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  • TonyDPTonyDP Inside the MonolithPosts: 4,279MI6 Agent

    @caractacus potts, regarding Star Trek: The Animated Series, I have it on DVD and will rewatch it regularly. While the animation was quite limited it was really heady stuff, especially given the Saturday morning kiddie time slot it was assigned. It also tackled some pretty weighty topics with episodes such as The Magics of Megas Tu where Kirk defends a benevolent alien at a Salem Witch Trial who ends up being what we would call the devil (that one ended up being banned in some markets). The show even had some elements that Gene Roddenberry cribbed for Star Trek: The Next Generation over a decade later including the first appearance of the holodeck. Sadly, these days it seems the animated show gets largely ignored with regard to established continuity. Roddenberry himself once even said he didn't consider it part of established canon (though I think he might have retracted that at some point) and I think people have used that to marginalize it to some degree. Personally, I disagree as I think it presents some really good stories with thought provoking ideas behind them.

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,178MI6 Agent

    BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935)

    Unofficially the greatest sequel film ever made, the best Frankenstein horror film ever made, Universal Pictures’ best-ever horror movie, one of the top ten greatest horror films ever, etc, etc, etc, one feels unable to criticise this hoary old thing from 1935.

    Boris Karloff revives his own dead Monster from the 1931 original and goes tramping around the countryside terrorising kids, maidens and blind old men. He’s petrified of fire, has learnt to speak, loves a drink and a fag and desperately wants a mate. Meanwhile evil psychologist Dr Pretorius reckons he’s found a method of genetically engineering a live human, but needs Dr Frankenstein’s assistance in reactivating the heart and brain. Pretorius plans to provide a partner in the living dead for the poor old shouty Monster. Dr Frankenstein, haunted by his past, looks seriously ill. Actor Colin Clive was an alcoholic who worked almost the entire movie half-cut. Probably wise. His performance is mania personified, mirrored by Karloff’s frightful turn. Sanity – or insanity, depending on how you look at it – is provided by Ernest Thesiger as Dr Pretorius. He’s a weird one. Fifteen minutes in, he persuades Frankenstein to his attic and presents him with a half-dozen ‘living dolls’, including a king, a queen, an archbishop and a pretty ballerina who only dances to Mendelssohn. Creepy isn’t the half of it: Pretorius is a first order raving lunatic.  

    The film is framed by a prologue of some length at which Lord Byron congratulates Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley on her as yet unpublished novel. Keen to know why she killed off her tragic monster, Percy Shelley asks his wife to continue the tale, and she begins to relate a chapter omitted from the original film version, segueing us neatly into a fiery flashback. It appears both the Doctor and his Monster escaped the blazing fire at the mill…

    Elsa Lanchester, who never quite became a star, but would always remain remembered for her role as the titular bride, dominates proceedings late on. Her hissing, scowling Bride is a thing of both beauty and terror. Lanchester has the dual role of Mary Shelley, a clever piece of casting which hints at the darkness residing inside all writers of fiction.

    The whole project is enormous. Huge sets abound. The music score is loud and proud. The special effects dominate. Lots of shouting. Bad accents. Many over the top performances in a cast of Universal regulars. The mixing of jazz-age art deco with nineteenth century fashions is hilarious. A comedic delight which threatens to undermine Mel Brooks forever. A film that occasionally still shocks too. It’s a complete mess, really, but it succeeds on pure energy and gusto alone. You can’t quite believe what you are watching, never certain if the film asks to be taken seriously or not. Director James Whale is on record as stating he wanted the picture to be a “real hoot.” It probably is, one way or another.

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,178MI6 Agent

    THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1957)

    An important movie in cinema history for being the first top-rank horror film to utilise colour for shock purposes. The blood is vividly red, yes, but importantly the shadows are also spectacularly dark, the women alabaster white, the clothes opulently brown, gold and green, the candles and gas lamps sparkle, the sky shimmers an azure blue, even at night, and the Creature, that poor lost soul, is freckled with black scars and duck-shell skin. This is an Eastmancolor extravaganza which attempts to paint its horrific portraits and actions, the guilty and innocent, in primary shades, yet hawking beside them are the deep shadows, contrasts and bursting light of a gothic tradition and the old masters, like Caravaggio and Rembrandt.

    Perhaps what is most interesting is the smallness of the scene. Universal’s Frankenstein pictures tended towards German expressionism, as exemplified by the huge sets and over-acting. Hammer, with less of a budget, chose to focus on character and storytelling, building not by incident but by personal intent. So here we have Peter Cushing’s Baron Victor Frankenstein, a genius scientist, but a man so subsumed to his own satisfactions that he has quite simply begun to lose his own grip on reality. This is quite possibly Cushing’s greatest performance on screen and one of the greatest ever seen in the horror genre.

