A spotty list to be sure. Maybe half are good calls. THE BIG SLEEP is a lot of things, many of them good, but a decent murder mystery it is not. MURDER MY, SWEET would be closer. I was glad to see a Ustinov Poirot on there, though personally I prefer (by a little anyway) EVIL UNDER THE SUN. No Hitchcock? VERTIGO is a murder mystery that just might be better than MURDER BY DEATH...possibly so are DIAL M and REBECCA.
I have a soft spot for WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION:
I'm dating a vibrant, smart and totally hot woman named Mary, who happens to be blind. Last weekend we started watching WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION at her place, which involves me telling her what's happening on screen when the dialogue doesn't cover it.
So the film opens on a British Courtroom with people talking in hushed tones, and the Judge comes in and the Bailiff says "All Rise" or something like that, and I'm relating all this to Mary pretty much as I'm telling it to you.
Then the title comes on and the background music swells up and Mary says,
A true story - I think Billy Wilder said that his WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION was thought of as a Hitchcock film, and Hitchcock said to Wilder than people thought DIAL M FOR MURDER was not done by Hitchcock but instead by Billy Wilder (and Hitchcock said he would not mind a trade).
A couple of favorites? SUNSET BLVD. and the classic noir DOUBLE INDEMNITY which I've recently seen a couple of times each.
8 comments:
Murder by Death? Seriously?
I was glad to see The Last of Sheila on the list, however.
I really wanted to like Murder by Death. But it was awful. The Last of Sheila, however is fun.
A blog devoted to movies asserts that W.S. Van Dyke wrote "The Thin Man "? Yikes!
My mistake--they do credit Hammett.
A spotty list to be sure. Maybe half are good calls. THE BIG SLEEP is a lot of things, many of them good, but a decent murder mystery it is not. MURDER MY, SWEET would be closer. I was glad to see a Ustinov Poirot on there, though personally I prefer (by a little anyway) EVIL UNDER THE SUN. No Hitchcock? VERTIGO is a murder mystery that just might be better than MURDER BY DEATH...possibly so are DIAL M and REBECCA.
I have a soft spot for WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION:
I'm dating a vibrant, smart and totally hot woman named Mary, who happens to be blind.
Last weekend we started watching WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION at her place, which involves me telling her what's happening on screen when the dialogue doesn't cover it.
So the film opens on a British Courtroom with people talking in hushed tones, and the Judge comes in and the Bailiff says "All Rise" or something like that, and I'm relating all this to Mary pretty much as I'm telling it to you.
Then the title comes on and the background music swells up and Mary says,
"They have a band in British courtrooms?"
And we both break up laughing.
Vibrant, smart, totally hot...and with a great sense of humor!
A true story - I think Billy Wilder said that his WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION was thought of as a Hitchcock film, and Hitchcock said to Wilder than people thought DIAL M FOR MURDER was not done by Hitchcock but instead by Billy Wilder (and Hitchcock said he would not mind a trade).
A couple of favorites? SUNSET BLVD. and the classic noir DOUBLE INDEMNITY which I've recently seen a couple of times each.
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