Movie review - "Free and Easy" (1941) **

 Interesting collection of elements. The feature directorial debut of George Sidney. An MGM cheapie so it's still pretty glossy. C Aubrey Smith. Based on an Ivor Novello play. Still feels English. Bob Cummings and Nigel Bruce are son and dad (?), fortune hunters - they love each other which is sweet. Cummings strikes up a nice relationship with Judith Anderson who is rich but falls for Ruth Hussey who he thinks is rich but is poor. Bruce gets gambling debts so Cummings gets engaged to Anderson. It's resolved too quickly.

It clocks in at 55 minutes. Maybe it needed songs. Hussey has no charisma no chemistry with Cummings who has to do all the heavy lifting. There is warmth in the Cummings-Anderson scenes and the Cummings-Bruce scenes.

Movie review - "Woman of the Hour" (2024) ***1/2

 The story is fascinating - woman meets serial killer on a dating show - but doesn't really have legs because she had the meeting and that was it. So the writer cleverly expands it by adding a woman in the audience who recognises the guy but is ignored, and there are flashbacks to other attacks, which are done well - including quite a sizeable role for Autumn Best who plays a runaway (this character is shown to be responsible gor getting the guy and good on Anna Kendrick for not hogging this role for herself0. 

It's all done very well. A most impressive directorial debut.

Top Ten Monty Python Linked Films

 (excludes TV which means no Ripping Yarns, Fawlty Towers)

1) A Fish Called Wanda - at his best Cleese really worked hard on scripts and it paid off brilliantly which is why Fierce Creatures is so hard to understand

2) Brazil - Terry Gilliam's brilliant take on 1984 a reminder of what he once could do

3) Yellowbeard - look I haven't seen this since I was a kid but I loved it as a kid

4) Clockwise - a stressful movie in many ways but very well done

5) Nuns on the Run - funny drag comedy that was a big deal in Oz when released but seems to have been forgotten

6) The Adventures of Baron Munchausen - intense, wondrous, imaginative - I pick it over Time Bandits

7) Labyrinth - the script is too simple but it was a wondrous element to it

8) Personal Services - untypical film, very well done

9) The Missionary - naughty and sweet, like Michael Palin

10) A Private Function - another strong effort from Palin

TV review - "Territory" (2024) ****

 Good, solid soap. Intergenerational. Plenty of different motivations and clashing parties. Gorgeously shot. Pretty good acting. Some slightly smelly scenes that reek of pointless rewriting but the basic story holds really well.

Movie review - "Gaolbreak" (1962) **

 One of the last leading roles from Peter Reynolds who is top billed. You'll recognise some of the other cast including Carol White. 

Reynolds is part of a crime family. They're planning a job. They have to bust a brother out of prison even though he's not that keen to do it being with Carol White.

Reynolds lacks a little of his old humour and was looking puffy but he holds the screen I love that mum was part of the gang.

It's not bad. Feels like an ep of a TV series really but done with some pace.

Movie review - "The Osterman Weekend" (1983) **1/2

 Sam Peckinpah's famously mediocre last movie. Dutch actor Rutger Hauer plays an all American TV host who hosts weekends for his old college friends. Then CIA agent John Hurt (a British actor) tells him that his friends are spies. The friends are played by Dennis Hopper, Chris Sarandon and Craig T Nelson.

Actually this film wasn't as bad as I thought it was. I felt it was easy to fix - they should have told the whole story through Hauer's eyes. The reveals come when he's revealed. Also more characterisation work please - I couldn't tell the difference in personality between Hopper, Sarandon and Nelson. 

Everyone had a blonde wife too - Hopper ( a sort of trashy hooker), Hauer (scary eyed Meg Foster who at least got to kill someone with a bow and arrow), Hurt (whose wife masturbates before being killed). Sarandon's wife was played by the woman who was Kris Kristofferson's sad eyed lover in Convoy.

 The action scenes are done very well. The voyeur stuff is irritating - the CIA watch everything on screens. How did they film everything? I got confused in a lot of places.

This actually should have been a character piece - dig into the notion of friendship.

But I didn't mind it. I guess my expectations were super low.

Movie review - "The Ipcress File" (1965) ****

 Harry Saltzmann's anti-Bond is still about a sexy agent who beds women, has some sophistication (he's a cook), outsmarts the bad guys and is cocky to his superiors - but he wears glasses, is unapologetically working class, and there's nice touches about filling out forms and bureaucracy.

It's very stylishly directed by Sidney J Furie, clearly loving having more of a budget. The music score is very James Bond-y as are Ken Adams' sets.

The plot was a little confusing but basically it's whether Nigel Green is the baddie or Guy Doleman is the baddy. You know that Gordon Jackson is going to be killed.

Some Aussies in the cast like Guy Doleman and Ric Hutton.

TV review - "The Westener" Ep 3 Brown (1960) **

 A saloon owner, John Dehner, wants to buy Brian Keith's dog, Brown. Bruce Geller wrote this. Peckinpah directed. 

Keith's character is drunk a lot of the time, Dehner is sly. There's plenty of production value - dancing girls and celebrations. It's not really funny.

Movie review - "A Dangerous Age" (1957) **1/2

 Sidney Furie got his start working for Canadian television and this debut feature - entirely financed by his dad - feels more like a TV play. It's a simple tale of a couple who want to elope - both less than 21. 

It's unpretentious, quite well acted. The adults come across as smug prats. We never get to meet the parents. Like a lot of films that feel like TV plays, it needed another key subplot.

Location filming helps as does the jazz score. Shane Rimmer, from many Hollywood films shot in the UK, is in it.

Movie review - "The Long Riders" (1980) ***1/2 (rewatching)

 My opinion of this film hasn't really changed over the years - it's episodic, a film of vignettes rather than a cohesive whole. But the pleasures remain. It looks terrific, wonderful production design and locations. Some superb performances - David Carradine is electric, Keith and Robert very good, Stacy Keach a superb Frank James, the Guest brothers are fun as are the Quaids. James Keach is a little stiff as Jesse. Pamela Reed is splendid as Belle Starr as are James Remar and James Whitmore.

Movie review - "The First Time" (1952) ***

 Frank Tashlin's directorial debut (as a feature) is a comedy about new parents Barbara Hale and Robert Cummings. Its a series of small vignettes - waiting for the baby to come, she even gives her will in case something goes wrong (not unreasonable at the time), scenes of grandmas and mid wives ripping babies out of mum's hands, struggle to get sleep, worries about finances which prompts Cummings to take a job he doesn't like

Tashlin's vision arrived pretty formed. There's lots of his touches, like jokes about sex (Cummings collects a hooker/floozy thinking she's a baby sitter), animation references (the family watch a cartoon)

I feel a third main character would have helped more - there's a nanny but even she's a little skim.

Still this is charming and sweet.

Movie review - "God Told Me To" (1976) ***1/2 (rewatching)

 I saw this only a few years ago but couldn't remember it - just flashes of Andy Kaufman at the St Patrick's Day Parade. I saw it on the big screen. Enjoyed the New York locations, the 70s actors, the ambience. Tony Lo Bianco was solid. Loved Deborah Raffin. Her part could't been bigger - she could've been used to explain things. I got confused in the second half. It was wild.

The scene of the actor explaining how he killed his family was powerful. Some plots cried out for more treatment - such as the cabal of rich people helping the demon. More Richard Lynch.

Full of ideas.

Movie review - "Two Moon Junction" (1988) **1/2

 This film was a big deal in its day - Sherilyn Fenn was a very big deal. It's some classy erotica from Zalman King with Fenn as a hoity Southern belle who gets horny for hunky carnival worker Richard Tyson. Both are very good looking. And they commit.  Fenn is a natural. The two leads have plenty of heat.

There's an impressive support cast - Burl Ives, Lucille Fleticher,  Hervé Villechaize, Kristy McNichol (she goes topless too), Martin Hewitt (Brooke Shields' lover in Endless Love), a young Milla Jovovich.

Looks gorgeous. I wasnt one hundred percent into the story but Fenn looks terrific and it's an elevated movie.

Kevin Kline Top Ten

 1) The Big Chill (1983) - stands out in a great cast as Larry Kasdan's surrogate

2) Silverado (1985) - again playing Kasdan, in a Western

3) A Fish Called Wanda (1989) - very funny

4) Dave (1993) - this is very 90s but its heart was in the right place

5) No Strings Attached (2011) - funny support performance

6) Grand Canyon (1991) as Kasdan again

7) In and Out (1997) - a deal in its day, he is charming

8) Soapdish (1991) - very funny

9) The Pirates of Penzance

10) The Ice Storm

Movie review - "Vamp" (1986) ***

 A clear inspiration for Tarantino's From Dusk til Dawn  - three guys go looking for a stripper in a club and find one (Grace Jones) only to realise she's a vampire. That's a decent premise and this is a pretty fun movie.

It could have done with more character interaction between Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler and Gedde Watanabe. Deedee Pfeiffer is very sweet as the waitress who has an old crush on Makepeace. Grace Jones is perfect in the role.

Apparently they wanted Jerry Lewis to play the barteneder but New World didn't go for his price - they went with Sandy Baron. Billy Drago is in it too.

It's silly rather than scary but is made with energy and a bit of flair.

Movie review - "The Great American Beauty Contest" (1973) ** (warning: spoilers)

 Classic Spelling-Goldberg television movie - high concept, lots of starlets, some old time-y stars. It focuses on a beauty contest, run by Robert Cummings and Eleanor Parker (a former beauty queen and actress with a Secret). 

There's a heap of plots: Louis Jourdan blackmails Parker into getting help for Susan Darnonte to sleep with him; Darnonte has a neglectful dad; one of the contestants is black, Tracy Reed; Farrah Fawcett has a boyfriend (Larry Wilcox) who doesn't want to be ignored; Joanna Cameron plans to make a feminist protest. I'm surprised there wasn't a killer out to get them.

The film is silly but it moves along at a fast clip (75 minutes!) and does tackle some issues, such as racism, feminism and soon. But the film loses a lot of points by having Parker scold Tracy Reed about racism and have Cameron win and not be feminist at the end.

Movie review - "The 4.30 Movie" (2024) **

 Kevin Smith fans were hoping for a return to film from this film - he'd given up marijuana, was making a heavily autobiographical movie about a tubby kid in New Jersey 1986. The basic idea is simple and could've been great - young teen invites girl out (though they've already kissed and she seems very keen on him and so there's no stakes).

The young actors aren't very good. They yell at each other a lot.

The piece lacks logic and a sense of truth. Like it builds up to him taking a girl to the movie which is great, but then they go to the movie that morning as well and get kicked out.

I think Smith made a mistake focusing on the one guy and his story - that should've been more of a subplot. It needed three or four stories like American Graffitii. That way you could focus on the location, and cut from story to story.

There's a few too many "hey isn't this inaccurate prediction about the future funny" jokes. And also the trailers of films they see don't seem real - did they have grindhouse trailers in 1986 suburban theatres? On VHS yes but not in the movies.

