The 10 Best Alfred Hitchcock Movies

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Alfred Hitchcock was the first director I learned to know by name.  I’ve always been an Alfred Hitchcock fan so I was delighted to see Nate Williams and ComingSoon present the 10 Best Alfred Hitchcock Movies.  Here are three of my favorites with my comments (and Hitchcock films that didn’t make the cut that should have)…

  • Rope: I love that Hitch was able to film the movie (in 1948 no less) as if it was shot in one complete take.  He did this in order to give the feeling of real time as if seeing the action unfold on stage as in a play.  So, kuddos to Hitchcock for this technical achievement.  Unfortunately, many times I think this technical aspect overshadows the fact that Rope is a suspenseful movie.  And the question isn’t who will be murdered or who committed the murder, but how will they be caught — what will trip them up?
  • Psycho: was a groundbreaking film well ahead of its time.  I love the fact that it starts off like a crime caper, moves into a murder mystery and wraps up as a horror film.  Hats off to Hitch!
  • North by Northwest:  For my money,  North by Northwest is Hitchcock’s finest film.  Cary Grant was never better and the supporting cast (Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Leo G. Carroll, Martin Landau…) were perfect.  There was the right blend of action, suspense and humor.  It doesn’t get any better than North by Northwest.

Three Hitchcock films that would have made my Top 10, but didn’t make Williams’ list are Lifeboat; Saboteur and The Birds!

12 Horror Movies That Should (or Shouldn’t) Have Won Best Picture

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Scott Beggs and /Film present 12 Horror Movies That Should (or Shouldn’t) Have Won Best Picture.  So, let’s look at Beggs’ choices and the Best Picture Winner for that year and decide…

  • The Phantom of the Opera (1925) vs Nothing
    As Beggs points out, the Academy Awards didn’t begin until 1927 so my decision is NO CHOICE.

  • Frankenstein (1931) vs  Cimarron
    While I haven’t seen Cimarron, I have seen Dracula that was released the same year and Dracula would be my choice for the Horror Movie That Should Have Won.

  • Psycho (1960) vs The Apartment
    The Apartment has been on my to be viewed list for quite a while.  Since I haven’t seen it, I’ll abstain from a choice.

  • Night of the Living Dead (1968) vs Oliver
    I am a huge NOTLD fan, but part of the appeal is it is NOT a Hollywood, Oscar-winning type movie.  I prefer NOTLD to Oliver.  I even prefer NOTLD to Rosemary’s Baby which also came out the same year.  Still, I think my vote for the Best Picture would go to Oliver.

  • The Exorcist (1973) vs The Sting
    I’ve seen and enjoyed both but I would have given the Best Picture Award to The Exorcist.

  • Jaws (1975) vs One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
    Both are classics films but the my nod would have went to Jaws.

  • Alien (1979) vs Kramer vs Kramer
    Alien     easily gets the win from me

  • The Shining (1980) vs Ordinary People
    The Shining would get my vote over Ordinary People but Raging Bull should have been the real winner. (I know, I know, we’re talking horror movies vs the actual winners, but c’mon, Raging Bull!)

  • The Thing (1982) vs Gandhi
    At the time I would have went with Gandhi, but now my choice would be The Thing.

  • The Silence of the Lambs (1991) vs The Silence of the Lambs
    Ah, I guess I’ll go with The Silence of the Lambs.

  • The Babadook (2014) vs The Birdman
    I didn’t care for the Babadook and I haven’t seen The Birdman so for me No Choice.

  • Get Out (2017) vs The Shape of Water
    Get Out was excellent, but I’d give the Oscar to The Shape of Water.

 

 

The 10 Best Bruce Willis Movies

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Nate Williams and ComingSoon present the 10 Best Bruce Willis Movies. Here are three of my favorites with my comments…

3.  The Last Boy Scout:  Willis is great in his role of a cynical detective teamed with an ex-football player investigating the player’s girlfriend’s murder.  Perfect mix of action and humor.

2.  The Sixth Sense: Although M. Night Shyamalan (writer & director) is the real star of The Sixth Sense, Willis does a fine job as the lead.

