#sunset blvd.

[inthedarktrees]

Gloria Swanson in Sunset Blvd. (1950) dir. Billy Wilder

[darrys-laundry]

brent comer at the sunset blvd. premiere photographed by mundellmodernpixels (x)

[weirdlookindog]

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

source

[harveyguillensource]

As always when he visits NYC, Harvey's been checking out the hottest theatre productions, including Sunset Blvd.

[lobbycards]

Sunset Blvd. (aka: Sunset Boulevard), Italian lobby card (fotobusta), Italian theatrical release 1951

[thesarahfiles]

Promotional pics from Sunset Boulevard Australia starring Sarah Brightman.

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

"WELL, THE CLOCK SAYS IT'S TIME TO CLOSE NOW, I GUESS I'D BETTER GO NOW."

PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on fan shots of American rock band THE DOORS, performing live at the Whisky a Go Go, Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA, c. 1967.

""Jim had never sung before and your singing muscles need time to develop,” he said. “It didn’t take long but, vocally, Jim became a 95 on a scale of 100 after starting as a 10. His voice became a weapon.”

Likewise, though Morrison “was very shy and reserved on stage at first”, the guitarist said, “as we played night after night, he got better and better – and wilder and wilder.""

-- THE GUARDIAN, "DOORS guitarist Robby Krieger: "The music will outlast the crazy Jim stuff,"" published December 3, 2021

Source: www.reddit.com/r/thedoors/comments/14skjrf.

[roderickjaynes01]

Sunset Blvd. 1950 - Billy Wilder

[vickster51]

Favourite Theatre Shows of 2023

My Favourite Theatre Shows of 2023

It’s hard to believe it’s that time of year again, when I look back at my theatregoing year and look forward to the year to come (that’s coming soon in another post). Although 2023 has seen me see more shows than last year, I’ve still only seen about a third of the shows I’d see pre-lockdowns. I’m slowly getting back in the routine of planning ahead and booking theatre (which is something I’d…

[crowdvscritic]

crowd vs. critic single take // THE APARTMENT (1960)

Note: This is a modified version of a review originally written for ZekeFilm. Photo credits: IMDb.com.

Need a creative way to climb the corporate ladder? C.C. “Bud” Baxter might have found the solution. To garner his bosses’ favor, he lends his apartment out to them for their extramarital trysts. But as if scheduling the time he can spend at home weren’t complicated enough, he discovers a new wrinkle: the co-worker he’s trying to romance (Shirley MacLaine) is one of the mistresses his residence accommodates. 

CROWD // Writer-director Billy Wilder got a kick out of straightforward character dramas, and he found his mojo when he was writing “just” a man and a woman talking. He found it in Sabrina and Sunset Blvd., but his mojo arguably worked its magic best in The Apartment. (No matter how you rank those three, we can agree they all beat Love in the Afternoon.) Lemmon and MacLaine bring fully realized people to a New York City apartment, he an insecure conformist, she a wounded spark. They’re both dreamers of a kindred sort, ones who yearn for the stability that comes with unconditional acceptance. For something so simple, The Apartment digs deeper and darker than you’d think if you’ve only seen the image of Lemmon and MacClaine’s playful hand of gin rummy. Yes, it’s witty (“When you’re in love with a married man, you shouldn’t wear mascara.”), but it’s just as heartbreaking. (In the age of #MeToo, it weighs in a new way.) Today’s Hollywood may not be so enamored with stories that feel this small, but today’s audiences will find it just as moving and winsome.

POPCORN POTENTIAL: 8.5/10

CRITIC // I get a kick out of the original posters for this film: “Movie-wise, there has never been anything like The Apartment, love-wise, laugh-wise, or other-wise!” While that sounds like typical marketing hyperbole, the Academy seemed to agree: The Apartment was nominated for 10 awards and won 5, including top dogs Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture. 

Would the today’s Academy be so enamored with Wilder’s writing/directing/producing gig? I don’t think so, but that says more about the their current tastes than about this title. Voters now like their films historical (12 Years a Slave, Argo, The King’s Speech), artsy/experimental (Moonlight, Birdman, The Artist, Parasite, Nomadland, Everything Everywhere All at Once), or issues-focused (Spotlight, The Hurt Locker, Slumdog Millionaire, The Shape of Water, Green Book), and they like them most when they can combine them. A straightforward, contemporary character drama about a 9-to-5 office job wouldn’t rank high their Oscar bait checklist; so much so, the only Best Picture nominees in the last 10 years with any resemblance are CODA, Lady Bird, Marriage Story, and Silver Linings Playbook. But even if this film isn’t the Oscar bait we’re familiar with today, don’t underestimate the poignant performances actors like Lemmon, MacLaine, and Fred MacMurray can find in a Wilder script or the commentary on corporate culture a Wilder script can find.

