Charles Laughton film that featured Robert Mitchum & Shelley Winters, Night of the Hunter (scared the bejeesus out of me! but the artifice of the children floating down the river shot through a spider web awakened my aesthetic sense in some way), and, one of the first European movies that captured my fancy when I attended college in New York, Jules and Jim, a "movie movie" as the phrase goes. Grad school in New Haven, thanks to the student film festivals: the first dance sequence in Swing Time with Ginger Rogers & Fred Astaire, plus I would watch the Alistair Sim version of A Christmas Carol from the 1950s, alone in the grad student lounge during Christmas break; a tradition from childhood (re-watching it, I mean).

>16 featherbear: Have you ever heard the musical adaptation of Night of the Hunter? It's only been staged a few times, but they put out a concept album about 25 years ago. It's a fascinating project. The big ensemble number at the end of the first act is (as so many Broadway numbers are) strongly influenced by religious choral music, but instead of the loose, ecstatic bounce of southern gospel, it's got the square rigidity of New England Protestantism.

>17 KeithChaffee: I have not, though I am reminded that Robert Mitchum could sing, after a fashion (I'm sure he wasn't in the musical), not to mention his nightmarish Leaning in the Arms of the Lord as he tracked down the poor children in the Laughton film.

As an addendum, to my favorites list, after I finished grad school & started working in a library in the late 70s, the cheap rerun theaters on New Haven's College Street began to close down, & one of the last movies I caught was McCabe and Mrs Miller, probably my favorite Western, above even The Wild Bunch & The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly (both go back to college days in NY). The first run theaters moved out to the suburbs off one of the highways in Orange CT, though the York hung around on New Haven's Broadway area for a while, & I remember watching Kubrick's Barry Lyndon & Altman's The Long Goodbye there several times. After that, lacking driving ability all my life, most of my movie memories originate from the early 90s when I finally got a TV & VHS, then DVD player, and, via the rental shops of downtown New Haven, I was introduced to Mizoguchi's Ugetsu & Max Ophuls' Letter from an Unknown Woman & (just remembered) Arthur Penn's The Miracle Worker! I think I caught Kubrick's The Shining about the time I was watching Altman films early in my working career, having become a fan of Shelley Duvall, so I'm guessing it was at one of the rerun theaters before my movie hiatus in the 80s.

I was a huge fan of movie musicals in my teenage years and retain the highest regard for Astaire/Rogers films. The plots are flimsy in the extreme but their dances together are poetry in motion. A particular favourite is 'Swingtime' in which their 'farewell' dance near the end of the film (which Ginger records as being absolutely fiendishto do with multiple takes)is exquisite.
I should note however that Astaire in a tribute to the great Bill Robinson appears in blackface for the only time in his career. Although well intentioned it makes one wince now.

Lane Brown, with reporting by Luke Winkie. Vulture, 09/06/2023: The Decomposition of Rotten Tomatoes. "The most overrated metric in movies is erratic, reductive, and easily hacked — and yet has Hollywood in its grip."

>19 Maura49: I believe it would make me wince now also. Times have changed a lot, haven't they?

>19 Maura49: >21 Carol420:

Another number that struck me as on the cringe-y side was "Slap that bass" in Shall We Dance, not blackface, where Astaire does tap in the stylized engine room of an ocean liner, to an adoring audience of black stokers; "thank you for lending your prestige to our musical & dance culture"

Background on LT issues over the weekend.

Charlie Warzel. The Atlantic, 09/08/2023: Streaming Has Reached Its Sad, Predictable Fate.

Richard Brody. New Yorker, 08/25/2023. What We Lose When Streaming Companies Choose What We Watch.

>24 featherbear: thank you for the articles. I wa able to read the New Yorker one. Very interesting and I agreed with every word. I do pick up movies from streamers to a limited extent but my DVD/Blu ray collection is very important to me.

QUESTION #2: Who do you love?

If their name is on the poster, you're going to be in the theater on opening weekend. If their face pops up on the TV while you're flipping channels, you're going to stop and watch. And even the slightest rumor of their next project is enough to fill you with anticipation. Who are the filmmakers -- actors, directors, craftspeople -- on your must-see list?

