Just had to say that Phone Booth is a fabulous film (we saw it Thursday night). Not holding a grudge against Joel Schumacher for the abomination of the last two Batman films, I was really impressed.
Read More »You Never Call Anymore
I just got a lot of packing done. I’d be in fairly good shape to move tomorrow, at a push, so I feel I’ve done something useful! I haven’t felt like writing much, tho’.
Brief comments on some recent films we’ve seen:
Panic Room… excellent stuff! Original story idea, stylish direction and Jodie Foster. Need I mention that Jodie is supremely cool? If I have little to say about this one, I guess it’s because it all works so well and beggars only mindless praise. See it if you haven’t already done so.
It’s been out a while, but we finally saw Road to Perdition the other night. In spite of my almost irrational loathing of Tom Hanks, I really wanted to see this one.
So, is it ‘The greatest gangster film since The Godfather‘? Nah. Not even close. It is very good, though. The direction, courtesy of Mr. Kate Winslett, is constantly aspiring to interesting things, and sometimes even succeeds. The style outweighs the content on a few occasions (a sure sign that nothing very interesting is happening), but thankfully, the effect is not overwhelming.
Read More »Road to Perdition (2002)
Recent viewing: Sunday night we watched Dog Soldiers, a British horror film from last year.
A band of soldiers doing manoeuvres up in Scotland get besieged by a pack of werewolves. How’s that for a simple idea? I expected it to suck, to be honest, but it was okay. What, a decent British fright flick? Yep. There have been several recently, so I hear.
Some of the direction/action is a little confusing, but the acting is solid and the creatures are entirely convincing. Actually, they’re amongst the creepiest werewolves I’ve ever seen—huge, lithe monstrosities, rather similar to Bernie Wrightson’s rendition from Cycle of the Werewolf, only without the muscles. Good use of a small budget, FX-wise.
Read More »Cycle of the Limeys
Last night’s viewing: a rather strange film from 2000 titled Memento, starring Guy Pearce. I won’t give any spoilers if you’ve not seen it: read on without fear.
Pearce plays a guy who has lost his short-term memory and is looking for the person who raped and killed his wife. Simple premise, but… the film has a totally non-linear narrative. Initially, I felt it was going to be an irredeemable pain in the backside. By the halfway stage, the reasons for this technique start to become much clearer. The ending is terrifically well done. No, really, this one genuinely surprises.
Read More »If Memory Serves
By the way, we watched the Hitchcock courtroom drama The Paradine Case (1947), starring Gregory Peck, last night. We’d taped it off BBC2 on Monday afternoon.
It couldn’t be called the best work from either Hitch or Peck (some of the melodrama is rather overacted), but it has a strong cast and was worth seeing again. Mr. Peck was 30 years old at the time and wears a few dashes of grey in his hair for added maturity! Although he’s supposed to be English, he doesn’t try to fake the accent, which somehow works in his favour. The actual courtroom scenes are the best moments (Charles Laughton is terrific as the judge). Trivia: it was the Hollywood debut for both Alida Valli and Louis Jourdan.
Read More »Gregory Peck in Court
I’ve just finished reading Doug Warren’s official James Cagney biography. After the Orson one, I was in a biog mood (actually, a mood to read more on Orson, but that’ll have to wait), and mom recommended this, which she’d read and enjoyed some time ago.
I’m not a big Cagney fan, really. I think he was a great personality and a fine actor, but many of the films he appeared in were not to my taste. (Reading this book, ironically, I find they often weren’t to Cagney’s taste either.) With Cagney being a rather private person, and this book being authorised, it’s a pretty slim volume, and eschews a lot of in-depth probing… but there’s still some interesting insight.
Read More »Just a Job, Honest
Yes, I am reading something at the moment. Watching Touch of Evil a couple of weeks ago gave me the urge to read the eponymous Orson Welles biography by Barbara Leaming.
This has been in our house for a while now, and mom’s already read it. She didn’t like the writing style much. On the whole, I tend to agree—the sentence structure and phrasing is often awkward, and somewhat quaint… but there’s a lot of interesting stuff underneath the stylistic problems.
I’m much more keen to read the Frank Brady bio, Citizen Welles, but it appears to currently be out of print in the UK. If anyone sees a copy going cheap in a second-hand store, hey, drop me a line.
Read More »Reading the Small Print
Okay… some television comments, as promised.
Big Brother—I’ve resisted! I resisted the first series almost completely; I wavered a little on the second; and last year, my resolve broke down very quickly and I watched most of it. (Obviously, Jade was robbed.)
Anyhow, this year, I’ve not watched it at all. Not a second. And I’m quite happy about that. In principle, I think it’s an idiotic concept that provides little genuine entertainment. Unfortunately, if you expose yourself to it, it’s almost impossible to not get hooked. The best bet is to avoid it altogether.
A few words on American import shows. In recent years, the Big Two UK terrestrial channels (BBC1 and ITV) have shown almost no American material on prime-time slots, or even close. I’m not sure why. The days when shows like Hawaii Five-O or Quincy would be shown at 8:00pm are long gone. Too many effing house makeovers and airport documentaries to fit in, I guess (read: unimaginative tat that is dead cheap to produce).
Read More »TV or not TV
Well, Big Entry time! I started writing a few lines about the film we watched last night… and quickly found I could either say, ‘It’s great! A must-see!’ or I could do the full review thing. So I put my journalist hat on. Be warned! I could’ve written twice as much, but I forcibly contained it within reasonable limits for a blog entry.
Classic Movie Review!
Orson Welles was originally hired simply as an actor on 1958’s Touch of Evil. It was his co-star, Charlton Heston, who urged Universal to hire him also as director. Welles jumped at the chance—he hadn’t directed in Hollywood since Macbeth (1948). Sadly, his relationship with the studio deteriorated rapidly, and what he thought would be his big-studio ‘comeback’ turned out to be the end of the road.