    For all the ghastliness of Christopher Lee’s impressively made-up Creature, the real horror lies within Victor Frankenstein himself. Not only does he treat his creation like a bad dog – chained to an attic wall and fed on scraps – but he shows total contempt for everybody who surrounds him. Robert Urquhart’s nominal hero Paul Krempe gets a foretaste of the coming troubles when he meets the teenage Baron [a wolfishly young Melvyn Hayes] who engages him as a tutor. As their roles reverse, Paul sees through the Baron’s external façade of obsessive brilliance and recognises the darkness of his intent, the god-arm he is wielding. When the Baron decapitates a corpse, splashing blood stains on his pristine silver grey coat without a care, director Terence Fisher draws closer and closer to Paul’s pained features. This forms comparisons to the earlier close-up of Peter Cushing as he listens to the heartbeat of a rejuvenated cat. One is alert, fascinated, exalted with success; the other is appalled, uncomprehending, revolted. The contrast is used again and again to emphasise the Baron’s increasing single-mindedness and eventual mania: his cutting down of a hanged man, his outrageous claims of resurrection, his ignorance of social graces, his captivation with a sculptor’s severed hands or a pair of blue glutinous eyes.

    This Frankenstein is no prodigious scientist, although he just might be a genius. As played by Cushing he is an ogre in a lab coat. He’s even engaged in a one-way affair with the house maid, Justine, raising a triad undercurrent of sexual frigidity, passion and longing between the Baron, Justine and the Baron’s wife Elizabeth, a subtext completely absent from Universal’s interpretations. Hazel Court and Valerie Gaunt [Elizabeth and Justine] become the first of many blushing victims feted for revealing a heaving decolletage. The Baron barely blinks; he takes what he wants whenever he wants it and damn the nation. Cushing’s so convincing he can turn a simple stroke of his wife’s cheek into a gesture of ghoulish menace. His deception, abuse and waste of Justine is as arrogant and conniving as any heartless lothario. That he commits murder to achieve his ends completely escapes his reasoning. So too the fact his eureka moment comes via an accident of nature: he really ought to listen to Paul Krempe who attempts to advise him that man shouldn’t meddle in the natural order as no good will come of it.

    As his world collapses, Frankenstein blames everyone but himself. It is only at the very end, when his wife finally discovers the truth in the attic – a bit like poor Jane Eyre – that he finally realises creature creation may not be such a good career move. Too late, both for him and the monster: the latter is burnt to death; Frankenstein exits, stage left with a guillotine rising before the fall.   

    None of this is to say the film isn’t impressive. Filmed entirely on studio sets, it manages to feel expansive while never reaching beyond the laboratory, a prison cell, a bedroom and a drawing room. The make-up is good, as are the costumes. The sets demonstrate how miracles can be worked within tight budgetary constraints. There’s a sense of disorderliness and bustle to the Frankenstein household which seems to fit well with the Baron’s chaotic experiments. Throughout, director, photographer [Jack Asher] and editor [James Needs] provide us with plenty of visual dramas to occupy our eyes and minds. James Barnard’s music sounds fresh and incisive. Curiously, the film is mostly comprised of implied shocks and the gore count is very low, although the reveal of the Creature is certainly as stunning as it was in the 1931 original.

    Splendid entertainment, a very short runtime, and a big thank-you to Peter Cushing.       

  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,033MI6 Agent

    You may want to check out Queensland, Australia for your visit @Gymkata because it was filmed there in its entirety!

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,178MI6 Agent

    Two tales of loneliness watched over a bank holiday with nothing to do and no one to see...

    THE RED TURTLE (2016)

    Shipwrecked on a desert island, a man goes insane caring for the corpse of a dead turtle. A strange environmental fantasy whose excellent hand drawn animation and emotive music score fails to hide a dispiriting centre. The turtle of the title isn’t very nice and nor is the man; the tale which evolves is deeply unsatisfactory all-round. It’s probably a good thing there is no dialogue. 


    THE ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE (1954)

    I don’t know how many films have been made of Daniel Defoe’s famous story based on the life of Alexander Selkirk, who really was abandoned on a desert island, but this one was highly lauded on release. I haven’t seen it since I was a kid. It has dated horribly, which is not unexpected. I was surprised Talking Pictures TV didn’t put up one of those disclaimers regarding ‘content and language considered acceptable at the time’, but there you go. Basically, a voyager gets shipwrecked on an island in the Pacific and spends twenty-eight years attempting to escape and survive. Eventually he rescues a south-sea islander from cannibals, names him Friday and the two share an unequal relationship that leads to rescue.

