The Criterion Collection

[Ray Jackson]

Originally Posted by oildude

I thought posting selfies in this thread is considered bad form.

[hoytereden]

Originally Posted by oildude

:thumbs up: Very cool to discover another Ward Bond fan. I have posted several times during my time on this forum that I like just about any movie with Ward Bond, and that his presence in the cast immediately improves the film and makes it blind-buy worthy if I have never seen it. One of my favorite character actors of all time. Fort Apache is one of the great westerns, thanks in no small part to the talents of Bond. The fact that he is in many John Ford films is how I discovered him.
I have a lot of character actor favorites, too many to list, and quite a few crossed the boundary into substantial roles in some films, but most spent large parts of their careers as minor or secondary characters or co-stars. The result of this is that they appeared in a whole lot of movies. Off the top of my head are:

Harry Dean Stanton
Richard Farnsworth
Wilford Brimley
Vic McLaglen (also a John Ford regular, often with Ward Bond, but really came to my attention for his role in The Quiet Man))
George Macready
William Demarest (one of the Preston Sturges players)
Thelma Ritter (one of the best)
Gloria Grahame
A lot of the classic noir actresses, in addition to Gloria, like Rhonda Fleming, Jane Greer, Jean Wallace, etc
Same thing for the male actors in noir, many of whom played small parts in many films - Richard Conte, Earl Holliman, etc
Lee J. Cobb
George Kennedy
Karl Malden
Eli Wallach
John Carradine
Strother Martin
Van Heflin
Arthur O'Connell
George Sanders (frequently a top billed co-star in the 1940s)
Jack Palance
Ben Johnson

That's a great list.
I think Ward Bond's death was the first time I was affected by the passing of someone I didn't know. I should correct that a little to say I felt like I did know him because, as a kid, he was a familiar face weekly as Maj. Adams on Wagon Train.
For some odd reason I can name obscure character actors on sight but can't remember someone I met in person a month ago.
Clem Bevens? Charles Halton?? No problem!
My wife's coworker??? aaaaaaaahhhhhhh

[oildude]

Originally Posted by hoytereden

That's a great list.
I think Ward Bond's death was the first time I was affected by the passing of someone I didn't know. I should correct that a little to say I felt like I did know him because, as a kid, he was a familiar face weekly as Maj. Adams on Wagon Train.
For some odd reason I can name obscure character actors on sight but can't remember someone I met in person a month ago.
Clem Bevens? Charles Halton?? No problem!
My wife's coworker??? aaaaaaaahhhhhhh

How true! I added a few more that came to mind after I posted. Sam Elliot especially, and members of the Sam Peckinpah players. Also the great Sam Fuller, who had bit parts in other director's movies. (That's a lot of Sams in one sentence lol.)

I really admire Thelma Ritter. Such a riot and frequently steals the show in whatever film she is in.

[hoytereden]

Originally Posted by oildude

How true! I added a few more that came to mind after I posted. Sam Elliot especially, and members of the Sam Peckinpah players. Also the great Sam Fuller, who had bit parts in other director's movies. (That's a lot of Sams in one sentence lol.)

I really admire Thelma Ritter. Such a riot and frequently steals the show in whatever film she is in.

I feel that same way about Marjorie Main.

I could also add Robert J. Wilke who was a familiar face in many a bad guy's gang in '50s westerns had a nice role as the foreman in Malick's Days of Heaven.

[The Great Owl]

I finally finished going through everything on the Gilda Blu-ray. (It's been a busy week.)

The Eddie Muller extra feature is most excellent, and he brings up a lot of subtleties in the film that I did not notice. It's funny that I've taken the plot of Gilda at face value for so long, but it's also a testament to the power of the script that I did so. Gilda was a controversial movie that you could show to the kiddies (unlike Deadpool, which I saw earlier today).

I won't write one of my customary long-winded reviews for this disc, since I'm about to start watching my Spectre Blu-ray and since I'm sort of burned out on writing long User Reviews for the moment, but I'll just sum it up by saying that everything about the Gilda Blu-ray is awesome.

[jmclick]

Originally Posted by hoytereden

The discussion about Timothy Carey prompts me to ask:

"Who is your favorite character actor?"
I probably could list a couple of dozen easily but I have two that are always there at the top- one well known and the other more obscure

Ward Bond-the guy was in lots of films but is probably best known for being a close friend of John Wayne and John Ford and his appearances in their films. He's in Criterion titles My Darling Clementine, Young Mr. Lincoln, and as the grumpy bus driver in It Happened One Night.