Movie review - "Angel" (1984) ***

 The first movie New World made, I believe, after Roger Corman left. It's very good exploitation - a solid, easy to understand concept (high school student works the streets of Hollywood as a hooker), with a strong story engine (serial killer is knocking off hookers). Donna Wilkes plays a fifteen year old (!) who's been doing it since she was 12 (!!) but the impact of this is lessened as Wilkes looks so much older and never does nudity (there's more nudity from the girls in high school who all look as though they're in their twenties). Wilkes handles the lead quite well - she's very empathetic.

The unexpected strength of the film is its sense of family - Angel gets on with the other hookers (one of whom has a sweet prospective romance with a Charlie Chaplin impersonator), and has nice friendships with Susan Tyrell and cross dresser Dick Shawn, and cop Cliff Gorman isn't judgey about street walkers, and the most vile person in it apart from the serial killer are the male snots at high school. So when people die it means something. Elaine Giftos from Student Nurses pops up as the guidance counsellor and John Diehl is the killer.

Cliff Gorman actually doesn't so much - doesn't solve any crimes, get the killer , or even save Angel's life. That's all Dick Shawn, Rory Calhoun. But he's got gravitas.

The film surprised me. Not that sleazy and it had a lot of heart.

Movie review - "Children of the Corn" (1984) **

 Apparently Stephen King's original draft focused its opening scenes on the arguing couple as per his brilliant short story - I think he was aiming at a slow build tale along the lines of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Totally legitimate. But it went to New World who made a pulpier, shockier version (more "bumps" earlier) - also legitimate. It breaks POV to incoporate the young kids, which TBH is less scary. The couple who come across the town are happier, younger.

The film has a terrific story which cries out for atmospheric treatment and true horror. The cast are pretty good - the main kids are appropriately scary. But too much of it is silly like Peter Horton scolding them about religion. There's not a high enough death toll. No sense of dread. It's too much a vehicle for Peter Horton being heroic - with Linda Hamilton being rescued.

So basically you have to let go of this being a good movie and just enjoy its clunky straight to video ness.

Movie review - "Tuff Turf" (1985) ***

 It didn't really twig for me until about 30 minutes in that James Spader was meant to be a former rich kid sent to a crummy high school -  once I got that, then I understood this film and why Spader was cast. It shouldn't have been hard to set that up.

This is part teen melodrama, with Spader falling for the girl (Kim Richards, very pretty and good) of the local hoon (Paul Mones, who Michael Pare slapped around in Streets of Fire). It's also part musical with Spader singing to Richards, and forcing her to dance with him, and big production numbers, and lots of music.

Nice to see Spader playing a hero in this era, and Robert Downe y Jnr as his friend. Spader and Richards are a cute couple and Mones is a decent villain. It goes on a bit - the final fight is especially long - and lacks the strong handling of a really good B but it was fun.

Book review - "The Billy Bob Tapes: A Cave Full of Ghosts" by Billy Bob Thornton and Kinky Friedman

 Entertaining memoir from Thornton told in the form of conversations and chats from friends such as Robert Duvall. Angelina Jolie wrote the intro. Doesn't talk much about his early marriages. The stories of growing up are vivid as are those of him being a young man in Arkansas then trying to break in Hollywood. Generous and spiritual. The last third is full of a lot of rants about how the world is going to hell and the internet is horrible - turns into middle aged white man ranting. Always interesting though as we don't often get an insight into Thornton's mind.

Written when Ang was with Brad and Thornton endorses them. Goes up until Jayne Mansfield's Car. Talks a lot about music.

TV review - "The English Teacher" Season 1 (2004) *****

 Excellent comedy. Funny. Differentiated characters. Well cast. Has a point. Love the editing.

Movie review - "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (1974) *****

 Really accomplishedn filmmaking. Considering its budget and aims it's a masterpiece. Very confidently handled. No wonder people thought Tobe Hooper was going to be a superstar.

Everything works. John Larroquette's opening narration, warning what's going on. The slow build up. The family squabble - wheelchair brother. The sense of unease - talking astrology, killing cows, meeting weirdos. The logic - they need petrol, go to a house to find petrol, are warned away. The first death is quick and brutal and just like how cows are killed (the stunned person). The second death is more drawn out but very much like real killing of animals. The third kill adds to it. Then there's the fourth. Then the last act has Marilyn Burns scream and run in terror for something like half an hour. It's brilliantly intense.

All the actors are pretty good. The location is wonderful. It feels hot, instense, lonely. The themes are primeval - heat, survival, screaming, and family: Burns and her brother and the killers, both have believably bickering families. It has wonderful lore. You sense the history, the backstory. The creepy things in the house.

It's just very well done.

Movie review - "Bullseye" (1987) **1/2

 David Stratton had a soft spot for this film which was made for almost $5 million - it's up there on screen - but was barely released, although it was screened theatrically in the US.

Certainly worse films got a wider release, and the movie is entirely fine, but it's not a lost masterpiece. The central story is strong - based on Harry Reardon's cattle drive - but it never quite seems to got alive. Paul Goddard is not a particularly engaging lead neither is Kathryn Walker as his lady love.

They're surrounded by a fine galaxy of hams who do their thing - John Wood, Bruce Spence, John Meillion, Rhys McConnochie, Kerry Walker, Lynette Curran - but it never seems to come alive. Actually that's not true - when Spence is on screen it seems to work. 

There's a lot of shadows and I'm not sure the music is right (there's rousing tune at the end - more of that was needed instead of the Paris Texas vibe). The desert photography is pleasing and there's plenty of production value.

But it lacks pace and drive. There's not a lot of laughs. I think Walker should've gone on the cattle drive. It needed more star power - like a Jack Thompson.  More stakes.  Better Aboriginal characters than the wise old tracker who has minimal dialogue. Something. The film just lacks "oomph".

Don't know what Bob Ellis (credited with "additional dialogue") contributed. Presumably the stuff in the brothel and Phil Scott singing on the piano and Curren refusing to sleep with Paul Chubb.

Quick fixes - have the girl go on the trail, had her be the squatter's daughter, had a real villain who is going to kill Goddard, have some conflict between Goddard and the girl which evovles to love, have a rival for the girl. Just basic stuff.

Movie review - "Drawing Flies" (1996) **

 I'll give this to Kevin Smith - he made a break with Clerks and immediately tried to give back supporting films like this and Vulgar. These films did not break through. I had affection for it - the black and white photography, the opening scenes of Gen Xes at parties, sitting on couches, drinking beer, cameos from Smith, Joey Lauren Adams, Ethan Suplee and Scott Mosier (I wish all their parts had been bigger). Jason Lee and Jason Mewes have big roles - they are friends who with some othr friends go on a search for bigfoot.

I couldn't tell the characters apart aside from Jason Mewes because it was Mewes and Jason Lee in the last act when he goes mad.

Movie review - "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" (1974) *** (warning: spoilers)

 The most Sam Peckinpah title of all Peckinpah films, this has become a big cult, with its title, seedy Mexican setting, Warren Oates leading role, interesting cast (including Gig Young and Robert Webber as assassins), love story at its core between Oates and Isela Vega, woman who is raped but also enjoys it (Kris Kristofferson drags Vega off to the bushes but she seems willing).

It's almost two hours and feels dragged out with lots of scenes of chatting in the car - Oates and Vega and then Oates and the head. There is violence but it is short and sharp.

Beautifully shot, Mexican locations, dodgy views of men and women, Oates having a high old time, Young looking seedy AF, chatting to a head. Vega's murder happens off screen - he wakes up and finds she's been killed, but that is interesting. It also happens half way through. We never meet Garcia - lot of off screen drama.

But the film has its own integrity.

TV series "The Westerner" ep 2 "School Days" (1960) ***

 This one is directed by Andre de Toth and was not written by Sam Peckinpah, but it still has a strong story: Brian Keith kills a man, takes him to the nearest house... owned by the dead man's brothers. The dead brother had just killed a woman. It's solid story and the lynch mentality, wanting Keith to dig his grave and die is well done. Tough. Serious.

Movie review - "Convoy" (1978) **1/2

 Making of this was famously troubled, like so many Sam Peckinpah films, with the cocaine riddled director booted off the film. It has a lot of pleasures - gorgegous shots of trucks going through the desert, Kris Kristofferson looking handsome, a sense of camraderie around the truckers, a feeling of pace and speed (they're always in trucks).

It's got silly things like Ali Macgraw's perm. I always remember the trucker girl Kristofferson slept with and how sad faced and unhappy she looked and wondered if that was the original intent which was surely to show Kristofferson to be a stud.

Ernest Borgnine's racism against Ajaye is very effective dramatically. It's great there's a black female trucky too. Bognine works well as a villain even if the "top level government conspiracy to get Kristofferson" is confusing and dumb and probably the result of too many drugs. Macgraw isn't much in this - if only they'd given her straight hair - but she doesn't have much to do, her tan matches nicely with Kristofferson and she does serve as a non-trucking surrogate for the audience to identify with. (This may have helped the film become such a big hit.)

And that title track is catchy.

James Coburn directed second unit!

TV review - "Nodbody Wants This" (2024) ***1/2

 The first three or so episodes are perfect - beautifully cast, well done, funny, lovingly shot. But as the series goes on it gets increasingly silly as if madcap LA girls took over the plot room with Kristen Bell acting like a child, and Adam Brophy becoming more of a cardboard cut out, this perfect man who just accepts everything. Which is a shame because when the show plays the reality of the characters and situation a bit more, less sitcomy and more honestly, it works wonderfully well.

Movie review - "Tempe Tip" (2001) **

 I think they were hoping for something like The Castle but it's not very funny. Jason Donovan is good value as a dad married to Helen Dallimore who moves into a house with a backyard. They think there's money in the backyard and dig it up.

The shenanigans are not interesting, there's no jokes, a quite spectacular sequence at the end when the rain comes pouring in. There's a lot of comic caricatures especially ethnics. The film strives for a deeper meaning it can't convey and some roles seem undercast eg Gary Day in a part that needed someone more iconic. Jason Donovan has an easy charm and the film's heart is in the right place. It's not very good.

Movie review - "During One Night" (1961) **

 Odd story - US pilot Don Borisenko is a virgin. His co pilot is rendered importent in a flying mission so he determines to lose his virginity. He can't get it up with a prostitute. Tries another, who sets him up for robbery. Finds a shy and gorgeous Susan Hampshire. They fall for each other. She wants sex. He can't get it up again. The MPs take him away. A chaplain is nice. He doesn't throw the book at him. Lets him sees Hampshire again. Gets it up this time.

It feels like a TV play at heart. But it's full of interesting touches. Nicely directed and acted. The topic of impotency is at least different. It's sensitively handled. There's some exploitation - an action sequence at the beginning where his co pilot is shot, nudity from the prostitute (we see nipples!) and then later from Hanpshire (her back). The film needs it TBH it is slow. But it's different.

Movie review - "Death of a Soldier" (1986) **

 Philippe Mora is such a bright, engaging conversationalist I keep wishing his films were better but this isn't very well directed. A good true life story - a Yank soldier turned serial killer in WW2 in Melbourne - is done without any real atmosphere or tension, and over the top acting.

