A fine conclusion [to my festival]

A Night to Remember (1958)

Starring: Kenneth More, Michael Goodliffe, Kenneth Griffith, Anthony Bushell, and James Dyrenforth

Writer: Eric Ambler

Director: Roy Ward Baker

Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

Based on the eponymous book by American writer Walter Lord.  Whereas the other films I've watched this week all deal with an additional story, be it a love affair, a famous passenger, or just the Titanic itself, A Night to Remember cuts to the chase.  It takes James Cameron's version until the end of the first cassette to get where Night is when it's less than a third over.  Despite this, it is not an exploitative action movie.  In fact, it's probable that Cameron copied heavily from this film.  The special effects, by the way, are in any way as good as the ones in that movie, one of whose 11 Oscars was for this field.  It was one of the first films to use slow motion for dramatic effect.

I did not know that SOS was a new concept in 1912, or that it stood for "save our souls."  I just heard of Rihanna's song, her first big hit.  Now I know it's mainly used by ships at sea.

Activity onboard the Carpathia, the ship that rescued the survivors, is something exclusive to this subject.  Roy Ward Baker was mainly known for directing horror films, and it shows in this one, what with the direction of the ordeal, combined with the fact that this actually happened.  This film does have some some flaws, though, mainly that despite many Americans having boarded the Titanic, this film has an all-British cast.  Also, there is one anachronism at the end, where someone smokes casually and someone takes a modern leftist attitude toward it.

Interestingly, it is in this version that the hallways are the tallest, and people throw themselves off the end of the vessel, as they did when the Great Depression began.  This film was originally titled Titanic, which means that if it had stayed that way, more than half of our subjects would have had that exact name. (The others, if you'll recall, were from 1996, 1997, and 1953.) I watched a brand-spanking-new (released March 27) DVD from the Criterion Collection; they are known for archiving the world's great films and releasing them on DVD and Blu-ray.  Their website should be of interest to any serious film buff.

A Night to Remember is a fine conclusion to an occasion for which I should have played the song "Taps" from YouTube.

Classic Hollywood spin on a now-familiar tale

Titanic (1953)

Starring: Clifton Webb, Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Wagner, Thelma Ritter, Audrey Dalton, and Brian Aherne

Writers: Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch, and Richard Breen

Director: Jean Negulesco

Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Julia Sturges (Stanwyck) is determined to bring her family back to America and out of Britain, which she feels is superficial.  Her husband Richard (Webb) learns of the plan and purchases a steerage ticket; but "the usual," combined with a zealous captain, may jeopardize all this.

Films about the Titanic were made back to 1912 itself, but the earliest that is not ultra-obscure (560-odd votes in 14.25 years at IMDb) dates from 1943.  This version, made ten years down the road, is a sufficiently nice movie for those who don't watch many classic movies.  It was made with a then-very high budget of $1.805 million and was reportedly a smash hit at the box office.  "TITANIC," read the PR, "in Emotion…in Spectacle…in Climax…in Cast!"

Then again, The Conqueror, a fictionalized epic in which John Wayne played Genghis Khan, was advertised as the best movie ever made, and it's usually considered a turkey.  This Titanic, despite being obviously much better, is not quite all the advertising cracked it up to be.

It rates 7.1/10 among users at IMDb, but it has not yet been mentioned on a list collected by TSPDT for their annually-updated 1,000 Greatest Films project.  Yet Manos: The Hands of Fate has been mentioned once, probably by some schizophreniac, on a ballot; and if it can make their Starting List, then absolutely anything can.  This film won an Oscar for Best Story and Screenplay (it was a single award back then), and was nominated for best art direction in a black-and-white film.  Could Manos have done the same?

Barbara Stanwyck was known as the "best actress never to win an Oscar"—although she was nominated for Stella Dallas, Ball of Fire, Double Indemnity, and Sorry, Wrong Number—but in fact she won an honorary award in 1982.  She plays Julia with enough flair to get by, as do the rest of the cast.

Usually the term "forgettable" has a strongly negative connotation, but this film is a few steps above average and it certainly is.  It uses a concise 98 minutes to its fullest advantage.

