12 Movies Meme

Tag! I'm it!

Ibetolis over at Film for the Soul tagged me to participate in the 12 Movies Meme started by Lazy Eye Theatre. I don't really get the rules so I kind of just went with a similar form based off of Ibetolis' entry. Basically I'm creating line-ups for 6 double-feature nights (Monday through Saturday), each with it's own theme. I've also provided a reason for why I chose that line-up. I have to tag 5 people and with an interesting twist, I'm tagging 3 guest bloggers (their responses I'll post here) and 3 bloggers. I know that's 6, but since I'm already breaking rules... My double-features and tags are listed below. Enjoy!

Monday
Theme: Right in the Belly - Poisonous Stories
Films: D.O.A. (1950) & Notorious (1946)
Reason: My favorite film noir matched with an astounding Hitchcock classic, both feature protagonists who have been poisoned.

Tuesday
Theme: Blonde Bette Davis Does Not Want to Kiss You
Films: Cabin in the Cotton (1932) & Of Human Bondage (1934)
Reason: Two great Bette Davis films, with her as a blonde, both include famous lines about kissing. Cabin in the Cotton - "I'd like to kiss ye, but I jus' washed ma hair". Of Human Bondage - "And after ya kissed me, I always used to wipe my mouth! WIPE MY MOUTH!"

Wednesday
Theme: Robert Mitchum Just Wants to Love on You
Films: Holiday Affair (1949) & Two for the Seesaw (1962)
Reason: Robert Mitchum's softer side shines through with these two romances. A delight for anyone who crushes on him.

Thursday
Theme: The Morning After ~ Ultra Sexy Pre-Codes
Films: Female (1933) & The Divorcee (1930)
Reason: One thing leads to another and well, you know... Women in charge of their sexuality. And a little Norma Shearer never hurt anyone.

Friday
Theme: Triumphant Triumvirates ~ Everything's Better in Threes
Films: Three on a Match (1932) & A Letter to Three Wives (1949)
Reason: It's a shame I couldn't make this one into a triple-feature! Based on threes, great films about three very different women coming together in unusual circumstances.

Saturday
Theme: Multiple Families, Multiple Problems
Films: Yours, Mine and Ours (1968) & With Six You Get Eggroll (1968)
Reason: Two films that gave birth to The Brady Bunch. What happens when two families come together as one? Laughter is sure to follow.

TAGS
Frank ~ Guest Blogger
Bob ~ Guest Blogger
Kevin ~ Guest Blogger
Carrie ~ Classic Montgomery
Ginger ~ Asleep in New York
Steve ~ Film Noir of the Week

Emergency Alert! Watch Mad Men Immediately!

If you have yet to watch Mad Men the AMC original drama, go out and watch it. NOW! It's amazingly good. I was skeptical myself until I watched the first episode and got sucked in. It takes place in the 1960's during America's hey-day of Advertising. "Mad Men" refers to the men who worked in advertising on Madison Avenue in New York City. The period detail is exquisite and they bring in a lot of cultural and technological references. It's also a lot of sex, booze and tobacco but all the characters are interesting and their individual stories along with the relationships with each other makes for amazing TV. This is exactly what we need right now in what's proven to be a very tough economic climate. During the Depression, people flocked to the cinemas to watch others live the glamorous life on screen so they could live vicariously through them. Although I think today's contemporary audiences don't necessarily need to watch other contemporaries rejoice in their wealth, we do however want to escape to another time and place where things were very different. Either a time we lived in or a time our parents lived through. I'm a firm believer in understanding the present by understanding the past. But also take this show with a grain of salt. It's an exaggeration as TV shows tend to be.

So watch it please. Season 1's DVD is available now. I just ordered mine and am anxious to receive it in the mail.

I'll be keeping an eye out for classic film references made in the show. So far I have two. As I see them I'll point them out.

