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Okay, I admit that I have been watching the Poirot mysteries and the Ellery Queen episodes longer than expected, but now I'm more than ready for some Charlie Chan. There's something about those 1930s and early 1940s mysteries which the retro episodes just can't capture. Maybe that's why I like it when I find out that a classic mystery was filmed shortly after the story was written.

I won't review each film, but if I have any random comments to make about any of the movies, I'll be sure to say a few words here.

cool

Just got word:

Next week we will start delivering some of the perks and two days ago we started placing graves with your names at Sad Hill. The process is taking longer than expected, so please be patient. We will start sending pictures very soon.  You can reach at info@zapruderpictures.com for any questions you might have.

Thanks so much for you support!

Luisa Cowell - Producer

-- Gromek's death scene is the most famous of the movie, a great scene. I enjoyed seeing the German get the gas chamber (though I'm not certain if it was intended that way).

I am. This is just the kind of gag the Master liked to put over. (cf: Tippi Hedren in the phone booth (cage) whilst outside the Birds circulate.)

-- Many movies have one character whose job is to be nothing but a pain in the ass. The blonde woman on the phony "Leipzig-Berlin" bus plays that role, constantly whining and whining, the pain in the ass role.

This kind of character frequently appears in real life, too, especially on chat boards.

the Stanton cut (aka the Pope's favourite version)

Anyone else notice there's someone on this board who is just--how should I put it?--just a little bit too full of himself? Just a teeny bit? Anyone else see that?

January 11, 2011, 07:46:40 AM »

Born To Kill (1947) Director, Robert Wise with Claire Trevor, Lawrence Tierney, Walter Slezak, Phillip Terry, Audrey Long, Elisha Cook Jr., Isabel Jewell, and Esther Howard. Part of the Film Noir Classic's Collection #2. This one is great with a good cast who aside from Elisha Cook Jr., I was pretty unfamiliar with. Trevor plays a high society divorcee in Reno finalizing the divorce, who befriends beer swilling  landlady Ester Howard, in a great performance, and next door cutey Isabel Jewel who two times ladykiller hood Tierney as a way to keep him in line. Loose cannon Tierney who is in a sort of "Of Mice And Men" relationship with Elisha Cook Jr. (though not retarded as in the Steinbeck book, just dangerously impulsive) surprises Jewel & date in her house and kills them both. Trevor discovers the bodies but says nothing and leaves Reno on the train to San Fransisco with Tierney (who she met and becomes infatuated with in a casino while he was shadowing Jewel & her date), not knowing that he was the murderer. Walter Slezak is spot on in a classic characterization of a sleazy detective hired by Landlady Howard to find Jewel's killer.

Trevor is living with her wealth stepsister Audry Long and is engaged to a man with wealth Phillip Terry, the divorce paving the way for their marriage but she is now drawn fatally to Tierney who upon meeting Long projects his uncanny attraction to women and immediately focuses his attentions on Long to Trevor's dismay.

This is a good one, entertaining, with many twists, some great interior and location shots, all around great performances by the whole cast 10/10

Anyone looking for the specific differences between Kino's shorter cut and the actual 1967 international cut can find them here:

http://theeditroomfloor.blogspot.ca/2017/08/the-gbu-kino-disc-has-arrived.html

Thanks Jordan - great work!

Even if he really helped to cut the shorter version (which makes more sense than let other people do the butcher's job, if it is inevitable), his version remains the original Italian one. And calling that one an extended cut is absolutely wrong.

Problem is that somehow in that case the shorter version is not a weaker version. But, apart from the few segments, which the Stanton cut (aka the Pope's favourite version) leaves rightly out, I love every of the scenes missing in the 162 min version, and want never again watch the film without these scenes, but they are bought of course with 15 more min of film length, and films should never be longer than necessary. So this is one of the few cases in which both, the longer and the shorter version are equally perfect.

Now, what's with these flip cuts? They are all in?

On blu in November from CC: https://www.criterion.com/films/184-le-samourai/?

This will be a mandatory buy (altho hopefully they have also secured the UK rights for a region B release, it would definitely help my wallet, heh). The French blu-ray has only French subtitles (and supposedly less-than-stellar picture quality)

Just watched this last night... It's an enjoyable film, but the bad print really hampers things at times... It's also a tad bit too long, and there's too much voice over narration/exposition going on (esp in the last part of the movie on the steamer to NYC, with Dick Powell narrating the layout of the rooms while pointing it out on a map, several times in a row).

But it also has a sense of realism and grimness that sets it apart from similar 'crime busting' movies of the time that took the semi-documentary style approach... The methods that were employed to grow and smuggle the drugs were quite clever. And the scene early on where a hundred slaves are callously 'disposed of' at sea... Damn, that was quite graphic for 1948!

It's far from a perfect film, but if a clean print every surfaces and gets a nice DVD or blu-ray release, I wouldn't hesitate to add it to the collection. 7+/10