1940's Hall Of Fame Part I

Sorry Swan but you are mistaken, did you not read what i said?

Nah, seriously it'll be good having you to discuss these movies with.

I don't blame you for preferring Waldo, he was no doubt the most interesting, but I was happy to follow McPherson around during the film. I'm not so sure, if Waldo was the main character, I would have felt the same.

McPherson was great too, they all were. I like how he was very serious and professional for most of the movie while harbouring feelings for Laura.

I'm fine with that if it comes to it.




no pressure swan haha

Thank you thank you!

A few years ago I was at an event where three undisclosed movies were to be shown. The only thing you knew before hand was that all three were unreleased prior to this point. Movie number two was Delivery Man with Vince Vaughn. Since then I haven't watched a single new release that was marketed as a comedy.

*Shivers at the thought of Delivery Man*

I haven't heard anything about Arsenic, but if you like it enough to nominate it here I guess must be good. Fingers crossed.

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Why not just kill them? I'll do it! I'll run up to Paris - bam, bam, bam, bam. I'm back before week's end. We spend the treasure. How is this a bad plan?

How Green Was My Valley

Everyone that knows my film tastes knows that I love me some John Ford films. I had seen this when I first joined movie forums and to be quite honest with you guys I wasn't all that fond of it. I was excited to see it nominated as I thought maybe my opinion of it would have changed. The best thing about this film is the camera work. There's a lot of great shots and compositions. It's a really beautiful film on the surface.

Ford has always tackled pretty dense stories. This was perhaps his biggest challenge in adapting a story to the screen. I think he tells the story well, but my main problem lies in the fact that it just isn't that appealing of a story to me. Not that a story can't be grim or dark, but I want to find meaning and a purpose being it. And I don't connect with it as well as his other films. The acting ranges from really good to ok for me. My main problem is I'm not fond of the preacher and that ultimately hurts my thoughts on the film. I wish we got to know the characters a bit more too, I don't know them enough to care about what ultimately happens. There's a lot of good with this film but I just enjoy my other Ford films a lot more. Perhaps this will get me into more of a Ford kick though.

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well, I don't know about swan getting a vote in the end. I mean, after all, he DID get the WRONG best character in Laura.

seriously, that would be pretty cool by me.

Speaking of Laura regarding Vincent Price's character not getting a flashback about Laura; that would have been cool to see. But I do see, as far as story line, keeping him as the red herring that was always on the defense worked very well.
Also, having Waldo open the movie and be the first to talk about Laura and be Johnny On The Spot with the investigation was a nice lil distraction. Which I'm sure was the character's motive as well.

And Raul I can see how if you didn't care for the preacher in HGWMV, it would make it very hard to enjoy that movie.
And there were only a few people you really got to know; which, for me, were the parents. They were my favorites. Especially when they went at it with one another. Loved the mother through out.

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Murderers Among Us:

I really like the premise of this film. Unfortunately, I don't think the execution is very good. The protagonist is handled all too clumsily. The PTSD scenes are probably the most poorly done. I really don't like the way he changes direction as a character either. He seems to have life revelations that come out of left field. Consequently I never felt the weight of the drama. Considering the subject matter I should have felt a lot of weight. The cinematography is interesting at times. Even that feels kind of like it's cribbing from others though. That probably is just because the story wasn't grabbing me. I was never bored and I am glad this was nominated. I think it will have a tough go with the lineup in this HOF.

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Letterboxd

Disney's Fantasia

Having horrible luck with several dailymotion links for Thief of Bagdad with sticking video, having gotten nearly half way through, I gave up and moved on to Netflix where I was surprised to find this. YAY

I think my initial irritation caused me to have little patience and so the majority of the beginning episodes were a bit trying for me.
The gentleman who introduced them only jabbed and poked that lack of patience. Though from the opening and every time he appeared I kept getting THIS in my head:

Making me want to see Warner Bros spoof instead.

Which was a damn shame because, for its part, this is a rather beautiful animation. The pixies were quite spectacular to watch, for example.
Still, even a childhood memory of Mickey vainly fighting back bucket toting brooms fell a little short for me.

It was the final two episodes that I waited for, remembering them as well from my youth.
They, I truly did enjoy.
Appreciating the full amusing irony of using hippos and elephants for ballerinas was effin delightful. And much like GB I kept hearing "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah" play in my head which further added to my enjoyment.
I'm pretty sure it had to do with how playful this particular episode is as opposed to some of the more serious ones before. Including the one proceeding it with the centaurs and "centaur-ettes"??? Really?! I'm still rolling my eyes from him saying that.

