Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
YouTube viewing

You have to hand it to Russ Meyer. He knew exactly what he wanted to see in his movies, and he got it, time and time again: sexy chicks with big tits—yet his films weren’t pornos, and sometimes, they weren’t even erotic. His women weren’t put on pedestals; they were active and did things; sometimes bad things, true, but they were rarely boring.

As a cartoonist, I’ve drawn sexy girls in the past for my own amusement, and occasionally for publication, sometimes clothed, other times not. I’ve wanted to make an erotic comic book; I even wrote a script for a story about a stripper, but I never had the cojones to actually draw it and publish it.

Putting one’s sexual fantasies on display is not an easy thing, not even these days, where public exhibitionism is more common than ever thanks to the internet. I know the things that turn me on are not as unusual as I once might’ve thought (and none of your beeswax), but in my prose at least, I’ve loosened up somewhat in that category thanks to a writer friend whose stories have lots of steamy sex scenes. She and I have had long conversations on the subject. Still, I’m no E.L. James by any stretch.

Being attracted to sexual imagery and afraid of it at the same time has been the American way for generations, and it’s certainly been a long-running subplot in the history of film. The underground cinema of the 50s and 60s chafed at the restrictions against nudity and depictions of sexuality in general, and Meyer was one of the filmmakers at the vanguard.

Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song

Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song
YouTube viewing

Sure, a movie about a black guy who kills cops and gets away with it looks really good right now... and I can’t help but feel churlish for wanting to criticize a movie like Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, which even in its day hit like a bolt of lightning and set the stage for the blaxploitation films of the 70s. Still, it’s worth discussing as a film, independent of its wider cultural impact. I’ll do my best.

Chicago native Melvin van Peebles was working as a cable car grip man in San Francisco in the 50s when, in conversation with a passenger, he got the idea to make movies. A few fledgling attempts at some short films led to an unsuccessful attempt at breaking into Hollywood which led to an extended stay in Europe for awhile, meeting avant-garde filmmakers, making some connections, gaining experience.

In 1968 he made his first feature, The Story of a Three-Day Pass, in English and French, which led to a gig at Columbia Pictures, where he made the comedy Watermelon Man in 1970. MVP, however, craved greater creative control over his work.

M

M: A City Searches For a Murderer
YouTube viewing

Fritz Lang left his native Germany in 1933 to escape the Nazis (Joseph Goebbels had offered him a job as a studio head) and three years later, worked in Hollywood, where he made such films as The Big Heat, Clash By Night, Scarlet Street, and many more in a career that lasted into the 60s. Prior to all of that, he was a successful filmmaker back home as well, and for a long time, he worked with a collaborator who was a vital part of that success—his wife.

Thea von Harbou was a novelist turned screenwriter. She met Lang while working on an adaptation of one of her novels in 1918, which led to an affair. In 1920 she divorced her husband and married Lang two years later. During the 20s, she worked not only with Lang but other filmmakers, including FW Murnau and Carl Theodor Dreyer. In 1927 she adapted for the screen her novel Metropolis. (Lang did some uncredited work as well, but the screen credit belongs solely to her.)

TVH would divorce Lang in 1933 due to him having multiple affairs. That was the year Hitler came to power in Germany and regrettably, she supported the Nazis. However, she also went on to directing a few films and writing many more—plus she spoke out publicly in favor of women’s right to abortion.

Algiers

Algiers
YouTube viewing

In Jeanine Basinger’s book about the Old Hollywood approach to creating movie stardom, The Star Machine, she says that Charles Boyer “was every American moviegoer’s idea of Big-time French.” I imagine he came across as pretty exotic and cosmopolitan to audiences back then, like Maurice Chevalier and Jean Gabin. These days, when I think of French thespians, I tend to think of the ladies—Catherine Deneuve, Brigitte Bardot, Audrey Tatou, Juliette Binoche—before any fellas.

Even before the actors, though, I associate French cinema with the directors who came out of the New Wave era: Godard, Truffaut, etc. Call it a cultural shift, one where who makes a film became as important, if not more so, than who’s in it. The French were greatly responsible for that. Now that’s big-time.

I can’t say I know a great deal about Boyer beyond what I’ve read. MGM originally wanted him to do foreign-language versions of their English language hits, but once dubbing was used, duplicates became unnecessary. Hollywood still wanted Boyer, but he had to improve his English first (he could speak five other languages and made movies not only in France, but Germany too). He came back to Hollywood in 1934 and once it was determined the ladies in the audience responded to him, that’s when his stardom in America took off.

