Mother, uh, what is the phrase? She isn’t quite herself today.
Joseph Stefano was best known as the screenwriter for Alfred Hitchcock’s classic shocker Psycho. The Philadelphia-born Stefano began his career as a composer before switching to writing.
You can do all these amazing things, and sometimes you think that you will burst wide open unless you can tell someone about it, don’t you?… There’s one thing I know for sure, son. And that is, you are here for a reason. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but I do know this much: it’s not to score touchdowns.
Pa Kent has passed.
Glenn Ford, best known to modern audiences as Clark Kent’s father in the 1978 Superman movie, died today at the age of 90. Ford, a native Canadian who became an American citizen in 1939. His film career dated back to 1937, interrupted when he served in the Marine Corps in World War II.
Someday you’re gonna kill ten thousand in one of these firetraps, and I’ll keep eating smoke and carrying out bodies until someone asks us how to build them.
I suppose it’s just coincidence that this film wrapped 27 years to the day before 9/11, but in the wake of those terrorist attacks, and the ultimate sacrifice of hundreds of rescue personnel, this film carries a level of grim irony. Beyond that, however, Irwin Allen’s clichéd, overblown disaster spectacle offers little in the way of significance.
People should not be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.
A dystopian future is difficult to bring off on film, except as a broader metaphor. Attempts to equate the setting of such a film with current events usually come off as shrill and preachy. V for Vendetta succeeds largely on style points since its politics are ultimately obvious and shallow.
I will be attending the World Science Fiction Conviction in Anaheim, CA from today through Sunday, the 27th, so I may not get to watch another movie until next week. I am bringing a copy of V for Vendetta, so if I get some down time I might get to that one, but I can’t promise anything.
See you soon!
Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service.
Francis Ford Coppola’s feverish anti-war epic Apocalypse Now actually began its journey to screen in the late sixties when Über-macho filmmaker John Milius attempted to meet the challenge presented to him when he was informed that no one had successfully adapted Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, although several had tried, including luminaries such as Orson Welles. His original screenplay was true to Milius’s conservative, pro-military outlook, containing a great deal of praise for the warrior lifestyle and nothing but contempt for the hippies he saw protesting against the Vietnam War.
If confusion about your love life is ruining your day, I think it’s good to go over to your best friend’s house and ruin her day, too.
L.A. Story is a film dedicated to the premise that the city’s reputation as a haven for free-spirited oddballs is actually understated. It also looks under the well-buffed exterior of the so-called “beautiful people” and finds layers of desperation and loneliness below the insecurity we already knew was there. This Los Angeles is a place where a woman’s breasts feel odd if they’re real.
I just found out that actor Bruno Kirby has passed away of leukemia at the age of 57. He was always a favorite of mine for his role in Good Morning, Vietnam and his hilarious cameo as a limo driver in This is Spinal Tap.
He will be missed.
Remember that, how so ever you are played or by whom, your soul is in your keeping alone, even though those who presume to play be kings or men of power. When you stand before God, you cannot say, “But I was told by others to do thus,” or that virtue was not convenient at the time. This will not suffice. Remember that.
When I reviewed the theatrical cut of Ridley Scott’s Crusade-era epic Kingdom of Heaven, I made note that the film was long on spectacle and short on story and compelling characters. I was not in the minority in that opinion either. Fox Studios, in order to bring the film down to a more commercial running time, pressured director Ridley Scott to cut it, emasculating the story in the process.
At the time, there was already work being done on this director’s cut, and I hoped that this version would restore the depth and substance that the theatrical version lacked. I am now pleased to report that this is exactly the case. This new, 196-minute version restores a number of scenes, sub-plots and entire characters that answer my objections and give this film a level of resonance worthy of the images on screen.
There is no terrible way to win. There is only winning.
Back in the 1960s, there was a particular genre of movies comprised of big budget epics with large international casts. Their sudsy stories usually centered on some larger-than-life subject. Another prime example would Guy Hamilton’s Battle of Britain. This film shares a lot of DNA with the later war epic. Both films work best when focusing more on the machines than the people inside them. When Grand Prix is in its element, using director John Frankenheimer’s car mounted cameras on the real circuits of the Formula One racing season, the film is exciting and visually spectacular. When the characters get out of their cars, strip off their racing suits and start talking to each other, the film runs into trouble.
