Now Screening - What Are You Watching Right Now?

[struth]

Tremors, 1990. Directed by Ron Underwood.




Prior to the film's release, Bacon felt that the film was a career low: "I broke down and fell to the sidewalk, screaming to my pregnant wife, 'I can't believe I'm doing a movie about underground worms!'"
Kevin Bacon later called the filming of Tremors to be "the single most fun time I've ever had making a movie in my entire career".

Ron Underwood said that he was uninterested when Reba McEntire asked to audition for the film, saying he had grown tired of seeing celebrities trying to become actors even if they cannot act, and that it was "gimmicky" casting. However, after begrudgingly letting her audition, he was blown away by her performance and realized she was a great natural actress, immediately knowing she was perfect for Heather Gummer.

and just for barry ....Burt's elephant gun, an 8-gauge Darne Shotgun, was rented from a private collector for uses in the film. It fired dummy cartridges custom-made from solid brass rod stock.

[struth]

Jack the Ripper, 1988. Michael Caine stars...






After Mary Jane Kelly's murder, there is a scene where Abberline hands Gull a photo of her body. That photo is an actual crime scene photo of the real Mary Jane Kelly.

Hugh Fraser wore clothes that his character Sir Charles Warren had actually worn.

Sir Michael Caine was persuaded to return to television for the first time in nearly twenty years because of David Wickes's powerful script. Caine later described Wickes as "the nicest, fastest director I've worked for, and the master of filming Victorian London."

[struth]

A bit of classic noir now with one of my favs... Key Largo, 1948. "When your head says one thing and your whole life says another, your head always loses."






Although they played on-screen enemies, off-screen Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson treated each other with great respect. Bogart insisted Robinson be treated like a major star, and he would not come to the set until Robinson was ready. Often, he would go to Robinson's trailer to personally escort him to the set.

In the five films Robinson and Bogart appeared in together Robinson killed Bogart once, Bogart killed Robinson once, and they killed each other twice.

The scene with Claire Trevor drunkenly singing "Moanin' Low" was inspired by a true-life event from World War II. When Humphrey Bogart was entertaining U.S. troops stationed in Italy, his wife at the time, actress Mayo Methot, insisted on doing an impromptu song number, though quite visibly intoxicated and despite being cautioned. Stammering over forgotten lyrics and singing steadily off-key, she gave a winged performance that was a memorable embarrassment.

[struth]

Star Trek: Time Travel Fan Collective, 2006(i think)






Quite a good collection of time travel episodes across the francise.

ep 1 is Tomorrow is Yesterday. The Enterprise is hurled back in time to the year 1969, where the US Air Force sights it as a UFO. The crew must find a way to erase evidence of their visit before trying to get back to their future home.

[struth]

Here Comes Mr Jordan, 1941. Director Alexander Hall. The Criterion Bluray.






Columbia chief Harry Cohn had serious misgivings about this adaptation of Harry Segall's minor stage play. He preferred to reserve his more lavish budgets for surefire successes (i.e., anything featuring the studio's biggest star, Rita Hayworth). However, Sidney Buchman was eventually able to talk Cohn into forking out for costly celestial sets and Farnsworth's elaborate mansion and also into hiring Robert Montgomery on loan-out from MGM. Buchman was also able to convince Cohn that he had a better appreciation of what the public would pay to see than the Wall Street bankers who Cohn answered to.

James Gleason was mainly brought on board to polish the dialogue. Gleason had a knack for authentic sounding vernacular language but also happened to be a great actor. He was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in the role of Max Corkle. This is the first time in Academy Awards history for a person to be nominated for a supporting Oscar for a role for which a different person would later also be nominated for a supporting Oscar: Jack Warden was nominated for Best Supporting Actor as Max Corkle in Heaven Can Wait (1978).

[struth]

Double Indemnity, 1944. Directed by Billy Wilder.






The movie was based on the novel by James M. Cain, which in turn was based on the true story of Ruth Snyder, the subject of a notorious 1920s murder trial.
Author James M. Cain later admitted that if he had come up with some of the solutions to the plot that screenwriters Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler did, he would have employed them in his original novel.

Due to strict wartime food rationing, policemen were stationed in the store where a scene with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck was filmed, to make sure nobody on the film crew was tempted to take away any of the food. "Paramount" released publicity stills showing four policemen in the store with MacMurray and Stanwyck.

