by ·Comments Off on With Nails (1996, Richard E. Grant)

Picked this up at Strand, opened to a random page in The Player chapter and decided I need it – then thought I’d better watch Withnail & I before reading. Hilarious, fun book about Richard’s travails acting in Withnail & I, Warlock, Henry and June, LA Stories, Hudson Hawk, The Player, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, The Age of Innocence and Ready to Wear, with paperback-edition epilogue bits on Portrait of a Lady, Twelfth Night, The Serpent’s Kiss and Spice World. A couple mentions of How to Get Ahead in Advertising (having already sketched out the process of working with Bruce Robinson in the Withnail chapter, he probably wanted to get on to the Hollywood stuff), a few sentences on Mountains of the Moon (its producer is insanely wealthy) and no mention at all of Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life. Since I never read gossipy behind-the-scenes Hollywood tales it was full of surprises for me – but Grant’s writing and humor is always the main attraction.

Lately Grant has written/directed a movie called Wah-Wah and written a diary about that – something to look forward to. Oooh and looks like there’s a novel called “By Design,” which a reviewer says is “an attempt to fictionalize all those great Hollywood experiences & stories that for legal reasons he couldn’t include” in the diaries.

by ·Comments Off on Sorry, Wrong Number (1948, Anatole Litvak)

Didn’t seem very noirish, nor very good, for at least the first half. Barbara Stanwyck (between Double Indemnity and The Furies) is at her least appealing as a spoiled invalid shouting into the telephone all day and night, and her husband Burt Lancaster (in his noir period, between The Killers and Criss Cross) barely appears. Eventually it all falls into place. She is even more spoiled than it first seemed, having stolen Burt away from his girlfriend, given him a meaningless job at her father’s chemical corporation, then fallen into a psychosomatic paralysis to keep him at home taking care of her. Burt is no jewel himself, attempting to break free of his father-in-law’s grasp by stealing chemical supplies and selling them to gangsters. The “wrong number” of the title is a call Stanwyck accidentally overhears at the start, two men plotting a murder – hers, on order of her husband, who tries to stop it at the last minute. Too late, and though I love Ms. Stanwyck, this was one movie in which I didn’t mind her getting killed.

Since the plot comes together in fragments from Stanwyck’s perspective, gathering backstory over phone calls as time ticks away, I was hoping for a flashback-within-a-flashback, and got one! Burt’s cutie ex (Ann Richards) is nice enough to try helping out, though her husband (Leif Erickson, the grinning would-be cop-killer in The Tall Target) is investigating Lancaster. I also liked meek scientist Evans (Harold Vermilyea of The Big Clock and Edge of Doom), Burt’s reluctant partner in crime, who manages to escape (but perhaps not for long, since the cops are closing in on Burt). The Franz Waxman score can best be characterized as loud.

Between this and The Snake Pit with Olivia de Havilland the same year, Litvak was on fire making popular pictures about mental women – unfortunately, his two stars’ oscar nominations cancelled each other out so the award went to Jane Wyman.

by ·Comments Off on Two Post-Wire Comedy Series

A couple of TV shows I watched after finishing The Wire but before starting The Prisoner…

Time Trumpet (2006)

It’s one of those stupid look-back-at-a-certain-year half-hour entertainment-news shows – but set in the distant future, “looking back” into our near future, and created by Armando Iannucci. Brilliant. Talking-head interviews with Charlotte Church, Tony Blair, and “an increasingly erratic Tom Cruise.” Surprisingly good visual effects throughout. Highly enjoyable, even to a non-Brit like myself who missed more than half the references. An IMDB reviewer warns that it’s “an enquired taste.”

Look, Dean Learner!

Human Giant season 2 (2008)

What a great show. I miss it already.

Huebel is on Childrens Hospital now, Scheer on NTSF:SD:SUV and The League, and co-creator Jason Woliner (who was on Shining Time Station as a kid) on Players and Eagleheart. Must watch all of these.

Look, Omar!

by ·Comments Off on The Lady From Shanghai (1947, Orson Welles)

If I count right (and it’s difficult), this was director Orson’s fourth of twelve released feature films. All the usual Wellesian eccentric production tales surround it, and the usual claims of studio mistreatment (an unapproved music track, an hour of footage removed), and the usual reports of poor reviews and low ticket sales. That stuff aside, we’re left with a great movie, full of idiosyncratic camerawork and acting (why oh why does Welles assign himself an Irish accent) and super dialogue.

Trophy wife Rita Hayworth (who’d just starred in Gilda) takes a fancy to Irish-Welles, sends her rich husband Arthur (becrutched Everett Sloane of The Patsy, The Enforcer) to hire Welles for their yachting expedition. Welles doesn’t mind being around Rita, but Arthur and his partner Grisby (Glenn Anders of Laughter, hamming it up) get under his skin with their power plays and upper-class bitchiness.

