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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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Favourite Fiction

Yep, another top ten. Which I might have posted earlier, but I had something to do (more later), plus I didn’t finish writing the list out until around noon. And so:

TOP TEN BOOKS (fiction)

01. The Complete Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle, 1887-1927) Fiction’s greatest detective. Over a span of 56 short stories and four novels, the quality is a mixed bag—the worst can be quite dull, the best simply magnificent. Almost all of them have great moments. Doyle was the reluctant creator of a true legend.

Favourite Fiction
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Favourite Films

A new Monday feature: Top Tens. For the next few weeks, anyway. This week I’ll try to list my…

TOP TEN MOVIES

Only about half of these movies would always make my list, no matter what; the rest is prone to change daily. Listed in no particular order…

01. King Kong (1933) Sentimental choice, of course—the four-year-old me who first saw this was spellbound. Today? It still it has a marvellous sense of wonder.

Favourite Films
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Comic Relief

I’ve rather annoyingly got interested in that Comic Relief Does Fame Academy thing. Generally, anything to do with Comic Relief is anathema to me—this has nothing to do with the cause, which is terrific, so much as the second-rate standard of the shows. But there has been a compelling, macabre kind of fascination generated by Ruby Wax’s performances, and Kwame (the black bloke out of Casualty) has a damn fine voice, actually. He looks damn fine too. You won’t get great odds on him being the winner.

The Comic Relief night itself looks to be the typical banal lineup. Lenny Henry doing Michael Jackson, presumably on serious steroids, promises to be as funny as herpes. The Martin Bashir interview literally defies parody, in any case.
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London Etc

Catching up… I made my trip to London on February 14th, meeting up with my old friend Paul, along with Martin Skidmore. I was a bit stressed for a few reasons (not least of which was some truly intolerable problems with the train I was on), but I relaxed after a while and things were pretty good.
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