I'm not sure that these people are still in any movies, but I do really like them. Liam Nesson and Steven Segal were always favorites and in spite of his unpopularity with some die-hard movie fans...I always liked Tom Cruise....but my all-time favorite, I'd watch anything that he's in...is Patrick Swayze..."Nobody puts Baby in a corner"

>27 Carol420: Steven Seagal is still working, but mostly in direct-to-video movies; he hasn't been in a movie that had a wide theatrical release since Machete in 2010. Liam Neeson still has a robust theatrical career, but for the last fifteen years or so, he's basically turned himself into -- well, into Steven Seagal, making a long series of movies in which he is an ex-cop/government agent/spy who is forced to use his "special set of skills" to save a kidnapped daughter/wife/best friend's cousin's niece. And kudos to both of them, I say; it's hard to find success in Hollywood, and if you find a niche and a loyal fanbase that will keep you working, by golly, stick with it.

As for my own "I will follow them anywhere" list, they tend not to be actors, just because actors have to take a fair number of "pay the bills" jobs in undistinguished movies. The people I'm more likely to follow without reservation are directors who are at least a little bit outside the mainstream, or who have earned enough clout to do what they want to do. The Coen brothers are on my list, and I look forward to seeing how their individual careers develop now that they've decided to work separately for a while. I haven't seen all of his early Greek-language films, but I love Yorgos Lanthimos, and am happy to see the great early reviews for the upcoming Poor Things. And there's only one disappointing movie on Rian Johnson's filmography (that would be The Brothers Bloom).

But I think my biggest "I'm there" name doesn't belong to any single person: It's Pixar. Twenty-seven movies, only one outright stinker in the bunch (Cars 2 -- who thought that putting Mater at the center of any story was a good idea, much less a James Bond spoof?). I don't always agree with the general consensus on which are the truly great Pixar movies -- Wall-E is by a long shot the most overrated, and Coco doesn't get nearly as much love as it deserves -- but there's no name that fills me with as much certainty that I'm in for a good time.

>29 KeithChaffee: One thing you could always count on with a Pixar movie, was that you could usually take your kids, or let them go with friends, without worrying about what new words or activities they were going to learn.

Barbara Streisand films, musicals and I also love documentaries and biographies. I am reading a book on John Hughes and am going to re-watch some of his films!

>31 JulieLill: I liked his Planes Trains and Automobiles, Home Alone, and The Great Outdoors. I'm sure there are more but those are the ones that I remember. I believe he also did 101 Dalmatians. That was cute.

I am a big fan of Film Noir and it is in these dark streets and chiaroscuro lighting that I first discovered Barbara Stanwyck who stars in, for me, the supreme noir- ‘Double Indemnity’. She plays the woman who leads men astray like no other actress of her time.
She can also play comedy beautifully as fans of ‘The Lady Eve’ will know. I have acquired those of her films that I can but here in the UK availability is limited and I always feel lucky if I find one being screened on TV that I did not know. I love all of the great female stars of the 30’s and 40’s but Barbara Stanwyck is the one who shines brightest for me.

You know what I love the most? We have had more conversation on this site in the last two weeks than we've had in 6 years! Keep up the good work.

>33 Maura49: My mother loved Film Noir. I bought several for her from Amazon and E-Bay. There was a man on E-Bay that was selling a huge collection that he had recorded onto DVD's. The whole collection, there was over 50 of them, for $100.00. I don't remember the titles of all of them, just the ones she always asked to watch the most. She loved 'The Woman in The Window", "The Missing Corpse" , 'The Fat Man" (that was Rock Hudson), "Framed" (Glenn Ford), I like "Inner Sanctum". (someone named Charles Russell that I had never heard of). I always hoped that if I had to stay to pause or stop the DVD for her to go to the kitchen or the bathroom, that she would want that one. For some reason she never wanted to learn to operate the DVD player. The most god-awful thing I ever watched from that batch was a thing called...and I couldn't possibly make this up..."I Am a Fugitive from A Chain Gang", made in the early 1930's and staring (if you could call it that) ... someone called Mervyn LeRoy. I would watch the whole bunch including that one, again if I could have her back.

>34 Carol420: I know exactly what you mean as I too lost my mother some years ago and things she loved sre always reminding me of her.

What a great collection of noirs. I must make notes.

>35 Maura49: Just stay away from "I Am A Fugitive From a Chain Gang:)

>34 Carol420: I'm almost afraid to tell you that I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang is the best-known of the movies you mention. It's generally well-regarded as a powerful, albeit melodramatic, look at what were then the harsh realities of the American prison system. The movie got glowing reviews in its day, and three Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Paul Muni; Mervyn LeRoy is the director's name); in 1991, the Library of Congress added it to their National Film Registry of "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant films" that it deems particularly worthy of preservation.

