While it's always great to notch off another entry on a favourite filmography, the inevitable downside is that there's less left to find. This is the only Jean Harlow film I had missing from The Beast of the City in 1932 to the sadly early end of her career in Saratoga in 1937. At least I still have Platinum Blonde to look forward to. She plays a young and wealthy widow called Crystal Wetherby who is engaged to Claude Dabney, who really just wants her money. The twist is that she's engaged to him for precisely the same reason.
Unfortunately for Claude, his brother Raymond has just got out of prison after receiving what is apparently a hard deal. Raymond is Robert Taylor, romantic lead of the era and real life husband to Barbara Stanwyck. He's as calm as his brother and father, in the respective forms of Reginald Owen and E E Clive, are not. Owen in particular overacts to the point of apoplexy. They want to send him to another country and are quite happy to pay for it but Raymond doesn't want to leave London. Naturally he soon bumps into Crystal and falls in love with her though she has a terribly inconsistent accent that isn't sure what nationality or class it belongs to. Maybe he falls in love with her because of it.
The key part of the plot is that in pursuing her he manages to become a sheriff's officer acting for a bailiff to whom she owes a large sum of money, and thus gets to stay on the premises until the bill is paid in full. It's an intriguing law that may or may not be real but certainly sets the scene for an intriguing love story. What's most intriguing though is the humour. For twenty minutes or so the humour is as inconsistent as Crystal's accent and just as annoying. There are moments of genius, then nothing, then moments of genius again.
However once that long introduction is over, everything picks up. Harlow finds her way into the part and settles in nicely, proving as she did in many of her later films that she was becoming something of an actress. She certainly wasn't a natural and she was far from good in her first few roles, but through hard work and perseverance she became a joy to watch far beyond just her looks. The jokes pick up along with her performance and there are a bunch of classic lines that often slip by so easily that it takes a moment to realise how great they were. If only they weren't buried in so much clumsiness.
Taylor is deliciously calm and, posing as Crystal's butler, proves that William Powell wasn't the only good American butler in comedies, and the rest of the cast assist ably though completely stereotypically. Cora Witherspoon plays the dedicated socialite, Marla Shelton her nymphomaniac daughter, Lionel Braham as a forgetful lord and Barnett Parker as a snooty Englishman with an unfathomable accent. Luckily there's Una O'Connor as the one real servant Crystal has left. She doesn't get much of a part but she could always wring something out of nothing.
Wednesday, 30 January 2008
Tuesday, 29 January 2008
Calling Bulldog Drummond (1951)
A ruthless and seemingly highly coordinated gang of robbers in very cool masks is succeeding in their business all over London. Three times they've struck and three times they've succeeded. Every little detail is accounted for with the greatest of care and so Scotland Yard have almost nothing to go on. To take a stab at the 'almost' part of it, they call on Captain Hugh 'Bulldog' Drummond to go undercover, even though he's been happily retired for some years to focus on breeding pigs.
In fact he's been retired so long that he's no longer the familiar John Howard who played Drummond seven times, including in three out of the four I've seen thus far. This time out he's Walter Pidgeon who only got one shot at the role. He teams up with Margaret Leighton as a undercover policewoman called Sgt Helen Smith, very able but still a woman, which the highly sexist Drummond can't help but focus on.
There's a lot of thought put into the story, the machinations and counter-machinations, and I was highly impressed, but there are still points at which I couldn't help but throw my hands up in the air in exasperation. For instance Drummond leaves various things in his apartment to reinforce the fact that he's really Joe Crandall, and it works. The bad guys break in and check, which is all very well, but then he shouts out that it worked, gleefully ignoring any surveillance of the apartment or even that a bad guy might still be there.
That's but one example of a few, and really if you're going to go into such admirable detail you may as well be a little more consistent.
In fact he's been retired so long that he's no longer the familiar John Howard who played Drummond seven times, including in three out of the four I've seen thus far. This time out he's Walter Pidgeon who only got one shot at the role. He teams up with Margaret Leighton as a undercover policewoman called Sgt Helen Smith, very able but still a woman, which the highly sexist Drummond can't help but focus on.
There's a lot of thought put into the story, the machinations and counter-machinations, and I was highly impressed, but there are still points at which I couldn't help but throw my hands up in the air in exasperation. For instance Drummond leaves various things in his apartment to reinforce the fact that he's really Joe Crandall, and it works. The bad guys break in and check, which is all very well, but then he shouts out that it worked, gleefully ignoring any surveillance of the apartment or even that a bad guy might still be there.
