Buffista Movies 5: Development Hell
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
They don't have Blood on the Moon. I'm being deprived of Robert Mitchum. Unfair!
Totally unfair! Blood on the Moon is coooool. It's super moody and noir - on the short list of 10 Noir Western it's #1 or 2. Also, there's much plaid. Also, Robert Preston is a sinister bad cowboy and there's a big, violent brawl between him and Mitchum. That's right, it's the Music Man vs. Max Cady, and one of them is wearing plaid.
Okay, it's a little slashy too.
Mitchum is just a wee bit handsome all scruffed up.
I'm a big ol' Sound of Music sap
Oh, I don't think it's a bad movie. I'm just not big on musicals.
Mitchum is just a wee bit handsome all scruffed up.
Well, yeah. So few men can look wry and sleepy at the same time.
I grew up with musicals! In addition to the last vestiges of Hollywood big-screen attempts in the genre (the first movie I remember seeing in the theater was Sound of Music, in the now-long-defunct Princess Theater in downtown Joliet during its second or third run in the early 1970s), not getting a VCR or cable until sometime in high school meant that afterschool TV viewing was a lot of old-time musicals, Three Stooges and Our Gang comedy shorts, and reruns of The Mickey Mouse Club. A big part of my New Years Eve babysitting gigs in junior high was the Astaire/Rogers movies that the local PBS station always showed.
I seem to deal best with musicals if they're either completely surreal or completely... not. Sunday in the Park with George is fine, Yankee Doodle Dandy is fine. It's when they alternate between real and surreal that I get thrown.
FYI. 1981 Best Director/Best Picture noms. Last time there was a perfect match-up.
Warren Beatty, Reds
Hugh Hudson, Chariots of Fire
Louis Malle, Atlantic City
Mark Rydell, On Golden Pond
Steven Spielberg, Raiders of the Lost Ark
Chariots of Fire
won Best Picture. Warren Beatty won for Director.
Sound of Music is an excellent musical. The problem is, (1) not everyone cares for musicals (Disclaimer: which is a fair point of view), but even more significant, (2) it came out just before that type of old-fashioned musical became, well, old-fashioned.
Anyway, The Set-Up has been added to my queue.
An excellent decision. If you've never seen THE HAUNTING (and I mean the Wise version, not the incredibly well casted yet truely vile recent atrocity - talk about a waste of resources) add it in too. First film that SERIOUSLY scared the shit out of me as a kid. It's all implication, sound and style (with one freaky exception) that makes it scary, and very little has topped it since for keeping me up at night.
Oh, yes, I think "The Haunting" was one of my first rentals because it had been on my must-see list for a while. And yes. Brr. I still need to read the book, too. Actually, I need to hit the used book store this weekend. Let's see if I remember to look for it.
I'm also good on "The Day the Earth Stood Still." Plus I've got a bunch of stuff from Joe Bob's "Profoundly Erotic" that I need to see. I think I'm confusing the hell out of Netflix's recommendation logic.
The Haunting & The Day The Earth Stood Still are two of my fave-raves, too.