Which is not, of course, to say that your distaste for the movie is wrong. People like/hate what they like/hate, and the minority views are often the most interesting. (Hmmm... there might be a weekly discussion question in there somewhere....)

>37 KeithChaffee: Oh believe me, I know and understand about peoples likes and dislikes, and I agree that everyone has the right to express them about whatever they wish. I will defend their right to do so. I'm glad someone...well lots of someone's obviously... liked it, and my mother would have been ecstatic to know that it got so many awards. She couldn't stand to be in the same room with Dirty Dancing which I watched a million or so times:)

QUESTION #3: On your own little island...

Everybody's got one or two movies where they feel at odds with the general consensus -- a movie or an actor the world loves that you just don't get, or something you love that no one else takes seriously. What are your biggest divergences from what "they say"?

>39 KeithChaffee: a. "no one else takes seriously": I've been a fan of Freebie and the Bean from the first time I saw it at a 2nd run movie theater on Whalley Avenue in New Haven. I have learned recently that Quentin Tarantino also likes it, so maybe it doesn't quite count -- however I'm also fond of Miami Blues which he thinks ruins the book, & I don't agree there (& I did enjoy the book). I also sense that Death Proof is not a popular choice within Tarantino's oeuvre but it's one of my favorites.

b. "general consensus": I didn't like the Top Gun sequel & haven't bothered to watch the original; glamorized militarism -- Lion King & Toy Story, meh -- could be an age thing; too old to appreciate when I saw them -- on the other hand, A Few Good Men also meh when I saw it in my sunset years

>39 KeithChaffee: Pretty much everyone I know absolutely loves The Princess Bride movie, and quotes lines from it constantly. I saw it in the theaters when it first came out, and I thought it was ... fine. I don't understand the extreme levels of affection for it at all, and no one's ever been able to explain why they feel that way to me. Maybe someone here can finally crack the code!

I don't enjoy The Philadelphia Story. It may have been zippy and fast-paced in its day, but it's sluggish now, and no one in it talks like a real person; everyone talks exclusively in punchlines and snarky insults. It's as if every role in the movie was played by Karen Walker from Will & Grace.

I have tried repeatedly, but I just can't sit through The Godfather. As soon as Marlon Brando starts mumbling, I'm out, because I can't understand a word he's saying.

And I don't really get the fuss about Daniel Day-Lewis or Daniel Craig. I mean, they're perfectly fine actors, but their performances don't thrill me the way they seem to thrill most people. I don't even think they're particularly attractive; they've both got immobile faces that might as well be carved from stone for all they communicate.

>37 KeithChaffee: Hello everyone! Just joining and had to mention a different film directed by LeRoy, Anthony Adverse (1936). I have a copy on VHS that I watched and enjoyed a year or two ago. A lot of big name talent in this one including Olivia de Havilland.

I'd say one of my favorite films is Terminator (the original). On a lighter tone, The Jerk is classic comedy, and Ghostbusters and Drugstore Cowboy are also favorites.

I have a wide ranging taste in film and a physical media collection to match. I haven't put any of it on LibraryThing at this point. I've been using a free database app called Memento for several years that I find works for me. Does anyone use LibraryThing to index their media outside of books?

>43 monkity: I use LT to catalog DVDs, blurays & streaming licenses I own, but I'm pretty far behind; I believe I still have quite a few books I haven't gotten around to cataloging. With regard to the DVD/blurays my general vague plan is to catalog each title after re-watching as soon as my Netflix DVD subscription expires at the end of Sept. (Although Netflix is threatening to send a bunch of subscribers' queued items to clear their warehouse shelves; I'll believe that when/if it happens). Unfortunately I have a large pile of uncataloged & to be watched TV series I picked up when companies started dumping them at remainder prices when Netflix & other streaming services started ramping up. Two recent acquisitions I did add on LT: Broad City & Orphan Black. I ought to catalog some of my comparatively modest educational, jazz, classical, & opera CDs (some of the lectures are also streaming licenses) but haven't had the time; too busy exploring the Spotify library.

I know I'm a day late...but the wish is just as warm...have a happy Yom Kippur to all our friends who celebrate.

QUESTION #4: What ever happened to the romantic comedy?