Welles tosses a sharks-eating-each-other metaphor at the rich folk, later is spotted smooching Rita at the aquarium as a visual tie-in. What distracted me from thoughts of the Steve The Octopus controversy from Citizen Kane was noticing that sometimes Welles and Hayworth seem to be conversing before real fish tanks, and sometimes before massive projection-screen blow-ups of fish tanks, so unrealistically out of proportion that it must have been intentional.

Back in the fold, Grisby offers a way out – he’ll give Welles enough money to run off with Rita in exchange if Welles helps Grisby fake his death, boasting about a murder for which the police could find no body. But the plan, as all movie plans must, goes wrong. Grisby kills Arthur’s private investigator (Ted de Corsia, killer who gets chased over the Williamsburg bridge in the climax of The Naked City) then turns up dead himself, Orson the obvious suspect. He escapes the cops and finds Rita, but she’s behind it all, stashes him in an abandoned funhouse – for no reason other than to provide outstanding visuals for the final mirror-room showdown. Arthur and Rita shoot each other down, and Welles is left behind.

by ·Comments Off on Blackmail (1939, H.C. Potter)

Edward G. Robinson (eight years and twenty movies later, still being billed on posters as “the screen’s Little Caesar”) has a lovely wife (Ruth Hussey of The Philadelphia Story), an annoying son, and an assistant named Moose (Big Boy Williams of Lucky Star and City Girl). Ed and Moose run a thriving company putting out oil-well fires with explosives. But Robinson has a secret past – convicted of a robbery a decade earlier, he escaped from the chain gang and changed his name. This being 1939, we wouldn’t be allowed to root for a crook, so it turns out Robinson was innocent, wrongly imprisoned.

Check the well-fire reflection in the car next to Ruth:

The real thief (a broken-down-looking Gene Lockhart of Meet John Doe, The Devil and Daniel Webster) tracks Robinson down and blackmails him for all he’s got, including his new oil well, and gets Robinson sent back to the chain gang as well. A few hardass prison scenes and depressing letters from home later, Robinson escapes again – his fellow escapee getting shot to death in the process, but no matter – sets fire to his own well and waits for Lockhart to call Moose to put it out. A punchout, a coerced confession, and Robinson’s name is cleared.

Slimy Lockhart:

Tight little thriller. Loved the infernal opening and closing scenes in front of well fires. Wonder how much fuel was burned up while making this movie. I also dug the chain gang singing “Take This Hammer”. This has nothing at all in common with the other HC Potter movie I’ve seen, Hellzapoppin’, besides that they’re both really good. Actually there’s a scene at the beginning where so-called fireman Big Boy sets a trash can ablaze while on the phone, setting a comic tone that is immediately lost when the sinister Gene Lockhart arrives.

Also enjoyed the superimposition showing Robinson digging his prisoner’s pick into the grinning face of Lockhart, and Robinson’s Cape Fear-style escape clinging beneath a truck.

Whole pile of writers, including Hertz & Ludwig (Love Crazy), Dorothy Yost (The Gay Divorcee) and Brown Holmes (I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, unsurprisingly).

by ·Comments Off on The Lion King (1994, Minkoff & Allers)

About the 20th time I’ve seen The Lion King, but the second time in theaters and the first time in THREE-DEE (Katy commented that in the rainy scenes it seemed like it was raining inside the theater – otherwise the 3D didn’t add much). During the whole Hakuna Matata scene (and a few others) the Book of Mormon song “Hasa Diga Eeebowai” ran through my head, but I restrained myself from bothering Katy with it, since she was 15 again and reciting all the lyrics and dialogue along with the movie. Didn’t realize Rowan Atkinson played the king’s bird assistant Zazu. Jeez, IMDB lists 29 writers.

by ·Comments Off on Hobo with a Shotgun (2011, Jason Eisener)

The Black Dynamite of trashy 80’s action/revenge flicks. Gets all the details right, but skips the boring parts – a trick House of the Devil could have learned.

Our hero Rutger Hauer rides the rails to the worst town in the world, which is controlled by super baddie Drake (Brian Downey of the show Lexx) and sons Slick and Ivan. He tries to stay out of trouble, meets a friendly prostitute named Abby. But one day they push him too far, and Rutger grabs a shotgun and cleans up this town. The dialogue could’ve been better but otherwise it’s a hella fun flick.

by ·Comments Off on The Tall Target (1951, Anthony Mann)

I don’t know much about Anthony Mann, but this and The Furies both kicked some ass. Thought it’d be a Western, since I never look up even the most basic information about movies I’m about to watch, but it’s a high-quality period piece set on a train (I love movies set on trains) about a frustrated New York cop (technically ex-cop; he turns in his badge at the start of the film) trying to uncover an assassination plot on Abraham Lincoln on his way through Baltimore to inauguration on the eve of civil war.

Powell:

Dick Powell (star of Susan Slept Here, Christmas In July) is “John Kennedy” (unwittingly aiding future nerds with their Lincoln/JFK parallel theories), the ex-cop, whose intended contact on the train is murdered off-screen. So Powell hooks up with sideburned Colonel Jeffers (Adolphe Menjou, noted commie-hater who named names in 1947) to solve the mystery of his dead friend and his hunch about an assassination attempt. I lost track of the colonel for a while though, soon found out that it’s unwise to track actors in this movie by their sideburns, kinda like trying to remember someone in a 1930’s movie as the guy with the hat.

