Movie review - "Love on the Run" (1979) **

The fifth and final installment of Truffaut's Antoine Doinel series feels at times like one of those compilation episodes they make on television series when they are running behind schedule: there is a rough sort of plot (Antoine's getting divorced, sees an ex hop on a train and follows her) but the film is mostly flashbacks, either to earlier films or new scene shot so they seem to be flashbacks to earlier films. It's interesting to watch since the same actors repeat their roles - instead of an actor playing "young" or a different actor who get the actual actor playing the actor roles. It also reminds you that Jean-Pierre Léaud, an OK actor as an adult, was exceptional in The 400 Blows (it would be interesting to see a documentary contrasting child actors who made it as adults eg Roddy McDowall, Dean Stockwell, Natalie Wood - to see whether they got better or more inhibited or whatever).

It's nice to see the clips again and I guess it brings things full circle, but Truffaut is slumming here - only once, when Antoine talks to his mother's ex lover, does the piece approach any depth. (It's like it needed a death or something not just an amiable divorce). A surprisingly large amount of screen time is spent on Antoine's ex, Colette (Marie-France Pisier, who co-wrote the script which is maybe why she gets so much screen time - she might be more familiar to American audiences since she played the lead in The Other Side of Midnight) - she gets her own story that doesn't involve Antoine (a lawyer who is also a high class hooker... c'mon Truffaut, stop it with the hookers, already). Dorothee, who plays Antoine's nice new girlfriend, was a children's television host in the 80s so presumably her topless scene has given the film a sort of pop culture immortality there.

Book review - "Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live" by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller

As a movie loving kid in the 80s you were very aware of Saturday Night Live, even if we didn't get it in Australia. The reason was the movies - the show seemed to be a vertiable movie star factory, pumping them out with a frequency unmatched by a studio since the heyday of classical Hollywood (the only recent example I can think of is Roger Corman and directors): Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, James (and Jim) Belushi, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy. There was even a subsection of people who you assumed were on the show but weren't: Rick Moranis, John Candy, Harold Ramis. When I finally got the chance to see it on Pay Tv in the 90s I was a little disappointed, it was so flabby - for some reason I didn't realise it was live. Reading the book I caught some episodes on the comedy channel and now think its great.

This is a terrific look at the series. The decision to tell the story by oral history was totally the right one: because its such a chaotic show you're going to get different opinions anyway, true objectivity is impossible so subjective accounts cancel each other out with a few facts to state things like ratings and budgets sprinkled throughout. Full of hilarious stories and insghts, some of which I offer below

Chevy Chase - the first big star of the series, and no wonder: handsome, charismatic (and, from interviews, very intelligent), he should still be a movie star now. He seems to have been a major prick though - few people have a good word to say about his personality. Bill Murray says that when you become famous you have to be an ar*ehole for a year you can't help it but if you don't change the year after that it becomes permanent.

John Belushi - the first death, a huge talent - most people on the show loved him but also knew he had demons. Lots of time is spent slagging off Bob Woodward.

Dan Aykroyd - like Chase, highly intelligent - he was a star on this he never quite became on screen. Very Canadian, if that makes sense. Went out with Lorne Michaels' wife in the 70s which was gutsy but Lorne Michaels wasn't Lorne Michaels then.

Gilda Radner - seemingly beloved by everyone her work wasn't as familiar for those outside America - she was best known in the 80s to many for being married to Gene Wilder and starring in his movies. She was bulmic - one of the other women on that show remembers thinking "wow throwing up after eating... what a great idea."

Garrett Morris - the first black performer, one of the few of the initial cast not to become famous, notorious for being a token and he seems to be bitter about it.

Larraine Newman - like Morris didn't become famous (partly due to drug problems). Al Franken (a writer on the show who is now a well known commentator in the US) once nastily cracked some of SNL became $20 million stars, some became Larraine.

Bill Murray - anger management issues - surprise - but obviously less than when he became a star. Chip on his shoulder about Chevy Chase whom he replaced but again his intelligence is striking.

