Best Movie Ever!

[Winslow Leach]

Another of my favorite movies is The Night of the Hunter, which was the only film directed by Charles Laughton. The film had a style which became influential to well-known directors such as the Coen Brothers, David Lynch, and Terrence Malick. It has become culturally significant and features many themes amongst its many horrific, harrowing images. To this day, I find it hard to think of any movie as "scary" when I remember seeing Shelley Winters... well, those who have seen the movie know exactly what image I'm speaking of.

It's amazing that Hunter was Laughton's first and only film as director. It has the look and style of someone who had been directing for years. I think Preacher is Robert Mitchum's finest performance. He was one scary dude!

I especially like that long shot of Mitchum riding his horse through the night, singing his hyms, looking for the children.

 

[Winslow Leach]

LOL! The Party is such a cool movie! I love the drunk waiter!
You have awesome tastes... I don't know many people who know those movies! Yeah, when I menchion What's Up, Doc? to people they're like, "So, it's a cartoon?" and I go, "noooo, it stars Babara Steisand? Ringin' a bell?"
I totally agree, American Graffiti is an awesome but under-rated movie- I have all the records!

Well, you have awesome tastes yourself! You mean you actually read my favorite movie posts? I have a tendency to ramble on and on (and on) about topics I enjoy. If you made it through 'em all, I congratulate you, and give you a merit badge!

LOL, "it stars Barbra Streisand? Ringin' a bell?"

Doc is a very clever movie. It took me a few viewings before I got all the bags straight. Madeline Kahn is great in her first film: "I am not a Eunice Burns, I am THE Eunice Burns!"

The ending on the plane is hilarious. Streisand tells O'Neal, "Love means never having to say you're sorry," and bats her eyes. O'Neal takes a beat and says, "That's the stupidist thing I ever heard!" Streisand's quote of course comes from Love Story (1970), which starred O'Neal, in which that quote was used several times, and served as the tagline for the movie.

I have the soundtrack to American Graffiti on vinyl (a two-LP set, I found it at a flea market) and on CD.

 

[Winslow Leach]

Hey, you played Claude in college? That's so AWESOME!

Yuppers. My sophomore year.

The play is different from the movie. The movie has a plot, but the show itself is virtually plotless; there's a lot of interaction between the actors and the audience. Before the show, for instance, the members of the Tribe passed out flowers to the people in the audience. During the show, actors would run offstage into the audience, sit on people's laps, duck behind chairs, etc.

In the play Claude is the leader of the Tribe, and Berger is his best friend. When Claude gets his draft notice, he doesn't know what to do: burn it like the other guys, or get inducted. Eventually, Claude decides to become a soldier. At the end of the play, he returns to his friends, wearing his Army uniform, but no one sees him. He speaks, but no one hears him. At the very end, after the Tribe has sung "Let the Sunshine In," Claude's body is lying on stage. Berger places a cross on his dead friend.

 

[Winslow Leach]

M (1931) - Fritz Lang's first talkie, a haunting study of a compulsive child killer (Peter Lorre in one of his first films) is still creepily effective all these years later. Lorre is chilling as a pathetic, tormented psychopath, who roams the streets whistling ("In the Halls of the Mountain King" from Peer Gynt) in search of victims. The criminal underworld decide to take matters into their own hands, to get the police off their backs. In the climax of the film, Lorre is dragged in front of the city's criminals, where he is put on trial, and pathetically pleads his case. Lang cuts back and forth between the police and the criminals throughout the film, and their efforts to catch the killer. The criminals always seem to be one step ahead of the police. Lang uses sound (and silence) to maximum effect, heightening the tension. Peter Lorre is excellent as the lead, and this film cemented his status as a new star. On the basis of this film, Alfred Hitchcock cast Lorre as the ringleader of the assassins in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), and the actor played a variety of colorful roles for the next 30 years, until his death in 1964.

 

[Speed Tracer]

By the way, Winslow, Phantom of the Paradise is also among my favorites. It's my favorite movie musical of all-time, as well as my favorite De Palma film. Paul Williams is just magical.

I haven't seen Blow Out, but I'll look for it... is it available on DVD?

 

[Drtooth]

The Incredibles... hands down. Best Super Hero parody I have ever seen, darkly funny, and it proved that Pixar doesn't do just kid's stuff...

I'll also add some of my personal best films...

TMNT and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1... they truely upheld the comic book, while making it appealing to younger audiences familiar with the cartoons. The second and third ones were ok, but these two were really intense.

Crayon Shin-chan: Let's Dance Amigo... Quite Frankly the weirdest film I've ever seen since Yellow Submarine... Didn't understand a word of it, but it was just weird.... There are some things I really liked, but I can't say them here.

Yellow Submarine... Since I mentioned it, I'm putting it here.

The Original Star Wars Trillogy... I think the third Prequal was well done too.

Muppet anything except OZ and KSY, since I haven't seen KSY yet...

Dragon Ball Maka Fushigi... if anything, it has Dr. Slump in it for a very brief cameo.