There's a lot of older actors in it, who capture the tone and mood of the war, but they're old and wars were fought by the young. The costumes and everything are there, but it feels like a re enactment.

James Coburn is an officer. Bill Hunter and Maurie Fields are cops. Michael Pate is a Yank. Everyone feels old even the soldiers. Reb Brown isn't bad as the killer.

But what's the point. The guy kills. He's caught. He's hung. There is a little outrage at the speed of it but he's killed three women.

What a disappointment.

Movie review - "The Snake Woman" (1961) **

 Sidney Furie's second British film. It's the sort of movie I should like - British horror about a woman who turns in to a snake and kills people, decent story - done in with too many two handers, too much chat, too many scenes indoors. No atmosphere. Too much dull hero John McCarthy. Not enough snake woman - though Susan Travers isn't much in the role. Only 70 minutes.

Neil Simon plays - autobiographical or not?

Come Blow Your Horn (1961)* - yes, based on his brother and parents
Little Me (1962) - no, musical
Barefoot in the Park (1963)* - yes, based on his first marriage
The Odd Couple (1965)* - kind of, based on his brother and mate
Sweet Charity (1966) - no, musical adaptation
The Star-Spangled Girl (1966) - no, Simon regretted not doing concept justice
Plaza Suite (1968) - no, just funny
Promises, Promises (1968) - no, musical adaptation
Last of the Red Hot Lovers (1969) - no, just funny
The Gingerbread Lady (1970) - no, based on people he roughly knew
The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1971) - no
The Sunshine Boys (1972) - no, based on old vaudevillians
The Good Doctor (1973) - no, Chekov
God’s Favorite (1974) - no, Job (bad play)
California Suite (1976) - no, just funny
Chapter Two (1977)* - yes, based on his second marriage
They’re Playing Our Song (1979) - no, musical
I Ought to Be in Pictures (1980) - no
Fools (1981) - no, old Russian
Brighton Beach Memoirs (1983)* - yes, expressly so
Biloxi Blues (1985)* - yes, time in army
Broadway Bound (1986)* - yes, starting career
Rumors (1988) - no, farce
Lost in Yonkers (1991)* - yes based on childhood
Jake’s Women (1992)* - yes based on ex wives
The Goodbye Girl (1993) - no, musical
Laughter on the 23rd Floor (1993)* - yes based on TV career
London Suite (1995) - no just funny
Proposals (1997) - no
The Dinner Party (2000) - no
45 Seconds from Broadway (2001) - no
Rose’s Dilemma (2003) - no

So it’s actually a smaller proportion than I thought - ten if you include Odd Couple. I think bc the blockbusters and critical hits are autobiographical they overshadow other work.

Al Pacino Top Ten

 1) The Godfather - yes, I know, easy choie

2) Dog Day Afternoon - ditto - he's still very good

3)Cruising - I gotta say, he commits

4) Heat -I used to find this hammy now I find it great

5) Dick Tracy - over the top fun

6) Carlito's Way - the film is still underrated, it's terrific

7) Donnie Brasco - this is a very good movie

8) Glengarry Glenn Ross - Pacino had such a 90s hot streak (cf the 2000s)

9) Any Given Sunday - not belivable as a footbal player but lots of fun

10) Scarface - sure why not

Movie review - "Doctor Blood's Coffin" (1961) ** (re-watching)

 Saw this again after reading the book on Sidney Furie. It's competently directed, quite stylish. In colour, set outdoors in Cornwall which is different. Keiron Moore is a lump. He grabs Hazel Court's arse. Not bad.

Book review - "Sidney J Furie Life and Films" by Daniel Kremer

 Excellent book about an interesting filmmaker. He was treated as a bit of a punchline for a long time and Furie has been associated with a lot of disasters - quitting Night of the Juggler, fired off The Jazz Singer, plus Superman 4 and Gable and Lombard and a lot of flops from big stars (The Appaloosa, Little Fauss and Big Halsy)  - but I remember seeing Ipcres File and thinking this was pretty impressive. And his filmogrraphy holds up. Lots of popcorn fun, from Cliff Richard musicals and Iron Eagle to solid biopics like Lady Sings the Blues and flashy spy movies like Ipcress. I have a lot of gaps on my Furie list which I will try to address.

Great stories like Jeannie Berlin walking off Sheila Levine and dealing with Jill Clayburgh on Gable and Lombard and Brando on Appalosa. Interesting that Michael Caine never worked with him again. I presume bad luck.

Kremer skims over his later movies. Just compared to the others.

It's an excellent book.

James Coburn and Australia

 1) The Great Escape - mangled the accent, nailed the attitude

2) Death of a Soldier - Australian film with Coburn as the imported star

3) Payback - Coburn had a good support role in this film from Aussie-when-it-suits-us Mel Gibson - he and Gibson were also in Maverick together

4) Dead Heat on a Merry Go Round - Coburn impersonates an Aussie

5) Babe in th Woods - early TV play written by Aussie Sumner Locke Elliott starring Coburn

6) Major Dundee - Coburn and Aussie Michael Pate have support roles

7) Duck You Sucker - Cobun took a role originally offered to George Lazenby

I'm kind of stretching...

Musicals - Cry Baby versus Hairspray

 Listened to the cast album of Cry Baby - the broadway show. I know it's only going off cast albums but I think I can see why that didn't work and Hairspray did. As a musical that is - I prefer Cry Baby as a film. But it doesn't have a lot of story - the film runs out as is. Also the characters are less vivid - Johnny Depp and Amy Locane are a solid centre, and there's decent villains (the smarmy guy, the fake pregnancy girl) but the others are more a galaxy of types - Hatchet Face, Ricki Lake.

Compare Hairspray - it's got the overweight girl, and her mum and geeky dad, and her best friend and the friend's religious nutter mom, and the cute guy and bitch girl and her mum, and the black singer, and the black boyfriend. Hairspray has a natural playground - the Corny Collins show - and is about two big issues: treatment of fat people and treatment of blacks. There's more to work with. Cry Baby doesn't have these. It's about outsiders.

Also I think the music in the film is better than Broadway. It was rock a billy, catchy, fun, The musical music feels more generic.

Movie review - "Bite the Bullet" (1975) ** (warning: spoilers)

 Richard Brooks had a big hit with The Professionals and went back to the well with another macho, male driven Western in a slightly odd time period (1906 or something like that) with a rousing score. This has neat photography and an interesting cast but you're bound to wonder "why should we care". The Professionals had clear stakes - kidnapped woman, cash. This is about a cross country race. You can give stakes to a race but Brooks can't crack the problem here. 

There's two old mates Gene Hackman and James Coburn, and a callow kid (Jan Michael Vincent), and a hooker (Candice Bergen), a Brit (Ian Bannen), an old poke (Ben Johnson).

It needed more stakes. More character differential. There's some nice scenes and the actors are fine. The horses are pretty as is the scenery But I got lost what the race was about or why we should care or what was going on. Some robbers turn up and that perks things up because it's clear and clean what they want and the stakes are life and death.

At the end Hackman and Coburn cross the line together. It might mean more if we got a sense they were friends, or rivals, or brothers, or cared. Coburn's character could be removed. So could Johnson. Actually Johnson and Coburn could be merged.

Oh, I'm picking. I don't know. It was loud and pretty and kind of lifeless. Burt Reynolds and James Caan were going to be leads at one stage - they would've given the piece more urgency.

Book review - "Eruption" by Michael Crichton and James Patterson (spoilers) (2024)

 Cobbled from notes in Crichton's papers and put together quite professionally by Patterson. I don't know who did what. I'm guessing the heavy volcano mumbo jumbo was from Crichton. He specialised in taking a silly concept and grounding it in as much reality and research as possible. I totally bought it.

The novel started well, with its set up of a Hawaiian volcano about to expode and the reveal that it has gas that would wipe out the world and a plan to blow up the volcano and divert lava.

It gets less effective as it goes on. Main problem - the army and President keep everything hush hush. Why not tell the world and get the world's resources devoted to getting out the gas and blowing up the volcano? It affects the whole world. Why not tell the town and get them to evacuate?

The tough hero scientist Mac is particularly dull. Like he's tough and impulsive and has some girlfriend and... ugh. He's cardboard. I'm not sure why the reporters are Bad or the head of civilians or the volcano experts who appear on (gasp) TV.

The final volcano isn't bad with a decent death toll. They could've had that an evacuatin. But it sets things up nicely for a suicide run then goes into a deux ex machina. Frustrating.

Easy to read. Short chapters.

Movie review - "Looking for Kitty" (2004) **

 After a swing at being a movie star, Ed Burns went back to basics and made another lower budgeted film playing a private detective who looks after the ex of David Krumholz. It's not a bad premise for the movie but there are no twists and turns. It's mostly Krumholz and Burns trudging around New York and talking. 

Krumholz is a boor - attached to his vows, a dull person, all too easy to see why his wife left. Burns isn't that interesting - he has charm, cranks aout the rich, his wife is dead... Both Krumholz and Burns help each other come out of their shells, I guess, but not to a great degree. Certainly not an itneresting one.

They don't find Kitty to the last few minutes. It's not that compelling. When Burns ask her why she left, he already knows.

Burns has some nice by play with Connie Britton as his neighbor and it would've been a better movie had she hired him to track down her husband or something and it had played as a romance. As a bromance it's not that exciting.

Movie review - "The Carey Treatment" (1972) **

 Blake Edwards whined that MGM cut this movie around and I'm sure Jim Aubrey and co did even though it co stars Aubrey's daughter but it's still long even at 100 minutes taking all this time to get going.

The strength of the novel was its fast pace and technical detail, both which aren't conveyed. The faults of the novel - its tropes - do survive. Like the book there's not enough compulsion for James Coburn to investigate - I think they should've made Jennifer O'Neill (who's pretty but whose part is pointless) be the doctor who got arrested and Coburn investigates it to free her because he loves her.

There's some effective bits and it's not a bad story. Coburn is a swinger and groovy but though he spouts the dialogue isn't entirely convincing as a dogged pathologist. Actually O'Nell would've been better in his role because as a woman she might have a reason to defend an abortionist. You know, Raquel Welch would've suited this.

Thereis a scene where Michael Blodgett gives James Coburn a massage that is very homoerotic. Blodgett is an effective villain and there are neat turns from people like John Hillerman.

But it doesn't have Edwards' patented style and gloss. Variety was right it feels like a TV movie. I think the only point to making these sort of films by the 70s was if you made it glossy and had stars in them.

Book review - "The Late Child" by Larry McMurtry (warning: spoilers)

 Sequel to The Desert Rose gets off to a great, if dark, start  with Harmony discovering her daughter Pepper has died, and Harmoney's boyfriend taking off. But after that McMurtry doesn't have any place to go - he bring in Harmony's sisters who chat away (one is a sex addict which does provide some comedy) and Harmony has a young child a cute kid and they wind up in New York and meet some uninteresting characters - some Arabs, a prostitute, her pimp, a dog. There's a plot where the dog falls off the Statue of Liberty and lives and the son and dog become celebrities, and the daughter died of AIDS from straight sex, and then they all go back to Oklahoma and the New York characters leave and Harmony's other family comes in, mum and dad and it's all mum's fault because she's a bitch. It goes on and on.