    An odd project for director Luis Bunuel, until you recognise he’s more interested in the personal impact of isolation than he is in how Crusoe fashions his homestead, makes pots and pans, grows wheat, makes clothes, etc. He glosses over the practical in favour of the psychological. Dan O’Herlihy carries the whole movie as the title character. They filmed it in Bunuel’s backyard of coastal Mexico and the external photography is very pretty. 

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,178MI6 Agent

    Been catching up on those Star Trek movies, one day at a time:

    STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK (1984)

    Celestial little number from the Star Trek crew that considers the possibility of life after death – although only for Vulcans, one assumes. Following directly on from The Wrath of Khan, director Leonard Nimoy forsakes his pointy ears and attempts to inject something of a more genial, companionable atmosphere into this mini-epic, focussing as it does on Kirk’s deep, unfulfilled love-affair with his Science Officer. The Admiral is less upset by the death of his son.

    A fair outing, in fact, which is a half-way house between the baffling, impressively mounted first movie and the more conventional, less showy second. The whole thing appears to be done on studio sets, like the old TV series [mostly] was, with blue screen work in abundance and some extremely obvious special effects. The space ship model work is better than average however and the mortally wounded USS Enterprise is a thing to behold, battle scarred and weary as she mounts her final defiance. DeForest Kelly takes the acting honours, carrying the weight of Spock’s soul in his own craggy edifice. Christopher Lloyd cracks us up as a Klingon Commander of much stupidity.

    Not a lot of tension, but I suspect the fans loved it.   


    STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME (1986)

    After three sturdy entries, the Star Trek franchise took on time-travel and decided to go all out for comic effect. I think it is worth remembering that time travel as a concept was played fairly seriously until the 1980s and Back to the Future, which itself wasn’t devoid of world changing implications, albeit on a smaller scale than this outlandish epic.

    The Voyage Home concludes a trilogy of interconnected movies, on this occasion with a diverting sense of fun and the impossible. I’m fairly certain they time-travelled in the Original Series – I can’t remember the episode titles, but I don’t think they were overtly amusing. McCoy references the adventures when he and Scotty offer 23rd Century technology to a 20th Century plastics engineer [“Aren’t you changing the future?”]. There’s also a clever nod to Some Like It Hot at the expense of Spock’s half-human / half-Vulcan split biochemistry ["Nobody's perfect"]. The film also blatantly references 2001 with a strange tubular space probe and all those indecipherable whale sounds.

    The plot is as slim as a feather, writable on a postcard and, other than the obvious fish-out-of-water content, has a vague environmental eco-warrior subtext which feels more in keeping with the Original Series than the last couple of dour attempts. However, it isn’t entirely clear if the movie makers want the audience to be pleased it is the Earth being saved from oblivion or the Humpback whales being saved from extinction. Either way, the film turns out to be curiously heart-warming, which I didn’t expect. Leonard Nimoy would go on to direct Three Men and a Baby and here he demonstrates that comedy, not drama, is his forte. He’s aided by a crew-full of good, game performances.

    Blink and you’ll miss one of our alumni: Vijay Amritraj has a small role as a Star Fleet Captain.  

  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,907MI6 Agent
    edited May 2023

    The Voyage Home is probably my favourite of the Star Trek films because of the comic rapport between the regular cast.

    chrisno1 said:

    I’m fairly certain they time-travelled in the Original Series – I can’t remember the episode titles, but I don’t think they were overtly amusing.

    _______________________

    I believe the first time they time travel is the all-time classic City on the Edge of Forever, guest starring Joan Collins.

    as you suggest, this one is not funny at all, but explored a very heavy philosophical question indeed: would it really have been better to prevent WWII before it started?

    unfortunately I cant find any episode of the Original Series online. pity, because if theres any single episode an aspiring Trekkie should watch it is this one. And if you can only watch two, pair it with Trouble with Tribbles to get both extremes of the tonal range.

    in this episode they literally walk through a portal to Earth's past. I think its a later episode where they establish they can time travel by sling-shotting the Enterprise round the sun. By the time of the late 1990s series Voyager, the writers introduce the Temporal Police, because the various Star Trek casts have interfered with the space time continuum too many times.


    ...speaking of casting, I spotted Miguel Ferrer, Special Agent Albert from Twin Peaks, as helmsman in the other ship, in the clip @Gymkata posted!

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,178MI6 Agent

    I was also thinking of Tomorrow is Yesterday.

