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Post by Dreamfire on Jun 11, 2006 2:38:16 GMT -5
Lots of great late nite movies on for me this week! Tonight there is "The Dark Angel", from 1935. It's about a man who is blinded in the war who allows his own wife to think he's dead, rather than face her. (presumably as blindness was viewed as worse than death back then). Amazing how our cultural attitudes have changed for the better since then. It's Fredric March as the blind soldier. Sounds like a real melodramatic tearjerker (that can be good in my books). Anyone seen this one? Did you watch it? Was it good? many kleenexes? Natascha
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Post by mlm828 on Jun 11, 2006 21:51:13 GMT -5
When channel-surfing earlier today, I happened to see an ad for "Touch the Top of the World," a movie about Eric Weihenmayer, the first blind man to climb Mt. Everest. It will be shown on A&E next Sunday, June 18. For more information: www.aetv.com/touchthetop/index.jsp
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Post by inuvik on Jun 12, 2006 11:34:00 GMT -5
Lots of great late nite movies on for me this week! Tonight there is "The Dark Angel", from 1935. It's about a man who is blinded in the war who allows his own wife to think he's dead, rather than face her. (presumably as blindness was viewed as worse than death back then). Amazing how our cultural attitudes have changed for the better since then. It's Fredric March as the blind soldier. Sounds like a real melodramatic tearjerker (that can be good in my books). Anyone seen this one? Did you watch it? Was it good? many kleenexes? Natascha It wasn't on. Stupid CBC showed a bunch of old Oilers games from the heyday of the 80's. Then, instead of The Dark Angel, they showed The Birds. And I recorded all night just in case! (Insert expletive of choice here). Maggie, I would have done just what you described if I'd watched it! (minus the popcorn, I have braces). I did, however, watch the two hour series finale of Everwood last night. Talk about kleenexes and tears! There is nothing like going to bed, all stuffy from crying and also having a crying headache. I'll sure miss my Sunday night bedtime ritual! At least they wrapped up all the loose ends and gave us happy endings to all the romantic entanglements. It's the least they could do.
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Post by shmeep on Jun 12, 2006 12:14:17 GMT -5
Sorry you didn't get to see it. I caught this one years ago and wasn't wildly in love with it. The melodrama and the way blindness was handled was pretty annoying to me, but I really enjoyed being introduced to Merle Oberon, who was a very appealing actress.
Also, the blinded character didn't hide his condition from his wife. Merle Oberon was his girlfriend--or was she the girlfriend of his best friend? All I remember is that she grew up with both of them and was loved by both, but I think her heart was with the one who had been blinded but then when she thought he was dead, she ended up with his friend. Or did she marry the blind one just before he went to war? Oh well. Now I've just confused myself. Either way, I much prefer stories involving people who deal with things and with the people in their lives to stories in which the characters hide because they think their condition is too disgraceful to be tolerated by the people they love. The latter just frustrate me and this movie was definitely of that ilk. At least there was no miraculous sight restoration.
Here. This should help with the jumbled mess of my plot description:
Samuel Goldwyn's The Dark Angel is a sumptuously produced soap opera with a poignant "Enoch Arden" style denouement. Fredric March, Merle Oberon and Herbert Marshall star respectively as Alan Trent, Kitty Vane and Gerald Shannon, friends since childhood. Though Gerald is deeply in love with Kitty, it is Alan who wins her hand in marriage. But before the wedding can take place, WW I intervenes, and both Alan and Gerald march off with their regiments. Blinded on the battlefield, Alan gallantly pretends to have been killed so that Kitty will not feel obligated to care for him. Eventually, however, she discovers that he's still alive, which leads to the film's most memorable scene, in which the proud Alan painstakingly arranges all the furniture and bric-and-brac in his room to make it seem as though he can still see. Though the film is set in the late teens and early '20s, Merle Oberon is garbed throughout in the latest 1935 fashions -- an endearingly anachronistic Sam Goldwyn trademark. Oscar nominations went to star Oberon and art director Richard Day, with the latter taking home the gold statuette.
