Book review - "Letters of Noel Coward" by Barry Day

 A lot of this was very familiar but there was some lovely fresh stuff - the letters from Coward feel well trodden ground but the ones to him are really fascinating: TE Lawrence, Shaw, Virginia Woolf, Edna Ferber. Coward really loved the "c" word. Loved Marlene Dietric writing letters about how Yul Brynner would love bomb her then gaslight her.

Very long book but rewarding. Good companion piece to Day's other works.

Movie review - "The King and I" (1956) ***

 It's definitely a movie but it feels like a stage play - the construction, the staging, the gags. You can hear the pauses for laughs, the moments that would've worked well. Shots are set up with mid body two handers to enable the stars to do their thing.

What a down-home hit: feisty female lead, strong male opposite her, urst for the 1950s ("ooh he's got so many kids and is shirtless I can dance with him but not have sex with him because he's coloured but he still adores me" ), lots of cute kids, some sappy romance among young lovers, king expiring on stage. It scolds imperialism but still pushes the superiority of the West. Like a lot of Rogers and Hammerstein it has a plot where a woman comes along to a man of power and goes "your household is a mess here let me fix it" (South Pacific, Sound of Music). Presumably that's why they were so popular.

The art direction and colour is glorious as is the CinemaScope photography. Deborah Kerr is fine, her kid is hideous and Yul Brynner is magnificent as the King. Rita Moreno is very good as the wife in love with another guy (the actor who plays him isn't as crash hot).

I enjoyed this a lot to start off but it went on too long. Plenty to admire. Nice songs just too many of them. Brynner is perfect.

Movie review - "Fuzz" (1972) **

 One of the its-hard-to-run-a-police-station-in-the-grimy-inner-city sub genre, later familiar on TV shows like Hill Street Blues. It's an ensemble piece although it features three icons, Burt Reynolds, Yul Brynner (a small role) and Raquel Welch. There's a variety of subplots, various crooks, sleaze, and lots of politically incorrect humour like Tom Skerritt molesting Welch on stake out, Reynolds and Jack Weston dressed as nuns.

I didn't like it. The tone is bleak and smart arse. I know exactly the sort of people who would like this movie. I felt really sorry for Welch who was trying to do a good job.

Movie review - "Taras Bulba" (1962) **

Odd that this was such a hot property - Robert Aldrich tried to make it for five years. It's got spectacle but it's not too hard to find spectacle stories, surely. I suppose it has three decent leads - the imposing Cossack Taras, who loves his sensitive son but turns against him when his son falls for a Pole.

That is a strong simple conflict that should work. And this film has its moments - some spectacle, the horse duel over a cliff. Christina Kaufman is pretty. Yul Brynner is idea in the title role and Tony Curtis gives a good performance. But Curtis is simply spectacularly miscast - he's like twenty years too old for a role that needed someone who was clearly Brynner's son. I could've handled Curtis as a Cossack - I've gone with him being a Viking and a Persian prince - but not Brynner's son and that is the heart of the piece.

He's also too old for a role that requires someone callow. They would've been better off getting some teen idol - or cast Brynner's part a lot older.

The drama is muted. The character of the brother, played by Perry Lopez, is wasted (what's his dramatic point?). Curtis' mother character is wasted. Guy Rolfe's villain feels undercooked - oh for Frank Thring to have played this. Kaufman feels too young for Tony - I get they hooked up in real life, but he's too old for the character as written.

It doesn't feel real. Films have to make their own reality. This feels odd with its colourful costumes, and Cossack dancing and singing (sometimes it's like it's going to spill over into a musical).

Also the Cossacks just feel dumb. The opening scene Guy Rolfe tricks Brynner into defeat. They have a silly dispute resolution process where they jump over a gap - it's an exciting scene but it makes you worry about the stability of this society.

I admit I'm influenced by knowing nothing about this period. Maybe if the storyline had been changed to say the Goths and the Roman Empire.

I do think having cast Brynner and Curtis they should have changed it so that they were brothers rather than father and son.

Still, it is a big expensive Hollywood epic set in medieval Russia so it has points for novelty. And a gorgeous music score.

Movie review - "The Light at the Edge of the World" (1971) **1/2 (warning: spoilers)

Splendid rocky locations and lighthouse. Yul Brynner ideal as a pirate. Kirk Douglas in some late period stardom - he also produced.

At first I wondered why this movie cost so much. But then boats become involved - Douglas clambered over them, there's boats on the rocks, etc. That wouldn't have been cheap.

