I remember this one vaguely. Probably on video at some high school age party/sleep over/event sort of-thing.
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I think I may pull this out of my DVD library. Because itâs great. I think itâs underrated. Great leads, great supporting actors, good characterizationsâŠ
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I saw it, under the title Creepers, back in the late â80s. I didnât think much of it at all back then. It may be changes in me, but it could easily be those missing 33 minutes. The film is more than somewhat incoherent either way, but I think the flow may be better in the long version. Slow patches have been retained which gives one a breather before the next dose of insanity.
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I just watched âSamurai I: Miyamoto Musashi.â This is the first movie of Tohoâs so-called Samurai Trilogy, set during the early days of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Like âThe Lord of the Rings,â the Samurai Trilogy was three epic movies released a year apart â in this case in 1953, 1954, and 1955. The movies are about the historical figure Miyamoto Musashi and his personal journey from peasant to kensei â a sword-saint.
Miyamoto is played by Mifune ToshirĆ, because why not? The guy looks good with a bokken. Miyamotoâs peasant origins and ambitious nature are very similar to Mifuneâs role in âThe Seven Samurai,â but in this movie heâs much smarter and has a lot more self-loathing. Heâs a ronin without a cause. Mifune gives a typically good performance, and for some curious reason he looks shorter that usual.
Yachigusa Kaoru plays the fictional character Otzu. Otzu is the girl left behind on more than one occasion: First she agrees to wait for the return of Matahachi, then she waits for Miyamoto, and at the end of he movie she waits for Musashi a second time. The part is well-acted, and has some interesting and courageous moments, but at the same time it doesnât add up to much.
Kuroemon Onoe plays the historical figure Takuan SĆhĆ, a renowned Zen Buddhist monk. He decides to direct the training of the uncontrollable Miyamoto. He plays the role of Yoda. In reality, these two men probably never met. Iâm no expert in Zen Buddhism, but this character is more abusive and manipulative than I would have expected.
To add to the productionâs prestige, Toho Studios decided to make this their first color movie. They handled the medium so effortlessly you canât tell. The scenes are as well lit and composed as you would expect from one of Tohoâs black and white films.
The main problem with the movie is that it feels rushed â itâs only an hour-and-a-half long. There are two important moments in Musashiâs life that are completely glossed-over. What occurred between Musashi running away from his hometown to join the army and the Battle of Sekigahara? We donât even know how much time passed. How much training did he receive? Later in the film, he spends three years studying Buddhism after being tricked by Takuan SĆhĆ and locked in a room. Did he spend all three years in the room? How was he fed? Once again, how much training did he receive? He walks into the sunset at the end of the film, but we have no idea what he knows. At least âRockyâ gives us training montages. These points could have been covered in the film and it would still have been under two hours.
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Iâve tried writing about Jacques Tatiâs 1967 movie âPlaytime" before. Itâs a hard thing to do, because the movie shouldnât exist: Itâs a nearly-silent comedy filmed on a scale normally reserved for epic blockbusters.
Playtime is Tatiâs third film to feature Monsieur Hulot and his unending battle with being human. The film is used by Tati primarily as a way to satirize the sameness of modern architecture, the growing reliance on electronic devices and the growing intrusion of the English language.
Tati intention to depict the middling superficiality of contemporary Paris is undermined by the movieâs appearance. This movie looks beautiful. The design and photography of the movie is superb. By day, the movie is a symphony of bright sunlight beaming through glass walls, and gleaming off of beige and grey surfaces. By night, the interiors now shine out into the dark city through those same windows. Everything is arranged in austere, tasteful modernism.
The movie portrays 24 hours in modern Paris. To make this movie Tati had a vast modern city constructed and filmed it all on 70mm film. Itâs hard to judge how big the set is because he augments it with models and actual locations in Paris, which he blends together seamlessly. Using this vast resource as a stage, the movieâs humor comes from minute observations of human behavior and absurd sound effects. It feels like a Preston Sturges movie with the dialogue removed.
The movie opens inside a large, modern building. It is early in the morning. Various people walk in and out of the scene performing mundane tasks. A couple is in the foreground is having an unimportant conversation. We have no idea whatâs going on because we have no idea where we are. And thatâs the point. Weâre lost in a sea of the International Style. Gradually the story emerges.
