Category Archive: FILM
All About Eve
"Too bad, we're gonna miss the third act. They're going to play it off stage."
(Written & Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz) (1950) This curlicued lass, Eve (Anne Baxter) shows her pathological ambition to act from a mile away, but the Theatre Folk are too wrapped-up in themselves to notice. Margot (Bette Davis) notices all right, but too late. Addison DeWitt gets it immediately though; he’s a critic after The Varnished Culture’s heart (soft-hearted though he is), and he is prepared to help the fledgling, albeit at a very high ticket price. This is the granddaddy of bitchy theatre films, a wall of highly-strung wit that both diminishes a film like Birdman yet makes that inferior piece possible. It features…
Continue Reading →Inherit the Wind
Proverbs, 11:29 – “He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind: and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart.” ——- I watched this Stanley Kramer bag-of-wind With that pair of plump boiled hams, Tracy and March, In a hot and dusty courtroom, having a fine old time Debating whether a schoolteacher had sinned. Kids bit into the apple when their brains began to parch So he taught them evolution was no crime. Tracy, playing Darrow, fought the case upon the law, In other words he posed as legislator. But the facts were dead against him, so,…
Continue Reading →Relax, Max
"Please redeem me, let me go..."
Mad Max Franchise (Dir. George Kennedy) These highly influential and popular films are, truth to tell, shite. Oh I know, they represent a definitive textbook for the Stunt Man; they give employment to a bunch of Aussies (yay!); in the case of the first film in the series, it justifies awakening the city of Clunes; they combine great visual beauty along with nauseating ugliness; they tell the world of the practical effect of the Greens’ energy policy, but excrement they remain. Listen! We blame no one. We’d rather watch these films than 97% of the cloacal mess showing at a cinema…
Continue Reading →The Martian
We'd rather watch Marvin (thanks to Warner Bros.)
(Dir. Ridley Scott) (2015) The one where the rocket takes off, but leaves the botanist behind by mistake, to tend his potatoes. It is easy to overlook quibbles (about, say, wind-cut sand dunes and big storms in an almost airless planet, consequence-free exposure to massive radiation, etc. – in other words, the fact that Mars doesn’t look or act as presented here) if you get a compelling story with real wit and feeling attached. Unfortunately, we don’t. What we do get is the old Hollywood ‘bake ‘n’ shake’. Recipe: Ingredients & method Let’s mine a bit of Interstellar but this time, Matt Damon…
Continue Reading →Books About JonBenét
What happened to her? (Picture thanks to Associated Press)
She was the beloved daughter of wealthy parents, and the only little girl in the world with that name. And we all know how things ended, only we don’t. The two best books on the subject, to date, are Lawrence Schiller’s Perfect Murder, Perfect Town and Detective Steve Thomas’ JonBenét, Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation. There’s no need to outline the events which are known, or to detail the weirder aspects – the “War and Peace” of all ransom notes, the $118,000 ransom, the playwright across the road who wrote it all before it happened, the false confession, Burke’s voice on tape when it…
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