Algiers was the film that put him over the top. Set in the North African city in Algeria, it focuses on a French criminal who, after pulling off a major jewelry heist, set up shop in the seedy criminal quarter known as the Casbah and became a big-shot there for years. The cops could never touch him because he was so well-protected, but now they have a plan, which comes right as Boyer feels restless and is ready to leave the neighborhood he may rule like a king, but which has also become a prison to him.

The Casbah was in pretty bad shape even before this year. UNESCO declared it a “world heritage site” and efforts have been made to preserve it, despite the political upheavals of recent decades. This New York Times article goes into more detail. Plus, here are some first-hand accounts of the current state of the neighborhood.

It was hard to not look at Algiers through 21st-century eyes. I didn’t completely buy the cliche of glamor-girl Hedy Lamarr falling for bad-boy Boyer, though I did accept him falling for her. She represented the France he missed after being away for so long and believed he could recapture again—the movie hammers this point home pretty well. (I liked the line about how she reminded him of the subway.) I was reminded of Casablanca: foreigner in a foreign country he has learned to call home gets hung up over a girl who reminds him of the past but represents danger. Setting plays a vital role; as does local law and order.

Basinger discusses what made Boyer a star in his day:

To American audiences, Charles Boyer seemed the perfect lover for many reasons, Algiers chief among them. But women also thought he was a gentleman.... he had that gentlemanly quality, that elegance, that sense that he was offering his arm to a lady. He was an exotic French lover Americanized, democratized, and because of that, he seemed to be perfect to play in support of female movie stars.

Boyer seemed like a cliche to me only because his type had been imitated and parodied many times since Algiers. Sometimes it really is necessary to attempt to see an old movie the way audiences of its time saw it in order to appreciate it better. I haven’t mastered that ability yet.

Sigrid Gurie (second-billed over Lamarr) plays this local chick totally hung up on Boyer
for reasons I couldn’t exactly fathom. He, of course, takes her completely for granted.

A brief word about Lamarr. Much has been written about her prowess as a scientist and her contributions to inventions that still impact modern society. This was the first time I had seen her as an actress, and I can’t say I was bowled over by her. She wasn’t bad, but she wasn’t distinctive in the way a Garbo or a Dietrich were. She was gorgeous, but that was the extent of it. I probably need to see more of her films. If it weren’t for her, though, I couldn’t write this post for you to read on the Internet, so there’s that. Last year, Deadline announced that Gal Gadot would star in a biopic of Lamarr.

Borderline

Borderline
YouTube viewing

Recently there was a blogathon devoted to Claire Trevor and I wanted to take part in it so bad because I really dig her. I haven’t seen her in much, but her bad-girl characters were so memorable and she was so believable and sympathetic as them. I’m glad Crystal and Virginie put her back in the spotlight. Alas, I had too many other blogathons too close together to add another one, but I still wanna talk about her.

Sister Celluloid did a post about a Trevor movie called Borderline, a comedic crime picture with Fred MacMurray, and once again she was kind enough to embed the YouTube video. Borderline is It Happened One Night meets Anthony Mann’s Border Incident, and while it’s more funny-amusing than funny-ha ha, it was worth watching to see Trevor as a good girl!

The Brooklyn native graduated from Columbia and did a lot of stage work on and off Broadway before heading west to Hollywood. You probably knew she was a three-time Oscar nominee, winning for Key Largo in Supporting Actress, but did you know she also won an Emmy for a TV remake of Dodsworth? I’d love to see it if it’s available.

In the 80s, after retiring from acting, she took up mentoring young performing artists at the University of California-Irvine, to the point where after her death in 2000, the School of the Arts was renamed in her honor. From the Claire Trevor School of the Arts website:

Ms. Trevor was a frequent visitor to the School, sitting in on rehearsals and interacting with student actors and faculty. She liked getting to know the drama students and seeing their work, according to those who knew her at that time. She often spoke of the important role the Arts had played in her life, and she believed that using one’s imagination to its fullest is necessary in order to live a happy life. She was thrilled to be able to help the School’s students achieve their goals and assist them, in some small way, according to her friends.

