R.I.P. Paul Newman :(

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Cool Hand Luke and Color of Money are two of my favorites of his. I think Paul brought out the best in Cruise in Color, I think that was his specialty: bringing out the best - be it, a person, a film, a story or a family. I for one think he should be listed in the top 5 actors of the last 100 years. It hurts to know he is gone, but it also warms my heart that his legacy will always be strong.

Bye Paul, R.I.P.
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“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton



Out of his movies, that I've seen, my favorite would have to be Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid...



Rest In Peace Sir...
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You never know what is enough, until you know what is more than enough.
~William Blake ~

AiSv Nv wa do hi ya do...
(Walk in Peace)




So many good movies, so little time.
A role model for us all.

Some of my favorites:

1. The Verdict (1982)
2. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
3. Cool Hand Luke (1967)
4. The Hustler (1961)
5. Cat On a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
6. The Sting (1973)
7. Slap Shot (1977)
8. Hud (1963)
9. Nobody's Fool (1994)
10. Road to Perdition (2002)
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"Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others."- Groucho Marx



I am burdened with glorious purpose
In my "Grill a Mofo" thread, just this past month, I was asked"

Name 5 actors you would love to meet, and why. What would you want to do to, or with them?

4. Paul Newman. What stories he could tell! I want to gaze into those blue eyes before he's gone.
And now he's gone.

My earliest memories as a child was watching Paul Newman movies. And Paul always seemed like such a tortured soul. I vividly remember Somebody Up There Likes Me, and feeling incredible emotion watching that movie. And Sweet Bird of Youth, and another was The Hustler. One of my favorite scenes:



And what a human being he was. He stood for something. He valued family. He helped people.

I'm feeling rather old tonight. I'm watching many of the actors/actresses I grew up watching now pass away.



I am having a nervous breakdance
Paul Newman was a great actor who loved the craft, an iconic movie star who never took that position too seriously, a humanitarian and political activist who put his money and time where his heart and passion were, and simply one of the coolest and most beautiful humans to ever walk the planet.There will never be another Paul Newman, which is a testament to his singularity but also a damn shame because this world could use about a billion more of him. His health had been rapidly deteriorating for months so this news isn't a total surprise, but it's still a shock to my psyche because I was hoping against hope that he'd live to be three hundred. Of course one of the great things about cinema is that he will continue to live forever as Lukas Jackson, Eddie Felson, Hud Bannon, Brick Pollitt, Lew Harper, Robert "Butch Cassidy" Parker, Henry Gondorff, Frank Galvin, Sidney J. Mussburger and every other performance he leaves behind. But his legacy is much bigger than that, and just as indelible.

REST IN PEACE

What he said....


He was one of the greats. Genuine all the way through...

Cool Hand Luke, perhaps not necessarily my favorite film, but probably my favourite Newman character.

I don't care if it rains or freezes
Long as I got my plastic Jesus
Sitting on the dashboard of my car

Comes in colors, pink and pleasant
Glows in the dark because it's iridescent
Take it with you when you travel far

Get yourself a sweet Madonna
Dressed in rhinestone, sitting on a
Pedestal of abalone shells

Going ninety, I ain't scary
Because I got the Virgin Mary
Assuring me that I won't go to Hell


R.I.P.
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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

--------

They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but
now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.



He was great as Brick. And a really convincing Chance Wayne. You could see the tiredness in his eyes when Chance returns to St Cloud.



Registered Creature
R.i.p.



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
My daughter, who's the prez and founder of Film Club at her school is scouring through our various Paul Newman films to try to show one at the first film screening of the club. I think she's decided upon Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Hustler (she likes to give them three choices to vote on but we can't seem to find a decent copy of Cool Hand Luke). I told her not to put The Hustler up against Hud, not because they aren't both great, but because I thought they were a bit too similar, so she picked her DVD of The Hustler. (For the same reason, I told her to pick between Butch Cassidy and The Sting.) She certainly can't show them Slap Shot (no R-rated flicks allowed), but I pushed that one up to the top of my "cue".



