Wayne119

I had to get up at 3:30 a.m. to take my friend to work. Then, around 4:15, I turned on the television, thinking it would help me get back to sleep. It didn't. There was an old Joan Crawford film on TCM, and I became fascinated.

At the point where I came in, Louise (the Joan character) was confronted by Dean Graham (Raymond Massey), who was unhappy about her having been out when his wife, Pauline, threw another tantrum. Louise is a nurse hired to take care of Pauline (whom we never see). It's Louise's day off, but she goes upstairs and takes some guff from Pauline. I don't know why I didn't turn off the television right then.

Louise is in love with David (Van Heflin). He has fallen out of love with her, but she can't accept that. She keeps on chasing him, even after she has killed Pauline - or thinks she has - and married Dean. David, meanwhile, is courting Dean's teenage daughter, Carol. This makes Louise furious, because she still wants David for herself. That's why she married Dean. Does this make any sense? It goes on and on like that. Every once in a while, she will go to a psychiatrist. But then she keeps on doing crazy things....

A friend of mine had rented this, so I watched it with him and another friend and none of us fell asleep. One problem with the story is that it lacks a setting. The boys' haircuts are 1970s, but the nun's habit is 1950s. We don't see the boys' parents at all, so I guess this is supposed to be a residential school. But we don't see the boys in the dormitory either, not that I remember.

The performances of the young actors are good, but much of the action seems unmotivated. The boys think of something to do, like kidnapping a mountain lion from a zoo, then they go ahead and do it without asking why or considering any consequences. Do today's youth behave that way? I hope not.

The adult characters (nun and priest)are shallow. One boy has some serious questions to discuss, and the priest advises him to pray the Lord's Prayer. When the nun confiscates a book of William Blake that a boy is reading, she fails to explain why--other than saying Blake was a "dangerous thinker." I don't know any priests or nuns who are like that. Oh well, it's only a movie. . . .

"East of Eden" came out when I was 21 and very impressionable, and from then on I was a James Dean fanatic. So were most of my friends, but we didn't see his other two films until after his death. We identified with the roles he played. Cal Trask, Jim Stark, and Jett Rink were just as mixed up and insecure as we were, and James Dean could play those guys because he was mixed up, too. After we saw "Rebel," all of us wanted red jackets like the one he wore in that movie.

In this new movie, a young actor named James Franco plays James Dean, and he beautifully conveys not only the angst and many of the distinctive mannerisms but also some of James Dean's offbeat humor. I suppose one reason Franco was chosen to play Dean is that he looks like him. Not a lot, but there is a resemblance. He could have done a caricature of Dean, but happily he didn't fall into that trap.

Some of the writing was disappointing. The actress who plays Pier Angeli is beautiful and quite good, but what can you do with lines like "You don't understand" and "My mama won't let me"? Those are not her exact lines, but you get what I'm saying.

Dean's relationship with Jack Warner is well done. Also his relationship, or rather his lack of a relationship, with his father. But I kept wishing they'd show more about the making of the films. How did he relate to Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Carol Baker, Sal Mineo, Natalie Wood? And what were the films about? If I didn't already know James Dean's films, I still wouldn't know much about them after seeing this biography. But maybe I would be inspired to check them out.

Saw this movie with my family in 1943 at age 10. We all liked it, even though it made us sad. Seems like it starts with Rusty already dead, killed in the war. Then there are flashbacks to his childhood. What it said to me back then was: war makes no sense. I'm not sure that's what was intended.

When "A Summer Place" opened in 1959, I was already so sick of the theme song, which was played constantly on the radio, that I avoided seeing the movie. But recently I happened to catch part of "A Summer Place" on the Turner Classic Movies channel and found out I really like it in some sort of way. The actors are beautiful, all of them, and the story can be enjoyed in the way that one enjoys a soap opera and then forgotten about.

The Fibber McGee and Molly TV series never caught on, probably because it didn't have Jim Jordan and Marian Jordan, the original stars of the classic 1935-1959 radio show. People remembered the Jordans too well and could not accept other actors in the roles of Fibber and Molly.

I didn't care much for the flying whales in The Pines of Rome, the flamingos playing with yoyos in Carnival of Animals, or some of the other images that seem not to fit the music in Fantasia 2000. But the Gershwin segment is great: Rhapsody in Blue, with cartoon images of mid-20th century New York. The images in the Beethoven segment are nice too. They look like abstract birds and butterflies. And it was fun seeing Mickey again as The Sorcerer's Apprentice. That's the only segment from the original Fantasia film that's in this new movie.

