Script review - "The Paper" by David and Stephen Koepp

 No one talks about this film but I liked it when it came out and feel the script held up. It's a 24 hours in the life of movie, the life being people who work at a New York tabloid, though not an evil one. There's Bernie the head business guy I guess, Alicia the other business person and Henry the editor. Some bits really shine - the whiny reporter going on about his ergonomic chair, Bernie telling Alicia that they cover the rich people's world they don't live in it, Henry stealing off the New York Times surrogate, Henry's pregnant wife meeting a source and laughing at his jokes. A nice movie.

Script review - "Pulp Fiction" by Quentin Tarantino

 This script was over exposed at one stage. Now it's nice to look back and appreciate for what it has always been - a clever, exciting piece of work, in which you wish Mr Wolf did something more clever. It's like a novel with various side characters clearly having full lives (eg the Columbian cab driver, English Dave, Lance's wife), A surprisingly moral piece. Vincent's poor bowel control is crucial - going to the toilet leads to his death, leads to the robbers taking control of the Diner, leads to Mia's overdosing.

Tim Holt Top Ten Non-B Western Films

1) Stella Dallas (1937 version)

2) Stagecoach (1939)

3) Swiss Family Robinson (1940)

4) Back Street (1941 version)

5) The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

6) Hitler's Children (1943)

7) My Darling Clementine (1946)

8) The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

9) His Kind of Woman (1951)

10) The Monster That Challenged the World (1957)

That's an amazing collection of films for a B Western movie star. Who else matches it apart from John Wayne?  (I will acknowledge Holt's contribution to the bulk of these isn't that critical.)

Movie review - "Blurred" (2002) **1/2

 Bright Aussie teen film with plenty of energy, engaging cast and good ideas. It doesn't quite work. The problem is easily identified... in my opinion anyhow... and it was something not picked up on my any of the critics that I read. All the central situations have potential but they aren't developed.

Craig Horner is besties with Veronica Sywak and Kristen Schmid and they hook up. Great scenario - when three becomes a crowd. Horner is very good. But that happens at the end, after we've just hung out with them, when it needed to happen earlier, and we play out the real drama i..e Horner finding life without his best friends.

Tony Brockman wanting to break up with Jess Gower because it's schoolies. That's great. But then Brockman just sits on a seat and gets wasted with a girl and... nothing much happens. Gower grabs Jamie Croft to root him and... she doesn't. No story progression. You could've spun it any sort of way. Had a romance. A fight. Just some relationship progression. But instead they jump up and down on the spot.

Mark Priestley and Travis Cotton as two yokels going to schoolies - great. But they just yokel around, run into Damien Garvey, do more yokeling. Then they meet the two private school girls and it looks like they might get off on them... and you go "that's the story. Those four having a romance." But they dismiss it in one scene.

Nathalie Roy as a posh girl meeting some raucus boys, but one seems nice... That has promise. Girl letting to let hair down. But we find out straight away the boy is a lout. No progression.

The film is good in its serious moments - Horner realising his two friends want to root, Horner making friends with Roy at the beach,  Gower and Croft saying goodbye.

A lot of the comedy is uncomfortable. I don't mean to sound old but two girls getting wasted and driving a limo erratically on the road... that's frigging dangerous. The scenes where Nathalie Roy is surrounded by boozy aggro boys is realistic in a really unfun way.

Book review - "Razzle Dazzle The Battle for Broadway" by Michael Riedel (2015)

 Super entertaining look at Broadway of the 70s and 80s... its decline then Chorus Line led revival. There was maybe a little too much on the Schubert organisation for me.

Full of colourful characters, Michael Bennett leading the way. It gives Frank Rich a shellacking, which is entertaining. It maybe warps the view of Broadway by focusing on the hits - tales of a few more flops might give a more accurate figure. And jeez every hit production is full of personal narrative of triumph. I don't think Phantom of the Opera can play the underdog card.

Book review - "Dune" by Frank Herbert (1965)

 Talk about world building. Herbert build a world, and a universe, and a language, and a system and, well, heaps. He uses the Jesus myth and history and came up with a compelling mythology. It's a first rate story.

Sometimes it got bogged down in detail and I needed someone to have a sense of humour but it is truly epic.

Lots of nice touches like the good Duke Leto having a propaganda arm. The action sequences are surprisingly short.

The Breaking of Bumbo (1971) ** (warning: spoilers)

 Part of Bryan Forbes' slate at EMI Films this is a swinging sixties film that probably came out too late. Maybe he was also thinking it could be another Virgin Soldiers but there had been The Jokers, If, and all those sorts of movies.

It's also about the guards at Buckingham Palace which kind of limits its appeal  - that's a very specific demo unlike National Servicemen. 

Richard Warwick is an engaging chap who makes his role unsleazy though he lacks a little in the charisma department. (The original director wanted Chris Cazanove.) Joanna Lumley is great fun as the protestor he hooks up with.

There's anarchic humour and a bleak ending with Warwick getting his head blown off and no one caring. But it was hard to care.

Edward Fox is in it. It's a relic of its era (even though the film never got a proper release).