254. The Band Wagon (1953)

Running Time: 112 minutes
Directed By: Vincente Minnelli
Written By: Betty Comden, Adolph Green
Main Cast: Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, Oscar Levant, Nanette Fabray, Jack Buchanan
Click here to view the trailer

NOTE: NON-BOOK UPDATES!

Band of Outsiders (1964 - Jean-Luc Godard) 6/10 - Another TCM one. Seriously, if you live in the states and aren't constantly raiding Turner Classic Movies for film, you need to be. I was less than thrilled with this one. I think I expected more, after hearing Tarantino talk about it so much and even him naming his production company after it. I liked it fine, just not enough. Perhaps two or three more viewings sometime down the road would sweeten me. 

They Live by Night (1948 - Nicholas Ray) 6/10 - TCM again. Not entirely crazy about it. It got a lot better in the second half. I would've liked to have seen less complications early on and just gotten Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell into their wooded cabin ASAP. Still a pretty good little movie and nothing terrible on display. 

The Lucky One (2012 - Scott Hicks) 5.5/10 - So, my wife has been trying to compromise a lot lately and she's sat through some BOOK stuff with me, just to help me get finished. SO I figured it was my turn to sit through something with her. She's a Nick Sparks fanatic, but had yet to see The Lucky One, so I agreed. Not quite as atrocious as I expected and the presence of Taylor Schilling actually made me want to finally check out Orange Is the New Black. She was great here and looked great to boot. Efron isn't bad himself, but some serious roles would help to refine him, I think. 

The Threat (1949 - Felix E.Feist) 6/10 - Yeah, so all of my TCM ventures this week got a '6' - mediocre affairs, the lot of them. This one was only a little over sixty minutes and also dealt with a band of fugitives (like They Live by Night). This one was a lot simpler and just gave us the meat & potatoes of a band of crooks, trying to outwit the law and stay on the lam. Nice conclusion too. Probably the best of the three classics I saw, or at least tied with Band of Outsiders. 

Now then...

GOTTA' DANCE...AGAIN!

I also nabbed this one off of Turner Classic Movies as well - one less disc to get from Netflix, I thought. Can you believe, as of this writing, there are only forty-one discs on my Netflix queue!? Everything else that's left I either have access to on the computer or have recorded off of TCM. I can remember when I first started THE BOOK journey and put all THE BOOK movies on my queue. I maxed out my queue at 500 films and still had a handful that I had to leave off, because it wouldn't let me add anymore. Nitty gritty indeed...

Another musical from the minds of Comden and Green, The Band Wagon dusts off Fred Astaire (who probably didn't need much Pledge) as Tony Hunter and displays him as a has been song & dance man, who can't hang with the current crop of stars. When his stage writer pals, Lester Marton (Levant) and Lily Marton (Fabray) (supposedly the onscreen incarnation of Betty Comden and Adolph Green), write a new musical, however, Hunter looks to get back in the spotlight. The Marton's take their script to famed stage director, Jeffrey Cordova (Buchanan), who claims to love it, but then proceeds to change everything about it - turning it into a modern day retelling of Faust. Cordova plans to remake Tony Hunter a star and nab a leading lady who's worthy of his tap shoes. The one he has in mind, upstart star Gabrielle Gerard (Charisse). The two stars quarrel at first, Hunter still bitter that he's not in the limelight anymore, Gerard a youngster to the stage scene, who doesn't quite know how to take him. Eventually, their show opens and bombs (think The Duelling Cavalier), but Tony Hunter has ideas to redeem the show and tour with it, to all the major cities and repackage it as a variety show, using The Marton's original script as the entree.

Think The Duelling Cavalier, I said. It makes you think - at the heart of it all, isn't this movie much the same as Singin' in the Rain? Okay, there's huge differences of course, but the main story about a production flopping and then being rebranded as something else, that's an idea stolen by Comden & Green from Comden & Green, from Singin' in the Rain. Also Astaire & Charisse quarreling for the first half, reminded me a lot of Kelly & Reynolds feuding for the first half of Singin' in the Rain - only to make up and fall in love a la Astaire & Charisse. It kind of makes me want to see other Betty Comden/Adolph Green productions and see if they just kept recycling the same ideas, over and over.

