Now Screening - What Are You Watching Right Now?

[struth]

Another regular, the classic,... Some Like It Hot, 1959.





Jack Lemmon wrote that the first sneak preview had a bad reaction with many audience walkouts. Many studio personnel and agents offered advice to Billy Wilder on what scenes to reshoot, add and cut. Lemmon asked Wilder what he was going to do. Wilder responded: "Why, nothing. This is a very funny movie and I believe in it just as it is. Maybe this is the wrong neighborhood in which to have shown it. At any rate, I don't panic over one preview. It's a hell of a movie." Wilder held the next preview in the Westwood section of Los Angeles, and the audience stood up and cheered.

[struth]

Blackadder 3.. Amy and Amiability.




Prince George needs money and has to wed.

[struth]

Agatha Christie's Poirot, 1989... season 1....

[struth]

currently this... Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, 2003.. a bit of piracy is always good fun to watch. johnny depp had such a great character to play; much of it his own invention too.

[struth]

Key Largo, 1948.





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.

Lionel Barrymore was severely disabled by arthritis (clearly visible in his hands) and was confined to a wheelchair, making the scene in which his Mr. Temple character gets up and falls taking a swing at Toots more than a dramatic moment.

The ramshackle hotel--along with the beach area-- where most of the drama unfolds was constructed on the Warner Bros. lot. Exterior shots of the hurricane were actually taken from stock footage used in "Night Unto Night (1949)," a Ronald Reagan melodrama made the same year at Warner Bros.

[struth]

The song Clair Trevor sang was extremely good for the film. In a classic case of a director being emotionally manipulative, John Huston did not inform Claire Trevor about when she was to perform her song solo until the very day it was shot. Trevor was not a trained singer, and she had not even rehearsed the song yet. She also felt very intimidated that she had to perform the song for the A-list actors seated directly in front of her. The result was a hesitant, nervous, uncomfortable rendition--exactly the feeling Huston was hoping to get.
Bogart's simmering hatred both of rocco and himself was also brewing constantly, just off boil. as was rocco's fear of the storm.
A great, moody, stylish film

[struth]

The Odessa File, 1974.




Prologue: "This film is based on carefully documented research. There really was a secret society called Odessa, linking former members of Hitler's murderous SS, among them Roschmann, the 'butcher' of Riga Concentration Camp. Nasser did seek to perfect a strike force of 400 rockets to wipe Israel off the face of the map. His key scientists were mostly from Hitler's former rocket programme. For obvious reasons the names of some people and places have been changed.--Frederick Forsyth"


Eduard Roschmann was a real-life wanted war criminal living in South America. He became even more wanted after the book and movie, and he turned up dead, rumored to have been killed by O.D.E.S.S.A. to stop the search for him that the media had begun.

The character played by Hannes Messemer was not referred to by name in the dialogue. However, it is intended to be S.S. Gruppenführer Richard Glücks, former S.S. Inspector of Concentration Camps, who disappeared after World War II and is rumored to have been one of the founding members of O.D.E.S.S.A.

The supporting cast was mostly German. Most of the character actors and actresses were major movie and theatre personalities of the German stage and screen. The English-speaking players were given special coaching by dialogue director Osman Ragheb to acquire German accents which would be identical to those of the native actors and actresses. Not only did Jon Voight and Mary Tamm have to learn to use the accent, but had to do it with North German dialect nuances because of their characters' Hamburg origins in the story.

[struth]

Charley Varrick, 1973. Director Don Siegel..





Character Maynard Boyle's line, "They're gonna strip you naked and go to work on you with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch," is paraphrased in Pulp Fiction (1994) by character Marsellus Wallace.

Walter Matthau's character makes love repeatedly to Felicia Farr's character. She was the wife of his longtime comedic partner, Jack Lemmon

watched this recently but picked up a bluray copy today so will watch it in 1080 now lol

[Barry]

The Odessa File, 1974.

Not a bad film, although the ending IMO is a bit too neat and pat.

[struth]

Fun with Dick and Jane, 1977.





The names of the movie's two central characters Dick and Jane were taken from the popular educational children's' story books which feature at the start of the movie.