I liked Harmony because of her resilience but this felt like a lazy book, McMurtry pushing out five pages a day and not revising it. I was relieved when it ended.

Movie review - "In Like Flint" (1967) **

 Fox were so happy with Our Man Flint that got work started on a sequel before it came out - it did well, was a hit, and so the second one came. It did okay, less well, but Coburn refused to make a third. I think he should have because those two films were really the only ones he starred in that were hits.

This had great photography and that classic Jerry Goldsmith score and some pretty women. J Lee Cobb is in drag. The story isn't bad - clones and women wanting to take over the world. The sexual politics are dodgy AF with Coburn laughing at women wanting to throw over the patriarchy then leading them to fight off the men. I liked the women kicking some arse but it has the vibes of a film made by people going through a divorce.

This has more Matt Helm vibes.

Movie review - "No Looking Back" (1998) **

 Ed Burns ran out of things to say with this movie, which takes what would've been a subplot for his first two movies and drags it out over a feature - Lauren Holly is engaged to Jon Bon Jovi and ex Ed Burns turns up. We find out early on that she was pregnant and he paid for an abortion. That's about it. Oh Holly can't have kids - that's the third act twist.

The windswept locations are beautiful, the cast is pretty, there's some nice Springsteen songs. There's a lot of working class acting in this - lotta smoking, lotta drinking beers. Every scene some actor seems to spark up or drink a beer - after a while it gets to be a joke.

Holly doesn't quite fit in the world which is the point I guess. The movie's a bit of a love letter to her. I'm not sure she's got It (she was an It girl at the time with Jim Carey and all that). In her defence Burns can't dramatise her issues. But you sense Cameron Diaz or Jennifer Aniston who'd been Burns' last film would've nailed in it.

Jennifer Esposito does fit in. She has a great moment where she makes a move on Bon Jovi. More scenes to the suport characters would've been better. Bon Jovi gets a great scene where she cries. Blythe Danner is in it. Her scenes aren't bad. Connie Britton.

Possibilities are hinted at but not really explored - Burns' character being dodgy (I do like that Burns doesn't play him for sympathy).

Movie review - "Newlyweds" (2011) ***1/2

 A delight - Ed Burns' best movie in a long time. Simple, understated, subtle. Unplotty but there is a strong story - a couple on their second marriages for both (Burns, Caitlin Fitzgerald) deal with another couple(her sister is married to his mate) and his hot mess of a sister (Kerry Bishe).

Very Woody Allen with foursomes chatting in diners, and talking to camera. Some old creaky Burns lines about men and women and sex and I feel Fitzgerald's sister could've done with another scene or beat to show vulnerability (no knock on the actor who is good, she's just a little too much of a villain). 

But generally this is wonderful -a mature work, it pops along (talking to camera helps), the subplot about Fitzgerald's ex works well, the tension of the rules of a family member at home works excellently. Fitzgerald and Bishe are outstanding and Burns rises to match them - actually all the acting is strong.

Movie review - "Candy" (1968) **

 Cripes. The novel was popular, apparently. I don't think anyone reads it anymore. I haven't heard anything good about this movie so I was surprised to find myself enjoying it so much at first. It got off to a flying start with its groovy visuals and music and all star cast. Ewa Aulin isn't much of an actress but she's gorgeous - apparently Terry Southern wanted an All American type like Hayle Mills which would've been interesting but maybe too confronting.

Candy has a series of encounters with men who all manhandle her. This isn't a film that's strong on consent. What it does have is a series of encounters with stars, and you find yourself marking the vignettes. Richard Burton is hilarious as a Dylan Thomas type poet - he really commits and goes all out. Ringo Starr is less fun as a lechy Mexican. John Astin (in probably the second biggest role) is Candy's dad. Walter Matthau is a funny as a general but as Pauline Kael pointed out this sort of character was old hat by then. James Coburn is very funny as a doctor, he plays it in the right spirit as does Anita Pallenberg (sexy nurse) and John Huston.

There's an unfunny sequence with some Italian actors playing gangsters and an even less funnier one with Charles Aznavour as a hunchback and I wasn't wild with Marlon Brando in brownface as a guru or the cimax where she has sex with her dad Astin.

Look, the film exists and it's got stars in it and is weird. Everyone disowned it but it did business.

Book review - " The Day the World Ended: The Mount Pelée Disaster: May 7, 1902" by Gordon Thomas, Max Morgan-Witts (1969)

 I wasn't that familiar with the disaster - it happened in a French colony in the Caribbean - but it was remarkable with around 30,000 people wiped out in a few minutes due to an exploision, ash cloud and fire. The thing is the situation got bad for weeks and weeks earlier, mudslides and fires and mini exploisions and the town wasn't evacuated. This is an examination of inertia and denial, rulers swept up in petty politics (there was a local election at the time), the Church being useless, stiff upper lips, a weak press. All too many resonances today with climate change.

Film rights were purchased but it wasn't filmed, at least I don't think so. I can see why. The actions are so frustrating from humans. However tremendous action set pieces - mud, ash, snakes going mad and attacking humans, cats taking on the snakes, voodoo sparking up, gore of people being killed, lots of dead kids and babies. It's a harrowing read.

Movie review - "Megalopolis" (2024) **

 Too many thoughts to put down in a coherent form so I'll do dot points:

- this didn't have to cost $120 million, at heart it's people in rooms talking

- props to a boomer blowing his fortune on an indulgent movie

- it feels like a third year drama school play - a verse drama, cobbled off Roman history, lots of "wisdom" and pretension, lousy female roles

- occasionally some genuine emotion comes through like Talia Shire giving son Adam Driver a serve

- the cast all commit - Nathalie Emmanuel does as well as she can, Driver goes for it, Aubrey Plaza really goes for it, Jon Voight excellent and Shia LeBouf absolutely nails it - whatever the film is, Shia is it

- the adaptation of Rome doesn't work - there's lots of newspapers, and people smoking - also rich families tend not to run for elected office these days it's easier to buy politicians - so there was a level of non reality about it (I know it was expressionistic but things clunked - it was set in our world but also had a 1980s vibe) - I wish he'd just set this in Ancient Rome or gone fully sci fi and set it in the future

- I couldn't follow what was happening (Driver builds things I think and there's elections and... something) and at two horus 15 minutes it was hard

- Coppola can still do violence well as shown with the assassination attempt on Driver

- DB Sweeney and James Remar have small roles! Bless

- obviously very personal about Coppola with his love for a princess daughter and Driver thanking Emmanuel "for making him work" (gotta love those behind the scenes women), and blonde female sex objects

- why was Dustin Hoffman in this film?

Look, he had a go. He really did.

Movie review - "Our Man Flint" (1966) ***

 Sometimes you have to be there. This was one of the many, many, many Bond spoofs but it was one of the first out of the gate - I think it just beat The Silencers to the punch though that was a big hit too. The casting of James Coburn was, in hindsight, a masterstroke - he had a laconic, suave, rugged look, not too imidiatingly pretty, a nice sense of humour. I mean, maybe it would've worked with someone else but who? Think about it - Paul Newman too earnest, Jack Lemmon too goofy. James Garner could've made it work.

Anyhow. It's very 60s. Lee J Cobb got on the nerves as did the gag about the phone. There's some funny bits and pretty girls. Edward Mulhare is suave but doesn't have much of a character to play apart from suave - why not someone more colourful.

I really liked the second half when Coburn went on the mission. That's when Flint worked for his money and girls and was more likable. The island is fun, Jerry Goldsmith's music is terrific, the whole wish fulfilment is hilarious.

Movie review - "Major Dundee" (1965) ***

 A famous they-took-my-film-away-and-butchered-it movie, with Sam Peckinpah bleating loudly about the suits and critics dutifully taking his side. I think there's a lot of great things about this movie but it has an essential flaw. Oddly, fixing that flaw I think would've been easy and saved money but the studio wanted a Roadshow, and Peckinpah prepped for one, then the studio cut budget, and filming went haywire. I get why the studio wanted to cut the budget but if they did they should have junked the Roadshow idea and gotten Peckinpah to properly refigure it. It would've saved money.

The basic idea is very strong - North and South troops team up to chase Apaches into Mexico and clash with the French. There's a knock out cast. You could tell that story with ten people. It's a prison. There only needs to be a few guards.

But there's too many characters. Charlton Heston (very good) leads a a big band and there's all these people whose stories need to be serviced. Richard Harris is the Southern officer, an Irishman (which makes historical sense), James Coburn is a scout, Warren Oates is a Confederate, Brock Peters is a black soldier, Michael Anderson is a bugler seeking revenge against the Apache, Santa Berger is an Austrian doctor's widow, Ben Johnson is a sergeant, there's a sort of peaceful reverend guy RG Armstrong, and there's a Mexican Mario Adorf, Jim Hutton is an officer (I think he's meant to be a scrounger character), there's also some other women, oh and there's Slim Pickens too. And LQ Jones as some Southern soldier who gets these close ups. Like Heston hooks up with Berger, and then has a relationship with another woman. Who cares?

It's impossible to feed all these characters especially when time is devoted to Heston's character having a mid life crsis - which is fine actually. He should be the focal point. And you need Harris' character. Peters' character had great potential and is junked. Oates has a terrific subplot being killed. They should've cut Anderson and Hutton entirely, merged Coburn's characer with Johnson and Adrof... made it  about a small bunch. Trim it right down to, let's say, Heston, Harris, Peters, that merged Coburn character and a few others. 

There's so much terrific stuff. I loved the novelty of them fighting the French at the end. Harris and Heston duking it out is fun. Heston gives one of his best performances and Harris has flair. The Peckinpah regulars are spot on. Actually all the acting is good and the Mexican locations are splendid as is the photography.

What a missed opportunity.

Book review - "Larry McMutry: A Life" by by Tracy Daugherty

 I was always going to find this interesting. Daugherty can write and has done research. The book isn't as good as McMurtry's own autobiographical writing which is so extensive. I was hoping for a little more numbers and date behind the books and movies (sales, etc) - Daugherty draws from letters and writings which have to be taken with a grain of salt. Some of the movie stuff, which I know a bit about, was a little wrong which made me wary of the rest of the book.

Ah, look, this is fine. It's better than fine it's very good. I guess I was hopeing for less quotations from people and letters and writing and more hard facts, like more specificity of who he was sleeping with and how much the different books sold and the money he made. And it'k okay on the novels, not amazing (I acknowledge this is due to the fact I have different opinions from Daughterty as to a few of them).

Movie review - "What Did You Do in the War Daddy?" (1966) ***

 A box office flop despite the fact it was from Blake Edwards and had James Coburn coming off Our Man Flint and a concept that would've seemed idea for the cynical sixties I'd have thought - a US unit in Italy comes across a town that wants to surrender after their wine festival, so the Yanks pretend to meet resistance, which brings in the Germans and US superiors. That's funny.

But maybe when you pick at it, it's not - World War Two was a Good War, so they are ducking out of important service. Also why can't they surrender and then do the wine festival? It doesn't make sense. It maybe would've worked if it was near the end of the war and they'd been sent to fight silly battles and there was a better reason to stop - like give the Americans a really villainous gneneral.