ARTISTIC TASTE: 9/10

[news-buzz]

Nicole Scherzinger Apologizes After Supporting Russell Brand Post News Buzz

Nicole Scherzinger has apologized after facing backlash on social media Thursday evening after she posted a positive comment on an Instagram an post by Russell Brand in which he flashes a red hat reading “Make Jesus First Again.” Posted in the hours ahead of the U.S. presidential election, Brand captioned the post “God Bless America.” “Where do I get this hat?” Scherzinger wrote in a now-deleted…

[byneddiedingo]

William Holden and Gloria Swanson in Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, 1950)

Cast: William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson, Fred Clark, Lloyd Gough, Jack Webb, Franklyn Farnum, Larry J. Blake, Charles Dayton, Cecil B. DeMille, Hedda Hopper, Buster Keaton, Anna Q. Nilsson, H.B. Warner, Ray Evans, Jay Livingston. Screenplay: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, D.M. Marshman Jr. Cinematography: John F. Seitz. Art direction: Hans Dreier, John Meehan. Film editing: Arthur P. Schmidt. Music: Franz Waxman.

Sunset Blvd., with the abbreviation, is the "official" title because it's the only way we see it in the credits of the film: as a shot of the street name stenciled on a curb. So from the beginning we are all in the gutter, and later we are looking at the stars -- or at least one fading star, Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). Accepting the role of Norma was a truly courageous act by Swanson: She must have known that it was the part of a lifetime, but that posterity would remember her as the campy has-been silent star, and not as the actress who had a long and distinguished career, playing both comedy and drama with equal skill, or as the spunky title character of Sadie Thompson (Raoul Walsh, 1928), which earned her her first Oscar nomination. The role of Norma Desmond might have won her an Oscar if it hadn't been for another star whose career was beginning to fade: Bette Davis, who was nominated for All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz). The conventional wisdom has it that Swanson and Davis split the votes, allowing Judy Holliday to win for Born Yesterday (George Cukor). This was also a landmark film for William Holden, who had been a sturdy but unremarkable leading man until his performance as Joe Gillis established his type: the somewhat cynical, morally compromised protagonist. It would earn him an Oscar three years later for another Wilder film, Stalag 17 (1953), and would be his stock in trade through the rest of his career, in films like Picnic (Joshua Logan, 1955), The Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean, 1957), The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969), and Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976). Holden almost didn't get to play Gillis; Montgomery Clift was offered the role but backed out. One story has it that Clift thought the role, of a man out to get the money of a woman he doesn't love, was too much like one he had just played, in The Heiress (William Wyler, 1949), while others have said that he turned it down because the story of a man's affair with an older woman would remind people of his own earlier affair with the singer Libby Holman, 16 years his senior. There is in fact an unfortunate whiff of sexism in Wilder's treatment of the age difference between Norma Desmond and Joe Gillis -- Norma is said to be 50, which was Swanson's age when the film was made, while Holden, who was 32, was made up to look even younger. Wilder, it must be observed, seemed to have no problems when the age difference was reversed, as in his 1954 film Sabrina, in which a 54-year-old Humphrey Bogart romances a 25-year-old Audrey Hepburn, or the 1957 Love in the Afternoon, with 28-year-old Hepburn and 56-year-old Gary Cooper. None of this, however, seriously detracts from the fact that Sunset Blvd. remains one of the great movies, with its its superb black-and-white cinematography by John F. Seitz. It won Oscars for the mordant screenplay by Wilder, Charles Brackett, and D.M. Marshman Jr., the art direction and set decoration of Hans Dreier, John Meehan, Sam Comer, and Ray Moyer, and the score by Franz Waxman. It's also one of the few films to receive nominations in all four acting categories: In addition to Swanson and Holden, Nancy Olson and Erich von Stroheim received supporting player nominations, but none of them won.

[thevelvetgoldmine]

I'm the greatest star of them all.

SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950) dir. Billy Wilder

[jasonsutekh]

Sunset Blvd. (1950)

A has-been silent movie actress clings on to her former life and drags an aspiring writer into her fantasy world.

 The acting is fairly strong, mainly because the lead woman has a license to be over-dramatic the entire time but gives her madness just enough nuance to make it melancholic. The sets are all attractive and remind the audience of the decadent but feeling-less lifestyle of the actress. There are also a number of meta-textual elements about the business which create both comedy and self-reflective criticism.

 Easily the weakest part of the movie was showing the ending at the start just to create an attention grab moment. It swiftly becomes irrelevant to the rest of the movie as we jump back in time to explain it and plod through the sequence of events until we almost forget about it. It’s weak because it’d have made a striking, and possibly unexpected, ending.

 Although the cynicism can get wearisome at times since it’s chronic throughout the movie, it is necessary to make such a cutting exploration of the backstage underworld of film. It’s atypical in that the love story is only teased with no real intention to fulfil it. There are also some fitting literary parallels to amuse and reinforce some plot elements.

 Most of the characters are somewhat unrelatable because of their niche roles, the strongest being the younger true love interest who is more of a plot device than main character. The characters largely invent their own inter-personal problems which undermines the drama they create. There’s also some attempts at film worker banter which gets tedious really quick since the humour is often strained and limited.

 4/10 -It’s below average, but only just!-

 -While shopping Norma remarks that if Joe isn’t careful he’ll need a cutaway. This is a reference to a grey morning suit worn by a groom, and also a piece of footage shot separately to add context to a scene.

-The failed script presented at the beginning of the film is the basic plot of A League of Their Own which was released 42 years later.

-Many articles were provided from the leading lady’s genuine possessions, including jewellery, accessories, and the film they watch is from her repertoire.

[lobbycards]

Sunset Blvd. (aka: Sunset Boulevard), Italian lobby card (fotobusta), Italian theatrical release 1951