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Post by loucapitano on Jan 2, 2014 18:02:09 GMT -5
Saving Mr. Banks is a Hancock masterpiece. Very emotional and satisfying. Strongly recommended. I really hope your Alamo rumor is true. I always felt too much of Alamo 2004 may have been left on the floor. Perhaps there is a great Alamo movie buried and soon to emerge from the 2004 attempt. Happy New Year to All.
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Post by Rich Curilla on Jan 3, 2014 19:41:13 GMT -5
Also, does anyone know the progress of an extended/directors cut of The Alamo? I heard rumor that John Lee Hancock was negotiating having a cut of the film released as part of his payment for Saving Mr. Banks. That film is on the verge of being nominated for some good Academy Awards, right after The Blind Side won Best Actress and was nominated for Best Picture. He's also co-writing the upcoming Malificent film that's being strongly awaited. It's certainly possible Disney, with this success and certain up-and-coming success, would permit a possible cut, even if it were just limited. Honestly, what do they have to lose, especially with the kind of profit Disney has? All I know is that John still wants to do a directors cut of The Alamo. However there seems to be little interest from the Mouse House -- and they're the ones who would have to pay for it. Even if JLH donated his time to assemble it (which IMO he would not be able to do for the very reasons you mentioned above), there would also be quite a sum needed for the editorial staff, digital lab work, new titles, remastering, duplication, distribution and advertising for a movie that Disney seems to have written off before they even released it. So, here's hoping he can find a way anyway.
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Post by Rich Curilla on Mar 26, 2014 9:04:20 GMT -5
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Post by Riley Gardner on Mar 28, 2014 23:32:37 GMT -5
What a fantastic experience that must have been, Rich! How lucky you are!
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Post by Rich Curilla on Mar 30, 2014 17:40:21 GMT -5
What a fantastic experience that must have been, Rich! How lucky you are! Thanks, Riley. It was indeed a wonderful experience -- the whole 2-1/2 years!!! And I owe my involvement in the film 100 percent to the amazing Michael Corenblith.
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Post by Rich Curilla on May 12, 2015 15:57:53 GMT -5
Here is a link to the new web page for Lauren Poluzzi, who was Michael Corenblith's art director on THE ALAMO (2004). While the company stills photographer took tons of behind-the-scenes production and star shots, Lauren focused her camera on the superb sets created by Michael, Lauren and their art department. Check them out................ www.laurenpolizzi.com/index#/the-alamo/Take a look at her SAVING MR. BANKS shots as well.
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Post by jenny on Sept 2, 2015 8:08:52 GMT -5
I first saw the original The Alamo at the movies when I was 10 years' old and recently watched both movies after reading the pertinent parts in James Michener's Texas.
Two nights ago I re-watched the first Alamo through Amazon.com on my computer (I had seen it 5 times when it came out) and it didn't have my favorite part, unless it's a false memory after 55 years: The bugle playing what I first thought, until researching it yesterday online, as The Deguello. As it ran almost 3 hours, I didn't see how it could have been cut; it had all the other parts I remembered and a few I'd forgot.
Last night - the night right after - I watched the 2004 version. Although I just loved some parts of it, it was hard to get around Jim Bowie, who I understand had red or light hair in real life (and maybe from seeing him blonde in the original as played by Richard Widmark) so resembling Ted Bundy. Although this actor was excellent and should have received some sort of award for his amazing performance of the dying Bowie.
Also, the large glass cross-window in Bowie's room looked.....Art Deco?! Could it really have looked like that in 1836 in a crumbling old mission?
My interest in the Alamo has now been rekindled after spending tons of time way back then on the subject. Thank you for this excellent board.
