Random Thoughts

I’ve never seen a DVD from this er company: It seems to be called Mr. Fat W Video, and the titles look like they’ve been made in Video Toaster in the 90s. And the DVD looks to have been upsampled from a low-resolution, low-bandwidth source: There’s both jaggy lines and banding. But it doesn’t look horrible!

Anyway, this movie is rather spiffy. It’s a proper British murder mystery, set during the war (i.e., a couple of years earlier). Immaculate Received Pronunciation and lots of stiff upper lips, but also PASSIONS GONE WILD (i.e., some kissing) while the V-1s are whizzing (well, flying very slowly) past and occasionally cutting out.

It’s great.

(Except bits of the actual mystery, which are very… er… stupid? Yes, that’s the word. Still, who cares.)

The detective character is great. I wonder whether they did more movies with him? Hm… the computer says no, although there’s a series of novels featuring him. I think I’ll sample one of those; if the novels are anywhere near as witty as the movie I’ll be very happy indeed.

Green For Danger. Sidney Gilliat. 1946.

Popular movies in March 1947 according to IMDB:

Poster	Votes	Rating	Movie
	3308	7.6	Green for Danger
	2070	7.4	Pursued
	1744	7.4	The Farmer’s Daughter
	508	7.2	The Late George Apley
	1777	7.2	The Egg and I
	673	7.0	Framed
	499	7.0	The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby
	2166	6.9	The Red House
	2293	6.9	My Favorite Brunette
	2664	6.8	The Two Mrs. Carrolls

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

This is yet another (probably public domain) B movie from that DVD box set I’m apparently mentioning every third movie in this blog series.

This is the rags-to-riches story about the Dorsey brothers (who were jazz musicians back in the day). The acting shifts between horrible and ridiculous, but the script is pretty amusing. And there’s beaucoup de jazzy music, so I was entertained. It’s a lot better than it has any right to be, really.

The Fabulous Dorseys. Alfred E. Green. 1947.

Popular movies in February 1947 according to IMDB:

Poster	Votes	Rating	Movie
	904	7.1	Nora Prentiss
	4014	7.0	Angel and the Badman
	582	7.0	The Devil Thumbs a Ride
	978	6.9	Hue and Cry
	1160	6.9	The Sin of Harold Diddlebock
	369	6.9	The Beginning or the End
	819	6.9	Ramrod
	506	6.6	The Brasher Doubloon
	1401	6.4	The Sea of Grass
	224	6.4	Carnegie Hall

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

It’s been a while, but here’s another B movie from that box set where all the other B movies came from. Unfortunately the sound quality here is so bad that I can make out only every third word.

It’s kinda charming. It doesn’t really amount to a whole lot, but it’s inoffensive. Nothing much to dislike (except the audio quality). It’s… nice!

But not very interesting.

Calendar Girl. Allan Dwan. 1947.

Popular movies in January 1947 according to IMDB:

Poster	Votes	Rating	Movie
	6639	7.8	Odd Man Out
	380	7.3	Hungry Hill
	3081	7.3	Boomerang!
	4744	7.2	Dead Reckoning
	273	7.1	Zakazane piosenki
	2186	7.0	13 Rue Madeleine
	537	6.9	The Man I Love
	944	6.9	Johnny O’Clock
	3733	6.6	Lady in the Lake
	298	6.4	The Shocking Miss Pilgrim

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

Joan Crawford! John Garfield! And directed by Jean Negulesco! Er… Ok, that’s a completely utterly unfamiliar name to me. That’s a really unenthusiastic Wikipedia page. He was nominated for a bunch of awards but didn’t win much. But they let him make a bunch of movies, so I guess they were commercially successful?

This is… kinda bad? Negulesco goes for Real Drama in every scene, I think, and it falls kinda flat. He mostly doesn’t have good enough actors to carry it off, and there’s such an abundance of bad lines and uninspiring (but “clever”) cinematography.

I’m not sure where my immediate antipathy for this is coming from. I mean, in some respects it’s not that far from Douglas Sirk, and he’s brilliant. But he… knew what he was doing?

Crawford’s performance is appropriately over-the-top, but..

I do like the extended musical scenes. That’s kinda unusual. And they’re all from the Now That’s What I Call Really Dramatic Classicalish Music Volume 14! Let’s see… this claims it’s Gershwin, Bizet, Chopin, Gershwin, Chopin, Chopin, Korsaov, Dvorák, Dvorák, Wagner, Grieg, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Bach, Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Porter, Porter and de Sarasate?

But it’s mostly Waxman? I think?

Humoresque. Jean Negulesco. 1946.

Popular movies in December 1946 according to IMDB:

Poster	Votes	Rating	Movie
	293826	8.6	It’s a Wonderful Life
	18210	8.0	Great Expectations
	391	7.8	Enamorada
	2951	7.6	Humoresque
	4430	7.3	The Yearling
	1683	7.2	The Locket
	6515	6.9	Duel in the Sun
	231	6.6	The Falcon’s Adventure
	426	6.6	The Secret Heart
	1719	6.6	The Beast with Five Fingers

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

This seems awfully familiar… Oh, I watched this in 2014!

Oh, well. Let’s watch it again; I seem to remember it being rather good.

This 2K version has been beautifully restored — the last time I saw this was on .7K. So many more pixels!

This is adapted from the Noel Coward play, and I thought that he mostly did droll comedies? This isn’t a comedy at all in any way.

The actors are absolutely brilliant. Mixing theatre projection with understated, subtle little details.

Grade A schmaltz.

Brief Encounter. David Lean. 1945.

Popular movies in November 1945 according to IMDB:

Poster	Votes	Rating	Movie
	27366	8.1	Brief Encounter
	26215	8.0	The Lost Weekend
	6174	7.7	‘I Know Where I’m Going!’
	2677	7.6	Road to Utopia
	10343	7.4	Detour
	3286	7.2	Fallen Angel
	1235	7.1	My Name Is Julia Ross
	1104	7.0	The Seventh Veil
	310	6.9	Allotment Wives
	477	6.8	Danger Signal

This blog post is part of the Decade series.