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Of Human Bondage (1964)
Writers: Bryan Forbes (screenplay), W Somerset Maugham (novel)
Cast: Kim Novak, Laurence Harvey, Robert Morley
Genre: Drama, Romance
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Of Human Bondage (1964)
Writers: Bryan Forbes (screenplay), W Somerset Maugham (novel)
Cast: Kim Novak, Laurence Harvey, Robert Morley
Genre: Drama, Romance
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I've heard talk of a third version with Eleanor Parker but I'll be damned if if it's available anywhere or know anyone who's ever seen it.
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It's on TCM all the time. Next showings.
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The King and I (1956)
Writers: Ernest Lehman (screenplay), Oscar Hammerstein II (book)
Cast: Yul Brynner, Deborah Kerr, Rita Moreno
Genre: Drama, Musical
About: In the 1860s a British school teacher and widow, agrees to travel to exotic Siam (Thailand) to teach the King's many children.
Background: Based on the successful Broadway musical written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, that featured Yul Brynner in the lead role. That play was originally based on a novel: Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon, which in turn was based on the real diaries of Anna Leonowens who did indeed travel to Siam as a school teacher.
Also influenced by the 1946 movie Anna and the King of Siam and remade in 1999 as Anna and the King (1999) Both are non-musicals.
Review: I just love this movie! It's wonderful...It's intelligently written by one of the truly great Hollywood screen writers, Ernest Lehman. Lehman's volume of great movies include:
Hello, Dolly!
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
The Sound of Music
West Side Story
From the Terrace
North by Northwest
Sweet Smell of Success
Sabrina
The script is the life blood of a movie and The King and I pulsates with life! It's witty, it's charming, and it explores many different themes without being obvious. Of course the real star of the movie is
Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr. Have there ever been two more inspired performances which are so in tune with each other, and the story, that you forget you're watching a movie.
Yul owned the role of the King, it's hard to believe anyone else could do that role. He's forceful, he's powerful and yet he's curious and not quite as forbidding as he might seem. Thanks to Yul making the King human, we can see more than meets the eye.
Deborah Kerr has never shined more than here, she seems to be truly enjoying her self and that joy comes through the screen to us. She has great charm and poise. She's strong yet feminine. We like her, we care about her.
A young Rita Moreno, has a plum role as Tuptim the Burmese slave girl brought against her will to the palace of the King of Siam. Her story line is in many ways what this film is about.
And those sets! Anna is decked out in those giant hoop dresses which the director puts to good use in the film. I love the way her skirt swirls when she dances and spreads out on the floor like a giant umbrella when she sets down. All the colors and the fabrics shine in the glorious palace sets, this is a visual treat!
Ahhh...the music! What wonderful songs we have from the greatest song writing team to work on stage and movies, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. Getting to Know You is the signature song from the movie.
My favorite number was the ballet style The Small House of Uncle Thomas, it's a beautiful yet simply retelling of the classic American novel Uncle Tom's Cabin...it's told from the viewpoint of a Burmese slave woman running away from the Kingdom of Siam. It combines both traditionally Thai and Asian dance movements with modern choreography. There's nothing else like it.
I'd give The King and I Ten Stars if I could.
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Unfaithfully Yours (Preston Sturges,1948)
Writer: Preston Sturges (screenplay)
Cast: Rex Harrison, Linda Darnell, Rudy Vallee
Genre: Screw Ball-Dark Comedy, Romance
About: A flamboyant, misogynistic symphony conductor (Rex Harrision) brow beats everyone around him and then becomes jealous when he envisions his lovely wife (Linda Darnell) having an affair with his male secretary, thus prompting the mad genius to conceive of multiple scenarios for dealing with his wife's imaged infidelity.
Review: Hell, that mini synopsis sounds pretty good doesn't it? To bad the film is a confusion of different styles and drags in the third act. I've seen some pretty good work from Preston Sturges too, but this sure isn't one of them.
Problem 1, Rex Harrison is way over the top, with zero charm and maxim annoying-ability. The man grates on the nerves. A little Rex can be good thing, but a lot of Rex and I need ear plugs.
Problem 2, The film doesn't know what it wants to be? Is it a dark comedy? Rex Harrison is as dark as they come in this and that might have work if they hadn't then did the next problem. Or is it a zany screwball comedy?
