Category Archive: Classic Film
Atticus Unsympatheticus
Is it a sin to kill a Finch?
Harper Lee died a few days ago. Atticus Finch died a while ago, mortally wounded by the publication of Go Set a Watchman. That is, the holier than thou Gregory-Peck-type Atticus Finch of To Kill a Mockingbird, died. The real Atticus Finch, or the draft Atticus Finch, depending on which way you look at it, lives on in infamy. He’s A Bad Man because he’s racist. Lordy lordy. Our whiter than white Atticus was nought but a whited sepulchre. A product of his time and place. Either a man with shades of grey in his past, a hypocrite, an even better lawyer and…
Continue Reading →12 Killer Quotes – The Godfather Saga
A colleague and friend suggested a bunch of lines from The Godfather saga: [Part I] Don Corleone to Buonasera: “You found Paradise in America, you had a good trade, made a good living, police protected you and there were courts of law. You didn’t need a friend like me.” Michael Corleone to Kay Adams: “My father made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.” Kay: “What was that?” Michael: “Luca Brasi held a gun to his head, and my father assured him that either his brains or his signature would be on the contract.” “It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.” Don…
Continue Reading →Killer Film Quotes – The Classics
No CGI, often in glorious black-and-white, but here’s a bunch of reminders why the old films can still be music to the ears: Q (Peter Lorre): “You despise me, don’t you?” A (Humphrey Bogart): “If I gave you any thought, I probably would.” [Casablanca] (see our link for more quotes from the typewriters of the Brothers Epstein and Howard Koch) “The Children of the night…what music they make!” [Dracula] Rufus T. Firefly: “Go, and never darken my towels again!” [Duck Soup] “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” [Gone With the Wind] Private Eye Sam Spade to gunsel Wilmer:…
Continue Reading →Ace in the Hole
"There's three of us buried here."
Politics love disaster: ‘”Ace in the Hole” aka “The Big Carnival” directed by Billy Wilder, with a great star turn by Kirk Douglas, could just be the best cynical disaster film ever made. [UPDATE: With a general federal election now called in Australia for 2 July 2016, the Beaconsfield Mine collapse has appeared as part of the opposition’s political campaign. Ten years ago (Autumn 2006) Brant Webb and Todd Russell left the pit, triumphantly clocking-off, after spending a fortnight trapped underground. There had been an earthquake and the tunnels didn’t hold. 14 other miners escaped early on; of the three…
Continue Reading →1984
"We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness."
(by George Orwell) [films by Michael Anderson (1956) and Michael Radford (1984)] “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” Thus does George Orwell dare start his last book with the dreaded weather line (cf. Bulwer Lytton), yet it works brilliantly. All of this Miltonian tract works brilliantly. It does because George was a certified seer, a genius. As Anthony Burgess wrote of 1984: “a mere novel, an artefact meant primarily for diversion, has been scaring the pants off us all. It is possible to say that the ghastly future Orwell foretold has not come about simply because…
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