cherry68
Based
Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's happy. It's only that.
Posts: 3,679
Likes: 2,112
|
Post by cherry68 on Dec 25, 2018 20:16:21 GMT
There were two movies about that. Processo e morte di Socrate, directed by Corrado D'Errico (1939) Socrate, directed by Roberto Rossellini (1971). I haven't seen those though, even if I read the book by Plato many years ago.
|
|
|
Post by pacinoyes on Dec 30, 2018 18:29:13 GMT
This one could be made right now (Werner Herzog, come on!) as a commentary on political themes, identity, cultural repression, religion - could be a great horror film even (you could have incorporated it into Suspiria '18 no?). The dancing plague (or dance epidemic) of 1518"The dancing plague (or dance epidemic) of 1518 was a case of dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg, Alsace, (now modern day France) in the Holy Roman Empire in July 1518. Around 400 people took to dancing for days without rest and, over the period of about one month, some of those affected collapsed or even died of heart attack, stroke, or exhaustion." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_plague_of_1518
|
|
|
Post by pacinoyes on Dec 30, 2018 23:54:45 GMT
What has 12 teeth, doesn't shower and an IQ of 50? The first 5 rows at a pro wrestling match. That was a very old joke my father told me ages ago - but the story of pro wrestling in America, if you did it right is a Boogie Nights level one. In America, it had nefarious crime elements going back to the 40s/50s - it had corruption, tragic deaths and murder and fascinating fringe characters, in women's wrestling it had exploitation and sexual slavery/prostitution - not kidding. In some way, the history of America is tied into it or was from the 40s to the 80s - in the 50s every network showed it - and it served as melting pot too, where immigrants from all countries sat side by side - something you didn't often do anywhere else - and enjoyed a storyline rampant with racism and sexism without any of their own bias coming into it. On top of that, it was, like the movies too - involving suspension of disbelief, acceptance of things as "real" or "fake" personas as believable. It's a great story that in some ways speaks more about American culture than even legit sports do - Baseball, Football......and it's a story no one would think to tell because well, wrestling is stupid......but so is porn and Boogie Nights by focusing the story made something great out of it. I think you'd need that focus here 40s-60s or 70s-80s because well no one is going to sit through a 4 hour wrestling expose The Wrestler is a fine movie too but not really what I'm talking about here.....
|
|
|
Post by pacinoyes on Dec 31, 2018 12:31:37 GMT
Often in the history of killers, you rarely see female ones and when you do it's so famous that you rarely can make a great movie about it anyway (Lizzie Borden, Countess Bathory), because you have to serve the "facts" of the murder which is boring.
The Branch murder however is different - it was the rich killing a servant, takes on metaphors of the Revolutionary Way, colonialism, privilege, casual cruelty (beyond the murder), and the nature of "legacy" - the town feared them and wouldn't dare challenge them so they were in effect an England unto themselves.
Elizabeth Branch (1672–3 May 1740) was an 18th-century English murderer. She and her daughter had a reputation for violence, especially towards their servants. In February 1740, the pair decided that their maid had been loitering on an errand and beat the servant to death. They buried the girl, claiming she died of natural causes, but the body was exhumed. The pair were tried for murder at the Somerset assizes, with the jury delivering a guilty verdict without even retiring. Elizabeth and her daughter were hanged at Ilchester on 3 May 1740.
|
|
|
Post by pacinoyes on Jan 1, 2019 18:38:09 GMT
A great potential bio, the hoax-master Joseph Weil and his cons and associations form a tapestry of 20th century life (and psychology). Joseph "Yellow Kid" Weil (July 1, 1875 – February 26, 1976) was one of the best known American con men of his era. Weil's biographer, W. T. Brannon, wrote of Weil's "uncanny knowledge of human nature". During the course of his career, Weil is reputed to have stolen more than $8 million.
"Each of my victims had larceny in his heart", quipped Weil.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Weil
|
|
|
Post by Mattsby on Jan 4, 2019 22:57:03 GMT
Pinetop Smith (June 11 1904 - March 15 1929).
