Janet Leigh Top Ten

 1) Psycho (1960) - famous scene but also a genuinely nuanced performance as a frustrated woman who makes a bad decision - Vera Miles doesn't have what Leigh had

2) Touch of Evil (1958) - passive (kidnapped) but she has an inner steel

3) Living It Up (1954) - really fun Martin and Lewis movie and Leigh matches well with Dean 

4) Scaramouche (1952) - honestly her character is a ninny and not in Eleanor Parker's league I just love this flm 

5) Little Women (1949) - the most nothing role in the story but she's ideal - she fitted in well at MGM

6) The Manchurian Candidate (1962) a sex positive woman chasing after Frank, from Leigh's hot streak of classic movies

7) The Fog (1980) - she's fine rather than great I just love the movie

8) The Vikings (1958) - lovely and warm in a movie that needs it

9) Houdini (1953) - perhaps the best film she made with Tony Curtis, very winning

10) Harper (1966) - one of many stars.

Book review - "Vera Miles: The Hitchcock Blonde Who Got Away" by Christopher McKittrick

 Miles was a solid, pretty actor who delivered solid performances over the years, including some classics - The Searchers, Psycho, The Wrong Man, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. I think it's fair to say she's no one's favourite part of these movies but she doesn't let anyone down. The most interesting thing about her career is Hitchcock was briefly obsessed with her and wanted to star her in Vertigo but she fell pregnant and he ended up using Kim Novak.

This is a conscientous, dogged book, like a Miles performance, not that gripping - her life and career wasn't that interesting. She had a few divorces, the Hitchcock interlude... that was about it. She seems like a nice person who married a few dodgy men. The book might've been better putting more dates and credits in an appendix than the text.

TV review - "Alfred Hitchcock Presents - Silent Witness" (1957) **1/2

 Best seen for Dolores Hart's performance as a sexually aggressive student sleeping with married lecturer Don Taylor (Pat Hitchcock is his wife). He strangles her, a baby watches, the baby is kind of like the Tell Tale Heart. But really they can't think of a third act. Maybe the cops shoud've suspected and used it to trap him. 

Great Unmade British films - a random selection

* Alex Korda - I Claudius (started filmin), War and Peace (with Orson Welles!)

* Hammer - I am Legend (yes, more but that's the main one)

*Kubrick - Napoleon, The Aryan Papers

* Hitchcock - No Bail for the Judge, Greenmantle 

* Alistair Maclean - HMS Ulysses

*Mistress of the Seas

*Mary Queen of Scots from Alexander Mackendrick 

*Tom Paine by Richard Attenborough

*The Knight by Ridley Scott

*Barnado Boys, Feathers of Death and The Long Loud Silence from Bryan Forbes at EMI

*Nat Cohen - the Nat King Cole Story yes, remake of Kind Hearts and Coronets with Dick Emery no

 *Lawrence of Arabia from Terence Rattigan

*the Lewis Collins Falklands film 

Movie review - "Rope" (1948) ****1/2 (re-watching)

 Love this film. Don't get why it isn't more critically acclaimed. Seems to have fans. John Dall should've been a bigger star. Farley Granger is excellent. James Stewart is miscast yes and his dialogue doesn't work in the first bit for his persona but he's good in the last third as he figures out what's going on. Good support cast too with Cedrick Hardwick being touchy. With that young man revealed to have dump the girl... is every male character in this film gay? I love the sun going down in the background, the ending.

Movie review - "The 39 Steps" (1935) ****1/2 (reviewing)

 Abducting a woman at gunpoint maybe isn't so romantic these days. The spooky nature of much of the film though has aged well. Paranoia. Scary. Great POV. Superb vignettes. Wonderful sense of humour.

Movie review - "Coda" (1987) ***

 Liked it. I got it. I don't think Craig Lahiff then had the skills to pull it off, quite - or the budget. But I love its ambition, the Hitchcock riffs. I love it being set at an Adelaide Uni and the second wave feminism of its four leads being women. There's something endearing in that three gave off mature age student vibes. Penny Cook can look gorgeous but here was mumsy. Liddy Clarke was like a pot smoking single aunt. Olivia Hamnet was also mumsy. Anna Marie Winchester however was spot on - campy, big, scary.