That's but one example of a few, and really if you're going to go into such admirable detail you may as well be a little more consistent.
Monday, 28 January 2008
Death to the Tinman (2007)
This 12 minute short is apparently based on the L Frank Baum Oz novel The Tinwoodman of Oz, but 'the names have been changed to protect the innocent.' Intriguing. Of course not having read the thing, I have no clue how this resembles it in the slightest but that's probably not the point.
What we have here is a bizarre story of a volunteer firefighter who puts everyone else to shame and who suffers both their bizarre vengeance and an even more bizarre miracle. I'd describe the process but it would spoil the film entirely and I don't want to do that. I was rivetted if that isn't a horrendous pun. This is certainly something to experience, but I'd be lying if I said I had a clue what it really meant.
What we have here is a bizarre story of a volunteer firefighter who puts everyone else to shame and who suffers both their bizarre vengeance and an even more bizarre miracle. I'd describe the process but it would spoil the film entirely and I don't want to do that. I was rivetted if that isn't a horrendous pun. This is certainly something to experience, but I'd be lying if I said I had a clue what it really meant.
Sunday, 27 January 2008
The Sea Hawk (1924)
As I only discovered yesterday that there's a location in Phoenix that shows regular silent features (regular unfortunately being only every couple of months), I missed out on today's True Heart Susie, a D W Griffith film with the immortal Lillian Gish. I'll certainly be at the next one, which looks like Wings, the winner of the first Academy Award for Best Picture and the most famous air story written by Fay Wray's husband, John Monk Saunders. I've been waiting a long while for that one!
So in the meantime, I have The Sea Hawk on my DVR. It's not the Errol Flynn vehicle from 1940, this is the 1924 version 'personally supervised and directed' by Frank Lloyd and starring Milton Sills. He was a former professor of psychology and philosophy who found a place in silent film as far more than a swashbuckler, exhibiting talent in a variety of roles. He was also one of the founders of the Academy. Here he's Sir Oliver Tressilian, a veteran of the wars with Spain who had helped sweep the Armada from the sea.
As we kick off, Sir Oliver is relaxing at Penarrow Hall in his Elizabethan ruff and doublet. He's waiting for Rosamund Godolphin to be his wife, something that upsets her brother because after all, Sir Oliver is a pirate. Relations between the two families become even more strained when Sir Oliver's half brother Lionel kills Peter but rumour puts the blame on Sir Oliver himself. Lionel wants Rosamund for his own so pays the unscrupulous Captain Jasper Leigh to kidnap him and sell him to the Moors. Leigh is the biggest name in the film, Wallace Beery, who had a habit of cropping up in all the great American silents as a supporting actor.
Of course nothing works out as intended. Leigh wants to milk Sir Oliver for enough to free him, but then they all get captured by the Spanish. After six months working the oars on a Spanish galleon, he's captured again, this time by the Moors and he through connections with a fellow prisoner, rises quickly to captain his own ship, becoming known as Sakr-el-Bahr, the Sea Hawk. All the while, of course, he wants to return to his love, the fair Rosamund, who is played by Enid Bennett, no relation to Constance, Joan and Barbara, instead an Australian actress sister to Marjorie and Catherine. Her key relation was her husband, Hollywood director Fred Niblo.
Bennett and her moon face are fine here, and she has a powerful gaze of indignation. Milton Sills is good too, though he's no Errol Flynn, let alone a Douglas Fairbanks. Wallace Beery shines though, cowardly at one turn, strutting in power the next, reminding of no less than Macho Man Randy Savage with maybe a little Peter Jackson thrown in for good measure. I hadn't realised that the Macho Man had taken most of his look from a 1924 silent movie, but here he is in Elizabethan garb. Then again, one of the musical themes here is straight out of Knight Rider, but that's not original music, naturally.
As to the film itself, it runs on nicely though there's to much melodrama and not even action for my liking, even though some of the battle scenes were stolen to splice into the 1940 version. This one apparently keeps far closer to Rafael Sabatini's original novel, but then I haven't read it yet so wouldn't have been able to tell. I just prefer it, truth be told. As much as I enjoyed this though, the best Sabatini adaptation thus far for me has to be the 1935 Michael Curtiz version of Captain Blood, which is one of the great swashbucklers, starring Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, Olivia de Havilland and others.
