What are you watching?

Ok, time for a small reminder.

* Would love it if more members were sharing their viewings (movies, music concerts, documentaries and all). ...That's all. :)

Don't get me wrong: I love albums (analog vinyls), turntables, digital music, hi-end audio gear, and all that jazz,
but I also love home theater experiences, cinema; Charlie Chaplin, Charlie Brown, and all that blues too. :cool:
 
I am on my iPad so I don't have a picture, but I was watching the bu ray of a perfect picture: Driving Miss Daisy. Great story, plot, dialogue, acting and scenery. Little pictures like this and 42 don't get the attention they deserve.
 
Loved 42, Django, Inglorious Bastards. way way back was ok. Life of PI was too slow and not my kind of flick. That's it for me for this year.
 
Last night ::

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* Different! ...Shiny picture and soundtrack for sure but still different! ...The future, one vision, fiction over reality, reality over fiction ....
No matter what each one of us gets from it, ...still different. Check it out!
 
Watched this one last night ::

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* Nah, did certainly not rock my boat. ...Skip it, or at best a cheap rental.
...I'll give the DVD disc to a kid from my neighborhood, and the Blu-ray disc to one of my youngest relatives. ...Or not (Rated 'R'). :)
 
Casino Royale: how many times to you get to mention Peter Lorre, Orson Welles, Peter Sellers, Daniel Craig and The Amazing Spider-Man in one post!!!

There are two Bond stories that have had multiple screen adventures. Thunderball (which was later Never Say never Again) and Casino Royale.

In 1950, Ian Fleming was newly married and with a child and needed a steady income. So he created James Bond and immediately tried to sell it to the movies. He failed. But in 1954 he was able to sell the rights to both Casino Royale and Moonraker to CBS for $1,000 each. As TV was new and incredibly expanding many of the one hour dramas on Playhouse 90, Desilu Theatre, Suspense and Climax served as pilots as did Casino Royale. This was the era of live studio TV, no filmed shots, not many sets and terrible production values. CBS Americanized James Bond and could not show many of the elements were love in the Bond movie …action, violence, sex and so on. The hour drama starred Barry Nelson as the first Jimmy Bond and the villain was Peter Lorre. This is a fun thing to watch because of what is not there, all the Bond touches. While Bond rescues Linda Christian from this restored kinescope, until recently, no one could rescue the very end, until now. The new Blu Ray show the actual climax of the show, two minutes that were missing since 1954. Its sound and picture quality is not good, but worth the show. Iran Fleming, in an extra discusses how he picked the name “James Bond”

CBS passed on a James Bond series saying that it was too violent, to sexy and too sadistic. I don’t whether it’s a good thing, but that is part of the reason it was such a big hit in Daniel Craig’s remake.

Fleming bought back the rights to Moonraker for $5,000, but passed on regaining Casino Royale because he thought CBS was right, it could not be turned into a movie.

Actually that proved correct even in 1967.

In the mid 1960s, Charles K. Feldman, producer of such films as “What’s New Pussycat” and “The Seven Year Itch” obtain the rights to CR. And did he want to make a movie out of it? NO! His goal was to sell it to Eon productions so that they could make a movie out of it. What happens next is very interestingly outlined in the 41 minute bonus feature on the Blu Ray edition of Casino Royale.

From the beginning, without Sean Connery, the production staff et all, everyone knew this movie was going to be a disaster…and it was. Peter Sellers walks of the set and would not appear in any of the scenes with Orson Welles. The Welles would not appear with Sellers. Sellers returns and is such a pain in the neck they fire him, leaving many scenes confusing and incomplete. Directors were fired, directors quit, and film editors directed. The only saving grace to the movie is the soundtrack, by Bert Bacharach , which also become one of the best sounding vinyl discs of all time. The movie was supposed cot about $6 million, but cost 11 million. It took in 44 million, a lot for its day. The video is surprisingly good and the audio, which is more stereo than 5.1 is fine too. Nothing great, but fine.

So how does Spider-man fit in?

Well, Thunderball was originally a screenplay written by Fleming an Kevin McClory, who sued and got the rights to the script and produced “Never Say Never Again.”

Briefly, Sony bought Columbia, the studio that distributed the original Casino Royale movie. They also bought McClory’s rights to Thunderball and then announced that they were going to put out their own Bond series. MGM sued. And won. But MGM wanted to rights to Casino Royale, especially since Sony could NOT make a movie series from it. So they worked out a trade. MGM got Casino Royale and Sony got all the rights to Spider-Man!

The irony is not just that both studios did great, but MGM, after experiencing financial woes, is partly owned now my Sony, who distributes all the Bond movies. And Eon productions, one when or the other is now the copyright owner of those two other films.

There is a cheap way to get the CBS version: It's on the earlier version of the DVD of Casino Royale! Get it used!
 
It's a comedy! :) (1967) ...With Ursula Andress! :exciting:

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And the older one, with Barry Nelson, Peter Lorre, and Linda Christian (1954). ...From CBS TV (50 minutes).

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Thanks for the pictures. I never watch a movie on an iPad. I don't have an iPhone. Next up...the uncut Superman and Donner edition of SupermanIi
 
Lefisc said:
Thanks for the pictures. I never watch a movie on an iPad. I don't have an iPhone. Next up...the uncut Superman and Donner edition of SupermanIi
Click to expand...

That was my prior mistake; sorry about that. ...BTW, I fixed that post by now.

Lefisc said:
ps....it's debatable if that version of cr is a comedy.
Click to expand...

The 1967 one is definitely a comedy. :)
 
The term “Director’s Cut” was originally used to refer to a director’s chose of how a movie was edited, it’s now used to add delete scenes so that studios could get money from us without producing a new product.