Problem 3, Is the completely insane, slap stick third act...where for what feels like an eternity, Rex Harrison stumbles around trashing his apartment in a scene reminiscent of a Three Stooges movie. He stands on a chair but then his foot goes right through the wicker material (good grief)... then he 'tries' to open a high cupboard and the knob breaks off (a real knee slapper) and then he falls over and everything he touches breaks or falls over...and he's left setting in a big mess in his living room. I thought Preston Sturges was known for biting social observant commentary, delivered in a witty comic style...not here!
Do yourself a favor and instead watch the remake with Dudley Moore, Unfaithfully Yours (1984).
As you already know, I disagree with you about Unfaithfully Yours. I think the 1948 version is much better than the 1984 remake, but I like both versions.
I think the movie is more dark comedy than slapstick, with the exception of the third act when he tries to actually act out one of his fantasies. That part worked better in the 1984 remake, probably because Dudley Moore was better at that type of slapstick acting than Rex Harrison.
I like that in the 1948 version he imagines three different fantasies, even taking the high road of forgiveness in one of them. (In my head, I always picture Bugs Bunny singing "Return My Love" (from "What's Opera, Doc?") during the 2nd fantasy.
) I also like how he incorporates the first two fantasies into the third, as if this was actually happening, and he's telling them about his original thoughts. Another thing that the remake did better was telling the viewer what actually happened with his wife while he was away earlier in the movie. We don't find out the truth until the very end of the movie in the original version, and that leaves us wondering if she actually cheated on him or not.
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The King and I (1956)
Writers: Ernest Lehman (screenplay), Oscar Hammerstein II (book)
Cast: Yul Brynner, Deborah Kerr, Rita Moreno
Genre: Drama, Musical
About: In the 1860s a British school teacher and widow, agrees to travel to exotic Siam (Thailand) to teach the King's many children.
I'd give The King and I Ten Stars if I could.
+++
It's been a long time since I watched The King and I, but it's a great movie. I was hoping that someone would have nominated it in the recent musicals HoF, but sadly, nobody did. I think it would have placed pretty high in that HoF.
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Yul owned the role of the King, it's hard to believe anyone else could do that role. He's forceful, he's powerful and yet he's curious and not quite as forbidding as he might seem. Thanks to Yul making the King human, we can see more than meets the eye.
), my top 3 favorite performances in any movie musical are all by actors who originated the roles on Broadway and then appeared on screen with them.
My favorite number was the ballet style The Small House of Uncle Thomas, it's a beautiful yet simply retelling of the classic American novel Uncle Tom's Cabin
It's been a long time since I watched The King and I, but it's a great movie. I was hoping that someone would have nominated it in the recent musicals HoF, but sadly, nobody did. I think it would have placed pretty high in that HoF.
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I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity - Edgar Allan Poe
I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity - Edgar Allan Poe
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Yahoo! I just hit 600 Reviews... thanks to everybody who stops in here to comment, I really appreciate it!
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Manhattan (1979)
Director: Woody Allen
Writers: Woody Allen, Marshall Brickman
Cast: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Mariel Hemingway
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Woody Allen's masturbatory ode to himself...a film that has become seminal in the annals of celebrated and obscure film reviewers around the world...Yes Virginia, there's life outside of Manhattan, but one wonders if Woody is aware of anything outside of his own existence. Nay make that outside of his own fantasies.
In 1979 director, writer and actor Woody Allen crafted an introspective film that was so unique in it's style that it still influences film makers today. One can hardly watch a Jim Jarmusch film without seeing a bit of the cityscape cinematography that Woody so masterly incorporates into his look at the denizens of Manhattan.
The strength of Manhattan is the sheer beauty of it's black & white photography. But any 'joe schmo' can shoot his movie on B & W film stock...it takes an artisans eye to hand select the perfect location for the shot, and to create a composition that is uniquely framed to give maxim artistic impact....and of course: lighting and shadow is all key, Woody Allen is undeniable a master at this.
For all the cinematic artistry, Manhattan plays out like one of Woody's personal fantasies, that's his auteur's stamp. Woody Allen is Isaac a successful but neurotic New York intellectual who's magnetic to women and despite looking like a peeping tom, manages to marry a young and beautiful Meryl Streep, who we find out turns lesbian and divorces Isaac. The 43 year old then has a fling with a 17 year old played by Mariel Hemingway also 17 in real life at the time of filming.
The much older man involved with a teenage girl could have had so many possibilities for exploration with this taboo theme. Woody, who wrote this film could have shown the relationship as having some type of consequences or made some type of statement.
But instead the movie presents the friends of Isaac (Woody Allen) as having no real objections to a relationship that would be considered pedophile-ism in the real world and could result in statuary rape charges. But no, not here in Woody's make believe world. Woody the person, wants to bring his fantasy to life and so has the characters readily accepting his strange love.