Twenty-five years ago, we were living through a golden age of romantic comedy. In 1998 alone, we had There's Something About Mary, The Wedding Singer, Sliding Doors,and You've Got Mail; and How Stella Got Her Groove Back and Shakespeare in Love were at least rom-com adjacent.

But now? It feels like it's been years since there was a successful romantic comedy in the theaters. The genre hasn't vanished entirely, but it seems to have been moved mostly to streaming services, and the primary target audience for much of the genre is teenaged girls.

What has brought the once mighty rom-com to such a sorry state? Can this genre be saved?

>46 KeithChaffee: Hi, everyone. I'm new to the group (far more active on letterboxd, the site for film watchers / cataloguers).

Streaming algorithms, of course. I joke. Okay, I'm only partially joking.

I think the simplest answer is there have been a multitude of factors.

Hollywood saw what brought the most money (superhero films, franchises/IPs) and romcoms weren't part of that equation. Add the pandemic, which exacerbated movie theatre versus streaming tensions even further, and one can argue it's been a perfect storm for romcoms. And while we have a variety of comedians, how many actors/comedians are associated with the romcom genre itself? The trend for longer films (to make it feel like more bang for your buck at your theatre) works against the genre. A change in attitudes/cultures, too, I reckon played a role - what is funny now, what isn't going to be simultaneously offensive. I read two fairly recent reviews of You've Got Mail from letterboxd friends, which while praising the film in general were creeped out by Tom Hanks's character and his duplicity. Anecdotal evidence, I know, but it asks a question.

https://www.looper.com/308278/the-real-reason-big-screen-romantic-comedies-stopp...

The above article was updated January 2023.

I don't have any qualms about it being "saved." It will evolve. We'll still have romance films, heck romcom films, too, but they'll look different just as much 1980s romcoms aren't the same as 1930s romcoms (which also weren't the same pre-Hays Code versus post-Hays code enforcement). I doubt we'll have a proliferation of them any time soon though. The entire mood of 2010s/2020s films has been the serious or bigger, the better, something that doesn't fit well with the romcom genre as a whole.

>47 petricor: I think you're right that some older romcoms look a little icky in light of changing attitudes about gender. I'd add that because romcoms depend to a large extent on gender norms -- reinforcing in some ways, questioning in others -- that the blurring of those norms is happening faster than screenwriters have been able to adapt to. The more there are no rules, the harder it becomes to tell stories in which the breaking of those rules is crucial to the plot.

And yes, the loss of the mid-budget movie has been a huge factor. Movies today are either multi-million dollar special effects extravaganzas or art-house/foreign movies that will play to crowds of ten people for one week in LA and NY; no one wants to make movies about relatively normal people living relatively normal lives. And that's related to:

how many actors/comedians are associated with the romcom genre itself?

In an era when the movie itself is the star, when people are going to see the stunts and the effects and the Stuff Blowed Up Real Good, there are no movie stars. And the romcom depends on movie stars. What do we remember about the classic romcoms? We remember Tom & Meg or Julia & Hugh or Cary & Katherine

A quirkier piece of the problem: There is very often a moment in a romcom where the plot hinges on whether Partner A will be able to contact Partner B in time to stop them from (leaving, making a crucial mistake, saying the wrong thing to person C...); the cell phone essentially eliminates the "how do I reach them?" crisis.

>47 petricor: I was notified this morning that you were a new member to this group. Welcome and I hope you have a lot of fun.

In answer to the question...The movie industry is like any other public driven business...it will produce whatever the public will buy at any given time. Romance seems to be making somewhat of a comeback...at least in the literary industry. You can get romance books in dozens of different genera. I think the "romance" had to be tempered more on the screen than on the page. Reading about the romantic antics of the two of any sex was much easier to "filter" in your head than on the screen. Actually, I never saw much "comical" about romance...seems as foreign as a romantic murder.

By the way, >48 KeithChaffee:. Thank you for putting in so much time and effort into this group. I really am happy to see it getting new members and coming alive again. As I told >44 featherbear:...I was the absolutely the last person on the face of the Earth to admin this group. I inherited it in 2020 from the friend that I told I would "help". I don't watch television and I watch very few movies. I think the last movie I watched was in 2018. Thanks again.

Alissa Wilkinson & Emily Stewart. 09/27/2023: The Hollywood writers’ strike is over — and they won big: Here’s what’s coming in the WGA’s new contract.