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Post by Rich Curilla on Sept 2, 2015 12:33:44 GMT -5
Welcome, Jenny. I love your comments about both Alamo movies. Particularly interesting is your memory of a bugle playing The Deguello in the John Wayne Alamo. Actually, the film was cut from 192 minutes to 161 minutes (the version you probably saw), however, there was never a scene of a bugler playing the piece, but the theme (actually created by composer Dimitri Tiomkin out of whole cloth for an Alamo tie-in in the 1959 John Wayne movie Rio Bravo and then reused in its true character in The Alamo) was a key motif in his score and then played on-camera by Santa Anna's band as they march into position to begin the final battle. Perhaps you also saw Rio Bravo about this time or on TV later. In that movie (a good Howard Hawks western), Wayne and his deputies are defending the sheriff's office against outlaws who are besieging them. The outlaw leader has a trumpet player perform Tiomkin's Deguello in a saloon across the street to signify that he will kill all the "defenders" of the jail like Santa Anna did the garrison of the Alamo. As in The Alamo the following year, Tiomkin incorporated his them into the background score. It would have been very easy for you to have transferred the image of the Mexican in the saloon playing the tune to your memory of the scene in The Alamo. Things like that have happened to me. Also, there was a 1955 film titled The Last Command about Jim Bowie at the Alamo (also quite good), and Santa Anna orders The Deguello to be played by massed bugles just before the attack. This might also be your source, if you had seen that movie back then. That Deguello, a different tune, was also written just for the film by composer Max Steiner. Carter Burwell, the composer of the score for The Alamo (2004) chose to use the real Deguello and give it the same effect on the characters as Tiomkin's theme in Rio Bravo -- to get under the skin of the defenders. He chose to slow it down however (the real thing was played at cavalry charge tempo) so that he and John Lee could create that memorable scene with Davy Crockett "grinning down" the Deguello with his fiddle counterpoint. Each of these two Alamo movies is a film for its era and this fact often polarizes viewers to like one or the other, depending on age and background. Wayne's is largely fictional (except for the basics), and John Lee's is largely factual (except for dramatic necessities). I'm very happy to see that you like both, as do I. I cut my teeth on Wayne's and then got to help with John Lee's. Love each for its own reasons. Jason Patric did a phenomenal job as Bowie -- the most difficult part in the film to due to its illness limitations, and Jason carried it off very well. Alas, he never seems to get the applause. He is a very underrated actor who creates original characters -- even in a historical personage. The window you speak of was created by production designer Michael Corenblith (as were the sets for the Alamo, San Antonio de Bexar and Gonzales/San Felipe). His inspiration for the window was the famous Rose Window on the south wall of the sacristy of Mission San Jose in San Antonio carved in the mid-18th. century by local Béxareño artisan Pedro Huízar. It is not inappropriate for Mission San Antonio de Valero (the Alamo), but there is no evidence that one like it existed at that mission. Michael's approach to Bowie's room was to provide it with a feeling. The style of vaulted ceiling also adds to this feeling and was inspired by the drawings of Louis Eyth from the 1870's and, more specifically, from the actual interiors of the Alamo church baptistry and confessional rooms. However, both the Rose Window motif and the groin-vaulted ceiling are more likely to have been found in the church or the convento, since the Low Barrack (where Bowie was staying) was actually a structure added by the Spanish garrison in the early part of the 19th. century and would have been simply functional in construction. But designing for a film requires creating sets that reflect or add to characterization, as in this case with Bowie, and Michael Corenblith is one of the best. Welcome aboard this board.
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Post by Rich Curilla on Sept 2, 2015 12:39:27 GMT -5
Deleted accidental double of above post. :/
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Post by jenny on Sept 3, 2015 7:48:19 GMT -5
Thank you so much, Rich! Since I never saw the films you mentioned, I realize it must have been from the Alamo soundtrack I had back then. I listened to it often and when John Wayne made his speeches over 50 years later, the other night, I could still remember them almost word for word. That must be where I heard that beautiful trumpet solo I had always thought of as the deguello.
I just checked Amazon to find the 1960 Alamo they have runs 2 hours and 42 minutes, so it's unlikely I missed anything there. However, there was another false memory (I guess): In the speech Davy makes to "Flacka" on the record I always remembered the line "you might still be walking around but you're deader'n a coonskin cap." Which Wayne always wore in the original. But the coonskin turned into a "beaver" hat this time around. The other would have been more appropriate and even the syntax would have fit better.
After trying to see if there was any reference to the album online just now I found them selling on Amazon.com for up to $557.04. Yesterday I found one selling for well over a thousand dollars, plus $45 postage, but it seems to be gone today.
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Post by Rich Curilla on Sept 3, 2015 20:28:00 GMT -5
Jenny, Tiomkin's score for THE ALAMO is my favorite music of all time. I had the album in 1960 before I even owned a record player to play it on. I got that for Christmas. I am not surprised that it has gone up in value, however this must be for the original acetate record and certainly not for a CD. Yes? Dimitri Tiomkin was born in Russia, educated in Germany and France and did film music almost exclusively for American Westerns and epics. No one has been able to master his style or his very organic way of conducting his orchestras. So, you must get a CD of the original score if you can find it. However, in 2010, a fine reproduction of the whole score (every single music cue in the movie on 3 discs) was produced by James Fitzpatrick in Europe. The score was meticulously researched and then conducted by Nic Raine using the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. For the extremists (like me), Raine misses the boat on tempo for two or three cues, but mostly has given us a wonderful representation of (IMO) Tiomkin's best work. Below is a link to a review of this new homage to Tiomkin's score. The review also contains a link to the company that sells it. The website has videos of Raine's orchestra recording parts of the score. Enjoy: filmscoreclicktrack.com/2010/07/cd-review-the-alamo/ The 3-CD set sells for #35.