The movie falters in terms of characterisation. The leads are Dick Shawn and James Coburn but Coburn's role is sidelined. I think Shawn is meant to be uptight and Coburn laid back but Shawn gets un-uptight pretty quickly and Edwards can't seem to think of things for Coburn to do, or Aldo Ray who's also in there. Operation Petticoat had very defined characters - Cary Grant was uptight and by the book, the nurses called havoc, Tony Curtis was on the make... The characters here aren't as fixed. You could cut Coburn and Ray out of the film and made it about Shaw and Sergio Fantoni - actually that's what it should've been.

It looks gorgous, there's some funny bits, it was good to see Shawn in a lead role. I did sense Edwards would've been happier with Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis. But also Edwards liked Coburn - he used him on Waterhole 3 and The Carey Treatment - why not give him more to do. The Italian female doesn't have much of a character, or does Sergio Fantoni (friendly Italian).

Movie review - "Harry in Your Pocket" (1973) **

 James Coburn stars in another film from a first time director, Bruce Geller - who worked on Mission Impossible and I think the writers worked on that show. It has a TV movie feel, lots of brown, Lalo Schifrin music. Coburn is a pickpocket working with veteran Walter Pigeon, they hook up with two newbies Michael Sarrazin and Trish Van Dere.

Sarrazin should have been Coburn's brother or son - would've given it more emotional kick. The slang about pick pocketing is interesting but not that interesting.

It's nice that Pigeon had a juicy role - old thief who snorts coke - but watching it I couldn't help think "a lot of other old stars would've been better in this like Bette Davis or someone".

The film doesn't work. It doesn't lean into its love triangle until too late. There's no enough history between Coburn and Sarrazin. More needed to be made of their rivalry.

Or else the film could've been a three girls movie.

Pickpockets arent that interesting. A lot of bumping into people.

Movie review - "Dead Heat on a Merry Go Round" (1966) **

 One of those films inspired by Charade - all groovy, with twists. It's a bit annoying. A lot rests on the shoulders of James Coburn, who gets out of prison and plans a heist. Thing is it takes half the film for him to raise money for the heist, which involves him romancing people - the shrink to get him out of prison, a maid (Nina Grey who is terrible), a socialite (Rose Marie) another cleaner (Camilla Sparv). Most of these actresses are gorgeous and dressed gorgeously but they're swept off their feet by Coburn - who is attractive but not that hot. Even Cary Grant would struggle to have sold it. But it's all so patchy and stop start.

Coburn also imitates various people including an Australian cop! (He was an Aussie in The Great Escape.)

The film gets much better once the heist kicks in and there's some pace.

It looks terrific in that late 60s way. Harrison Ford pops up to deliver a telegram. I struggled to tell the male support cast apart.

Movie review - "Duffy" (1968) ** (warning: spoilers)

 This movie has a good central idea-  some spoilt kids (James Fox, John Alderton) of a rich man (James Mason) decide to rob dad, and hire a tough American (James Coburn), who winds up sleeping with the girl (Susannah York) of one of them.

It has gorgeous photography, neat  location work, fab costumes, and is very groovy. It's all played for comedy though. -I think that was a mistake. It needed to have real stakes - Mason should've been really dangerous, ditto Fox. People should've died.

Also I think there needed to be more difference between Coburn and the Brits. Fox is such a great decadent aristocrat, York an ideal smashing bird and Alderton a good idiot - Coburn should be this gruff, tough Yank but he's a hippy (looking handsome it has to be said).

There's a final twist where York is in cahoots with Mason but it's not much of a twist. Everyone needed a twist.

Movie review - "The Wild Robot" (2024) ***

 Very sweet animated movie, a little reminiscent of Wall E, about a robot on a planet who winds up raising an orphaned geese. Pulls at heart strings very effectively and some gorgeous animation. I got confused about where the humans were - it's on the same planet yes? Also the film seemed to end a few times - really it could have ended with the geese flying away the first time.

Movie review - "The Fog" (1980) *** (re-watching)

 Just put it on for mood and atmosphere and location - it looks so splendid, with that great score, likeable cast. Runs smoothly. Fun to try and spot the reshoots which are quite well integrated. Ending is a little damp squip with randoms in a church and Adrienne Barbeau on top of light house but still worth watching.

Watched a doco on the making of it after - Janet Leigh seems to have cancer, and sad to see Debra Hill looking so smart and healthy knowing she wouldn't live very long.

Movie review - "The Honkers" (1972) ** (warning: spoilers)

 James Coburn backed new talent - this was the first studio film from character actor Steve Ihnat - who died of a heart attack aged 37 at Cannes as this film was being released. It's an actor-y piece with Coburn as a rodeo rider - he's good at his job but is irresonsible, has an ex (Lois Nettleton) he still sleeps with because he's a stud, has a hot young hippy (Anne Archer) who wants him because he's a stud, clashes with locals, has an old mate (Slim Pickens), walks aound a town.

I'm surprised this got greenlit - Coburn wasn't that a big star by 1971 or whenever it was made... but I gues The Last Picture Show made studios go "quick we need our own modern day Western about lost people having sex.

The one outstanding bit is the end sequence when Slim Pickens dies in an accident. Everything else feels too light too dissolute, like minor Larry McMurtry. Coburn is fine but the piece would have been stronger had he been given stronger actors to play off against.

Movie review - "Waterhole #3" (1967) **

 Blake Edwards produced this but did not direct - that job went to William Graham who had a solid TV career. It's a lighthearted Western about the search for gold. There's a balladeer Cat Ballou style and a plot where James Coburn comically rapes Margaret Blye.

I was in the mood of a comic Western and Coburn is really well cast and it's gorgeously shot. But the film started slowly, grew more annoying and I ended up hating it.

Three main issues with this film. First the comic depiction of rape - the film really commits to this plot, Blye complains and keeps complaining and everyone laughs and dismisses it and then she falls for Coburn with no motivating scene. Why not just make her horny and try to seduce him? Was rape really funny in 1967? Was it hilariously trangressive or something? They don't even establish Cobun's a good lover.

Second the storyline is unconvincing. It's about the search for gold but there's no really memorable scenes.

Third Carol O'Connor is undercast. This part needed to have more star charisma to match Coburn - like a genuine star, someone old enough to have a daughter, such as, I don't know, Edward G Robinson or someone.

Movie review - "The Man Who Fell to Earth" (1976) ***

 Okay, so... am still processing... it's long, felt long, has a story but you have to pay attention, which is fine, kind of ends, Nic Roeg is a bit of a dirty perv with that useless subplot of Rip Torn having sex with nubile 18 year old students who are naked and one of them talks to Torn's unerect penis (we get a bit of Bowie's too), and then Claudie Jennings turns up in it as Bernie Casey's wife and she'd nude too. 

David Bowie is perfect, so entertaining and compelling, Candy Clark is lovely (Roeg shoots her body from all angles of course but it's an excellent performance), Torn is good, Buck Henry effective. The most positive depiction of a gay relationship in movies til that time? (Henry and his partner - supportive, loving, long term).

I'm not sure how Bowie got a hold of a British passport but most of it is believable enough though in today's world big business would surely trump the CIA. Very moving with the family back home and the experiments. Anti climactic ending. Varying make up - superb to dodgy.

Movie review - "Hard Contract" (1969) **

 Hitman who has lost zest for life and only sleeps with hookers is given a job which he hopes will fun his retirement but he falls in love... that feels like a very familiar plot and I was expecting a familar film.

But this is a very arty, sixties effort - close in tone to the George Lazenby Bond follow up Universal Soldier in a way. There's a little bit of assassinating but not a lot. Mostly it's chat in European locations.

James Coburn is more effective when chatty but here plays a stoic Alain Delon type - the film feels very influenced by the French. He hooks up with Lee Remick thinking she's a hooker but actually she's a bored housewife. He won't kiss but the film makes sure we know he's great in bed. (Karen Black pops up as another hooker). Lili Palmer is Remick's friend.

The film was written and directed by S Pogostian who was a TV writer and this has the soul of a television play. Lots of chat, mostly dialogues. It would work fine on the small screen. It's directed that way too. Jazzy angles - the John Boorman Point Blank treatment - would have worked. Less bad back projection.

To be fair I think there's also miscasting. Coburn isn't the same as Lee Marvin - far more effusive. He doesn't have chemistry with Lee Remick who is beautiful but aloof, not in a good way. The film is slightly off. The sex isn't that sexy. Imagine, I don't know, Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson in this. More interesting, yes? Actually Sterling Hayden, who plays an ageing hit man, would've been better in Coburn's part.

No real action. I feel sorry for Fox they would've expected some bang bang as well as philosophy but they just got philosophy.

But look film gets points for trying to be different. Coburn spent his stardom on interesting projects - this, Presidents Analyst, Last of the Mobile Hot Shots, etc.

Movie review - "Ride Lonesome" (1959) ***1/2

 James Coburn's film debut and Randolph Scott's third last. Scott plays a bounty hunter tracking James Best. They come across a duo - enigmatic Pernell Roberts and gangly grinning James Coburn, both of whom are superb. Lee Van Cleef adds tang as Best's dodgy brother. Best is great fun.

The dialogue is tangy, the photography beautiful, the plot full of twists. It's low budget but that doesn't matter. Karen Steele is a little silly with her peroxide blonde hair but her performance isn't bad. She's outshone by the men but they do have better roles.

Movie review - "The Desert Rose" by Larry McMurtry (1983)

 Warm, fun, affectionate tale of an aging Vegas showgirl (ie late 30s) and her sixteen year old daughter. So The Gilmore Girls before then. McMurtry loves warm hearted hapless women and this book is full of them. He's maybe a little too warm hearted towards the creepy millionaire who marries the teenage girl. The Vegas milieu is well evoked. It's a warm book but the seediness of the world is still there.

Movie review - "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" (2024) *** (warning: spoilers)

 It's not terrible! Sorry to be cynical. Burton's record hasn't been great. And it's not as though he's got new ideas (I don't think there's a song older than the 1990s). But the old film had plenty of ideas and it benefits from the long gap because it's about Winona Ryder's daughter. 

Catherine O'Hara smashes it as always and Michae Keaton is fun and Jenna Ortega does her thing (there's a few throwbacks to Wednesday eg a dance and a cute boy who's a killer). The film kicks into gear when Ortega starts romancing a ghost. It's sweet to see Ryder in the lead of a big studio feature again.

Lots of fun. Some genuine cleverness. I had a good time.

Movie review - "Hotel de Love" (1997) ** (re-watching)

 Gosh this is a period piece now. The talk of the differences between men and women, the self conscious literary quality, all the quirkiness. There's mugging and over playing. Saffron Burrows is beautiful but can't really act (she got better). Aden Young can act, and isn't bad, just feels a little wrong. Simon Bossell is allowed to over act as is Peter O'Brien. Everyone is fine when they tone down and emote, I've got to say. Oh, and Pippa Grandison, Ray Barrett and Juliet Blake have no trouble shifting gears.