>50 featherbear: Good news indeed. Creative people should not be sideswiped by AI. Let's hope that this settlement helps the actors who face many of the same issues as the writers.

Lili Loofbourow. WaPo, 09/27/2023: TV is dead! Long live TV?

"The Hollywood strikes haven’t just been negotiating what the next contract (or the fall TV season) is going to look like. They’re part of an existential fight over what television’s next iteration will be.

"The battle is being fought against the backdrop of two seismic shifts: the much-discussed decline of prestige television and the beginning of the end of television’s disruption by streaming services.

"...There will probably be more revivals. More reboots. And, if some executives have their way, a heavier reliance on formulas and algorithms, perhaps assisted by new technologies like AI."

Reminder: Let's Talk About It thread continues to the end of 2023.

>46 KeithChaffee:

Coleman Spilde. Daily Beast, 10/01/2023: ‘Fallen Leaves’: The Gorgeous Finnish Rom-Com Genre Fans Must See.

"Romantic comedies have become a dime a dozen, which means it’s become increasingly difficult to find one that’s more than just decent. There are plenty of films that slap together a collection of tropes, hire a few beautiful or interesting-looking actors, and call it a wrap. But Fallen Leaves, an international selection from Finland that screened Sept. 26 at the New York Film Festival, is primed to invigorate a genre grown stale—and do it in the most deliciously glacial, unassuming way possible."

>54 featherbear: Yes, I've heard the buzz on that one. I don't know Kaurismaki's work at all, so I'm intrigued.

Reminder that while the writers' strike is ended, the actors' strike continues:

Ashley Fetters Maloy. WaPo, 09/30/2023: The New York Film Festival opens with the industry in limbo. "NEW YORK — The New York Film Festival got off to a stylish start Friday night with a party at Central Park’s famed Tavern on the Green — or as stylish as you can get when none of the striking actors in this season’s slate of films are expected to attend." New York downpours didn't help.

Kyle Swenson. WaPo, 10/02/2023: Hattie McDaniel’s missing Oscar is replaced at Howard University.

"In an moment decades in the making, representatives from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Sunday night presented Howard University with a replacement Oscar for Hattie McDaniel’s 1940 best supporting actress award.

"The Oscar — for McDaniel’s performance as “Mammy” in the 1939 big-screen epic “Gone With the Wind” — was the first awarded to a Black actor. As a nod to the significance of that award, McDaniel bequeathed her Oscar to the university before her death in 1952.

"On the night of the ceremony — Feb. 29, 1940 — the nightclub hosting the award banquet would not allow the actress to sit at the same table as her White co-stars.

"Black newspapers and political figures criticized McDaniel’s on-screen role for embracing a racial stereotype. Others attacked the film for presenting a romanticized picture of the antebellum South. The Black newspaper the Chicago Defender blasted the film as a “weapon of terror against Black America.”

The original Oscar went missing sometime in the 1960s or 1970s.

QUESTION #5: Your movie marathon

The proprietor of your local rep house calls and tells you that they're planning a special "Community Month." As one of the community's most beloved lovers of film, you are being invited to program a 4-film marathon. You have free choice of titles -- if it's a real movie and hasn't been completely lost, the theater will show it -- and of themes. Your choice might be as simple as four favorite Bogart movies, or as esoteric as four great German films about bisexual crime-fighting librarians. Your only restriction is that no more than one of your titles can be longer than three hours.

What's your theme? What movies do you choose, and why? Do you have any opinion on the order in which the films are shown?

If you are ambitious and enjoy doing this sort of thing, do feel free to offer more than one possible marathon for our contemplation.

>58 KeithChaffee:
Old age comes to mind; I'd probably show them in chronological order; there are probably other worthy candidates, though it's not a common trope at least in Western movies, but my memory isn't what it used to be; other suggestions? I've provided the directors.
1937 Make Way for Tomorrow (Leo McCarey)
1953 Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu)
1958 Ballad of Narayama (Keisuke Kinoshita; there's a 1983 remake by Shohei Imamura I haven't seen; I'd program it as an extra just so I could view it)
1974 Harry and Tonto (Paul Mazursky; haven't seen this for many years, though)

Lesser known World War 2 movies; more intense than any horror movie, & without any of the heroic moments of Private Ryan:
1956 Attack! (Robert Aldrich)
1959 The Bridge aka Die Brucke (Bernhard Wicki)
1962 Hell Is For Heroes (Don Siegal)
1977 Cross of Iron (Sam Peckinpah; seen this only once years ago, so I'd program it just so I could view it again; possibly not on the same level of intensity as the other 3)

Nice! The old age lineup sounds especially interesting.

