Book review - "My Name is Barbra" by Barbra Streisand

 I'm not a big Streisand head but have no particularly strong feelings about her. This book is very good though. Well written, enjoyable. Feels "her". Strong willed, eccentric, passionate. She's copped a lot of bad press over the years but from men trying to punish her. Arthur Laurents and Garson Kanin struggled to direct her with their "set and forget" methods. She had better luck with people like Jerome Robbins, William Wyler, and Peter Bogdanovich, people who challenged her. Did badly with weaker directors like Gene Kelly, Frank Pierson.

She writes affectionately of Elliot Gould which I liked - they had issues (he was partial to marijuana, jealousy and had a gambling habit) but was basically supportive. Also she has a lot of time for most of her exes: Ryan O'Neal, Geoge Lazenby (! - it was just a flirtation during On a Clear Day You Can See Forever), Kris Kristofferson, Warren Beatty (who she's not sure if she slept with), Pierre Trudeau, Omar Sharif, Anthony Newley (I didn't know that). Isn't nice about Sydney Chaplin who she had an affair with then called off and he behaved badly (Walter Matthau was a mate of his, hence his bad attitude on Hello Dolly). Likes most of her co stars even if she didn't fall in love with them (she was a method actress that way) - eg James Caan. She adored Brando and they had a friendship but not an affair (I don't think).

Full of "gee I wish you'd done that" moments-  she should've turned director on A Star is Born, should've made Merry Widow with Ingmar Bergman

She's ambivalent about Sue Menges (says Menges begged her to be in All Night Long), Jon Peters.

Particularly fascinating accounts of her musicals and movies especially The Way We Were (admits to not remembering much about For Pete's Sake). Also deep dives her albums and TV specials.

Lots of good juice like Arthur Laurents sending her a mean letter after her first album - but she also liked him because of The Way We Were; Mandy Patinkin demanding to have an affair; Complex descriptions of Ray Stark, Sydney Pollack

There's a bit too much about clothes and blocking of scenes. And the last few chapters are really grim - the Clintons, politicis, philanthropy, her 21st century career. But def read the first bit.

Book review - "Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather " by Mark Seal

 I knew all the stories but it was fun to read anyway because the making of this film is a classic story, full of colorful characters (Bob Evans, Coppola, Charlie Bludhorn, Puzo, Brando, Caan, various mafiosos - Al Ruddy is among the least colourful) and genuine conflict (mafia opposition, Evans vs Coppola). The sections on dealing with cinematographers and designers are particularly strong.

Movie review - "Gone with the West" (1975, made 1968) *

 Ugh. A sort of jokey Western, "way out" and "crazy". Stupid. Cheap. Dumb. Quite a serious story - James Caan is a cowboy framed by Aldo Ray and goes looking for revenge. Ray's scenes seem like they are filmed on different days and cut in. Stephnie Powers plays an Indian. Sammy Davis Jr is a cowboy. He should've played the lead - that would've given the film some point. Caan is professional and accomplished. Awful.

Movie review - "Poodle Springs" (1998) **

 It's got Bob Rafelson, Chandler, Caan, Tom Stoppard, HBO... but it's not very good. The story wasn't the best, this doesn't nail it. Caan is too old for Dina Meyer (who suits period movies). Brian Cox and Joe Don Baker add the right tone but there's not enough of them.

Movie review - "The Glory Guys" (1965) **

 The films of Levy-Gardner-Laven aren't particularly well remembered now and weren't that highly regarded in their day but there were a bunch of them including this one. It's a Western very much in John Ford mode - it's about a cavalry troop at a fort, with a dogged captain, some glory hunters and incompetents, boozy Irish sergeant, etc.

Instead of John Wayne there's Tom Tryon, who is handsome and all that but is simply too wooden; instead of Victor McLaglen as the Irish sergeant there's James Caan, of all people, who should've played the Tryon role; instead of Henry Fonda or Richard Widmark as the scout there's Harve Presnell. They throw in a brawl.

The cast also includes Stefanie Powers (fought over by Tryon and Presnell), Michael Anderson Jr, Wayne Rogers. Good on Laven for giving young actors a go.

The script was written by Sam Peckinpah who had worked with Laven in television. Laven directed, and tries to channel Ford - rituals, farewells at the fort, long shots of men on horseback. Some of the colour photography is pleasing.  It's a decent story - a version of the Custer story with Tryon playing a version of Reno/Benteen.

But it's done in by a cast who all feel wrong. Presnell in particular looks out of place but Tryon runs a close second.

If only Peckinpah had directed!

