cult film freak: stanley kramer

Showing posts with label stanley kramer. Show all posts

Written by James M. Tate / 4/19/2024 / No comments / ann-margret , anthony quinn , college , counter-culture , don keefer , donald moffat , gary lockwood , john mcliam , joseph bernard , paul winfield , ramon bieri , seventies , stanley kramer

GARY LOCKWOOD PROTESTS 'R.P.M.' STARRING ANTHONY QUINN

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUx2bAVJWw_Wg2HkGJl4KhDddzmXr061sVf-6TKg9CJAASgE4aUtXVfaPG2tSos2VoGYIWbGLIFU5kvRFTA81u4bBOijTaluZonxnF5fSW7FPUP3eKpbZVzbF8ZY5u-6sASSD8XluM2coTiWj5crpsV7c3PB9ZSYf7UnRsqAjgUBILN8ENvaMhz6hh_SxP/s1120/Screen%20Shot%202024-04-17%20at%203.24.22%20AM%202.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="686" data-original-width="1120" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUx2bAVJWw_Wg2HkGJl4KhDddzmXr061sVf-6TKg9CJAASgE4aUtXVfaPG2tSos2VoGYIWbGLIFU5kvRFTA81u4bBOijTaluZonxnF5fSW7FPUP3eKpbZVzbF8ZY5u-6sASSD8XluM2coTiWj5crpsV7c3PB9ZSYf7UnRsqAjgUBILN8ENvaMhz6hh_SxP/s16000/Screen%20Shot%202024-04-17%20at%203.24.22%20AM%202.jpeg"></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gary Lockwood in R.P.M. Year: 1970 Rating: **1/2</td></tr></tbody></table>A year after Gary Lockwood was slightly too old to play a hapless hippie about to go to Vietnam, cruising around L. A. with nothing to do but get stoned in MODEL SHOP, he played an even younger hippie and is completely miscast... especially since he's also balding... but this rebel at least has a cause...Leader of a student group taking over a university's computer center, Lockwood (along with fellow thirty-something Paul Winfield) have demands for a liberal sociology professor they once really dug...

ann-margret, anthony quinn, college, counter-culture, don keefer, donald moffat, gary lockwood, john mcliam, joseph bernard, paul winfield, ramon bieri, seventies, stanley kramer

GARY LOCKWOOD PROTESTS 'R.P.M.' STARRING ANTHONY QUINN

Gary Lockwood in R.P.M. Year: 1970 Rating: **1/2 A year after Gary Lockwood was slightly too old to play a hapless hippie about to go to Vie...

HUBERT CORNFIELD DIRECTS SIDNEY POITIER IN 'PRESSURE POINT'

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhURBLAEmK6BbxuezifbDlPGTDN1nbWHt8V9gCAxHk83Fh35MouB9hwhGY7X-m6sVRFS_B9slg3NjZq6q3uMRmfSq375uciK2OxFwpiURw6_4Oqu4DQiakVj25OQsgTl2Ii0pM0udsfyDAF6TKQWPt36RUq7l1NPQgrwZsxBLMutxSEjP2qRpNzWUxyGg=s903" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="473" data-original-width="903" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhURBLAEmK6BbxuezifbDlPGTDN1nbWHt8V9gCAxHk83Fh35MouB9hwhGY7X-m6sVRFS_B9slg3NjZq6q3uMRmfSq375uciK2OxFwpiURw6_4Oqu4DQiakVj25OQsgTl2Ii0pM0udsfyDAF6TKQWPt36RUq7l1NPQgrwZsxBLMutxSEjP2qRpNzWUxyGg=s16000"></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sidney Poitier in PRESSURE POINT Year: 1962 Rating: ***</td></tr></tbody></table>Produced by Stanley Kramer and directed by Hubert Cornfield, the recently-departed acting legend Sidney Poitier starred in this psychological drama about a prison shrink batting heads with a full-blown Nazi sympathizer... An unapologetic self-proclaimed Anti-Semitic/White Supremacist who right off the bat considers President Roosevelt (neither Jewish or black) a no-good cripple during a flashback taking up most of the screen-time, so he's... well, opposite of a registered democrat... but made in 1961 what comes across as preachy-bias now was fairly new then, and part of Kramer's usual progressive teachable-moment forte...

barry gordon, bobby darin, hubert cornfield, melodrama, noir noir, peter falk, prison, sidney poitier, sixties, stanley kramer

HUBERT CORNFIELD DIRECTS SIDNEY POITIER IN 'PRESSURE POINT'

Sidney Poitier in PRESSURE POINT Year: 1962 Rating: *** Produced by Stanley Kramer and directed by Hubert Cornfield, the recently-departed a...

BAD LONGER VERSION OF MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Review of the much too extended version of IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD before having seen the original</td></tr>
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AN IMPORTANT NOTE before reading this review... IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD MAD WORLD was viewed, for the very first time, on the big screen in a retro theater, just last week, and it was the version that is reviewed below, which was written before even realizing there was a much. much. much, much better original version at all... 
 
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"What's in the bawwwwwx?"</td></tr>
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Thus, the film is torn apart for an abundance of flaws, and yet now, after ordering the beautiful Criterion Blu Ray/DVD package, and watching the ORIGINAL THEATRICAL CUT, it's like experiencing an entirely different motion picture, one that actually has wonderful, flowing motion instead of sinking slowly into proverbial quicksand for nearly three overlong hours... 
 
Getting the plot and misadventure underway in five minutes instead of twenty is one of many changes... Again, like just mentioned, yours truly had no idea there was an extended edition, and why, if playing classic old movies in theaters, would the "Director's Cut" or "Extended Edition" be shown instead of the one originally viewed on the big screen to audiences seeing it for the first time? (Same thing happened with GOOD BAD UGLY... promoting the original but instead showing the one where scenes, like Tuco with the chickens, are added with a completely different film stock). In that, newcomers to MAD WORLD should see the original theatrical version just like people did in 1963, without the Director or Studio, or whoever is responsible for this catastrophe trying to improve upon a Classic: Being too close to the material at hand, there seems to be no realization that what's left out is, in fact, shown even more clearly by not having it there at all. For this is where the viewer's imagination comes in, which is what makes a film worth watching, again and again and again. And, so, before journeying through this writeup, note that the long, long, long, long version is downright horrible while the original is absolutely fantastic... Scenes that cut to lead to others are extended to the point that when you reach the next scene you forget about why there was a last scene... And so much time's spent talking there's simply no adventure or journey happening at all... So there you have it... Alas, since the Landmark Presentation Series decided to overindulge modern audiences with a piece much different than what made it truly shine and memorable and incredible way back when, that's what this somewhat negative review is centered on... Passing the buck, but with reason... Thus the... 
 
REVIEW OF THE EXTENDED CUT BEGINS HERE: Many films have followed the heels and back bumpers of IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD... That's four MAD's for four cars, at first, whose inhabitants witness another car drive off a cliff and a whispered, dying man's secret – like a few years later would happen to Clint Eastwood against poor Elli Wallach in THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY – is heard by a couple of fellas: Yet soon enough their women and a few others catch wind of a race to find a bunch of loot buried underneath a mysterious, unknown "W"...

buddy hackett, car, ensemble, jonathan winters, milton berle, race, sid caesar, sixties, stanley kramer