I saw Sinners again. What a movie. Beautifully wrought slow build narrative that gives weight to everything that happens in the final third. Noticed some things I didn’t before. If you love music, this one is a must.
I was discussing it with my husband afterward and we both noted that despite its heavy themes, this film never ceases to be fun. It deals with Jim Crow and oppression, but it is about liberation.
Also, apparently “Pick Poor Robin Clean” is a blues number, which gives more context to that scene.
I’ve seen this movie one time, about 20 or so years ago, but keep thinking about watching it again. I recall enjoying it at the time.
One thing that I really liked about it was the use of a great oldie: (Didn’t I) Blow Your Mind by the Delfonics. They were a Philadelphia sweet soul trio that only scored a couple or three national hits, but where I grew up, they were all over the radio and appeared many times at local night spots. I just love that song and I have a couple of their albums on vinyl. How many songs begin with a French horn?
Journey to the Center of the Earth 1959 James Mason, Pat Boone, Arlene Dahl, and Diane Baker
I’m having trouble with the fake Scottish accents. Pat Boone in a kilt? James Mason is English and moved to US in the 50’s.
It’s very dated. Professor Sir Oliver Lindenbrook is hot tempered aristocratic and unlikeable. There’s dated, misogynist dialog like “get out woman!” and “you can’t come, you’re a woman”.
The films looks great. Beautiful cinematography in the mountains.
Prime has it on sale for 4.50 or rent at 3 99. Buy is the best choice. I probably should have rented a remake.
Possibly my favorite Tarantino film (certainly near the top). Forster deserved his nomination. I’m not a huge Tarantino fan, but I do appreciate his talents.
I have a soft spot for this film, which I actually saw in the theater when it first came out.
It manages to be surprisingly faithful to the Verne novel, despite working in a female character (Arlene Dahl), a pop star (Pat Boone) and an antagonist not in the novel (the wonderful Thayer David, playing a descendant of Arne Saknussem). I guess they figured they needed a villain for dramatic tension. Dahl and Boone’s parts are written pretty well. Say what you will about the movie being dated, Dahl’s Carla Goteborg is a strong and serious role.
They substitute dimetrodons for the plesiosaur and ichthyosaur of the novel, and they make Lindenbrook a Scot instead of a German, but that’s acceptable. The iguanas they have playing the dimetrodons are abou th best fins-glued-on-the-back Mesozoic substitutes I’ve seen.
They also add a scene set in a part of Atlantis, which “fits” in a weird way. James Mason had played Captain Nemo in the 1954 Disney version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. In the novel, Nemo shows Arronax the remains of Atlantis under the sea, but they didn’t do so in the movie. So here you sort of get Nemo finally getting to see the ruins of Atlantis. (In the 1961 Ray Harryhausen Mysterious Island you get Herbert Lom as Nemo showing off the underwater ruins of a suspiciously Classical Greek-looking city which isn’t actually called “Atlantis”, but which obviously is, despite being in the Pacific. So Captain Nemo got to se Atlantis even as Nemo within a few years).
I went to look up the 1959 Journey to the Center of the Earth to see if it was the version I’d seen and was amused to discover amongst the cast listing on IMDB:
followed by the trivia
Every now and then the internet is a wonderful place.
As did I, and many times since. My father took me and my older brothers to see that movie at a magnificent downtown movie palace that had a huge screen that more than suited CinemaScope. I was only 7 years old, and I still remember the experience fondly.
Pat Boone was surprisingly good and only had one song stuck in there for the teenagers. Thayer David played a great villain, and Mason and the rest of the cast are excellent, especially Peter Ronson, a real Icelander, who as far as I know only made one movie. (I can still hear him calling for his duck. “Gertrude???”)
The special effects were pretty darn good for 1959. Much of it was shot at Carlsbad Caverns, giving it a look of authenticity. And Bernard Herrmann wrote a great score. What more could you ask?
Unfortunately, the translation of the Verne novel available then (I have a hardcover version – one of my first SF book purchases – and also a copy of the paperback movie tie-in ) is an abysmal one. That’s pretty much par for the course. The author deleted whole sections, wrote new material, and changed the named of the characters (“Lindenbrock” became “Hardwigg”, for no good reason I can see). In 1965 Penguin published a new, more faithful translation by Robert Baldrick (It’s quoted in the narration for Rick Wakeman’s 1973 Journey to the Center of the Earth). Two more new translations appeared in 2009 and 2022. We’re living in another Jules Verne Renaissance, with new, faithful translations coming out and the release of material rarely or never previously published
As a 10-year-old aficionado of dinosaurs and every manner of monster movie effects, “fin-glued-on-the-back” was always disappointing, mostly because the result did not resemble any dinosaur known to science. But it was better than “bad puppetry”, or “man in a suit stomping on models”. The gold standard of course was Ray Herryhausen’s stop-motion.
Watched Grand Tourismo last night. If I hadn’t known it was based on a true story, I’d laugh at its unbelievability, as epitomized in this classic 1990 Farside
Still, I enjoyed it. Fewer changes from the truth than say, Bohemian Rhapsody, but really, would it hurt Hollywood to just tell the truth? It’s right there! And just as exciting!
It’s so captivating now I wanna…go out and buy a Playstation!
I told my teen daughter I’d watch anything with her to get her out of her room. She put that boast to the test with KPop Demon Hunters (Netflix). It was alright, more K-Pop and less Demon Hunter than I had anticipated, but better than I was bracing myself for.
She likes songs, is what I have gathered. Searching for musicals a teen girl would like…
Hilarious at the time, but has now come true in more ways than just Jann Mardenborough. For example the top 100 esports earners have career earnings between ~$1.5 million and ~$7.1 million. You can make a career out of video gaming these days (though only a few get genuinely rich).
I agree with you that this is a fantastic movie, but I somewhat disagree with the way you described it. It might lead someone to watch this expecting a psychological drama about loss and grieving. While those are certainly a driving theme in the movie, I’d say that this is indisputably a horror movie, and a very intense one at that. If viewers were to be warned about anything, it’s not about the serious drama but about the intensity of the horror; indeed, it contains one of the most realistic gruesome scenes I have ever seen in any movie. Laura isn’t so much a grieving mother as a completely unhinged psycho.
In any case, I’ll join you in the “highly recommended” rating, but this is for horror movie fans only.
I know a little about Icelandic names, so I knew this couldn’t have been his name at birth. I looked him up in Wikipedia. He was born Pétur Rögnvaldsson. Icelanders don’t have family names. They have first names and sometimes middle names. The last part of their name is a patronymic. This tells you what his father’s name is. His father’s first name was Rögnvald or Rögnvaldr. In Iceland you don’t have a family name that passes on from one generation to the next. Apparently Peter Ronson changed his name on emigrating to the U.S. It’s just not possible to tell people that you have no last name to put down on a form and there’s no space for a patronymic on the form. So you change your name to be as close to an average American name as possible.
Joker a disturbing movie but brilliant and deserving of the awards.
Staying in the dark
I did not buy Batman Begins in 4k so streaming it…have the other two in the trilogy in 4k and of course the the Dark Knight in 4k got kicked out as incompatible. Mad :mad:
Great cast in Batman Begins. The steaming io Netflix is pretty good even in near field.
Christian Bale is always top drawer for me and love to see Michael Caine. What an incredible cast/
Katie Holmes is a light weight actor but very cute.
