Today’s Open Thread

I love this movie. I always thought that Claude Rains was The Best Actor Never To Win An Oscar and this movie is proof positive. I'd add Cary Grant to that list too, but not for this movie. I always liked him better as a comedian.

Wonderful film, superb cast. Never tire of watching it.
Neat musical score.
The performances are an example of cream always rising to the top.
No underachievers in this film, in front of , or behind the camera !

Three great leads, a sterling Ben Hecht screenplay, and Alfred Hitchcock. What's not to love? This is the Master's finest achievement (arguably), and, like pendit1, I never tire of watching it.

Aside from invoking the professions of low lifes and injecting a litany of scumbags into the thread, no, I don't see what you did there.

Definitely one of my most favorite spy stories ever! And Cary Grant makes me swoon every time… even though this movie was made 40 years before I was born! It just goes to show good films are timeless.

Claude Rains was phenomenal. Even though he played a Nazi in "Notorious", you still felt sorry for the guy.

Rains is arguably The Best Actor Never To Win An Oscar, but I think Richard Burton and Peter O' Toole (who received a lifetime award) would give him a run for his money in that particular race.

The biopic of rapper Notorious B.I.G was called "Notorious" too.

Tough room.

Another Obama accusation from a comment on a thread on the web today. Never heard this one before.

"…..launch an investigation as to why President Barry is using a bogus, Connecticut-issued Social Security number, when the guy never lived in Connecticut, has no addresses associated with him in Connecticut, and had no relatives living in Connecticut. Besides the fact that using a bogus Social Security number implies that Obama is covering something up in his past, his mere us of a fake Social Security number is a felony."

And you're apparently too hip for it. ;-D I got it, though.

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I posted this late yesterday to the Open Thread, but am pretty sure that few saw it. I found it yesterday at my doctor's office. How about a Charlie Chan Open Thread?

Chang Apana was the Hawaiin cop on whom Charlie Chan was based. This is part of a description of him from the August 9, 2010 New Yorker titled: Chan, the Man by Jill Lepore: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/...

In the nineteen-tens, he was part of a crime-busting squad. His escapades were the stuff of legend. He was said to be as agile as a cat. Thrown from a second-floor window by a gang of dope fiends, he landed on his feet. He leaped from one rooftop to the next, like a “human fly.” When he reached for his whip, thugs scattered and miscreants wept. He once arrested forty gamblers in their lair, single-handed. He was a master of disguises.

There's a new book on Chan: "CHARLIE CHAN–The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous With American History." By Yunte Huang. Seems to be getting good notices. I've seen some of the films over the years. Can't say he was ever one of my faves, but he retains his following.

Well, I think you're missing out. Some of the best films have been about the struggles of gangster rappers. For example Ice-T's biopic "New Jack City" was a great film. But if that's not your speed you should check out the film they made about Tupac Shakur; it's called "New Jack City". Also worth seeing is the story of Lil Wayne: "New Jack City".

Hope that gets you on your way! I'd list a couple more titles but I'm in the middle of screening a Jay-Z biopic. It's called "Children of a Lesser God".

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In 1993, the literary scholar Elaine Kim bid Chan good riddance—“Gone for good his yellowface asexual bulk, his fortune-cookie English”—in an anthology of contemporary Asian-American fiction titled “Charlie Chan Is Dead,” which is not to be confused with the beautiful and fantastically clever 1982 Wayne Wang film, “Chan Is Missing,” and in which traces of a man named Chan are all over the place, it’s just that no one can find him anymore.

To which Lepore quotes No 1 Son: Keye Luke, a dashing Canton-born American artist and actor who played Lee Chan, Charlie’s No. 1 Son, in seven Oland-Chan films, loved them, too. Luke, who died in 1991, was exasperated with the argument that Oland, as Chan, “demeans the race.” “Demeans! My God!” Luke said. As he saw it, “we were making the best damn murder mysteries in Hollywood.”

I remember them from when I was less than 10 years old. Now that I live on the edge of SF's Chinatown, I would like to see them again.

See, that is the type of s/hit info I don't know or retain once I do know it.

Weak jest at best, in any event.

Please give some thought to deleting your post. It demeans the thread.