Movie - "Rollerball" (1975) ***

 James Caan was perhaps the most "jock"-ish of Hollywood 70s stars (along with Burt Reynolds and Warren Beatty) so he is perfect to play the champion athlete of the future, star of a violent game. The future here is meant to be chilling but no poverty or war doesn't sound too bad and are we really better off with Caan hanging on to his career? You could've told the story with poverty and war still existing.

Caan is excellent. Strong support from John Housman and John Beck and Maud Adams is very effective. Jewison does superb sport sequences. I wish he'd done more on the non sports stuff. Relationships between Caan and Beck is clear ditto Caan and Adams. But the rest felt undeveloped - Caan's stand, his position in society. His battle isn't quite dramatised.

Death Race 2000 is a better, more fun film.

Movie review - "Rabbit Run" (1970) *1/2 (warning: spoilers)

 There was a vogue around this time to film unfilmable novels - this, Portnoy's Complaint, Take a Nice Girl Like You, etc. Maybe this was filmable - it doesn't work here. It's by John Updike who I've never read, sorry John, but I'm prepared to accept is great. I think the novel's treatment of sex was especially appealing in the Eisenhower era. Maybe not so much in 1970. Maybe also not so much under the direction of Jack Smight.

James Caan would seem to be ideal in the lead - who is a former high school basketball star struggling with life as a grown up. And he's not bad. But maybe they needed to cast someone who played the subtext more - nervy, insecure, someone like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate (I guess I'm saying "cast Jewish"... but if not Jewish then more insecure.)

In the "plot" Caan is married to pregnant shrewish Carrie Snodgrass,deals with his old coach Jack Albertson, hooks up with young Anjanette Comer (like the night after leaving his wife). He goes back to the wife when she has the baby, the wife accidentally kills the baby (an unconvincing doll but a stressful sequence - they killed a kid in Caan's Cinderella Liberty too.

Look, the film has a go. Doesn't get there. I think it was beyond Jack Smight, director, and the adapter. Struggles from not being set in period. Gives Comer a chance. I can see why Caan was attracted to it.

But a film like this everything needs to wor, and that's not the case here.

Movie review - "TR Baskin" (1971) **1/2

 Peter Hyams' first script he wrote actually got sold and made. He became known for action-y pics/thrillers so it's a surprise to find this work is basically a woman's picture. I guess that's the best description, even though it starts with two men (which I think is the problem). The opening credits are Peter Boyle arriving in Chicago - he meets up with acquaintance James Caan who sets him up with a hooker... Candice Bergen. Boyle can't get it up but he hits it off with Bergen and she tells him her life story.

I thought this would be a film about how a woman became a prostitute but it's not because Bergen's not a prostitute, not really - she's a small town gal who moves to the big city and has various adventures. She goes on a few dates, experiences working in a firm, makes friends with Marcia Rodd (who is great - she was in Little Murders). One hour in she meets Caan and falls in love I guess over an afternoon and he gives her money and she's so insulted she becomes a prostitute... I think...

Look, that's one of the film's problems, it never seems to have a theme. It's a collection of incidents and scenes, some of them funny. I think it needed to focus more on her relationships, something with progression - there's one with Boyle, and Caan (though he comes in too late), and I think we needed to see her mother.

Also it's a film about a woman written by a man in an original script and directed by a man, Herbert Ross. Bergen wasn't quite up to the role, although she looks terrific.

But it's a stylish movie, it takes a swing from the fences - the fact it got made is quite remarkable.

Movie review - "Another Man, Another Chance" (1977) ***

 James Caan always had the soul of an artist, which he at times struggled to reconcile with the lure of being a big star. This is one for the art column: Claude Lelouch (A Man and a Woman) makes a film in the US, with Caan in the lead. It's mostly in English but has a lot in French. Genevieve Bujold comes out West with her photographer husband; Caan has a ranch with his pregnant wife. Both spouses wind up killed but not until an hour in, so their deaths mean something.

It's nicely shot, full of long takes, and devotes plenty of time to its star. Caan loved making it. I actually enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. I was at first reluctant, with its present day opening and scenes in 1870 Paris. But then I got in its rhythms. It's a little like McCabe and Mrs Miller - not a lot but a little - in that it sort of ambles but then there's this outburst of violence. Like we see Caan work, and talk with his wife, and go to town, and kiss, and argue and hang out... then she's raped and killed. and Bujold and her husband travel, and set up shop, and work as a photographer... then he's killed.