Paul Newman was is one of the Greatest! R.I.P. Both in fact and in our hearts every time we watch your brilliance.
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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page



Originally Posted by mark f
(she likes to give them three choices to vote on but we can't seem to find a decent copy of Cool Hand Luke)


Cool Hand Luke was just re-released at the beginning of September on DVD and Blu-Ray. It's even a special edition with some extras.
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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
Thanks for the Heads Up! but she wants to take the physical "animal" with her tomorrow. I can get it later if people want to watch it, but her meeting is tomorrow and nothing I have (or can find on short notice) is any good regarding Cool Hand Luke.



Newman was in a few great movies, some good-to-mediocre ones, and some real stinkers.

His absolutely best performance ever was in the title role of Hud (1963), based on Larry McMurtry’s novel Horseman, Pass By and filmed primarily in Claude, Tex. It had a great cast including Melvyn Douglas and Patricia Neal, both of whom won Oscars for their roles, and was shot by James Wong Howe. It was also Neal’s best role ever, but Hollywood chickened out in casting her in that part. You see, in the book the cook who befriends the Brandon De Wilde character and is raped by Hud was a black woman.

Newman’s second greatest role was in The Hustler (1961) with Jackie Gleason as Minnesota Fats, Piper Laurie, and George C. Scott. However, Newman was upstaged by both Gleason and Scott in that film. Gleason was known and loved as a comedian, and this was one of the first—if not the first—dramatic roles he had played since becoming famous, and everyone was talking about how well he made that transition. Scott, on the other hand, just plain acted the pants off of everyone else in the movie, including Newman. He should have won an Oscar for that part.

I recall reading somewhere that after the success of Hud and The Hustler, Newman insisted that author Ross Macdonald’s famous private detective Lew Archer be renamed Lew Harper for his title role in Harper (1966). But as a mystery movie it was a mess, with Lauren Bacall in a small part stealing scenes from Newman. Hombre (1967) was even worse—a film where a man lives his whole life one certain way and then in the last few minutes of it does something totally out of character for a bunch of people who despise him. Richard Boone, Cameron Mitchell, and Martin Balsam were good in their roles, and James Wong Howe shot the film. But the best take on the whole film was a Mad Magazine parody in which the lone surviving bandit, the one sent up into the hills to close “the back door” of escape by the former coach passengers, comes back down and robs the survivors. So Hustler and Hud, thumbs up; Harper and Hombre thumbs down.

Newman’s very worse film of all, however, was The Towering Inferno (1974) featuring everybody in Hollywood who could get to a casting call that week. They should have burned the film instead of the set. Terrible movie with unrealistic scenes and a plot thinner than toilet paper.

Of course, everybody raves about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and The Sting (1973). They were OK movies, good even, The Sting more so than Cassidy (lord, I got so tired of “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head!”) but neither would make my top 100 movies list. Instead, I like a film that few have seen and even fewer liked--The Outrage, the 1964 Hollywood remake of Rashomon with Paul Newman as outlaw Juan Carrasco and a cast including Laurence Harvey, Claire Bloom, Edward G. Robinson, Howard Da Silva, Albert Salmi, Paul Fix, and a very young William Shatner. I just like how the story unfolds from so many different points of view and yet the truth is so different. I’m not saying it’s a great film, but it caught my interest, and it was interesting seeing Newman playing so many different versions of his Mexican bandit.

I remember seeing Newman in his first film appearance, The Silver Chalice (1954) but the only thing I noticed about him was that he had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen on any person of either sex. Still, for me, the actor who dominated that movie was Jack Palance as Simon Magus; it also featured another of my favorite villains, Joseph Wiseman.

As for other good but not great to mediocre Newman films, he was very good opposite Woodward and sharing the screen with Orson Welles in The Long, Hot Summer (1958) and in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), with blue-eyed Liz Taylor, Jack Carson, and Burl Ives. He was especially good opposite Geraldine Page in Sweet Bird of Youth (1962) since the two of them earlier had created their leading roles in the Broadway play. The movie had a great cast including Ed Begley, Rip Torn, and Mildred Dunnock, but it was Page’s film all the way. On screen, both Bird and Cat were watered down versions of the stage plays, since Hollywood back then couldn’t say anything about venereal disease and castration in Bird or homosexuality in Cat.