Anyway, I didn't like this near as much as Singin' in the Rain. For one, the songs in The Band Wagon just weren't good. I enjoy musicals, to a certain extent. They're not my favorite, but I can certainly get behind them, but the music must be good. Every time Astaire or Charisse or someone would break into song, it would be this awful number and I just wanted to get back to the super thin plot - which is saying something, considering the plot wasn't anything to write home about either. How bout the song, "I Love Louisa". Just an awful number, that made my ears want to bleed. In fact, I feel like the first really decent song, was "Louisiana Hayride", sung with gusto by Nanette Fabray. And then, of course, "Triplets", which I'll admit, I rewound and called my wife into the room so she could see it. Loved that number. THE BOOK raves about the big finale, which is Astaire and Charisse starring in an eleven minute piece called "Girl Hunt", a film noir, with Astaire as the dick and Charisse as the dame. I'll admit Cyd Charisse looked fabulous in it (but then again, she looked fabulous throughout), but I wasn't totally thrilled with it. It was okay.

Seriously, I'll have to look into Cyd Charisse and see what else I can find her in. She looked marvelous. I also really dug Fred Astaire in this and it made me want to see the rest of his filmography, especially the ones he did side by side with Ginger Rogers. It made me want to go dig out Top Hat and Swing Time and rewatch them (I bought an Astaire and Rogers set after watching those for THE BOOK - wonder if I still have it?).

RATING: 5.5/10  We'll leave it at that. The end numbers (Louisiana Hayride, Triplets) and the appearance of the gorgeous Cyd Charisse and the uber talented Fred Astaire gets this otherwise bad musical over the average marker.

MOVIES WATCHED: 936
MOVIES LEFT TO WATCH: 65

July 18, 2015  8:48am

239. An American in Paris (1951)

Running Time: 113 minutes
Directed By: Vincente Minnelli
Written By: Alan Jay Lerner
Main Cast: Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Oscar Levant, Georges Guetary, Nina Foch
Click here to view the trailer

KELLY = AMAZING, THE REST = *MEH*

I DID manage to watch three movies yesterday, but obviously didn't make it back for the third review. So here I am now, to fill you in on my third feature from Tuesday's binge. All in all, I'd call yesterday a disappointment at the movies, with nothing blowing me away, but An American in Paris easily being the best of the lot.

The film, unsurprisingly, takes place in Paris and stars Gene Kelly as a starving artist named Jerry Mulligan. Jerry lives in a tinier than tiny apartment and considers a concert pianist who lives upstairs his best pal. The concert pianist is Adam Cook, also starving for his passion, unable to get a job, left to daydream about what fame & fortune might be like. One day Jerry meets the very wealthy Milo Roberts (Foch), who offers to buy two of his paintings and later, invites him to her place for a social gathering. Jerry accepts, but when he arrives finds that the social gathering only consists of two - him and Milo. Long story short, she's attracted to more than just his paintings and wants to build him up into a famous painter, by organizing exhibitions and whatnot. Meanwhile, Jerry can't help but swoon over the young, but gorgeous Lise Bouvier (Caron), a perfume counter girl who, at first, wants nothing to do with the very forward Mulligan. However, Jerry makes her laugh and eventually she caves, agreeing to a late night date with Jerry. Why late night? Because Jerry's lunches are scheduled daily with Milo and because Lise's dinner plans are scheduled nightly with her boyfriend and acquaintance of Jerry, Henri Baurel (Guetary). Jerry and Lise go on to meet nightly, eventually falling in love, but unable to break the news to their other lovers, who are promising them fame & fortune - Milo offering to take Jerry to America to begin showing his paintings and Henri, a famous singer & dancer, offering to marry Lise and put an end to her perfume counter days.

