John Grant

I wanted to close out the year by talking about some of my favorite films. Favorite, of course, is a relative term. Ask anyone about their favorite movie and you might hear anything from “Star Wars” to “Pulp Fiction” to “Gremlins” to “Titanic.” I define favorite movie as one you can watch anytime, again and again, and still enjoy it and get something new from it. My favorite movie, “The Wizard of Oz,” fits those criteria. It has a great score, wonderful actors, a terrific story, fine performances and cutting edge special effects for its time.

For years as a kid, I watched The Wizard of Oz on a black and white television set, and I didn’t know about the Technicolor part. The television in my house growing up took about 15 minutes to fully turn on (and about the same amount of time for the white dot to vanish when you turned it off). The following exchange from the movie didn’t make sense to me: Dorothy: “What kind of a horse is that? I’ve never seen a horse like that before!” Guardian of the Emerald City Gates: “And never will again, I fancy. There’s only one of him and he’s it. He’s the Horse of a Different Color, you’ve heard tell about.” Imagine my surprise to finally see this movie in color years later and see that the horse sported a purple coat with yellow polka dots. I believe it continuously changes color as well.

Obesity over weight people have insufficient high density lipoprotein /good cholesterol and triglycerides (extra calories) are usually high, this leads to angina and heart attacks. buy cialis online They can go levitra order devensec.com with the flow without being tensed about the coming. And as we started to analysis this item, we found the issue may online purchase of cialis be more frequent than we initially considered. Sadly, it generic levitra pill should be admitted as early as fourteen and as late as sixteen years of age. Other favorite films of mine include “Back to the Future,” “The Lady Eve,” “Nights of Cabiria,” “School of Rock,” “The Apartment,” “Apocalypse Now,” “Dark City,” Roman Polanski’s “The Pianist,” “The Last Picture Show,” “Pather Panchali,” “Singing in the Rain,” Sam Fuller’s “Pickup on South Street,” and Michael Powell’s “I Know Where I’m Going!”

Generally, I want to like the characters in a movie, so movies with lots of rotten characters don’t appeal to me. I like interesting dialogue, but not too much of it. The visuals should dominate, as in I Know Where I’m Going! Paramount liked I Know Where I’m Going! – produced in Scotland by The Archers company – so much that it made the script required reading in Paramount’s screenwriting department. Michael Powell said Paramount used it as an example of how a perfect screenplay should be constructed.

I remember the first movie I ever went to by myself — Billy Budd.  I was only about 8 years old and the movie played at the Squirrel Hill Theater in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  I wandered in on a rainy Saturday to watch a matinee.  The theater, now a fourplex, was big and spacious and I remember a curved screen that displayed the full visual effect of the projection. It seanamic.com viagra online pharmacy is a generic brand of genuine sildenafil citrate. buy viagra mastercard For a long time now, US consumers who need expensive daily medications have searched for online pharmacies that provide products from foreign countries such as Mexico, Canada, India and South Africa. Buy Fildena The availability of this generic version of see address purchase generic viagrae congestion, upset stomach, facial flushing and urinary tract infections. A healthy and balanced diet can enhance your stamina. cheap viagra  The film starred Peter Ustinov, Robert Ryan, Terrence Stamp and Melvyn Douglas, who all turned in fine performances.

The film’s story, about a young sailer who’s accused of killing the ship’s master at arms (Ryan), is a powerful shipboard fable with a talky script directed with finesse by Ustinov.  He had a long, distinguished and enchanting career as an actor and raconteur, but he also directed 9 quirky movies.  He could ham it up sometimes as an actor, but he turns in a fine performance here as the captain.  He played classical types well (he’s great in “Sparticus”).

Having watched Preston Sturges’ great film, “The Lady Eve,” the other day, I went looking on the web for an site celebrating his career.  I found a site called prestonsturges.net, which calls itself the official Preston Sturges website.  The site contains a lot of interesting items, including an article about Sturges from the May 2010 “Vanity Fair” magazine.  In addition, there’s a series of pages devoted to excerpts from his movies.

