Disqus - Latest Comments for Campaspe

Re: The Staying Power of James Thurber

Campaspe — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 12:33:11 -0000

I am a fan as well. The Years With Ross is also hilarious, though I have a vague memory of reading that it angered some New Yorker writers. (But it seems that any writing about the New Yorker is bound to anger some New Yorker writers, doesn't it?)

Re: By the Men who Moil for Gold

Campaspe — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 12:36:14 -0000

Oh my goodness, what memories you have brought back. My father loved Service too and read "Sam McGee" to us many times. Also "The Shooting of Dan McGrew":

These are the simple facts of the case, and I guess I ought to know.
They say that the stranger was crazed with "hooch," and I'm not denying it's so.
I'm not so wise as the lawyer guys, but strictly between us two--
The woman that kissed him and--pinched his poke--was the lady known as Lou.

Re: By the Men who Moil for Gold

Campaspe — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 12:37:33 -0000

Furthermore, Jan. 17 is my birthday, too, and I never knew I shared it with Service. Dad would have been tickled to pieces.

Re: Reality Racism

Campaspe — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 07:58:21 -0000

Wow, this is fascinating. I really hope you post a follow-up on the denouement, when the Mean Girls Get Theirs from a Righteous Public.

Re: Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole (1951)

Campaspe — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 12:53:19 -0000

David: Sterling is so good in this movie, she just rips into her dialogue. The only other thing I remember her in is Caged, as Smoochie (a similar character). In real life she was high-class and intelligent.

Tom, you are absolutely right about that circus downtown ... people posing in front of that ghastly spot like they're at DisneyWorld. I am surprised I didn't think of it, but then again, it pains me even now so perhaps it was just repressed.

Despite my deep love for Film Forum and TCM, count me as someone who misses the Million-Dollar Movie.

Re: Reality Racism

Campaspe — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 12:56:54 -0000

It is interesting how all this ties in perfectly to Ace in the Hole. It is not at all comforting to think Americans aren't alone in seeing cruelty as entertainment.

Re: Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole (1951)

Campaspe — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 09:57:24 -0000

I apologize for my long delay in replying to this! I do think Boot still forms what little moral compass the movie has. Ex: his essential good-eggness is developed even as he "negotiates" salary with the hard-up Tatum: "I pay forty." (or was it fifty? anyway, more than Tatum was asking for.)

Also, the key to Tatum's attack of conscience being real is in the last rites scene. As the doomed Leo says "Bless me Father, for I have sinned," Wilder draws the camera in on Douglas's face, and there is no question in my mind that Douglas is playing the scene as straight-up, gut-wrenching remorse.

Finally, I didn't mean to imply that Wilder held Americans in special contempt (ever heard what he had to say about Germans?) but I do think that the unwashed masses are the real villains of the piece. They are filmed like gargoyles, often from weird angles or from a distance that seems to emphasize Wilder's contempt, like he's holding them up with tweezers. In general I don't consider Wilder misanthropic either, or misogynist for that matter, but in this film it is hard to absolve him of either charge. Hell, that is part of its fascination.

Re: The Motivations of John Ford: Arrowsmith (1931)

Campaspe — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 09:24:07 -0000

Roxstar, Elmer Gantry is an excellent film, both for Shirley & Burt Lancaster but also for Jean Simmons' underrated performance. But my favorite Sinclair Lewis adaptation must be Dodsworth, which I caught up with only last year and blogged about here.

The only Lewis novel I have read is the one my parents happened to have, "It Can't Happen Here," which in high school struck me as overdrawn and unlikely. But now, as I refresh my memory with this review, I am thinking it is probably more relevant now than at the time I was reading.

Re: Operator, Can You Help Me Place This Call: Great Telephone Songs

Campaspe — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 09:31:37 -0000

What? No Switchboard Susan?

First time I picked upthe telephone

I fell in love with your ringing tone

I'm a long distance romancer

I keep on trying till I get an answer ...

