mystery meat's movieverse

Let's talk Aguachile Alley

Postby mystery meat » Sun Nov 25, 2018 1:40 am

following in merceil and madness&chaos' footsteps

thread rules: ur really pushing it if you talk about movies made after the early 70s. we're all about that old shit in here for the most part. as bradley cooper once said in A Star is Born about should we let the old ways dies, this thread is a safe haven from postmodern z-grade shlock-horror drive-in arthouse-cynical camp-kitsch reagan-mallstream aesthetics, all of which is just a little too much for us oldtimers. we value Classical Narrative Storytelling Virtue, Precision of Camera Movement, Theatrical Virtuosity. experimental avant garde shit providing unique perspectives on Old Hollywood as a subject is more than welcome tho, or current shit with echoes of the ancient. you guys seen Histoire(s) du Cinema? so good. also Old Hollywood goss is always interesting and very encouraged.

i'm gonna update this thread every once in awhile digging for that obscuro hollywood gold and sharing my thoughts. i'm also buzzed on cinema from uk, italy, japan and the 'cassical' french pre-60s cinema that the new wave kinda obnoxiously eclipsed.

yeah ok i think that's it, have fun folks

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ANGEL | Paramount | Ernst Lubitsch | Marlene Dietrich / Herbert Marshall / Mervyn Douglas | 1937

i'm trying to use my public library as a resource for newer studio flicks i really dont otherwise have easy access to. i was pleasantly surprised to find a Universal Vault installment -- a criminally undersung Lubitsch (even Bluebeard's 8th Wife is getting canonized at this point ffs) that's basically his last gasp of the true Paramount cynical-continental Oscar Wilde-adjacent taboo-flouting barbed wit-fest 'Lubitsch Touch' mode. his MGM work would continue the wit and the elegance and the layered dramatic ironies and fascination with True Charisma but never again would it have that distinctly Paramount production value and facility for truly pointed comedic filmmaking. Angel has that Design for Living Lust Triangle but it's less frivolous in that it uses its witty continental charisma-play as a prism thru which to view an ideal marriage in jeopardy. why is it in jeopardy? because the fucked specter of Duty and Official Business get in the way of Romance! Dietrich is unapologetically sexual and the film has super mature and healthy assumptions about sex and marriage and conflict-resolution than basically any other Hollywood film of the era imo. like Cukor in Holiday and Renoir in Rules of the Game, allots every character their respective reasons and motivations and knots them together into true suspense! true conflict! a tensely teetering deadlocked stalemate that's gonna cave in at any moment and Dietrich and Douglas and Marshall are fucking gods of swank and suave and personality-magnetism. the camera is also super fuckin smooth. really bowled me over fellas.
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Postby Merciel » Sun Nov 25, 2018 2:17 am

post for purposes of following this thread

I'm really happy to see you doing one, as I have always wondered what your thoughts on your own selections would be :)
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Postby palmer eldritch » Sun Nov 25, 2018 2:19 am

sick
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Postby madness and chaos » Sun Nov 25, 2018 2:48 am

ily mystery meat
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Postby naturemorte » Sun Nov 25, 2018 3:19 am

These threads are good
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Postby Spoilt Victorian Child » Sun Nov 25, 2018 3:37 am

palmer eldritch wrote:sick

Agreed. I will probably steal a bunch of these!

Hard to believe I overlooked Angel. I definitely prefer Paramount Lubitsch to MGM Lubitsch, and I see it even has my old friend Edward Everett Horton.
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Postby Plainsong » Sun Nov 25, 2018 3:41 am

This is my kind of thread. Love reading your thoughts about movies mystery meat.
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Postby Plainsong » Sun Nov 25, 2018 3:46 am

Will definitely watch Angel pretty soon, always found it intriguing purely because of the casting.
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Postby Plainsong » Sun Nov 25, 2018 3:50 am

hey nathan wrote:
Plainsong wrote:Will definitely watch The Shopworn Angel pretty soon, always found it intriguing purely because hey nathan reccd it weeks ago