NOTE: This version's original title was Nearer My God to Thee, and the song plays at the end of the movie.  I forgot to mention last night that I am expanding my collection of uplifting death songs and will use the version by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

How to take something from a tragedy and make it entertaining

The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964)

Starring: Debbie Reynolds, Harve Presnell, Ed Begley (Sr.), Jack Kruschen, Hermione Baddeley, Vassili Lambrinos, and Fred Essler

Writer: Helen Deutsch

Director: Charles Walters

Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A biography of Margaret Brown (Reynolds), later dubbed The Unsinkable Molly Brown because of her survival of the Titanic wreck.

When I mentioned to my mother that I decided on this picture for this occasion, she questioned that it might in itself be morbid.  In fact, The Unsinkable Molly Brown is a wonderfully entertaining life story about one of the best-remembered actual passengers of the shipwreck.  It's based on a stage musical with music and lyrics by Meredith Wilson (of The Music Man fame).  And who better to produce it than MGM, the folks who brought you many bright, cheery musicals.  Only two, Singin' in the Rain and The Wizard of Oz, are today considered masterpieces, but there are plenty of entertaining ones besides those.

This film begins with Molly as a toddler, emerging unscathed from rapids flowing downstream.  Though probably fictitious and meant to emphasize her reputation, it is one of the greatest riveting scenes for such a small scale.  Up to a certain point in the film, the action is entirely in Colorado, which has much of the best scenery (and color photography for that matter) I've ever seen in a movie.  The next scene takes place with her in her early teens, where she's living with her father (Begley) and brothers in a log cabin.

Then she meets Johnny Brown (Presnell) and, longing for the good life, declines to get involved with him.  So he builds her a log cabin, trying to meet all her desires as she tells them to him at once.  After they get married, Johnny strikes it rich.  Molly tries to hide the money somewhere for safe keeping (after a great sequence where she ends up hiding it in a heater), but it turns out to be anything but as Johnny burns the money by mistake.  When he sets off again, gold falls from a hill.  The rest, as they say, is history. (And because I'm a lower-class man, they get so rich it makes me jealous.)

Debbie Reynolds considers this to be her favorite film she made; and the soundtrack and dancing, I might add, are as good as that of any musical ever made.  But if I were Helen Deutsch, these things would have to be corrected before I could agree:

• The neglicence in providing us with dates leaves something to be desired.
• There are cheesy parts.  For example, when Johnny sets off for the mine the second time, Molly cries like a baby—no exaggeration.
• The part where Molly becomes literate is too quick to really have the proper effect.
• The final part of the movie, which takes place on the Titanic, could also use a little bit more time.  Ms. Brown underestimates the seriousness of the sinking, and how she came across as smug to other passengers goes completely undiscussed.

Yet much like Life Is Beautiful (the "feel-good Holocaust comedy") and The Death Book, an acclaimed picture book from 1999 by Pernilla Stadfelt that I've expressed interest in getting, The Unsinkable Molly Brown nearly triumphs in what it sets out to do.

NOTE: I looked Margaret Brown up on Wikipedia.  She was not known as Molly during her lifetime (1867-1932), but as Maggie by her friends.  She had a space capsule named after her.

NOTE 2: Debbie Reynolds, who turned eighty ten [back then] days ago, first did her own singing after Singin' in the Rain.  My hope is that she will play Mr. Crocker's mother Nanette in my adaptation of The Fairly OddParents.  There is a mix-up here, however; on the show, she was the mother of newscaster Chet Ubetcha.  This I forgot, but all adaptations must be slightly different so what the heck.

It's a disaster of a movie

Titanic II (2010)

Starring: Shane Van Dyke, Marie Westbrook, Bruce Davison, Brooke Burns, Michelle Glavan, Carey Van Dyke, and D. C. Douglas

Writer: Shane Van Dyke

Director: Shane Van Dyke

Rating: 1 of 5 Stars

In 2012, the U.S.S. Titanic II sets sail from NYC to Europe.  When it collides with an iceberg, the passengers and crew try to fight against fate.

Yes, Titanic II is a sequel to the ship.  No, no one who boards it is familiar with what happened to the original.  The 1912 sinking is not only the worst sealine disaster in human history, it is probably the most famous.  The statement, "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it," has been exemplified through many disastrous situations, including the League of Nations and the U.S.-Iraq War.  If Titanic II was based on real life, it would rank right up there with those events.