    I am waiting for Great TV to start repeating Star Trek from episode 1. I haven't watched most of the episodes since the nineties. That Joan Collins episode was brilliant and so was Trouble with Tribbles. Problem is I can't take on too many projects what with The Saint, my books, MacLean and the Uni assignments...

    I have watched a lot of the show over the years, I don't regard myself as a fan. I even remember that animated series you mentioned.

  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,907MI6 Agent

    chris said

    I was also thinking of Tomorrow is Yesterday.

    ______________________

    I'd forgotten about that one, wikipedia says it came first. and that was the one where they discovered they could slingshot round the sun.

    again the plot centres round the need not to disrupt the timeline, but (without having seen if for years) it doesnt seem have the same weight the City on the Edge of Forever does, as the established-timeline-that-must-be-maintained is imaginary rather than WWII. Even fifty years later I'm sure we all have an opinion about the necessity of WWII and could debate the question until shouting starts and doors slam. and who wants to see Joan Collins sacrifice her life? heavy, heavy episode


    btw, when I was watching The Persuaders recently, and got to that shows episode with Joan Collins (which is a heckuva lot more lightweight than her Star Trek episode) I decided she is by far my favourite of all the magnificent specimens who were ubiquitous on 60s teevee and/or film.

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,178MI6 Agent

    btw, when I was watching The Persuaders recently, and got to that shows episode with Joan Collins (which is a heckuva lot more lightweight than her Star Trek episode) I decided she is by far my favourite of all the magnificent specimens who were ubiquitous on 60s teevee and/or film.

    That Persuaders episode is one of the best IMO. I loved the twist at the end and Joan looks great in it, very 70s chic. The humour was well matched to the drama as well. Isn't Ferdy Mayne in it as a despicable Italian Count? A classic.

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,178MI6 Agent

    And more...

    STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER (1989)

    A dismal entry into the Star Trek canon which, after previous attempts to show the folly of playing God, decides to actually show us God himself, or some version of him anyway. Turns out he’s a mixed up, vengeful kind of fella. Didn’t they battle computers with God-complexes in the Original Series? It certainly feels like a seen-it done-it.

    The movie starts genially enough with some fun in Yosemite National Park, proceeds to a hostage rescue on Nimbus III that resembles the Seventh Cavalry charging Moss Eisley on Tatooine and then goes all ponderous on us for an encounter with a deity of immense power who is rumbled by Kirk in a mere seconds.

    The vantage deck featuring the ship’s wheel from the original Civil War Enterprise showed a hint of panache missing through most of the escapade. The three major players are fine and it is good to have a reasonably convincing villain in Laurence Luckinbill’s Sybock, a renegade Vulcan with powerful mystic awareness. Scotty and Uhura seem to be getting romantically involved. Nice touch that. Otherwise, really, who cares? Certainly not God, I venture.

     

    STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY (1991)

    A final fling for the original Enterprise crew and a fair effort all round. The film isn’t perfect, stuck with its television origins and an aging cast, but it is engaging, firstly with bouts of humour, then a series of well-designed intrigues that have their roots in those innovative TV shows, and latterly a Klingon vs Federation showdown. The fans get the things they’ll know and love and the casual viewer isn’t confounded by what they watch. The constant Shakespearian references thudded like irons on bells, and the script is undeniably clunky, but the film looks bright when it needs to be and dark when the tension mounts, which is often. At least the god-complex themes have been consigned to history.

    It is quite an achievement for a franchise to get six movies out in a little under twelve years and also, I feel, quite an achievement to watch them all in few days. Speaking as an ambivalent viewer, there’s only so much Star Trek a man can take and these films, watched close together, are by turns both interesting and dreadful. I vaguely remember watching this in the cinema. I don’t remember thinking it was as good as this.

    Pleasantly surprised.   

  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,033MI6 Agent

    THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY (1966)

    The third, and best, of the “Dollars” trilogy. This one serves as a prequel to the other two, taking place during the American Civil War. It pits Eastwood’s Man With No Name (nicknamed Blondie in this one) against Eli Wallach as Tuco and Lee Van Cleef asAngel Eyes as they battle to find a horde of buried gold. Full of sweeping vistas and lingering closeups, it is justly considered the greatest Spaghetti western of all time and one of the greatest westerns ever. It’s really incredible that director Sergio Leone could make such a movie with a cast of hundreds on a meagre budget of 1.2 million dollars. The Civil War battle is extraordinarily powerful and the final scenes in the graveyard as Tuco runs around searching for the grave to the music of Ennio Morricone’s The Ecstasy Of Gold is iconic. I’m not usually a fan of movies that stretch to three hours but this one is an exception. There seems to be some extra scenes that I haven’t seen before in this version so I’m presuming it was previously edited for running time.