At 16 he travelled America with the T.O.B.A. (would make a good movie on their own, an african-american vaudeville/entertainment group toured thru the '20s), a dancer, comedian, singer, pianist. In Dec '28 he records first popular use of "Boogie Woogie" - maybe in turn inventing rock and roll??? - and in January '29 writes/performs the lines "And I believin’ to my soul at that time I was on my last go round, it was an unjust jury that set me down." Chicago March '29, 24 y/o, he's shot and killed in a dance hall. The jury acquitted the killer.
You could do a traditional biopic, something more like a lyrical musical pic. Or put the character in a larger tapestry of 1920s Chicago - St Valentine's Massacre was a month before his killing, Prohibition, mob syndicate, etc.
|
|
|
Post by pacinoyes on Jan 12, 2019 22:53:05 GMT
The Philadelphia Poison Ring Fascinating criminal case that came to rise in the Great Depression and went on for years - as a way to scam insurance companies and cash in policies. This case mixes money, murder, the faltering American Dream, betrayal, and exploitation of the poor, desperate or unlucky. Grisly but compelling stuff that still applies today - the culture shapes criminal activity that the culture doesn't "see". The Philadelphia poison ring was a murder for hire gang led by Italian immigrant cousins, Herman and Paul Petrillo, in 1930s Philadelphia, where the Italian community had grown from 76,734 in 1910 (the year the Petrillos came to the USA) to over 155,000 by 1930 - just before the murder ring began operations. The ring came to light in 1938 and the cousins were ultimately convicted of first degree murder(s) and executed by electric chair in 1941. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_poison_ring
|
|
|
Post by stephen on Jan 12, 2019 23:04:19 GMT
One of my favorite historical periods that has rarely been portrayed with justice on-screen: The Mexican War. It says a lot when my favorite film depicting that era is Ravenous.
|
|
|
Post by pacinoyes on Jan 17, 2019 0:54:59 GMT
The Younge murder case, cross connects the military, race relations, wide ranging social movements (voters rights, student Vietnam War protest, social upheaval in general) - shockingly, it's never been filmed yet, it's perfectly representative of an entire era. Samuel Leamon Younge Jr. - a Naval veteran - was a civil rights and voting rights activist who was murdered for trying to desegregate a "whites only" restroom. Younge became the first black college student to be murdered for his actions in support of the Civil Rights Movement. Samuel Younge Sr. said of his son's death, "This is an era of social revolution. In such revolutions, individuals sacrifice their lives." link
|
|
|
Post by pacinoyes on Jan 17, 2019 12:04:31 GMT
Not an event, but a whole life
Would you describe yourself as socially active? Well, no one, ever, from an artistic sense in America was ever more socially active than Phil Ochs - and no one ever disintegrated more on the public stage than him - he was SJW before everyone and he was Kanye West (behaviorally) for a pre-Internet era - and no narrative film has been made on him.
His career is a prism of ALL social causes and personal decline and begs the question - how much can you change the World when you can't change yourself or stop yourself from doom? A '68 Chicago key figure, Vietnam protest, Civil Rights marcher, Chile supporter - a far lesser folk singer peer of Dylan's, his life was a mess tied to headlines - failed revolutions, early career success then homelessness, conspiracies, drugs, depression, madness and Death all around him and lastly eventual unstoppable suicide. The Basketball Diaries book is dedicated to him.
His most famous song, the mocking, humorous "Love Me I'm A Liberal" - not only says something, it has come to represent what Trump's base eventually came to think - whether they know Ochs or not (no one does now) - so by definition he speaks to our cultural divide now.
Phil Ochs was a man of his time, that his time forgot, what revolution can you make if no one buys your records and if no one buys your records, who are you - not who were you, but who are you ? ......his life was the void between those 2 questions.
|
|
|
Post by pacinoyes on Jan 18, 2019 0:55:38 GMT
One of the first cases of Hollywood gossip, it set a trend and created a whole Hollywood industry - the gossip rags.
