It is. There are others in different genres, but nothing is greater than Ben Hur.
My favorite Kirk Douglas is SpartacusâŚ
but my second favoriteâone of my favorites as a kidâwas âThe Championâ 1949âŚ
Itâs a boxing film noir with Douglasâs greatest performance IMO
There is one pinnacle scene I canât find on youtubeâŚan amazing scene (no spoilers). Douglas was nominated best actor for it The movie is a buy or rent on Youtube. Anyone who hasnât seen it needs to find it. A masterpiece!
Douglas was a boxing fan as was Kubrick, that was how they met for Paths of Glory and Spartacus. Kubrick had made a short, âThe Day of the Fight.â
Stanley Kubrickâs, âDay of the Fightâ. 1951
Hereâs somethingâŚIn 1962 my father took me to this boxing matchâŚKirk Douglas was there, mentioned by narrator and they pan to himâŚI was there. after the fight Kirk went into the ring to congratulate Clay, who defeated Archie Moore. At the time, Kirk Douglas was my second favorite actor , after Charlton Heston. I was really surprised how short Kirk Douglas was, but built like a tank. He was T-shaped
I bet Kubrick was there too!
I should study this film and try and find me and my fatherâŚand Kubrick,
Cassius Clay vs Archie Moore 1962 LA Sportâs Arena.
Could that be Kubrick sitting next to Kirk Douglas and leaning over talking to Douglas?? They might still have been on speaking terms.
I canât tell if thatâs KubrickâŚat the time Lolita was just out. He had plenty of reason to be in LA. James Mason lived off San Ysidro in Bev Hills. Tower Dr . He was soon divorcing his wife Pamela who remained in the house, with their daughter Porty.
Douglas was 5â9". Hereâs a quote:
Kirk Douglas was obsessed with height , his shoe-wearing habits were legendary. Watch Ace in the Hole, his enormous lifts are clearly visible, especially in the last scene. In Gunfight at OK Corrall, he has boots on with ca. 3-inch heels. And yes, the anecdote is true, as a practical joke Burt Lancaster stole his lifts during filming of Seven âŚ"
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Great example of the use of sound as a way to build tension. Leone was a master when it came to using his sound tracks for dramatic effect in all his movies.
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This is my very favorite Western.
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One thing I read about being on set when this movie was being made was how Leone would play the music while shooting scenes. He did this sort of thing quite frequently.
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Of the most modest films to have ever been produced was the 1970 war flick âWaterloo.â
What makes this film remarkable is the fact what it took to make it and the meticulous efforts made to details. Even though it bombed at the office and received less then stellar reviews, what its enduring legacy was the way its battle scenes were depicted, and how accurate they were to more dramatic effect. Perhaps the events leading up to Waterloo was just too much and big to capture in a movie, but in todayâs day in age of CGI where such battle scenes are now done with, âWaterlooâ was able to achieve what no other film has ever done since. Depict accurate and realistic battles scenes that was actually carried out by live actors and reenactment of the battle itself, its impressive and very lavish battle scenes incomparable to todayâs CGI animation solely because every horse that fell down, every soldier marching on, every explosion happened as they did.
Waterloo was an Italian Soviet film production directed by Russian filmmaker Sergei Bundarchuk.
All in all, the whole Waterloo production employed 15,000 real soldiers along with 2,000 cavalrymen as extras. Added to that were fifty circus stunt riders to do the risky stunts like falling of horses and such.
How was the team behind Waterloo pull up a production this massive in those days when CGI was still unheard of? The answer is simply because the team did not make it the traditional way.
For Waterloo, producer Dino De Laurentiis flew up to the Soviet Union despite it being the middle of the Cold War and with the movieâs cast was entirely made up of British and American actors. De Laurentiis was able to use director Bundarchuk, who was Russian, to deal with the Soviets. This deal they struck up not only allowed them to film the whole Waterloo movie in the USSR but also that they could access Russian men and equipment at unbelievably basement prices.
Because of the said deal, the Soviet Army ended up lending fifteen thousand of its men to play soldiers for Waterloo. In addition to that, there were also engineers and an entire cavalry brigade. The soldiers â who stayed throughout the duration of the filming in tents placed near the âbattlefieldâ â were trained to give them authentic Napoleonic airs for months while the other 2,000 had a more intensive training since they were required to load and fire muskets for the cameras.
This movie in its original release to both British and American markets was just a little over 2 hours in running time. The Soviet release was 4 hours. I know, pretty crazy to think that anybody would sit through a movie that long, but I guess anything is possible.
With a production this big and number of extras â real soldiers at that â this huge, it was even believed that during the making of Waterloo, its director had the worldâs seventh largest army in his command. And that he used . . . to make up the marvelous battle sequences for the movie.
In the end, Waterloo had the final bill of USD$40 million which, by 1970s measures, make it one of the most expensive films ever made throughout the filming history. If the movie had not been shot in USSR that time, its cost would have been double or triple the above-mentioned amount.
This said, Waterloo is quite a tedious movie to watch. Most of the scenes that do not involve fighting are dragging to look and listen as the screenplayâs not that great. Really in the end that is the shameful part for such efforts that were put into the fantastic accurate realistic fighting scenes. Absent is at least French accents, which is another part of this movie that bothers me. It does for some odd reason have its loyal followers which is also rather interesting too.
In parting, there will never be a production like this on such a scale to which todayâs CGI can replace, which makes this film a class in of its own. 40 millions dollars by todayâs standards can fund multiple films with lesser headaches.
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I have the soundrack on CD, this I recommend to everyone because itâs great.
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I think the 1812 overture is one of this most iconic pieces used in this film.
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New Season of âMandalorianâ has started.
Lets see if they can continue with interesting story lines and Chracter development such as what Season 1 has provided. So far, the Star Wars franchise has been an abysmal failure with recent SJWâs narratives and terrible storyâs to boot, but not so much with the Mandalorian spinoff, it has been a different result under different direction of smarter people in charge and the results are a pleasant surprise.
I love this movieâA Fine Madness, Sean Connery and Joanne Woodward. An offbeat comedy that had mixed reviews, but I loved it.
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I think I am going to watch this one tonight.
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I just watched A Fine Madness. Havenât seen it in years. Pretty silly. It might have been a better part for Cary Grant, like some of his looney, madcap rolls. Connery was pretty wild, though, maybe too wild.
On a scale 1 to 5 how many stars do you give it?
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A 3, but I loved it when I saw it in the theater. It was never a 5
My 1/2 sister used to take me to Saturday cinema for $1 and hereâs what she took me to see:
(and God bless her!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKeYS1P9j1c
Then
https://vimeo.com/356066232 <should be whole movie.
There was some New York, New York in there, too.
Sinatra and Gene Kelly.
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I just watched it last night. When he was walking on the Broooklyn bridge I thought he was going to break into a dance and the movie was going to have a brief musical interlude. 
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That would have made the movie. A whole singing in the rain kind of thing
Oh I donât know, I thought of a âLa La Landâ kind of moment would have been off the beaten path sort of thing. I am sure this movie went over well with Feminists, huh? 
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