Watch List for 11/10/2025

 

I Like Stan Best When Winning, So Tend to Gun the Remote After This Scene

Watched: (and) Skipped Through, plus The Man I Love

GET ME PAST THESE QUICKER --- How many “skip-watchers” among us? Till lately I’d advocate seeing all of a feature, or none. To shorten was somehow to cheat, committing in part rather than whole. There’s a TCM stream option at Roku, their last months’ worth to watch as one will, pictures well known often glazed over, memory knowing where favored sections are and a remote to land us there. Nothing is sacred where sampling. I’m learning how much a movie matters, or rather, what portion of movies still matter. Getting to essence was advantage we didn't have with television or film on reels. Video cassettes had not the convenience of chapters. To watch piecemeal is to follow baleful lead of You Tube or Tik Tok, where much is mere tasted and seldom digested. Is this to admit attention depleted? Herewith chunks consulted, parts passed by, and why: Nightmare Alley … yes to Stan succeeding at rackets, putting it over on rubes, but not Stan descended to drink and geekdom. He and Blondell together, this all repeat-worthy. Helen Walker not as much because I don’t enjoy her getting the better of Stan. Guess it’s clear I like Stan and don’t want him humbled, save moment of him put to geek duty by Roy Roberts (Mister, I was made for it). Such smacks of playing albums and realizing its but part that will play repeatedly, says me who hasn’t dropped a needle on an LP in thirty-five years. Why shave Rio Bravo from 141 minutes down to 80? To trim Angie Dickinson and Gonzalez-Gonsalez and wish there was more of John Russell and Rick Nelson. A lot of Dean Martin goes bye now, worn out welcome his tortured drunk save where there is action like shooting the guy off bar rafters. When Chance says midway we’ve been pamperin’ you too much, I tend to agree. Should features be cut for each like tailored suits? I no longer linger on what meant much to makers, Rio Bravo mine to enjoy minus marbling, which if we can trim same off meat, why not here? Art the creation of its maker becomes the property of its consumer to do with what he/she will. Oscar Wilde thought that and said so, his own work never sacrosanct as he saw it (“a starting point for a new creation”).

Here's One Time You Could Show Up for Act Three and Get the Best of a Movie

Reap the Wild Wind has good things, but a far-in court trial isn’t among them. DeMille, knowing or not, provokes fast forwarding here. I say no to Lynn Overman and pitch parts of Susan Hayward over the side so we can quicker to the squid. Had I but spared college companions to lulls in 1974, theirs a restless itch I felt by default for having dragged them to it. Not to revile Reap, thanks to much being good about it, plus visual enhance Blu-Ray supplies. Speaking of fruit with worms to discard, there is The Razor’s Edge and Anne Baxter dipso narrative endlessly fussed over. Dropping her sharpened this Edge from ungainly 145 minutes to manageable 100 or so. Not to discount Razor merits, what’s good being terrific (Power, Tierney, especially Clifton Webb, Elsa Lanchester, Herbert Marshall, let’s have all there is of these). Picking my own company on film is what we all prefer to do in life, to edit chat among folk onscreen as if able to do so with acquaintances off. If only. Next of late: Skyscraper Souls and an easy fix, keep Warren William and can the rest. Not that I dislike Wallace Ford, Anita Page, Jean Hersholt, but beside William they evaporate, or in my case, go by like blurs while I press forward to get him back. And adios Jeanne Crain and Jeffrey Lynn from A Letter to Three Wives plus Ann Sothern and Kirk Douglas except when Florence Bates is around. This picture, much as I admire it, belongs to Linda Darnell and Paul Douglas. Did Mankiewicz, Zanuck, and company realize these two were the whole show? Me with my push-button votes yes. Lastly, Jerry Lewis, but why linger long on this? You’re Never Too Young and The Nutty Professor each resolved to about forty minutes, enough being enough. Will I be able to get through The Day the Clown Cried even when finally permitted to look at it?

Is This Where Gable Learned That Hand Trick He'd Use in Publicity for Band of Angels? (see index)

THE MAN I LOVE (1947) --- Aspects of the jazz life were much to be envied. Total freedom, reporting to nowhere for nobody save yourself toward perfection of skill at the craft. Immerse in jazz made everything else superfluous, to starve OK so long as one had talent and the instrument. The Man I Love gets at lone but in ways attractive life through characters played by Ida Lupino and Bruce Bennett, former returning home after years separation from siblings suffocated by obligation, internecine conflict, and unstable marriages. These are what “Petey Brown” has dodged through wandering ways and not letting herself be tied down. Petey’s sister Sally (Andrea King) took wartime vows and now husband Roy (John Ridgely) is shell-shocked and an in-patient. Her other sister (Martha Vickers) keeps bad company from which Petey must separate her, and a brother has fallen in with gangsters, all which suggest Petey chose right the isolated life, options expressed by the feature’s opening where she shares all-night playing in a “jam session” where no participant has homes to return to or schedule to keep. Most who worship at jazz alter have pasts to escape. Bennett’s “San Thomas” was famed once in music circles, Petey recognizing his name and attracted to him, San wrestling demon of a bad union that drove him to enlist with the merchant marine, means by which bridges may be burned. Others talk of escape but these two manage it, if not together then at least away from everyone else.

For Me, Dolores Moran Had More on the Ball Than Bacall ... Warners Should Have Used More of Her

Warners had celebrated jazz as dark-lit enterprise in a short subject called Jammin’ the Blues, out in 1944 and confirming that jam sessions happen best at night after business hours and all of squares figured to be tucked in and ready for when AM alarm sounds. The Man I Love takes stylistic leaf from Jammin’s one-reel book to establish the Lupino character and define that of Bruce Bennett, director Raoul Walsh capturing well the isolation of those who live altogether for their chosen art. Melodrama is incidental to what story and these characters are really about. Best then to let Warner mechanics go expected way and enjoy what The Man I Love reveals about truly alternate lifestyle that was jazz music, even as the film focuses on hit standards most of which went back a ways, these a bridge mainstream audiences could easier cross and associate with movies viewed before plus songs heard previous, and often. We listen to accompany for The Man I Love and visualize Warner cartoons where tunes got used, that or Steiner’s score for Saratoga Trunk, background against bustle at Robert Alda’s nightclub. The Man I Love was shot during mid-1945 but not generally released until early 1947 after select ’46 holiday opens, though service personnel saw it during the interim as with much Warner output. Lacking King’s Row pedigree perhaps, but The Man I Love similarly gave opportunity to WB players otherwise ill-used or miscast after initial impressions wore off, these including Andrea King, Martha Vickers, Dolores Moran, Bennett and Ridgely. The effect is of workshop participants displaying what they learned over contract terms not so productive as they hoped. The Man I Love offers such opportunities and is outstanding if not largely ignored, at least till Warners announced Blu-Ray release and has bumped broadcasts at TCM to High-Def. Also there is footage added that wasn't there before.