Just a space to discuss films you like and can recommend to members. Apart from staring at football matches I'm a voracious movie watcher, with a leaning towards classic cinema with special attention paid to Westerns, Noir, British (wartime and kitchen sink mainly), Chaplin, Hitchcock, Wilder, less strong on foreign language films because I'm a Philistine.
Last night, because it was cheap on Amazon Prime I caught THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD, from 1973, something I haven't seen in years, the sort of fare I devoured as a kid. I love that Harryhausen nonsense, and this one really goes to town with its sword wielding, multi-armed Kali statue and winged demons. There's a real charm to these stop-motion creatures, I feel - Harryhausen gave them personality and made them greater than simply models that got moved slightly frame by frame to suggest they were actually there. Obviously they look crap compared to modern CGI, but there's more to these things than modern effects work...
One thing that struck me while watching it is how 'of its time' it was. A white and mainly British cast are playing Middle Eastern characters, doing the accents, without a care for how 'wrong' or offensive their performances might have been. Clearly it was a different time, and I've no wish to weigh in on what is or isn't acceptable, but it certainly added to the movie's whimsical tone. That, and Caroline Munro's legendary cleavage, which was on full show to the extent she might as well have been holding a glass of Bacardi throughout! And then there's Tom Baker, playing the villain, ageing physically with each spell of black magic he weaves, just wonderful.
This should be right up your street then....
Ha ha yes, I love Talking Pictures TV. There's a fair amount of fluff on there but some real hidden gems also, with an emphasis on British classics. Good shout.
@mikei always scan talking pictures each week to see what’s on. Mrs OFB usually has a go “what are you watching that rubbish for?” I usually just agree turn it off and watch it later on my own. You can see what a strong minded self willed and determined referee I was playing football!
OFB
I’ve been lucky enough to spend the last forty years in the film business - mainly in distribution - and one of the few benefits of the lockdown has been the time to chase up a range of old films. Some stand up well and some don’t. I’ve had a lot of fun looking at films from the early 30s, just before the introduction of the Hays Code which imposed all kinds of restrictions on what could be shown. A lot of these films were made by European filmmakers who found their way to Hollywood and brought broader sensibilities and it’s fascinating how many of the so-called screwball comedies had deeper social messages under the surface. Two to start with are IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT and MY MAN GODFREY.
This drain of talented filmmakers continued with sublime filmmakers/writers such as Billy Wilder who was one of the greatest directors. Anyone who hasn’t seen SOME LIKE IT HOT is really lucky. I’d love to see it again for the first time.
happy watching guys.
I’m not a lover of American films except for musicals my favourites being ‘Kiss me Kate’, ‘Guys and Dolls’ and ‘Showboat’, plus all the Rogers and Hammerstein musicals. Best stage musical for me though was Lionel Bart’s ‘Blitz’ about life in London during the Second World War with some stirring songs like ‘Whose this geezer Hitler?’ I saw the original in London and another version in Newcastle when Lionel Bart appeared on the stage. I also saw the original stage production of ‘My Fair Lady’ in London but the film version with Rex Harrison playing Professor Higgins was better.
I also liked the old black and white kitchen sink dramas such as ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’, ‘A Touch of Honey’, ‘It Always Rains on Sunday’s’,
‘The L-shaped Room’, ‘A Kind of Loving’ and ‘This Sporting Life’ all produced in the 1960’s and some still available on YouTube. Also still available are JB Priestley’s ‘When We Are Married’ and ‘An Inspector Calls’, Terence Rattigan’s ‘The Winslow Boy’ and ‘The Browning Version’, plus of course ‘The Trial of Oscar Wilde’ magnificently portrayed by Peter Finch and all his subsequent works such as ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’, ‘Lady Windermere’s Fan’ and ‘An Ideal Husband’.
I have a large collection of DVD’s of British war TV series such as ‘Secret Army’, ‘Colditz’, ‘Enemy at the Door’, Island at War’, ‘We’ll Meet Again’ and ‘Wish Me Luck’ which I started watching in Portugal in January and continued watching during this coronavirus pandemic since returning home, so enough to keep me occupied so far this year. However I’ve little interest in recent films be they British or American, guess it must be an age thing with me.
Several years ago I read with some dread that Johnny Depp had acquired the rights to The Thin Man series of films and was planning on re-making them. Thankfully it hasn’t materialised, so for the time being Nick and Nora Charles are safe.
Classic film series like this should be left alone. I think the originals are copyright free now so can be viewed on one of the many free streaming sites. If you haven’t seen them I suggest you are in for a treat.
Not a movie but a documentary series consisting of 5 episodes, all available on the BBC iplayer now.
Recommended.
GHW, I got your contact form request (it ended up in the junk mail folder) - I'm just responding to urgent requests this week while on holiday but I've renamed the title of 'Movie recommendations' to 'Movie and TV recommendations' in the system database. Unfortunately, I couldn't change the page url as it seemed to cause problems with pages not found so it remains as...
https://diasboro.club/forum/general-discussion/movie-recommendations/
Thanks
Captures the Zeitgeist of today and an excellent example to us all....
Recommended
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000lpv7/the-australian-dream
Hi everyone,
a new documentary called Finding Jack Charlton is released on Monday, it's probably of interest to many on here and well worth watching.
Here's a link to my personal website if you'd like to read a review, in which I not only managed to include reference to our club, but also to avoid mentioning the Dirties. Which if nothing else, made me chuckle.
https://chrishunneysett.uk/2020/11/20/finding-jack-charlton/