At first there are two stories. Plot A is about a group of American women on a packaged tour. They arrive, go to their hotel and various venues, while having one unending conversation. One woman in the group stands out to us because she is actually interested in what is happening around her. Plot B is about M. Hulot going to a business meeting of some sort. Thatâs the entire first half of the movie.
These two stories meet at the grand opening of a luxurious new nightclub, the Royal Garden. This makes up the second half of the movie. I used to think the most impressive thing shot on 70mm film was the chariot race from Ben-Hur. I was wrong. It is this nightclub scene. Itâs a precisely choreographed, slowly unfolding disaster. It just goes on and on getting bigger and bigger. And just as the evening goes completely off the rails, it becomes perfect.
The one American woman I mentioned above reveals she can play the piano. M. Hulot is rather taken with her. The party lasts all night. In the morning, the American women return to the airport and M. Hulot remains M. Hulot.
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I finally managed to sit through âItâs a Wonderful World.â
On paper I should really enjoy the film: Starring Claudette Colbert and James Stewart, script by Ben Hecht, directed by W. S. Van Dyke, made in 1939. All of these are points in its favor.
When I first tried to watch this movie, I stopped after about 20 minutes. But that was a couple of years ago. All that has remained is a vague memory of a headache. I decided I finally had to see the film. I knew at some point James Stewart would be disguised as a scout master, and I at least had to see that much.
After breaking through the 20-minute mark the plot started looking very familiar. The story is basically an American adaptation of Hitchcockâs adaptation of âThe 39 Steps.â The hero, in order to clear his name and escape police, jumps from a train thatâs crossing a bridge. He is then thrown together with a woman. At first she assumes he is a dangerous criminal. He plays along. They spend some time together in handcuffs. She gets away while he is asleep and finds out who he really is. Now she wants to help him solve the mystery. This all leads to the movieâs climax in a theater, sort of.
It sounds like it should be a fun, romantic adventure. âThe 39 Stepsâ is, but this isnât. It somehow manages to be slow-paced and frantic at the same time.
The most unforgivable aspect of the story-telling comes at the end â Stewart solves the central mystery off-camera. It apparently happens between the third and fourth acts. We never see him do any detective work. This makes the rest of the movie nothing but tedious padding.
Claudette Colbert
Claudette Colbertâs primary direction for his film appears to have been âover-act and shout a lot.â Her character is a poetess. Iâm just mentioning this because itâs pointed-out a number of times throughout the film. It doesnât contribute to the plot in any way.
She is supposed to be a bookish person who enthusiastically wants to help James Stewart because itâs something new and adventurous. The trouble is, sheâs glamorous from beginning to end. Her charater has no personal growth. They could at least have given her a little pair of glasses to wear at the start. Glasses she takes off at some point to symbolize the change that has been made in her life. Thatâs just basic script writing. See âFour Frightened Peopleâ for an example of this done right.
James Stewart
This movie stars pre-war James Stewart. This is as opposed to post-war James Stewart, who usually played the same character in every movie. In this film he plays a jaded, woman-hating private detective. This seems like a promising start, but he too undergoes no personal growth. He remains an unlikable jerk from beginning to end.
Grady Sutton
Grady Sutton is in this movie. He plays a normal person and only gets one line. Thatâs bad movie-making.
Guy Kibbee
Would you believe the only actor worth watching in this movie is Guy Kibbee? Somehow he manages to make his character the only interesting and occasionally funny aspect of it.
In conclusion
There is one interesting moment in this film. Blink and itâs gone. At one point Colbert needs to distract a group of police. Her character has been reported missing and it is assumed she has been kidnapped by Stewart. So she identifies herself to them, talking a-mile-a-minute. A press photographer accompanying the police vouches for her. He says he knows itâs her because he photographed her last week. âYes,â she says to him, âat the Spain rally.â Then she turns back to the police and resumes distracting them.
So, we see her character is Antifa.
Itâs a quick aside, but an odd thing to find in an MGM film from 1939. Itâs more like something you would expect from Warner Brothers.
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Itâs MGM trying to be Warner Brothers, sounds like.
