Now Screening - What Are You Watching Right Now?

[struth]

the next up was a good un so went with it...

To Have and Have Not, 1944... classic performances from the 3 leads. Bogey, Bacall and Brennan.





Lauren Bacall was terrified on the set of her first film. Fortunately, Humphrey Bogart was able to put her at ease with humor and acting tips. Bacall had nervous shakes in her first scenes and quickly learned that keeping her chin down and her eyes up kept her head from trembling. It developed into a trademark sultry look.

The most famous scene in the film is undoubtedly the "you know how to whistle" dialog sequence. It was not written by Ernest Hemingway, Jules Furthman, or William Faulkner, but by Howard Hawks. He wrote the scene as a screen test for Bacall with no real intention that it would necessarily end up in the film. The test was shot with Warner Bros. contract player John Ridgely acting opposite Bacall. The Warners staff, of course, agreed to star Bacall in the film based on the test, and Hawks thought the scene was so strong he asked Faulkner to work it into one of his later drafts of the shooting script.

Howard Hawks gave John Huston the climax (a shootout on a boat) that he was unable to fit into the end of this film. Huston used this in Key Largo (1948), as he had been having difficulties coming up with a satisfactory ending.

[Barry]

One of my favourite films! IMO it's even better than 'Casablanca'.

[struth]

Irma la Douce 1963...




According to an article in the 21 October 1962 edition of the New York Times, the sprawling Rue Casanova set took three months to build at a cost of $250,000 ($2.45M in 2022), and included 48 buildings and three converging streets.

[walpurgis]

DVD, 'Last Exit to Brooklyn' 1989, with Jennifer Jason Leigh and Stephen Lang. Powerful, raw and brutal stuff!

Not seen this for a long time, it was as memorable as ever.

[struth]

St. Martin's Lane, 1938.. (aka Sidewalks of London).


Made in London just before England's entrance into World War II, this film was co-produced by a refugee from Adolf Hitler, the great German producer of Metropolis (1927) and many other classic UFA movies, Erich Pommer. It was directed by an American from Hollywood, Tim Whelan, and features another American, the great harmonica virtuoso, Larry Adler, who was to return to live in exile in England after the war after he was blacklisted in the U.S. Adler went on to compose and perform the score for the classic English comedy Genevieve (1953). The role of the tall busker Gentry was played by Tyrone Guthrie who would be knighted and would one day become Artistic Director of Canada's Stratford Festival and founder of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. This movie was edited by Robert Hamer, who would go on to direct the Ealing Studio comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) and others.

[struth]

A Haunting in Venice, 2023...




Sir Kenneth Branagh worked with the technical department to cause surprises for the cast. The actors were not warned about lights going out suddenly, or gusts of wind and slamming doors on the sets in which they worked, causing genuine confused and startled reactions from the actors to appear in the film. Kelly Reilly confirmed that filming the seance scene was a terrifying experience saying in an interview, "It scared the bejesus out of me."

The screenplay is inspired by Dame Agatha Christie's 1969 novel "Hallowe'en Party", with the setting changed from the UK to Venice, Italy. This is not the first time that Hallowe'en Party was adapted to film. In July of 2011, ITV Studios and WGBH released an 89-minute feature length film adaptation of "Hallowe'en Party", starring David Suchet as Poirot.

[struth]

O Brother, Where Art Thou?, 2000...


The American Humane Association, an organization that protects animal rights, mistook a computer-generated cow in the movie for a real animal and demanded proof before they would allow the use of their famous disclaimer, "No animals were harmed in the making of this motion picture." After seeing a demonstration at Digital Domain of how the cow was created, the Humane Association added the now-familiar (but then much rarer) "Scenes which may appear to place an animal in jeopardy were simulated."

[Barry]

O Brother, Where Art Thou?, 2000...


The American Humane Association, an organization that protects animal rights, mistook a computer-generated cow in the movie for a real animal and demanded proof before they would allow the use of their famous disclaimer, "No animals were harmed in the making of this motion picture." After seeing a demonstration at Digital Domain of how the cow was created, the Humane Association added the now-familiar (but then much rarer) "Scenes which may appear to place an animal in jeopardy were simulated."

I've seen the film several times, yet can't recall any scene involving a cow; simulated or otherwise.

[struth]

I've seen the film several times, yet can't recall any scene involving a cow; simulated or otherwise.

Was when they were in baby face Nelson's car. One of the chase cars hit a cow

[struth]

The Maltese Falcon, 1941... bluray..




At 357 pounds, 60-year-old British newcomer Sydney Greenstreet was so large that the studio had to specially manufacture his entire wardrobe for the role of Kasper Gutman. The chair in which Greenstreet sits while talking with Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) in the hotel room was also specially made for him; the chairs the prop department was going to use weren't wide enough to accommodate Greenstreet's girth nor strong enough to support his weight.

"The stuff that dreams are made of" (a line suggested by Humphrey Bogart) was voted as the #14 movie quote in 2005 by the American Film Institute. The line is paraphrased from William Shakespeare's "The Tempest": "We are such stuff as dreams are made on, / And our little life is rounded with a sleep."

A few of the principal actors became close friends during the shooting. Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Ward Bond, and Mary Astor would often join John Huston at the Lakeside Country Club for drinks, buffet supper, and good conversation, usually until midnight. Bogart always considered Lorre and Huston great pals, mostly because they met two principal criteria: they weren't boring and they could drink like fish.

Even though Warner Bros. executives were happy with John Huston's draft of the screenplay, they put restrictions on the first-time director's production by allotting him only six weeks to shoot the film with a $300,000 budget. If Huston happened to go over budget, Warner Bros. warned him that he would be looking for a job elsewhere. However, Huston left nothing to chance. He tailored the screenplay to include shot-by-shot instructions for him and his crew, detailing the set-up of each and every scene. The final screenplay was so finely laid out that one could read the script and perfectly visualize the finished film. This method was used by Huston only for this film. Other directors, like Alfred Hitchcock and later Steven Spielberg, would employ this method more frequently throughout their career.