And that's one of the weak points of Manhattan...it fails to explore this relationship and it's consequences. In fact none of the relationships seem to say much about anything, they just simply happen so that Woody can hang his intellectual name dropping script onto the back of the actors.
That's why I call Manhattan, Woody's masturbatory ode to himself.
Writers: Woody Allen, Marshall Brickman
Cast: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Mariel Hemingway
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Woody Allen's masturbatory ode to himself...a film that has become seminal in the annals of celebrated and obscure film reviewers around the world...Yes Virginia, there's life outside of Manhattan, but one wonders if Woody is aware of anything outside of his own existence. Nay make that outside of his own fantasies.
In 1979 director, writer and actor Woody Allen crafted an introspective film that was so unique in it's style that it still influences film makers today. One can hardly watch a Jim Jarmusch film without seeing a bit of the cityscape cinematography that Woody so masterly incorporates into his look at the denizens of Manhattan.
The strength of Manhattan is the sheer beauty of it's black & white photography. But any 'joe schmo' can shoot his movie on B & W film stock...it takes an artisans eye to hand select the perfect location for the shot, and to create a composition that is uniquely framed to give maxim artistic impact....and of course: lighting and shadow is all key, Woody Allen is undeniable a master at this.
For all the cinematic artistry, Manhattan plays out like one of Woody's personal fantasies, that's his auteur's stamp. Woody Allen is Isaac a successful but neurotic New York intellectual who's magnetic to women and despite looking like a peeping tom, manages to marry a young and beautiful Meryl Streep, who we find out turns lesbian and divorces Isaac. The 43 year old then has a fling with a 17 year old played by Mariel Hemingway also 17 in real life at the time of filming.
The much older man involved with a teenage girl could have had so many possibilities for exploration with this taboo theme. Woody, who wrote this film could have shown the relationship as having some type of consequences or made some type of statement.
But instead the movie presents the friends of Isaac (Woody Allen) as having no real objections to a relationship that would be considered pedophile-ism in the real world and could result in statuary rape charges. But no, not here in Woody's make believe world. Woody the person, wants to bring his fantasy to life and so has the characters readily accepting his strange love.
And that's one of the weak points of Manhattan...it fails to explore this relationship and it's consequences. In fact none of the relationships seem to say much about anything, they just simply happen so that Woody can hang his intellectual name dropping script onto the back of the actors.
That's why I call Manhattan, Woody's masturbatory ode to himself.
Last edited by Citizen Rules; 06-22-17 at 01:02 PM.
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Wrestling Ernest Hemingway (1993)
Writer: Steve Conrad
Cast: Robert Duvall, Richard Harris, Shirley MacLaine, Sandra Bullock, Piper Laurie
Genre: Drama, Romance
An old cantankerous and hard-drinking Irishman (Richard Harris) who once was a sea captain, finds himself in a small apartment building run by Helen (Shirley MacLaine). To escape the heat of his broken air conditioning unit he spends his days in the park by the lake. There he meets a dawdling but, well-mannered Cuban American ex barber (Robert Duvall) who spends his days sitting on a park bench doing crossroad puzzles...and visiting the local cafe to talk to a friendly waitress, (Sandra Bullock).
I liked it. It reminded of Harry and Tonto or The Straight Line. I won't say it was that good but the first half of the movie was pretty interesting. The film loses some of it's edginess towards the end, but still there's enough themes being explored here for the viewer who enjoys learning more about the human condition.
As a bonus you get to see a lot of Florida and some well respected actors too. The music score was too much of the 'it's wonderful feeling' sound, the type of score Spielberg often uses. But ignore the overblown score and enjoy the acting and the story.
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[center]
Manhattan (1979)
Woody Allen's masturbatory ode to himself.
Manhattan (1979)
Woody Allen's masturbatory ode to himself.
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I think that goes for pretty much every Woody Allen movie starring Woody Allen. I also tend to find his characters annoyingly self-indulgent, but I think he said in an NPR interview that his film personas are usually intentionally different than himself in real life. Maybe that's a testament to his acting.
