Posted on 08/02/2012 7:46:04 AM PDT by OneVike
Well, I’ll have to admit that my evidence is no more compelling that Wikipedia, which another poster suggested I read concerning Stewart. There are multiple sites on the interweb that relate a story pertaining to the fact that while filming “Destry Rides Again”, Stewart, during an extramarital affair, impregnated, and then coerced, Marlene Dietrich to have a clinical abortion for their careers sake.
2001 Space Odyssey: Please. Not unless you took a whole lot of acid and watched in the theaters in the 60s. Sure it captured the wonders of space travel and future potential of computers but the silly monolith creation story and the 15+ minute acid trip light show and floating baby makes watching the whole movie painful.
Apocalypse Now: More pretentious crap. Excluding the Napalm in the morning scene everything about this movie was beyond ridiculous. An Army Colonel that forms a cult that does nothing but dance around all day and kill people and then just gives up and lets himself be killed is just a beyond stupid premise. It is also the first movie to portray American soldiers as nothing but sexed crazed psychopathic killers.
With that said, Army of Darkness should be in the top ten
Stewart wasn’t even married yet in 1939, when “Destry” was filmed. That sounds like crap. Heaven knows there’s a lot of well-known scandals/secrets about Hollywood and its folk, but there does seem to a huge wave of “made-up” garbage, especially since the internet era started.
Fine, you think he’s great. As far as I’m concerned Hollywood, except for the commerce it has generated, is a Hell hole, always has been, always will be. IMO the whole place isn’t worth the sweat from between my thighs. If Stewart was a great man, it wasn’t anything he did in the motion pictures that caused it.
For a real shouldabeen abortion, see (no don't see!) the 1940s version of Pride and Prejudice with Greer Garson and (I think) Lawrence Olivier. It's awful. Lady Catherine is a sweet old lady who only wants what's best for her dear nephew. From there it deteriorates.
If you haven't seen the Anthony Hopkins version of War and Peace, run--do not walk--to the nearest movierentplace and get it. Get lots of popcorn. No. Get several excellent bottles of excellent wine and/or some good Russian vodka and caviar, have your wife sit next to you on the sofa, and get ready for one of the most wonderful movie experiences of your life. When you have finished watching all 12 or 15 or so episodes (you might want some beef stroganoff for dinner between some of the episodes), read (or re-read) the book. Then email me and let me know how it went.
~S
For a real shouldabeen abortion, see (no don't see!) the 1940s version of Pride and Prejudice with Greer Garson and (I think) Lawrence Olivier. It's awful. Lady Catherine is a sweet old lady who only wants what's best for her dear nephew. From there it deteriorates.
If you haven't seen the Anthony Hopkins version of War and Peace, run--do not walk--to the nearest movierentplace and get it. Get lots of popcorn. No. Get several excellent bottles of excellent wine and/or some good Russian vodka and caviar, have your wife sit next to you on the sofa, and get ready for one of the most wonderful movie experiences of your life. When you have finished watching all 12 or 15 or so episodes (you might want some beef stroganoff for dinner between some of the episodes), read (or re-read) the book. Then email me and let me know how it went.
~S
Apply some context. Hollywood was indeed ALWAYS tilted towards moral degeneracy compared to the rest of the country. But compared to the current deviant cultural state-of-affairs across all fifty states here in 2012, Hollywood in the 1930s/40s/50s would actually be pretty tame! I spent some time out there a few decades ago, and got to meet and know some of those old-timers, and frankly, they were a heck of a lot more conservative and more guided by morality than most would expect.
But my main point is that a whole lot of ludicrous garbage has been popping up on the internet in regards to now-dead celebrities. And a lot of this stuff gets made up and promulgated by liberal freaks and queers who seem to have a mania for projecting their sleazy minds onto historical figures, like some kind of weird psychological need to bring a moral-relativist attitude onto past eras, by dragging down others.
Any patriot who can get through that incredible film without crying (at least twice) is a better man than I. And Teresa Wright is mesmerizing.
Strangers on a Train, The 39 Steps, North by Northwest and Psycho are all better. The last third of Vertigo is sleep-inducing and obvious. Any fool knew where it was headed.
All I can say is I WANT TWO HOURS OF MY LIFE BACK, wasted on this piece of European dreck!
Another thing...imagine Vertigo without the soundtrack and Saul Bass titles, Godfather without the musical score, 2001 without Richard Strauss' waltzes. Those 3 would be nowhere. "Best Years" had NONE of that, and still is awesome.
I’m responding only to be argumentative, but “Fatty” Arbuckle killed a woman in the silent era and if things were so moral back then why were the Hayes codes instituted? Wasn’t it because the viewing public was fed up with the immorality in motion pictures and was hitting Hollywood in the pocketbook by not patronizing the filth it was producing?
Arbuckle didn’t kill anyone. That was one of the biggest examples of yellow journalism in the country’s history. Now, the relatively concurrent scandal involving Mary Miles Minter was indeed a genuine scandal, and gave the industry a black eye.
But yeah, in the early-30s, there was some increasing raciness in films, and with the combination of the various states each having their censor boards with varying standards, along with the Legion of Decency, it made sense for the industry to go for the uniformity of the Hayes code. But I don’t think it was so much that Hollywood was being hit in the pocketbook, as the Depression years of 1932-33 were actually pretty profitable for the studios.
Anyway, gee whiz, I never remotely argued that Hollywood was some kind of moral mecca. Quite the opposite. Only that it’s not really accurate to think of it as existing on the same level of abject deviancy as what we see now in 2012, when the whole culture is now awash in filth and absolutely zero moral standards. Remember also, in the 20s/30s/40s, most of the people in Hollywood gravitated there from mid-America, and were more apt to maintain at least some of those values. Later on, the industry became vastly more populated by lefties from NY/Broadway and home-grown CA hippie-scum, who had HORRID moral values. That’s when the big difference started occuring.
Vertigo and North by Northwest, two of the best by Hitchcock.
Citizen Kane? Good story line but weird production.
Apocalypse Now’s main problem began when some schmuck said, “ooh, Heart of Darkness” is such a good story! And, hey! Vietnam films are all the rage right now!”. Sometimes you put two things together and do NOT get a peanut butter cup.
OK, I'll have to add War and Peace with Anthony Hopkins to my list. With a recommendation like that, I've gotta see it.
Steven Spielberg called “The Searchers” (#7 on this list) the greatest film, clarifying it after his interviewer asked him if he just meant in the western movie genre. I’ve never seen “Citizen Kane” because Orson Welles always came across as a pompous ass, and the movie was merely groundbreaking in its (over)use of compositing images the old-fashioned analog way.
I’m surprised that “Eating Raoul” isn’t on this list...
Really. Can’t believe they voted The Godfather and part II so low. And where is Gone With The Wind?
As for cinematic innovation, Wells was a master with Citizen Kane.
Hitchcock topic.
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