I wish Lahiff had had a little extra money to do a blood and guts feature version. A hot guy or two might've helped - if onyl to have a red herring.

Opening murder well done - one long take. Other stuff is choppy. The tight budget hurt. But endearing.

TV review - Alfred Hitchcock Presents - "The Case of Mr Pelham" (1955) **

 Based on the short story later filmed as The Man Who Haunted Himself. Its good source material but this is surprisingly bland and talky, like a radio play - that might've had more atmosphere. It was directed by Hitchcock himself too. This was early days so maybe that was it.

Tom Ewell plays the lead. Maybe someone more nervy.

The best bit is the out-tro where Hitchcock watches Hitchcock be carted off. A Hitchc doppleganger would've been more fun.

George Sanders Top Ten

 1) Action in Arabia (1944) - George Sanders as a conventional hero

2) Rebecca (1940) - almost steals the film as Rebecca's "cousin"

3) The Black Swan (1942) - in a red beard as a pirate!

4) Samson and Delilah (1949) - excellent villain toasting the temple as it falls on him

5) Ivanhoe (1952) - another excellent baddy role, complex, in love with Rebecca 

6) The Saint Strikes Back (1939) - enormous fun

7) Call Me Madam (1953) - he sings, and well

8) Psychomania (1971) - sad bc it was his last film but what nutty gloriousness to go out on

9) Son of Monte Cristo (1940) - terrific villain and death

10) All About Eve (1950) - oh I guess so...

Actors Who Gave Career High Performances in Hitchcock Films

 1. Barry Foster in Frenzy

2. Tippi Hedren in Marnie

3. Janet Leigh and Tony Perkins in Psycho

4. Cary Grant in North by Northwest (proviso: Grant's best performance as "Cary Grant")

5. James Stewart and Kim Novak in Vertigo

6. Grace Kelly in all her Hitchcock films (better than The Country Girl)

7. Robert Walker in Strangers on a Train

8. Farley Granger in Rope

9. Ingrid Bergman in Notorious

10. Joseph Cotten in Shadow of a Doubt

11. Joan Fontaine and Judith Anderson in Rebecca

12. Dame May Whitty in The Lady Vanishes

13. Robert Donat in The 39 Steps (his best "film star" performance)

14. Ivor Novello in The Lodger

15. Tallulah Bankhead in Lifeboat

Movie review - "Obsession" (1976) *** (warning: spoilers)

 Lots of great stuff here - Bernard Herrmann doing a final score, lush camera moves, John Lithgow hamming it up with a Southern accent, knowing this was how Cliff Robertson formed a relationship with Columbia/Begelman, the riff on Vertigo. There was never a more perfect Hithcock heroine - well, brown hair aside - than Genevieve Bujold.

I didn't like it as much. Not much story. I got it. They toned down the incest but it's still there. I'm not opposed to it. Cliff Robertson maybe not quite right. I like him normally but am inclined to agree with De Palma - it needed someone else more Byronic. Who was a 70s James Mason? Mason presumably too old. 

Also Robertson killing Lithgow feels perfunctory. Bujold remains a cypher. I got it, I understand the film. Just didn't click. I'll give it three stars any way.

Louis Jourdan Top Ten

 In honour of his birthday

1. Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) - the perfect cad. I still think about this film.

2. Octopussy (1983) - never regarded as a top level Bond villain but I thought he was good.

3. Gigi (1958) - so dodgy. Yet a good performance.

4. The Paradine Case (1948) - Hitchcock wanted Robert Newton but I thought Jourdan was fine.

5. Dangerous Exile (1958) a very fanatical hero for a swashbuckler

6. Three Coins in the Fountain (1954) - The American public didn't like heroic Jourdan but liked him in roles like this.

7. The Best of Everything (1959) - career girl stuff, he works well as one of an ensemble.

8. Julie (1956) - a great abusive spouse

9. Fear No Evil (1969) - I've got a memory of this being good. Vague. But it's there.

10. Man in the Iron Mask (1977) - effective as D'artagnan.

Book review - "Ernest Lehman: The Sweet Smell of Success" by John Krampner

 Excellent book. Looks at the short stories, novels, different drafts of scripts. Compares how he improved apparently easy jobs eg West Side Story, Sound of Music. Retrieves Lehman's contribution to Virginia Woolf from the cult of Mike Nichols and to West Side Story from the cult of Arthur Laurents and Steven Sondheim.