Still contemplating another possible idea, but for now, I offer you a lineup of four international films, all of which feature striking visuals.

Ten Canoes (Australia; Rolf de Heer & Peter Djigirr; 2006) -- The first full-length feature to be made entirely in Australian Aboriginal languages. A young man finds himself attracted to the youngest wife of his older brother, who tells him a legend/fable about another young man in the same situation.

Wild Tales (Argentina; Damian Szifron; 2014) -- Six short films on the theme of anger and retribution. The highlight is a road-rage duel that turns into something like a live-action Road Runner cartoon.

Blancanieves (Spain; Pablo Berger; 2012) -- A black-and-white silent retelling of Snow White, with bits of other fairytales thrown in, set against a backdrop of bullfighting in 1920s Seville. Magnificent performance from Maribel Verdu as the stepmother.

Tears of the Black Tiger (Thailand; Wisit Sasanatieng; 2000) -- A young woman reluctantly agrees to her father's demand that she marry the local police chief; her childhood sweetheart is the infamous bandit known as the Black Tiger. The movie is filmed in color so vivid as to make Technicolor look like Whistler's Mother -- the bandits wear turqouise shirts and raspberry ascots; the bride wears a gown of carnation pink; a climactic shootout takes place on the greenest lawn you've ever seen. It's like a collaboration between Douglas Sirk and John Ford .

OK, finished with my alternate possibility -- four animated films based on some sort of myth or legend, sequenced from most kid-friendly to least.

Rango (Gore Verbinski, 2011) -- Surely the Western is part of American mythology? Johnny Depp voices a timid chameleon who wanders into a desert town and winds up as its sheriff, tasked with ridding the place of Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy). Both an homage to and a parody of the classic Western.

ParaNorman (Sam Fell & Chris Butler, 2012) -- No one believes that 11-year-old Norman can talk to ghosts, but when his small Massachusetts town is threatened by an ancient witch's curse, Norman must come to the rescue. A minor bit of historical interest here, as one of the supporting players is the first openly gay character in an animated film.

Wolfwalkers (Thom Moore & Ross Stewart, 2020) -- In 1650, a group of Irish villagers are trying to kill or chase away a pack of wolves from the local forest, under orders from the Lord Protector (never specifically named as Oliver Cromwell, but that's who it is), setting up a distinctly Irish werewolf story.

Sita Sings the Blues (Nina Paley, 2008) -- Scenes from Paley's own life, woven together with scenes from the Indian epic The Ramayana, with musical commentary on both drawn from the recordings of 1930s jazz singer Annette Hanshaw; each layer of the film gets its own animated style, from contemporary "squigglevision" to intricately cut-out shadow puppets.

>58 KeithChaffee:

I enjoy "conversation" movies. Initially, I wanted to do a "girl talk," list -- ensemble women in conversation -- then a one on one male/female, but in both cases I couldn't come up with a fourth -- so I made a single "Conversations" list, again presented in chronological order with director:

1939 The Women (George Cukor)
1969 My Night at Maud's (Eric Rohmer)
1995 Before Sunrise (Richard Linklater)
2007 Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino)

Incomplete combinations -- missing the elusive #4; suggestions welcome:

"Girl Talk"
1939 The Women (Cukor)
2007 Death Proof (Tarantino)
2022 Women Talking (Sarah Polley)

Comment: if this wasn't a "female ensemble" list -- I do enjoy Tarantino's The Hateful Eight; would also break my unwritten rule of no repeat directors, which is why the other Sunrise pix couldn't make the one on one or the combined lists:

"One on One"
1969 My Night at Maud's (Rohmer)
1974 Scenes From a Marriage (Ingmar Bergman)
1995 Before Sunrise (Linklater)

On a completely different note. I doubt Shelley Duvall could have fulfilled a complete TCM Night Under the Stars presentation, but I've always been fond of her beginning with her bit part, largely silent, in McCabe and Mrs. Miller, but she had significant roles in 4 feature films; in this case I have to break the "one director" rule; she was obviously an Altman favorite:

Shelley Duvall in

1974 Thieves Like Us (Robert Altman)
1977 3 Women (Altman)
1980 The Shining (Stanley Kubrick)
1980 Popeye (Altman)

>62 featherbear: To fill out a "Girl Talk" list...