SPOILER ALERT!

Definitely not Best Picture worthy, but not terrible either by any stretch. I'm a sucker for Gene Kelly and am of the opinion that his tap dancing feet are a form of hypnosis in some countries. Watching him tap dance through the streets, serenading little kids was one of the high points of the picture, not to mention his dance with Leslie Caron on the banks of the River Seine, during their first date. What WAS NOT a high point, was the eighteen minute ballet that concluded the film, which was annoyingly long, at a point when I was ready to be done with the predictable story. I think by then we all knew that Lise would come running back into Jerry's arms, so by then we were just prolonging the inevitable. Speaking of Caron, I only called her gorgeous in the plot synopsis, because in the movie she was considered gorgeous by all. However, is it just me or is she quite the opposite? I mean, what's the appeal with this girl? I'm not going to get into name calling, but I found her quite resistable and it was almost a joke to watch Kelly and Guetary vie for her affections. Come to think of it, I didn't care for her in Gigi either, making her one of the most detestable actresses I've encountered from THE BOOK.

Overall the film made the time pass fairly easily, but it wasn't because of anything blow away. It was the exact definition of a slightly above average picture and considering it beat out A Place in the Sun for Best Picture is more of a joke than Caron being considered the film's object of desire. The cinematography and choreography were both brilliant, but the story itself was quite mundane, predictable and uninteresting. Seriously though, the cinematography is outstanding, enough to make you pity the color blind, with eye popping yellows, greens, purples...oh, who am I kidding - every color of the rainbow is represented to eye popping perfection. You can really tell that unlike myself, Minnelli was just infatuated with Caron, framing her in beautiful color, early on when Henri is describing her to Oscar, the only time in the film where she looks halfway decent. Also, dig that scene where Kelly steps aside and lets Georges Guetary strut his stuff in the number "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise" - one of my favorites from the film. Other than that, the songs are pretty forgettable to be honest, with nothing really sticking in my memory, even this morning, having just finished it less than twelve hours ago. I must say though, these old musicals have been fairly good to me and this one only helped to remind me of others I've passed in my journey to 1001 watched. It got me to thinking that someone needs to make a modern musical, with original songs, but stage it so that it looks classic. Get a bunch of clean cut, good looking actors together (honestly, I can't think of anyone in modern Hollywood, so you might have to recruit some new, young talent), force them to don cheesy smiles and top notch dance moves and put on a show. Could Hollywood get away with something like this today? If given the right director, choreographer could it produce a profit? I really don't know, but seeing as how Hollywood produces handful upon handful of bombs per year, I can't see the harm in giving it a shot and perhaps reinvigorating the pretty much dead genre that is musical. Just a thought...

RATING: 6/10  This has to be one of the big letdowns among Best Picture winners, as both A Place in the Sun and A Streetcar Named Desire should have won out over this and have both stood the test of time much better than An American in Paris.

MOVIES WATCHED: 889
MOVIES LEFT TO WATCH: 112

January 7, 2015  11:27am

332. GIGI (1958)

Running Time: 115 minutes
Directed By: Vincente Minnelli
Written By: Alan Jay Lerner, Anita Loos, from novel by Colette
Main Cast: Leslie Caron, Louis Jourdan, Maurice Chevalier, Hermione Gingold, Isabel Jeans
Click here to view the trailer

FROM WEE WEE'S TO OUI OUI'S

I realize I should've been back before noon for my second review of the day, but after watching Gigi I got sidetracked doing some chores around the house - a bit of a surprise for my wife, who's due home within the hour. Anyway, we're off together tomorrow, so that means I'll probably retire to my little TV room later on to continue today's binge of must see movies. For now, let's talk Gigi.