The Siren has loved Nick Lowe for lo these many years.

Re: Molly, We Hardly Knew Ye

Campaspe — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 08:43:58 -0000

Thanks for this. It is brutally phrased, but it needed to be said. At the message board where I occasionally hang out, which is a pretty good cross-section of American women, people were discussing this as though it was some sort of national tragedy. Plenty of Marilyn Monroe comparisons, and even (god help us) Jean Harlow. Anyone pointing out that ANS was hardly a loss to the cinematic arts, national dialogue or even to reality TV ran the risk of being shouted down as heartless.

Now mind you, I kinda liked old Anna Nicole. She reminded me of the golddigging showgirls in the Busby Berkeley movies I loved. But even a mild call for a teensy bit of perspective was greeted with remarks like "Some people feel the need to let us all know how superior they are, how they care about 'real
issues.'" "Life is wonderful on my high horse." "Why do poeple insist on doing the 'Well, this death is worse than that death' thing?"

So aside from thinking I won't be posting there much in future, I am thinking something is seriously, seriously messed up here. In the end, your post makes me wonder which came first, the appalling skewed priorities of the American public, or the ludicrous trivialization of the media, especially the news channels. Or are we all merrily going to hell in the same handbasket?

Re: Molly, We Hardly Knew Ye

Campaspe — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 12:48:21 -0000

Tom - not to mention the 130 Iraqis who died Saturday for, in essence, daring to go outside. That news story didn't even make it to Sunday afternoon.

And I don't buy that we care about ANS because she was closer to us or more like us or whatever. You can't care about people who remain all but invisible on our screens. Show some grieving people for more than a 10-second pullback shot, go back to their house and interview them a year later, people will care. You have to see something for longer than the length of an explosion in a video game in order to feel.

But who is willing to do that? As Brendan points out in his comment, the idea that news serves any sort of public-spirited function is today regarded as quaint.

Re: Molly, We Hardly Knew Ye

Campaspe — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 18:10:35 -0000

Slappy, ok, there's a few biographical similarities, although I would argue Monroe married for love, and was the worse for doing so. But the comparison still won't stand. Anna Nicole didn't give a standout performance in All About Eve, The Asphalt Jungle, Some Like It Hot or The Misfits. Hell, Anna didn't even make Gentleman Prefer Blondes or How to Marry a Millionaire, though she seems to have taken the latter title to heart, if not the love-conquers-all theme. I sincerely believe that if Monroe hadn't made movies that remain eminently watchable forty years after her death, she would be a vaguely remembered pop-culture trivia question, like Jayne Mansfield.

Re: Bob Dylan: Spinnin’ Those Cool Records

Campaspe — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 08:08:23 -0000

A friend of mine told me about these shows and I have listened to several. Dylan's incredibly eclectic playlists are a joy, but they also point up why I quit listening to bland, formulaic, grab-the-biggest-audience-share-possible regular radio a long,long time ago.

Re: Marty Cares, and So Does the Siren

Campaspe — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 17:57:54 -0000

Dan, I would agree, except that the blogosphere's two best-reviewed films of the year -- Children of Men and Pan's Labyrinth -- didn't even see their directors nominated. Of the five that were nominated, I have no problem seeing Scorsese win, especially since The Departed is a hugely enjoyable movie. Had it been directed by any number of lesser talents, it might have been hailed as a career-topper. Judging him by his nominated company this year, I think Scorsese honestly deserves it.

King of Comedy has its ardent supporters, but I still feel pretty safe calling Taxi Driver his best.

D.R., when you read about the critical judgments of the past, one thing that strikes you is that people seem to have a hard time predicting which films will last. I think you are on pretty safe ground, though. ;)

Re: Marty Cares, and So Does the Siren

Campaspe — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 20:03:08 -0000

Tom, it is funny you should mention The Last Waltz, because as soon as I posted this I went downstairs and put on The Band's eponymous album. The connection with writing about Scorsese was irresistible.