This--"...gallantly pretends to have been killed so that Kitty will not feel obligated to care for him..."--is precisely what so annoyed me about the movie. Many older movies and books are full of characters who feel this way and it never struck me as being realistic. And why would such behavior be called gallant and not weak?
I saw another movie about a blinded war vet that was a bit better, if I recall. I think it was called Bright Victory.
Here's something I found about the movie:
Arthur Kennedy stars as a blinded war veteran struggling to adjust to his affliction in peacetime. He must overcome his pugnacious attitude towards any problem he can't think his way out of--and he must learn to temper his inbred racial prejudices. Peggy Dow plays the woman who loves Kennedy enough to be cruel to him during his bouts of self-pity. Refusing to lapse into sentimentality, Bright Victory, based on the novel by Bayard Kendrick, is one of the best of the "against all odds" films of the 1950s. Arthur Kennedy's performance won him the New York Critics' Circle award, but not the Oscar he so richly deserved.
It kind of reminded me of The Men, starring Marlon Brando as a paralyzed WWII vet going through rehab and adjusting to his new life. I only saw that once, but I seem to remember it being pretty powerful.
There was also yet another blind movie starring Merle Oberon, but I thought it was downright silly--with occasional watchable moments. It's called Night Song. I found a blurb about it, but it gives away most of the plot (not hard to do):
Unabashedly sentimental and a little silly (and all the more winning for it), John Cromwell's Night Song is about love, music and blindness. After a night at the San Francisco Symphony, Merle Oberon goes slumming with her high-hat companions to a joint called Chez Mamie. Promptly she falls for the blind piano player, Dana Andrews, who hews to the unbreakable Hollywood code of the vital male with a disability: he takes it out on everybody around him, including her.
With the help of his band-mate and companion Hoagy Carmichael, she comes up with the sort of plan that would better be left to Lucy Ricardo - she pretends to be blind, too! And not only blind but living on slender means, so of course the proud Andrews comes to reciprocate her love. Meanwhile, she uses her secret wealth to fund a composition prize, which goes to Andrews for the piano concerto he's been bitterly working on. He wins, and with the money flies to New York not only to have his sight restored but to hear his work played by Artur Rubinstein under Eugene Ormandy's baton (both appear as themselves; the concerto, alas, by Leith Stevens, dispels no memories of Brahms' 2nd).
In New York, the newly sighted Andrews meets up with Oberon - not as the poor blind girl but as his society benefactress (he's never seen her, remember, but you'd think he'd remember her voice - he is, after all, a musician). He falls in love with her, too, or again, or something, but then starts to think that he's a heel for throwing over the woman he left in San Francisco....
Night Song is one of those late-40s/early-50s movies that takes classical music seriously, and hurray for that. It also features that wise old crone Ethel Barrymore as Oberon's aunt, all knowing smirks and wry aphorisms (it's exactly the performance she gave in A Portrait of Jennie that same year). Best of all is Lucien Ballard's inspired photography: in the digs that Andrews and Carmichael share, he overlays a shadowy scrim from the tracery in the lace curtains and the gingerbread that festoons the archways. All in all, Night Song is a bittersweet romance of that potent post-war vintage; it's intoxicating, and puts your good judgement quite to sleep.
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Post by inuvik on Jun 12, 2006 16:07:37 GMT -5
Thanks for all these Shmeep! I'll have to add them to my mental list. (except, maybe, that last one). Oh, who am I kidding! If it's about blindness, no matter how cheesy, I'd watch it.
