We figured it was time to have a place to talk about Steve’s latest video subjects that do not have an UMR page.
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We figured it was time to have a place to talk about Steve’s latest video subjects that do not have an UMR page.
Merry Xmas Bruce, Bob, Flora and everyone at the UMR!!!
It hasn’t been my best internet year, I’ve barely popped into the UMR and almost completely ignored my youtube channel. Hopefully next year things improve.
How is everyone? Still watching movies? On the news here freezing weather in the USA, affecting 200 million people! Boiling water turns into ice. It’s like that movie The Day After Tomorrow, science fiction becomes science fact. I hope you’re all okay over there.
I’ve just put Ben-Hur (1959). Maybe Die Hard tomorrow. [Bob snarls] 😉
Hello, Steve and Merry Christmas! I have missed your videos and your popping in to the UMR to say hello. Still watching old movies, reading mysteries and doing what my cat wants me to do. Have a happy new year!
Hey Flora….I hope you are having an awesome holiday. Lots of family here but things are starting to calm down. Merry Christmas Flora.
Hey Steve…..Merry Christmas to you as well. I would second “It hasn’t been my best internet year”. I have not ignored UMR, but it has taken a back to seat to family and school responsibilities. I have had time to watch movies….currently sitting on 598 movies watched in 2022. As for the weather….yesterday was brutal…today has been much better….by Wednesday the temperatures should be back to our beach resort norm temps. Enjoy Ben and Bruce….two all-time classic movies. Great hearing from you.
Some time ago upon the stair
I met a man who hasn’t been there
I’m glad to see him there today
And to know he hasn’t gone away.
“Seasons greetings and Happy New Year”
Will suffice for now this Christmas Day.
Paraphrased version of the poem “Antigonish” 1899 by W H Mearns
Hey Bob….your comment is how I felt when I saw your comment pop up in the forum section. Glad to see you pop up…and I hope you had an awesome Christmas. So hard to believe that 2023 is almost here.
HI BRUCE:
Thanks for your season’s greetings.
Actually it had already been on my mind to write something like “Best Yuletide greetings to all the UMR gang – and DOUBLE greetings to The Big Guy!” Pass on my season’s best wishes in relation to as well your -now enlarged! – family.
As it was I always like going down your Best Christmas Movies chart each year and as I was fishing that out I noticed Steve’s post.
I am leaving on the Xmas movie page by way of comments my own perceptions of the Top 12 best Xmas movies ever up until the present time.
YOUR chart will of course remain this site’s OFFICIAL offering; but as my tastes are usually exquisite I think I’ll go with the private notion that my Top 12 is the definitive one and should be everyone’s Top 12 !!!
Hey Bob….thanks for the holiday good wishes. I will check out your Top 12 Xmas movies. I was thinking about you earlier today….Edward Norton was on the Smartless Podcast with Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes. They got Norton to tell a few stories of his time on the set of The Score which was one of Brando’s last movies and also starred Robert DeNiro. Good stories.
HI STEVE: As indicated in my previous post I am pleased that you are enjoying your well-deserved break. However I hope you can tear yourself away for a moment or two from the “wine, women and song” to look at my latest post on the ‘Next Brando’ page.
At last someone has tracked the NEXT world’s newest Mumbler down, succeeding where The Work Horse failed by limiting himself to just established contemporary actors. To give himself the maximum opportunity of ‘discovering’ a genius capable of stepping into The Great Man’s shoes WH might have been better advised to also frequent stage plays and movie art houses featuring obscure performers.
I hope that I don’t lose a good a longstanding ‘pen-pal’ by providing an extracted review from The New European weekly publication whose strong anti-Brexit credentials are notorious; Alistair Campbell and Baron Andrew Adonis for example both write for it and Campbell has in fact a weekly diary which mostly confines itself to Brexiteer-bashing.
However beside reading sources friendly to my cause I believe in finding out what the enemy’s saying so that one can guard against it.