    Not really a spoiler, but it’s interesting to contemplate what The Man With No Name did with all the money he got away with in this movie before he appeared virtually penniless in A Fistful Of Dollars. Would have made a good sequel.

    Essential viewing.

    9/10

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,178MI6 Agent
    edited May 2023

    the final scenes in the graveyard as Tuco runs around searching for the grave to the music of Ennio Morricone’s The Ecstasy Of Gold is iconic.

    @CoolHandBond I agree. I watched this film in the cinema a number of years back on a cleaned up print and that scene is a masterpiece of editing, camera, music and Eli Wallach crazy-eyed acting. If you want to see how men can be driven mad by the lure of gold - this is the way to picture it. Morricone's score is fabulous here, drawing us slowly then faster and faster and faster as Tuco walks, jogs, sprints to find the grave, the whole landscape vanishing into a blur as the music reaches feverish crescendos - then BAM! A zoom on the gravestone and silence accept his breathing. This kind of sequence is the reason I love movies.

  • The Red KindThe Red Kind EnglandPosts: 3,119MI6 Agent

    👍️

    A good soundtrack can make a huge difference to a film, all of my favourite films have soundtracks I love. They just go hand in hand together to complete the package.

    "Any of the opposition around..?"
  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,033MI6 Agent
    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,178MI6 Agent

    THE NANNY DIARIES (2007)

     Bridget Jones for childcare workers. One more word: garbage.     

  • Silhouette ManSilhouette Man The last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,646MI6 Agent

    It sounds it. They'll print anything these days! 😉

    "The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
  • TonyDPTonyDP Inside the MonolithPosts: 4,279MI6 Agent

    @caractacus potts, if you really want to get technical about it, you could argue that The Naked Time (the 4th episode to air) had the first use of time travel since the maneuver the Enterprise uses at the end to escape its decaying orbit also creates a time warp that sends them two days back into the past. The same maneuver was later used in Assignment Earth, another time travel episode, when the Enterprise travels back to the late 1960s to observe events of the Cold War.

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,178MI6 Agent

    Draculas, good and bad, or maybe not so good...

    BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA (1992)

    It’s hard to know what to say when a film so blatantly wants us to believe it is telling the story as the original author wrote it, yet it has so blatantly decided not to tell that story.

    Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a mess from start to finish. Director Francis Ford Coppola clearly hadn’t done any research into what makes a horror movie successful. He’s gone for huge operatic scenes and sets and a romantic across-the-centuries fairy tale love story. Place these against the rather good make up and creature effects and the embarrassing sexual subtext – which should always be there, but isn’t a subtext at all here, more a dominant in-your-face theme – and your struggling to find a heart and soul. Is Dracula a despicable devil or a suave hopeless romantic? Is Mina a devoted fiancé or a young woman lusting after a foreign prince? It doesn’t help that the script can’t decide who the story is about, so the point of view changes from Harker, to Mina, to Lucy, to Dracula, to Van Helsing with annoying rapidity. Eventually it settles on Mina, just about, but even then Anthony Hopkins' maniacal Professor of the Dark Arts overwhelms everything. He’s just awful in this. So too Keanu Reeves, who looks about as uncomfortable as you’d expect him to look; this is not an actor who can do costume drama – I remember Dangerous Liaisons. Sadie Frost, terrible. Cary Elwes, terrible. Billy Campbell, terrible. Richard E. Grant, terrible. Winona Ryder, bearably terrible. Gary Oldman, occasionally terrible. Tom Waits, not bad.

    The story is jumbled all over the place, doesn’t take account of time and distance, has its characters make some preposterous decisions and even has the temerity to relocate the action to London. So definitely not Bram Stoker’s Dracula then. There is some good stuff. Dracula licking blood from a razor was itching. The scenes shot from a wolf’s point of view were eye-catching. The film doesn’t have the claustrophobic tension of the best horror movies and despite some bloody moments, it lacks genuine shock appeal. Most of wickedness on display has been seen before. Latterly, the movie turns into a western. Odd. Overall, it’s a long-winded uncomfortable view.

    The photography doesn’t help matters. At times it looks unreal, so overloaded with primary red and greens. It’s tremendously dark. Probably the intention, but it isn’t clear why this should be so. The music is a thunderous drawl, not helped by a dull Annie Lennox song. To illustrate how poor this production is, during a seduction scene, it is quite clear that Winona Ryder is wearing flimsy white bikini slip panties under her nightgown, an article of clothing which simply didn’t exist in 1897. If you’re going to go all-out for big operatic detail, you need to get every specific right or you just end up looking lazy.