So in the meantime, I have The Sea Hawk on my DVR. It's not the Errol Flynn vehicle from 1940, this is the 1924 version 'personally supervised and directed' by Frank Lloyd and starring Milton Sills. He was a former professor of psychology and philosophy who found a place in silent film as far more than a swashbuckler, exhibiting talent in a variety of roles. He was also one of the founders of the Academy. Here he's Sir Oliver Tressilian, a veteran of the wars with Spain who had helped sweep the Armada from the sea.
As we kick off, Sir Oliver is relaxing at Penarrow Hall in his Elizabethan ruff and doublet. He's waiting for Rosamund Godolphin to be his wife, something that upsets her brother because after all, Sir Oliver is a pirate. Relations between the two families become even more strained when Sir Oliver's half brother Lionel kills Peter but rumour puts the blame on Sir Oliver himself. Lionel wants Rosamund for his own so pays the unscrupulous Captain Jasper Leigh to kidnap him and sell him to the Moors. Leigh is the biggest name in the film, Wallace Beery, who had a habit of cropping up in all the great American silents as a supporting actor.
Of course nothing works out as intended. Leigh wants to milk Sir Oliver for enough to free him, but then they all get captured by the Spanish. After six months working the oars on a Spanish galleon, he's captured again, this time by the Moors and he through connections with a fellow prisoner, rises quickly to captain his own ship, becoming known as Sakr-el-Bahr, the Sea Hawk. All the while, of course, he wants to return to his love, the fair Rosamund, who is played by Enid Bennett, no relation to Constance, Joan and Barbara, instead an Australian actress sister to Marjorie and Catherine. Her key relation was her husband, Hollywood director Fred Niblo.
Bennett and her moon face are fine here, and she has a powerful gaze of indignation. Milton Sills is good too, though he's no Errol Flynn, let alone a Douglas Fairbanks. Wallace Beery shines though, cowardly at one turn, strutting in power the next, reminding of no less than Macho Man Randy Savage with maybe a little Peter Jackson thrown in for good measure. I hadn't realised that the Macho Man had taken most of his look from a 1924 silent movie, but here he is in Elizabethan garb. Then again, one of the musical themes here is straight out of Knight Rider, but that's not original music, naturally.
As to the film itself, it runs on nicely though there's to much melodrama and not even action for my liking, even though some of the battle scenes were stolen to splice into the 1940 version. This one apparently keeps far closer to Rafael Sabatini's original novel, but then I haven't read it yet so wouldn't have been able to tell. I just prefer it, truth be told. As much as I enjoyed this though, the best Sabatini adaptation thus far for me has to be the 1935 Michael Curtiz version of Captain Blood, which is one of the great swashbucklers, starring Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, Olivia de Havilland and others.
Strange Cargo (1940)
The opening reads: 'Deep in the Guianas... a penal colony for men set aside to be forgotten by the world they lived in - for men to whom the present, the future and the past are one... for men without hope.' It doesn't say so but this is Devil's Island, obviously a popular place for film in 1940 as Karloff had made a film with that explicit name only a year before. It's a grim place and sure enough, the next thing we see a bearded and filthy Clark Gable being released after thirty days in solitary confinement. He's André Verne and he's obviously not happy where he is. We're given a list of his achievements: 90 lashes, 16 months in solitary, 7 months in the bear pit, 5 attempts to escape in 3 years.
He looks surprisingly good for such treatment but then this is 1940 after all, and to make matters even more strange, those in charge decide to put him out on the wharf, confident that there's no way that he could possibly escape. These are the jungles of Guiana, after all, and they get to a man. On the wharf he quickly becomes aware of a number of the other major players in our story, including Joan Crawford as a saloon singer called Julie, Peter Lorre as the slimy Monsieur Cochon ('The Pig'), Paul Lukas as a particularly nasty prisoner called Hessler and Ian Hunter as another called Cambreau with spiritual strength and a mystery behind him. The other major name is Albert Dekker as a tough prisoner named Moll who masterminds an escape. This was his last film before Dr Cyclops, shot in colour and from which I knew him best.
On the wharf we also become aware that pretty much everyone's supposedly French, though nobody remotely tries to be. It's about as authentic in that regard as the supposedly German but completely American soldiers in All's Quiet on the Western Front, with only Peter Lorre and Paul Lukas coming remotely close, and even they not by design. Hunter of course is English and Dekker is apparently an Aussie. Nobody's French.
