Now Screening - What Are You Watching Right Now?

[struth]

Harlem Nights, 1989.






During the scene at Sugar Ray's house, detective Phil Cantone falsely sings "It Don't Mean a Thing" by Duke Ellington. In real-life, Danny Aiello is an accomplished jazz singer.
Despite its harsh critiques by film critics, it has become a cult classic over the years, due to its humor and dialogue.

[Barry]

Not a bad little film.

[Mikeandvan]

Rising damp, it's quick fire dialogue has aged well. I remember b n bs like that back in the 80s.

[Pigmy Pony]

Harlem Nights, 1989.





During the scene at Sugar Ray's house, detective Phil Cantone falsely sings "It Don't Mean a Thing" by Duke Ellington. In real-life, Danny Aiello is an accomplished jazz singer.
Despite its harsh critiques by film critics, it has become a cult classic over the years, due to its humor and dialogue.

I did not know that - I like Danny Aiello, he was good as the "chiropractor" Louis in the film Jacob's Ladder. We all need a "Louis" in our lives

[struth]

The House of Fear, 1945.. another Holmes film starring the great Basil Rathbone.





According to Harry Cording, the movie was filmed completely out of sequence. With first week filming the beginning and ending when all the cast members were present. He said that Cyril Delevanti, this first person murdered, only worked four days. Universal saved money by only paying for days work and filming each victim's part in sequence. With the climax already filmed there was no need for any actor to return. Except for Aubrey Mather and Paul Cavanagh , when you died the pay stopped.

[struth]

Sunday western is... Cheyenne Autumn. 1964. Directed by John Ford and starring Richard Widmark, Carroll Baker, James Stewart, and Edward G. Robinson.
It tells the story of a factual event, the Northern Cheyenne Exodus of 1878–79, told in "Hollywood style" using a great deal of artistic licence.





Years earlier Richard Widmark had the historical subject matter researched at Yale. He brought the material to John Ford, who didn't want to make it. Years later Ford, who had kept the research, changed his mind and asked Widmark to star.

Little Wolf was a chief of the Cheyenne tribe in 1878. He and another chief led the Cheyenne off their Oklahoma reservation and took them back to their homeland in Montana, despite hundreds of US cavalry troops trying to stop them. This was called the "Cheyenne Autumn Trail" and is the basis for this film.
The "Cheyenne" in the film are actually Navajo, and they are speaking in the Navajo language (mostly telling each other dirty jokes).

[struth]

a bit lighter now with ... Doc Hollywood, 1991, and stars Michael J. Fox, Julie Warner, Barnard Hughes, Woody Harrelson, David Ogden Stiers, Frances Sternhagen, and Bridget Fonda.






This movie was filmed in Micanopy, Florida, a small town of 650 people just south of Gainesville.

The car driven cross-country is a 1956 Porsche 356 Speedster.

While Melvin and Lane are looking at Ben's car after it was hit by the semi at the end the movie, a kid on a skateboard passes by in similar dress as Marty McFly from Fox's film Back to the Future.


a beauty

[struth]

The Scarlet Claw, 1944. another Rathbone/Bruce mystery.





The eighth of 14 films based on Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional consulting detective Sherlock Holmes starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson.

[struth]

Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror, 1942.




The Voice of Terror is based on the type of genuine Nazi radio propaganda broadcast by the American-born fascist William Joyce, AKA Lord Haw-Haw. Joyce was hanged for high treason against the United Kingdom after the war in 1946, so becoming the last person executed for treason in the UK and the penultimate one hanged for a crime other than murder.

[struth]

Went The Day Well, 1942. British war film adapted from a story by Graham Greene and directed by Alberto Cavalcanti.





The poem from which the title is taken and which appears at the start of the film, is actually the second of four epitaphs written in 1918 by Greek scholar John Maxwell Edmonds. These were written for graves and memorials for those who died in battle. The full epitaph included a heading, "On Some who died early in the Day of Battle Went the day well? We died and never knew. But, well or ill, Freedom, we died for you." Another of Edmonds' epitaphs is "When you go home, tell them of us and say, For your tomorrows these gave their today".

It didn't go so well for this guy alas...

When the man running the pub in the village where the film was being shot discovered that he had used up his alcohol ration on the film crew, he was so distraught he committed suicide.