The plot sort of reminded me of My Fair Lady, except there's no Audrey Hepburn and instead there's Leslie Caron (Gigi), a poor man's Audrey. Gigi comes from a long line of socialite, spoiled, wealthy, well to do women, including her "grandma-ma" Madame Alvarez (Gingold) and her "auntie" Alicia (Jeans), the latter of whom is her teacher in the fine art of sophistication - you know, putting your pinky up when you sip tea and never lifting the saucer before you lift the coffee pot, those sorts of things. Once a week Gigi takes lessons from her Aunt Alicia, as Alicia hopes that one day Gigi will be groomed enough to be a brilliant lady. However. Gigi has different dreams & desires and those don't include learning how to be more lady like. Meanwhile, you've got Gaston (Jourdan), who is bored with life (that sounds serious - perhaps some prescription anti-depressants would've been just what the doctor ordered and this movie would've been over in jig time). He hates how trees are always green, how the sky is always blue and how he's always so rich & always being chased after by beautiful women (poor sap). He's engaged to Liane d'Exelmans (Eva Gabor), whom he breaks up with when he finds out that she's cheating on him with her skating instructor. Seriously, if you guys can't figure out the entire rest of the plot spoilers and all, then you haven't been paying attention to movies. However, for the ones who don't care to guess for lack of spoilage, I'll stop there. Maurice Chevalier co-stars as Gaston's uncle and he's far & away the best part of the whole production.

SPOILER ALERT!

I mean, seriously, is this meant to be a ripoff of My Fair Lady? The casting of Caron who bore of resemblance to Audrey Hepburn, the basic plot which dealt with a girl being taught to act more sophisticated and even Louis Jourdan's belting out the tune "Gig" which seemed to have the same basic message as Rex Harrison's "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face". Add the fact that both were written by Lerner & Lowe and it seems like much more than a happy coincidence. What's with Lerner & Lowe anyway and why are they so preoccupied with girls being taught to act proper? I wonder if they had a rough childhood, with their mother forcing them to listen to show tunes and walk around with dictionaries on their heads, while balancing three champagne glasses in one hand and twirling a parasol in the other?

All kidding aside, I more put up with this one then enjoyed it. In fact, I barely enjoyed it at all. Outside of Chevalier's appearances (what a gem he was), I wasn't the least bit interested in what became of these characters, partly because the damn thing was so predictable that I could see the ending coming before the ink was dry on the opening credits. Best song honors also go to Chevalier, but not for his famous "Thank Heaven for Little Girls (which comes off more like a creepy anthem for pedophiles everywhere), but instead his duet with Hermione Gingold and "I Remember It Well", a cute little ditty where Gingold's character remembers much more about a date with Chevalier's character than he does. It's also worth noting that during and after watching this, I came up with a new test for judging musicals. It's called the "hum test" and revolves around my desire and ability to hum songs from the movie after watching it. If can remember some of the tunes and have a desire to hum and/or sing them, then "yay", your musical is tops with me. Otherwise, it fails and well...like Gigi, it's forgettable and dull. I dig a good musical, but honestly, they're few and far between and with the exceptions of My Fair Lady and Grease, I'm hard pressed to think of anymore really good ones. Nuff said...

RATING: 3.5/10  Someone online said it's movies like this that make people discredit the Oscars and I can hardly disagree. Nine Oscars for this pile? Gimme' a break!

MOVIES WATCHED: 878
MOVIES LEFT TO WATCH: 123

December 2, 2014  12:47pm

248. The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)

Running Time: 118 minutes
Directed By: Vincente Minnelli
Written By: George Bradshaw, Charles Schnee
Main Cast: Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, Dick Powell, Walter Pidgeon, Barry Sullivan
Click here to view the trailer

HE'S A BAAAAD MAN!

So Netflix seems to have been converting a lot of their "At Home" inventory from "available" to "save", meaning they're listed on the site but not available. In just the past couple weeks I've seen three films on my queue go to save and it's becoming frustrating, as they're obviously coddling their streaming section and letting their DVD business go by the wayside. Anyway, this was one of the movies that went to save, but thankfully TCM aired it last night so I was able to snag it without too much trouble.