There's always the musical remake of The Women (musical only in the sense that one of the characters has a nightclub act and we hear her sing a few songs). But The Opposite Sex (1956) isn't a very good movie, as its list of stars would suggest. June Allyson, Joan Collins, and Dolores Gray suggests a bad day of being turned down by everyone the casting director actually wanted.

François Ozon's 8 Women (2002), on the other hand, is a delight. Ozon had wanted to do a remake of The Women, but his rights deal fell through, so instead he adapted a French play from the late 1950s, and assembled a stunning cast: Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Béart, Fanny Ardant, Virginie Ledoyen, Danielle Darrieux, Ludivine Sagnier and Firmine Richard. They are gathered at the isolated family home for Christmas when the patriarch is found stabbed to death; which of them is the killer? And this one really is a musical, with songs that advance the story.

A possible fourth for the "One on One" list: A Love Song (2022). There are a few brief appearances from other characters, but it's basically a two-hander for veteran character actors Dale Dickey and Wes Studi, playing former classmates who meet to see if the spark they once felt for each other might be rekindled. Neither Dickey nor Studi often get to play a starring role, or is thought of as a romantic lead -- this was reportedly the first on-screen kiss for both -- but they are lovely here.

QUESTION #6: Character actors!

My most recently finished book (Celeste Holm Syndrome by David Lazar) was a bit of a disappointment, but it did start me thinking about character actors, those useful utility players who fill out the supporting cast of a movie.

What exactly is a character actor, anyway? Who are your favorite character actors, past or present?

>64 KeithChaffee: It's confusing. If I understand correctly, during the studio system period, a character actor was indeed always in a supporting role, who tended to play a certain "type," e.g. Eugene Pallette or Walter Brennan. On the other hand, post-studio, I get the impression an actor who was adept at playing different characters, without necessarily playing a supporting role, got the "character" label; Philip Seymour Hoffman seems to have been categorized as such, while Tom Cruise never. Not sure where this puts the Method types like Brando or DeNiro. If Hoffman counts, he'd be my modern favorite.

>65 featherbear: If forced to offer a definition, I'd say that a character actor is someone who can create a memorable character with limited screen time. I think they've always come in the two types you suggest -- the actor who plays the same basic character every time, and the actor who seems to have no particularly distinct personality of their own, but disappears into whatever new role they're asked to play. In the 1940s, for instance, William Demarest was the first type; Celeste Holm was the second.

I'll pick one recent favorite of each type. Margo Martindale is a relative chameleon. There are certainly traits in common to most of her characters -- a blunt practicality, a down-to-earth quality -- but she can range from the villainy of Mags Bennett on Justified to the goodness of the mother superior on Mrs. Davis. Her filmography includes titles as varied as The Rocketeer, August: Osage County, and Cocaine Bear.

On the other hand, Leslie Jordan really only had one character in his toolbox -- the sharp-tongued Southern queen -- but he played that one character to perfection. There were variations -- his Will & Grace character was smarter and meaner; his character in the ensemble sitcom The Cool Kids was sweeter and a bit more befuddled -- but when he showed up, you knew basically what to expect.

Mark Sweney. Guardian, 10/15/2023: Disney execs consider radical shake-up as crisis hits centenary celebrations.

QUESTION #7: Remakes!

Before the year is over, we'll be getting a second film version of The Color Purple (this one based on the musical) and a third version of the Willy Wonka story. Hardly a month goes by without the announcement of plans to remake some beloved movie or other.

Do you have favorite remakes? What makes a remake worthwhile? Which movies should (or shouldn't) be remade? Is there any movie you'd like to see a new version of?

>68 KeithChaffee: I’m in a minority in liking the 1994 remake of The Getaway (1972, Sam Peckinpah). Director was Roger Donaldson, who's had a rather spotty track record, but he does have No Way Out (1987) & Cadillac Man (1990) to his credit. The original film is better (Quentin Tarantino has high praise in his Cinema Speculation), but I prefer Kim Basinger’s performance to Ali McGraw’s. I’ve only seen the 1992 Last of the Mohicans, but I suspect I’d prefer it to the 1936 version. Then there’s Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961), remade by Sergio Leone as A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and remade by Walter Hill as Last Man Standing (1996). To my mind, the Western remakes of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954) -- John Sturges’s The Magnificent Seven (1964) & Antoine Fuqua’s version (2016) -- aren’t in the same league. I think the Yojimbo remakes work better for me because the Japanese original has strong genre roots, and the remakes stay within genre boundaries. Seven Samurai is intended as more than a genre film while the remakes don’t go beyond genre.

