Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-01-18 (Saturday)

On 1/19/2025 12:14 PM, anim8rfsk wrote:

Arthur Lipscomb <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:

On 1/19/2025 9:10 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:

Yesterday was 1) football, and 2) streaming TV series. I barely got to
soaps:

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What did you watch?
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I decided to watch movies from the 1940s by watching:
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His Girl Friday (4K disc) 1940 comedy directed by Howard Hawks and
starring Cary Grant as a newspaper editor who cooks up a scheme to trick
his ex-wife (Rosalind Russell) to continue working at his newspaper
instead of running off to get married to Ralph Bellamy.  Between running
cons on Russell, Grant keeps framing Belamy for minor crimes.  In the
backdrop of all of this Russell is investigating an upcoming execution
which is politically motivated due to the killer (who may be mentally
incompetent) shooting a Black police officer and the governor needing
the Black vote to get reelected not stopping the execution.  I found the
humor for 1940 to be pretty good.  At one point I had to rewind it back
to confirm what I heard.  Grant's character is talking to someone about
Bellamy's character and is asked, what does he look like.  Grant says,
he looks like that guy from the movies, Ralph Bellamy.  Now I recognized
Bellamy's name in the credits because he starred in "Trading Places,"
but I didn't know he was famous enough that you could make a joke about
him in 1940.  This is one of those old movies with lots of fast talking,
and people talking over each other.  Even with subtitles it was hard to
follow the dialogue at times.  I never saw this movie (or heard of it)
before now.  But it's another movie in one of the 4K box sets I own.
And I'm determined to watch all the movies in those box sets.  Overall,
it wasn't bad.  And today I plan to finally watch the rest of the movies
(dramas and romantic comedies) in the set that I haven't gotten around
to yet.

 I saw this for the first time sometime in the last year probably on TCM.
But I can’t remember more than the first half hour or so of it.
 

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Casablanca 1942 (4K disc) - The classic movie starring Humphrey Bogart
as an American nightclub owner in German occupied Casablanca during
WWII.  Bogart gets torn between helping his former lover and staying out
of the way of the Nazis.  Probably the most shocking thing about this
movie was the discovery that there was gambling taking place in Rick's
nightclub.  This movie is not part of any box set.  I just happen to
like the movie so I bought it.  And now I had a good excuse to watch it.
  This was my first time watching this disc and as I put the disc in, I
was hoping there would be a commentary, and it turns out there is a
commentary, two in fact, with one being from Roger Ebert.  Ebert does
great film commentaries and this was no exception.  He gave an in-depth
commentary about the making of the movie and all the historic events
that was taking place at the time the movie was made. He talked a lot
about the production code of the time and what was and wasn't censored
as a result.  He said Warners were very anti-Nazi, before being
anti-Nazi was fashionable.  And almost the entire cast and all the
extras were made up of real refugees from Nazi Germany (or invaded
countries) and in the scene where the nightclub patrons sing to drown
out the Nazis, the tears in the extra's eyes were real.
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 I love this movie.

One of the first things Ebert said on the commentary is everybody loves this movie.  Even people who don't like old black and white movies like it.
  The great love of my life dumped me for a guy named

Victor and against all odds we somehow all ended up being friends.
 I first saw it in a revival theater I was doing the advertising for on a
double bill with Play It Again, Sam.  They would run them together, so the
end of Casablanca became the beginning of Play It Again, Sam as one big
continuous movie.
 

Isn't that a Woody Allen comedy?  Checking...Yes, it is a Woody Allen comedy.  Although I just know the name, I don't think I ever watched it before.

I was going to try to squeeze in "The Maltese Falcon" before watching
Casablanca, but when I went to watch it I discovered it wasn't available
to stream for free on any of the usual streaming channels. Oh well.  I
didn't really have time to watch it anyway.

 I think I have all of these stored on the DVR that I no longer have access
to.  A great film. Don’t bother with the earlier versions, except as
curiosity.
 

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The Big Sleep (TCM) 1946 directed by Howard Hawks. The movie stars
Humphrey Bogart as a detective hired to look into a blackmail scheme.  I
saw this once before but didn't remember it all that well.  I had the
movie sitting on my DVR for over a year.  It would have ended up getting
deleted unwatched if I didn't have Casablanca to pair it with.  That
plus it also had the same director of "His Girl Friday" made me want to
watch it again.  I didn't care much for it.

 Really? I love this movie. Who killed the chauffeur?
 

I have no idea.  I think I stopped trying to follow the plot and zoned out about half way through.
Although one thing I noticed was in the "Casablanca" commentary Ebert talked a lot about how short Bogart is and the various tricks they used to make him appear taller than his costar, while in this movie it's almost a running gag the various comments about how short Bogart is.

The cab driver (an uncredited Joy Barlow) and the bookstore clerk (an
unrecognizable Dorothy Malone!) are worth the price of admission all by
themselves.