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OT: In the US: The Godfather this week; Some Like It Hot next week(Big Screen)

posted 7 years ago by ecarle (14979)
3 replies | jump to latest

Its gotten a little confusing. There is the "Cinemark Classics Series" and the "Turner Classic Movies Classics Series" running at local theaters here in the US. But as there will be back to back TCM classics at my local Cinemark chain (The Godfather this week; Some Like It Hot next week)...perhaps TCM has taken over the Cinemark franchise?

In any event, I'm going to both of 'em. The Godfather: my favorite of 1972 AND of the seventies. It shares this with Psycho: both films became blockbusters, it seems to me, on virtue of their violent murder scenes -- "murder set-pieces as entertainment." Indeed, though The Godfather is called "a drama," its really a thriller, isn't it? A whole lotta murders and the initial suggestion(carried through in GoodFellas and The Sopranos) that "organized crime" is really an organization of psychopaths who will kill people with no remorse or revulsion(ala Lars Thorwald, a lot of these Mafia guys dismember corpses and bury the pieces).

Some Like It Hot -- less major than The Godfathfor me, but from that 50's/60's cusp and quite related to Psycho in interesting ways: Anthony Perkins turned down one of the cross-dressing roles, and upset when SLIH hit big , decided he couldn't pass up Psycho and a 'second chance." And of course, Mr. Janet Leigh (Tony Curtis) DID play one of the cross-dressers, in a film which criss-crossed WITH Psycho in "pushing the sexual envelope" of the dying Hays Code.

PS. The TCM/Cinemark films run on Sundays and Wednesdays only.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

In other TCM news: "The Essentials" is back. It used to be Robert Osborne with one famous celebrity -- Alec Baldwin chiefly, but Drew Barrymore, Sally Field, and Rose MacGowan, too -- introducing major classic films, once a week.

Well, Alec Baldwin is back. With Robert Osborne passed, we get...David Letterman?(Perhaps just for one movie -- Brief Encounter.) So Letterman's back on TV, with that wacky long and unkempt homeless beard and baldness -- only his famous voice remains.

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

The equivalent of 'Cinemark Classics Series' in Auckland, New Zealand is called 'Flashback Fridays' (w. a $10 ticket) at Event Cinemas. Its current slate is:

Godfather
Godfather 2
Alien
Lost Boys (!)
Fifth Element (!!)
Goonies (!!!)
Rocky Horror (!!)

I believe that a previous lineup was:

Back to the Future
The Princess Bride
Labyrinth
Top Gun
Point Break
Grease
Die Hard
Titanic
Dirty Dancing

You see the pattern: very '80s-centric, very populist. Alien and the Godfathers are among the oldest and artiest of what's being run.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

You see the pattern: very '80s-centric, very populist. Alien and the Godfathers are among the oldest and artiest of what's being run.

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Well, its where things are. 80s movies are "old movies" to the young people I meet. Psycho 1960 is practically ancient...might as well be a silent movie.

When Turner Classic Movies gets involved in these screenings, the "golden oldies" are there. Some Like It Hot this weekend, and eventually this year, Casablanca (75th Anniversary!) and they've kept some old Hitchcocks in circulation -- Psycho, NXNW, Rear Window, The Birds, and To Catch a Thief in about the last three years. Oddly, I don't think they've shown Vertigo; its simply not the entertainment that those other Hitchcock films are. Also, I don't think they've felt like going back to Rebecca and Spellbound, etc.

Whether Cinemark or TCM, I've shown up in recent years for the Hitchcocks AND for: Charade, Dr. Strangelove, MASH the movie(which I still much prefer to the TV series), The Godfather, and Animal House. And the big screen DOES make a difference.