Bujold's husband is the most interesting character - someone trying to make it as a new profession. Caan is very good as a vet/cowboy who tries to be a decent person - he is touching in pursuit of Bujold Bujold is beautiful but doesn't seem to have much of a character. There's nice scenes between Caan and his son - Caan dumps him with Susan Tyrell's school teacher but stays in touch a lot.

I dont think this is a classic and can see why it wasn't a hit but it was engaging.

Movie review - "Cinderella Liberty" (1973) *** (warning: spoilers)

 A sleeper. This has been overlooked in film buffdom by The Last Detail by the same writer - it's a similar ish look at life in the peacetime Navy among the lower ranks, people who shlep along. This is a romance between James Caan and prostitute Marsha Mason. Mason is quite racy here going topless and what not - this seemed to launch her as a star but she took time off and then got pigeon holed as a Neil Simon specialist.

This is long - it ambles, goes for over two hours. But it's effective. When they introduced the baby my heart sunk because I got the feeling they'd kill off the kid and I was right. Still, powerful and good obstacle.

My favourite bits were the inane chats the sailors had. This felt so true. As did Eli Wallach's ageing veteran unable to do anything else, and the medical stuff ups, and the red tape.

Movie review - "Kiss Me Goodbye" (1982) **

 Attempt at making a Topper/Blithe Spirit type comedy - smart New Yorkers, stars, comic ghosts. Sally Field is the woman whose ex James Caan, a Bob Fosse type choreographer, haunts her old house. Jeff Bridges is the Bill Pullman.

The film is set up to be funny - there are wacky best friends, old dames (Claire Trevor as Field's mother). The cast try - try too hard, no one's funny and they're all trying. Caan even tap dances a bit. He played a few showmen in his day.

The second half of the film is geared far too much to Jeff Bridges when it needed to focus on Fields. It also lacks a subplot - like they are knocking down the house, or Field has a project, or Caan gets Field to do a show or something. Caan in particular looks haplessly passive. And the dialogue isn't funny. I kept wishing Neil Simon had done a polish on this.

Directed by Robert Mulligan.

Movie review - "Funny Lady" (1975) **

 Done with gloss but it feels old fashioned for 1975. It's very much in that 20th Century Fox musical mode - a true story heavily fictionalised with plenty of production numbers. I didn't recognise any of the songs. Barbra Streisand fans will like it, with all the songs and outfits and jokes. The bulk of the plot is a squabbling rom com with James Caan, hamming it up with Babs, as Billy Rose. These two are fun. Omar Sharif adds a dash of drama as her ex.

I didn't really like it but it wasn't made for me.

Movie review - "Journey to Shiloh" (1968) ** (warning: spoilers)

 A Western seemingly made with the main goal of showing off Universal's contract roster.  The cast is headed by James Caan, relaxed and confident but in an absurdly distracting wig. He plays the leader of seven cowboys who are riding from Texas to join the Confederate Army.

The seven are made up of Caan, Don Stroud, Harrison Ford, Jan Michael Vincent, Don Stroud, Paul Petersen and Michael Burns - that's not a bad hit rate from the Universal casting director. Ford gets a close up at the beginning but then I forgot him. Vincent overacts his death scene.

It's shot in that cheap ugly Universal style - clearly on the backlot. There's quite a decent little romance between Caan and Tisha Sterling. Caan gets to kick a little arse but is always undermined by his wig.

The film gets points for killing off six of the seven. You do feel Caan has been through the wars.  Some bits seem flat out dumb like the soldiers realising the South supports slavery.

The novelty of the cast is the only real reason to watch this

Movie review - "Harry and Walter Go to New York" (1976) *

 Cripes The Sing has a lot to answer for - Lucky Lady, Nickelodeon, this. It was probably heaps of fun to make. James Caan and Elliot Gould look like they're having fun as a song and dance duo who are like a low rent Hope and Crosby - only without really defined personas (Caan is dumb and confident, Gould, dumb and not as confident). They use their routines to pick pockets. They go to prison, wind up with classy thief Michael Caine. I think there's something about revenge. The film throws in Diane Keaton as a feisty woman, and Lesley Ann Warren as Caine's dolly bird.

I liked seeing Caan and Gould do songs but the film was annoying. Wacky music. Dumb plot, Not developed. Lacks focus. You could have cut out Caine's character - Caine is charming and pulls focus. The film doesn't get going until an hour in when they decide to rob a bank. 

The robbery sequence is painfully unfunny. Charles Durning is in it. Burt Young. Oh it was terrible.