Re: The Festival of Mediocrity

Campaspe — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 10:35:56 -0000

Gentlemen: Cavalcade over 42nd Street, I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang AND The Private Life of Henry VIII. Mind you, Trouble in Paradise, Scarface and Love Me Tonight weren't even nominated!

Twas ever thus. As for the proliferation of mediocre blogs, I glance at my own pink palace of opinionated-ness and wonder if I should say anything ... but I will anyway. Blogs are kind of self-winnowing. There are so many abandoned blogs littering the Internet like beer cans after a tailgate party.

Re: What Price ‘Info’

Campaspe — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 13:41:38 -0000

This has to be a parody. I mean it HAS to be:

"The entry for the Renaissance in Wikipedia refuses to give enough credit to Christianity."

Mind you, that is the Number Two Example of Bias in Wikipedia.

I smell conspiracy. Someone is trying to make conservatives look, well, silly.

Re: What Price ‘Info’

Campaspe — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 14:48:27 -0000

John -- this looks like a job for Michelle Malkin! No one but Our Michelle could possibly have the assistants and resourcefulness and goshdarned stick-to-itiveness to ferret out just what these nefarious LFAs are putting into this site.

Which reminds me ... I should see if Conservapedia an article on the Japanese internment. I couldn't help noticing that Wikipedia, in its biased way, seemed to cover that event like it was a bad thing.

Re: What Price ‘Info’

Campaspe — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 18:38:11 -0000

Tom, you are so right. I love the Warren Court entry. It "found many new rights not expressly in the U.S. Constitution." Right after that, you get a decision list that includes Griswold v. Connecticut and Brown vs. Board of Education.

And the end of the Copernicus entry, we have this gem:

"To this day, most Protestant countries reject the Copernican theory."

Re: Why? (Real Housewives of Orange County)

Campaspe — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 19:18:49 -0000

Brilliant post. I enjoyed every line. I have not seen this show, but confess that now my curiosity is piqued, just a little.

Re: Rock’s Greatest Covers: Patti Tops the List

Campaspe — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 10:46:51 -0000

Late to this thread, but since Tom started with Van Morrison & Them, I must post my choices: Them's version of "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" and "Turn on Your Lovelight."

Re: Redeeming The Informer

Campaspe — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 10:24:52 -0000

Tom, thanks for adding the YouTube bit, complete with French subtitles. (Much amusement can be had from watching French translations of period slang. The subtitles to "The Maltese Falcon", for example, are a hoot. "Quelle charactere!")

As George Fasel, Lance and even Jim Wolcott all state, Ford was more of a classicist than anything. There is a formal beauty and structure to this film that I don't think another filmmaker could have managed.

M.A., this film is rarely shown as a St. Patrick's Day tribute, most likely because it is, as you note, depressing as hell. One of my private parlor games is "Fantasy Double Feature," and I think this movie would play nicely on a bill with the similarly underrated "Cal," another movie about a doomed Irishman. (Also has a great performance by Helen Mirren.) While it would not be a jolly St. Paddy's evening, it would drive the viewers to drink as surely as "The Quiet Man." "Ah, the stories I could tell ye ... but me throat, me throat!"

Re: Green Beer and English: The Actors and Poets of St. Patrick

Campaspe — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 12:41:23 -0000

Re: Irish loyalty and The Departed ... one thing I didn't touch on in the essay was how common the theme of informing and betrayal is in Irish history, folklore and literature. Goes all the way back to Deirdre (at least).

And a Happy St. Patrick's to you, Mr. Watson. I am celebrating by attending a French movie. (speaking of historic betrayals of the Irish ...)

Re: Meeting Kirk Douglas

Campaspe — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 21:09:32 -0000

Don't forget A Letter to Three Wives (he got the biggest laugh of the picture, when I saw it, by correcting the grammar of a Philistine radio boss). And Two Weeks in Another Town, which film blogger Girish also admires. You can read that one as a sort of sequel to The Bad and the Beautiful.