The silly hotel has its own charm with its bright colours. It doesn't have lot of logic (would a hotel with such rooms ever appeal).  

The marriage between Julia Blake and Ray Barrett is so inherently toxic that their reunion is hopeplessly unconvicing. Likewise Simon Bossell's character is basically unhinged - at the end he goes to the airport every Friday to waiy for Grandison, is that right? Like we see them at the end, a very sweet scene... but he's been going for weeks and weeks unsuccessfully?

Movie review - "Is This is the Real World" (2015) ***

 Decent Aussie film which captures the violence and tension of high school. The direction has some flair -tracking shots, music. Sean Keenan has probably played the moody young man role too many times but there's a reason he keeps getting cast in those parts.

More could have been done with Susie Porter's character I feel and the brother but everyone acts well and the handling is sure.

Book review - "Dervish Dust: The Life and Words of James Coburn" by Robyn Coburn (2022)

 Robyn Coburn is an Aussie, married to James Coburn, son of the actor, so this book has an excellent inside track - close to its source but not too close. Certain it''s open about Coburn (I'll use the star's surname more) being a crap father, absent and not interested, and a grumpy old opinionated man. But a fine actor, superb speaking voice, some excellent performances. The book benefits from his letters, thoughts and interviews - as a member of the family the writer has superb access.

Coburn had a fascinating life and career. Tall, deep voiced, silver haired. He got professional work quite quickly. Benefited from being able to study under the GI Bill (he was drafted in the early 1950s but was in Europe not the Korean War). He always seemed to be able to support himself via advertisements - when starting out and later on. When he began getting TV work the jobs came thick and fast - he was ideal as villains in Westerns and played a lot of them. His film career was respectable quickly too - Ride Lonesome then The Magnificent Seven. He had a great run as a second lead. The Flint films turned him into a star but his actual period as a top level name above the star wasn't long. But 1980 there were no more film leading roles, and TV didn't give him that much longer either. But he always had his voice and cameos.

A genuine hippy. Managed to link to popular culture in odd ways - a mate of Bruce Lee's, in the Band on the Run photo, a rejected Cosmo nude centerfold (the one before Burt Reynolds), a big car importer, in some films edited badly by Jim Aubrey. 

He had a great 60s and pretty good 70s. Things went south in late 70s and took a while to bounce back. Won an Oscar with Affliction but that didn't so much for his career. Managed to appear in some iconic films though. Made a LOT of flops.

James Coburn top ten

 1) The Magnificent Seven (1960) - a guide for actors how to do a lot with very little screen time, big impact
2) The Americanisation of Emily (1964) - terrific movie, Coburn excellent as James Garner's sidekick
3) The Presidents Analyst (1967) - when Coburn became a star with In Like Flint he tried to make some "commercial" films that no one remembered and floped (Waterhole 3, Duffy, Hard Contact) but also a chance on this, which flopped but has a deserved cult
4) The Great Escape (1963) - yes it would've been better had an Aussie played this role but Coburn gets the spirit of playing an Aussie and he's great fun (and he's one of the few to escape!)
5) Pat Garrett and Billy the Kit (1973) - way out, flawed, consistently interesting Western which Coburn always adored perhaps influenced by that scene where he gets to be in bed with three hookers
6) The Last of Sheila (1973) - his part isn't that big but this is peak 70s Coburn
7) Our Man Flint (1966) - oh, look, I know, but the film defies criticism in a way...
8) Major Dundee (1965) - another memorable Coburn sidekick (I'd group it with High Wind in Jamaica)
9) Charade (1964) - from Coburn's hot streak of early 60s support parts
10) Fistful of Dynamite (1971) - look, Coburn's not Clint Eastwood but I really like the movie

Book review - "Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine " by Andrew Roberts and David Petraeus

 A look at various Western conflicts after WW2 - Vietnam, Oman, Korea, Malaya. Amazing how much failure. The bits on Iraq and Aghanistan are especially upsetting because they were so pointless, and expensive. Smart book. All the conficts needed political solutions. Just depressing.

Book review - " Face to Face: The Art of Human Connection Book" by Brian Grazer

 Interesting to read, passionately conveyed, very Hollywood and touchy feely, but that's fine. I had the sense he would tell a story about saving someone's life and he did - Harrison Ford's daughter. You can see why Grazer's done so well, all that sincerity and conviction. Not a dig.

Book review - "In a Narrow Grave Essays on Texas" by Larry McMurtry (1968)

 Excellent collection of essays - McMurtry on sure ground, he dives deep on some Texan writers I'd never heard of, takes pot shots at LBJ which are of their time, talks of driving an Texan citites. A joy to read.

Movie review - "Reflections in a Golden Eye" (1967) ***1/2

 When I grew up Ray Stark was this figure of terror, especially in accounts of the David Begelman case and David Puttnam at Columbia, but he had classy taste. This was not obviously commercial material - although I guess it had sexy Southerners and included Elizabeth Taylor stripping off. Maybe that and horny Marlon Brando would've meant more a decade earlier.

Anyway the story - Brando is married to Elizabeth Taylor who is sleeping with Brian Keith who is married to Julie Harris, and Brando is hot for nude horse riding Robert Forster who is obsessed with Taylor. Zorro David is one of cinema's first gay besties - Harris' camp Filipino houseboy.

Brando's performance is interesting - he has a weird Southern accent and does a lot of emoting. I didn't buy it. 

The ending is directed in a slightly silly way IMHO but it seems to have influenced American Beauty - closeted military man kills object of desire.

Book review - "Charlie Chaplin vs. America" by Scott Eyman

 Eyman's done a few books about famous right wingers so here's one about a left winger. It doesn't take on all of Chaplin's life, it focuses bascially on the hatred America had for him - elements of it. It stars at Chaplin's peak in the 1930s then goes into his battles for The Great Dictator, World War Two and the way the USA turned on him - or at least his critics grew in power. It was vicious and ferocious, the big fat slab of facism within American politics (we have it too) going berserk. It wasn't a tragedy as Chaplin held on to his money and had a happy last marriage but it was pretty brutal. A moving book.

Movie review - "Streetcar Named Desire" (1951) *****

 Over seventy years on few cinema entrances beat Marlon Brando walking into the apartment here with his insolence and confidence. Vivien Leigh matches him of course with her brilliance - she has the added advantage of having gone mad. Kim Hunter and Karl Malden are very solid support - the less flashy roles, but so crucial.

It's so much better plotted than most Williams works - the arrival, the mystery of Blanche's past, the concern over money, the use of Mitch, the build to climax.

The domestic violence is startling as is the depiction of sexual longing and satisfaction. The censor imposed final scene is fine because we all know Stella will go back to Stanley within a week.

A masterpiece.

James Darren Top Ten

 

1) The Brothers Rico (1957) - good Phil Karlson drama

2) Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961) - lots of fun (compared to Gidget Goes to Rome which is just depressing)

3) Gidget (1959) - the film is ostensibly about Gidget surfing but in reality about the gentrification of Moondoggie

4) Guns of Navarone (1961) - he's effective in this and should've done more action films

5) The Time Traveller (1966) - no one forgot the skivvies

6) Venus in Furs (1967) - Jess Franco film - gets points for sheer weirdness

7) Diamond Head (1962) - Hawaiian melodrama with Darren as a "local" - quite fun if in right mood

8 ) Gunman's Walk (1957) - decent Phil Karlson Western with Tab Hunter given a decent role

9) All the Young Men (1960) - Korean War movie famous for trying to include someone in the cast for everone: Sidney Poitier for black audiences, Alan Ladd (looking dreadful) for older white audiences, Darren (singing a song) for teens, some Swedish boxer for sports fans, Mort Sahl for comedy fans

10) The Tijuana Story (1957) - Sam Katzman melodrama gives Darren an absurd death sequence running in to the ocean and drowning while being chased by the police but is actually quite compelling in its own way and has a rare Mexican hero in a Hollywood film.

Movie review - "The Silence of Dean Maitland" (1934) **

 At one stage you couldn't go wrong with a horny man of God hooking up with a woman and this was a big hit for Ken G. Hall at Cinesound. At this stage Hall was still very much in learner director mode but he was fortunate to be protected by some solid IP - the story, though hoary, is very solid. John Longden is ideal in the title role as the tormented reverend. Charlotte Francis is ideally sexy as the woman who tempts him. I liked Jocelyn Howarth too as her daughter - she is relaxed and natural although her role is small.

Location filming helps a lot - the seaside town - and it's fun to see little Bill Kerr as a blind kid. There's some wacky comedy from a George Wallace type. The romantic male lead (not Longden, the guy after Howarth) is wet, as so many 30s Australian film leading men were.

The pacing is a little off - gaps between people talking, uncertain sound. It's not as confident as later Cinesound movies. Also I saw an hour long version so character development was cut right down.

Movie review - "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1958) ***1/2

 MGM's luck wasn't great in the late 50s but it held for this Tennessee Williams adaptation - Dore Schary bought it as a vehicle for Grace Kelly who then retired but Elizabeth Taylor stepped in and for all her vocal limitations was a perfect horny housewife. Paul Newman wasn't a big star at the time - rising but not big - but he was offered the male lead (I think Ben Gazzara may have turned it down) and it worked like gangbusters.

Newman doesn't sleep with Taylor because of guilt over his friend more than being gay for his dead friend but that works on its own terms. There's still Burl Ives' bombastic Big Daddy, and Jack Carson and Madeleine Sherwood as Taylor's dreadful in laws (because it's Williams she's more of a shrew he's amiable but waeak).

It's a solid movie. Richard Brooks suits it, at that stage. Taylor, Newman and Ives all get a chance to monologue.

Films MGM could’ve remade in the early 60s instead of the ones they did

 After Ben Hur MGM went on a remake kick. Not surprising considering the success of Ben Hur.

Their choices sunk the studio
- Cimarron
- Mutiny on the Bounty
- Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Also throw in Jumbo.
 

Okay trying not to be too wise in hindsight but... all the remakes made sense. Big screen and colour worked on all.

Mutiny on the Bounty especially. Shot in Tahiti. Gorgeous.

Where the studio really stuffed up with that one? They went into production without a fixed script and a star who overpowered the director. They really just needed to shoot the 1935 script. Update it a little. But it was involving water and going to Tahiti. They needed calm heads. People good on location. Not to make a masterpiece. Just to get spectacle. They should’ve cast Charlton Heston or Burt Lancaster or Kirk Douglas. A little bit of a diva but basically pros.

Cimarron had the right male star and director. But problem - it’s a woman’s story. They gave the female lead to Maria Schell - but then geared the film to Glenn Ford. They needed to have a matching female star, Elizabeth Taylor would’ve been ideal but if not her then I don’t know Debbie Reynolds. Make it more about her. Tell the story of her falling for Ford and so on.

Four Horsemen was the most obvious misfire. Update to WW2 - why? That not fatal but... Glenn Ford killed it. And female stars. Needed to be sexy. Sexless director. Incidentally, this didn’t need to be a big spectacle.