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Post by anna on Jun 12, 2006 16:44:00 GMT -5
I saw another movie about a blinded war vet that was a bit better, if I recall. I think it was called Bright Victory. Here's something I found about the movie: Arthur Kennedy stars as a blinded war veteran struggling to adjust to his affliction in peacetime. He must overcome his pugnacious attitude towards any problem he can't think his way out of--and he must learn to temper his inbred racial prejudices. Peggy Dow plays the woman who loves Kennedy enough to be cruel to him during his bouts of self-pity. Refusing to lapse into sentimentality, Bright Victory, based on the novel by Bayard Kendrick, is one of the best of the "against all odds" films of the 1950s. Arthur Kennedy's performance won him the New York Critics' Circle award, but not the Oscar he so richly deserved.It kind of reminded me of The Men, starring Marlon Brando as a paralyzed WWII vet going through rehab and adjusting to his new life. I only saw that once, but I seem to remember it being pretty powerful. I really like Bright Victory. Arthur Kennedy is excellent in it. It raises issues of racism and attitudes toward people with disabilities in ways that you might not expect of a movie of its era. One story line that reminds me of our favorite detective: The Kennedy character is offered a job by his fiance's father, but, when he discovers that it is a charity job, he refuses to take it, preferring to make his own way. There was also yet another blind movie starring Merle Oberon, but I thought it was downright silly--with occasional watchable moments. It's called Night Song. I found a blurb about it, but it gives away most of the plot (not hard to do): . . . Night Song is one of those late-40s/early-50s movies that takes classical music seriously, and hurray for that. It also features that wise old crone Ethel Barrymore as Oberon's aunt, all knowing smirks and wry aphorisms (it's exactly the performance she gave in A Portrait of Jennie that same year). Best of all is Lucien Ballard's inspired photography: in the digs that Andrews and Carmichael share, he overlays a shadowy scrim from the tracery in the lace curtains and the gingerbread that festoons the archways. All in all, Night Song is a bittersweet romance of that potent post-war vintage; it's intoxicating, and puts your good judgement quite to sleep.Yes, Night Song is silly. However, I love Ethel Barrymore in it. One of my favorite scenes: She is reading a dimestore mystery novel. When she drops it, instead of bending over to pick it up, she just takes the next one from stack on the table. This movie also brings up the eternal question - in movies of the thirties and forties, why do upper-crust Americans always speak with British accents?
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Post by hoosier on Jun 12, 2006 16:59:33 GMT -5
Wasn't there a tv movie starring Richard Dean Anderson as a returning Vietnam who had been blinded? I can not remember the name of the movie but I do remember liking it. Found this reader comment on IMDB: "Ordinary Heroes" (1986) It is a sad movie and it almost made me cry. Tony Kaiser (Richard Dean Anderson) finally finds the love of his life. But when then he has to go fighting in the Vietnam War. Because of a stupid accident, he gets blind. This ruins his life. He doesn't want any visitors. Even his girlfriend Maria (Valerie Bertinelli) isn't allowed to see him. His best friend - and also the person he saved in the War - succeeds in bringing him home, although he swore never to return. Thanks! I couldn't think of the title. I believe they only showed it once.
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Post by bjobsessed on Jun 12, 2006 17:36:31 GMT -5
Bright Victory sounds good. I googled it and it doesn't seem to be available on dvd or vhs. Is that right? If not, guess I'll have to watch for it on tv.
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Post by awlrite4now on Jun 12, 2006 18:29:25 GMT -5
I saw another movie about a blinded war vet that was a bit better, if I recall. I think it was called Bright Victory. Here's something I found about the movie: Arthur Kennedy stars as a blinded war veteran struggling to adjust to his affliction in peacetime. He must overcome his pugnacious attitude towards any problem he can't think his way out of--and he must learn to temper his inbred racial prejudices. Peggy Dow plays the woman who loves Kennedy enough to be cruel to him during his bouts of self-pity. Refusing to lapse into sentimentality, Bright Victory, based on the novel by Bayard Kendrick, is one of the best of the "against all odds" films of the 1950s. Arthur Kennedy's performance won him the New York Critics' Circle award, but not the Oscar he so richly deserved. Baynard Kendrick also wrote the Duncan McClain novels that were the inspirtation for Longstreet. I just finished reading The Odor of Violets, published in 1945, and it was a pretty good war thriller.