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The Gangster (1943 I think)
semi-interesting noir. the title roleâs actor hands in a great performance hamstrung by a script that made him repeat his justifications every twenty minutes. kinda like an Ayn Rand novel. it was a unique premise for a gangster noir, though.
a fledgling Harry Morgan aka Joe Fridayâs sidekick aka Colonel Sherman Potter has a pretty good supporting role.
If I hadnât pulled up wiki to confirm the young man was indeed Morgan by the cast list, I would have never recognized a late-teens-looking Shelly Winters in an uncredited bit part. not just extremely young, but thin. quite a looker.
script partially written by Trumbo, who I mostly just know by reputation. so either the other guy loused it up, or not one of his better efforts.
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Born in Flames (1983) Dir: Lizzie Borden
Ten years after the USâs peaceful socialist revolution, women still have second class status. The Womenâs Army struggles to change things, while The Party monitors and then attempts to suppress them.
A great, great film, although not for everyone. Frequently (and accurately) labeled as SF, it lacks the production values and gadgetry most want from the genre, and the plot promises action which the film never really delivers. (Also, a la Godardâs Alphaville, itâs very clearly filmed in contemporary reality.) What we do get is some world and a lot of character building mostly conveyed through a lot of talk, but personally I was never bored. The film is snappily edited (especially the audio editing), has great footage of late 70s-early 80s NYC, and a very energetic soundtrack which keeps everything moving nicely. (Although the oft repeated theme song, Red Crayolaâs âBorn in Flames,â is also going to not be for everyone.) Lizzie Borden gets screenplay credit, but most of the spoken words were actually devised by the performers themselves, thus arguably making the film a sort of documentary of feminist attitudes of the filming period, 1978-1983.
Director Lizzie Borden went on to the acclaimed, but not widely seen, prostitution drama Working Girls and a handful of films which she disowns due to producer interference. In BiF, one can see Eric Bogosian in his first film appearance, and a rare acting performance from director Kathryn Bigelow.
The aforementioned theme in full:
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I recently rewatched âA Passage to India.â I was thoroughly enjoying it, until the ending: The scenery was beautiful, but nothing really happened.
I rarely watch this movie. Being let down by the ending is the final, lasting impression. Even after I havenât seen the movie for a while I remember being disappointed by it, although I donât remember why.
A little over a year ago I heard an adaptation of the novel on BBC Radio 4. It matched Leanâs adaptation almost scene by scene and line by line. But the ending was different. In this adaptation Dr. Aziz and Fielding were riding horses together in Mau. Fielding was relieved that they can be friends again. Dr. Aziz explains that they can never really be friends because they are not equals, and they can never be equals until India is itâs own country.
That ending made sense. Iâve admit I never read the book, but apparently that is the ending taken from the book. Everything that happened in the story is there to support that one exchange of dialogue.
Giving the movie an ending that is vague and indefinite must have been a deliberate choice on David Leanâs part. I am in no position to question Lean, but I canât imagine why he did that. I guess he figured if a vague ending worked with âLawrence of Arabiaâ it would work here too.
It would be like if Luke Skywalker blew up the Death Star but decided to not use the Force.
So, in short, I was enjoying the movie â but now Iâm even more disappointed by it than before, because I know how it was supposed to end.
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âI balanced it up a bitâ
Forsterâs novel predates partition (of course), and this passage
âWho do you want instead of the English? The Japanese?â jeered Fielding, drawing rein.
âNo, the Afghans. My own ancestors.â
âOh, your Hindu friends will like that, wonât they?â
âIt will be arrangedâa conference of Oriental statesmen.â
âIt will indeed be arranged.â
âOld story of âWe will rob every man and rape every woman from Peshawar to Calcutta,â I suppose, which you get some nobody to repeat and then quote every week in the Pioneer in order to frighten us into retaining you! We know!â Still he couldnât quite fit in Afghans at Mau, and, finding he was in a corner, made his horse rear again until he remembered that he had, or ought to have, a mother-land. Then he shouted: âIndia shall be a nation! No foreigners of any sort! Hindu and Moslem and Sikh and all shall be one! Hurrah! Hurrah for India! Hurrah! Hurrah!â
might have struck Lean as naive. (Or perhaps he didnât want to offend Indian bureaucrats)
There 's a certain amount of ambiguity in the novel which is ill suited for film as a medium. Attempting to âbalanceâ this out can lead one to all sorts of ill-conceieved readings.