Back to the Future 2... Improving on the first, while not being off as the third one (I liked the third one, but it's my least favorite)

Ghostbusters... the sequal, again, I enjoyed but wasn't as good.

Naked Gun series... by far Leslie Nielsen's best films.

One Piece Omatsuki: Once again, didn't understand a word. I hope Funimation releases it on DVD somehow, since they got the license apparently.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit: The best half toon, half live action film of all time.

Teacher's Pet: The most underrated Disney film in history, with character desings by my favorite Illustraitor Gary Baseman, featuring the voices of Wallace Shaun, Nathan Lane, Jerry Stiller, David Ogden Steers (sp), and for the film Kelsey Grammar and Pee Wee Herman...well... Paul Rubens...

And on that note, Pee Wee's Great Adventure

And of course, Nightmare before Christmas- beautiful Stop motion animation.

 

[Speed Tracer]

I hadn't seen the television show before seeing Teacher's Pet, so the movie was a huge surprise for me. I enjoyed it immensely, and it's a shame it wasn't very well-received.

 

[Winslow Leach]

By the way, Winslow, Phantom of the Paradise is also among my favorites. It's my favorite movie musical of all-time, as well as my favorite De Palma film. Paul Williams is just magical.

I haven't seen Blow Out, but I'll look for it... is it available on DVD?

Cool! Another Phantom fan! All right!

Blow Out IS available on DVD from MGM. It's a bare-bones release, like Phantom but is definitely worth seeing!

In France there's a 2-disc SE of Phantom, as well as a box set of rare, early De Palma short films, including the feature film Dionysus in '69 (1970). This is the only De Palma feature I haven't seen (haven't seen any of the shorts either), but Dionysus sounds interesting. In 1968-1969, there was a radical, modern adaptation of Euripides' The Bacchae performed off-Broadway. De Palma and another filmmaker were given permission to capture the show on film and present it in movie theaters. This is the first film in which De Palma utilized the split-screen technique that would be frequent in his later films. In Dionysus, one screen shows us the actors performing the play on stage, and the other shows the reactions of the audience to this very unconvential, somewhat shocking production.

In the summer of 2001, MGM Home Video released three De Palma titles. Two were special editions, produced by Laurent Bouzereau (who wrote a book on De Palma, and has made several DVD documentaries over the years, including the one on the Jaws disc). Dressed to Kill got an awesome release. First you had De Palma's controversial, uncut version; then you had the toned-down theatrical version; you had a full-length docu on the making of the film, from its inception to the critical reaction and its legacy; then you had a comparison between several versions of the film (original cut, theatrical cut, TV cut), a trailer and a stills gallery. Carrie got a similar treatment: a docu with most of the cast (excluding John Travolta, but including stars Sissy Spacek, Nancy Allen, William Katt, Betty Buckley, Amy Irving and PJ Soles), a photo gallery, a segment on the short-lived Carrie: The Musical, comparisons between the Stephen King novel and the movie, and a look at a deleted scene (never completed or lost, I forget) that was to open the film, and follow the opening of King's novel: as a young girl, Carrie causes a rain of stones to fall from the sky. I think De Palma scrapped it because he was working with a limited budget, and couldn't complete it to his satisfaction. The notorious hand-from-the-grave scene that ends the film is actually star Sissy Spacek's. De Palma was planning to use a double, but Spacek insisted on doing it herself (she had to crawl underneath the grave set, and since it was a tight squeeze, she couldn't hear or see De Palma, and hope her hand would be timed perfectly with co-star Amy Irving's, just as she placed the flowers on the grave. I think De Palma got the shot in one take).

Friends George Lucas and Brian De Palma held auditions for Carrie and Star Wars at the same time. The actors would audition for both films. William Katt (who played Tommy, the jock who takes Carrie to the prom) auditioned for Luke Skywalker and Amy Irving (who played Sue, Carrie's only friend) auditioned for Princess Leia. I think Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher auditioned for Carrie.

Star Sissy Spacek was 27 when she played Carrie. Although in real life the actress was pretty (King's Carrie was a short, chunky girl with greasy hair and bad body odor), De Palma cast her after the actress he originally hired dropped out. Spacek had been in films since 1972, and had appeared in Terrence Malick's classic Badlands. She was married to art director Jack Fisk, who worked on Phantom and Carrie. Interestingly, Sissy Spacek worked on Phantom as a set decorator.

Which comes to the third MGM release, Blow Out. Bouzereau said in an interview about the releases he was planning on a SE of Blow Out, but by the time he got to it, the discs had already been pressed. Aside from the trailer, the only other "extra" on the disc is a pan & scan version of the film (ugh!) De Palma's films look TERRIBLE in P&S because he uses every inch of the frame.

 

[Speed Tracer]

See, Winslow, what I love about you and your posts is that I always, always learn something.

 

[Speed Tracer]

And I will definitely check out Blow Out. We don't have it at the store I work at, so off to Netflix I go!