Borderline, like I said, has a slight, gentle comedic touch to it, though it’s mostly a dramatic crime pic. It made me think of the kinds of movies Lucille Ball made in the 40s, before she came to television, and Trevor does feel like she’s channeling Lucy in places. It’s also an unusual role for a woman of the late-40s/early-50s in that she plays a undercover cop, one who was an intelligence agent during the war and speaks fluent Spanish. I would’ve loved to have seen a little more of this life than we do in the movie.

Trevor goes south of the border to infiltrate a drug-running racket in Mexico and expose boss Raymond Burr, once again playing the heavy, and at first it seems as if this will be her movie. Then she crosses paths with MacMurray, a G-man who’s also undercover, and suddenly they’re both on the run and it becomes a buddy road movie, where neither of them know each other’s true identities. Of course, they fall in love.

In the final reel, MacMurray is the one who does the heavy lifting and catches the bad guys while Trevor watches, which was disappointing, but seeing the two of them together is fun. They both come across as mature adults, and the humor is never over-the-top or inappropriate. The location shooting is good as well.

Trevor subverts her bad-girl image at first by having her character pretend to be one. We see her dancing as a chorus girl in a Mexican cafe, trying (and failing) to attract Burr’s attention, then turning to one of his henchmen, wearing a tight blouse off the shoulders and getting him drunk so he can take her to Burr’s hotel room. Trevor would’ve been 40 when she made Borderline, yet she still got to be sexy and seductive and brave, sneaking around Burr’s room looking for evidence of his illicit activities and surviving a shootout between Burr and MacMurray.

Borderline is not perfect, but it’s a nice showcase for Trevor, older but not having lost a thing, playing a rare kind of woman in the Old Hollywood era.

5 Minutes to Live

The Pop Stars Moonlighting Blogathon is an event devoted to singers who act, hosted by RealWeegieMidget Reviews. For a complete list of participating bloggers, visit the link at the host site.

5 Minutes to Live (AKA Door-to-Door Maniac)
YouTube viewing

He was a musician in the fields of not only country music, but rock, folk, and gospel, a pioneer whose influence continues to be felt today. He had a roguish reputation, fueled by his addictions to alcohol and drugs. He was a deeply spiritual man who wrote songs about the plight of Native Americans and other disenfranchised people. They called him the Man in Black—but his name was Johnny Cash.

The Irishman

The Irishman
Netflix viewing

Before I start talking about The Irishman, I wanna make one thing clear: I waited till it came out on Netflix because it’s a three-and-a-half-hour movie and I wanted to be able to take breaks! I also wanted to save a little money, but mostly, I wanted to take breaks. Marty, I love ya, but seriously, bro, why couldn’t you have made this an HBO miniseries?

I bring this up because a lot of people in Hollywood are still freaking out over the fact that Netflix exists, much less that it’s making Oscar-caliber movies with directors like Marty—and I totally understand. I’m lucky to even have Netflix. I think we need, once again, to address the current mishegoss behind it and online streaming in general, because friends and neighbors, it’s changing the way we consume entertainment quicker than you can say “Marvel movies aren’t cinema.”

This Variety piece discusses how the traditional window between theatrical release and TV/home video release is less of an issue overseas than domestically with The Irishman. The limited (at first) domestic theatrical release was motivated, in part, by Netflix’ desire to win Oscars with the movie, and you may recall from earlier this year that some within Hollywood don’t like that streaming movies are Oscar-eligible. That’s the business end.

He Walked By Night

He Walked By Night
YouTube viewing

The cool kids amongst the classic film blogger crowd like to devote this time of year to blog and/or tweet about film noir flicks. They call it “Noir-vember” (get it?). When it comes to WSW, I mostly prefer to march to my own drum, but it occurs to me this is a nice excuse to talk about a film I first watched last year, as research for my Dark Pages article—a film that amazed me.

He Walked By Night is credited to Alfred Welker as director, but Anthony Mann finished it when Welker was no longer available. It’s based on a true story about the search for an LA cop killer and robber who had the police befuddled because he was smarter than the average bear. The film is very much of a piece with Mann’s other noir work, such as T-Men and Raw Deal, as well as other police procedurals from the era like The Naked City.

My Dark Pages piece was about Mann and his favorite cinematographer, John Alton, a guy who really put the noir in film noir due to his deft understanding of light and shadow and how to photograph it. Since they both worked on Night, I had watched it to learn more about them. The familiar noir tropes are there—narrator; hard-boiled lead character; the terse, gruff cops and their lingo; the chase—but it still works! In an era of CSI and Law and Order and their numerous spin-offs on TV, it’s easy to forget how these kinds of stories still have the ability to entertain, but for me, at least, this film did.