1.  Die Hard:  Can you imagine anyone other than Bruce Willis as John McClane?  Die Hard changed the genre and now movies are described referencing it. Die Hard on a Ship… Die Hard on a Plane… Die Hard at the White House… yet none (not even the Die Hard sequels) managed to equal the original.

Other Bruce Willis movies that were worthy…

  • Pulp Fiction:  I could see Pulp Fiction making most folks’ lists but I focused on movies he carried as the lead.
  • Hudson Hawk: didn’t make Williams 10 Best Bruce Willis Movies list, but it sure would have made mine.
  • Sin City:  When I read the comic series I pictured someone older (Clint Eastwood maybe) but Willis was Hartigan for the movie and it worked.
  • Lucky Number Slevin:  A very under-rated movie.

“It Follows” Trivia

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Scott Beggs and Mental Floss present 10 Fascinating Facts About It Follows. Here are three of my favorites…

1. ITS TIME PERIOD DOESN’T FEEL REAL.
David Robert Mitchell, production designer Michael Perry, and costume designer Kimberly Leitz coordinated to throw us off-balance without us even realizing it. Almost none of the young characters use cell phones, but they exist—and Yara (Olivia Luccardi) has that clamshell e-reader. The vintage cars all look brand-new, but people also have cars from the 2010s. It’s presumably modern day, but all the TVs are from the 1980s, and all the movies the kids watch are classics. Characters also wear bathing suits or heavy winter coats on the same day without appearing too hot or cold. Essentially the movie takes place during a stretch of impossible weather during an unreal era, making it impossible for you to find your footing. (Craig – This is genius!)

7. ONE OF THE MONSTERS IS JAY AND KELLY’S FATHER.
The monster takes on the form of a middle-aged man when Jay and Kelly try to kill it at the pool. In an incredibly subtle moment, Jay refuses to tell Kelly (Lili Sepe) what the monster has taken the form of, but if you rewatch the movie, you’ll see that the middle-aged man is their father, who is featured in several family photographs in the house but completely absent from their lives. Some viewers theorize he killed himself, and others see his throwing appliances at her in the pool as a nod toward possible abuse, but Jay is definitely protecting her sister.

4. THE PLAN TO KILL THE MONSTER IS TERRIBLE. BUT THAT’S ON PURPOSE.
Jay and her friends plot to electrocute the monster in a pool even though they don’t know anything about what might weaken it, and they were warned directly that it’s not dumb. “It’s the stupidest plan ever!” Mitchell told Vulture. “It’s a kid-movie plan. It’s something that Scooby Doo and the gang might think of, and that was sort of the point. What would you do if you were confronted by a monster and found yourself trapped within a nightmare?”

Mitchell specifically wanted to avoid the trope of the perfect nugget of information about the monster’s vulnerabilities magically dropping into the gang’s lap.

 

‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ (1956) Trivia

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Rob Hunter and Film School Rejects present  22 Things We Learned from Joe Dante’s ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ Commentary. Here are three of my favorites …

11. Sam Peckinpah, who has a small role in the film, was apparently very quiet on set. He can be seen in the basement at 37:32.

13. They disagree over when exactly Dr. Dan Kauffman (Larry Gates) became a pod person. Dante thinks he’s one for the first time when Miles and Becky arrive in their bathrobes, but McCarthy says he’s been one since the earlier car ride. “Hmm, interesting,” says Dante, clearly not believing him but choosing instead to be a gentleman and a fan.

16. Siegel once snuck into Wynter’s house and hid a pod prop beneath her bed. No one challenges her on the commentary to prove she’s still human.

This version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is one of my favorite horror films.  I fondly remember watching it many times over the years — with my favorite viewings being hosted by Sammy Terry late at night at my grandparents house.

11 Legendary Facts About “Enter the Dragon”

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Matthew Jackson and Mental Floss present  11 Legendary Facts About Enter the Dragon. Here are three of my favorites …

2. THE LOOK WAS INSPIRED BY A COMIC STRIP.
Enter the Dragon was made quickly, on a tight schedule, and with a budget much more constrained than what we commonly associate with action movies today. As a result, Heller and Weintraub had to start concerning themselves with getting sets built in Hong Kong even before Michael Allin’s script was completely finalized. To do that, Heller looked to his childhood and to a comic strip about adventures in China that he’d loved, Terry and the Pirates.