I liked Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys! (1958) primarily because it was based on Max Shulman’s very funny novel of the same name. I think Woodward was better at comedy than Newman.

Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956) was another extremely good performance. Newman as middleweight Rocky Graziano could have taken Robert De Niro as middleweight Jake LaMotta (interestingly, LaMotta later played the bartender in The Hustler).

The Left Handed Gun (1958) with Paul Newman as Billy the Kid and fine character actor John Dehner as Pat Garrett touched all the bases of the legend while Newman portrayed Billy as primarily an overgrown child who sometimes became deadly dangerous.

I really liked the premise and story of The Prize (1963), a good spy film with Edward G. Robinson. Very entertaining and much, much better than the very boring Torn Curtain (1966). I also enjoyed What a Way to Go! (1964) although Newman’s role wasn’t as good as Mitchum’s or Gene Kelly’s. Slap Shot (1977) was good. Blaze (1989) was, well, interesting. Newman was good in primarily small parts in The Hudsucker Proxy (1993) and Road to Perdition (2002). He was too good for Where the Money Is (2000). Until They Sail (1957) was strangely interesting.

Exodus (1960) was his epic movie, but looks very dated today. I don’t recall much about The Young Philadelphians (1959) and From the Terrace (1960), and the only thing memorable about Paris Blues (1961) is that Woodward and Sidney Poitier also were in it. Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man is a complete wash: liked the Hemingway stories on which it was based, but can’t recall a thing about the movie. I have an impression of A New Kind of Love (1963) as vaguely silly. Sometimes a Great Notion (1971) was overrated. The Secret War of Harry Frigg (1968) was definitely mediocre.
Cool Hand Luke (1967) was a good ensemble film with a good cast and was especially enjoyable after an immediate succession of Harper, Torn Curtain, and Hombre. But it’s not one of my favorites.

I strongly disliked Torn Curtain (1966), Winning (1968), The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), Pocket Money (1971), Buffalo Bill and the Indians (1976), The Drowning Pool (1975). Other films not named here, good or bad, I have never seen.





For those in the U.S., Turner Classic Movies is running their Paul Newman tribute today. It's already four films into it, but there are still plenty left to watch or record.
  • 3:45PMEST
    Sweet Bird of Youth (1962)
  • 6:00PMEST
    Hud (1963)
  • 8:00PMEST
    Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956)
  • 10:00PMEST
    Cool Hand Luke (1967)
  • 12:15AMEST
    Cat On a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
  • 2:15AMEST
    Rachel, Rachel (1968)
  • 4:00AMEST
    The Outrage (1964)

The day started with two little-seen Newman flicks before he was a famous movie star, The Rack (1956) and Until They Sail (1957). That was followed by the disappointing Hitchcock entry Torn Curtain (1966), and right now they're in the middle of the Israel epic Exodus (1960).



This thread does not have enough posts! Shame on you all



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I've honored him by only buying Newman's Own at the grocery store.



Cool Hand Luke's an unbearable movie. Truly and deeply. I call it Beauty and the Beasts due to the fact that Newman seems to be surrounded by deliberately the ugliest (OK, maybe plainest) men they could possibly cast...



Paul Newman was an amazing actor with screen charisma to spare. He should have won an armful Oscars before the one he finally received for THE COLOR OF MONEY. I give him the lead actor Oscar for CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, COOL HAND LUKE, THE HUSTLER, and especially THE VERDICT. A true original...RIP.



Ghouls, vampires, werewolves... let's party.
I was going to ask, did he die again?

Paul Newman died in 2008; but since you dug him up, my favorite films with him are The Sting, Butch Casidy and the Sundance Kid, and Cool Hand Luke.

I especially liked the car wash scene.