Richard Basehart is top-billed as the amoral killer, a role in which he could’ve laid it on thick, but he doesn’t; in fact, his slow-burn approach is part of his character, who’s described on the surface as average-looking, unassuming, kinda bland. When we see his anger, though, it’s on a hair trigger; you get the sense it wouldn’t take much to set him off—but when he’s on the run, his fear, mixed with desperation, is just as clear on his face, however subtly. Basehart’s lack of melodrama makes you watch him closer.

In a story like this, plot is far above character, but there are revealing moments: the cop on the phone, asking about another cop’s child’s wedding while getting important information; the crippled officer visiting his partner and joshing with him as they go over the case; even the killer’s relationship with his dog, who acts as a sentry against intruders to their bungalow. Even the plot itself goes off the track in unexpected ways: in one scene, a detective, disguised as a milkman as he searches for the killer, runs into a chatty housewife with issues of her own. Little things, but they add life and variety to the story.

The highlight, however, is the climax, in which the cops chase the killer through the underground storm drains of LA. Here’s a brief but checkered history of the system and the river that necessitated its creation. Basehart runs through the tunnels with his flashlight the only illumination, while in the distance the cops pursue, their lights dots in the background that turn into penetrating beams of light. Can you imagine not only filming this in black and white, but directing it? Determining where everyone is to go amidst the maze of tunnels, finding appropriate spots to stage shootouts, contending with the different kinds of sounds and sights to produce something coherent for film and not just a murky mess? But Mann and Alton did it, and well.

A young Jack Webb plays a forensic scientist in a supporting role. This is significant because in talking to the police technical advisor between takes of Night, Webb was inspired to create more police-procedural stories, done in a similar faux-documentary style that emphasized the process in which the cops catch the bad guys, and thus was born, a year later, the radio show-turned-TV show Dragnet.

Night has to be one of the most important noir films ever made. It’s in the public domain, so it’s easy to find and watch. If you’ve never seen a noir film before, start here.

Joker

Joker
seen @ Cinemart Fiveplex, Forest Hills, Queens, NY

This is the movie everyone was so scared would incite another mass shooting?

I almost fell asleep while watching it!

In fairness, I saw Joker the day after a late night out with Virginia. I got home at three in the morning, so while I was wide awake by the time the movie began, I didn’t have much sleep. Still, by the time I started dozing off, maybe a smidge past the halfway point, I had already decided Joker was not saying anything new or different; that Joaquin Phoenix, while excellent in what will almost certainly be an Oscar-nominated performance, couldn’t make up for a largely derivative screenplay (though he does come close); and that Joker isn’t a love letter to Martin Scorsese. It’s a rehash of Alan Moore.

Hard Boiled

Hard Boiled
YouTube viewing

The 90s were a great time to work in video retail — for me, anyway. Quentin Tarantino made being a video store clerk cool, and the store I worked in for much of the decade had a primo selection of independent and foreign cinema. Our clientele appreciated us for this.

This made me want to keep up with the current filmmakers building reputations outside the boundaries of Hollywood: Mike Leigh, Lars von Trier, Hal Hartley, Jim Jarmusch, Pedro Almodovar, just to name a few. One of the hottest directors during the decade, one championed by us film nerds, was a fella from Hong Kong named John Woo.

I admit, I jumped on the bandwagon for Woo late, after he made his American debut in 1996, with the film Broken Arrow. If you were a film nerd then, though, it was damn near impossible to avoid the buzz surrounding him.

This was partly due to the rising interest in Asian cinema in general, especially the chop-socky kind: Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Michelle Yeoh were also crossing over to the Western market around this time (plus filmmakers like Ang Lee and Wong Kar-Wai, who appealed to the Film Forum/Angelika crowd).

You will always see a moment like this
in a John Woo film.

Tarantino made it clear his films owed a big debt to Asian cinema, and lo, his disciples did go forth and spread the word, from their churches of VHS and Betamax, to their customers, and the word was Cool.

Woo made high-octane crime flicks, with levels of violence that would make Sam Peckinpah gasp. Woo's films were among the first where I understood the importance of letterbox.