He is such an intense actor that at times he is almost feral, and he occasionally would overdo it. (He was also famous for driving directors and costars batty.) But I look at the movies we're all listing here, and few actors can boast of such a wide-ranging and superlative filmography.

And kudos to him for still speaking out about the blacklist. There is a worrisome effort to rehabilitate the blacklist these days, and it is good that we still have people who, like Douglas, lived through it and are still willing to remind us of what it was.

Re: Storming the Gates

Campaspe — Tue, 22 May 2007 08:05:16 -0000

Good, measured response here to Schickel. He has earned his bile by extensive writing on film history, but my first reaction to his article was that he clearly doesn't read much on the Web. If I thought Schickel checked his email I would send him some links. Thanks to newspaper cutbacks, there may be more thoughtful, well-informed film critics on the Web than there are in print. Schickel is playing King Canute to the blogging tide, which is a bit ironic considering his early role as a champion of young filmmakers over the more traditional Hollywood fare.

Sean, I also agree with your point about blog posts; rambling is the enemy. My own blogging is a continual struggle to write short, one that I do not always win.

Re: No More Cakes and Ale: Maugham v. The Literati

Campaspe — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 22:11:58 -0000

I just read Cakes and Ale myself last year, and your post brought it back, in all the novel's glittering bitchiness. For a writer, it is simultaneously tonic and terrifying.

Re: Jean-Pierre Melville’s ‘Army of Shadows’

Campaspe — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 17:26:57 -0000

Since I have this on my desk from Netflix, waiting to be seen, I am glad you are leaving the plot unspecified. I was otherwise occupied during its re-release (pregnant) and didn't get to see it. By way of cute coincidence Army of Shadows figures in my Hostel post above. :)

Here is a quote about Melville for you, from Volker Schlondorff:

"He begged us to turn our backs on what he considered to be misguided works like Johnny Guitar, and to look instead to the American classics for inspiration. Biased as he was, he contended that only two--at that time, disdained--directors counted for anything at all; William Wyler and Robert Wise."

Re: ‘You Think I’m Hostile Now’ … Hostel Part II

Campaspe — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 20:36:03 -0000

Dan, I think you were responding here even as I posted my Schlondorff quote on your Melville post. :)

Re: Confession of a Schizophrenic Movie Fan

Campaspe — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 11:09:57 -0000

We really are curiously in sync this week. Over at my place I just posted in brief about a film by Jean Negulesco, a guy who made several movies which I treasure but cannot really defend as cap-A Art. Or even little-a art. It does rather boil down to which sort of cinematic Twinkie you choose to consume.

I do believe, however, that certain types of genre dreck get more respect than others, and that is frequently tied to who enjoys it. The sort of stuff Tarantino favors--grindhouse, slasher, giallo, kung fu, whatever--appeals to the still very male critical establishment, and therefore gets more respect. Whereas the kind of stuff I favor when I want empty movie calories--the lesser-grade women's pictures, Sandra Dee, Baghdad-and-boobs--have less boy-appeal.

Re: ‘You Think I’m Hostile Now’ … Hostel Part II

Campaspe — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 11:16:30 -0000

Dan, our minds are on parallel tracks this week.

Kevin, I love The Seven Samurai too. In the spirit of adventure I would like to say I will watch anything but it isn't true. There are certain pictures I just do not want in my head. One of my favorite bloggers confessed to me that he wished he had never seen Last House on the Left, because now those images would be with him forever, ready to jump into his brain whether he wanted them or not.

Re: ‘You Think I’m Hostile Now’ … Hostel Part II

Campaspe — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 14:35:28 -0000

Yes, the roller-coaster comparison is spot-on. In fact I am tempted to a do a film-blogger survey and see whether enjoying the wilder reaches of horror -- willingness to watch anything, as Kevin says -- correlates with a willingness to ride things that send you hurtling along upside down and far up into the sky. It can't be coincidence that I turn green on Ferris wheels.

