Now Screening - What Are You Watching Right Now?

[struth]

Scrooge, 1951.





Although this movie is widely regarded as the best version of Charles Dickens' story, it is the only one which omits Ebenezer Scrooge's famous line: "If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled in his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart." Alastair Sim would eventually get a chance to say it, however, when he reprised his role in the animated A Christmas Carol (1971), which also featured Sir Michael Hordern returning as Jacob Marley.

[struth]

Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 1975.






A 2021 tweet by Eric Idle revealed that the film was financed by eight investors: Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson, Holy Grail co-producer Michael White, Heartaches (a cricket team founded by lyricist Tim Rice), and three record companies including Charisma Records, the record label that released Python's early comedy albums. The investors contributed the entire original budget of £175,350 (about $410,000 in 1974). He added that this group also received a percentage of the proceeds from the 2005 musical Spamalot.

According to Terry Gilliam, the Pythons turned to rock stars like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin for finance as the studios refused to fund the film and rock stars saw it as "a good tax write-off" due to the top rate of UK income tax being "as high as 90%" at the time.

quote...



Dingo : You must spank her well, and after you are done with her, you may deal with her as you like... and then... spank me.

All : And me. And me too. And me.

Dingo : Yes. Yes, you must give us all a good spanking.

Dingo : And after the spanking, the oral sex.

Galahad : Well, I could stay a bit longer...

[struth]

Red, 2010...




now Red 2, 2013..

[struth]

Dark Passage, 1947...






Warner Brothers studio head Jack L. Warner was not pleased to discover that the face of one of his biggest stars, Humphrey Bogart, is not seen for the first half of the movie. By the time Warner knew this, the film was too far along to be changed.

[Pigmy Pony]

Not right now, but last night watched "Boys from the Black Stuff" - part 4, Yosser's story. Funny and sad at the same time.



"I'm desperate father"
"Call me Dan"
"I'm desperate Dan."

This drama was a big deal in the 80s. Currently showing on BBC iPlayer.

Yosser's kids were played by creator Alan Bleasdale's kids. I wonder if any of it affected them.

[Barry]

I remember watching the series when it was first screened. Unless something is done very soon, I fear we are heading towards another depression - yet don't see anything from the current administration or from the competitors for leadership to be encouraged.

[Macca]

Not right now, but last night watched "Boys from the Black Stuff" - part 4, Yosser's story. Funny and sad at the same time.



"I'm desperate father"
"Call me Dan"
"I'm desperate Dan."

This drama was a big deal in the 80s. Currently showing on BBC iPlayer.

Yosser's kids were played by creator Alan Bleasdale's kids. I wonder if any of it affected them.

I remember watching those when they were brand new. That bit where she headbutts the social worker is classic.

I think Bleasdale was too middle-class to write anything authentic though. The whole series is about how middle class think the working class live and how terrible it must be,. Not much in the way of reality, but still entertaining.

[struth]

The Long Goodbye, 1973..






Both Leigh Brackett and Robert Altman have said that Sterling Hayden and Elliot Gould''s dialogue during the drinking scenes was improvised. This was because Hayden was drunk and stoned on marijuana most of the time.

Elliott Gould smokes in every scene.

Marlowe's car was a 1948 Lincoln Continental Cabriolet that belonged to Elliott Gould. In 2013 it was in The National Automobile Museum (The Harrah Collection) in Reno, Nevada, and where it had been repainted yellow.

[struth]

The Devil and Miss Jones, 1941..

[Pigmy Pony]

I remember watching those when they were brand new. That bit where she headbutts the social worker is classic.

I think Bleasdale was too middle-class to write anything authentic though. The whole series is about how middle class think the working class live and how terrible it must be,. Not much in the way of reality, but still entertaining.

So were you not a regular at The Green Man? I thought I saw you drinking there in the last episode