“It was high chroma reds, blues, golds, and it just lent itself to this project so closely,” Heller said.

So, with Terry and the Pirates in mind, Heller began working with a sketch artist to design various sets, including Han’s (Kien Shih) underground layer, the banquet hall on the island, and other key areas of Han’s domain. From there, the sketches were turned over to set builders in Hong Kong, and construction was underway

8. THE ICONIC MIRRORED ROOM WAS NOT IN THE SCRIPT.
It’s impossible now to imagine Enter the Dragon without the iconic final fight between Lee and Han, which takes place in a mirrored room that replicates Lee’s movements several times over as he delivers his famous kicks. Once upon a time, though, this was nowhere in the script, and only came about because Heller noticed the effect mirrors had at a Hong Kong hotel where he was eating one day.

“I took Bruce and showed it to him. He thought it was too fragmented, that you couldn’t get any action that would mean anything out of it,” Heller recalled. “Bob Clouse and I really fought hard for it, and we created this mirrored room.”

Clouse and Heller pushed ahead with the mirror concept, and once they showed the set to Lee and he was able to move around in the space, he became a believer. A special “closet” made of mirrors with a hole cut in one side for the camera lens was built, so that the cameraman would always blend into the rest of the scene, and filming of the famous sequence began. According to Hubbs, though, working for hours on end in that environment created a unique set of challenges.

“I remember that I would always have to touch, because if I’m looking at something, they might not be there, they might be over there,” Hubbs said. “I found that I could only be in there for a couple of hours, and I’d have to go out and sit down and look at a wall and real dimension, because it’s like there was a fourth dimension in there.”

9. LEE CHOREOGRAPHED THE FIGHT SCENES HIMSELF.
Lee was not just the star of Enter the Dragon. He also played a key role in how it was staged, as the screenplay would often describe action sequences by simply saying “This Will Be Choreographed by Mr. Bruce Lee.” As Heller recalled, Lee would often walk through the various sets, particularly Han’s underground lair, and look for details and props that he could then incorporate into each sequence, with the help of Clouse. Together, they worked closely to engineer the film’s iconic fight sequences, and by the time early footage from the film was available, Lee was so excited that he didn’t want Enter the Dragon to end. According to Weintraub, he later went back to Hong Kong to shoot the early sparring sequence at the monastery with his friend Sammo Hung.

State by State – The Most Popular Horror Films in America!

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Zack Sharf and IndieWire present The Most Popular Horror Films in America: New Study Reveals Each State’s Most Talked-About Title.   Here they are (with my comments)…

Alabama: “Halloween” (A classic!)

Alaska: “Little Shop of Horrors” (Comedy over horror)

Arizona: “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane” (Arizona does have a lot of retirees)

Arkansas: “The Thing” (Now we’re talking!)

California: “The Orphanage” (Wonder if the latest border separations influenced this…)

Colorado: “The Shining” (When a movie is made in your state…)

Connecticut: “Pan’s Labyrinth” (Ok…)

Delaware: “The Birds”  (Another classic!)

District of Columbia: “The Exorcist” (The movie that scares you most after watching it…)

Florida: “This Is the End” (Comedy over horror)

Georgia: “Get Out” (A modern day classic…)

Hawaii: “The Exorcist” (See District of Columbia)

Idaho: “The Birds” (See Delaware)

Illinois: “The House of the Devil”  (Huh?)

Indiana: “Frankenstein” (My birth state goes with a classic!)

Iowa: “Evil Dead 2” (Groovy!)

Kansas: “Shaun of the Dead”  (Comedy over horror)

Kentucky: “Evil Dead 2” (See Iowa)

Louisiana: “Get Out”  (Interesting that GA and LA are both Southern States… “They’re on to us!”)

Maine: “The Host” (Surprised it wasn’t a Stephen King adaptation)

Maryland: “Blair Witch Project” (When a film is made in your state…)

Massachusetts: “The Silence of the Lambs” (Is SotL really a horror film?)

Michigan: “Near Dark” (Well, played Michigan.)

Minnesota: “The Silence of the Lambs” (See Massachusetts)

Mississippi: “Drag Me to Hell” (Seems redundant since you’re in Mississippi.  – Just kidding!)