Ha, I remember that Sternberg sequence! It is probably the most accurate thing in that movie, historically speaking. Sometimes old movies can surprise you with how chilling they are. There is a scene in The Big Combo (coincidentally, it's on TCM tonight at 8) where Cornel Wilde is tortured that is quite difficult to watch even in 2007.

Re: My DadÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s Letters from WW II

Campaspe — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 10:39:34 -0000

So many of that generation were raised to just get on with it, no matter what life--or their country--demanded of them. Beautiful post. I wish you well this Father's Day.

Re: Father’s Day with John Ford

Campaspe — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 08:40:12 -0000

Ms Peel, I made the same point, about How Green getting unfairly dissed because of beating Citizen Kane, in a post a while back about Best Picture winners. I think a contemporary example is Shakespeare in Love.

Thanks Dan. :)

Viscount, having met you & read your blog many times, I am not surprised you like the film. :) Ford's own politics, as Lance has argued, were not as conservative as some folks like to argue, especially not in a contemporary sense. But looking at the movie as it stands on its own, it is as harsh an indictment of rampaging, unregulated, unaccountable capitalism as you are likely to find in an American film of that era. You see how not only the Morgan family disintegrates, but also the environment of the valley itself. (That may also be due to the avowedly left-wing screenwriter, Philip Dunne.)

Re: 100 Plus 10

Campaspe — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 10:47:40 -0000

These lists are always fun for the discussions they sprak. But I do get irked at how safe and boring the AFI choices continue to be. No Lang, no Lubitsch. Epics, Oscar-winners, adventure stories, some comedies, some musicals (but nothing too fey), crime dramas (but nothing too dark or sleazy). And MALE. God is it male. And I am not talking about the directors. So few women's pictures, so little of anything that doesn't appeal to a very straight he-man sensibility.

I posted more objections at my place too.

Re: Barbara Stanwyck: The Professional’s Professional

Campaspe — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 16:55:50 -0000

It is wonderful to see her finally get her due. To me, Stanwyck's voice retained a hint of Brooklyn no matter what she was playing, but unlike fellow Brooklynite Susan Hayward it never intruded on the character.

There is no question that Double Indemnity was her peak, but the reason I like her as Martha Ivers is that she gets to play the backstory in that one. You know why Martha is the way she is and Stanwyck fleshes her out. Whereas Phyllis Dietrichson is just rotten to the core--deliciously, wondrously so, but not as layered a woman.

Re: Barbara Stanwyck: The Professional’s Professional

Campaspe — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:04:19 -0000

Ah, The Furies is great, and missing from DVD, like The Bitter Tea of General Yen, which probably ranks No. 1 on the list of titles Stanwyck fans want to see on DVD. I have not seen Night Nurse; here I must admit that my knowledge of Stanwyck's earliest work is pretty spotty.

Re: Barbara Stanwyck: The Professional’s Professional

Campaspe — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:43:26 -0000

That's one of the few Sirks I haven't seen, and I am a huge Sirk fan. Remember the Night is such a good movie. I wrote it up right before Christmas and discovered that several other bloggers had, too. I think we all saw it on TCM. My favorite Stanwyck moment in that one: the way her face changes from eager nostalgia to apprehension, as they drive through her old town.

Re: Deliver Us From De Palma

Campaspe — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 20:12:31 -0000

Thank you very much, Dan.

So, are you saying Eli might go for it? ;)

Re: Deliver Us From De Palma

Campaspe — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 10:02:55 -0000

The closest Hitch came was having Doris Day sing Que Sera, Sera in The Man Who Knew Too Much. In one scene she sings it like a dirge. I

Re: Deliver Us From De Palma

Campaspe — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 16:10:22 -0000

Shamus, I don't know. One time at my workplace my colleagues staged an intervention: they took away my WSJ editorial page. 'You do not need to be reading that, hon.' Maybe I need a 12-step program.

I do like The Fury but rarely list it because Amy Irving irritates me, for reasons I can't completely explain.