Good solid concept - Douglas is at a lighthouse that's taken over by pirates led by Brynner, who turn it into a wrecking location.  The development is less assured - Douglas runs around rocks and doesn't seem to have a plan; he kills the odd pirate then goes and hide again; his actions don't stop Eagger being pack raped and his associate being killed.

Surprisingly violent - the pirates kill Douglas' co workers relatively mildly, but when they get a boat to crash they go about killing women and children, hacking away. Later on a man Douglas rescued is flayed alive (skin ripped off) before Douglas shoots him dead, Samatha Egger is pack raped by the ship's crew (which does happen off screen at least) on a ship which is blown up by Douglas so they all die.

Brynner seems more interested in Douglas than Eagger but at least it's well cast.  Not very tense. Strong idea - they should remake this.

Movie review - "The Sound and the Fury" (1959) *

Maybe one star is harsh considering the talent involved but this was a hard, hard slog. Heated southern melodramas can work a treat and this was from the creative team who did The Long Hot Summer but I loathed it.

Yul Brynner loses a lot of his on screen power with hair and feels miscast as the horrible uncle. He raises Joanne Woodward, who is too old for her role (she just seems old) and overacts, like everyone else.

Jack Warden plays a deaf mute and might have been effective but has a silly dyed hair. There's some other member of the family played by John Beal who gets one monologue and that's it. Margaret Leighton turns up as Woodward's mum and she overacts. Stuart Whitman comes in as a shirtless sexually harrassing carny worker and he chews the scenery. Warden shares a bed with a little black boy.

Are we meant to be happy that Brynner, who has helped raise Woodward, and reminds everyone of that fact, and seems to be a horrible person, kisses her and they might have a romance? That's incest!

The only cast member who seems at home is Ethel Waters. This movie is terrible.

Movie review - "Kings of the Sun" (1963) **

An extremely flawed movie but consistently fascinating because it's the only time Hollywood has really tried to make a movie about the Mayan civilisation. The concept of this movie - which, surprisingly for something that's so different, wasn't based on a best selling book or play but was an original for the screen - is that the Mayans get kicked out of their kingdom, sailed over to modern day Texas, and mixed it with the local Indians.

Apparently the original writer was inspired by the weird Indian mounds and thought the Mayans could be the one responsible. Now that's actually a great idea, only it didn't wind up in the final film - it would have been a great way to start it, with the mounds, then going back in time to tell the story of how they were created. It's one of several bad decisions that hurt this movie.

It actually starts very interestingly. George Chakiris is the Mayan prince, whose people come under attack from Leo Gordon; Gordon chases him out of his kingdom so they have to force some fisherpeople to transport them across the sea to safety. Okay yes the actors look a little silly most of the time spouting dialogue, but there's plenty of action and pace, Chakiris is as well cast as any name Hollywood actor from this time, the characters are clearly drawn (Shirley Ann Field is the leader of the fisherpeople whose dad forces Chakiris is marry her as a condition for using their boats, which sets up solid conflict).

Then Chakiris arrives in America (well, soon to be America) and local Indian chief Yul Brynner worries about him, and winds up captured by Chakiris. I bought Brynner as an Indian but its at this point the film became muddy - Brynner sort of falls in love with Field who would rather be with Chakiris but he isn't showing any love so she's open to Brynner; Chakiris is going to sacrifice Brynner in a Mayan ceremony but gets talked out of it, in part because he kind of falls in love with Brynner, which annoys his head priest. Then, least convincingly of all, Leo Gordon and his men turn up to attack Chakiris. Like, why bother? The real reason is for Brynner and Chakiris and their mean to team up - I guess dramatically they had to but it didn't seem real. (Maybe it would have been better to reduce Gordon's part and instead have the baddies be a fringe hard-right group of Mayans).

Director J. Lee Thompson ensures there is plenty of blood and thunder but too often things get silly. Shirley Ann Field is cute as hell, but not terribly convincing, and she's got an awful character - she starts off spirited but then becomes this passive trophy to be fought over. Would the Mayans really build a large stone pyramid almost as soon as they arrive? Would Indians and Mayans really fight battles this way?

Dramatically, the movie suffers from us never really getting to know any Indian characters well apart from Brynner and his offsider - this needed to be fleshed out. Chakiris' character was muddy - maybe they were trying to make him enigmatic but I think it was just bad writing.

Still, it is about Mayans and so it's always interesting - props, costumes, and so on. There really is/was no other Hollywood epic like it.

Movie review - "Westworld" (1973) ***1/2

Michael Crichton's feature debut as film director has aged remarkably well due in part to the cleverness of its concept - indeed, it ranks with one of the all time great sci fi concepts, and is so good Crichton reused it in Jurassic Park and Timeline. There is also the casting of Yul Brynner, who makes a terrifying villain.

