God, I didn’t even have to look it up.
There’s only the time between hello and goodbye
Curse you! 
I just watched this myself, and though I wouldn’t quite say it was that bad, it certainly lacked the rapidfire zingers and creative hilarity I usually get from Aardman. Quite a disappointment.
A very fine thriller indeed, and well worth mentioning in its own right. Morgan was obviously not yet well known in 1948, and not only plays a minor character, but unless I missed it doesn’t have a single line of dialog in the entire movie. His job is to walk around looking menacing.
BTW, the name of the actress you were referencing was Elsa Lanchester, not Lancaster. She was a British actress who was married to Charles Laughton at the time of this movie and until his death. Both of them are great in the movie, albeit Lanchester in a fairly minor role as an attractive, ditzy young artist.
Thanks. She’s terrific in her role. You’re right that Morgan does say a word - he moves through scenes like he’s in a different movie and all the other characters ignore him for the most part adding to the creepiness
Nobody (2021 — seems to be on the NBC streams). This is from the John Wick director, and features Bob Odenkirk as a retired super assassin. It did well with critics and made a decent return on a 16mil budget. Wikipedia says a sequel is coming in 2025.
I got this BluRay for Xmas from my daughter’s SO (30 y.o. male). I had loaned them my Gross Pointe Blank disc a few months back, which I love but left them confused and unmoved. Nobody left me confused and annoyed, but I approved of the 92 min. run time.
The first violence is believable, the second fight is brutal, but otherwise ordinary for a retired super assassin film. By the film’s end the fights reminded me of a bloody Home Alone … or A-Team episode. But it’s not satirical enough to alienate its core action movie audience — or to win my affection.
B minus, I guess.
Janet Planet. A woman (Julianne Nicholson) and her ~11 year old daughter spend a summer+ together. Set in rural Mass. in 1991. Story is mainly told in 3 parts each concerning a person who is hanging around for that segment. The three are Will Patton, Sophie Okonedo and Elias Koteas, resp. All well regarded actors. And Nicholson as Janet is one of personal favorites.
This is a slow paced film. As in nearly glacially slow. Lots of long shots with very little, if anything, happening. If you took just the parts with actual dialogue and such it would be a 30 minute film tops. It’s just amazingly padded.
It might have been a pretty good film if it was done differently, but it ended up just being ho-hum. It is really well reviewed by critics and even appears on some top 10 lists for the year. I don’t get it.
Give it 2 stars.
Watched the new Wallace and Gromit movie over the weekend, and went to see Wicked Part 1
Liked them both. I’m surprised about Wicked. It was over 2 1/2 hours long but didn’t feel like it. I don’t think the stage play runs longer than about 2 1/2 hours, and this was only half the show. I didn’t care for the way they broke up the songs with more verbal asides and occasionally just introduced an un-needed pause. Having listened to the album often enough, I found that annoying.
Cute touches:
1.) Having Kristin Chenowith and Idina Menzel as the “Wise Ones” in the Wiz-O-Mania show. The way they kept trying to upstage each other reminded me of the way Chenowith and Patti Lupone kept upstaging each other in Candide
2.) Stephen Schwartz, the composer, go a cameo as the Emerald City official who says “The Wizard will see you now!”
3.) At the beginning the camera glides up over the rainbow, literally fulfilling the words of the Judy Garland song “Somewhere Over the Ranbow”. And, of course, it’s impossible, because the observer, even if a camera, has to stay in the center of the rainbow. That’s why it’s impossible to go “over the rainbow”, or to pass under it, or to get to the end and get a pot of gold. CGI is a wonderful thing.
4.) All the Oz sets concentrated on huge circular features, notably doorways and huge round windows. This is ubiquitous, but it’s particularly noticeable in the scenes in the Shiz library, which does not have one single rectangular bookcase or shelf. The books are kept in those cylindrical things with the rotating ladders. Some books are stored in upright things that store the books radially. Even the study tables are all round. The books, though, are standard rectangular books. Talk about putting a square peg in a round hole.
5.) Peter Dinklage voiced Professor Dillamund, the goat professor!
6.) I have no idea what it means, but the head Monkey Guardsman had two different-colored eyes. Maybe it was supposed to be a subliminal signal that something was wrong?
I have no idea, but I enjoy speculating.
- David Bowie homage.
- If one of them is green, he’s becoming infected with…Ozness.
Could’ve been a Jane Seymour (actress, not Henry VIII’s wife) homage, too.
Or Ann Boleyn (Henry VIII’s wife, not actress)
Watched the Blu-ray of The Wonderful World Of The Brothers Grimm yesterday. The movie might be a little cheesy for today’s tastes but the real attraction here is the terrific restoration job they did. Of course you miss out on the real Cinerama experience, but the “smilebox” presentation looks fantastic on a big screen TV.
I never heard of “Smilebox” before. I saw this film when it first came out. It was presented in both Cinerama and in Todd AO, but I didn’t get to see this in full widescreen (unlike Around the World in 80 Days, which I saw in Todd AO), sad to say. The film has been available on VH and DVD, but before now only in “pan and scan”. I understand that there was a digital Todd AO restoration two years ago.
This is called heterochromia iridis. I find several different estimates as to how common it is. Some are around 1%, while others are that it’s less than one in a thousand. The amount of difference varies in each person. Some cases are caused by disease or injury and are not different at birth.
David Bowie doesn’t actually have two different colored eyes; one of his pupils is blown out due to an injury.
Or Anne Hathaway (actress, not Shakespeare’s wife).
I have the Blu-ray of How The West Was Won that also has the smilebox presentation. Poking around on various streaming sites I discovered my library has Search For Paradise availble in the format. A really neat travelogue/time capsule.
They’re likely the same color now.
Somehow I never got around to watching The Grand Budapest Hotel until this evening. Very enjoyable and quirky. Very Wes Anderson.
I thought I’d rewatch Disney’s Tarzan, which has always been one of my favourites, though it has been quite a while since I watched it last time.
It’s a fantastic adventure with a sweet romance, and some well staged action and drama. The comic-relief is a bit jarring and annoying, but, to make up for that, the music is top notch, and the animation, with its extensive pioneering use of 3D environments, remains outstanding. And then the death of the villain, with Disney’s trademark “fall from a great height” ends with a chilling visual.
Like most of their movies from this era, it is well worth your time.
This was the first movie we took our daughter to see. We weren’t sure how she’d take it, especially with that violent fire at the beginning. But as soon as she saw the screen she was entranced.
After the show was over, she ran down to the front of the theater and tried to look behind the screen to see where the performers were.