Other flops.
- Wonderful World of Brothers Grimm. Charming film. But dull, dull brothers. Just needed to tell fairytales. Not the dull brothers. Just too much money spent. Blown up too much.
- Billy Rose’s Jumbo. Great star and ideal director. Lost heaps. Musical possibly too old.
 

What else could they have remade from the MGM library? As in, a big budget spectacle
- Tale of Two Cities? Yes but the Brits did it in 1958.
- Marie Antoinette? Yes, but only if right star... Elizabeth Taylor or nothing.
- Gone with the Wind? No point. Same with Wizard of Oz.
- San Francisco? Yes!! Colour, better effects. No Gable but... you could do Glenn Ford.
- The Good Earth? No. Too problematic. Needed genuine Chinese actors by the 960s.
- The Big Parade? Interesting. A big hit. But public more war weary in 1925 than 1960?
- The Birth of a Nation? No!
- The Thief of Badgad? Yes. If they’d gotten the rights. They could’ve done big Robin Hood too.
- The Scarlet Letter? Too depressing.

Movie review - "Sweet Bird of Youth" (1962) **1/2

 Tennessee Williams play had plenty of familiar characters - the male drifter failed actor (a type that was in Picnic), the ageing film star - but was very well done with solid drama, such as the drifter Chance giving his ex the clap, and her foul family castrasting Chance at the end.

MGM cleaned it up. The piece is robbed of its doom and tragedy. It retains much that is very effective - Paul Newman is terrific (as you'd hope so considering he played it on Broadway), ditto Geraldine Page. It think Richard Brooks, with his yelly style, suited Tennessee Williams. He makes sure there's a sexual charge.

This lost money though. Maybe the Williams tide was running out. Maybe it would've been a bigger hit with say Ava Gardner in the lead - but their scenes wouldn't have had the same charge.

Shirley Knight isn't bad but doesn't have the heavy aura of tragedy that role really should have. She doesn't seem like someone who's lost a child. Rip Torn and Ed Begley are electric. Knight was always pretty and fine but her performances seemed to lack an extra gear - just imagine what, say, Joanne Woodward or Gena Rowlands could have done with it.

The ending is dumb. So dumb. That awful pompous bland newspaper editor. Them beating up Chance. But then Chance/Newman and Heavenly/Knight going off together. It's really abrupt too like Brooks was embarassed.

I think the film needed a tragic ending for it to have power. He didn't need to be castrated - he comes back and heroically dies trying to protect Heavely, gets shot by Rip Torn., dies in her arms... that works. Because as it is too much of the play is kept for that ending to work. Newman begs Page for a scren test only a few minutes before the final scene. So there's no redemption. No heroism. He's taking what he can.

Movie review - "The Glass Menagerie" (1950) **1/2

 The play is fine. Simple. Autobiographical. I can imagine is cast correctly it would've played beautifully.

This film is... is what it is. Gets off to wrong start with Arthur Kennedy in the merchant marine. Kennedy doesn't feel like Tom. Too strong. Kirk Douglas is also too strong. I mean, why is he calling on her. He's doing his best. Everyone is. The film is made with care. The cast just annoyed me.

Jane Wyman didn't I should say. She was playing it like the text. Gertrude Lawrence wasn't bad. She was just whatever. The flashback scenes seemed dumb.

Some of the scenes play well - Douglas and Wyman in the dark with the lights. But even then Douglas feels too cocky.

Who would've worked? Well, a faded beauty film star for the role of Amanda. Bette Davis, or someone. And a sensitive new age boy for Tom - Monty Clift, or Farley Granger. 

The happy ending is insulting.

Movie review - "I Love You Daddy" (2017) **1/2

Louis CK pushed things to the edge, and continues to do so, but the content and timing of this one was not idea. Ten years earlier it might've been okay but who knows.

It's very Woody Allen, specifically Manhattan with its black and white widescreen photography, classical music, show business milieu, romancing actresses, being interested in the sex lives of young girls With John Malkovich as a Woody Allen style director - acclaimed as a genius, charming, funny, with a reputation as someone into young girls accused of being a molesterer. Apparently Woody Allen was offered the lead but turned it down. Malkovich plays him more as a Polanski type figure (I sense a European actor would've worked better in the role but Malkovich gives off that sensibility).

 There's a scee where Charlie Day mimes masturbating to the thought of the actress played by Rose Byrne - while Louis CK and Edie Falco are in the room. That's a little close to the bone. Anther scene has Rose Byrne going is it so bad if his daughter is with Malkovich? Plenty of things to discuss.

The cast also includes Edie Falco (as a very recognisable type - the put upon overworked producer), Pamela Adlon (kind of a cameo as CK's ex), Helen Hunt (CK's other ex), Chloe Grace Moretz (daughter), the voice of Albert Brooks. That's a hell of a cast.

I laughed a few times. Felt uncomfortable in other places. The parenting scenes seem to lack a little authenticity Maybe I'm wrong. The story telling is a little iffy - felt not quite enough story, or at least what was there wasn't developed.

Book review - "Folly and Glory" by Larry McMurtry (2004)

 The fourth in the Berrybender novels and the best because things actually happen - well people die and suffer. They could've made this one book. McMurtry introduces all these characters to have some to kii but some do have impact - Tasmin loses one child to cholera and another to murder at the hand of slavers, leading to Sin Killer going on a rampage. I know he's resorting to killing of young kids to get an emotional response but it does work. He also kills off a nice Indian girl who was helping out.

The characters are on the whole paper thin - horny aristocratic women, scungy Indians, rapists, eccentric locals. Lord Berrybender remainder a joke the whole way. The second half of the book was page-turny. It helped having good vengeance plot and then the Battle of the Alamo. I liked the bit where he quickly killed characters with chloera in a page or two.

But generally this series tried my patience. He made things up as he went along and used too many of his tropes.

MGM 1961 ad

 In Variety here:

Look not a bad slate... I understand the desire to remake their old films. Nothing wrong with doing Mutiny and Four Horsemen in colour.

But - costs got away for both. And Four Horsemen was spectacularly misconceived.

Movie review - "The Rose Tattoo" (1955) ***

 A big deal in its day - Anna Magnani had buzz, Tennessee Williams and Burt Lancaster were stars, Daniel Mann was consideredn an exciting director.

It's not bad. Magnani is a woman whose husband dies in an accident. She whines about it. Her daughter Maria Pavan is horny for Ben Cooper. Like all these Williams' adaptations I've been watching it feels a half an hour too long. It drags. Lancaster doesn't appear until like 45 minutes in.

At first I was resistant to it and I'm not convinced it's a great movie or anything - too 1950s-adaptation-of-Broadway - but I got used to it.Lancaster is clearly trying - he's slightly amateurish but he's giving it a go, suits the part physically, and is a handsome charismastic star. Magnani Acts all over the place but she commits too. It helps a lot that the two seem into each other and like each other. This was missing in Fugitive Kind - Brando and Magnani didn't seem to care in that one.

Lots of dialogue and acting and two handers. Cooper is fine, I guess. Pavan is sweet. It's a more upbeat Williams. Happy ending and so on.

Movie review - "This Property is Condemned" (1966) **1/2 (warning: spoilers)

 A tour de force for Natalie Wood who is gorgeous and very good as a wildcat living in a small town panted over by a lot of men, including Charles Bronson (a rail worker) and some old dude John Harding. Then Robert Redford comes into town and he pants over her too.

Redford is handsome and gives what David Shipman once described as his "usual hesitant, nice performance". Director Sydney Pollack once said they never cracked the love story - I think the issue is more Redford struggles to portray lust for Wood. He's always been better as a lust object  - Wood's keen for him but you don't get the sense that she's keen for her. Also the reason he dumps her is so stupid - because his mother says she's a liar. He just believes the mother, walks out on Natalie Wood, who is naked in the shower. I'm sorry he doesn't care about her - why should we care about them?

The film feels vey studio bound although there was some New Orleans filming. Some weird decisions - Wood runs off after Redford discovers she's married and stole money off Bronson (so?).. she dies off screen... we don't know what happened to Redford.

Why not have Bronson appear and kill Redford? Or why not make Redford a complete cad? Why cheat Wood of a death scene? It's so stupid. Wood's excellent performance deserved better. Bronson is good too. The mother is fine. Redford isn't up to it.

Mary Badham is Wood's younger sister. Mary Reid is a stock monstrous Williams mother, and Robert Blake is in it too.

Movie review - "Night of the Iguana" (1964) ****

 Tennessee Williams' last hit on Broadway was also his last hit in the cinemas. He's helped by gorgeous casting: Richard Burton as a defrocked priest (apparently the original choice was James Garner who wouldn't have been anywhere near as perfect), Ava Gardner as a lusty woman running a hotel in Mexco, Deborah Kerr as the seemingly prim woman with fire underneath.

I love its naughtiness - Sue Lyons is so keen to bonk Burton who's fighting her off, and Burton is this boozy loser who is still charismatic, and Gardner has these beach boys with maracas. A big role goes to Grayson Hall who is the antagonist, crucial to the story. John Huston clearly adores his characters and he's obviously loving working in Mexico.

This is a funny, fun joyous film. The constrant references to Burton sleeping with young girls is maybe a little dubious if you think about it too much. And like a lot of these William adaptations it's half an hour too long. But one of the best adaptations of the work - if you get the cating right there's a lot of fun to be had.

Movie review - "Summer and Smoke" (1962) **1/2

 Geraldine Page is a very fine actress just not a movie star. Laurence Harvey isn't bad as the hedonistic doctor but the two of them don't have chemistry. I didn't really get the sense he was that into her or she wanted to be pummelled by him. Others may disagree.

(You know who would've been interesting and who was contracted to Hal Wallis? Elvis Presley. He was Southern and hunky and charismatic and played well with older actors.)

But my core issue of this is it didn't get the transformation of Page's character. She's meant to go from airy fairy to hedonism and that's not really well done. It's a sexless version. I can see why it wasn't that popular.

Pamela Tiffin is pretty as the young horny girl who Harvey winds up marrying. She's a little amateurish but it suits the part.

Movie review - "Period of Adjustment" (1962) **1/2

 Little remembered though it was a hit at the time - well, profitable for MGM at a time when everything from that studio was constantly flopping. Also it was from Tennessee Williams, an early role from Jane Fonda and the first feature from George Roy Hill.

It's a more comic take from Williams - no one's life is destroyed or goes mad, although as in many plays it has men reluctant to have sex with women. Jim Hutton and Jane Fonda get married  but squabble and she winds up at the house of Anthony Franciosa, Hutton's old army buddy who's just had a fight with his wife, Lois Nettleton.

Williams' film adaptations had a good chance it it was about a hot, beautiful female star who was horny - here they were lucky enough to get Jane Fonda. Hutton was a dab hand at comedy, which helps. She and Jim Hutton are sweet. Their plot is Huddon is scared to have sex - he didn't even do it with the gals during the Korean War.

I don't really like Franciosa, he gives off too much of a wife beating vibe (I'm not saying he did it, just that's the sense he gives) even if he's a good actor. I didn't care that much for Lois Nettleton or that plot - she's "homey", he married her for dad's money. It feels 50s TV. Maybe if Nettleton had been more heartbreaking or Franciosa more empathetic. Or more Southern. (John McGiver as her dad isn't very southern). I'm being mean, maybe I just didn't really care about either compared to the others. It's also long.