In those primitive days before every television was formatted in widescreen proportions, I remember hearing my video store co-workers use phrases like "aspect ratio" and "pan and scan" and "two-three-five to one" and learning from them that how you watch a home video matters, especially if it's a tape of a film by a certain kind of filmmaker, like Kubrick, or Cameron, or Woo.

Many film nerds from my generation agree that one of Woo's best is Hard Boiled, starring Chow Yun-Fat, the Robert De Niro to Woo's Martin Scorsese, a star who also crossed over to Hollywood.

In Hard Boiled (story by Woo), he's a loose cannon cop who inadvertently crosses paths with an undercover cop while investigating a smuggling ring. It's a grand guignol of blood and bodies falling in slo-mo and bullets, bullets, bullets. It's not for the faint of heart, but man, is it fun to watch!

In searching for pics for this post, I discovered that Woo wants to remake another one of his classic HK films, The Killer, for American audiences. (Lupita Nyong'o? Talk about an out-of-the-box choice!)

My fear is that Woo's brand of ultraviolence won't have any traction today, in an era where PG-13 films reap wider audiences than R-rated ones. Then again, given how crazy PG-13 films can get with the violence themselves, maybe it's not an issue anymore. I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Road to Perdition

The It Takes a Thief Blogathon is an event devoted to theft as depicted in the movies, hosted by Moon in Gemini. For a complete list of participating bloggers, visit the links at the host site.

Road to Perdition
Cinemax viewing

In both the graphic novel and the film versions of Road to Perdition, Tom Hanks' character Sullivan (O'Sullivan in the book, but I'll stick to Sullivan here), on the run from his double-crossing mob boss Rooney, forces a wedge between Rooney and his Chicago ally Al Capone by robbing banks with their money. Sullivan shrewdly gives the bankers a share of the cash to ensure their silence. 

The book has a poignant scene between Sullivan and his son Michael where he explains this money will be Michael's one day, to do with as he pleases. 

Michael is overjoyed at the amount they have, especially since this takes place during the Depression, but Sullivan makes it clear it means nothing without their family, his wife and younger son, murdered by Rooney's son Connor.

I liked the film version, but thought, and still think, Hanks was miscast as Sullivan. The role needed a Clint Eastwood type. While Hanks can do tough-guy roles, I just wasn't convinced of him as a stone-cold killer, partly because of who he is. He's Tom Hanks! He wouldn't hurt a fly, would he?

If I was director Sam Mendes, I might have put Hanks in the Rooney role and had Daniel Craig play Sullivan, but that would've deprived us of a great performance from Paul Newman (one of his last, as it turned out) as Rooney, so maybe it's just as well.

In the introduction to the 1998 Paradox Press edition of Perdition, writer Max Allan Collins acknowledges how much truth there is to this tale: John and Connor Rooney (nee Looney) were real - a father and son who ran an organized crime business in the Iowa-Illinois Tri-Cities region.

Capone and Frank Nitti were real, obviously (Eliot Ness appears in the book too), and according to Collins, there was an actual enforcer whom Looney betrayed.

Perdition, however, is a work of fiction; for Collins, the fusion of fact and legend, as exemplified in films like Bonnie and Clyde, are what give it its strength:

...These things had really happened, right where I lived; there was a truth underlying the noir fantasy, more than moldy old books, musty magazines and library microfilm had ever brought to life for me... and that was where my impulse to develop what has been termed the "true-crime fiction" subgenre began.

--------------------
Other movies about theft (an abbreviated list):
High Sierra
The Drop
Across 110th Street
Bob le Flambeur
Gun Crazy
The Town

Fargo

The Reel Infatuation Blogathon is an event devoted to favorite movie characters, hosted by Silver Screenings and Font and Frock. For a complete list of participating bloggers, visit the links at either site.

Fargo
from my VHS collection

Larry wasn't born with the brains God gave a duck but he was my brother and he shouldna oughta died like that: shot, left in the snow in the middle o' the night. I told him to stay on 71 when he called me: "Stay on 71," I says, "that'll take ya to I-94 and I-94'll take ya to Minneapolis." Don't know how he ended up in Brainerd, but that's Larry for ya - and all on account o' him and his girlfriend needin' to go to that damfool Three Stooges film festival.

I went to Brainerd to... you know, identify the bodies and all. Long drive from Billings.

I got there and went to the police station and that's where I met Sheriff Marge Gunderson.