Re: Comedy in Character

Campaspe — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 09:09:31 -0000

Jim, I thought of Demarest and cut him at the last minute, but you have me thoroughly chastened. His delivery of Sturges' line on daughters in Morgan's Creek alone should have earned him a spot.

Dan, I never saw F Troop but I am sure Horton earned the classic actor's epitaph: "darling, you're the best thing in it."

Re: “A Perfect Gentleman Through It All”: Roy Scheider, 1932-2008

Campaspe — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 18:51:38 -0000

Someone was gently rebuking me for saying I wanted more movies from Scheider, seeing as how he was 75 years old. But I am greedy that way, like all fans. I wanted another movie out of 90-year-old Ingmar Bergman. And Scheider never really got his due. I wanted a great swan song for him.

Re: Happy Birthday, Joan

Campaspe — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:32:52 -0000

Thanks for the kind words. She was definitely a star who required a good director but in the right hands she could be quite a presence.

As for the language, yes, it's something isn't it? but the "rode through the studio" remark was too fabulous not to repeat. :D

Re: Happy Birthday, Joan

Campaspe — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 15:03:27 -0000

Dan, there were a good many straight men who loved her a lot, including Gable and Tracy as well as Mankiewicz, so you have very good company.

As for Grand Hotel, I always find it fabulous. Garbo strikes some people as too dramatic but she's playing a very self-dramatizing part. The one thing the movie can't do is make her LOOK like a ballerina, though.

Re: Happy Birthday, Joan

Campaspe — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:03:27 -0000

Dan, if you go over to The Ballerina Gallery, which is a fantastic site, you can see what ballerinas looked like in the 1930s by looking at someone like Ulanova. In a nutshell: not the teensy sylphs of Balanchine's NYCB, but not Garbo either. And it's more than physical typing, there's a very peculiar gait and rhythm to the way a classical ballerina moves that Garbo just doesn't have. But she's Garbo, and that ain't hay.

MaryC, I had drinks last night with a friend who reacted the same way you did to the excerpt, but for a slightly different reason. She thought Cathy's emphasis on how wonderful everything was became just a leetle too repetitious. I don't think we'll ever know for sure what childhood was like chez Crawford, but I don't have much trouble saying I am glad she wasn't MY mother. But I did lose patience with Christina when she suggested a few years ago that Joan might have murdered one of her husbands. It was like, enough already. And over the years it's become plain that a lot of stars were probably dreadful parents--Bing Crosby comes to mind--but that isn't ALL the general public knows about them. I'd just like to see the good Joan work come more to the forefront.

Re: Being A Woman and Cheap Sentiment: Davis at 100

Campaspe — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 10:46:25 -0000

I still think Davis would have made the definitive Martha, good though Taylor is in the movie.

It's true, recommending a Davis movie is a breeze as so many have held up remarkably well. I have noticed more people mentioning Mr. Skeffington of late--that's a great one, Davis playing a legendary beauty, which she was not. But you watch the movie convinced that she is, she was that good an actress.

Re: Hollywood’s Censor

Campaspe — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:39:07 -0000

Thanks so much for this thoughtful response. The Celluloid Closet was a thunderclap for me when I read it more than a decade ago, and made me look in particular at character actors in a far different way. In the Doherty book he quotes from Breen's stern warnings about "pansy" characters or connotations, so it is always interesting when I come scenes that have decidedly forbidden overtones, such as the bar in "Crossfire."

It's only in the past decade or so that so-called pre-code films have become widely available and I agree, the more I see of the era the more fascinated I become.

Re: The Titanic in Three Movies

Campaspe — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 22:12:59 -0000

Billy Zane's whole character should have been given the heave-ho. There just wasn't anything he added to the movie. I guess the iceberg wasn't enough of a villain for Cameron. I think the movie works as romance and spectacle and I liked the way Cameron tried simultaneously to de-bunk and enshrine myths. But yeah, not a wholly good movie, just an unevenly good movie.