I haven't been able to find a torrent of it. But i'll watch as soon as I can. :)
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Postby madness and chaos » Sun Nov 25, 2018 3:55 am

Plainsong wrote:
hey nathan wrote:
Plainsong wrote:Will definitely watch The Shopworn Angel pretty soon, always found it intriguing purely because hey nathan reccd it weeks ago

I haven't been able to find a torrent of it. But i'll watch as soon as I can. :)


i'll db it in just a minute
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Postby Plainsong » Sun Nov 25, 2018 4:10 am

madness and chaos wrote:
Plainsong wrote:
hey nathan wrote:
Plainsong wrote:Will definitely watch The Shopworn Angel pretty soon, always found it intriguing purely because hey nathan reccd it weeks ago

I haven't been able to find a torrent of it. But i'll watch as soon as I can. :)


i'll db it in just a minute

Thanks madness and chaos.
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Postby Plainsong » Sun Nov 25, 2018 6:11 am

hey nathan wrote:
Plainsong wrote:Will definitely watch The Shopworn Angel pretty soon, always found it intriguing purely because hey nathan reccd it weeks ago

Just watched it and really loved it. Thanks for the rec hey nathan. Sorry it took me ages to watch it.
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Postby madness and chaos » Sun Nov 25, 2018 6:15 am

damn, you found it elsewhere. I just db it. Maybe others will wanna watch
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Postby Plainsong » Sun Nov 25, 2018 6:18 am

madness and chaos wrote:damn, you found it elsewhere. I just db it. Maybe others will wanna watch

No worries. I just downloaded it, i'll definitely re watch it. Thanks again.
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Postby inmate » Sun Nov 25, 2018 11:51 am

i very much look forward to following this thread
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Postby mystery meat » Sun Nov 25, 2018 9:20 pm

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SCATTERED CLOUDS | Toho | Mikio Naruse | Yûzô Kayama / Yôko Tsukasa | 1967

balmy Sirk- or late Daves-adjacent story about two characters reluctantly bound together in the sadness of loss, one via guilt and one via grief. they fall in love kinda, but it's that frosty secretive "people will talk" love. no paranoia or melodrama or danger, just the kinda frigid gossip of a Henry James novel. it's a "meet me by the lakeside on the downlow at the appointed time" kinda flick. Naruse is probably the auteurist master of rendering faintly lonely restaurant meetings. there's lots of relocation-as-hibernation-as-moral/emotional-regeneration, and also jazz piano! Daisuke Katô, the Guy Kibbee of Japanese cinema, is bluster-gregarious until he's a straight-up monster. hooray for masterpiece swansongs!
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Postby aububs » Mon Nov 26, 2018 11:49 am

p-p-p-post
astonishing vigils
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Postby iacus » Mon Nov 26, 2018 2:51 pm



this scene blew my mind when I saw it a few weeks ago
(there was a hyperbole)
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Postby mellowgold » Mon Nov 26, 2018 3:03 pm

there are not enough hours in the day!!!!
wimbledon, strawberries, bubbles, please protect me. happy midsumma, hope you spend it in your heart, everyone is there. bitch.
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Postby mystery meat » Mon Nov 26, 2018 4:26 pm

damn i gotta re-watch The Clock

Vincente Minnelli is the patron saint of this thread
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Postby Plainsong » Thu Nov 29, 2018 12:01 pm

Scattered Clouds is great. It's up there with Street Of Shame for me in terms of great swansongs.
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Postby haddonfield » Thu Nov 29, 2018 2:15 pm

In a classical Hollywood headspace right now.

