Was it George Kennedy?
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Come to think of it, he does get dowsed in an unsettling way, but that wasn’t what I was referring to.
It’s a rather illogical film. There’s a death early on which should make everyone extremely freaked and cautious on the accursed ship, but everyone just takes it in their stride and a mother even lets her young children run off by themselves. Sometimes it feels like important connective scenes are missing.
The shower scene was allegedly the producer’s idea who further insisted that it go on as long as possible. I shan’t complain because it’s easily one of the highlights of the picture, although probably not precisely in the manner intended.
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I saw The Invisible Boy today.
Fun enough for a kid oriented film.
Not really a sequel as much a maybe the further adventures of Robbie The Robot. They hint that the former director of the institute that is the focus of the story did some time travel and brought Robbie back from the future.
Anyway a supercomputer gains sentience and wants to rule the universe and our young hero accidentally helps out by having it remove the don’t harm limitations from Robbie. Hokey but a coherent enough script and plot with solid acting from everyone in the cast.
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All my talking about Dune convinced a friend of mine to see it. He’s not much into science fiction, so I was sure he would turn it off as soon as the Guild Navigator appeared. But he’s recuperating at home and looking for ways to pass time, so no harm done. He would rather watch something like, say, George Hearn and Angela Lansbury in Sweeny Todd.
I’m surprised to report that he didn’t completely hate it. We talked yesterday and I tried to fill-in all the various plot holes, which I think made the story more confusing.
He was most disappointed that it was so serious. I think he was expecting it to be a campy romp like Flash Gordon.
He says he’s going to watch it again to see if it will make more sense.
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The Lynch version? Probably not. There’s absolutely no reason why Paul, even being the Kwizatz Haderach, would be able to summon rain.
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Well the Fremen did that, eventually, didn’t they?
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It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from Dune
There’s nothing that a hundred Fremen or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Arrakis
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had.
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Yes. But not through magical powers. Through twenty years’ worth of following Liet-Kynes’ painstakingly-researched plans (and that’s just to reach the point where they’re at in Children of Dune).
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The China Syndrome (1979)
In James Bridges ’ haunting film, a nuclear power plant almost melts down during a visit by a television reporter ( Jane Fonda ) and cameraman ( Michael Douglas ), whose resulting footage was snuck out of the facility to be shown to experts. When the company that owns the billion-dollar facility and hopes to keep the incident quiet finds out about the breach, it begins to threaten and intimidate the reporter and cameraman.
I know they’re trying to keep the summaries short, but how could they leave Jack Lemmon out of this??? His character is the whistleblower.
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Well, they tried to silence him in the movie, too. /s
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I got about to watching Machete Kills
It was surprisingly a lot of fun and held up to be as good as Machete. If totally absurd violence and over the top ways to kill bad guys is your thing then both of these movies are worth seeing.
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Well I lucked out at getting a ticket for Deep Red at VIFF.
And seriously lucked out as it was done with a live score from Goblin.
I was very happily surprised to see it was not sold out when I checked after seeing in the festival program.
Anyway a fun little slasher/thriller with excellent sets and mood from Dario Argento. Definitely worth seeing if you haven’t seen it.
And here is a crappy phone pic from Goblin playing the theme from Demons after the movie was over.
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score, dude
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Do you know who could have played a good Joker? Rod Steiger, that’s who. If they were making serious comic book movies in the 1960s, when Steiger was in his prime, he could have been amazing.
Case in point is 1967’s “No Way to Treat a Lady.” In this movie Steiger got to play a theatrical serial killer, a mother-obsessed psycho dwelling in Times Square. I’m sure he loved the role — not only did he get to play the bad guy, but he also got to take on a variety of personas with a variety of accents, and he also got to shout. Shout a lot in fact. Especially at the end when he’s being apprehended. He shouts so much at that point that he threatens to blow the sets down.
“No Way to Treat a Lady” is a combination thriller-romance-comedy that I would describe as “almost great.”
One of its problems with the film is that it feels about ten minutes too short. For example George Segal solves the crime, but we are never shown how. And then there is the romance between George Segal and Lee Remick — doing her finest Doris Day impression — which just sort-of happens when you’re not looking.
And it’s possible that Eileen Heckart over-did the “Jewish mother” trope just a bit.
The movie was filmed in the “That Girl” era of New York — New York right before the 70s happened. We see all the elements that would go on fill the backgrounds of a thousand gritty urban movies, but at this time they were still clean and colorful.
There is an interesting scene when Segal and Remick are in a police boat going down the Hudson River past all the piers of Chelsea. The passenger terminals that are now gentrified parks, were still berthing ocean liners at that time. Cunard, the French Line, the United States Line. There they are — actual ocean liners. Not cruise ships, ocean liners.
But, anyway, I for one would like to see Rod Steiger play a role in clown makeup. And I feel sure I’m not alone.
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This was the highlight for me:
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Michael Dunn Is always a highlight.
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I would like to write a little about “La Grande Illusion.”
Some people say it’s the best movie ever made. I think that’s going a little too far. I wouldn’t even say it’s one of Jean Renoir’s best movies. It is, however very good, and may just be the most “ripped-off” movie in cinema history. Watching this movie the first time I was distracted by noticing all the plot and style elements that were reused in later films.
A short list would include:
- The Wooden Horse
- The Great Escape
- The Colditz Story
- Casablanca
- Stalag 17
- Citizen Kane
- The Defiant Ones
- The Sound of Music
My primary problem with La Grande Illusion is that it feels very long, even though it is not quite two hours long. The main themes of the movie could have been retained, and the script could have been much tighter, if it restricted itself to developing the second half of the plot.
This trailer is certainly compelling, but it totally misses the point of the movie:
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Hmmm… too long since I’ve seen it to say a great deal about it, but I thought it was great. I preferred The Rules of the Game but I still think GI ranks pretty high.
Have you seen the inexplicable Charleston Parade?
In the ruins of a future France, a native white girl teaches an African scientist some of her people’s customs.
Warning: Contains blackface, albeit a black man (Johnny Hudgins) is wearing the cork. (Hudgins wore blackface in his offscreen stage work as well, so this aspect may not have been Renoir’s idea.) As I recall, Renoir claimed it was an anti-racism statement, and I’m inclined to believe him, although I suspect he was also looking for an excuse to show off his wife’s physical charms.
ETA:
Reissue trailers for historic films are often terrible about this.
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The original trailers aren’t always any better
Fight Club, for instance, was marketed as a boxing movie
and then there was I Am Legend, where the whole theatrical release was edited to miss its own point
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