The obscure one is Joe Sawyer (aka Joseph Sauers). Also in a lot of films, especially in the '30s when he was usually cast as a gang member as he was in The Petrified Forest. As far as Criterion titles-He's in Kubrick's The Killing as Mike the bartender.

Ward Bond and Joseph Sawyer are both superb choices. They were two of the best. My list favorite of character actors and some of their best performances would have to include:

Robert Barrat (Lilly Turner, The Florentine Dagger, The Last of the Mohicans, Mountain Justice)
Roman Bohnen (Of Mice and Men, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, The Best Years of Our Lives, Brute Force)
Dwight Frye (Dracula, Frankenstein, The Circus Queen Murder)
Walter Huston (Kongo, Dodsworth, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Furies)
Claude Rains (Casablanca, Notorious, Deception, Alfred Hitchcock Presents: And So Died Riabouchinska)

Judith Anderson (Rebecca, Laura, And Then There Were None, Pursued)
Beulah Bondi (Street Scene, Remember the Night, It's a Wonderful Life, The Snake Pit)
Agnes Moorehead (The Magnificent Ambersons, Dark Passage, Caged, Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte)
Elizabeth Patterson (A Bill of Divorcement, The Cat and the Canary, Tobacco Road, Intruder in the Dust)
Thelma Ritter (All About Eve, The Mating Season, Pickup on South Street, Pillow Talk)

[oildude]

Originally Posted by jmclick

Ward Bond and Joseph Sawyer are both superb choices. They were two of the best. My list favorite of character actors and some of their best performances would have to include:

Robert Barrat (Lilly Turner, The Florentine Dagger, The Last of the Mohicans, Mountain Justice)
Roman Bohnen (Of Mice and Men, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, The Best Years of Our Lives, Brute Force)
Dwight Frye (Dracula, Frankenstein, The Circus Queen Murder)
Walter Huston (Kongo, Dodsworth, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Furies)
Claude Rains (Casablanca, Notorious, Deception, Alfred Hitchcock Presents: And So Died Riabouchinska)

Judith Anderson (Rebecca, Laura, And Then There Were None, Pursued)
Beulah Bondi (Street Scene, Remember the Night, It's a Wonderful Life, The Snake Pit)
Agnes Moorehead (The Magnificent Ambersons, Dark Passage, Caged, Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte)
Elizabeth Patterson (A Bill of Divorcement, The Cat and the Canary, Tobacco Road, Intruder in the Dust)
Thelma Ritter (All About Eve, The Mating Season, Pickup on South Street, Pillow Talk)

Good call on Agnes Moorehead. Also Beulah Bondi and Claude Raines. There are so many I like the list could go on for pages. A few you listed are not names that jump out at me, but I googled them and recognize their faces from the films you list. I tend to like character actors as much as the big stars.

Another one that comes to mind is Angela Lansbury. Growing up I only knew her for her television role in Murder, She Wrote. Only much later did I discover she was a classic film actress before her elder TV years, and played small parts in many memorable films. Then one day I saw her performance in The Manchurian Candidate....... Anyone who has not seen this film yet is in for a treat.

[hoytereden]

Originally Posted by oildude

Good call on Agnes Moorehead. Also Beulah Bondi and Claude Raines. There are so many I like the list could go on for pages. A few you listed are not names that jump out at me, but I googled them and recognize their faces from the films you list. I tend to like character actors as much as the big stars.

Farley Granger said much the same thing on a TCM spot talking about character actors.

Another one that comes to mind is Angela Lansbury. Growing up I only knew her for her television role in Murder, She Wrote. Only much later did I discover she was a classic film actress before her elder TV years, and played small parts in many memorable films. Then one day I saw her performance in The Manchurian Candidate....... Anyone who has not seen this film yet is in for a treat.

It's nice that quite a few of these folks had second careers on TV like William Frawley, Edgar Buchanan, William Demerest, etc.

[pedromvu]

I am watching the documentary called Side by Side and it is very interesting, it gives a lot of details on the history and the whole process of movie making, focusing on the battle between film vs digital with interviews with everyone involved from directors, cinematographers, editors, colorists, etc, giving their point of view.

At one point some of the crew talk about how no matter all their work they end up going to theaters and it looked different on each one, and how poor the quality ended up because of degraded film.