    ZOLTAN, HOUND OF DRACULA (1977)

    A film which gets a terrible rap from most critics, but isn’t as bad as all that. There’s a black mark against the American actors who play the Romanian characters and can’t even be bothered to put on an accent, but otherwise this is a sturdy, if unattractive, horror movie set in Bear Lake, California.

    Jose Ferrer has fallen a long way from his Oscar winning days, but he gamely plays Inspector Branco, expert on the supernatural who is called in when the Romanian military accidentally uncovers Dracula’s tomb. He arrives too late: a vampire servant and a devil dog have been freed by an unsuspecting sentry and fled the scene. Branco knows the only surviving linage to the Count is Michael Drake, orphaned and sent to live in America. Drake is not aware of his vampiric roots, but he has some memorabilia which stir vivid flashbacks. Unfortunately, he’s taken his family on a camping trip at precisely the moment Zoltan and his Master tip up demanding his jugular.

    If putting kids and little puppies in danger is your kind of thing, this is right up your street for an hour, then it turns gamely vicious on us as a horde of snarling hounds attack Branco and Drake in a fisherman’s cabin. This was an effective piece of action which has atmosphere and menace seeping through every second. Escaping with their lives, Branco and Drake are later attacked in their car – a scene which has all the terrifying nightmares of being caught in a lion feeding frenzy at a safari park. Very good stuff, bloodily resolved.

    Gore a plenty. The excellent sound effects are by Sam Shaw. Albert Band directs with speed and efficiency.   

     

       

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,178MI6 Agent

    THE ITALIAN JOB (1969)

    An over-repeated treat, but as I hadn’t watched a really enjoyable movie for a while, I thought I’d dip an idle toe into the water. The word iconic gets overused, but this light as a feather caper movie really does have a trio of authentic movie moments which are never forgotten, oft-imitated and rarely bettered.

    First is a car chase through the streets, sewers, lakes and rooftops of Turin featuring three colourful Mini Coopers and a host of stunts which at the time put almost every chase to shame except those in Goldfinger and Bullitt. We see these sorts of sequences often now, and this version looks distinctly tame in comparison, but it wasn’t so in 1969. The ground-breaking nature of the scenes, with their stunts, comic asides, shifting landscapes and sheer length is what makes the movie required viewing. The project looks as if the producers went on holiday to Turin and said: “You know what, I could film a brilliant car chase here.” Without dwelling on it, the sequence is fun and innovative.

    Then there’s the cliff-hanger ending, which had probably been done before, or a version of it, but never so elegantly and with such an uplifting music score to boot. Quincy Jones came up trumps here. For an American, he seemed to hit the British and European pulse on the button, serving up a jazz and soft-blues influenced soundtrack which touches on traditional British patriotic songs and climaxes with the cast singing a cockney knees up Get A Bloomin’ Move On (a.k.a. The Self-Preservation Society). The ridiculousness of the thieves situation is highlighted by the song and also allows the audience to leave with a smile, even though the predicament is unresolved. I must add too that the opening titles play out over Matt Monro singing the classic lounge ballad On Days Like These – one of Don Black’s best lyrics, one of Monro’s best vocal performances. They of course are both ours.

    So car chases and music, big tick. Script doing well, tick. The final dialogue is brilliant, but throughout Michael Caine gets to deliver a series of one-liners which seem designed to reinforce his Alfie image as a cheeky, sexually available, street smart chappie. “You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off” became so associated with Caine he even used it for the title of his autobiography. His performance is one of his best and most, dare I say it, iconic. It has been parodied and impersonated so many times, and many times by Caine himself, that the beauty of his original star turn has been virtually forgotten. He’s only hampered by the curtailed script. A host of supporting performances from the world of British and Italian thespianism give him more than capable assistance. Noel Coward’s imprisoned gangster Mr Bridger is the highlight – surely the inspiration for Peter Vaughn’s Harry Grout in Porridge – but Benny Hill is a delight and John le Mesurier and Irene Handl step in when necessary. Raf Vallone brings a touch of seriousness to proceedings as a Mafioso.

    The film looks lovely, especially in widescreen, all those Italian Alps, beautifully photographed by Douglas Slocombe. It has a comic appeal as well as an adventurous one, which all the best capers do, and every circumstance has a gentle humour exercising itself in the fore or background. The film doesn’t overstay its welcome. Yes, there are obvious plot holes, but sometimes these things just don’t matter. Writer Troy Kennedy Martin created Z Cars and this feels a world away from that dreary television existence. Peter Collinson was an up and coming director at the time, but he never quite made it as big as he ought to have done. This is his best and most accessible achievement hands down.