Affectionate towards Lehman to a degree but also exasperated. Hypochondriac, night owl, distant father, workaholic, loving husband but not around, tolerant of wife's long affair, devoted carer towards end, became a dad in his eighties, super talented, decent supervisory producer but bad hands on one, terrible director. Skill as novelist left him in 70s apparently, though could still write good essays. Probably retired at right time, I can imagine him getting kicked off Mission Impossible. Fitted in well at classy studios like MGM and Paramount and Fox. Mate of David Brown's. Should have written another original. Should have teamed more with Robert Wise, they collaborated so well together.

Really good work.

Movie review - "Vertigo" (1958) ****1/2 (warning: spoilers)

 The greatest film of all time? That is pushing it. But there is certainly a lot of admire. The brilliant hypnotic score. Saul Bass' titles. The opening sequence plunges you straight into action. The stylish design and look. Funky visuals. Use of colour. It's maybe too long. Though hard to cut.

Kim Novak is used brilliantly. Hitchcock captures two aspects of her - the beautiful blonde goddess, enigmatic and alluring versus the trashy insecure shopgirl.

The film actually kicks up a notch in the last third with the reveal because Novak becomes the protagonist. It's about a woman hungry for love, who's been kicked around, and this guy pays her attention - she's willing to put up with it even though he's abusive. It's fantastic.

James Stewart maybe isn't good looking enough for her to be so devoted but I guess he is a film star. And his nervous intensity is used brilliantly - all that wartime PTSD.

Barbara Bel Geddes shines as the nice bitch in love with Stewart. This was a good addition from Sam Taylor, who downplayed the contribution of Alec Coppel.

Still ti's Novak who is the soul of the film - her longing. While Stewart is its possessive soul.

Not hard to see why it wasn't a hit. It's depressing.

TV review - "Alfred Hitchcock Presents Season 1 Ep 12 - Hangover" (1962) **1/2 (warning: spoilers)

 Reunites Tony Randall and Jayne Mansfield from Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? and Randall even plays an ad man again. He's got a hangover and can't remember what he did. There was a Cornell Woolrich story with that plot but this one is based on a story by John D MacDonald.

Randall is excellent and believable in his descent to murder. Mansfield is quite good - better than the actor who plays Randall's wife. Mansfield's short hair is a shock and it works for the reality of her performance.

It didn't need to be an hour. It feels like half an hour. I thought it would be Randall retracing his steps and he does a bit of that but there's no real accumulation of narrative. It's more, he was on the piss, remembers how he stuffs up, accidentally kills his wife.

Worth a watch though esp for that Randall-Mansfield re-teaming.

Book review - "Howard Kazanjian: A Producer's Life" by J. W. Rinzler

 Interesting book. Kazanjian isn't one of the famous producers, he's more of a line producer, but he worked during interesting times. There's a lot of quotes from Marcia Lucas and the book is especially insightful on that and makes you wonder why she doesn't do a memoir.

Kanzanjian was one of the DGA trainees alongside Walter Hill which is interesting. He became a top AD and after doing heaps of TV worked for a lot of directors at the end of their careers, such as Billy Wilder, Hitchcock, Robert Wise and Elia Kazan. He also worked for Coppola on Finian's Rainbow and with Peckinpah on The Wild Bunch (this section is terrific).

He was mates with George Lucas and eventually went to Lucasfilm in the late 70s, producing Raiders and Return of the Jedi as well as More American Graffiti (the account of that is fascinating).

