Preminger/Fuller research

“Fallen Angel” is such garbage.  Ugh.

Dana Andrews’ lines were all canned, and Linda Darnell is a horrible actress.  Not as bad as Faith Domergue, but close.

 

 

Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street (1973) – Sam Fuller

This is the most awesome movie I have ever seen.

 

Citizen Kane Leitmotifs and Rachmaninoff’s Isle of the Dead

Thanks to Martijn for the link.

Citizen Kane Leitmotifs and Rachmaninoff’s Isle of the Dead

Kent Nagano conducts Wagner

Well, that’s a racist graphic.

http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/05/my-wagner-problem-and-ours/#more-3928

Patrick Cassidy, Vide cor Meum

I just realized a few days ago that one of my favorite pieces of music from the film Kingdom of Heaven, wasn’t written by Harry Gregson-WIlliams at all.  It was Patrick Cassidy.    More info on the youtube page below.

Wagner’s leitmotifs (website analysis)

Stumbled across this while I was prepping notes for my class.

Pretty rad.

http://www.pjb.com.au/mus/wagner/

In other news, I’ve recently begun a rap battle with user @IgnatzKolisch on Youtube.   

If any of you all wanna jump in and back me up, be my guest.

 

The Outlaw (1943)

To any student who’s ever told me that all I do is praise old movies:

The Outlaw (1943) is terrible, and I regret having watched it for my History of Scoring BACH-M254 class next term at MI.  The only interesting thing about this film is that it’s in the public domain due to a copyright snafu.  Although I’m reconsidering showing it.

Tchaikovsky’s Symphony #6 was used as the main theme – at first welcomed, and then it got annoying.

And Jane Russell’s mammaries aren’t that impressive.

Screwball antics in Day-Time Wife (’39)

Day-Time Wife with Tyrone Power and Linda Darnell is a very weak film — I wanted to like it (the DVD transfer from 20th Century Fox was awesome – pristine and from the negative), but the script is quite poor… although I will say that the film had fantastic potential.  Tyrone Power, plays Ken Norton, a philandering businessman who starts out the film forgetting that it’s his anniversary.  Jane, his wife, soon realizes he’s having a side fling with his secretary, and vows to figure out what it is that makes secretaries more appealing than wives in 1930’s New York.  She gets a job as a secretary to Tyrone’s business partner and hijinks ensue when the business partner, Warren, Jane, Ken and his secretary all show up to the same party together.  

So far so good, but I think the latter half of the film falls flat.  That isn’t to say the film isn’t without its merits.  Joan Davis has a brilliant cameo as a Joan-Harris-of-Mad-Men type and Mildred Gover has a great one liner as Ken and Jane’s housekeeper.  The cinematography is beautiful.  

I won’t tell you how it ends, but I think a more modern retelling of this film is needed, where Jane just rips Ken a new one and we find Ken at the bottom of the social ladder.  A little too sexist and unsettling for a modern viewer, but still… it is quite amazing the performance Linda Darnell pulled off at the age of 16 (according to history, or 24 according to IMDb).  For my money, Bringing Up Baby is still the best film of this genre from 1939.  

Lauren Bacall’s passing

Because of Bacall’s passing, I think I will screen “To Have and Have Not” in my Film 1 class at LBCC.  Besides the fact that the film doesn’t have an urban setting (it’s set on the exotic island of Martinique — substituting for Hemmingway’s Cuba) it possesses all the stylistic elements of a noir.  (Trailer is attached to my January post.)

I checked out Dark Passage (’47)… The only Bogie/Bacall pairing I hadn’t seen, and the first-person perspective camera from Bogart’s POV is dizzying and very strange.  In fact, he doesn’t really even appear in the film until about an hour in!  Daring, but very uneven.

Bogart/Bacall/Robinson

It’s been a while, but isn’t To Have and Have Not and Key Largo pretty much the same film?