Sunday's experiment was the definition of a zero-star movie; and if Titanic II's script is not a Cinematic Titanic (referring to the new DVDs from the MST3K folks), I don't know what is.  In addition to the idiotic premise, we also have a girl at the beginning who seriously says she would rather let passengers drown than perform CPR.  Yet very few bad films got that way on purpose, and with all this comes a kind of epic ambition.  It's plain to see when Titanic II sets off that Shane Van Dyke was aiming for the same triumphant mood (albeit in an ironic way) as in the most famous Titanic film when the same thing happens with its predecessor.  Likewise, the score is under-inspired, but you can tell the composers understood that a score makes or breaks a film.

So even though Titanic II is an epic failure—in its attempts to build suspense about the inevitable, in its character development, in its conventionality in regards to plot logic, and in its non-conformity to the reboot/remake trend that's reaching crisis levels in Hollywood—it might be a good candidate for a book someday about the event it takes after: The Little Ocean Liner That Thought It Could, But Couldn't.

'Titanic' as only Hallmark could tell it

Titanic (1996)

Starring: Peter Gallagher, George C. Scott, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Eva Marie Saint, Tim Curry, Harley Jane Kozak, and Marilu Henner

Writers: Ross LaManna, Joyce Eliason

Director: Robert Lieberman

Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars

Intertwining stories on the Titanic.  Wynn Park (Gallagher) tries to hit on Hazel's (Saint) granddaughter Bess (Kozak); Captain Smith (Scott) celebrates (at the beginning only, of course) his last voyage; Jamie Perse (Mike Doyle) is obsessed with becoming an actor, fixates on Mary Pickford, and hits on a Danish girl (Sonsee Neu); and Alice (Felicity Waterman) has a recurring premonition that the children she's watching will drown.

In 2003, BBC fanboys who had obviously never heard of Hal Warren voted James Cameron's Titanic the worst movie ever made.  If you have any perspective on filmic quality, then of course this statement is ridiculous to say the least.  This 2.75-hour cable version, for starters, plays up the corny qualities of the Cameron version.  Especially towards the end, when a passenger challenges the crew members' command that only women and children board the lifeboats: "Don't talk to me like that, young man!"  Or when the Danish girl randomly says that she doesn't believe in God.

As VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever (which gave this flick 1.5/4 bones) points out, Scott is the most interesting actor to watch.  Between Gallagher and Doyle, it's hard to remember who's who.  The villain appears to be Curry, in a rather abrupt twist of situations.

Stupidly, when the other vessel arrives in New York, the skyline (including the Statue of Liberty) is entirely computer-generated, and looks like something from a 3D computer game of the time.  Yet the iceberg is the only other CGI effect, and since TV movies don't count as box office bombs, couldn't this have cost more than $13 million?

The video release boasts, "The story so few lived to tell," but 31.6 percent of the passengers were saved.  Titanic has a decent score by Lennie Nielhaus, who brought you Unforgiven, and the film succeeds in conveying the incident as the awful tragedy that it was.  The ending, though, draws parallels to Killer at Large, a dud of a documentary I saw 359 days ago that presents the obesity epidemic as all bad.  Maybe it was all bad, so why remind us?

Worst animated movie ever (Day 1)

Titanic: The Animated Movie (2000)

Starring: Lisa Russo, Mark Ashworth, Gisella Mathews, Silva Belton, Bianca Alessandra Ara, and Veronica Wells

Writer: Camillo Teti

Director: Camillo Teti

Rating: 0.5 of 5 Stars

A young woman named Angelica (voice of Russo) boards the Titanic not knowing her - and everyone else's - lives will be changed.

Titanic: The Animated Movie (video title for Titanic: The Legend Goes On…), an Italian production, is possibly the worst movie ever made and certainly the worst animated movie ever made.  First of all, as Timmy Turner would say, the animation reeks.  It reminds me much of Belle's Magical World, the 1998 Disney video release that inspired me to forge a letter of resignation for my despotic instructional assistant.  It also reminds me of Disney's The Return of Jafar, the first sequel to Aladdin.  Strictly speaking, in those films the animation was too fruity, too colorful.  The animation in The Legend Goes On… is not ambitious almost at all.  When I watch an animated feature, I expect it to be sweeping and not like something you could see on any Saturday morning TV show.

And, yes, it's a musical.  The first number is "Party Time," sung by a rapping gray terrier, which is completely unnecessary to the story and horrendously edited.  There is also "Mucho Gusto," sung by "Mexican" mice (all characters have British or American accents) and lifeless, considering it was a "salsa" song (though male salsa singers have high voices).  That's right, according to this movie, the animals onboard Titanic were just as important as the humans.  Yet none of the personalities who were onboard made it into this movie.  No, they've been substituted by insipid ones.