There are good things here, but mostly they have to do with the major names increasing their presence in our minds, just building our impressions of them within the context of their respectively bodies of work. In most respects they just play the same characters they usually played, merely in a new location: Gable is tough and manly, Crawford the tough as nails dame in tough circumstances, Lorre the slimy and sinister supporting character with depth. There's some really cool dialogue with Gable in particular getting a couple of great ones in early, both aimed at Crawford: 'Keep a light in the window and a couple more in your eyes' and 'You've got class, baby, or is it because I haven't seen any women lately?'
Unfortunately that 'baby' is used in what seems like every single line that Gable throws Crawford's way. It's one of the most annoying things about this movie, even more annoying than the accents. Others include the staccato camerawork when switching between the two halves of a conversation, some atrocious soundtrack music and the ease at which everyone and their dog seems to be able to escape at will from somewhere as notorious as Devil's Island. There's also a notable contrast between what is obviously location work somewhere and blatant set work, but some of the location shots are gorgeous, yet another contrast in this movie. It's like there were two cinematographers or the one was schizophrenic.
Gable and Crawford made eight films together, nine if you count Erich von Stroheim's The Merry Widow in 1925 when both were just extras. They were always good opposite one another, and this one works as well as the rest on that front. Lorre isn't on screen long and Dekker and Lukas are archetypes. The key player here is really Ian Hunter, as while this pretends to be an action film, it's really a spiritual epic with Hunter playing Jesus Christ himself, the real strength and soul of everyone in the story. He can see everything that's to come, good and bad, and he's the one to whom everyone turns when they're about to die, to give solace and meaning to their lives. What a strange film.
He looks surprisingly good for such treatment but then this is 1940 after all, and to make matters even more strange, those in charge decide to put him out on the wharf, confident that there's no way that he could possibly escape. These are the jungles of Guiana, after all, and they get to a man. On the wharf he quickly becomes aware of a number of the other major players in our story, including Joan Crawford as a saloon singer called Julie, Peter Lorre as the slimy Monsieur Cochon ('The Pig'), Paul Lukas as a particularly nasty prisoner called Hessler and Ian Hunter as another called Cambreau with spiritual strength and a mystery behind him. The other major name is Albert Dekker as a tough prisoner named Moll who masterminds an escape. This was his last film before Dr Cyclops, shot in colour and from which I knew him best.
On the wharf we also become aware that pretty much everyone's supposedly French, though nobody remotely tries to be. It's about as authentic in that regard as the supposedly German but completely American soldiers in All's Quiet on the Western Front, with only Peter Lorre and Paul Lukas coming remotely close, and even they not by design. Hunter of course is English and Dekker is apparently an Aussie. Nobody's French.
There are good things here, but mostly they have to do with the major names increasing their presence in our minds, just building our impressions of them within the context of their respectively bodies of work. In most respects they just play the same characters they usually played, merely in a new location: Gable is tough and manly, Crawford the tough as nails dame in tough circumstances, Lorre the slimy and sinister supporting character with depth. There's some really cool dialogue with Gable in particular getting a couple of great ones in early, both aimed at Crawford: 'Keep a light in the window and a couple more in your eyes' and 'You've got class, baby, or is it because I haven't seen any women lately?'
Unfortunately that 'baby' is used in what seems like every single line that Gable throws Crawford's way. It's one of the most annoying things about this movie, even more annoying than the accents. Others include the staccato camerawork when switching between the two halves of a conversation, some atrocious soundtrack music and the ease at which everyone and their dog seems to be able to escape at will from somewhere as notorious as Devil's Island. There's also a notable contrast between what is obviously location work somewhere and blatant set work, but some of the location shots are gorgeous, yet another contrast in this movie. It's like there were two cinematographers or the one was schizophrenic.
Gable and Crawford made eight films together, nine if you count Erich von Stroheim's The Merry Widow in 1925 when both were just extras. They were always good opposite one another, and this one works as well as the rest on that front. Lorre isn't on screen long and Dekker and Lukas are archetypes. The key player here is really Ian Hunter, as while this pretends to be an action film, it's really a spiritual epic with Hunter playing Jesus Christ himself, the real strength and soul of everyone in the story. He can see everything that's to come, good and bad, and he's the one to whom everyone turns when they're about to die, to give solace and meaning to their lives. What a strange film.