Raymond Chandler was kept on a writer's retainer during the film's eight-week shooting period. This was a highly unusual occurrence for any writer at any studio at the time, signifying the high regard that Chandler was held in by Paramount and Billy Wilder. Raymond Chandler hated the experience of writing the script with Billy Wilder so much that he actually walked out and would not return unless a list of demands was met. The studio acceded to his demands and he returned to finish the script with Wilder, even though the two detested each other.

The blonde wig that Barbara Stanwyck is wearing throughout the movie was the idea of Billy Wilder. A month into shooting Wilder suddenly realized how bad it looked, but by then it was too late to re-shoot the earlier scenes. To rationalize this mistake, in later interviews Wilder claimed that the bad-looking wig was intentional. On viewing the film's rushes, production head Buddy G. DeSylva remarked of Barbara Stanwyck's blonde wig, "We hired Barbara Stanwyck, and here we get George Washington".

[struth]

More Noir now with The Blue Dahlia, 1946. Director George Marshall.





Just after the fight scene between Alan Ladd and the two thugs who kidnapped him, one of the thugs is seen soaking his broken leg in a round tub. That wasn't in the script; the actor had actually broken his leg filming the fight and, without consulting screenwriter Raymond Chandler, director George Marshall rewrote the script to have the character break his leg as well.

The pressure of having to finish the screenplay combined with the curve ball of having to write an entirely new ending was too much for Raymond Chandler. He quickly came down with a severe case of writer's block. According to a near-legendary story, screenwriter Raymond Chandler offered to finish the screenplay by working drunk: in exchange for sacrificing his health to produce the requisite pages on time, Chandler was permitted to work at home (a privilege rarely granted to screenwriters) and was provided two chauffeured cars, one to convey the completed pages to the studio and the other for his wife. Chandler turned the script in on time. Many now believe the "drunkenness" was simply a ruse by Chandler to wrangle extraordinary privileges from the desperate studio.

Elizabeth Short got the nickname "The Black Dahlia" from a bartender at a Long Beach bar she frequented. This film was playing at a theater down the street, and the bartender got the name wrong. Elizabeth picked up on that and kept the nickname, adding a flower to her hair to complete the transformation. She was murdered the next year (1947). The local newspapers dubbed the case the "Black Dahlia" as a morbid twist on this film's title. Unlike the movie, the Short murder case is still unsolved. Short's unsolved murder and the details surrounding it have had a lasting cultural intrigue, generating various theories and public speculation. Her life and death have been the basis of numerous books and films, and her murder is frequently cited as one of the most famous unsolved murders in American history, as well as one of the oldest unsolved cases in Los Angeles County. It has likewise been credited by historians as one of the first major crimes in post–World War II America to capture national attention.

[struth]

The 6th Day, 2000. Arnie stars...

not the greatest script to be fair but its fun enough.






The Sim-Pal slogan is "A Sim-Pal that's fun to be with!", a derivation from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series by Douglas Adams. There, the corporation that created robots with "Genuine People Personalities", had the slogan "Your plastic pal that's fun to be with!"

Set in 2015, but released in 2000, the only accurate future technologies predicted (excluding cloning) were flatscreen televisions, interactive computerized refrigerators, self-driving vehicles (though as of 2018, they're still in the prototype phase), and aerial drones (though as of 2021 drones this size are exclusively used by the military). The movie also accurately predicted automated phone systems to be annoying, frustrating, and functionally useless.

[Gazjam]

Taking a plunge over the weekend to watch some old B-Movie Classics stored on the Internet Archive Site "The Wayback Machine" Archive.org.

https://archive.org/details/SciFi_Horror

Been curious about Manos: The Hands of Fate?

worst movie ever made apparently, mighty IMDB score of 1.9/10
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060666/

"Last Man on Earth" is on there as well, never seen that one before.


Its a great "Library of free stuff" website Btw,
https://archive.org/

could get lost for days in it.

[struth]

Taking a plunge over the weekend to watch some old B-Movie Classics stored on the Internet Archive Site "The Wayback Machine" Archive.org.

https://archive.org/details/SciFi_Horror

Been curious about Manos: The Hands of Fate?

worst movie ever made apparently, mighty IMDB score of 1.9/10
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060666/

"Last Man on Earth" is on there as well, never seen that one before.


Its a great "Library of free stuff" website Btw,
https://archive.org/

could get lost for days in it.

a glutton for punishment lol.. hope you enjoy them.