The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Passage to India, by E. M. Forster
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Note: This was delayed for a couple of weeks because my job has been sucking the life out of me.
So what holiday movie did I watch this year? The 1963 movie âCleopatra,â of course.
This is the movie famous for nearly bankrupting 20th Century Fox and for ending one of Elizabeth Taylorâs various marriages. It is an historical epic that makes you consider important questions such as: am I supposed to like any of these people?
The first hour or so spent in Pharsalus and Alexandria is the most entertaining: It has multiple changes of scenery, a large cast of characters and political machinations. After that it settles down to Cleopatra trying to pick the right guy to help her acquire more territory and end democracy. Unfortunately for her she completely overlooks Augustus because he isnât hot enough.
Elizabeth Taylor was miss-cast. She brings nothing to the role other than her body. I never believed I was watching a queen from a three-century-old dynasty. She comes across as more of a whiney Lady MacBeth, or maybe Yoko Ono.
Rex Harrison lives up to his name and is perfectly cast as a charmingly egotistical tyrant. He is Caius Julius Caesar, the man who would be king â according to the script writers anyway. Interestingly Harrison must have been self-conscious of his arms and legs. Throughout the movie he appears to be wearing his armor over luxurious pajamas.
Richard Burton, on the other hand, lets it all hang out in a performance that really steals the movie. He strides around the screen giving a perfect performance of himself â a man who seems poised for greatness but falters due to a weakness for drink and an affair with Elizabeth Taylor.
The most inspired casting choice was Roddy McDowall as Octavian, or Augustus, or whatever name they decide to give him from scene to scene. I had forgotten he was in the movie, but as soon as I saw him standing silently on the over-sized Curia stairs I knew who he was.
At over four hours, this is a long movie. The director, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who knew a thing or two about movies wanted to release it as two separate films. That could have worked well. Unfortunately the producers had other ideas. It received the same treatment as âGreedâ and âBatman vs Supermanâ â it was edited down to one long incoherent movie.
The version available now has been restored back to almost its original length. And in Todd-AO it is certainly good to look at. Leon Shamroy did a great job with the cinematography. The movie cost twice as much to make as Ben Hur, and you can see every cent of the budget on the screen. It looks like an overly-accessorized painting by GĂ©rĂŽme.
In short, it is a beautiful movie to see and it presents you with historical names and places. So itâs valuable for that.
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Wasnât Carroll OâConnor in it as well, as one of the Senators?
Iâve only watched it once. And yeah, Liz was in it for the name value. Her behind-the-scene antics with Richard Burton are much fun to read about - even the Wikipedia article isnât that dry when it comes to 'em, lol. But some of those linesâŠlike how she wants to have a kidâŠEEuwwwww.
I think the best thing to come out of it was the fact that it got Liz and Dick together and eventually they made âWhoâs Afraid of Virginia Woolf?â which is by far their finest flick together, IMNSHO.
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Yes, and he does well in his toga. He has a curious accent, like Archie Bunker doing an impression of Charles Laughton.
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agree. the reason to watch Cleopatra is mainly visual, where it succeeds greatly. her visit to Rome, heralded by a lengthy entourage, is the stand-out scene (the culmination of which was copied by Madonna for her Superbowl halftime show, btw, which was pretty cool.)
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They were trying to out-DeMille DeMille.
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âDune!â How did I forget to mention Dune?
I knew there was a third movie I wanted to mention.
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I never thought I would hear âCome On-A My Houseâ in a Kurosawa film, but there it was.
I finally saw âIkiru.â The last weeks in the life of government employee Watanabe Kanji.
Iâve known the basic plot of this movie since I was a child. A simple story that could be summarized in three short sentences. I have, however, always been reluctant to see it â I thought there is no way this movie could be as good as I imagine it is.
It turns I neednât have worried. Although the story is exactly what I knew it was, it was told well and in a totally unexpected way.
The movie has a very novelistic script. It takes its time and wanders around. For example, there is an entire 20-minute scene where Watanabe spends a night in Tokyo with an addicted writer of pulp fiction. And this scene only explains how he got a new hat.
If this movie has a weakness it is, surprisingly, Shimura Takashiâs performance. Usually I enjoy him, but here he spends too much of the movie hunched over with his eyes bugging as he gasps out his lines.