Eddie Murphy - credited with saving the show when Michaels and the original cast left in 1980. Electrifying talent whom everyone who worked with still seems to worship.

Joe Piscopo - they always seem to make fun of him on The Simpsons and they do here - he seems to have attached himself to Eddie Murphy's star, and also Frank Sinatra's (who he impersonated).

Chris Farley - Belushi wannabe who seemed to be a typical funny fatman - lovable with a dark side. Funniest story: a girlfriend dumped him for another and he consoled himself with the thought that although the other guy may be better looking and richer, he would be funnier. The other guy was Steve Martin.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus - joined the cast for a while but obviously never hit her potential. Ditto Larry David... and talent such as Jeanne Garofolo (who seems to have had a chip on her shoulder when she was on it) and Chris Rock. When you see this it becomes apparent SNL were like the Brisbane Broncos - a super club of superstars where, however, some people simply didn't fit in.

Dana Carvey - part of the second great wave of SNL: Mike Myers, Will Ferrell, etc Less concentrated than the first wave but even more popular at the movies.

Tina Fey - part of the recent emergence of women - women have always been there but it wasn't until Molly Shannon, Fey, etc they really seemed to become part of the establishment.

Lorne Michaels - some people whine, some praise (the writers - who get their due in this book, incidentally, can be just as whiny as the performers), but he did a remarkable job. Look at the scoreboard - who else can match his record? Its not easy being keeper at that zoo but he did it.

Great book, makes you want to go

Comic review - Tintin # 5 - "The Blue Lotus" by Herge

This is often heralded as a major turning point in the Tintin series as Herge started to get a bit more serious about his plotting and art. It's hard to tell because Cigars of the Pharaoh, for which this is a sequel, was re-drawn so you can't tell the great leap in Herge's artistry. But he did try to make more of an effort with the drawings, especially to increase accuracy and base his opinions less on local Belgium prejudices.

Tintin goes to China to try to find a cure for madness and clashes with Japanese and also nasty Westerners. The story is very anti-Japanese (to be point of racism, really) and gives Western imperialists in Shanghai a hard time (the head of police is corrupt, an American businessman is a bully and a racist), while the Chinese are mostly nice and brave. The story is more closely tied in to a historical event than any other Tintin - to wit, the Mukden Incident, where a blown up rail line gave the Japanese an excuse to invade Manchuria. The stakes in this one are huge - Tintin really feels to be in a lot of danger, in a war torn country (China) chased by the force of a whole nation (Japan) and the police force of the international settlement - the Chinese govt don't really help him, only a (good) secret society. So you really feel Tintin is in peril a lot of the time. And the Chinese setting mean it really feels exotic and the insanity injections are genuinely terrifying. I admit though I've never been as fond of this story - don't know why, maybe the Japanese are too monkey like, and the stuff with Chan a bit too sentimental.

Comic review - Tintin # 4 - "Cigars of the Pharaoh" by Herge

Tintin No. 4 is a big improvement on Tintin in America, benefiting from the revised colouring and illustration that was done to the story in the 1950s. But it also has a real exotic feel with locations in Egypt and India, various secret societies and smugglers (opium and guns), and there is an overall throughline (though it is mostly a series of episodic adventures).

The story has two major flaws: Tintin flies in a plane from the Middle East to India and just happens to run into Dr Sarcophagus again, and Thomson and Thompson just happen to see him on a train. This is the sort of lazy plotting that would eventually be eliminated from the series. There is also a bit of silliness, like talking to elephants. On the positive side the characters are strong: we meet the Thomson twins (who are idiots but are smarter than they would be in later books, they really come to the rescue twice - once to save Tintin from a firing squad, once to save Snowy from sacrifice), Sarcophagus is an early model for Calculus, we meet Rastapopulus and Alan. Some moments of real cleverness, like when Tintin wakes up in a coffin on the sea, and escapes from a hospital by jumping on a fat man's stomach.