The film revolves around Jonathan Shields (Douglas), a slimy and sleazy, yet intelligent and sometimes with good intentions film producer, whom we first hear of when he makes three phone calls. The three calls are to the top director in Hollywood Fred Amiel (Sullivan), Hollywood's leading lady Georgia Lorrison (Turner) and novelist turned script writer James Lee Bartlow (Powell). During each of the three calls, which begin the film, Amiel and Lorrison both ignore the call and Bartlow accepts the call (coming all the way from Paris) simply to tell Shields to "drop dead". Obviously there's bad blood and as the three are summoned to Harry Pebbel's office, they are enlightened as to what Shields wanted. He wants to make one picture with them, to bury the hatchet. All the audience has yet to find out is what are the hatchet's that need burying? We learn from each individual, one by one what their beef is with Shields. We find out that Amiel met Shields when he was a nobody, working for B movie producer Pebbel (Pidgeon) and using his talents to turn him into an Academy Award wielding super producer. A double cross by Shields to Amiel leaves Fred with a bad taste in his mouth and the two part ways, never to speak again. Then there's Lorrison, a drunk and a tramp, the father of a once great Hollywood actor, whom Shields transforms into the starlet of Tinsel Town, yet betrays her for one night of lust with a wannabe actress. And finally, there's the writer, whom Shields talks into coming to Hollywood to wrote a script, only to inadvertently kill his wife. That's plenty of plot synopsis....

Couldn't find any good images for this movie, but here's one that highlights the falling out scene between Douglas and Turner's characters'. The rage that Douglas is able to bring forth here is scary. 

In the few minutes of research I did on this one, I've seen more than one person compare this movie to Sunset Blvd. My question is why? Even THE BOOK notes that this is the best "Hollywood on Hollywood movie" ever made and even that's a slap in the face to the great Sunset Blvd. To me, "Sunset" is almost a horror film - that wretched old mansion, the plotting Erich von Stroheim, that scary as hell "closeup" that Gloria Swanson was so ready for. While I didn't honor "Sunset" with a TOP 20 nod (or even a Ten Worth Mentioning spot) I did add it to a list of BOOK movies that I want to catch up with again someday and I'm not sure I could say the same for The Bad and the Beautiful. This movie, in most ways, was just a movie - no layers, no particularly special qualities that I could see. Sure, Douglas, Turner and basically the entire cast were at the top of their game and sure the story itself was like three stories rolled into one, with each character having their own, unique relationship to the main one, yet I found the film to be ultimately forgettable. I will say it was nice to get back to old time Hollywood though - those opening titles, that music, the glorious black & white, the over the top yet fantastic performances, Lana Turner in beautiful gowns and even the gorgeous Elaine Stewart bathed in shadows atop a staircase, being a minx.

Was it just me or did the Dick Powell story not have as much "oomph" as the other two? With Amiel and Lorrison, you could argue that "yes, Shields did them wrong, but he also made them what they are", while with Bartlow, he was already a success when Shields met him, not to mention the fact that forgiveness was going to come a lot harder, considering Shields was in a way responsible for the death of Bartlow's wife. No, I just didn't take to the Powell story that much at all and while we're at it, I felt that the Lorrison story sort of bogged down the whole production. I was totally onboard with the film right through the Amiel plot line, even picking up on the obvious Val Lewton/Cat People references.

I will say, while I wasn't blown away by the film, I did notice certain devices in play that really struck me as somewhat innovative. The way they had the comment cards start out with "It Stinks", only to reveal that was the only one that said such an insult. The way Douglas kicked off his shoes and gave himself a foot massage in every story. The way they had the Shields' character empahsize how the audiences' imagination was such a pivotal part of the script, during one of Bartlow's rewrites. All of these little touches struck me as interesting and only helped to try and pull me a little further into the story. Only thing is, I wasn't budging for the most part. I didn't hate it or anything, but to me it was just a smidgen above average and ultimately another loss for Kirk Douglas, whom I love, yet can't find a movie of his that I really like.

