Category Archive: FILM
The Sweet Hereafter
"It turns to streaming piss."
(Dir. Atom Egoyan) (1997) The school bus has gone badly off piste in a town that looks (and acts) like South Park. Whilst a close-knit (at times, a little too close-knit – adultery and, disturbingly, incest seems de rigueur) community mourns the lost children, a troubled ambulance-chaser (Ian Holm) moves in. This intense and rich movie features superb performances and has a great weird atmosphere. [Trivia note: Director Egoyan is a big fan of The Homecoming, that AFI rendering of hijinks within a bogan family. Apart from Ian Holm, who is sensational in Atom’s film, TVC does not agree. Respectfully, filmmakers…
Continue Reading →Pretty Poison
(Dir. Noel Black) (1968) It starts like a pilot for Psycho II…Norman…er, Dennis (Anthony Perkins), is making a new life as an inspector on an assembly line in Shanty-town, rehabilitating himself after life as a rapist/psycho/firebug. Dennis has got some mad, grand, plan, and he is innocent, I swear he is, he didn’t know his Aunt was in that house he burnt, but whilst he is clearly too old for trim blonde cutie, Sue Ann (Tuesday Weld), he is not too mad: for she is a match for him, and more! David Shipman, a highly perceptive critic, suggested that Weld (the key role…
Continue Reading →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…
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Random Killer Quotes
From diverse film sources: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” [Apocalypse Now] The lass at the publishing company wants to know how obsessive-compulsive misanthropist Jack Nicholson creates his female characters, to which he replies: “I think of a man. And then I take away reason, and accountability.” [As Good As it Gets] “Go sell crazy somewhere else. We’re all stocked-up here.” [As Good As it Gets] “Sometimes nothin’ is a real cool hand.” [Cool Hand Luke] “You’ve got to ask yourself a question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?” [Dirty Harry] Parting note from a consummate con-artist:…
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