Sylvia of Hollywood Scandal - Sylvia Ulback (6 April 1881 – 2 March 1975), known as Sylvia of Hollywood, was an early Hollywood fitness guru. Between 1926 and 1932, "Madame Sylvia", as she was also known, specialized in keeping movie stars camera-read through stringent massage, diet and exercise.
In 1932, Sylvia exposed the foibles of the Hollywood system and her illustrious clientele.
Hollywood Undressed revealed intimate details of Sylvia's famous Hollywood clientele which included Jean Harlow, Marie Dressler, Mae Murray, Alice White, Bebe Daniels, Mary Duncan, Ramón Novarro, Ruth Chatterton, Ann Harding, Norma Talmadge, Grace Moore, Constance Bennett, Gloria Swanson, Nella Webb, F.W. Murnau, Elsie Janis, Ernest Torrence, Lawrence Tibbett, Laura Hope Crews, Ronald Colman, Constance Cummings, Ina Claire, John Gilbert, Carmel Myers, Helen Twelvetrees, Carole Lombard, Ilka Chase, Dorothy Mackaill, Pepi Lederer, Marion Davies, Neil Hamilton, Alan Hale Sr and Vivienne Segal.
|
|
|
Post by pacinoyes on Jan 20, 2019 23:00:15 GMT
The Order of the Solar Temple - This has never been told in a comprehensive way and it's a shocking organization/cult (still active?) whose murders and suicides occasionally broke through to the news but actually never stopped them from existing. A sad tale of trading Life for Death, despair for happiness by money - under complex guises, philosophies, deception. Scary stuff...... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Solar_Temple
|
|
|
Post by jimmalone on Jan 20, 2019 23:09:46 GMT
There are so many. So happy that Polanski is doing Dreyfus.
Still waiting for a great movie about some events in Rome in the first century before christ. Sulla and Marius, Caesar and Pompeius, Cicero, so many storylines...
Stanley and Livingstone - I know there's a movie, but it could certainly make an interesting new one.
The Indian Rebellion of 1857.
|
|
|
Post by pacinoyes on Jan 21, 2019 22:41:46 GMT
The dazzling young actress Adèle Haenel - the best young actress going (just turned 30), would have a career role as Thérèse Humbert - the famed French fraud, who pretended to be the heir of an American millionaire. A story about the deception of others, and even more of oneself, and how the dream of something bigger, can result in a prison of your own making - and how high society both invites, and then repels the "poor". en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%A9r%C3%A8se_Humbert
|
|
|
Post by pacinoyes on Jan 23, 2019 22:51:23 GMT
Sick of mob films? Too bad because it's almost inconceivable that the "Grim Reaper" story of Greg Scarpa which has been told to death (1st pun!) on TV and books hasn't gotten around yet to a feature film. The Wikipedia page alone is amazing...........if The Irishman is a hit (a 2nd pun!), I would imagine this would be on somebody's radar to finally make. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Scarpa
|
|
|
Post by pacinoyes on Jan 26, 2019 0:28:23 GMT
The Vere Street Coterie Scandal of 1810 Notorious example of the brutality and injustice against gays and takes on much peripheral context including rights of prisoners, police corruption, the nature and intent of law, fair trial and even the death penalty. A group of men arrested at a molly house in Vere Street, London in 1810 for sodomy and attempted sodomy. Eight men were eventually convicted. Two of them were hanged (as per the then still extant sodomy laws promulgated by Henry VIII in 1534) and six were pilloried for this offence. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vere_Street_Coterie
|
|
|
Post by pacinoyes on Jan 26, 2019 21:42:12 GMT
The case of George Albert Smith and Douglas Blackburn.