Key Largo

Key Largo
seen @ Landmark Loews Jersey Theater, Jersey City, NJ

When I think of Florida, my grandmother comes to mind. This was very long ago, so my memories are dim and fragmented. She was nice, though I can't picture her face. My mother always encouraged me to write to her, but I didn't need much prompting; she always sent me money.

She lived in St. Augustine. We might have visited her at least a couple of times that I recall. I have a vivid image of the street she lived on, if not her house. It was a sandy road, unpaved, with no sidewalks. While in Florida, we also went to Disney World at least once. No memories of that.

We did not visit the Florida Keys. I have no burning desire to do so, though I'm sure they're beautiful, based on what we see of them in Key Largo. John Huston gave us a few location shots, of the Seven Mile Bridge and the piers. I wouldn't want to live down there, though. I'd be too afraid of the damage hurricanes can do. They're enough of a problem here in the northeast.

Largo was based on a play, and as I watched it I tried to imagine how certain scenes would be staged. I imagine it's not too hard to provide sound effects for a hurricane. Maybe you could rattle the sets backstage to simulate the blowing wind. Could you have a tree smashing through a window on stage? Maybe that was for the movie. The climax on the boat probably plays much better on a movie screen.

When Jacqueline wrote about seeing Largo on a big screen, she pointed out how it almost seemed like a different movie because everything's magnified. Absolutely true. Every word. I didn't have the bad experience with the audience she had. The Loews JC crowd was totally respectful, as they almost always are. Going there for this movie was a spur of the moment decision. I'm glad I did it. I feel at home watching a movie there like I do no place else.

Let's talk about Claire Trevor for a minute. Did you know there's a Claire Trevor School of the Arts? It's part of the University of California-Irvine. Jon Lovitz went there, among other notables. They offer programs for visual as well as performing arts.

Largo was Trevor's Oscar-winning role. She had appeared with Bogey before, in the movie Dead End, another Oscar-nominated performance, plus she had done radio work with Eddie G in the late 30s. Her role here may not seem important at first, but it provides depth to the overall story, as well as a contrast to Lauren Bacall's more virtuous lead role. Plus, she ends up doing something very important late in the story. She's quite good as the sympathetic bad girl, a role she specialized at throughout her career.

Largo is a great movie, but you already knew that. It's Eddie G's swan song as a cinematic gangster, just as White Heat was for Jimmy Cagney a year later. When Lionel Barrymore tells Eddie "Your kind has no place in the world anymore," or something like that, the effect is doubly felt because it's being said to someone famous for playing gangsters. Very canny bit of casting there. Indeed, the gangster picture did fall into decline for awhile, until a film school brat named Coppola adapted a certain bestselling novel about the mafia... but that is another story.

New release roundup for September '16 and links

Well, you didn't think I stopped watching new movies last month, did you? I would've loved to have devoted entire posts to these films, but instead I'll give you the Reader's Digest version:

- Southside With You. Who woulda thought someone would make a movie about how the President and First Lady met? Or that it'd be this good? Rookie writer-director Richard Tanne forged this screenplay from all the bits of information publicly known about how Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson met, in Chicago in 1989. He gets two terrific performances out of Tika Sumpter and newcomer Parker Sawyers. The result is a smart and warm romantic drama that makes you forget who these two young people will eventually become.

- Kubo and the Two Strings. In an industry that continues to equate animated film with middle-of-the-road, celebrity-voiced, CGI pablum that teaches the same old lessons over and over again (and I may have more to say about this soon), this movie was a welcome change of pace. Amazing things are being done at LAIKA Entertainment out of Portland, and Kubo is the latest example. More than the stop-motion animation, which is incredible, this movie had a little bit of an edge; a story with character-based humor and not cutesy jokes; a measured pace that didn't need cinematographic acrobatics and rapid-fire editing; and an engaging story where the celebrity voice actors... acted! LAIKA, you have my attention. Keep up the good work.

- Sully. By now, I think, we've come to expect Tom Hanks to excel in a role like this, so while saying he was great may not be original or creative, it's no less true. He just was! Cpt. Sullenberger's miraculous airplane landing on the Hudson River and subsequent board hearing made for a thin movie, but I'd still say it was worth seeing to see how Clint Eastwood recreates the event. I admit, I was trying to pick out where he used CGI and where he didn't, and maybe that threw me out of the movie. Still, it's not like we don't know the ending. Maybe that's the problem with many of these "ripped from the headlines" movies: trying to inject a feeling of suspense into tales everyone knows. I dunno. Regardless, this was good.

