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Watched Robin and the 7 Hoods, because I'm trying to watch famous movies that I never watched before. It was nothing I'd watch a second time, or really enjoyed, but i had some thoughts that I'll share:
OK, I'm done. Your turn!
Marian = Barbara Rush = Nora Clavicle from Batman
Thanks, Baron. As it turnS out, i started watching some other old movie yesterday with her in it, and recognized her. It took me a minute, because even though she was only like 7 years younger (I looked it up), she was a lot more attractive. I guess she must have had a few babies in between.
Also watched Captain Blood. It was a lot of fun! Even though Errol Flynn's acting style was basically to pose and smile, it was a heroic romp that used everything I loved about that era’s adventure stories. And Olivia DeHavilland was a babe! There were a lot of cliches, but I realize that these movies invented them. Also they did them really well. When Basil Rathbone showed up, doing a bad French accent and schtick that Christopher Lee would steal 30 years later, i was sold.
While you are in the mood check out Sea Hawk, another great Errol Flynn adventure.
Captain Comics said:
Also watched Captain Blood. It was a lot of fun! Even though Errol Flynns acting style was basically to pose and smile, it was a heroic romp that used everything i loved about that era’s adventure stories. And Olivia DeHavilland was a babe! There were a lot of cliches, but i realize that these movies invented them. Also they did them really well. When Basil Rathbone showed up, doing a bad French accent and schtick that Christopher Lee would steal 30 years later, i was sold.
I am going to watch Sea Hawk, as soon as my wife can watch it with me. She caught the second half of Captain Blood, and she wants to see more.
Meanwhile, I'm trying to clear out my DVR. I recorded Up Periscope because of the cast: Edmond O'Brien, James Garner, Alan Hale Jr., and so forth. I mean, there are a lot of really good WWII submarine movies, right?
This not one of them. (And it's from 1959, anyway.) I sure hope Captain Benson reads this thread, so he can explain just how awful the chain of command stuff is, how bad the crew interaction is, how bad the "we hate the captain because he let a man die because he followed orders" stuff is, and so forth.
Then there are the submarine cliches, of sweaty men scared of the big boom coming down from on high when ... the sets are really too big for that to be an issue. Jesus, they're all in a Hyatt.
Also: Bad tech. They have a sonar that STOPS WHEN IT HITS SOMETHING. You have to see this to understand how weird it is. Sonar displays show a beam moving in a circle. It hits a blip. But it keeps moving. We all know this, from a thousand movies. Not in this one. When THIS sonar hits something, it STOPS. "Oh, look, skipper ..."
James Garner is a special ops guy, who is trying to steal Japanese code. You know, the one we broke in 1942. And this is, like, 1944. He has a miniature camera, smoke grenades and other James Bond items that didn't exist in World War II. But, hey, it's James Garner! Maverick can do anything!
Anyway, the whole movie is a walking anachronism, with a sub crew who should all be court-martialed, and a plot that is so preposterous that I'm sorry I even brought it up.
Also, I forgot to mention this about Robin and the 7 Hoods: It was weird watching a '60s director try to deal with TWO actors who had glass eyes (Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Falk) in the same movie.
And while we're on the subject: How does an actor with a glass eye get major roles? What director wants that? I get it with Sammy Davis Jr. -- he could dance, sing, act, had powerful friends, etc. -- but Peter Falk? What th-?
I don't think Peter Falk (who I agree was great) had much physical stuff to do. But Sammy Davis Jr? How do you dance the way he did with no depth perception?
Davis was already a star before he lost his eye in a car accident. Falk lost his to illness as a small child, but he played baseball and basketball in high school.
It's my understanding that our eyes also perceive depth by focus. I think the convergence effect only matters at short distances. The Polite Dissent website had a post discussing convergence of Superman's super-vision rays. It argued the rays should converge at short distances and not at long ones, and showed cases where the artists had it the wrong way around.
3D movies are a special case. The screen is at a distance, but our eyes get distinct images because of the glasses.
When watching baseball on TV, the one-eyed camera makes it look like players are close together when they aren't.
Captain Blood is set 1685-1689. The rebellion at the start is Monmouth's Rebellion, and Blood is condemned by Judge Jeffreys in the course of the Bloody Assizes. The conclusion takes place after the Glorious Revolution in Nov. 1688.
The book is a fix-up novel from a series of linked short stories. The movie follows it pretty faithfully, which is why it has that sequence in it where Blood teams up with Basil Rathbone's Levasseur and they quickly fall out.
The novel had previously been filmed in the silent era. Sabatini wrote further Captain Blood stories, collected in two more books.
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