A case of deception that still resonates in all those who want to believe and those who should know better. For nearly thirty years the telepathic experiments conducted by Mr. G. A. Smith and myself have been accepted and cited as the basic evidence of the truth of thought transference... ...the whole of those alleged experiments were bogus, and originated in the honest desire of two youths to show how easily men of scientific mind and training could be deceived when seeking for evidence in support of a theory they were wishful to establishen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Blackburn
|
|
|
Post by Mattsby on Jan 28, 2019 21:07:40 GMT
After watching Parker Posey's Drunk History clip, I've been trapped in Caresse Crosby's wiki for hours. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caresse_CrosbyI don't think there's been a movie or doc about her yet. Crosby was a maverick, bon vivant, activist, etc etc. She basically invented the modern bra in 1910, 19y/o, without much luck sold her patent for $1.5k which then went on to earn multi-millions. Had an open marriage with her very wealthy husband Harry Crosby - amateur poets themselves, they started a publishing company that issued the likes of James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Dorothy Parker, many others. Some years later, Harry at 31 was involved in a suicide pact with his mistress - one of many scandals she would have to elude. Caresse in the late '30s, alternatively, married a 20 year old footballer who abused her wealth, was ghost-writing pornography with Henry Miller for Anais Nin, and was having an interracial passionate affair with Canada Lee - who himself would be great figure for a movie. Canada Lee was a violin prodigy at 9y/o, a horse jockey at 14, began boxing, until he lost sight in one of his eyes, and then after auditioning for the theater was cast as Banquo in Orson Welles' landmark Macbeth production in 1936. He also headlined Welles' highly lauded production of Native Son in 1941 (this during the Hearst troubles with Citizen Kane). Was soon cast in Hitchcock's Lifeboat, and in '46 became the first African American to produce a play on Broadway. Later labeled a communist, his career was tanked after a damning nationwide column by Ed Sullivan (who was close friends and helped start Canada's career, ironically). And during this time he often exchanged intense love letters with Caresse - 14 years his senior btw, and would meet her at secret spots, due to segregration laws.
|
|
|
Post by stephen on Jan 28, 2019 22:23:44 GMT
Stephen Root needs to reprise his (Emmy-snubbed) performance from Boardwalk Empire and do a full story about the life and times of Gaston Bullock Means. This guy was a grifter and con-man of the highest order, who not only was one of the infamous Ohio Gang that conglomerated in Warren G. Harding's administration, but he fucking pulled a con-job on the Lindbergh family following their son's death! It's a riveting story, like The Wolf of Wall Street in a waistcoat.
|
|
|
Post by MsMovieStar on Jan 29, 2019 5:15:54 GMT
Oh honeys, a biopic on Libby Holman and her tragic but colorful life. - She was one of the early torch singers and was a big Broadway star at the height of the Depression era. - The first known wearer of the strapless dress. - Was bisexual and unconventional. - Was indicted for the murder of her millionaire husband. One of the biggest news stories of 1932. She was eventually found innocent as she was carrying his baby and her husband's rich family wanted to avoid further scandal. No-one knows whether she killed him or not. She inherited millions. - When she returned to Broadway, she was booed off the stages. - Her second husband also died tragically and mysteriously. - An early champion of civil rights. She toured as part of a mixed race act with musician Josh White & later Gerald Cook during the 40s. - She was Montgomery's Clift rich, older lover and the reason why he turned down Sunset Boulevard as Libby felt she would be associated with the Norma Desmond character. - Funded Martin Luther King's trip to India. - Her 'million dollar baby' died in an accident as a teenager. - Re-invented herself as a kind of folk singer in the late 1950s / early 60s. - Committed suicide in 1971. Libby Holman
|
|
|
Post by MsMovieStar on Jan 29, 2019 5:22:59 GMT
After watching Parker Posey's Drunk History clip, I've been trapped in Caresse Crosby's wiki for hours. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caresse_CrosbyI don't think there's been a movie or doc about her yet. Crosby was a maverick, bon vivant, activist, etc etc. She basically invented the modern bra in 1910, 19y/o, without much luck sold her patent for $1.5k which then went on to earn multi-millions. Had an open marriage with her very wealthy husband Harry Crosby - amateur poets themselves, they started a publishing company that issued the likes of James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Dorothy Parker, many others. Some years later, Harry at 31 was involved in a suicide pact with his mistress - one of many scandals she would have to elude. Caresse in the late '30s, alternatively, married a 20 year old footballer who abused her wealth, was ghost-writing pornography with Henry Miller for Anais Nin, and was having an interracial passionate affair with Canada Lee - who himself would be great figure for a movie. Canada Lee was a violin prodigy at 9y/o, a horse jockey at 14, began boxing, until he lost sight in one of his eyes, and then after auditioning for the theater was cast as Banquo in Orson Welles' landmark Macbeth production in 1936. He also headlined Welles' highly lauded production of Native Son in 1941 (this during the Hearst troubles with Citizen Kane). Was soon cast in Hitchcock's Lifeboat, and in '46 became the first African American to produce a play on Broadway. Later labeled a communist, his career was tanked after a damning nationwide column by Ed Sullivan (who was close friends and helped start Canada's career, ironically). And during this time he often exchanged intense love letters with Caresse - 14 years his senior btw, and would meet her at secret spots, due to segregration laws. Oh honey, I read Black Sun, the biography of Harry Crosby, her husband. His wiki entry is worth more than a glance...