I’ve only seen two Minnellis, St Louis and Some Came Running, and both were straight 10/10s so I really need to dig in more
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Postby mystery meat » Thu Nov 29, 2018 2:39 pm

that's the posts i like to hear haddonfield

St. Louis is god-tier 40s Freed Unit MGM Technicolor musical lavishness. for more of same from Minnelli, you gotta check out The Pirate and Yolanda and the Thief

Some Came Running is god-tier mid-50s widescreen melodrama lavishness. for more of same you gotta check out Home from the Hill, The Cobweb, and the Kirk Douglas tortured artist trilogy (Bad and the Beautiful, Lust for Life, Two Weeks in Another Town)
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Postby mystery meat » Mon Dec 03, 2018 10:34 am

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A MODERN MUSKETEER | Douglas Fairbanks | Allan Dwan | 1917

this is a movie to watch for Fairbanks doing cool cartwheels and handsprings and furniture-jumping stunts. he's this midwestern dude whose mom did nothing but read Three Musketeers while pregnant and so he's basically D'Artagnan reincarnated. like most silent movies, there's a love triangle pitting dashing Fairbanks against some materialistic stuffed shirt in pursuit of a woman with minimal agency, and it gets more :? when an outlaw Indian chief has designs on her too. it's a lot of the ingredients of rugged pioneer silent cinema -- dumb and problematic but also kinetic and pictorially gorgeous -- though not quite top-tier Fairbanks, or top-tier Dwan for that matter. but it's certainly better than Dwan's 1939 Three Musketeers starring Don Ameche and the Ritz Brothers, which is an abomination. also apparently Victor Fleming assisted on cinematography for this picture, that's the kinda trivia i live for.
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Postby Spoilt Victorian Child » Mon Dec 03, 2018 2:36 pm

I liked Angel a lot, though it was definitely more in the mold of Ninotchka than say Trouble in Paradise, in terms of balancing humor and romance. Still the central relationship (between Dietrich and Marshall, I guess to clarify) is genuinely fascinating; it feels both unusually realistic and also the sort of thing that doesn't exist outside of a Lubitsch film. Which I guess is a trick he manages pretty consistently. Anyway they were both great, and it's always good to see Melvyn Douglas reprising his role as "less-charming William Powell." The servants are very funny but their absence from the final third makes them feel kind of tacked-on in retrospect.
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Postby mascotte » Mon Dec 03, 2018 2:38 pm

bookmarked
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Postby mystery meat » Mon Dec 03, 2018 3:08 pm

1953 Salome is at the top of my queue for Laughton completism! gotta check it out
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Postby mystery meat » Mon Dec 03, 2018 5:42 pm

lmao
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Postby mystery meat » Mon Dec 03, 2018 5:54 pm

i gotta hurry up and finish Stanwyck first tho

1930 Ladies of Leisure
1931 Illicit
1931 The Miracle Woman
1931 Night Nurse
1932 Forbidden
1932 So Big!
1932 The Purchase Price
1933 The Bitter Tea of General Yen
1933 Ladies They Talk About
1933 Baby Face
1934 The Secret Bride
1935 Annie Oakley
1936 The Plough and the Stars
1937 Internes Can't Take Money
1937 Stella Dallas
1938 Always Goodbye
1939 Union Pacific
1939 Golden Boy
1940 Remember the Night
1941 The Lady Eve
1941 Meet John Doe
1941 Ball of Fire
1942 The Great Man's Lady
1943 Lady of Burlesque
1944 Double Indemnity
1945 Christmas in Connecticut
1946 The Bride Wore Boots
1946 The Strange Love of Martha Ivers
1947 The Other Love
1947 Cry Wolf
1948 Sorry, Wrong Number
1949 The Lady Gambles
1949 East Side, West Side
1950 The File on Thelma Jordon
1950 No Man of Her Own
1950 The Furies
1950 To Please a Lady
1952 Clash By Night
1953 Jeopardy
1953 Titanic
1953 All I Desire
1953 Blowing Wild
1954 Executive Suite
1954 Cattle Queen of Montana
1955 Escape to Burma
1956 There's Always Tomorrow
1957 Forty Guns
1962 Walk on the Wild Side

that's only like half her movies :x
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Postby OKterrific » Mon Dec 03, 2018 6:04 pm

I had that feeling looking at Chang Cheh's filmography the other day like, I'll never see all of them but there'll always be a new one to watch
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