The Apartment (1960) ~ First Season. I think it's part of the foundation of the story as it also deals with affairs between men and women in an office setting. A character sees this in the theater and is affected by how Shirley MacLaine's character tries to commit suicide.

Butterfield 8 (1960) ~ Second Season. Conversation about how an old friend became a call girl and the comment was that that is very Butterfield 8.

Guest Blogger: Steve-O

Check out Steve-O from Film Noir of the Week's guest post about three great film noirs you probably haven't heard of. I enjoyed this post for two reasons. The first being it reminded me of the three films I got to see in the Unseen Noir series at the Harvard Film Archive. And also two of the films feature Bonita Granville! Yay! Enjoy Steve-O's post and feel free to share some of your favorite lesser-known noirs.

Three Great Film Noir You Never Heard Of by Steve-O

One of the coolest things about loving film noir is discovering lost, forgotten films. True, most lost films are forgotten for a reason. However, every now and then you find a film so amazing that it makes watching hours and hours of bad films worth while.

If you're new to classic film noir, I recommend you first check out all the great movies released on DVD over the past few years. Start off with big studio noirs like Out of the Past (1947), Criss Cross (1949) and Gilda (1946). Then work your way to the smaller budget films like Caged (1950) and D.O.A. (1950). If you're still a noir fan, step down to the Bs like Railroaded and Decoy.

There you have the three tiers of film noir. Don Miller, writing in "B" movies: An Informal Survey of the American Low-budget Film, notes that there were three classifications of movies during the 30s and 40s: “... the A, the B, and the programmers, sometimes alluded to as a 'nervous A' or 'gilt-edged B.' That hybrid would often play the top half of a double bill, have one or two fairly high-priced performers and, when a character walked into a room, the walls wouldn't shake as he shut the door; it looked reasonably opulent, but if a studio tried to palm it off as a big or A picture, you knew they were kidding.” The three films that I want to recommend fall into the B category. They're nearly impossible to find on television and I doubt they'll ever find their way to DVD. They are cheaply made without a movie star in sight. Nevertheless they're wonderful.

First is a film called Suspense. The 1946 film is – and I'm not kidding here – a figure-skating noir. Olympic figure skater Belita stars as a skater that dumps her mobster boyfriend for a peanut vendor (Barry Sullivan). The film is wonderfully strange with outstanding performances from Albert Dekker (The Killers) and Bonita Granville (her other noir role was The Guilty). The film is loaded with strange images (including Belita crashing through a giant Dali-like skull to begin a skating exhibition) and some true suspense.

Night Editor from the same year is based on a long-running radio series. The film begins, like the radio series, with a newspaper editor recounting a scandalous story from the past. Surprisingly, the story he tells is fatalistic and dark. A drunk cop spends his nights cheating on his wife with a sexy (and also married) society girl (a wicked performance by Janis Carter). The cheating couple witnesses the brutal murder of a woman on a dark street. The cop (William Gargan) doesn't stop the killer for fear that it would cause a scandal. He doesn't want it to get out that he was stepping out on his wife. To make matters worse, detective Cochrane – who has already been reprimanded for poor performance -- shows up to work hungover and is quickly assigned the murder. He has to investigate and at the same time find a way to cover up his role. His cars tire tracks at the scene makes him a potential suspect in the killing. 99-percent of the film is just perfect. The happy ending tacked on at the end is very annoying but not unexpected. However, this is a great little movie.




The third film I covered last week at the Noir of the Week blog. The Guilty (1948) is possibly the cheapest movie I have ever seen. The acting is wooden and the sets look like they just might fall down. However, it's a damned involving story of murder. A twin girl is killed in a dark, nameless city. The prime suspect is a WWII shell-shocked vet. A couple of other potential suspects include the “bad” sister's violent boyfriend and creepy middle-aged house member. Who did the killing? I found myself involved from beginning to end.






These three films are not easy to find. However, if you do get to see them you'll probably agree they're true black-and-white gems.