From the 1930s to the 1960s the studio system was not kind to directors, often destroying their work. Gene Kelly, for example, when filming “Singing In The Rain” deliberately destroyed the film of takes he didn’t like so the studio could not use them. The first edits of Star Wars caused Lucas to hire his own editor and do it himself.

So, of the true Director’s Cuts I have seen, these are the ones I enjoyed the most:

#1: Superman II: The Richard Donner Edition. Donner shot Superman I and II simultaneous, finishing 70% of the second movie. The p[producers actually wanted a movie like the “Batman” TV show (notice the Need Beatty character) and so they fired him and brought in Richard Lester. Lester not just finished the film, but to be called “Director” had to have shot 51 % of the movie, so he added the Paris and Niagara Falls sequences among others. It was a decent movie, but nothing special.

The Donner edition is more than a Director’s Cut, is almost an entirely new movie that makes sense. It totally ties in the first movie and has outstanding performances. I never understood how Superman got his powers back in the first movie, here is very clear. And Marlon Brando is in this one and explains everything! I loved this movie! And when I saw it I wanted to see another Gene Hackman movie! For the era very good picture and sound

#2 Blade Runner. There have been five or so versions of this movie, the last one is the best. In the theatrical version, there is narration by Harrison Ford. In the first five minutes he discusses himself, his marriage and his life. (Spoiler Alert). This totally changes the picture because he is an enigma in the Director’s Cut. In addition there is a scene towards the end where one word is changed, that’s all, and we see that the Replicants are not vengeful creatures out to murder, but scared, thinking, aware beings scared to die. Looks great, sounds great.

#3 In Aliens, director Jim Cameron explains that movies are often cut because the studios want them to run a certain time. And director’s actually sign contracts with that clause in it. So two major scenes were cut out. Ripley returns to Earth 80 years after she left to see her daughter, who was 7 when she left, die of old age. They cut out this sequence, but it explains Ripley’s later attachment to the young girl she finds. Cameron also explains that they had to call Weaver back to do voice overs to explain the plot. Towards the middle of the picture, the space crew goes through a gauntlet of weapons to reach the ship but that too was removed (and not necessary.)

#4 Dark City. This is an incredible movie that so many people have missed. It is dark, mysterious, compelling and spooky. And women like it more than men! It is a story of shifting realities, years before the matrix. In fact, I think the Matrix was inspired a bit by this flick. The movie was always easy to follow, but by adding ten minutes the plot is easier to follow and understand. And they all look like Steve Ditko drawings. Looks terrific and sounds that way.

#5 Touch of Evil. This is a good, not great movie that was massacred by the studio. Orson Wells, director, opens the movie with a complicate shot that goes on for several minutes. The studio, put credits over it so you can’t even see what is going on. Then they chopped up the movie. The restored movie was produced using Wells” notes to the movies. Looks and sound OK.

6 Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Robert Wise was not a fan of Star Trek, never saw an episode and made a decent sci-fi movie that was just not Star Trek. I guess because he did “The Day The Earth Stood Still” they thought he could handle this. We missed the interactions between the characters and their personal stories that made the series compelling. Some of that is put into the Director’s Cut which made it better. But this movie was not over budget, but ran late, so they could NOT finish the special effects. Now they could with one person on a computer!!! And instead of costing millions I think it cost $1.50! So the movie looks better too. Robert Wise says it’s close to what he originally had in mind. This version has been released only on DVD, not Blu Ray.

And two DC’s I may never see:
The original 2001: A Space Odyssey was 20 minutes longer than the movie we saw in the theatres and on disc. Kubrick cut it after it’s opening run. I would love to see that.

I not a big fan of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, World, but I’ll never see the complete picture. Not only is 20 minutes of the film still missing, the intermission music is gone forever. While many long movies had intermissions and music to go with it, Mad World had dialogue in theirs, with the characters still looking for the “Big W.” Every few years a slightly longer version comes out on disc.
 
Quite interesting Barry regarding the 'old times' (censure, actor's say, studio's orientations, cameras, etc.) versus today's Director's Cut, for mainly, like you just said, a way to benefit more financially from the younger public.

Everybody nowadays has at least a flick or two with their own added vision (Director's Cut indeed).
When Picasso ..., or Leonardo da Vinci painted The Mona Lisa (La Joconde); how many "Director's Cuts" did he add to it?

Btw, they keep discovering secrets in it.

* Steven Spielberg modified slightly 'E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial' years later, and twenty years from now he might still do it again; to please the different people's mentality of that time.
...And he never did a single commentary track on any of his movies!

** George Lucas was so fed up with people's complaining about his modifications ('Star Wars') dual Trilogies that he struck the deal of the century with Disney. ...But George can afford to give to charities, which he does.

*** Ridley Scott has FIVE different cuts for 'Blade Runner'. ...Perhaps another one is coming in a near future...

I can keep going on and on, with all the good and bad, but they're free to do whatever they want to do with their own creations. ...They're not my babies; I'm just like the rest of us, a viewer.
And the studios? ...That's their own business with them directors if they want to add more revenues from them movies already made.

Nowadays some blockbusters cost $200 millions to make, and they have to be made within three to six months at the latest.
It's easy; everything is computer generated; even the actors! ...And the locales? ...Forget about the locales; it's in the cyber space anyway, except for double 007.
So if they don't make $500 millions or so at the box office, they just added few scenes, called them the Special Extended Director's Edition Cut, and up to DVDs and Blu-rays.
And ten months from now, they removed other scenes, and resell them movies as the True Essential Original Director's Vision Spatial Edition! ...For ten bucks more (DVD or Blu-ray)!

This is Hollywood; stuff like this just don't happen in Siberia, or Alaska, or the Sahara. ...Or Canada. ;)
 
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