Then finally, the demon. LOVE that.

Now, on Netflix this ends sans credits. The final notes of Ava Maria play out as you drift through the trees and the final CUT TO BLACK occurs. Did anyone who watched via other means have this as well? Just curious.

I watched Fantasia on DVD, and that's how it ends. There are no closing credits.

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If I answer a game thread correctly, just skip my turn and continue with the game.
OPEN FLOOR.

Arsenic and Old Lace is nothing like Delivery Man. You can't compare Vince Vaughn to Cary Grant.

Great write up, and I'm happy you liked it so much. It seems to be pretty popular, which surprises me. Not because of the film itself, but ever since I won those first three threads Don't say anything, Swan!, my choices aren't doing very well. Once again, thanks for the review, and also . . . Cool pic!

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Murderers Are Among Us

I'm not really sure what to say about this movie because I didn't really like it, but I didn't dislike it either. The story itself has a lot of potential, but the characters are the biggest problem for me.

At the beginning, I hated Dr. Hans Mertens, but the more time he spent with Susanne, the more he seemed to soften, and become kind of likable. But I never really cared if the two of them ended up together or not.

On the other hand, I liked the glasses repairman Herr Mondschein, and I really wanted to see him find his son.

And I think the flashback scenes with Brückner could have been done better.

But there are some good parts of the story, like the way Hans and Brückner's stories weave together, and how the gun plays into it. I also liked the ending.

It was actually Staudte's intention for the cinematography not to do anything particularly new or inventive. He wanted to go back to the German Expressionism period, which was the "Golden Age" of German film making, and to avoid using any film making techniques or visual language that was adopted by the Nazis.

Part of this was because many of the Allies didn't believe that the Germans should be trusted to make films (since film played an integral role in the rise of Hitler), and given the fact that Staudte remained in Nazi Germany and helped create propaganda films to avoid military duty, no one wanted to give him money to produce a film. Using old Expressionist techniques was supposed to be a way of reviving the glory days of German cinema, before it was tainted by the events of the Second World War.

I liked the cinematography in this film, but I also have a fondness for German Expressionism. But yeah, he was definitely copying other directors practically verbatim, without doing anything new or exciting.

Oddly, the ending is the one thing he was required to change in order to get his film produced (I believe it was funded by the Russians after he was turned down by everyone else). Supposedly it originally highlighted personal retribution, but Staudte agreed that it would be for the best if he didn't promote that sort of behaviour.

...and now I'm going to be late for work haha. I was actually thinking about watching my nomination next (or perhaps Pursued). I plan to get two, maybe three write-ups done this weekend since I've been a bit busier than usual since this HoF started.

The Little Foxes

This is a great movie about greed and deception. Bette Davis shines as Regina, but Charles Dingle and Carl Benton Reid also give standout performances as her greedy and conniving brothers. I also liked Herbert Marshall as her husband Horace. Surprisingly, my least favorite performance in the movie was Teresa Wright as their daughter. She was almost too sweet, and a bit whiny at times when she was around her father. Dan Duryea was a bit wishy-washy too, and we know he can be great in these villainous roles. He almost seemed like he was an evil-doer in training in this movie.

The story is top notch, with great dialogue, but the weak point for me was the ending.

It has a few weaknesses, but overall this is a great movie, and a great nomination.

So are you still in Destiny?

I'm glad this was nominated since I already had it on my 40's watchlist, due to it's inclusion on Ebert's great movie list. I had known nothing about it until it was nominated for this Hall of Fame. Once it was watched by the first person, I realized it was fantasy. I was still looking forward to seeing it, but I didn't exactly have high hopes since I haven't enjoyed much fantasy since watching the Sinbad films as a kid. I don't have much to say about it, but it was certainly a whole lot easier to watch for me than The Lord of the Rings. I like fantasy in theory, so I did like the story. The characters and actors were all fine, and whoever played the princess was gorgeous. The special effects were up and down, but I would expect that from a movie this old. I liked the musical score, musical numbers, and overall look of the movie. I ended up enjoying the movie, but it didn't strike a chord with me in any way to make me feel that it was anything more than a decent movie.





4 left for me

It's not doing well. Ah well, Casablanca next time