This is one thing I really don't get, how some people seem to prefer film projection compared to digital, I guess if you get a pristine film it could be great but in my experience here in Mexico I never really experienced anything near to great quality until theaters started using digital projectors, I still remember my first great experience, it was Casino Royale and it looked perfect.

It is incredible that with UHD blu-rays we could say we are finally in the point where we can have our own personal copy of movies looking equal or maybe even better than on theaters

[belcherman]

I'm loving this discussion of character actors. One of the things we lost with the demise of the studio system was the stable of great actors who were often on the screen for just a minute or two but who played an important role in the drama or comedy of the film. These were parts that fell in between supporting actor (name below the title) and bit player (second gunman). You saw these guys in movie after movie, usually playing a variation on the same character. Sometimes they blended into the background, sometimes they stole the scene, but you knew these guys by face, if not by name. They added color, flavor and depth. While we still have some great character actors today, we don't have that same bench of great players.

For your consideration:

Charles Lane
Edward Everett Horton
Oskar Homolka
Franklin Pangborn
William Demerest
Charles Coburn
Percy Kilbride
Mischa Auer
Billie Burke
Charles Ruggles

Just to name a few.

[colbyw]

Any predictions/rumors for tomorrow's announcements?

[Old Geezer]

I'd like to add one more name to the list of character actors if I could. As soon as I thought of character actors - Jack Elam popped into my head.

[Scottie]

Originally Posted by colbyw

Any predictions/rumors for tomorrow's announcements?

Cloudy with a 99.9% chance of a delay.

[jayembee]

Originally Posted by colbyw

Any predictions/rumors for tomorrow's announcements?

My prediction is that they'll push it off until Tuesday because tomorrow is Presidents Day.

[colbyw]

Originally Posted by jayembee

My prediction is that they'll push it off until Tuesday because tomorrow is Presidents Day.

Damn it, I forgot about that!

[ravenus]

Today I saw a bunch of Bergman titles at a local cinema hosting a retrospective. Most were re-watches (The Silence, Virgin Spring, Seventh Seal, Summer Interlude), but I saw one new title - All These Women. Sadly it was the least of the lot and actually kinda terrible. Here, Bergman tries to do a more high-brow sort of Carry On farce and falls mostly flat. While there is some nice looking color photography (Sven Nykvist), there's little color or spark to the proceedings themselves, and the satirical jabs at the "artist" and the "critic" are groan-inducingly broad and unsubtle. Definitely not recommended viewing.

[Arch Stanton]

Still desperate for Punch Drunk Love.

[The Great Owl]

Originally Posted by colbyw

Any predictions/rumors for tomorrow's announcements?

Prediction? Pain.

[Show spoiler]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSPNQ82Sq4E

I'd also like to see In a Lonely Place announced.

[oildude]

The time has come for Criterion to announce another Preston Sturges film. The drought has been too long. I am ready for The Lady Eve to make its Blu-ray debut.

It's Valentine's Day, after all, and the perfect Valentine from Criterion to us fans is a Preston Sturges screwball comedy starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda.




Of course, a perfect Valentine could also include any or all of these:

Le Samourai
The Naked Prey
The Cranes are Flying
Ballad of a Soldier
The Bad Sleep Well
Stray Dog
Pickup on South Street
Thieves' Highway
The Naked City
The Furies
Heaven Can Wait
Elevator to the Gallows
The Passion of Joan of Arc
Andrei Rublev
The Last Wave
An Angel at my Table
Red Beard
The Burmese Harp
Fires on the Plain
The Human Condition
Samurai Rebellion
Youth of the Beast
Bergman's Faith Trilogy
The Virgin Spring
Night Train to Munich
Fallen Idol
Touchez pas au grisbi
Three Films by Hiroshi Teshigahara
The BRD Trilogy
The Dekalog

[Rich Pure Doom]

Originally Posted by oildude

The time has come for Criterion to announce another Preston Sturges film. The drought has been too long. I am ready for The Lady Eve to make its Blu-ray debut.

It's Valentine's Day, after all, and the perfect Valentine from Criterion to us fans is a Preston Sturge's screwball comedy starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda.




Of course, a perfect Valentine could also include any or all of these:

Le Samourai
The Naked Prey
The Cranes are Flying
Ballad of a Soldier
The Bad Sleep Well
Stray Dog
The Human Condition
The BRD Trilogy
The Dekalog

BRD Trilogy is basically impossible as Lola and Veronika Voss have yet to be restored.