|
|
|
Post by MsMovieStar on Jan 29, 2019 5:35:47 GMT
what a great story, I'd buy it if i were a producer! and who could play her? Ashley Judd? Marion Cotilard? or yourself? Oh honey, myself, of course!... Or Blannie... who takes all my parts... I'd have two Oscars (and three GGs, and three Baftas) by now if she hadn't stolen all my roles! I love Marion, but she's too French for this...
|
|
|
Post by Mattsby on Jan 31, 2019 4:04:36 GMT
One word: COFFEE. Yes, coffee. What is the definitive coffee movie? We get a movie about McDonalds but not the most necessary beverage known to man?! Did Gloria Grahame take a boiling splash to the face for nothing? So........ I'm thinking, use true historical elements as the lining for a satire revolving around coffee. Quick breakdown of specific era: 1652, London’s first coffeehouse opens. More are opening by the hundred, fast becoming a favorite spot for people (mainly men) to idly gab. By 1674, a group of outraged women write a pamphlet petitioning Coffee (pic above) - and it reads so hilariously you’d think it was a humor piece by Woody Allen or something. It was actually a public shaming toward husbands for losing their sex drive (England birthrate had worryingly dropped), vilifying them and coffee culture. Of course, the men publicly, bumptiously, responded. So you have this battle of the sexes going on. Not a year later, a needle-kneed King Charles II issues A Proclamation for the Suppression of Coffee, with hopes to shut down all coffeehouses - in these spaces he feared political dissent. Well, he folded this idea after pressure from his ministers: of course they themselves loved coffee. More: Johann Sebastian Bach wrote a comic opera called Coffee Cantata in the early-mid 1700s, about Aria a young woman who loves coffee but is reprimanded, for drinking it, by her father, who wants to marry her off to someone who isn’t passionate about…coffee. There’s some metaphor there. Anyway, I’d use that gist as the central story and the above as comedic-vignette context or the world “Aria” would inhabit. You could weave a lot of themes here, satirically, on gender and class and censorship, private vs public, sex, hypocrisy, social divide feeding political paranoia.
|
|
|
Post by pacinoyes on Jan 31, 2019 10:00:56 GMT
What's weird is smoking gets really good movies all the time while coffee remains unappreciated - The Insider, Thank You For Smoking and Cold Turkey - Jean Stapleton and Vincent Gardenia speak the truth here - it's not even 7:00 yet! :
|
|
|
Post by pacinoyes on Feb 5, 2019 12:03:09 GMT
We love our serial killers in American but there's never been a movie on - the groundbreaking James Brussel who in the "Mad Bomber" (below is from that Wiki page) case of the 50s linked criminal profiling techniques with psychological profiles - this is now common place, then, revolutionary.
Fingerprint experts, handwriting experts, the bomb investigation unit and other NYPD groups worked with dedication but made little progress. With traditional police methods seemingly useless against Metesky's erratic bombing campaign, police captain John Cronin approached his friend James A. Brussel, a criminologist, psychiatrist, and assistant commissioner of the New York State Commission for Mental Hygiene.
Brussel examined the crime-scene photos and letters and discussed the bomber's metal-working and electrical skills. As he talked with the police, Brussel developed what he called a kind of "portrait" of the bomber, what would now be called an offender profile.
|
|