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Post by greenbeing on Jun 12, 2006 21:13:01 GMT -5
I really like Bright Victory. Arthur Kennedy is excellent in it. It raises issues of racism and attitudes toward people with disabilities in ways that you might not expect of a movie of its era. One story line that reminds me of our favorite detective: The Kennedy character is offered a job by his fiance's father, but, when he discovers that it is a charity job, he refuses to take it, preferring to make his own way. The guy in Bright Victory was actually, if I remember right, a crass and almost dislikable character, which was very intriguing for a hero. I agree that it really had a lot to say politically about racism and such, really was surprising, well-done. When Shmeep mentioned a movie where a guy pretended he could see, that reminded me of this Barbara Stanwyck movie I saw years ago called the Miracle Woman. It was based upon this evangelical charlatan that one of my professors mentioned when we were reading a book by Evelyn Waugh, Aimee Semple McPherson, and the name stuck in my head. One night TCM had a movie loosely based on Ms. McPherson, so I tuned in. Very good movie, if I remember. The blind man she fell in love with was a ventriloquist, which was entertaining. --GB
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Post by doobrah on Jun 13, 2006 9:23:08 GMT -5
Bright Victory is on TCM (commercial free) from time to time. I saw it last summer. It holds up pretty well, and yeah, there are a few similarities to Jim Dunbar, but sugar coats a few things to give you a happy ending.
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Post by awlrite4now on Jun 16, 2006 3:01:45 GMT -5
A&E docudrama chronicles blind trek up Mt. Everest
Fri Jun 16, 2:35 AM ET
It's pretty much inconceivable that a blind man could climb the 29,000-foot-plus Mount Everest. Scaling the world's highest peak is challenging enough for someone with all of their senses intact.
So clearly, Erik Weihenmayer deserves his own TV-movie docudrama honoring his truly mind-boggling achievement. As a biopic, A&E's "Touch the Top of the World" -- based on Weihenmayer's book of the same name -- is nothing if not flattering and laudatory, and appropriately so.
It does his incredible story proud. The guy is portrayed as a hero not merely for the blind community but indeed the human race itself. I mean, what he did in May 2001 is the equivalent of hitting a home run off Roger Clemens while swinging a pool cue. Into a headwind.
But while the telefilm is well produced and commendably documents the daunting perils of traversing Everest without sight, I couldn't help but be nagged by the feeling that this man also exercised a significant degree of selfishness.
By having to concentrate much of their efforts on aiding Weihenmayer's climb, the members of his climbing team put their own lives in even greater danger than they otherwise would have done.
Yes, these men had recruited Weihenmayer, and the entire expedition was funded by a blind organization's grant, but the sacrifice of his colleagues was at least as great (and perhaps greater) than his own. At worst, the glory should be shared.
That caveat out of the way, "Top of the World" delivers the goods in terms of storytelling and poignance, keeping the harrowing and treacherous aspects of the journey at the family-friendly level.
Peter Facinelli, who bears a resemblance to a young Tom Cruise, stars as Weihenmayer, struck by a genetic disorder that rendered him completely blind by age 13 but with a mother (well played by Kate Greenhouse) whose undying, coddle-free support helped produce a high-achieving son.
He didn't allow his disability to keep him from being on the wrestling team in high school or from developing an obsession for climbing rocks.
The Everest ascent frames the film in flashback and flash-forward, with Weihenmayer's teammates urging him on (often via tough love) through treacherous ice falls, wild weather fluctuations and the oxygen depletion issues that can render this mountain so brutal and deadly.
When he's not moving into thin air, Weihenmayer is shown bonding with his dad (Bruce Campbell), meeting a beautiful woman (Sarah Manninen) and marrying her and fighting through his own self-doubt that we're led to believe presents the only real barriers to what this blind wonder can do.