The Terminator supposedly ripped off an episode of Outer Limits but surely James Cameron also saw this film before he wrote it - the same relentless killer, played by an established star, the same POV shots of said killer, the same theme of technology overcoming humans. Cameron is a far better director than Crichton, though, whose handling is competent at best - he has his excellent screenplay, plus some fine actors (Richard Benjamin as the less brave hero, James Brolin as the tougher seeming guy who cops it early), so it doesn't matter for the most part. It's more when things go haywire that you feel a really good director could have milked the tension - the finale mostly consists of people walking down corridors with loud sound effects of people walking, and Benjamin thinking he's killed Brynner then walking away something like three times.

Also in places the action felt superfluous - like the barroom brawl. It's a shame these sequences weren't cut to free up the tight budget so the money could be spent elsewhere. Still, a fine film and one of the few decent movies made by MGM in the 1970s.

Movie review - "The Ten Commandments" (1956) ***

I'm starting to have an increasing appreciation for the films of Cecil B de Mille - he was a showman who liked to give customers their money's worth. This has got everything: religion, babies being killed, lots of handsome men walking around barechested and beautiful women with plunging necklines (I had no idea Ann Baxter was so well endowed), a cast that includes a combination of established stars (Charlton Heston, Baxter), recently blacklisted veterans (Edward G Robinson, Vincent Price), exciting new comers (Yul Brynner), teen idols (John Derek), stage knights (Cedric Hardwicke), sexpots (Yvonne de Carlo), starlets (Debra Paget) and lots and lots of extras.

The first part of this was the most enjoyable as drama - it's pulpy Biblical family drama with Moses being sent down river in reeds and raised among Egyptians. The story of Moses resonates so much because it's such a great yarn - an orphan raised with wealth, becoming aware of his origin and the plight of his people, deciding to take their side no matter what the cost and winding up a slave, then eventually leading them to freedom. (Ben Hur surely borrowed from it - as did much Disney).

Once Moses hears the call, the film becomes a lot less fun, with all these firebrand statements and Charlton Heston looking ridiculous in his beard and robe. God is such a hard arse in this story - killing Egyptian children, bringing on locusts and plagues... But once the Hebrews are allowed home, de Mille unleashes some tremendous spectacle: masses of extras, bright colours, a still-impressive Red Sea parting, a terrific orgy around the fattest calf (de Mille was always a lot more comfortable with sexy, decadent entertainment than serious religion)

Moses isn't an easy role to play and one could mock Heston's stiff performance but he does have the right gravitas; de Carlo and Baxter impressed me in roles that you would have expected them to have swapped; Derek is mainly handsome and that's it; Paget has quite a big role (a woman who becomes a mistress then becomes redeemed); Robinson and Brynner are really excellent - Robinson has intelligence, humour and shrewdness despite being a villain and adds some much needed cynicism, while Brynner is very charismatic.

It's big and goes on forever and is a bit creaky but still impresses.

Movie review – “Port of New York” (1948) **1/2 (warning: spoilers)

T Men paid tribute to treasury officials, the heroes of this one are customs officials. They are fighting drug smugglers in the form of Yul Brynner – in his first movie role and with hair! He’s very effective, the best thing about the movie.

Scott Brady, the bland hero from He Walked By Night, plays the bland hero here – you find yourself longing for Denis O’Keefe! Indeed, all the police heroes are bland, it’s hard to remember them at all – whereas you do remember Brynner, and the guy who plays a Charles Laughton-impersonating criminal.

The biggest surprise comes 60 minutes in when Brady, who has gone undercover, is busted and shot by the baddies, watched by another cop (Richard Hober) – a reprise of the moment in T Men but still something I wasn’t expecting, which is more than you can say for most of the rest of the film. Hober has to go undercover himself for the last section and finally gets his man. I enjoyed the location footage of the New York ports.

Book review – “I Thought We Were Making Movies Not History” by Walter Mirisch

During the 1960s the Mirisch Corporation seemed to have the Midas touch, producing a staggering array of films that combined critical acclaim with commercial success and artistic freedom. Even their failures were always interesting. The Mirisch brothers were lucky in some regards, teaming up with Billy Wilder and Norman Jewison during the peak years of those directors – but the harder you work the better your luck and the Mirisischs worked hard. Walter got his start managing theatres, went to Harvard, joined an engineering firm (Lockheed) to develop systems, joined Monogram and worked his way up to head of production via producing the Bomba Boy series, then branching out into independent production. The relationship at UA soured after a series of flops and a change in studio management, but Mirisch then had a profitable association with Universal.