Saturday, 26 January 2008
Nightfall (1957)
Aldo Ray is not a name I know too well. I've seen him in a few films but he's never really registered with me, just another supporting actor while I'm paying far more attention to someone else. Here he's the lead, appearing above Brian Keith and Anne Bancroft, and he's playing a character with a hidden past. He's Art Rayburn, who we first meet hiding under the name of James Vanning because he seems to have lost $350,000 of someone else's money, Brian Keith being the someone else.
He looks pretty good in the role, world weary with a little huskiness in his voice and completely believable as a real person in a film noir. Characters like the ones Anne Bancroft, Brian Keith and James Gregory play are archetypes, deliberately fashioned in particular ways to progress the plot, but Ray's is just real. He doesn't even look like a star and in some ways that's really refreshing. On the flipside it helps the story to become a little forgettable. As a character he's bright but not too bright, tough but not too tough, charming but not too charming. He's not too anything.
The story is a simple one. Rayburn/Vanning had a large sum of money but he lost it. Both the good guys and the bad guys want to recover it and he's the only lead they have. Naturally none of them believe him, but they have no other way of tracking the money without following him around and hoping. The bad guys are John and Red, played by Brian Keith and his thuggish sidekick Rudy Bond. The good guy is Ben Fraser, an insurance agent who's been shadowing him for three months, played by James Gregory. His goodness is highlighted by scenes at home with his wife, played by Jocelyn Brando.
The film is dark, way beyond the dark required for a film noir which generally plays around with the contrast between light and dark. This is just dark, hard to see what's going on half the time. It isn't just the outdoor scenes either, like the one where John and Red kidnap Rayburn and take him to some industrial plant to threaten him, it's the inside ones too. The scene after that has Ben Fraser talking with his wife and they don't even seem to have the lights on. Only when we get to Wyoming in flashbacks do we really see any light, so maybe it was a conscious decision: back before anything went wrong there was light, but no more.
Wyoming is where we find the background to the story and I really enjoyed this part of it. Jim Vanning is real in many ways and his part in all this comes through real things like accidents and mistakes. It also explains why he has to keep running but can't go to the police. He's camping out with a friend when a car crashes not far from them. It's a couple of bank robbers with $350,000 of loot. They kill the friend, whose wife has written him indiscreet letters, and set it all up as if Vanning did it. They think they kill him too, but he's still alive. They leave but take the wrong bag, leaving Vanning with the money and he loses it in the snow. It's one of those stories so stupid it has to be real.
He looks pretty good in the role, world weary with a little huskiness in his voice and completely believable as a real person in a film noir. Characters like the ones Anne Bancroft, Brian Keith and James Gregory play are archetypes, deliberately fashioned in particular ways to progress the plot, but Ray's is just real. He doesn't even look like a star and in some ways that's really refreshing. On the flipside it helps the story to become a little forgettable. As a character he's bright but not too bright, tough but not too tough, charming but not too charming. He's not too anything.
The story is a simple one. Rayburn/Vanning had a large sum of money but he lost it. Both the good guys and the bad guys want to recover it and he's the only lead they have. Naturally none of them believe him, but they have no other way of tracking the money without following him around and hoping. The bad guys are John and Red, played by Brian Keith and his thuggish sidekick Rudy Bond. The good guy is Ben Fraser, an insurance agent who's been shadowing him for three months, played by James Gregory. His goodness is highlighted by scenes at home with his wife, played by Jocelyn Brando.
The film is dark, way beyond the dark required for a film noir which generally plays around with the contrast between light and dark. This is just dark, hard to see what's going on half the time. It isn't just the outdoor scenes either, like the one where John and Red kidnap Rayburn and take him to some industrial plant to threaten him, it's the inside ones too. The scene after that has Ben Fraser talking with his wife and they don't even seem to have the lights on. Only when we get to Wyoming in flashbacks do we really see any light, so maybe it was a conscious decision: back before anything went wrong there was light, but no more.
Wyoming is where we find the background to the story and I really enjoyed this part of it. Jim Vanning is real in many ways and his part in all this comes through real things like accidents and mistakes. It also explains why he has to keep running but can't go to the police. He's camping out with a friend when a car crashes not far from them. It's a couple of bank robbers with $350,000 of loot. They kill the friend, whose wife has written him indiscreet letters, and set it all up as if Vanning did it. They think they kill him too, but he's still alive. They leave but take the wrong bag, leaving Vanning with the money and he loses it in the snow. It's one of those stories so stupid it has to be real.