There's a love story between Angelica and a gent named William (Ashworth).  By the time the credits roll, less than an hour had passed in my life, which is why the characters are undeveloped and the plot developments run off the rails.  It's a patient of Fuller syndrome*.  Also, the movie hasn't bothered to come up with an original plot, preferring to assemble one from carcasses of other children's movies.  Plagiarized are Disney's Cinderella (Angelica has an evil stepmother and step-sisters), An American Tail (Fievel and his family are ripped off), One Hundred and One Dalmatians (not just unoriginal, but pointless, since the Dalmatians don't talk and don't belong to anyone), and even James Cameron's Titanic.

William, too, is quite clichéd.  The step-sisters are deeply annoying, and the first low point of the movie (involving them) comes thirty-eight minutes into the affair.  It HAS to be one of the worst scenes ever filmed, almost up there with Torgo playing with women's hair in Manos.  In fact, not even the animals are as likeable as you should think - a shame, since this is aimed at five-year-olds.  The secondary characters are not supporting folks, they're props.  The dialogue between William and Angelica is tepid.

The second low point is the ending - or should I say, from the back of the video case:

"CHILD-FRIENDLY ENDING ASSURES EVERYONE IS RESCUED AND LIVES HAPPILY EVER AFTER!"

Aside from that, the animals are saved by dolphins; the men throw the water over the side with buckets; and although EVERYONE is saved, we only see an epilogue that is the most rushed part of all.  An already-crappy movie is now the textbook definition of pointless.

For the purpose of this film festival, this movie was my first purchase from eBay (which I will only use if I can't find something on Amazon).  Actor Edmund Purdom would, alas, end his career with this film.  By the way, this was the second of three retellings of the disaster by Camillo Teti.   Movies like this must be one reason traditional animation is folding.

*-Fuller syndrome is named after Simon Fuller, who wrote From Justin to Kelly, which also had rushed situations.

Leftovers for dinner!

Last spring, I had the Titanic Film Festival, from which I will post my reviews on here.

Used to love it, now am just nostalgic

The Pagemaster (1994)
Directors: Joe Johnston and Maurice Hunt
Rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

Richard Tyler (Macaulay Culkin) is a chicken-hearted preteen boy who gets lost in an animated world of books and must prove himself in the realms of Horror, Adventure and Fantasy before he can go home.

The Pagemaster was Culkin's second-to-last movie before he retired from these kinds of roles (Richie Rich was the last).  I used to read movie review books as a youngster, but I didn't care what anyone else thought of this one, because I liked it a lot.  I watched it nine times just in the past thirteen months since I revisited it, and my opinion of it was still favorable…but that's probably because I was nostalgic of the old days, when was my second most-rented movie from Blockbuster in the latter days of the VHS age.

The key problem is the script.  The film reportedly took three years to animate, so why didn't it take longer to write?  Many situations are pre-meditated, and it feels like the writers just used whatever they could come up with for the material.

And while the writers clearly could name famous novels, they have the same problem with literature that I used to have with history.  Strictly speaking, I could name famous events but not what made them important.  Books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Herman Melville, and Robert Louis Stevenson are adapted into the adventures of Richard and friends less faithfully than Jonathan Swift, which plays a very minor role in the plot.

As for the avatars, Adventure (voice of Patrick Stewart) and Fantasy (voice of Whoopi Goldberg) come across rather fine, but for annoying sidekicks in movies, Horror (voice of Frank Welker) ranks right up there with Bubba, Jar-Jar, and Mater*.

And it is amazing that it took so long to animate, because the animation here is…well, not overcast, but it does use a drab palate.  The only time when it's really satisfactory is during the Treasure Island stint, and first in the library.

Finally, the casting is under-inspired.  Very few movies have every single part played by a star, but Culkin, Welker, and Christopher Lloyd (in a dual role as the librarian, Mr. Dewey, and the eponymous Pagemaster) were probably chosen in the same way that the script was written.  The ending is a little disappointing because of Richard's initial lack of gratitude and failure to accomplish what the past villains say he has.

As a film, The Pagemaster is not in the same league of badness as the film I just reviewed.  Not even close.  But it is no better than just okay.

A sequel I was planning—wherein kids would be inspired to keep a good diet and weight instead of read—might have been better.  Maybe I can still do that?

*-In Cars 2 only