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Post by Rich Curilla on Sept 3, 2015 20:41:02 GMT -5
P.S. -- The version of the movie selling on Amazon is the only official home video version available. That is the "cut" version of the film that Wayne had to do in order to meet exhibition demands to present two shows a night in their theaters. Ted Turner sometimes shows the full director's cut (192 minutes) on his network, but it is not available on DVD. A ten-year-long attempt by awesome film restoration expert Robert Harris to do a restored 70 mm master was totally thwarted by MGM/UA who seems to have a death wish for the film. However, if you can still play VHS cassettes, you may be able to find an early 1990's 2-cassette release of the full length version. The 31 minutes that Wayne authorized for his editor to cut out in 1961 (when you finally see them) are arguably the worst scenes in the movie -- but at least the whole story is there (mostly fiction though is be).
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Post by mjbrathwaite on Sept 5, 2015 3:33:42 GMT -5
I've got the sountrack album for the 1960 version of "The Alamo", and it sounds like I'm sitting on a goldmine, but I wouldn't dream of parting with it, and have often pinched bits of music from it for my home movies, but I'm glad it occurred to me that the "Deguello" in it might not be the real one (which would presumably be out of copyright) before I released a surf guitar version I'd recorded of it. The first record I ever got was "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral", with Dmitri Tiomkin's music, and it's still one of my favourite recordings. I don't agree that the extra scenes in the director's cut of "The Alamo" are bad: I have both versions, and prefer that one. It even has Frankie Avalon singing one of the songs from his EP of songs from the film. When I first saw the film, I expected to see him sing them all, and even had a publicity still of him singing "Here's to the Ladies" in the scene where Chill Wills sang it.
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Post by Rich Curilla on Sept 5, 2015 10:43:13 GMT -5
Well, let me qualify "bad" a bit. The only truly bad scene (terribly directed, acted and edited) was the birthday scene for "Lisa" Dickinson, played by John Wayne's daughter Aissa. Other scenes (i.e. the morning patrol where they get chased back to the Alamo, the scene where Flaca helps Mrs. Guy when her stuff falls out of the wagon, etc.) were well done and would have contributed to the story line. When a director looks at his film objectively (very hard to do) once it is edited and screened for an audience or two, he often chooses to cut scenes that do not further the plot and slow the momentum of the movie. This choice is usually made after a test-audience screening. In the case of THE ALAMO, it went through the world premiere, and half of the giant TODD-AO roadshow presentation in 14 big city theaters before the choice was made to cut the overall length of the film down. At that point, a filmmaker must choose which scenes are least necessary (not necessarily bad) and/or cause the film to drag -- the ultimate no-no. Wayne was already in Africa working on HATARI! and let his son Michael and the film editor Stuart Gilmore make the choice of which scenes to cut. I would not have cut the two scenes I mentioned above, but the rest were expendable. Unfortunately, one is left with some story holes with the shorter version. What happened to Flaca's boyfriend? Why does Wayne suddenly start calling her Flaca? How come Juan Seguin's Tejanos are in the Alamo at the end when Travis snubbed Seguin in the beginning? Etc. On the other hand, the birthday party scene was just Wayne promoting his cute little girl and was creatively embarrassing.
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Post by mjbrathwaite on Sept 5, 2015 18:11:37 GMT -5
Being in the film industry myself (albeit a bit marginalized at present because when one of our leading directors was recently given an award as one of New Zealand's twenty greatest living artists I said he was one of our country's twenty greatest scoundrels because in the 1980s he stole the plot from one of my father's novels and changed it just enough so he wouldn't have to pay royalties or give my father any acknowledgement), I understand why the film had to be shortened but, as you say, the storyline makes more sense with them in. I agree that the birthday party scene was not an artistic necessity, but I'm a big fan of Frankie Avalon, and would hate to be without his song! Allen Ayles, in his book "John Wayne and the Movies", said that a scene of Bowie fighing with his knife had been cut out, and I've never been sure whether he mistook the bit where Flaca's boyfriend was killed with it for that or whether there is another scene we haven't seen.
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