    I don’t really have to comment much more, I already feel as if I have overstayed my welcome, as you probably don’t need me to tell you how good this movie is. There was no need to remake it and the 2003 version wasn’t any better; different, but not better.        

  • Shady TreeShady Tree London, UKPosts: 2,965MI6 Agent
    edited May 2023

    VILLAIN (1971)

    Directed by Michael Tuchner, 'Villain' sits very much in the shadow of 'Get Carter'. It's half way between that film, Mike Hodges' epoch-defining masterpiece, and TV's 'The Sweeney' in exploring British post-industrial ennui through the lens of crime drama. A groggy looking Richard Burton plays Vic Dakin, the cockney London gangster who's like a composite of the Krays, devoted to his old Mum but brutally cutting up grasses and indulging a sadomasochistic gay relationship with bisexual underworld chancer Wolfe (Ian McShane).

    Scripted by writers better known at the time for TV comedy, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, the film boasts a supporting cast of fine British character actors of the period, including Nigel Davenport and Colin Welland as the detectives, Donald Sinden as a corrupt MP, Joss Ackland, T. P. McKenna and Tony Selby as villains and James Cossins (TMWTGG's Colthorpe) as a disgruntled clerk, the inside man on a robbery job.

    A point of trivia for Ian Fleming fans. There's a scene where Burton's Dakin is sitting on Brighton pier, on a day out with his Mum. Sidekick Selby has just bought her a carton of fresh whelks and Davenport and Welland are about to move in to arrest Dakin. The book he's reading as he's relaxing on the pier? A dog-eared Pan paperback of Fleming's 'The Diamond Smugglers'. Excellent reading material for a villain!

    Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,239MI6 Agent

    Decades on, it occurred to me that they don't really have to do that stunt where the minis go up the ramps and into the coach while on the move. As they're not being chased at that point they could just stop the coach and do it that way.

    I had to switch to watching this on Channel 4 rather than C4 HD where the sound wasn't quite right.

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,033MI6 Agent

    LUTHER (2023)

    A movie continuation of the BBC TV series has detective John Luther chasing wealthy serial killer David Robey into the frozen Norwegian wastelands (actually filmed in Iceland). This plays out as the series did but with an added geographical location as it’s a movie. I liked the series and this keeps up the standard. Andy Serkis is terrifyingly good as the killer. Idris Elba has made the Luther into an interesting character over the years, he’s a good actor but him being touted as a future James Bond is laughable.

    If you haven’t seen the series then it’s not worth watching, those who have will enjoy another episode in Luther’s life.

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,178MI6 Agent

    PITCH PERFECT (2012)

    Intense psychological drama about an aspiring female disc jockey who, unable to get her music mixes played on the college radio station, takes up with the unorthodox all-girl acapella singing group and wreaks personal havoc for the team as she sleeps her way through the opposition, causing friction with her supposed girlfriends, who each want a piece of the action. Dad issues, girlfriend issues, boyfriend issues, all raise their ugly heads, each solved in turn by a bout of positive energy singing. A Harold Robbins inspired piece of fiction based around the real exploits of a college singing star. Phenomenally successful and controversial thanks to the full frontal shower and lesbian sex scene between Anna Kendrick and Brittany Snow, as well as the copious drug and booze fuelled party antics of Rebel Wilson. Anna Camp is the damaged blonde bulimia victim forced to reconsider her leadership role as spunky Miss Kendrick rises to prominence on the back of, well, her back. The climax as the girls gyrate to Don’t You Forget About Me has all the subtlety of a night at the Hustler Club. Made on the cheap with actresses well past college age but lucky enough to still look college age, and with a soundtrack of dozens of popular songs, the film rode the waves of success and spawned too sequels of similar distaste.

    I love Anna Kendrick, I really do.

    This film has officially ruined The Breakfast Club for me.

     

  • Shady TreeShady Tree London, UKPosts: 2,965MI6 Agent

    I heard this was really funny but haven't seen it yet so have ordered the dvd double pack with the first sequel.

    Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,033MI6 Agent

    BURKE & HARE (1972)

    This was journeyman director Vernon Sewell’s last film and spotting well known faces becomes the only enjoyable thing in it. Starring Derren Nesbitt (Where Eagles Dare) as Burke to Glynn Edward’s (Dave the barman from TV’s Minder) Hare as the real life grave robbers collect corpses for a doctor played by Harry Andrews ( The Hill ). Edwards’ real life wife Yootha Joyce (George & Mildred TV series) plays his wife here and Hammer film stars Yutte Stensgaard and Robin Hawdon turn up along with veteran actor James Hayter (The 39 Steps). The totally inappropriate theme song and Carry On style music does not help at all. The film is completely studio bound and the sets are the best thing in it. Some reasonably gory set pieces and lots of sex scenes in a brothel try to keep the viewer interested. The actors seem to be having a good time, so not all bad.