- Hell or High Water. Bonnie and Clyde meets Margin Call in this tale of West Texas bank robbers in the post-Bernie Madoff era. Never heard of Brit director David Mackenzie before, but he and screenwriter Taylor Sheridan put together a rock solid crime movie with memorable characters. There's a pervasive feeling of betrayal towards an economy, with the banks as its representatives, that failed the people in this story, and not just the bank robbing brothers. Even the minor characters are shaped by this attitude, which makes for some pleasantly surprising moments. Jeff Bridges does his best Sam Elliot impression as the Texas Ranger on the hunt for Chris Pine and Ben Foster, both of whom are also very good. Great soundtrack as well. Saw this at the Cinemart in Forest Hills and got to test-drive their new luxury recliner seats. They're just like the ones AMC uses, only without AMC prices!

And I've even got some links for ya:

Jacqueline talks with Aurora about movies.

Raquel reviews a doc that tries to uncover who made the first film.

Fritzi reimagines Star Trek as a silent film.

Danny has seen about 8000 movies and ain't done by a long shot.

Did you ever wonder what the deal was between Norma Desmond and her monkey?

On screen masking and why it's important for movie theaters.

Awhile back, I wrote about a documentary in the works about cargo biking. Now, at last, there's a trailer.

Courtesy of my pal Michael Neno, here's a look at a Star Trek convention program from 1976.

Thanks once again for joining me for my Star Trek month. Numbers-wise, I did okay. I hit my minimum pageview goal for the month (barely). I had thought so many consecutive posts might have an effect on the pageview counts of individual posts, but that doesn't appear to be the case. When I began WSW, I remember thinking I had to provide content as often as possible no matter what, but there was no way I could sustain that pace. Props to those who can. 

My monthly series on Star Trek today will continue to the end of the year, and then that'll be it - at least, until the next time I get a hankering to write about one of the movies or something. And of course, I'll talk about the premiere of Discovery in 2017 (though now it won't be until May).

I need a break, so I'm gonna take one. See you in a week.

Big Bad Mama

The TCM Summer Under the Stars Blogathon is a month-long event corresponding with the Turner Classic Movies annual presentation, in which each day in August is devoted to the films of a different classic film star. The blogathon is hosted by Journeys in Classic Film. For a complete list of participating blogs, visit the host site.

Big Bad Mama
YouTube viewing

I was way too young to know who Angie Dickinson was during her heyday - the 60s and 70s. All I knew for a long time was, she was a sexy siren in a vein similar to Raquel Welch, Pam Grier and Brigitte Bardot.

Looking over Dickinson's IMDB page, I didn't realize how far back her career goes - all the way to 1954! She did a whole lot of early television, appearing in a variety of anthologies and Westerns - sometimes credited, sometimes not - as well as films. Then, in 1959-60, her career took off when she starred in two big hits: Howard Hawks' Western Rio Bravo, with John Wayne, and the Rat Pack extravaganza Ocean's 11.

Dickinson would alternate between the big (Point Blank, Pretty Maids All In a Row, Dressed to Kill) and small (Dr. Kildare, Cassie and Co., Wild Palms) screens throughout her career. The one TV show she's remembered most for, though, is the 70s cop thriller Police Woman. It was the first primetime, hour-long drama with a female lead. It came during the rise of the women's lib movement, and it led to more ladies choosing to become cops.

Dickinson, however, never saw her career as groundbreaking. In a 2011 interview with AARP, she said, "I never felt the need for feminism... I never felt competition with men, which I really believe started the movement.... When I was up for a role, I didn't compete with a man; it was for a role as a woman."

And yet some of Dickinson's parts do reflect the slowly-changing beliefs in what a woman could do in a movie at the time. In her 1974 film Big Bad Mama, a Roger Corman-produced Bonnie and Clyde knock-off, she is put front and center in a unique role: leader of a bank-robbing gang in the 30s.

Yes, she gets totally naked and has hot sex with William Shatner and Tom Skeritt, but she's also busting caps in suckas with a tommy gun! The added presence of her character's two daughters (who also get naked) and a clearly defined goal to chase - escape from poverty - gives this film a pre-Thelma and Louise female empowerment vibe, in a time when that concept was beginning to take root in the public consciousness. Mama doesn't tread any new ground but it's entertaining to watch.