Movie review - "Comes a Horseman" (1978) **

 Beware genre films made by people too cool for that genre. That's what this feels like. "Ooh let's set it in the 1940s and explore character and not have caricatures". The thing is the base situation is so stock - evil land baron (Jason Robards) wants to kick feisty woman (Jane Fonda) off land and she's helped by hunky man (James Caan). There's a grizzled sidekick (Richard Farnsworth) plus a partner of Caan's (Mark Harmon, young and charismatic) to get killed early on.

Nothing wrong with that plot, however old - having Robards in debt to oil company isn't that much of a new twist - the main problem is the film is drained of excitement. There's no sexual tension or romance between Fonda and Caan, they're just in scenes together then they get together (the only character to exude warmth is Farnsworth). There's no excitement - the baddies poke around then occasionally flare up. Every now and then they throw in a bit of violence - Harmon is killed, then Caan punches someone in a bar, some bank guy is randomly killed, at the end Robards gets all melodrama villain conking out Fonda and Caan and putting them in a  closet and setting the house on fire, then they come galloping back and... oh it's silly. Until then it's dull.

Beautifully shot. The acting is fine. Robarts is excellent. Just dull. Like an Australian film.

Movie review - "Submarine X-1" (1968) **

 Walter Mirsch produced a bunch of these war films in the 60s - shot in England, medium budget, imported American star. Here it's James Caan, doing professional work but seeming bored. He's right to be bored. It's not a very good movie - something about prepping for a submarine raid. It's darkly lit (at least the copy I saw was) and I couldn't tell the supporting cast apart - full of nondescript British actors. Caan plays a Canadian. I couldn't really follow what was going on - well, actually I could, they were going on a mission to blow something up, it was more I didn't care.

Movie review - "Chapter 2" (1979) **

 One of Neil Simon's best plays - funny, honest, true - with Marsha Mason superb in a role inspired by her and played by her on Broadway. Joseph Bologna and Valerie Harper are fine as the BFF's - Harper looks really skinny. The film is let down by James Caan, who I normally really like. He can be funny but here he plays it low energy a man torn up with grief which I guess is legitimate but it drags the film down. Occasionally the dialogue sparks as it should and you get the vision of the film this should have been. Flabby direction.

Movie review - "The Killer Elite" (1975) **

 No one's favourite Sam Peckinpah film though like all movies from that director it has interest. James Caan and Robert Duvall really seem like mates at the beginning making Duvall's betrayal have real impact. That's the best bit of the film.

The rest consists of Caan's recovering, learning karate, going back into business, teaming up with Burt Young and Bo Hopkins, learning from Mako and a comely Thai girl (who I think married co writer Stirling Silliphant - she has a decent sized part for a Peckinpah film), clashing with Duvall again (who dies too quickly) then taking part in a slow motion, unconvincing, unexciting battle at on some boats in San Francisco Bay. 

It's not an exciting film. It has two good performances from Caan and Duvall, is odd, a decent story that has any thrills sucked out of it. This film annoyed me after a while. It's even got lazy 70s scenes about how all governments are corrupt - like sitting next to some stoner at a party.

Movie review - "Games" (1967) *** (warning: spoilers)

 Curtis Harrington is a cult-y director - Night Tide and this are responsible for a great deal of that. This is an engaging thriller about some wealthy New Yorkers (Katherine Ross, James Caan) who like to play tricks. In a not terribly convincing plot move they invite Simone Signoret, a random psychic, to stay with them - maybe this would've been more effective had Signoret been younger, or more clearly a sexual threat instead of a mumsy figure, or a male. 

There's plenty of weirdness, more visual style than we commonly saw from films at Universal during this period (I think Ross, Caan and Don Stroud were under contract there). Once you realise at heart this is a good old gaslighting thriller it could have done with an extra twist/dimension. 

But it is entertaining.

Movie review - "Slither" (1973) **

 Seventies Hollywood - MGM in decline, Dan Melnick greenlit, James T Aubrey disliked it, new stars (James Caan, Sally Kellerman), quirky road movie that covers genres (search for a bag of cash, a musical number, comedy), new scribe (WD Richter), new director (Howard Zieff).

Caan is very engaging as a sort of drifter. Peter Boyle feels a little try hard. Kellerman is fun as a nutty hitchhiker who attracts and scares Caan, Louise Lasser is good though feels wasted (it hints at a sort of romantic history between her and Caan that isn't explored; nothing much about her character is explored).

The movie varies in tone and is full of colourful types - a little like an Elmore Leonard novel, with its mixture of comedy and violence. Beautifully shot by Laszlo Kovacs. It wasn't for me but it showed how Caan can charm.