re: YouTube Pick Of The Day

Star at the right of your post.

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Star at the right of your post.

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Aha! Thanks! Is that something new? I thought in the past I clicked on something that said "Bookmark this thread."

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Have you seen Hell Is For Heroes?

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I have, but not in a long time. Guess I'll have to add it to the queue.

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Aha! Thanks! Is that something new? I thought in the past I clicked on something that said "Bookmark this thread."

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Correct. That was then, this is now. It's a new feature.

Away From it All

Heartwarming travelogue

Bookmarking the shite out of this thread. Keep it up

Lol at thread title adjustment

Are they arguing about which of them is more overrated?

The Great Gatsby (1949)




By 1949 F. Scott Fitzgerald had pretty much been completely forgotten, an unwanted relic of the frivolous Roaring '20s. As it happened, Paramount was desperately searching for a vehicle to suit their top star Alan Ladd, and discovered they owned the rights to something called The Great Gatsby, having filmed the novel before as a silent. Since the book dealt with bootlegging and gangsters (kinda), the studio figgered it could provide a role for Ladd as well as exploit the increasing postwar nostalgia for the carefree and innocent Twenties (every generation thinks the previous one was carefree and innocent).

So this film version of TGG has been filtered through Hollywood's standard noir gangster structure, in the same way the '49 version of All The King's Men was. As a result it's not completely faithful to the book -- at one point Gatsby is shown shooting a guy from a moving car! But it's much better as a movie than the Redford version, and I shudder to even think what Baz has done to Scott, the poor dumb son of a bitch.

IMO it's Ladd's best performance (and that includes Shane). The noir look (photography, art direction) is very good. And best of all, there's no rap.


The eyes have it



Confrontation at the Plaza hotel



Publicity photo intended to make people think TGG was a gangster movie (also note Ladd wearing fedora and trenchcoat in the poster)



A really, really weird publicity photo




Special extra added bonus addition:

The Trailer for the silent 1926 version

Unfortunately the film itself is lost. The trailer is the only surviving footage.

Interesting to see how the material was filmed in the era it was written.

LINK

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The great Italian poster artist Anselmo Ballester, who worked for more than half a century, has more breathtaking designs than I can encompass in one single post

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When I asked Dave Kehr, author of the Museum of Modern Art’s invaluable 2003 book Italian Film Posters and an avid collector himself, about Ballester I knew I was onto a good thing when he called him “for my money, the greatest movie poster artist of all time.”

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Under contract to Columbia, the studio for whom Rita Hayworth was the biggest star in the 1940s, Ballester got to design many of Hayworth’s posters. As Kehr writes, “Ballester’s Hayworth is an icon of joy and sensuality—head thrown back, red hair streaming, captured in a swirl of motion.” That is particularly true of the poster for Affair in Trinidad (1952), in which a vibrant, devil-may-care Hayworth, bursting out of the poster’s frame, laughs in the face of Glenn Ford’s monochrome brutality.

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Ballester's use of color is often very impressive:
















Anselmo Ballester (1897-1974)

In memory of Jean Stapleton:

Justice For All -- the never aired pilot for All In The Family (1968)

This long lost pilot was rediscovered in 2009. Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton are Archie and Edith Justice, while different actors play Richard (not Mike), Gloria, and Lionel.

As much as I hate to say it, this does make you long for Rob Reiner. The TV series Lionel was much better as well.

This starts very slowly, but after an awkward first scene Archie and Edith show up, and it begins to resemble All In The Family -- although the character of Edith is a bit less naive here than in the series.






Those Were The Days -- the second unaired pilot for All In The Family (1969)

This was lost for decades until unearthed in the late '90s. Once again different actors play the younger roles. The actor playing "Meathead" is especially miscast -- he seems more like a working class lout than Archie does.