Yeah, Blow Out was '81. When De Palma made PotP, he was just beginning to move from comedies into thriller/horror movies. If Blow Out really is the earliest De Palma you’ve seen, I strongly recommend you check out his '70s work. Sisters, Carrie, and The Fury are some of his best.
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yeah, I tend to weigh mis-en-scene pretty heavily
OK so I know Carrie but just from seeing it in bits and pieces on tv, and meta media clips and references. I liked what I saw but I never knew it was BDP, I guess I thought he was just getting started with the grimy-looking Blow-Out and then getting better money with Body Double as reflected in the production value and then on to Carlito’s Way.
Looks like I have a lot of catching up to do.
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Salome’s Last Dance (1988)
Starring: Imogen Millais-Scott, Glenda Jackson, Stratford Johns
Ken Russell’s version of Oscar Wilde’s 1891 play Salome, the story of Salome and her dance of the seven veils. Virtually all of the complete text of the one act play is included, Herod’s final speech is trimmed a bit, but in addition a framing story showing Wilde and his lover Bosie attending this secret performance of the banned play at an upscale brothel has been added. (It seems like every online reviewer refers to it as an all-male brothel when the dialogue quite clearly states otherwise. Besides, where did they think they got those scantily dressed women from?)
Other than the ultimately tasteless framing story, I think it’s fairly great, but admit that its appeal is probably limited to those who appreciate the original play and appreciate Russell’s frequently smutty irreverence. I especially enjoy Millais-Scott’s performance as Salome, a truly odd over-enunciated turn which somehow works. (Not-so-fun fact: A few weeks before filming she went practically completely blind due to illness, but carried on regardless. She never made another film, but I don’t know if that’s due to continuing health issues or Ken simply tanked her career.)
Joe Bob gives it three dildo spears up.
And here’s a copy of Wilde’s play, worth a glance simply for Aubrey Beardsley’s illustrations:
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I saw this when I was in high school on satellite TV when we were house-sitting. It might’ve even been on the Playboy channel, or maybe just HBO, but I know I was watching the Playboy channel a lot.
I’m not sure if I understood that it was Wilde who was in the audience, although I had read Dorian Gray at that point for school. Even if I did know that Wilde was depicted, I didn’t know that it was his play. I also didn’t know (or at least retain) that it was at a brothel, it looked like an old manor house; which I guess it was anyhow.
I do remember liking it quite a bit; you know how I like sets and costumes.
I saw Marathon Man with Dustin Hoffman, Roy Schider, and Lawrence Olivier on TV last night. I knew it had a decent reputation and was pretty well-known when it came out. But, as cool as it was for the majority of it, certain key things in the third act just didn’t make sense. Too bad. I mostly liked it, though. It’s one of those “New York in the 70s was super fucked-up but the people and the city were still actually cool” movies; similar in a lot of ways to the original The Taking of Pelham 123, which is an excellent movie.
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Carrie is one of my favorite movies, which is weird because I do not like horror as a genre. But the cinematography in this movie is pure genius. And I really love the use of split screens.
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Body and Soul (1925)
Paul Robeson’s screen debut and one of the few remaining silent films from pioneering African-American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. This film’s got the greater (or at least wider) reputation, but I very much preferred Micheaux’s earlier Within Our Gates, which is often claimed to be a response to Griffith’s Birth of a Nation. (As I recall, Micheaux denied this specific intent.)
To be fair, I should probably give BaS another chance sometime. On this first viewing, I watched it with Wycliffe Gordon’s musical accompaniment, which is quite good as music, but does tend to overwhelm the visuals, changing the film from a narrative to an artsy music video. Despite this, Robeson is good value even deprived of his voice.
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While it was somewhat gratifying seeing Tom Cruise die repeatedly, two things really stuck out in Edge of Tomorrow. First, there’s no chemistry between Blunt and Cruise, so toward the end of the movie, there’s a scene that’s awkward, at best. Second, the ending makes that other scene even ickier because a rotten movie trope is implied. Also, ending didn’t entirely make sense.