It’s an amazing career but this book is surprisingly dull. It seems as though it wasn’t ghost written and maybe that was the problem. Mirisch plots through his career with a sort of workmanlike prose that must have gone down a treat at Lockheed – “then I bought the rights to the book, then I hired the director, then I found a star”. He shows little flair for a decent anecdote or human weakness. Only one story from producing an Errol Flynn film (The Warriors)? And it was “Flynn was drunk”. Come on, Walter.

There are hardly any decent stories from the Bomba the Jungle Boy series either, or any of the other Monogram/Allied Artist films, which surely must have featured colourful characters and interesting anecdotes. Also far too much time is spent on the workings of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Who cares?

Inevitably some snipits sneak through: William Wyler had major second thoughts about Dorothy McGuire in Friendly Persuasion (he wanted Kate Hepburn) and Shirley Maclaine in The Children’s Hour. Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster were originally considered for the Steve McQueen and James Garner roles in The Great Escape. Mirisch decided to sack George Roy Hill from Hawaii and hired Arthur Hiller to replace him but then the natives and Hawaiian actors rose in revolt. The minor British war film Flight 633 with American star Cliff Robertson was popular enough to inspire a rash of British war films with American stars. Friendly Persuasion lost money but Midway was one of the most popular films of 1976.

Chapters are devoted to the troublesome productions of Moby Dick and Hawaii. It’s interesting when he talks about failures, the importance of luck, etc – but too often you get the feeling he’s being diplomatic, pulling his punches. Which makes him a gentleman but means the film is less fun to read.

It’s a real shame. Mirisch made great films, worked with terrific personalities. Maybe it just wasn’t in his nature to write a gossipy, informative tome. More’s the pity.

Michael Crichton Overview

Michael Crichton has been one of my favourite authors since the early 90s. I knew who he was before then because he was one of those authors who always seem to get a brief biological sketch whenever they are mentioned, eg “doctor turned writer turned film director”. In the 80s Crichton seemed to be associated with flops – the films Looker and Runaway (which I actually loved) in particular; his novels weren’t that well known in the reading lists of my circle (where Steven King reigned supreme), and his best known work at that stage - Westworld - was considered old hat.

But I gave Jurassic Park a read when the film came out and loved it and have tried to read everything else he’s done since then. I read a lot less fiction nowadays than I used to (due to a combination of lack of time and increasing obsessiveness with books about other topics) but I always try to read the new Crichton when it comes out.

Crichton’s first published novels were a series of pulp works, I guess you could call them, under a pseudonym. The best know of these is Binary, which I bought as one of those three-in-one volumes. It was an entertaining, fast-paced look at a threatened attack – what I remember most about it was the baddie dies a fair bit towards the end, and although there is still a threat, it doesn’t feel as severe as if the baddie was still alive (I felt a similar thing about the movie Blown Away).

I liked it just as much as The Andromeda Strain, also entertaining. This novel helped popularise the “10am San Francisco” method of science fiction writing, which was used on the X Files to such a degree. Thing I remember most about that book was the fact that the government save the day by refusing to blow up a contaminated site.

I still haven’t read Five Patients or Electronic Life but I really enjoyed The Terminal Man, a scary sort of version of the Frankenstein story. This demonstrates a Crichton technique: take a concept that’s normally only been done in a silly sci fi movie (dinosaurs come back to life, killer virus), treat it seriously and back it up with great research. This had a sympathetic female protagonist – something to keep in mind when Crichton copped all that sexism stuff around the time of Disclosure.

Westworld is a film with one of the great sci fi ideas of all time – so good Crichton himself later reused it in Jurassic Park and Timeframe. I always found the movie actually a bit slow – slow motion Western shoot outs, etc – but it was great to set up whimpy Richard Benjamin against Yul Brynner. And killing off the bold friend (James Brolin) is a terrific idea. They’re always remaking 70s films at the moment – why not do this one again, with faster pace and better special effects?

The Great Train Robbery was also enjoyable, though at times it felt Crichton was a bit weighed down by his period detail. I feel he’d loosen up and write more of a “romp” these days. Sean Connery was perfect for the lead in the film version.

Eaters of the Dead is an odd book – adventures among the Vikings. Crichton says in his introduction that there was something profoundly appealing about the viking lifestyle – I didn’t feel this came across, they seemed like a bunch of blood thirsty warriors who’d kill you as soon as look at you (admittedly they could navigate and paint).

Jasper Johns is a book about the artist. Crichton really stretches his wings here and the book is really good – I only read it because he wrote it, that’s how much of a fan I was. It has plenty of terrific pictures, and explains a number of complex concepts and thoughts in an easy-to-read style (he could do it for art as well as science).