But it's fine.

Movie review - "Last of the Mobile Hot Shots" (1970) **

 Having missed with an earlier Tennessee Williams film, Lumet strikes out again. An even more imperfect source - The Seven Descents of Myrtle - an even more distinguished screenwriter (Gore Vidal), an impressive cast (James Coburn, Lynn Redgrave, Robert Hooks), James Wong How as cinematographer, Quincy Jones did the score.

I know it's Tennessee Williams but this is a lot of hammy yapping in rooms mostly. Coburn marries Redgrave on a game show then they go to an old house and meet Coburn's brother, Hooks. None of the casting feels right. Coburn starts off bad, I got used to him, he grew into the role more, but he feels wrong. I liked Redgrave at first but then she got on my nerves more and more and was eventually too hard. I wanted to like Hooks, it was great to see a black man in a Williams production but he doesn't feel right. Too lightweight or something.

I didn't get it. I'm not sure Lumet did. On a basic level, the themes of sexual attraction and the menace of the incoming flood are not felt at all.

This film and Boom! killed Williams' appeal as someone whose work Hollywood wanted to adapt (though he came back on TV in the 1980s).

I've got to say though - it's oddness has an appeal.

Winona Ryder Top Ten

 1) Heathers (1989)

2) Beetlejuice (1988)

3) Edward Scissorhands (1990)

4) Reality Bites (1994)

5) Dracula (1992)

6) Age of Innocence (1993)

7) Little Women (1994)

8) Stranger Things 

9) Black Swan (2010)

10) Star Trek (2009(

Movie review - "The Man They Could Not Hang" (1921) **

 Australian film which was a remake of a 1912 film. Both were blockbusters. Weirdly. It's based on a true story - a man they tried to hang three times and failed. This adds a love story, villain all that stuff. Audiences lapped it up. Presumably because the war made them hungry for stories were someone escapes death.

This is shot by Tasman Higgins so looks good.

Movie review - "The Fugitive Kind" (1960) **

 Must have seemed like a sure fire thing - Brando, Magnani, Lumet, Williams, Woodward.

But it doesn't work. It's so long - two hours and feels it. Lots of chat. A small town in New York stood in for the South - that doesn't really work.

I mean, it's interesting to watch these actors. But it's not sexy. Magnani feels off. Brando seems a little too old - he's meant to be thirty, ageing... but he's not trying. The opening scene where he talks is interesting.

On a basic level the film doesn't work - it's not sexy, we don't feel a sense of impending doom about the town.  The material isn't the strongest- there's a reason the play flopped - but it has inherent sex and violence so could work on a base level but doesn't here. Maybe Lumet was the wrong director.

This movie has its fans. I just wasn't in to it.

Brando only did it for the money - oh the days when he'd sell out making a million dollars to appea in a Tennessee Williams adaptation directed by Sidney Lumet!

Book review - "By Sorrow's River" by Larry McMurtry (2003) (warning: spoilers)

 Book three in this series and I'm getting annoyed. Sorry, Larry, I'm sure you're having fun writing it but this is lazy. Now Tamsin falls in love with another guy Pomp who is reluctant to have sex with her. There's some wacky European journalists in a balloon.

A few violent action set pieces liven things up and it does get better once they arrive at Bents Fort. I just didn't care about these characters - Tamsin, her dad, the one dimensional Indians, the characters killed off when McMurtry got bored with them. These stories should have made the one book.

Movie review - "Looney Tunes Back in Action" (2003) **

 Joe Dante's last big budget studio feature - I wish he'd have the chance to do a few more but anyways... This has it charms, particularly some excellent animation, but doesn't quite work. Maybe too frantic or something.Maybe the real world is as cartoony as the cartoon world? Too noisy?

The human characters aren't that well defined. Brendan Fraser is an affable lunk and... that's it - a little more character wouldn't have hurt. (When he plays himself at the end, he has a real character... that had a lot of potential.) Ditto Jenna Elfman's exec... she's very undefined. Fraser is never believable as Timothy Dalton's son. Why not have an American actor? There's no real core emotional relationship to anchor it.

 I think that's the issue - it lacks chaacter and relationships.

Movie review - "Oh What a Night" (1932) **1/2

 This is a short film, a sketch from George Wallace. A better introduction to his talents than features in many ways because it's shorter. It's also more risque, less loveable as the plot is basically drunk Wallace coming home after a night on the tiles with MarshallCrosby and waking up his wife. It is funny.

Movie review - "Harmony Row" (1933) **

 George Wallace's second feature film is like his first an adaptation of one of his revues. It feels stagey - it proceeds in "acts" there's lots of mid shots, Wallace talks to the audience. 

Wallace is talented as are others but it is more of interested as a piece of filmed theatre. The boxing fight at the end is well done - I wonder if Ken G Hall was more influenced by this that he realied.

I watched this film in instalments - someone put it up on the net - and I don't think I missed anything. You could watch the sequences out of order.

Movie review - "Clara Gibbings" (1934) **

 Adaptation of a not particularly highly regarded play, which made a vehicle for Dorothy Brunton who was a name at the time. She's the owner of a pub who discovers she's related to an earl unleashing much class comedy. I'm sure this meant more in England. It Isn't Done dealt with this material better. Brunton isn't that impressive. Campbell Copelin is a funny old leading man.

But still it's of cultural interest.  And it is comptentently done - up to the standard of British B pictures. It's the sort of subject that presumably Frank Harvey, who was associate director and adapted the script, would've been interested in - I wonder if he used some situations in It Isn't Done.

Oh and there's a zoom - I wonder if that was FW Thring or Harvey.

Movie review - "Diggers in Blighty" (1933) **

 Pat Hanna's second film with Hanna as director and Raymond Longford as "associate director". The first segment is a straight war story, played seriously - it feels directed by Longford. Then in comes Hanna and Joe Vallis and his stage mates. There's a subplot about a German spy (Longford), a romance subplot involving a nurse and an officer, as well as the comic shenanigans.

This is interesting as a cultural artefact more than as a piece of entertainment - the comedy bits feel like stage pieces inserted, which is fine, and the serious stuff feels like serious interludes in a musical.

There is plenty of cultural stuff - Aboriginal soldiers, soldiers being funny, references to the Battle of Hamel, etc.

Movie review - "Horseplay" (2003) **

 Good on the filmmakers for taking a bold swing - this is  a farce about dodgy types in the racing industry. If it doesn't quite work they gave it a shot.

Marcus Graham isn't perhaps entirely well cast as a horse trainer who marries the daughter (Tushka Bergen) of a successful trainer (Bill Hunter) but cheats on her with his ex (Natalie Mendoza). He's short of money so he decides to arrange for the wife of a jockey to be kidnapped so he can fix a race.

I know there's a debate over how likeable characters need to be - but they definitely need to be watchable, and it's hard to watch Graham do this, especially as he's doing it just ebcause he's bad with money.

Some of it is a little ahem questionable such as Alyssa McLelland having to gyrate in a bikini and talk about the joys of sex with middle aged men.

Some of the acting is very good - Abbie Cornish, Damien Richardson. I think Marcus Graham is not quite right - Jason Donovan (very animated as Graham's sleazy mate) would've been better.

The film makes some simple errors - like it's got too many blonde women (McClelland, Bergen, Krista Vendy, McClelland's friends) so I got them mixed up. I struggled to tell the difference between the wacky hitman too.

Some critics said there were too many characters - I don't think that's the problem, I just think they needed stronger motivations. For instance I'd have Graham need the money because someone wanted to kill him not just because he's lazy. The film could have used its violence more - it's rather coy on that.

Give Tuska Bergen a moivation. Like what does she want? To rip off her dad? To arrange for Graham to be killed? Marc Owen Taylor is her ex who wants her back but... spends most of the time dancing? As does Donovan's ex and Bergen and then Dichardson and Morales.

Some scenes are mean like McClelland's parents finding her dead and Bergen seeing her father be killed.

Movie review - "A Ticket in Tatts" (1934) **

 George Wallace's third film for Efftee is mostly worth seeing as a cultural time capsule, particularly of Wallace's ability. He's very lively, jumping around, destroing a grocery shop, trying to romance a woman, dealing with horses, doing a nightclub act in a moustache. There's a beyond stupid plot where Frank Harvey makes a bet and if a horse wins Thelma Scott has to marry him  - this is played straight! 

It is fun seeing Scott so young. Campbell Copelin is her true love, looking like he's stepped off a stage - as do most people in this film. John Dobbie is on hand. There's song and dances and it's dim and nicely shot.

The footage of the real life Melbourne Cup is interesting.

Movie review - "The Hayseeds" (1933) **

 In the 1910s Beaumont Smith decided to cash in on the stage success of On Our Selection with a bunch of comedies about a yokel family, The Hayseeds. When Ken Hall had a huge hit filming Selection in 1932, Smith decided to cash in again, and blew the dust off his Hayseeds IP.

Canny Smith also hooked up with JC Williamsons, the theatrical management who dominated Australian commercial theatre. They (presumably) financed, or at the least "loaned" a  lot of their actors who were then appearing in a musical Music in the Air in Sydney. Most notable of these was Cecil Kellaway, a hugely talented South African-Australian comic actor who carved out a niche playing befuddled dads. He was given the role of Dad Hayseed.

The film quite shamelessly rips off the Rudds - Kellaway's Dad has a speech about drought and banks plunked in (which hokey but still would've carried weight in 1933), Tal Ordell's eldest son is horny and stupid and woos another stupid yokel, Kellaway has a wife who doesn't say much and there's a hot youngster who who gets romanced (a "Townleigh" though, not a Hayseed). 

The casting isn't quite right - Kellaway is awkward as a hayseed (that speech feels really forced), he's not good as an imitation Bert Bailey; he would be far better as a farmer in It Isn't Done. Tal Ordell seems older than Kellaway. They're better than Arthur Clarke who is the guy the hot daughter romances - he's terribly wet. So too is Shirley Dale, as his love interest.

The play of Selection cross pollinated with stage melodrama (the murder subplot). The Hayseeds feels more cross pollinated with JC Williamsons stage muscials - there's these dancing hikers who come through, and a plot about a girl getting lost in the bush who comes across a mystery man strumming a guitar. It turns out this man is the long lost nephew of a Lord. 

Both plots are resolved quickly and lazily - turns out mystery English man took the blame for theft for his relative who is really guilty; that relative dies off screen and confesses clearing his name. And Dad gets out of financial trouble by winning the lottery. There's also a plot involving one of Hayseeds' sons, I think that isn't resolved? I may have to check.

But still the speeches while manufactured have a basis in truth, the film loves Australia, there's fun with Kellaway and Ordell dressing up as Ned Kelly to help Clarke, the financial pressures on people were real, the songs are charmingly odd, there's a Busby Berkley number at the end which is quite good. There's lots to see.

Smith shot it mostly in studio but gets the cast out on Sydney streets to catch a tram. He also did some filming out at Pymble. He had a lot of get-up-and-go, did Smith.