Missouri: “The Silence of the Lambs” (See Minnesota)

Montana: “Young Frankenstein” (Comedy over horror. How about A&C Meet Frankenstein?)

Nebraska: “King Kong” (A classic)

Nevada: “Shaun of the Dead” (See Montana)

New Hampshire: “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (The original or the remake?  The original.)

New Jersey: “The Silence of the Lambs” (Seems to be a state favorite. But is it really horror?)

New Mexico: “Bride of Frankenstein” (A well deserved classic.)

New York: “Psycho” (A modern – does the 60’s still count as modern? – classic.)

North Carolina: “Halloween” (John Carpenter’s classic – don’t accept substitutes.)

North Dakota: “Aliens” (A great movie!)

Ohio: “The Silence of the Lambs” (Ok.  I get it. I give up. SotL is Horror!)

Oklahoma: “This is the End” (Comedy over horror.)

Oregon: “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” (Sounds like the start of a joke.)

Pennsylvania: “The Silence of the Lambs” (I’ve already conceded.)

Rhode Island: “The Love Witch” (Sounds like a 60’s drive-in movie)

South Carolina: “The Loved Ones” (The second feature to “The Love Witch” at the drive-in.)

South Dakota: “Cabin in the Woods” (Now we’re talking.)

Tennessee: “The Witch” (Ok.)

Texas: “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (Another modern (?) classic.)

Utah: “Zombieland” (Comedy over horror)

Vermont: “The Exorcist” (Scariest movie ever.)

Virginia: “Drag Me to Hell” (Or Mississippi. – Again, I’m kidding!)

Washington: “Shaun of the Dead” (We like our horror played for laughs.)

West Virginia: “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (Pleasant nightmares!)

Wisconsin: “Shaun of the Dead” (See Washington.)

Wyoming: “The Babadook” (That’s the best you’ve got?)

I’m surprised ot a single state picked: Night of the Living Dead; 28 days later; or  World War Z?

Things You Probably Never Knew About “The Sopranos”

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Johnny Hughes and Goliath present Things You Probably Never Knew About The Sopranos.  Here are three of my favorites …

10. Mob Attention
The Sopranos was lauded for its authenticity but the show’s realistic depiction of mob activities attracted the attention of real-life gangsters. As writer and executive producer Terence Winter told Vanity Fair in a wide-reaching 2012 interview, one FBI agent told him that he’d heard real-life mobsters talking about the show over wire taps and that they were convinced The Sopranos writers had an informant on the inside because the show was too accurate.

“We would hear back that real wiseguys used to think that we had somebody on the inside. They couldn’t believe how accurate the show was.” Fortunately, no hits were ever carried out on Chase, Winter, or the rest of The Sopranos creative team!

8. Paulie Was Based on the Actor Who Played Him
Paulie “Walnuts” Gualtieri is one of the many brilliant characters on the show. But as it turns out, he is actually very similar to the actor that portrays him – Tony Sirico. Funny yet also extremely dangerous and violent, Sirico was also a criminal with 28 arrests at the time he was cast (with 27 acting jobs). Not only was it a life of crime that made these two similar, but Sirico also states that he is also a neat-freak and lived at home with his mother. This was also true of his character, and contributed to some of the comedy in the show. Due to his eccentricities and OCD but also violent streak, it made Paulie one of the most memorable characters on the show and you can hear his voice simply by looking at a picture of him. This is largely down to Sirico’s brilliant portrayal of the familiar character.

6. James Gandolfini Paid Each Actor After Contract Disputes
Tony Soprano may not have been the nicest of people, but James Gandolfini clearly was. Following the conclusion of Season Four, tensions ran high between the cast and the studio as there were disputes over payment. This resulted in delays before Season Five, after a staged sit-in shut down the set. To ease tensions and get everybody back to work, James Gandolfini (who had been paid) split his bonus with all the cast members, seeing them earn $33,333 each. Whilst Tony is undoubtedly the star a key reason why The Sopranos is deemed such an incredible show is that it has many expertly written characters who all contribute to the story – making each one hugely valuable. This generous act from Gandolfini is just one of many stories of his kindness and generosity.