Friday, 25 January 2008
What Waits Below (1984)
This was a strange one. I have a copy on region 2 DVD but Midnite Movie Mamacita put it up on the big screen in 35mm so I paid the money and enjoyed. Unfortunately it was so bad and there were so many comedians in the audience that I couldn't hear half of the atrocious dialogue and that was far from the only atrocious thing about the movie.
We kick off in Nicaragua where a very smug and somehow very gay Robert Powell is playing some game with people with guns that is nothing but an excuse for a lot of bullets and a big chase. Anyway, we soon switch to Belize, where the US army want his character, Rupert 'Wolf' Wolfsen, to lend his speliological talents to a project they have in progress. They've discovered some really big caves and want to use them to host some sort of navigational transmitter. I have no idea why it needs to be in a cave which would seem to be a little counter intuitive but there you have it.
Beyond Powell and the officious US army types led by Timothy Bottoms as Major Stevens, there's a group of anthropologists in the area too, including an obvious love interest played by Lisa Blount, so maybe Powell's character is bisexual instead of gay. Anyway the anthropologists have discovered a way into this new cave system and they all head on down to explore. Given that this is a horror movie, it's not particularly surprising that the caves are full of what the end credits call Lemurians.
They're big albinos with strange voices, sensitive hearing and a bizarre fashion sense for haircuts and outfits. They're great warriors, except when up against our hero of course, even though they have nobody to fight. They have looms to make their clothes out of hair but nothing else, it seems, except some huge collection of technology that doesn't even have an attempt at explanation. It just sits there, completely out of place, just like the Lemurians themselves who the audience laughed their heads off at.
Beyond the bad Lemurians and the bad dialogue, there's plenty of other bad to comment about and precious little good. Powell is a good actor and he has a knack of appearing comfortable in any situation, however unlikely and outrageous. Yet he's completely self satisfied and egotistical here and comes off as completely gay. It feels strange to bring this up because I have no problem with gays, but generally someone gay in a film is gay because they're gay. The weird thing here is that from what I can tell Wolfsen isn't supposed to be gay yet Powell imbues the character with gayness every which way but loose. Every scene seems to have an adoring gaze at another man or a stray hand landing on another man's shoulder. I wonder if it was deliberate on Powell's part.
Lisa Blount is fine eye candy as anthropologist Leslie Peterson, but she has nothing to do except figure in cliched and forced parts of the plot. Much of this seems very forced and clumsy and at any point throughout you could easily write the next five minutes of storyline. Timothy Bottoms is an annoying army major, with a voice that doesn't do much except shout and his part was so one dimensional that it really highlighted just how much he looks like George W Bush. I wasn't surprised to find that he's played him three times since. It's uncanny how the beady little eyes and confusion in almost any circumstance nails the president precisely.
We kick off in Nicaragua where a very smug and somehow very gay Robert Powell is playing some game with people with guns that is nothing but an excuse for a lot of bullets and a big chase. Anyway, we soon switch to Belize, where the US army want his character, Rupert 'Wolf' Wolfsen, to lend his speliological talents to a project they have in progress. They've discovered some really big caves and want to use them to host some sort of navigational transmitter. I have no idea why it needs to be in a cave which would seem to be a little counter intuitive but there you have it.
Beyond Powell and the officious US army types led by Timothy Bottoms as Major Stevens, there's a group of anthropologists in the area too, including an obvious love interest played by Lisa Blount, so maybe Powell's character is bisexual instead of gay. Anyway the anthropologists have discovered a way into this new cave system and they all head on down to explore. Given that this is a horror movie, it's not particularly surprising that the caves are full of what the end credits call Lemurians.
They're big albinos with strange voices, sensitive hearing and a bizarre fashion sense for haircuts and outfits. They're great warriors, except when up against our hero of course, even though they have nobody to fight. They have looms to make their clothes out of hair but nothing else, it seems, except some huge collection of technology that doesn't even have an attempt at explanation. It just sits there, completely out of place, just like the Lemurians themselves who the audience laughed their heads off at.