On the other hand, a real standout is Odagiri Miki. This was apparently her first and most prominent role. She is very artless and is very reminiscent of post-war Shirley Temple.
The best line in the movie comes from Watanabe reflecting on his award for working 30 years without missing a day. âAll these 30 years, what have I been doing there? I canât remember no matter how I try. All I remember is just being busy.â
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Since a sequel to âComing to Americaâ has recently been released, I decided it was finally time to see the original version. Itâs titled âThe King on Main Street,â stars Bessie Love and Adolphe Menjou, and was made in 1925. I realize Iâm a bit late.
I donât know if a decent copy of this movie exists. But at least it exists. The version I saw on the Tube of You appeared to come off 8mm by way of extended play VHS. There are a number of moments where Iâm sure something funny was happening, but I couldnât tell. The distracting organ accompaniment was apparently lifted from some unrelated film. Some part of this movie was originally filmed in Technicolor. I had fun trying to guess which part.
In it Adolphe Menjou plays Serge IV of Molvania. The eponymous king. Molvania has oil fields that need to be developed, and I suppose the Austro-Hungarian Empire is no longer around to help. So in order to do this, he must travel to New York and negotiate a loan. He king doesnât care much for ruling his country, but he enjoys the superficial perks of royalty. Perks like traveling to New York on a luxury liner with his mistress from Paris.
Who better to play a charming, self-absorbed king than Adolphe Menjou? His mustache alone was born for this role. But I have also seen him play low-down and dirty Americans with equal ease. Not a good person at all, but a very good actor.
Bessie Love plays an average young American woman. She has a âmeet cuteâ with the king when she accidentally throws ice cream at him. She is semi-engaged to Oscar Shaw, who plays a young entrepreneur building a chain of gas stations. He wants to marry her, but sheâs holding out for someone who isnât Oscar Shaw.
If this movie was remade 15 years later, it whould have starred Ray Millland, Joan Blondell and Robert Cummings.
The king arrives in New York and stays at his countryâs embassy. If this movie had been directed by Ernst Lubitsch 8 years later, there would have been an establishing shot showing an ornate brass plaque reading âConsulate General of Molvania.â The camera would pull back showing the ornate stonework around the windows. It would continue to pull back revealing the embassy is a rented second floor above retail space.
Just before the king is to meet with various oil executives he sneaks out the back way. His security detail, in their ceremonial uniforms, is sent off to search for him in âthe fashionable places.â However, not knowing what else to do, the kings gets on a bus bound for Coney Island. Here he experiences life as a normal person for the first time and finds he likes it.
If this movie was remade by Preston Sturges, the kingâs day in Coney Island would have been interspersed with scenes of his security force â still in their ornate, ceremonial uniforms â trying to force their way into various âfashionable places.â The head of security would be played by William Demarest. His lieutenant would be a tall, good looking airhead who was only hired because he looked good in the uniform. We would see all them rushing onto the street and crowding into taxis. There would be haggling over the fare. Eventually they try to force their way into a restaurant where Franklin Pangborn is the maĂźtre dâ. He accuses them of being a publicity stunt promoting a revival of âBabes in Toyland.â A melee ensues, eventually evolving all of the wait and kitchen staff. Torben Meyer is the chef. Eventually the cops swarm in.
But back to the movie. Thereâs not much of it. The surviving portion is only 47 minutes long and clearly incomplete. This becomes obvious at the abrupt ending.
The king made such a hash of things on his trip to New York that he is forced to abdicate. After signing the abdication proclamation he walks to the window of his palace and thinks back to Bessie Love and his time in the US. And then the movie just ends.
So we have a king with oilfields who wants to live and be loved as a normal man, a woman who is looking for a big romance with a fiancé who develops gas stations. Surely there is some way this love triangle can be resolved in a way that makes everyone happy. I guess I will just have to imagine it.
I watched this movie for two reasons: 1 â it stars Bessie Love, 2 â Bessie Love dances the Charleston. And she dances it very well, complete with requisite ukulele. Although her on-screen persona was generally understated, she was a performer with a lot of versatility. Itâs not surprising she was cast in a number of MGMâs early musicals.
And here we come to the historic aspect of the movie. This is, in fact, the first time the Charleston appeared in any Hollywood film. And Bessie Love was there.
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