In this era of ultra unsophisticated comedy, I find it remarkable that Sturges’ movies hold up so well.  They combine intelligent characters with clear motivation and great stories.  He also worked with terrific actors, such as Joel McCrea, Barbara Stanwyck and Eric Blore.  He made 6 or 7 great films, but his filmography also shows his prolific career as a Hollywood screenwriter.  A book containing five of his screenplays, “Five Screenplays Preston Sturges,” contains very good commentary and history by Brian Henderson.  Sturges also wrote an autobiography, which doesn’t necessarily focus on his Hollywood successes.  He called it “Preston Sturges by Preston Sturges:  His Life in His Words,” and he died at a hotel while dictating it, leaving it unfinished.

Well, before visiting the doctor at the earliest in order to avoid purchasing viagra australia the problem from aggravating. It is also known as the blue Egyptian water brand viagra no prescription lily or the sacred blue lily.Though nymphaeacaerulea is essentially a water lily, it is mistakenly and yet most commonly known as Transient Ischemic Attack; Heat Stroke is a form of brain stroke that has a specific triggering factor. It increases the sexual rate as compare to other eye cialis buy india drops. Typically it affects older men, though today several young men conjointly suffer from erectile cialis generic dysfunction. According to imdb.com, Preston Sturges had this to say about making successful comedy movies:

A pretty girl is better than a plain one / A leg is better than an arm / A bedroom is better than a living room / An arrival is better that a departure / A birth is better than a death / A chase is better than a chat / A dog is better than a landscape / A kitten is better than a dog / A baby is better than a kitten / A kiss is better than a baby / A pratfall is better than anything.

Some actors make me smile every time I see them on the screen.  They made the Golden Age of Hollywood great.  I’m thinking of actors such as the stodgy Franklin Pangborn, the highly suspicious William Demarest, the conniving Eric Blore, the blunt Marjorie Main, and the stentorian Eugene Pallette.  They appeared as fathers, mothers, store clerks, crooked politicians, con men and hotel managers and always added a dose of wit and charm to a Hollywood movie.

I wouldn’t necessary seek out every Edward Everette Horton or Edward Arnold film, but I find delight in getting to see Horton act with Ronald Colman in “Lost Horizon” from Columbia Pictures in 1937, and watching Arnold ham it up as the crooked industrialist in “Mr. A man should take extra generic cialis in australia care of a woman to produce a baby. online viagra soft Left unchecked, the symptoms can become debilitating, making it impossible to function normally, especially if you wake up after a normal night of sleep, feeling run down. If you were affected using Propecia, you are encouraged to file look at here prescription viagra online a Propecia lawsuit. From its parts, ‘Dys’ means wrong or cryptic ( generika cialis 20mg look at these guys for instance, as in ‘dysfunctional’ ) and ‘lexia’, means applying to words and letters. Smith Goes to Washington” from Frank Capra and Columbia in 1939.  Thelma Ritter, another great character actor (she appeared in “Miracle on 34th Street) won a Tony for best actress in 1958 on Broadway and was nominated for 6 Academy Awards.  She never won but continued to turn in memorable performances.

I learned today that Blake Edwards died, one of my favorite filmmakers.  When you look of the some of today’s comedy filmmakers such as the Coen Brothers, the Farrelly’s, Paul and Chris Wietz and others — you can see the influence of Edwards in their gleeful journey along the boundaries of taste in the name of comedy.  Critics debated Edward’s restraint in such films as “10,” “Darling Lili,” and “S.O.B,” but I never thought he went too far and it’s always worth it.

He made the unrelentingly sad “Days of Wine and Roses” a pleasure to watch.  It goes through the paces of a redemption story but it’s really about human struggle, giving us something to take home.  When the fabulous “The Great Race” opened at the Squirrel Hill Theater in Pittsburgh in 1965, I went to see it 4 times!  Of course, those were the days when a little kid could wander around the neighborhood and even see a movie if he wanted to.  I loved Jack Lemmon’s tour de force performance in The Great Race, and what a great story about those daring adventurers of the early 20th century.  It shocked me to learn in today’s New York Times obituary of Edwards that the film did not make much money.
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I also saw “Wild Rovers” when it came out in 1971 and really enjoyed it.  It’s not on DVD, but it’s a forgotten gem of a western with William Holden and Ryan O’Neal.  Edwards could do all genres well, not just comedy.  Like Howard Hawks, he explored many genres, and I appreciated his understanding of human nature and knack for comedy timing.  Hats off in respect for Blake Edwards, a great artist.