RATING: 5.5/10  A '6' is probably more suitable, but that also seems a bit high, so we'll drop it a half a notch and call it a review.

MOVIES WATCHED: 841
MOVIES LEFT TO WATCH: 160

August 27, 2014  2:46am

166. Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

Running Time: 113 minutes
Directed By: Vincente Minnelli
Written By: Irving Brecher, Fred F. Finklehoffe, from novel by Sally Benson
Main Cast: Judy Garland, Margaret O'Brien, Mary Astor, Lucille Bremer, Tom Drake
Click here to view the trailer

FAMILY AND STUFF

Come hell or high water, "Meet Me in St. Louis" was apparently determined to be viewed THIS season. Under the blueprints of the old format, it was scheduled to be watched as part of "Vincente Minnelli" week. However, when the format was changed to the "5 and 5" method, it still came up and therefore, I was destined to have Judy Garland and a whole lot of melodrama shoved down my throat.

The film really isn't about anything, but instead is simply fodder for singing songs and showing a portrait of perfect family life & values, in the heart of America - via St. Louis. Okay, okay, so it has a loose plot, but it's barely there and trust me, it's really about that family stuff. The family is the Smith's (typical) and the one Minnelli is most concerned with touting is Esther Smith (Garland), a late teen - early twenty-something girl who spends her days swooning over her handsome next door neighbor, John Truett (Drake). Esther has three sisters - the eldest, Rose (Bremer) and two younger - and a brother. Of course, there's mom and dad too. Hell, there's even a grandpa and a maid, so it's a regular freakin' Brady Bunch. The film is really just a collection of vignettes, as we see the Smith's hosting a dinner party, a scene depicting the two younger sisters and the time they have during the Halloween festivities and we end around Christmastime and a big dance, where the eldest sister is forced to go with her brother (ewww). The brunt of the plot finally arrives, past the one hour mark, when Dad announces that he's moving the family to New York, for a career opportunity. The entire family acts as if it's the end of the world that they must leave the (apparent) paradise that is St. Louis and that takes us into the film's finale.

You know how when you go to the doctor and complain of a sore throat and they want to take an extra long q-tip and touch the back of your throat and you gag a little bit, because, let's face it, q-tips weren't meant to be touching the back of one's throat? Well, that's kind of equivalent to watching "Meet Me in St. Louis", because there are plenty of moments where you just want to gag. The film is just so damn wholesome and goody-goody, almost as if it's REQUIRED to be watched while sitting around a roaring fireplace, with Ma, Pa, Pappy and the family dog, Scruffy. The good news is, the fact that the songs seem to come out of nowhere is quite realistic, because you expect a gag inducing family like this to be singing songs round the clock, while they wait for the next big dance, family function or dinner party.

Okay, so maybe I'm being a little too hard on this one. It wasn't as bad as I'm making it out to be, but it's just about average at best and when I rate a movie average, I usually like to make a choice between praising the little that I can or just totally driving it into the ground. I've apparently chosen the latter here. It uses it's time wisely, doesn't drag and Lucille Bremer is a vision of loveliness. I also liked the guy who played the father (Leon Ames), but he was barely in the movie. I've also realized how much I really dislike Judy Garland and never want to see another one of her pictures, as long as I live. Liza Minnelli, if she valued my opinion, might be happy to know that I think her world's better than her mother and that's after only ever seeing her in one film - "Cabaret". Anyway, call it an average affair, a movie full of cringe worthy moments and way too wholesome for my tastes, but with enough good to not drag. Watch it around Christmas and you may be able to stomach it a little better, as it has a lot of qualities that may come off as more charming during the holidays.

RATING: 5.5/10  That's the best I can do. Let's hope that's the last Judy Garland movie in the book...I'm pretty sure it is!

MOVIES WATCHED: 678
MOVIES LEFT TO WATCH: 323

May 9, 2013  12:21am