The Colonel:

Kennedy isn’t the best cop, allows an interloper (Leif Erickson) to make off with his coat and gun. This guy also has Kennedy’s ticket, and grinningly claims to be Kennedy when the ticket-taker comes around. At the next stop, Kennedy fights the man for his identity, and the colonel, seeing a struggle, shoots at them, happening to kill the faker. This was really my only problem with the movie, dude just firing wildly in the darkness when he didn’t seem to have a clear shot or any understanding of the situation, irresponsible – until it’s revealed that the colonel is the main anti-Lincoln conspirator and that this was a clue to his identity. Because the colonel wouldn’t mind shooting Erickson, who could identify him, or Kennedy, who aims to stop him.

Jenny:

Kennedy’s main suspect is outspoken pro-slavery Georgian and sniper-rifle bearer Lance (Fiend Without a Face lead Marshall Thompson), travelling with his loyal sister Jenny (Paula Raymond of Crisis) and their slave maid Rachel (Ruby Dee! of Do The Right Thing!). But Kennedy suspects the colonel enough to leave his pistol loaded with powder but no bullet, so when the colonel shoots Kennedy while he naps, he is unharmed – the second harmless pistol head-shot I’ve seen in a movie this month. But at a stop in Philly Kennedy finds himself on the run instead of boldly turning in his evidence, an arrest warrant out for his “impersonating an officer.”

Ruby:

Back on board, Ruby Dee tells him that Lance has been lying about his intentions. Jenny the sister helps, then interferes, then helps. The colonel gets off in Baltimore but sends word to Lance that the future president is on the train. Kennedy awakes, fight ensues, Lance is knocked off the train, and Kennedy gets covertly thanked by the president’s people, as Lincoln looks out at the under-construction Capitol building. A fine-looking and tightly-plotted movie.

by ·Comments Off on Anatomy of a Relationship (1976, Luc Moullet)

An embarrassingly confessional sex/relationship drama starring the writer/director Luc Moullet as himself and actress Christine Hebert as Luc’s girlfriend (who is actually cowriter/codirector Antonietta Pizzorno). Mostly long-take conversations, the camera not seeming quite sure of itself – extreme indie narrative-verite cinema. And I’m annoyed, but not annoyed enough to turn it off. I try to put it in historical perspective (this might have been somewhat boundary-breaking in ’76), and besides, after reading many positive notices of Moullet’s career, I can’t give up halfway through such a short film. I’m also distracted that the girl is wearing a UGA shirt. And the poster of Nathalie Granger (which Luc produced) on the wall of their bedroom isn’t just glimpsed – it’s practically a third main character.

Then, three-quarters of the way through, a woman’s voice says “action” at the top of a scene, and any sense of documentary truth is shattered – I start to notice the movie-qualities of it all. It was self-referential before, with Luc’s “character” being a struggling indie filmmaker, and a dialogue scene filmed confessionally into camera, but now that is cranked up. A twist ending is injected (she’s pregnant, he receives a contrived financial windfall), and the two are in bed talking about making a porn movie. She: “I’ve got a feeling we’re being filmed already. You’re doing it for the camera, not for me. Stop it, will you! Cut!” End title.

But the movie doesn’t do anything halfway, so now that it’s introduced the self-referential element, we get a final sequence with Luc, Christine and Antonietta sitting around a table outdoors discussing the film and its ending, and Luc and Christine discussing it “on set” in the apartment. Katy says the whole thing sounds unbearable from my description, and it does, but I was drawn in and ended up liking it.

She: “With you, love-making is always rape.”

He: “For thousands of years women accepted normal sex. And now bang! That’s all over, sex is some place else. And that’s when I had to be born. It’s unfair! I couldn’t enjoy those thousands of years when billions of men had normal sex. Life is laughing at me. I’m the First Victim.”

“Do we communicate about anything?”
“Yes, movies. Our relationship hides behind movies. We always have something to talk about.

J. Rosenbaum says the contrived financial windfall in the film was based on real events, that the film itself “was financed by a real bank computer going haywire and accidentally sending LM a check for seven million francs.” Incredible.

The Phoenix: “Anatomy of a Relationship is a logical sequel to Billy le Kid: another film that focuses on a male-female relationship and explores the closeness of love and violence.”

City Paper:

Moullet paradoxically comes off the better of the two, or at least the more willing to bear the ugliest parts of himself; even a joke sequence observing that sewer holes are perfectly sized to swallow up film canisters betrays a trace of vaginal horror. After an abrupt false ending, Pizzorno appears for a three-way postmortem in which she laments not playing herself, a self-reflexive U-turn that only underscores the movie’s mood of failure. Appropriately for a film so concerned with castration anxiety, both versions end with a woman saying, “Cut.”