Re: The Titanic in Three Movies

Campaspe — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 11:20:58 -0000

You're the 2nd person to mention the Unsinkable Molly Brown, which I liked okay when it wasn't focused on the ship but found to be in gruesomely poor taste when it moved on to the Titanic. Do you remember Titanic: The Musical? I do, although I didn't see it.

I agree with your points about the big stuff--and thank you for reminding me of that superb pullback shot. With the exception of Zane and Fisher (both given impossible parts) I don't think the acting's bad at all. In acting class at dear old Stella Adler they would talk about how an actor has to "give it away;" well, Leo in particular hasn't given it away at all since his very open, joyous performance in Titanic. And Kate has to play a modern gal in period dress and acquits herself very well, I think.

We agree, however, about Kathy Bates. If she has given a bad performance I haven't seen it.

As for Celine Dion, she's heard only over the closing credits, thank GOD. Caterwauling is le mot juste. Sometimes I wonder if Dion doesn't deserve a large share of blame for the poor regard the movie is held in. The song was so massive and it's indefensibly bad, and despite the fact that the caterwauling is never heard during the running time it's the first thing people remember. Cameron didn't want a song in the movie at first and he should have stuck by that, I think.

Re: The Titanic in Three Movies

Campaspe — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 11:58:14 -0000

Dan, you have made my week, thank you. If you can take this much disaster I recommend viewing NTR again just before you see what one commenter at my place just called "Cameron's overblown bathtub toy." It points up what Cameron gets wrong, but you can also see Cameron having a conversation with the earlier film's notions of class and survivor guilt--not to mention its visual vocabulary.

As for Wagner, no, no love at all. Now that I think of it, he did cross my mind for my earlier list of what Wolcott called "Hollywooden" but I left him off, in part because I want to go easy on the legends still with us, even if they are far from favorites of mine. One thing that always befuddled me about Wagner, though, was the incredible ability he had to get the greatest of Hollywood's female stars to do these usually bad late-period TV movies with him. Did he have an incredible collection of naked photos, or what?

Re: O Youth and Beauty

Campaspe — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 21:12:19 -0000

Oh Lance how I love your literary posts. I just ate this one up. So well written, so thoughtful. It makes me want to re-read the Cheever stories, despite his loathesomeness, and then pick up some John O'Hara.

Re: blog.champura.com - Yes Tom, "Sunrise" was the first best picture

Campaspe — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 13:13:27 -0000

I followed your link here from Mr. O'Neil's post, because I liked your arguments there. I like them here as well. I agree with your general point, of course--you need not like a movie to appreciate its significance. There are several important movies that I personally disliked, such as 2001. But I'd be a fool not to acknowledge that movie's inventiveness and influence.

One point of disagreement, though. I think one thing (out of many) that O'Neil gets wrong is that what he is dismissing as melodramatic or "hammy" acting is just another form of performance. Realism is an acting style like any other and there's no reason to consider it the only valid way to approach the art. I'd argue that the performances in Sunrise (as well as the other great films made in the very great year 1927) are not melodramatic at all, if you consider melodrama to be a story where the high-pitched plot is taking precedence over character development. Character is all Sunrise has, the plot is deliberately kept as classically simple as possible. Rather, the acting is Romantic, presentational, deliberately done at a heightened emotional pitch. To me Gaynor is a wonder in Sunrise. To attach the adjective "schmaltzy" to her performance hurts my heart. Murnau was a genius and I am convinced he could have gotten any sort of acting out of the three main characters that he wanted. He got the performances that the film needed.

I hope you don't mind my stopping by to share my rather long-winded thoughts, as I plan to continue to read your blog.

Re: blog.champura.com - Yes Tom, "Sunrise" was the first best picture

Campaspe — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:12:23 -0000

Fable is the perfect word for Sunrise. And I agree, trying to convince O'Neil of the merits of the performances was a secondary issue. I was and remain astonished that he couldn't back down enough even to acknowledge the film's influence. But it seems clear to me that his grasp of film history is tenuous.