Two films that shouldn’t be remade would be Disney’s Song of the South & D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation. For that matter, I don’t think we need a remake of Gone with the Wind, even in the form of a musical.

Tarantino has an essay on Paul Schrader’s Hardcore (1979) as a remake of John Ford’s The Searchers (1979), where the issue of the racist quest is addressed. Too soon at this moment in time, but I could foresee a future film revisiting The Searchers in the 21st century within the context of the Hamas massacre aftermath.

Xan Brooks. Guardian, 10/16/2023: ‘Rejecting hatred and fear’: why Powell and Pressburger’s weird, confounding films are perfect for our times.

On the subject of remakes, I have always generally agreed with Roger Ebert's idea that if you're going to remake a movie, don't remake one that was done right the first time. No one needs a new version of Casablanca or Pulp Fiction. The movies to remake are the ones that almost worked; figure out what the problem was, and fix it.

The exception, I would argue, is foreign-language films; given the historic reluctance of most American moviegoers to foreign films -- what Bong Joon-Ho called the "one-inch barrier" of subtitles -- there might be good reason to remake even the very best foreign films, if you can do so well, as a way of getting at least some part of their brilliance to a new audience.

It is interesting how differently the idea of revisiting the classics is seen in the worlds of film and theater. One doesn't "remake" a play; one "revives" it, using exactly the same script. And audiences are thrilled at the opportunity to see a new cast tackle the same roles. Could you do that with movies? Use the same script to make a new Silence of the Lambs, say, with Emma Stone and Edward Norton in the Foster and Hopkins roles?

Probably not, and the crucial difference is that movies endure and remain available in a way that stage performances do not. Today's audiences can never see Jessica Tandy's Blanche Dubois; if they want the thrill of seeing that role on stage, a revival is the only way to do it. But Foster's Clarice Starling lives forever, easily accessible to anyone who wants to see it. The few times that anyone has attempted something like a "revival" in film, the reaction has generally been awful; Gus Van Sant's Psycho comes to mind.

>71 KeithChaffee: I agree with you. Don't remake a classic! I just saw the live version of The Little Mermaid and I wasn't impressed plus it was too long. I loved the original Disney animated film.

>68 KeithChaffee: & 71> I'm pretty sure there was a Hollywood re-make of Rashomon. Anyone recall what it was?

There have been dozens of movies and TV episodes inspired by the basic idea of Rashomon -- a single event told by each of the participants -- and there's a long list of them at Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon#Remakes_and_adaptations

Looks as if the most direct remake is probably Martin Ritt's 1964 western The Outrage, with the intriguing cast of Paul Newman, Laurence Harvey, Claire Bloom, Edward G. Robinson, and William Shatner.

>74 KeithChaffee: The Outrage! That's the one I was groping for! Thanks; I need to check out at some point.

>71 KeithChaffee: Regarding the one inch barrier of subtitles ... Interesting that the early history of films used intertitles to help the audience when the purely visual was inadequate, but reading is now used to explain why some folks won't watch foreign films (don't you want to know what those foreigners are saying?) though it's become a truism nowadays that people (not just us boomers) make use of closed-captioning because actors too often mumble their lines (not the case in the studio days, when they sometimes just talked VERY FAST -- looking at you Front Page); though as a dedicated watcher of Midsomer Murders with CC, I'm sometimes distracted by the gawdawful misspellings of the captioners. Don't understand why they can't caption with a script in hand, and then work around the actor/director emendations. Is that so much to ask??! Or is CC done by AI these days, based simply on poor voice recognition?

Random thought: I believe in Hollywood the oral history one of the interviewees from the silent era recalled changing a drama to a comedy simply by changing the intertitles. In the sound era, I thought of Woody Allen's What's Up Tiger Lily? for the use of subtitles for a comic effect. Were there any more such usages?

>72 JulieLill: JulieLill! Hello! I had begun to fear that featherbear and I were the only ones still reading this topic.

>76 featherbear: I can't think of any other examples specifically involving subtitles, but there are a variety of other uses of old footage in new films. Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid comes to mind, for instance, and there are several films and TV shows in which (like Allen's Tiger Lily) new dialogue is dubbed over existing footage.