The first time I saw Andy Kaufman, he was a standup comic on tv doing jokes with no punch lines. I found him hysterically funny and so did the studio audience. What was funny about Andy is that (except in "Taxi") he really wasn't funny. That was the whole point. We knew he was putting us on. Later, like in that whole wrestling thing, it was hard to know when he was putting us on and when he wasn't.

I love this film. Jim Carrey is great as Andy. He not only looks like him, but he gets inside him. After I left the movie theater, I had a feeling of unreality for several hours. And I kept thinking: Andy Kaufman is alive. His death never happened. It was just another part of his performance.

Until I happened to catch it on the Turner Classic Movies channel, I'd never heard of Roughly Speaking. It turns out to be a charming and genuinely funny romantic comedy, set during the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, and the 1939-40 New York World's Fair. Roz Russell and Jack Carson, as a married couple raising a family, keep us wondering what crazy scheme they will cook up next in order to survive hard times. Their optimism is contagious. This family laughs a lot, especially when everything is going wrong, and it's real laughter--the kind that makes me laugh along with them. The ending seemed kind of abrupt, but apart from that, I found this movie great fun and often quite touching.

I'm glad I decided to ignore Leonard Maltin's really bad review and buy this video. Not that it's really good, but it has much that I like. True, it has none of the original Dead End Kids and very little humor. But it's my first time to see Harris Berger, the actor who replaced Huntz Hall in the Broadway version of Dead End when Huntz went to Hollywood to be in the movie version, and Hally Chester. Frankie Burke is good, too--that kid from Angels With Dirty Faces who looks so much like James Cagney.

Valentino is a pretty bad movie. Nureyev is great in the dance scenes, and as an actor he's somewhat better than I'd heard he was. The costumes and sets and the behavior of some of the characters evoke the 1920s, but the script lacks depth. The only reason I ordered this video is that Huntz Hall is in it--but it turns out he's in it maybe ten minutes and isn't given much to do.

Having two of our favorite TV moms--Sada Thompson of Family and Barbara Bel Geddes of Dallas--in the roles of Mrs. Gibbs and Mrs. Webb was inspired casting. Charlotte Rae is adorable as the scatterbrained Mrs. Soames, and Robby Benson as George is appropriately naive and cute. The third act, where Emily returns briefly to life after dying in childbirth, must be difficult to perform convincingly, but Glynnis O'Connor beautifully conveys the many levels of emotion and meaning in this segment of the play.

This was intended as the "definitive" version of Our Town, and it could have been that. But the stylized stage sets are really hokey, and Hal Holbrook may be just a bit too "folksy" in his interpretation of the Stage Manager role (compared to Spalding Gray's more subdued performance in the 1989 version).

I love this play--and I like this version of it despite its flaws.

They did a really good job of adapting this stage play for the screen. It still feels like a play--and I like that. But the main thing I like about Dead End is that it shows us Huntz Hall and Leo Gorcey when they were teen-agers just getting started in show biz. They and the other Dead End Kids--Bobby Jordan, Gabriel Dell, Billy Halop, and Bernard Punsly--are magnificent in this. They are very believable as street kids and often very funny.

This is a really ugly, really pessimistic film. Is it truthful? I hope not, but I fear it may be. It does have a few lyrical moments--but not enough of them to make me want to see the movie a second time.

I had heard that Harmony Korine, who wrote the screenplay for Kids, is a grandson or nephew of the magnificent Huntz Hall of the original Dead End Kids. For that reason, I was expecting a better movie than Kids turned out to be. I hope he goes on to do some better movies than this. I haven't seen Gummo yet.

(P.S. It turns out, according to my research, that Harmony Korine is probably NOT related to Huntz Hall.)

The Mad Tea Party--featuring the nonsensical "Unbirthday Song" and with Ed Wynn as the Mad Hatter--is one of the funniest movie scenes I ever saw. When the movie came out, I was not familiar with the book, but the movie made me a Lewis Carroll fan forever.

(Saw the movie again recently. It's got some stuff that does not belong in there. Very un-Lewis Carroll like. But my favorite scene is still as good as I remembered it.)

No animated film I've ever seen surpasses or even comes close to "Pinocchio" and "Snow White." It's true that Disney's "Pinocchio" leaves out some of the most dramatic (and terrifying) moments in the original story, but it adds some good things, too, like giving the Talking Cricket a name (Jiminy). And of course the songs. This film has great songs that carry the story along. "An Actor's Life for Me" is my favorite.

One might wish the monstrous Dogfish that swallows Pinocchio in the book had not been changed to a whale in the movie, but (unlike the major changes the Disney people made in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame") this change is not great enough to quibble about.

