BK - Goodtime Network is very strange. I don't watch it all that much. It's on 110 on my Aldelphia digital system. I believe Tues. night is all the old Warner detective shows, Thurs. The Warner Cowboy shows, Wednesday is war night with Combat, Gallant Men, etc. Though Combat seems to be shown a lot at odd hours. At around ten pm or so, they used to show a lot of ballroom dancing competitions. Weekends had some old Variety shows from the seventies, it seemed, stuff like Tony Orlando and Dawn. During the day, they have this white-haired gent in suspenders who seems to be a jack-of-all-trades, does antique shows, cooking shows, hosts old, old "B" movies. My pal Nick Clooney used to host the night-time Warner Bros. stuff, but since he is now running as a Democratic candidate for Congress in Kentucky, I don't know if he's still hosting.
Matt H., I remember and love Burke's Law, that would be a great show for some station like Good Times to revive.
To last night's late indirect assumption that I am a cynic because I dared to criticize some aspects of Lord of the Rings. Well, I suppose all romantics and idealists inevitably become cynics in some ways, so I suppose I have to cop to it somewhat. However, I don't think it true in this sense. The caveat has always been that I said I've generally enjoyed the films. My complaints are quibbles. Much of my six-thousand book library is made up fantasy novels, I can still thrill to and delight in the wonders of Ray Harryhausen's mythical faery tales, despite that their special effects now seem archaic next to LOTR. My willing suspension of disbelief is still more than willing and I go into a film like LOTR rooting for it.
But that doesn't mean I abandoned totally every theatrical/dramatic instinct I've honed over a thirty year career as an actor, writer, scholar, occasional producer, and even occasional director...Sorry, for me, some of the scenes in Return have an emotional sameness to them, some of them try too hard to be a moment. Movies have rhythms and up and downs, highs and lows. Even a horror film or suspense film cannot sustain one mood throughout. There have to be moments of release and transition and shifting qualities.
It's a chronic complaint I have with Spielberg too often...particularly on such films like A.I. and Empire of the Sun. When you try to make every scene a moment...like I felt he did in those two films... you end up with no moments. Because everything comes at you at the same pitch and level. There is no variation.
This is not the case with Return of the King, for the most part, mind you, just every once in a while. It will be very interesting to see all three put together though, because we have a lot of thos scenes in Two Towers ,as I remember.
Restraint, restraint, resist the urge to wring tears out of every scene, or heartbreak out of every scene, or laughs out of every scene.
Again, I invoke my Loesser quote: "The heart must bleed, not slobber." Sometimes "loess" is more!
I think to suggest that, for me, Return of the King was a little too moist...does not make me a heartless, curmudgeonly cynic. It just means it didn't work as completely for me as it did for you.
Panni...Yes, there's nothing worse than bad Tennessee Williams. I remember having to sit through so many badly-interpreted Williams heroines in my acting classes at University because all these young actresses thought a southern accent was the easiest to do. And even if the accent was easily accomplished, they forgot the complex Williams characters aren't the easiest to do.
Still, I don't think I've ever walked out of anything. I'm always hoping that there might be something to justify the production coming up or, if nothing else, one can always learn from bad experiences. But mostly, I feel I have no right to criticize something if I haven't seen it all the way through.