Final assessment: over-rated. (90% on Rotten Tomatoes? Srsly, now.)
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Also, the wrong character did the finishing move. Cruise’s character should have been back to its douchey self at the end.
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I came at that one after reading All You Need Is Kill… Which has a much better completely different and more bittersweet ending. My biggest eyeroll at the movie was the hollywood happy ending they made for it.
ETA : I also hated how they totally pass over the reason The Full Metal Bitch uses the prop blade axe. There are way way too many aliens attacking for any reasonable amount of ammo that you can carry.
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Well the newish streaming service from the library has a bit more cinephile oriented offerings including a nice Criterion category.
I finally gave a watch to Le Samourai which was quite good… Alain Delon is hard boiled and smooth hired killer but is seen right after the hit and arrested during the rounding up of the usual suspects. His alibis stick so the police have to let him go but keep watch on him. When he realizes that his employer is now after him he is out to evade the police, figure out why the key witness is ‘not recognizing’ him and kill the crime boss who hired him.
Not sure if John Woo was going for a remake but his bullet opera The Killer runs along some parallel tracks and the main characters share the same name (edit they do in the dubbed version anyway). It is also worth seeing if you haven’t.
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What streaming service does your library use?
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Services…
Hoopla they have had for awhile but their selection… lets just say this months highlighted film is The Last Avatar (The live action one from M. Night Shameless). Not that it is all like that but they do reach deep into the barrel of bad and not always bad but still a lot of fun.
Kanopy is the new one and like I said that has a much nicer selection including about a 40 movie pick of Criterion Collection films.
I have Sweet Sweebacks Badass Song up next.
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I’ve found Hoopla is better for TV series, while Kanopy is best for art house/historical film.
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I just saw a pretty good film, it was “Sunset Boulevard, the Musical.” It starred Rita Hayworth, Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak, and had a great score by Rogers and Hart.
Yes, it was actually “Pal Joey,” but the plot is basically “Sunset Boulevard,” with the exception that Sinatra doesn’t end the film face-down in Rita Hayworth’s swimming pool.
The film is Hollywood’s 1957 adaptation of Rogers and Hart’s acidic Broadway musical from 1940. The story is about the brief rise and fall of a megalomaniac named Joey Evans who has two talents: dancing and using people. The role was originated, very appropriately, by a charming megalomaniac named Gene Kelly, and it brought him his first stardom. For this movie adaptation the character was changed into a singer, and was fortunately given to Frank Sinatra. In the story Joey uses — and is used by — a rich widow named Vera Prentice-Simpson played by Rita Hayworth. The more positive influence on Joey’s life is Linda English, played by Kim Novack.
The show was adapted for the film by prolific Hollywood writer Dorothy Kingsley. Although Kingsley streamlined the story, smoothed-over its rougher edges and added a somewhat happy ending, she did manage to keep the important plot points. The dog (Scruffy or Snuffy, I can’t remember) is an interesting addition on Kingsley’s part.
I think the dog serves as a representation of Joey’s emerging conscience. Scruffy — or Snuffy — is forced upon Joey one night by Linda, when he had instead been expecting a hot date. That evening we hear Joey delivering his first honest lines while he’s talking to dog. Later, when Joey moves onto Rita Hayworth’s yacht, he gives the dog back to Linda. When Linda shows up at the yacht drunk, the dog is there to stop Joey from assaulting her when she’s passed-out on his bed. At the end of the film, we don’t know what future Joey and Linda will have, but he picks the dog up again before they walk off together.
I’m generally not a big fan of Sinatra, but he is excellent as a self-centered, sarcastic nightclub entertainer who has been cursed with the ability to charm. Joey Evans knows just how far he can push people to get what he wants, but he always ends up being too greedy. The first half of the movie is rather fun, but it starts to drag after Rita Hayworth appears. It’s hard to believe, but Rita Hayworth is possibly the weakest aspect of this film. I don’t know if she is to blame or the director, but her attempt at portraying a jaded socialite merely comes across as leaden. She should have taken some lessons from Rosalind Russell.
Kim Novack does a good job as Linda English.