Beyond the bad Lemurians and the bad dialogue, there's plenty of other bad to comment about and precious little good. Powell is a good actor and he has a knack of appearing comfortable in any situation, however unlikely and outrageous. Yet he's completely self satisfied and egotistical here and comes off as completely gay. It feels strange to bring this up because I have no problem with gays, but generally someone gay in a film is gay because they're gay. The weird thing here is that from what I can tell Wolfsen isn't supposed to be gay yet Powell imbues the character with gayness every which way but loose. Every scene seems to have an adoring gaze at another man or a stray hand landing on another man's shoulder. I wonder if it was deliberate on Powell's part.
Lisa Blount is fine eye candy as anthropologist Leslie Peterson, but she has nothing to do except figure in cliched and forced parts of the plot. Much of this seems very forced and clumsy and at any point throughout you could easily write the next five minutes of storyline. Timothy Bottoms is an annoying army major, with a voice that doesn't do much except shout and his part was so one dimensional that it really highlighted just how much he looks like George W Bush. I wasn't surprised to find that he's played him three times since. It's uncanny how the beady little eyes and confusion in almost any circumstance nails the president precisely.
Wednesday, 23 January 2008
My Dad is 100 Years Old (2005)
This is a fascinating little 17 minute short, directed by Guy Maddin but really the work of Isabella Rossellini, writing about her father, the director Roberto Rossellini. It begins with anecdotes but quickly turns into an intellectual discussion about the purpose of film in which she plays every character, many of which we know well. Not only does she play her father's voice, but her mother, Ingrid Bergman, and a whole host of other names, depicted in appropriate ways.
She only plays her father's voice but she plays her mother in body too, on the screen. She's also Alfred Hitchcock from a distance and in silhouette, David O Selznick behind smoke, Charlie Chaplin speaking via title cards and Federico Fellini as, well, Federico Fellini. She even talks to the cameraman during the film to frame the picture in ways he would have felt appropriate.
It's an interesting little vignette, worth a repeat viewing for sure. It doesn't talk details, it talks impressions, and I wonder how long these ones will stay impressed.
She only plays her father's voice but she plays her mother in body too, on the screen. She's also Alfred Hitchcock from a distance and in silhouette, David O Selznick behind smoke, Charlie Chaplin speaking via title cards and Federico Fellini as, well, Federico Fellini. She even talks to the cameraman during the film to frame the picture in ways he would have felt appropriate.
It's an interesting little vignette, worth a repeat viewing for sure. It doesn't talk details, it talks impressions, and I wonder how long these ones will stay impressed.
Sunday, 20 January 2008
Play It Again, Sam (1972)
One thing I've always wondered about is whether Woody Allen could act/be funny/whatever if he isn't talking. A good indication is that he can comes as the opening credits roll. He's watching Casablanca and gazes gape jawed at his idol, Humphrey Bogart through the whole of the ending sequence. He's Allan Felix, a film critic, and his wife has just left him, so he's trying to work out how to deal with life and move forward. He ends up getting most of his advice from Bogart's ghost, as a sort of alter ego. Given that we're talking about Woody Allen, you can imagine how well that goes. Is there much of a more polar opposite to Bogart's persona than Woody Allen?
He also gets help from a couple who try to set him up with whoever they can find. Given that they're played by Tony Roberts and Diane Keaton, it's hardly surprising that he ends up spending most of his time with Keaton's character, Linda Christie, while her husband Dick works all hours God sends. Before long they're into an extramarital affair, with the angel and devil on Felix's shoulders effectively played by his ex-wife and Humphrey Bogart. That makes for an interesting play on things, and play is the key word.
While Woody Allen didn't direct this one, he wrote the screenplay from his own original play and it's immediately obvious that it's his material. How much director Herbert Ross really put into it is open for question but my guess is probably not much. It's easy to see this on stage and that it still works on screen says much for the material. What the film version adds is the ability for Woody Allen and others, especially Tony Roberts, to act out imaginary scenes in various movie styles: not just the Bogart film noir style but Italian melodrama, high English class material, European spy thriller, you name it. It's not surprising they would become regular collaborators.
He also gets help from a couple who try to set him up with whoever they can find. Given that they're played by Tony Roberts and Diane Keaton, it's hardly surprising that he ends up spending most of his time with Keaton's character, Linda Christie, while her husband Dick works all hours God sends. Before long they're into an extramarital affair, with the angel and devil on Felix's shoulders effectively played by his ex-wife and Humphrey Bogart. That makes for an interesting play on things, and play is the key word.