    Interesting, for all the wrong reasons.

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,178MI6 Agent

    STAR TREK: GENERATIONS (1994)

    A part-way relaunch of the Star Trek movie franchise that swiftly ushers in the cast of sequel television series Star Trek: the Next Generation which ceased transmission earlier in the same year after seven successful seasons.

    That’s a show I never watched and this is a movie I thought I’d never seen, but as it progressed, I became more and more familiar with it and the final confrontation on a desert mountain top flickered through my imagination like the memories William Shatner relives inside the Nexus temporal distortion.

    Yes, Captain Kirk is still in it. In fact, the film is probably at its best during an extended prelude that shows the destructive force of the Nexus field as it destroys two transport craft and damages an updated model of the Enterprise. During the mercy mission, the revered James T. Kirk finally meets his maker. Or does he?

    Well, I’ve let the cat out of the bag now. The rest of the film is padded beyond belief and overstays its welcome by about an hour. This is basically nothing more than an extended episode of the television show and you can see where all the padding is: holodeck silliness, the android Data struggling with his emotions microchip, a Klingon infringement, even the inclusion of Kirk and all that stuff on the Nexus ‘planet’. The story hasn’t got the legs for such a long enterprise [sic]. Having said that, Malcolm McDowell is a passable villain and Patrick Stewart display much superiority and superior acting as Jean Luc Picard. Shatner does as Shatner always does. The film has humour and excitement as slight as its narrative.

    I couldn’t understand why the scenes on board the Enterprise were so dark: do they not have light bulbs on board these 24th Century star cruisers? They used to in the 23rd century.


    STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT (1996)

    Now this one really does interfere with history, for the benefit of the Federation of course. The Nexus temporal vortex featured in Generations is not alone in its time bending properties, evil cyborg empire the Borg project themselves through a homemade warp speed temporal vortex and end up orbiting Earth in the 21st century. The Borg aim to conquer the human race at its most weakest, following World War Three, and thus prevent the development of interstellar travel for humans and the proliferation of peace throughout the galaxies. Or something.

    The Enterprise follows them through the wormhole, destroys their ship but inadvertently allows the Borg Queen to transport aboard and begin to wreak havoc. Captain Picard embarks on a dangerous cat-and-mouse game with his arch-nemesis. Meanwhile an Earthbound posse led by Commander Riker is trying to sober up the drunken genius who discovered warp drive, lest the future cease to exist.

    I’m not familiar with Next Generation lore, but having watched a lot of Dr Who recently, I can vouch there’s nothing new here, even the Doctor used to meddle and make quick getaways. The Borg do seem to be a more ruthless version of the Cybermen albeit with some central symbiotic intelligence. Nasty. Hats off to Dr Who then for providing both the villain and the time travel impetus for this movie.    

    A ponderous epic all-round, enlivened by the marvellous Borg creature effects and Alice Krieg’s turn as the nasty Queen. Among an unattractive cast, she’s the sexiest thing in it, which is peculiar, or maybe just peculiar of me. The humour doesn’t work. The action is tiresome. It feels what it is: two adventures for the price of one, overlapping and both as dull as each other. 

  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,907MI6 Agent

    chrisno1 sez:

    Shatner does as Shatner always does.

    ______________________________________________________________

    this sentence would read better with ellipses:

    "Shatner does... as Shatner... always... does."

    theyre actually both former Shakespearian actors, Shatner used to perform at Stratford Ontario! I guess thats the way us colonists interpret Shakespeare so far from the source, styles having diverged over the centuries, having almost evolved into a whole separate skillset only barely resembling acting as you Brits know it


    lets all watch the classic SNL parody Star Trek The Last Voyage, its probably better than these latter day movies

    Belushi does an excellent Shatner (Chevy Chase as Spock and Dan Aykroyd as McCoy in case someone doesnt know the original SNL cast)


  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,907MI6 Agent

    wow, I dont know Kevin Pollak but he's a spot-on impressionist! that Jack Nicholson was especially good. I didnt recognise who he cast as Scotty though.

    in comparison, Belushi isnt really trying to do Shatner's voice, I dont think he ever really tried to do voices except for Brando. But he prided himself as an actor, and he's capturing Shatner's mannerisms. Aykroyd is very good with funny voices, and does both Scotty and Bones. And Chase is barely trying to do Spock, I dont think he was very good in the ensemble sketches, he was best in solo pieces when on SNL (and was usually just playing himself, even if billed as Gerald Ford).

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