I found some of the movies little details interesting. For example:
- This is the earliest use I’ve seen of a flash-zoom. The movie, in fact, has two of them.
- This movie also has the earliest product placements I’m aware of: All the cars are Ford products, and Sinatra is clearly seen smoking Chesterfields, which was his sponsor at the time.
- Sinatra pronounces “mishmash” correctly.
- When Sinatra first gets on stage he’s actually being recorded by the microphone he’s holding. This adds a certain rough verité that Hollywood usually avoids.
- Furthermore, you can see by the way Sinatra holds that microphone and its cord that he knows what he’s doing.
Please note, the music for this show was written by Rogers and Hart, not Rogers and Hammerstein. You probably know of grand musicals such as the King and I, the Sound of Music, and Oklahoma. These huge, glossy creations were the products of Rogers and Hammerstein. Before this partnership Richard Rogers worked for 20 years exclusively with a tragic little fellow named Lorenz Hart. Their output together was markedly different.
Along with their contemporaries George and Ira Gershwin, Rogers and Hart wrote music that strove to be new, intelligent and popular. Music with those three qualities doesn’t come around very often.
What makes Lorenz Hart’s lyrics so distinct is that he writes with direct language and simple words, but there always seems to be some other meaning behind them that you can’t quite describe.
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For the Equinox… I share with you Equinox!
Not bad for a movie written, produced and shot by 3 high schoolers in SoCal.
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I love Pal Joey.
Some of the caddish snaps written for him are legendary, but I like that he decides to try to change and goes with Novak at the end.
I cannot even slightly imagine Kelly or anyone else in Joey’s role.
What is a flash zoom?
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Ah, but have you seen Kelly in “For Me and My Gal?” He’s self-centered and manipulative, at least until he injures his fingers.
It’s one of these things:
I think that’s what they’re called. If there is a more correct name I would love to know what it is.
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Crash zoom?
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Just watched The Witch from 2015:
It’s set in the early colonial era about a ultra religious family that gets thrown out of a frontier community and has to scratch out a living further out into the frontier… Creep shit ensues. Pretty historically accurate (in terms of the then commonly accepted mythology about witches).
Also, 2 Game of Thrones actors are in it, Kate Dickie who plays Lysa Arryn and Ralph Ineson who plays Dagmar Cleftjaw… the kids are great, too. A very good historical drama for halloween.
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So with being gainfully employed and a with a schedule that lets me just make it to the class on time. Schlock movie review time…
3 weeks late even…
So first up. The Cry Baby Killer at just over 60 minutes this counts a B movie proper. Jack Nicholson at 21 in his first movie role. He plays a jilted high schooler who wants his girl back from the guy who is a total bad influence who has his now ex girl in his spell. It opens with him getting beat up he then wants to get even so showdown at the malt shop. One of the foils lackeys has a gun which Jack takes and plugs two of them. There was an officer already on the scene as he is flirting with one of the waitresses so Jack backs himself into the storage shed taking a new mom her baby and one of the kitchen staff hostage. After just about the right amount of movie time his girl comes to her senses and talks him out just before they are going to use tear gas. Look for a Bruno VeSota as a gawker in the crowd and a cameo of Roger Corman. Not bad but not great either. The running time is just perfect as another 20 minutes would have really made it feel way too long.
Next we have Venom with Klaus Kinski and Oliver (they let him drive a car in this movie?) Reed as kidnappers where everything goes wrong including a deadly black mamba snake loose in the house. Sterling Hayden does well as the grandpa and the kid with asthma, is a kid with asthma. It actually is a fun little thriller and Klaus has one of the best cheesy death scenes in cinema history. I really wish I could find a clip of it.
And this week was Rat Fink. Not to be confused with the Ray Dennis Steckler movie (don’t watch that one… seriously). A young sociopathic boy has run off and is out to make a name for himself as a rock star. He gets his fame and fortune and more. Surprisingly well shot for a exploitation film and a good if hokey story. The acting and directing are good as the scenes meant for shock value are indeed hard to watch. It isn’t a happy movie but worth hunting down and seeing.
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