Fans of Star Wars and Raiders will find this interesting. Neat trivia like Kazanjian talking Lucas out of considering Jack Smight for directing a film. Bruce Beresford was considered for Jedi.

Kazanjian's credits post Lucasfilm are not that amazing - The Rookie, Demolition Man, a bunch of other films I hadn't heard of.

Still it's good to have a book about a less recognised figure.

Movie review - "I Confess" (1953) ***1/2

 One of Hitchcock's half classics. Great central idea and a perfect lead in Monty Clift who was born to play a tormented, guilt ridden person.

There's no humour and it's not much of a mystery - we know who did it, and Clift is required to be passive for the whole film, then deux ex machina wife speaks up. It lacked another plot or twist or something. Also Anne Baxter always makes me wish someone else had been cast in her part. That is mean, I know - she's a fine actor. I just wish someone else was in it... I mean, imagine Grace Kelly or Ingrid Bergman in that part, to go the obvious route.

It's very serious. The Quebec setting is different and Hitchcock fans will get off on the Catholicism of it all.

Book review - "Cary Grant" by Scott Eyman

 Typically excellent biography by Eyman of the legendary Hollywood star. Discussion in recent years has centered around Grant's sexuality - this one presents the evidence rather than making conclusions (some dicey... who cares what Budd Boetticher thought?) and basically leaves it for the reader to decide. He mentions Grant's physical beating of his first and fourth wives without comment.

Grant's father married above his class; the mother would pester him and was a bit eccentric - dad got jack and had her sent to a lunatic asylum, which he could. No wonder Grant became a bit odd and wanted to reinvent himself.

It's a tribute he turned out so normal. He was genuinely smart and charming,capable of kindness. Open minded about sex. As mentioned Eyman quotes a number of people who insist Cary was straight but quotes a bisexual dude who said Grant was open about that to him and the evidence seems to imply otherwise. Loved kids (he should have had more than one and he knew it - he tried).

He had his flaws. Stinginess, if you count that as a flaw (he would present house guests with a bill). He hit his first and fourth wives. Controlling.

A superb actor. Didn't push himself as much as he should have. A great friend of Clifford Odets.

Possible movie in this... Cary Grant married to Besty Drake, who came up with the idea of the film Houseboat. Grant sold it with Drake to co star but then fell for Sophia Loren, had the film rewritten for her, Loren and he had a fling but she refused to leave Carlo Ponti, Grant is left alone, but finds happiness via LSD.

Book review - "Phantom Lady: Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison" by Christina Lane

It's tricky to write biographies of movie producers because it's so hard (at times) to ascertain what their contribution was (not that it's not considerable... it's just hard to tell) . but the author here does a great job.

Joan Harrison is  a name quite well known to serious students of Hitchcock though her reputation is very much in his shadow. She joined his team in the mid 30s, and along with Alma was a crucial part of his development - Hitch only really became Hitch after he met Harrison. She helped make his great late 30s masterpieces which led to his American career; she worked on his early American masterpieces then went her own way, becoming a producer. She started off strong with some quasi classics - Phantom Lady, Nocturne, Dark Water  - before tailing off a little with some Robert Montgomery films. She reunited with Hitch for his TV series.

This book does an excellent job sketching Harrison's personality and artistic style - intelligence, taste, love of independence, sexually liberated (affairs with Clark Gable, John Huston and probably Billy Wilder, marriage to Eric Ambler, possible flings with women), sympathetic to progressive causes, stylish. She was friends with Alec Coppel and his wife. She had ill health toward the end which is sad reading but had a pretty good life.

A worthy tribute to a genuine pioneer.

Book review - "My Lucky Star" by Margret Lockwood (1955)

 Charming memoir from Lockwood, quite early in her career, really - twenty years in. But, as it turned out, it came as she stopped being a film star.

It was an eventful life. She was born into Karachi, moved to England, started acting young, made a fair fist of it early on, helped by her beauty, talent, and the support of Gainsborough. 

I would have liked more about the movies and co stars - there's no a lot here. There is a lot about her husband, her mother, her lover "Bill", and most of all her daughter Toots, the great love of her life. This is very sweet.