The Naked City

The Film Noir Blogathon celebrates this unique genre of crime stories, especially from the 1940s and 50s, hosted by The Midnite Drive-in. For a list of participating blogs, visit the website.

The Naked City
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Modern movies shoot on location all over New York's five boroughs so often, one sometimes feels as if they're living on a set. It's a fun sensation most of the time, although I've probably gotten jaded by the experience by now. Back in the day, it was different. Lots of Old Hollywood movies used New York as their setting, but many of those settings were no more than sets on California studio lots, made to resemble Manhattan in a general, roundabout way.

As a New Yorker, I've learned to accept this when watching an old movie. It's like watching a stage play: you fill in the gaps or paper over the inaccuracies with your imagination and concede the physical limitations. Seeing so many modern films and TV shows filmed on location has spoiled me for sure. It's always nice to spot a cafe you've eaten in or a retail shop you used to work at in the background of a movie.

Watching The Naked City, therefore, was a pleasant twist. This wasn't the first Old Hollywood movie shot on the streets of New York I've seen - Hitchcock's The Wrong Man was filmed here in Queens, for example - but this movie also made a strong effort to capture everyday life in the Big Apple while telling a murder mystery.

Naturally, I don't remember Manhattan as it was in 1948, but that's why we have websites like this one. Scouting NY, among other things, compares New York movie locations, then and now. The differences between Manhattan in the movie and today are dramatic, to say the least. There's little I recognize, and what does look familiar, such as the Williamsburg Bridge, isn't quite the same.

City is the vision of producer Mark Hellinger, who cheekily narrates the film. The title comes from a 1945 photo book on New York by the famed photographer known only as Weegee. He worked on the film as a visual consultant.

Hellinger was a New York journalist for the Daily News and the Daily Mirror, whose column was syndicated in 174 newspapers. He came to Hollywood in 1937. His short story "The World Moves On" was the basis for the Cagney/Bogey flick The Roaring Twenties. As a producer, Hellinger worked on, among other films, The Killers, They Drive By Night and High Sierra. Sadly, he died only weeks before City was released.

City is a wonderful time capsule of post-war urban life. I had heard stories of how New York used to be all my life, but actually seeing things that seem unimaginable today, such as swimming in the East River, is something else. It wasn't a completely idyllic time - many things about this period deserve to be dead and buried forever - but it's good to be able to look at it from a safe distance.

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Other film noir movies:
On Dangerous Ground
The Postman Always Rings Twice
The File on Thelma Jordon
T-Men
Lady in the Lake
Raw Deal
Double Indemnity
The Wrong Man
The Big Heat
Dark Passage
Gun Crazy
Pickup on South Street

Books: The Thin Man

The 2016 Summer Reading Classic Film Book Challenge is an event in which the goal is to read and write about a variety of books related to classic film, hosted by Out of the Past. For a complete list of the rules, visit the website.

I picked up Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man in a used bookstore on an impulse. It wasn't like I had any great desire to read it. For a brief period years ago, I had an interest in classic crime fiction, but it didn't last long. The thought of this blogathon did cross my mind, but mostly I was curious about the book. I had written about Hammett last winter in relation to Lillian Hellman... and, of course, I've seen the movie.

Dashiell Hammett

The first thing I noticed was that the ridiculous amount of drinking William Powell and Myrna Loy do in the film is no exaggeration. Nick and Nora really do drink that much in the book! It's almost comical how often Hammett writes them drinking, mixing a drink, receiving a drink, recovering from a drink, wanting a drink... Seriously, I almost thought this was meant to be read as a parody!

The next thing I noticed was how heavy the book is on dialogue. Hammett gets away with a bare minimum of narrative description of people and places. If he were a member of my writers group, I'd probably call him on that, but it didn't bother me that much. Nick Charles as written in the book strikes me as a man not easily perturbed by the things going on around him. Nora is as I imagined her from the movies - the sensible gal Friday with the droll humor.

The story, however, didn't grab me. As much as I tried to imagine Powell and Loy acting their way through this complex murder mystery with a large cast, I didn't care much for what was going on. I didn't see why the murder mattered, and while everyone's motives were laid out in the open all nice and neat, it still didn't make them that appealing as characters. The same might be true of the movie, but at least you had Powell and Loy to make it all watchable. I think I'll stick to Dennis Lehane from now on.