While Woody Allen didn't direct this one, he wrote the screenplay from his own original play and it's immediately obvious that it's his material. How much director Herbert Ross really put into it is open for question but my guess is probably not much. It's easy to see this on stage and that it still works on screen says much for the material. What the film version adds is the ability for Woody Allen and others, especially Tony Roberts, to act out imaginary scenes in various movie styles: not just the Bogart film noir style but Italian melodrama, high English class material, European spy thriller, you name it. It's not surprising they would become regular collaborators.
Cinderella (1977)
Director: Michael Pataki
Star: Cheryl Smith
This one has a history in the family I married into. My better half's former other half is addicted to it and everyone else gets to catch up on it at some point, regardless of which generation they belong to. Now it's my turn, but to be honest a camp 70s comedy musical softcore porn movie based on a classic fairy tale isn't something I would really have much of a problem sitting through. Everyone else puts up resistance but I'm all for it. I don't know many of the names but shrug. I knew a few of them at least.
We all know the story, so there's not a lot of point going through that again. Cinderella is Cheryl Smith, though why she would forsake her usual name of Rainbeaux, I don't know. Maybe she thought this was more serious art than the HOTS films or Massacre at Central High. She's the usual Cinderella, except her outfits have built in wardrobe malfunctions (as of course do everyone else's too). Amazingly she keeps disappearing from the story, so we can watch the King's Chamberlain go round watching young lesbians everywhere while attempting to keep his outrageous moustache consistently applied.
We meet the ugly sisters early on and they're truly ugly, though I get the impression that the actresses aren't in real life. One is ugly enough to look like Sarah Jessica Parker auditioning for a Twisted Sister tribute band and the other isn't far off Tim Curry as Frank N Furter. Needless to say they cause lots of trouble for their beautiful young sister but this time round, that includes making her work her spinning wheel, which isn't there to spin corn, but to be a Rube Goldberg machine that powers corn cob vibrators for her sisters. It's softcore though, so we get plenty of full frontal female nudity and lesbian writhing around but no actual sex on screen.
The songs are fun, and actually have some clever lyrics given the material. Given that this is 1977 I'm only surprised that much of it follows more traditional lines for a musical than just slip entirely into disco. They're written by Lew Arries to music by Andrew Belling. Frank Ray Perilli wrote the film, and he does have a sense of humour that goes well beyond writing the fairy godmother as a fairy in the gay sense rather than the small winged sense. Michael Pataki directed the film though I know him much better as an actor, and that Albert and Charles Band of Full Moon Entertainment produced. It's the songs that are most likely to stay with me here, and it seems pretty sad to say the songs were more enjoyable than the soft porn.
Star: Cheryl Smith
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We all know the story, so there's not a lot of point going through that again. Cinderella is Cheryl Smith, though why she would forsake her usual name of Rainbeaux, I don't know. Maybe she thought this was more serious art than the HOTS films or Massacre at Central High. She's the usual Cinderella, except her outfits have built in wardrobe malfunctions (as of course do everyone else's too). Amazingly she keeps disappearing from the story, so we can watch the King's Chamberlain go round watching young lesbians everywhere while attempting to keep his outrageous moustache consistently applied.
We meet the ugly sisters early on and they're truly ugly, though I get the impression that the actresses aren't in real life. One is ugly enough to look like Sarah Jessica Parker auditioning for a Twisted Sister tribute band and the other isn't far off Tim Curry as Frank N Furter. Needless to say they cause lots of trouble for their beautiful young sister but this time round, that includes making her work her spinning wheel, which isn't there to spin corn, but to be a Rube Goldberg machine that powers corn cob vibrators for her sisters. It's softcore though, so we get plenty of full frontal female nudity and lesbian writhing around but no actual sex on screen.
The songs are fun, and actually have some clever lyrics given the material. Given that this is 1977 I'm only surprised that much of it follows more traditional lines for a musical than just slip entirely into disco. They're written by Lew Arries to music by Andrew Belling. Frank Ray Perilli wrote the film, and he does have a sense of humour that goes well beyond writing the fairy godmother as a fairy in the gay sense rather than the small winged sense. Michael Pataki directed the film though I know him much better as an actor, and that Albert and Charles Band of Full Moon Entertainment produced. It's the songs that are most likely to stay with me here, and it seems pretty sad to say the songs were more enjoyable than the soft porn.
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