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Just a Job, Honest

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.
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Reading the Small Print

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.
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TV or not TV

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).
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Touch of Evil (1958)

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.

Touch of Evil 1958 Poster
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The Third Man (1949)

Blogging the midnight oil! I remembered there was, after all, something worth commenting on from last week, and so, I present…

Classic Movie Mini-Review!

Last Thursday night, we watched The Third Man (1949). I hadn’t seen it in about ten years. I spotted the video for £3.99 (in Virgin) and snapped it up. Well, what a movie! Orson Welles—need I say more? Yes. Welles has no creative role here; the story is Graham Greene’s and the direction is Carol Reed’s (Ollie Reed’s uncle). The setting is post-War Vienna, both beautiful and yet still ravaged by the conflict. The story is about the black market, an apparently dead racketeer and a ‘third man’… to say any more would be a spoiler. The emphasis is totally on atmosphere.

The Third Man 1949 Poster
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Hogwarts Revisited

It was great news to hear that Ali Ismail Abbas has been flown to Kuwait and is receiving proper medical care. On a more cynical note, how good it was of Mr. Blair to condescend to ‘comment’ on the situation. But I’m not going to have another war rant…

Monday, I went to buy the video of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. A bit of extra money came our way, and since this counts as extravagance in our current impoverished state, what the hell! We watched it Monday night.

I thought the first HP movie was just okay. This one was a huge improvement, although as each of the books is longer than the last, there was much more condensing. Arguably, the plots also get better, so perhaps a stronger plot suffers less from omission. It was fast-moving and slick. The younger cast were much more polished. Robbie Coltrane was his usual awesome self. The FX were much better, in particular Dobby the house elf… I thought they might mess him up, but he was a wonderful CGI creation, furnished with a wide range of extremely realistic and endearing mannerisms.

Hogwarts Revisited
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The Big Sleep (1939)

I’ve written a few book reviews recently. Here’s one of them:

The Big Sleep (1939)
by Raymond Chandler

This was Raymond Chandler’s first of seven novels, written at the not inconsiderable age of fifty. It introduces the famous PI Philip Marlowe, a character whose virtual twin, Carmady, had appeared previously in a number of Chandler’s short stories.

The Big Sleep (1939)

Chandler has somehow come to embody the genre of hard-boiled detective fiction, although he didn’t (as some people seem to believe) create it. His critical stock, as far as such things are meaningful, has climbed steeply over the years, whereas many of his peers remain in relative obscurity. The Big Sleep is arguably his finest hour, and does much to explain why his work is so highly regarded.
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Hogwarts Movie

Yeah, I did see the Harry Potter (and the Philosopher’s Stone) movie a couple of weeks ago. I really liked the books, in spite of my inclination to expect they would suck. Well, the movie was just okay… most of the cast was great, with Robbie Coltrane shining in particular, but… somehow, the pacing and direction seemed kinda flat. To me, anyway. I imagine it’d be quite confusing to people who’ve not read the books, due to the condensing of a lot of stuff. It was okay; just not great.

Hogwarts Movie

I still need to see Lord of the Rings.
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