Hollywood Movie Reviews......... |
Hollywood Movie Reviews......... |
Reeth |
Jul 18 2007, 02:54 AM
Post
#1
|
Dedicated Member Group: Members Posts: 2154 Joined: 22-May 06 Member No.: 6151 |
Please review and express your feelings about the Hollywood movies old and new ,that you have watched,liked & would recommend to the other members ......
I start off with an all time favourite film of my entire family....i have lost count of the number of times i have watched this since the time..... The Ten Commandments (1956) It is one of the Greatest movies ever made in the history of World Cinema... The film covers the life of Moses from his discovery in a basket floating on the Nile as a baby by Bithiah, a childless young widow and daughter of the then-Pharaoh, Rameses I, to his eventual departure from Israel in the wake of God's judgment that he not be allowed to enter the Promised Land. In between, the film depicts the early adulthood of Moses as a beloved foster son of Pharaoh Seti I (successor of Rameses I and brother of Bithiah) and general of his armies, his romance with Throne Princess Nefertari and rivalry with the Pharaoh's own son, Prince RamesesII. Critics have argued that considerable liberties were taken with the Biblical story, affecting the film's claim to authenticity, but this has had little effect on its popularity..... Aside from winning the Academy Award for Best Effects, Special Effects, it was also nominated for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color, Best Cinematography, Color, Best Costume Design, Color (Edith Head, Ralph Jester, John Jensen, Dorothy Jeakins and Arnold Friberg), Best Film Editing, Best Picture and Best Sound, Recording Cecil B DeMille’s swan song is a movie for the ages. At 75 the legendary director was at the peak of his fame, his name a house-hold word and his voice recognized by millions. He probably knew The Ten Commandments would be his last film it almost killed him. He certainly knew it would be his most important. Shot in widescreen Technicolor, The Ten Commandments remains the standard by which Biblical epics -- and many epics in general -- are measured When Moses turns his staff into a snake and back again, the effect is seamless. His turning of the Nile into blood is an impressive camera trick, but his parting of the Red Sea is one of Hollywood's most famous stunts. It's worth sitting through the 220 minutes of movie for this alone.... MAIN CAST #Charlton Heston as Moses # Yul Brynner as Pharaoh Rameses II # Anne Baxter as Nefertari # Edward G. Robinson as Dathan # Yvonne De Carlo as Sephora # Debra Paget as Lilia # John Derek as Joshua # Sir Cedric Hardwicke as Pharaoh Seti I But the Ten Commandments isn’t about God alone.... It’s about a woman, Neferteri the beauty of Egypt, and whom she marries will become Pharoe and rule the Earth...she prefers Moses who races chariots and saves old women from being crushed under the monumental obilisk he is raising in honor of Neferteri’s father — and helped by the fact he’s played by manly-man Charlton Heston who looks great,She does not want Ramses, the delicious Yul Brenner who wants Neferteri because of the wealth and power that comes with her. Moses is banished and Neferteri is forced to marry Ramses instead. History might know about Moses and Ramses, but DeMille knew about scorned women..... It remains one of the five most successful films of all time.It is Cecil B. DeMille’s last and arguably greatest film.....Definitely worth watching.... The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind -William James |
mmuk2004 |
Jul 31 2007, 10:26 PM
Post
#2
|
Dedicated Member Group: Members Posts: 3415 Joined: 25-September 04 Member No.: 907 |
Ten years after being a pariah in Hollywood, Welles returned to make another sensational noir, A Touch of Evil(1958), at the behest of the hero (Charton Heston) who had the star power to insist that Welles, who was also acting in the movie, be allowed to direct it. This was the last film he made in Hollywood.
Once again the fascination of the film lies in the characters, the 300 pound Hank Quinlan (played by Welles in a self parodic mode), the settings (Welles takes the audience into seedy strip clubs and the dark alleys and brothels of the border town) and the show-stealing cameo of Marlene Dietrich as Han Quinlan's ex lover, now brothel madame, who gets some superb lines: You're a mess, honey. You ought to lay off those candy bars. Come on, read my future for me. You haven't got any. What do you mean? Your future is all used up. He was some kind of a man. What does it matter what you say about people. The 93 mt. version of the movie that was released in 1958 had been badly hacked again by Universal, and Welles disowned the movie shooting off a 58 page memo to the producer about his vision of the movie. It is on the basis of this memo that recent attempts (I believe 4) have been made to reconstruct the movie in accordance with the director's original vision. Here is an excerpt from a review of the movie: Completely ignored by the Oscars, it was regarded as a rebellious, unorthodox, bizarre, and outrageously exaggerated film, affronting respectable 1950's sensibilities, with controversial themes including racism, betrayal of friends, sexual ambiguity, frameups, drugs, and police corruption of power. Its central character is an obsessed, driven, and bloated police captain ("a lousy cop") - a basically tragic figure who has a "touch of evil" in his enforcement of the law. Its other unusual and seedy characters include a nervous and sex-crazed motel manager, a blind shopkeeper, a drug smuggler, a sweaty drug dealer with a poorly-fitting wig, a terrorizing gang of juvenile delinquents, and an intense good cop - an international narcotics officer who is honeymooning (but ignores his wife), all in a sleazy border town (and a number of dark hotel rooms) within a twenty-four hour period. The film opens with its most famous sequence. It's an audacious, incredible, breathtaking, three-minute, uninterrupted crane tracking shot under the credits (appearing superimposed on the left of the screen). The entire tracking shot covers four blocks from start to finish. In a close-up, hands set an explosive, timed device. A shadowy figure runs and places it in the trunk of a parked convertible. The pounding of bongo drums and blare of brass instruments are heard (Henry Mancini's score), accompanied by the ticking-tocking of the mechanism on the soundtrack. The camera pulls away sharply, identifying the car's location - it is parked on a street in a seedy Mexican border town. An unsuspecting, wealthy American man - Rudi Linnekar (the boss of the town) and his giggling, blonde floozy, mistress/girlfriend [later, we learn she is a striptease dancer named Zita] emerge out of the background darkness and get into the car, driving off through the streets toward the US-Mexican border about four blocks away. From high above, the camera tracks the movement of the doomed pair in the shiny car through the squalid-looking town. It is a dark night as they drive through the town, the setting for the rest of the film. In the border town, there are flashing neon and electric signs, tawdry hotels and stripjoint nightclubs ("The Paradise"), crumbling arches, dark roofs, winding streets and twisting alleys with peeling posters on sides of walls and houses, heaps of trash, and vendors pushing carts. The black-and-white visuals emphasize the seedy atmosphere and the moral decadence, decay, and nightmarish dirtiness of the scene. And here's that brilliant opening sequence of the movie Attached image(s) "This isn't right, this isn't even wrong." Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958) "There are no facts, only interpretations." Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) |
Lo-Fi Version | Disclaimer | HF Guidelines | | Time is now: 7th June 2024 - 04:53 PM |