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[quote=Citizen Rules;1722326]
The King and I (1956)
[font=Arial Narrow]Director: Walter Lang
Writers: Ernest Lehman (screenplay), Oscar Hammerstein II (book)
Cast: Yul Brynner, Deborah Kerr, Rita Moreno
Genre: Drama, Musical
[quote]
Absolutely LOVED your review of this movie and agree with everything you said...no arguments here, this is one of my favorite musicals that I NEVER tire of re-watching, can't even tell you how many times I've watched it but my love for this film rivals my love for Mary Poppins... I loved what you said about Kerr's costumes (that was one Oscar the Academy got right, I think it was #2 or #3 on my best costume thread) and Yul Brynner has become the gold standard for this role that any actor who takes the role onstage aspires to. Brynner will also be appearing on the list I'm doing now.
The King and I (1956)
Writers: Ernest Lehman (screenplay), Oscar Hammerstein II (book)
Cast: Yul Brynner, Deborah Kerr, Rita Moreno
Genre: Drama, Musical
[quote]
Absolutely LOVED your review of this movie and agree with everything you said...no arguments here, this is one of my favorite musicals that I NEVER tire of re-watching, can't even tell you how many times I've watched it but my love for this film rivals my love for Mary Poppins... I loved what you said about Kerr's costumes (that was one Oscar the Academy got right, I think it was #2 or #3 on my best costume thread) and Yul Brynner has become the gold standard for this role that any actor who takes the role onstage aspires to. Brynner will also be appearing on the list I'm doing now.
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The Great Ziegfeld (1936)
Writer: William Anthony McGuire (screenplay)
Cast: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Luise Rainer, Frank Morgan
Genre: Fictionalized Biography, Drama, Musical
The life and times of Broadway's colorful producer of extravagant stage show revues, Florenz Ziegfeld.
The Great Ziegfeld stars William Powell as the great stage promoter and producer Florenz Ziegfeld. Luise Rainer as the French stage actress and his 1st wife, Anna Held whom he brought to America and made a big star out of...Myrna Loy as Billie Burke the actress, best known for playing Glinda the good witch in The Wizard of Oz. Billie was Ziegfeld's second wife and worked as a script consultant on this film...Also staring is his rival and friend Jack Billings played by Frank Morgan, who's best known as the Wizard in the The Wizard of Oz. Fanny Brice and Ray Bolger appear as themselves, having been an early talent discoveries by Ziegfeld. Ray Bolger was of course the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. (That's three The Wizard of Oz connections!)
At three hours long this lush MGM production is more of a love letter to Ziegfeld, than a factual biopic. It's a fictionalized and idolized view of one of the greats in the early days of Broadway. Such sorted details as Zig's infidelity is left out of the story.
The film is known for its exuberant musical numbers that cost millions by today's standards. Flo as his friends called him put on spectacular stage revues with elaborate costumes and filled with beautiful girls. Giving us the term 'Ziegfeld Girl'.
The movie does provide entertainment and William Powell does a stand up job here. He's likable and makes us care about him. He makes a good Ziegfeld.
The movie was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won the Oscar for Best Picture, Best Dance Direction and Luise Rainer picked up a Best Actress Oscar for her performance. Luise would be the first actress to win back to back Best Actress Oscars when she won the next year as well for The Good Earth.
I wasn't overly fawn of Myrna Loy performance, which is somewhat bland, but she has a smaller role and it doesn't take away from the movie. Reportedly Billie Burke wanted to play herself but was deemed not to be a big enough star to play herself! Frank Morgan deserves a shout out as a very likable and colorful rival and friend of Ziggy.
Trivia: Pat Nixon (then Patricia Ryan), the future wife of Richard Nixon and the First Lady of the United States from 1969 to 1974, makes an uncredited appearance as a Ziegfeld girl.
Last edited by Citizen Rules; 06-23-17 at 01:32 PM.
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The Great Ziegfeld (1936)
Writer: William Anthony McGuire (screenplay)
Cast: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Luise Rainer, Frank Morgan
Genre: Fictionalized Biography, Drama, Musical
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Brynner will also be appearing on the list I'm doing now.
After watching The Great Ziegfeld, Luise Rainer shoots to the top of my favorite actresses list.
) ever going to happen? 
As I said before, if you do yours, I have to do mine! I did actually try to work on one not that long ago. I've got a decent list, but other than my top 3, I don't know exactly where I would like to place the others.
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The King of Siam is going to be one of your sexiest characters? I approve very much of that.
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...Is your favorite actor/actress list (or lists ) ever going to happen? As I said before, if you do yours, I have to do mine! I did actually try to work on one not that long ago. I've got a decent list, but other than my top 3, I don't know exactly where I would like to place the others.
) ever going to happen? As I said before, if you do yours, I have to do mine! I did actually try to work on one not that long ago. I've got a decent list, but other than my top 3, I don't know exactly where I would like to place the others.
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