It is said by some political observers that Cameron’s downfall was complacency brought-on by totally believing the pro-EU press when they told him he was a cert to win the referendum because the British people wouldn’t be “mad enough” to go for a departure from the EU
Anyway keep safe and continue enjoying yourself.
Aloha Bruce, Bob, Flora, good to see you’re all still around and posting at the UMR.
I’m still enjoying my extended youtube video break and busy doing other things. Hopefully some time in June I’ll think of something new and upload a few videos.
Until then I’ll pop in to the UMR occasionally and see how y’all are doin’. 🙂
Take care amigos,
Lens Steveman
HI STEVE
Glad you’re enjoying your break – and will be even gladder when you return to the fray!!!
Thrilled to hear that you are doing well, Steve. I was wondering how you were doing. I hope you will find inspiration for a new slate of videos
BEST STILLS IN STEVE’s 1958/59 NOIRS VIDEO
1/Beat Generation
2/Screaming Myrna
3/2 for Cry Tough
4/Step Down to Fear
5/Both for Cry Terror
6/Tread Softly Stranger
7/Murder by Contract
8/2 for The Trap aka The Baited Trap
9/2nd one for Crimson Kimona
10/ALL for Chase a Crooked Shadow
11/2 for Party Girl – once again wow!
12/1st one for I Want to Live
13/The Line-up
14/Touch of Evil. Splendid montage of visuals; truly magnificent. Chuck and the lovely Janet deserve no less. However the man whom Joseph Cotton called The Boy Wonder [Welles] was no longer a ‘boy’ and was as bloated as Brando later became!
15/The Man in the Net. I have mentioned previously that this film provided the juncture at which movie historians have decided that Ladd was no longer a major star. Indeed the only film of any serious note that he did after that was 1964’s The Carpetbaggers but his role in that one was secondary to George Peppard to whom Laddie was 2nd billed – and in it indeed he was billed less than 1st for the first time since 1943’s China when his mega-stardom was at its commencement.
Loretta Young topped the bill in that one but the following year he “showed her who was now boss” in the wonderfully-mush weepie And Now Tomorrow as the new order of billing was Alan Ladd/Loretta Young/Susan Hayward. Indeed the posters at the time screamed out LADD’s BACK! Interestingly the screenplay was by Raymond Chandler. Ladd of course was his usual soft-spoken and laconic self so beloved by his fans-
Emily Blair (Loretta Young) : You’re not very polite this afternoon, are you doctor?
Doctor Merek Vance (Ladd): About average for me, Miss Blair, about average.
BEST POSTERS IN STEVE’S 1957/59 FILM NOIRS VIDEO
FL= Foreign Language version.
1/1st one for Beat Generation – wow!
2/FL for Screaming Myrna
3/1st 2 for Step Down to Terror
4/City of Fear – filming location Manchester?
5/FL for Tread Softly Stranger
6/ ALL for Touch of Evil
7/ALL for Thunder Road
8/FL for Crimson Kimona
9/2nd one for Chase a Crooked Shadow -Hitchcockian-type thriller
10/2 for Party Girl – wow to 1st one!
11/2nd one for I Want to Live
12/The Last Mile: Rooney part famously played by Tracy on stage.
13/FL for The Trap -called The Baited Trap over here. Buxom Tina Louise was heavily-promoted as a sex symbol around this juncture but she never really took-off [no pun intended!] and within a few years was reduced to supporting roles is mostly inconsequential movies with a few exceptions. She is still alive at 88.
14/2 for The Lineup: one of my own all-time fave B movies that I saw on a double bill with Van Heflin’s western Gunman’s Walk
15/Man in the Net: Franks Sinatra once said it wouldn’t be a Columbia picture without Rita Hayworth; and by the same token it wouldn’t be a film noir series without Ladd regularly surfacing!
16/ALL for Cry Terror. I saw this on an MGM double bill with Carley Bill Stuart’s western The Sheepman. Wikipedia records that both movies were profitable especially The Sheepman