Peter Silverman's teleplay adaptation paints a believable enough picture of off-the-charts courage, even if it has occasional problems trying to separate the man from the myth.
The Erik Weihenmayer depicted here is the very essence of positive thinking, wholesomeness and grace, somewhat like a blind, mountain-climbing Mother Teresa.
But again, it's hard to overstate the scope of the achievement, and director Peter Winther, in tandem with director of photography Attila Szalay, adroitly capture the sense of perpetual unease during the Everest undertaking.
That said, it had to be even more hazardous and difficult for Weihenmayer to make it to the peak than is suggested in "Top of the World."
Just close your eyes and try crossing the street. Now imagine doing it without air, traveling vertically, on ice -- for six miles.
CAST:
Erik Weihenmayer: Peter Facinelli
Erik (age 12-16): Jack Knight
Ellie: Sarah Manninen
Ed Weihenmayer: Bruce Campbell
Ellen Weihenmayer: Kate Greenhouse
Sam: Robert Moloney
Jeff Evans: Saxon DeCocq
Chris Morris: Aaron Poole
PV: Shaun Johnston
Ana Pasang: Mingma Sherpa
Mike O'Donnell: Marty Antonini
Mark: Kurtis Sanheim
CREDITS:
Executive producers: Mark Sennet, Eda Lishman, Michael Jaffe, Howard Braunstein, Delia Fine
Supervising producer: David Craig
Producer: Eda Lishman
Co-producers: Victor Boutrous, Shannon Bae, Nives Lever, Fiorella Cole
Consulting producer: Roger Lefkon
Director: Peter Winther
Teleplay: Peter Silverman
Based on the book by: Erik Weihenmayer
Director of photography: Attila Szalay
Production designer: Rick Roberts
Costume designer: Jennifer Haffenden
Art director: Janet Lakeman
Editor: Bridget Durnford
Visual effects: Ken Bits
Sound mixer: Ron Osiowy
Casting: Susan Edelman, Jackie Lind
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
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Post by maggiethecat on Jun 16, 2006 8:30:09 GMT -5
Hey, you beat me to it!
I was going to post about this upcoming movie today, but I'm glad you put up what you did so I can respond to the review.
This particular expedition up Everest was legendary for several reasons, one of them being Eric W. and the other being Dr. Sherman Bull, also along, and who was at 64 the oldest man to ever reach the summit. Dr. Bull was my mother's surgeon last summer when she was diagnosed with breast cancer (she's fine now, and her last mammogram was clean), and you take one look at this guy and can see him doing what he did with no problem. (I have never seen anyone in such fantastic physical shape in my life -- last summer at 68 he did the Block Island Triathelon.) Anyway, I know about the expedition because a good friend wrote a wonderful article on Dr. Bull for the local magazine.
And here's what already makes me want to avoid the A & E movie: No one coddled Eric W. or spend any undue amount of time getting him up that mountain. He was an experienced climber who had made difficult climbs all over the world before he attempted Everest. Oh, yeah, he needed some guidance across the ice fields, which you climb at night (Not a problem to him, so he said), but this review makes it sound as though Eric W. was the entire focus of the expedition. Which he wasn't. The story is obviously dramatic enough without ramping up the sob stuff, and it like that's what the filmmakers have done.
I don't see Dr. Bull even listed as a character. By the way, this was the third time he'd attempted the climb up Everest. On the previous attempt he fell down a crevasse and had to walk two miles down the mountain with blood clots in his lungs, broken ribs, and a broken pelvis. Amazing guy.
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Post by carl1951 on Jun 18, 2006 20:00:31 GMT -5
Touch the Top of the World.
And, wouldn't you know it, no Descriptive.
Another reason, I liked BJ.
Later, Carl
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Post by hoosier on Jun 26, 2006 17:01:15 GMT -5
With the talk of William Fitchner being on Prison Break next fall, do any of you remember him playing Kent Clark ( take-off on Superman???) ,a blind radio-astronomer on Contact with Jody Foster?
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