Over all, Disney's "Pinocchio" is Carlo Collodi's "Pinocchio." I loved both the movie and the book when I was a child, and I still do.

Get together a bunch of interesting actors, cast them in quirky roles, give them unusual problems, and turn them loose in a weird locale. That's the formula for Bagdad Cafe (aka Out of Rosenheim). My friends and I keep watching this weird film over and over. Besides being really funny, it's heart-touching, too. But I never saw the TV series based on it. I doubt it was any good. You can't repeat the success of something like this.

This film is so weird! I love it! The old West was probably more like what's shown in this film than in any film John Wayne ever made. Another really quirky performance by my fav actor, Johnny Depp. And it says a lot about us. Like why do you carry a gun? Because this is America.

This is a movie I always heard about and saw brief clips from, but I never saw it until last night when it was shown on Turner Classic Movies. Now I can say I have seen it....

Actually I found it pretty engrossing. It's surprising how slowly it builds up to the horror scenes. Whenever a bird appears in the early scenes, it feels ominous because you already know what the movie is about. But when it ends, my reaction is like: So what?

Maggie Smith's outrageously arrogant comments kept me and my friend laughing. They were so inappropriate, yet so in character. Cher is great, too. And Judi Dench, although they didn't give her very much to do. But my favorite of all the women in this film is the Joan Plowright character, who unwillingly took on the role of mother to the little boy and did a wonderful job of it. Call me sentimental. The happy ending made me all teary-eyed. I couldn't even read the credits.

I first read Our Town when I was in high school and found it deeply meaningful. Since then, I've seen several productions of it, but never got to see the 1940 film until recently. The actors are fine (especially William Holden and Martha Scott, both as teen-agers and as adults); the sets are good (even though Our Town is not supposed to have any); and the musical score by Aaron Copland is wonderful.

But they ruined the third act by making unnecessary changes. I think it destroys what the play is really about. Just the same, I'm happy to have a video of this version (which I have watched twice so far), but I'm ordering videos of other versions (1977 and 1989). Wish I could see the musical version ("Producers Showcase," 1955) with Frank Sinatra as the Stage Manager, but it seems not to be available anywhere.

When you read them from a book, Eugene O'Neill's plays seem kind of flat. The dialog seems ordinary and uninspired compared to more poetic U.S. playwrights like Tennessee Williams.

But the brilliant acting in this film version of "Long Day's Journey" - especially the delicately nuanced work of Katharine Hepburn as the mother and a sensitive performance by Dean Stockwell as the younger son - shows me what a magnificent playwright O'Neill was. At times this tragic play seems almost Shakespearean.

If you are a fan of Mickey Rooney, or if you loved "Ah, Wilderness!" (1935 movie) and "Take Me Along" (Broadway musical version of "Ah, Wilderness!"), you will find this version of Eugene O'Neill's only comedy worth seeing.

Mickey Rooney is in both films. In "Summer Holiday," he does a good job as the older brother, but I liked him better as the little brother in the 1935 movie. Butch Jenkins plays the little brother in "Summer Holiday" (the Mickey Rooney role in the 1935 movie). Somebody must have decided the role was not cute enough, so they gave poor little Butch a lot of extra lines and cutesy costumes. Remembering Mickey's robust performance in the earlier version, I found Butch embarrassing.

The music in "Summer Holiday" is not very inspired. "Take Me Along" has better songs. I don't dislike "Summer Holiday." It just doesn't live up to my expectations of it.

Roberto Benigni (whom I'd never heard of before) is a comic genius. The first half of "Life Is Beautiful" is wonderfully, spontaneously funny and makes us care deeply about the characters. The second half is devastating, yet it ends with a feeling of hope.

Eugene O'Neill wrote only one comedy, and this screen version of it is delightful. It treats some of the same problems as his tragedies, like alcoholism, but treats them lightly and with compassion. The cast is great. I especially like Lionel Barrymore as the father, Wallace Beery as Sid, and Aline MacMahon as Lily--but Mickey Rooney as the little brother dominates every scene he is in. My favorite scene is where the family is at dinner and Uncle Sid comes home drunk. They are concerned for him but can't keep from laughing at the nutty things he says.

After seeing this movie, I bought a CD of the Broadway musical version, "Take Me Along," and a video of a Hollywood musical version, "Summer Holiday." This is such a great play, they can't do too many different versions of it.

(My brother-in-law - who doesn't even LIKE movies - liked "Ah, Wilderness!" when I showed it for him and my sister on a recent visit.)