Comic review - Tintin #3 - "Tintin in America" (1931) by Herge

Just as silly and childish (and fast paced) as Tintin in the Congo but it passes the PC test because here Tintin was fighting gangsters in Chicago: Al Capone for a bit, then another one, Bobby Smiles, who naturally flees out west so Tintin becomes involved with some Indians (he dresses as a cowboy), then there are more gangsters.

A highly episodic plot with Tintin getting out of trouble mostly due to luck (eg weight bells turning out to be made of wood, a strike at a meat packers stopping him from being chopped up). There is some occasional cleverness, such as Tintin distracting Indians who want to kill him by flicking wood at them, and a brilliantly satirical section where Tintin accidentally discovers oil, and when Americans find out it's on Indian land they march the Indians off. But it gets a bit wearying after a while. (Haddock fans will note a fore-runner to Haddock, the appearance of a drunken man who tries to help Tintin .)

Book review - "700 Sundays" by Billy Crystal

Billy Crystal seems one of the nicest, most likeable people in show business - he comes across well in his hosting gigs, always interviews engagingly, constantly deals with problems of marriage in his screenplays in a way few (filmed) writers do. So it's no surprise that his memoir is a charming one - you can really imagine it working on stage. I had no idea Crystal came from showbiz stock, his dad and uncle were genuine big names in jazz promotion; other stuff is a bit more familiar from Jewish memoirs: holidays at the Catskills, discovering sex, wacky relatives. It is full of warmth and love and humour - Crystal really loves his family.

Book review - "No Leading Lady" by R C Sherriff

I knew Sherriff best as a screenwriter, one of Britain's best - his credits included several James Whale films as well as a number of Kordas (The Four Feathers, That Hamilton Woman) and post-war classics (The Dam Busters, Odd Man Out). He was best known in his life time for the play Journey's End, the writing and production(s) of which takes up over half this book. It is a brilliant play - it doesn't preach and the characters have become types but when you read it, it hits home because it is so real. Its accuracy and lack of affectation really captured the public's fancy.

Sherriff is very upfront and open about his trials and tribulations of the play - the writing process, difficulties in getting it mounted. The stories do have a lot of "I'd almost given up hope and was prepared to chuck it in but then the phone rang" quality, which gets wearying after a while, but it seems no doubt the play struck a real chord. The writer is less open when it comes to himself - he seems to be an only child, who went to a so-so public school and to work for the insurance firm his father worked at, a job which bored him to death so much the war was a releif (apart from a few "bad times in France" - this from the writer of Journey's End!), then back to insurance. His recreation was rowing and he honed his writing ability putting on shows to raise money for his rowing club, which eventually led him to try his luck with Journey's End.

Sheriff never mentions a girlfriend, wife, or partner - he and his mother was very close, she went with him everywhere. He had plenty of acquaintances through rowing but seemingly no really close friends. I read a biography of Whale where someone referred to him as sexless. I found this touching - a lonely figure in many ways, who when he had the money went to study at Oxford, and bought an archeological dig site for a hobby; who enjoyed rowing and cricket and wanted an Oxford Blue more than anything, who did most of his writing at night time.

Sherriff never repeated the success of Journey's End but that was flukishly large. To his credit he kept at his craft and enjoyed a number of successes - screenwriting, as mentioned, but also other plays such as Miss Mabel and some novels. He enjoyed a long Indian summer in the 50s but suffered from the Angry New Man movement of the end of that decade. A BFI book on The Dambusters offers some invaluable insights into Sherriff's writing - said he was best when the nature of the piece had a natural climax otherwise his writing tended to waffle a bit.

The book is written in Sherriff's bright, unpretentious style - it is slightly hollow at the centre (he is a bit too reserved - the no romance of any kind thing is a bit weird as is the closeness to mother, its like a Hitchcock character), and I would have liked to have had more on the screenplays (Odd Man Out and Quartet are both dealt with in a sentence, a bit quick for two classics) and for all the pages on Journey's End the plays there is little on Sherriff's actual war service - this is a writer who needs a biography.