Congo was a marvellous adventure romp in the vein of a H Rider Haggard novel. The talking apes worked fine in the book but came across a little silly in the movie. Sphere started off memorably, but the twist of the entity or whatever it is taking on aspects of the crew didn't quite work, something especially apparent when you watch the film version.

Travels is a wonderful book, Crichton’s most emotional and personal. Full of interesting stories, personal asides, and fascinating trips. It’s really fantastic and ranks as Crichton’s masterpiece along with Jurassic Park.

Crichton has long been a skilled essayist. I particularly love the introduction to his Westworld script, and this tribute to Conan Doyle’s Lost World. One essay I don’t like this one advising how to have an argument with your partner. Crichton’s been divorced like four times – I don’t necessarily think he should be giving advice on this stuff. (Mate, sometimes all they want to hear is “sorry”.) He’s also not too great on the battle of the sexes either - but no one can do everything.

Jurassic Park deserves all the acclaim that came it way bar one – it deserved a better movie. Spielberg hit goals with the dinosaur technology and the T-rex sequence is amazing, but the ending! Crichton wrote a great ending! Why didn't they use it? (David Koepp’s big budget scripts all seem the same – workmanlike pieces that seem to suck a lot of excitement out of it.) The Lost World isn’t anywhere near as good, seemingly made up of sequences that Crichton left out of the original (the movie version was far superior).

Rising Sun attracted controversy on its publication for perceived Jap-bashing. It wasn’t so shocking in the redneck wonderland of Queensland where I grew up - Japan-bashing was a common past time (especially around the period where they were buying up big slabs of the Gold Coast). This tended to obscure the fact that the book was also a first-rate whodunit.

Disclosure was also controversial, taking on sexual harassment in the early 90s. The two big sexual harassment pieces of the time – this and Oleanna by David Mamet – both centered around poor old men being falsely accused of sexual harassment (the much maligned David Williamson at least wrote a play where the guy actually did it). The book isn’t really about sexual harassment it’s about corporate politics – the sexual harassment stuff is a furphy. As a result it shouldn’t really be seen as a book about sexual harassment, but where that is a topic.

Twister made a so-so film, best remembered for its special effects and spinning cow – but Bill Paxton being able to “sense” tornadoes? And want to run into them, and evil corporate sponsored baddies… I know scripts are rewritten and will have to read Crichton’s original before passing judgement.

Airframe deals with airline safety. This seems to be a lower key book than his others mainly because the havoc wrecked feels relatively minor. Its mainly notable for the way Crichton gets stuck into the media, something that would become a particular preoccupation of his in recent years.

Timeline was much better, a thrilling time travel story whose main attraction was the marvellous “feel” for medieval life (smells, tastes, danger). These elements were all missing in the poor film adaptation, which lacked any feeling of authenticity, and was further hampered by Paul Walker’s “woah dude” quasi-naturalistic performance; also who wants to cheer the French on against the English?

I’ve read Prey but have a hard time recalling any of it, except a vague image of a bee swarm-like antagonist. Maybe I just don't find nanotechnology that exciting.

State of Fear is Crichton taking on the environmental movement, not very convincingly (not so much the arguments against global warning just the fact that I can’t see them being this well organised). Around this point I really felt Crichton should think about not living in California any more, I think it gets to him.

Still, marvellous writer and always worth reading - brisk style, ferociously intelligent. You might ask "what about the characters, huh?" and it's true some of Crichton's people can be a little on the dull side, especially the heroes. But the outlandish ones are vivid: the gunslinger in Westworld, the Terminal Man, the Arab in Eaters of the Dead, T-Rex. And that's not as easy as he appears. And how many novelists are still kicking goals after thirty years?

Movie review - "The Magnificent Seven" (1960) ***1/2

Famous Western isn't quite as good as I remembered it - terrific central idea, of course, and that incredible cast and theme song, but far too many scenes aiming for significance with the mercenary characters sitting around going "gee it's hard to be a gunslinger". 

But still it remains mightly entertaining, full of conflict. Yul Brynner is an imposing lead, Steve McQueen is great, Charles Bronson steals every scene he's in (though they cheat by giving him scenes with children), James Coburn and Robert Vaughan very likeable. 

I was surprised seeing it again how much screen time was given to Horst Buchholz, a handsome German who never quite made it. This and The Bridge on the River Kwai kicked off the great "guys on a mission" action cycle of the 60s: The Dirty Dozen, Where Eagles Dare, Dark of the Sun, etc