From a Bond fan point of view it's worth noting that Roald Amundsen's romantic interest's name was named Kristine Elisabeth Bennett, but she was known by the name Kiss Bennett. We need a return to that sort of Bond girl names.
A very different movie about Roald Amundsen is "Titina" (2022). It's a Norwegian/Italian animated movie about one of his later expedition were he wanted to reach the North Pole by air ship together with the Italian engineer Umberto Nobile (and his little dog Titina). Maybe you're tired of watching Frozen for the millionth time and wish to learn more about polar exploration too?
Robert Falcon Scott is wrongly celebrated in the UK as some kind of tragic hero. Tragic, yes, but hardly heroic. He may well have been an excellent scientific explorer and a commendable, respected leader of men, but his preparation for an attack on the South Pole was foolhardy and owed more to an imperialistic sense of entitlement than any genuine thought. While I understand why he might believe technology and durable pit ponies could benefit his attempt, the evidence it would not is very obvious. The poor ponies were half-starved by the time he reached the Antarctic and would never be suitable for traversing snow and ice; the badly maintained snow tractors were a liability before he even set off. I find it rather ridiculous British society and media constantly venerate failure - knighthoods for underachieving sportspersons spring to mind - celebratory warmongering during the First World War would be another - seeing something endearing in the 'nearly man'. The only thing endearing is he has a tale to tell, but it isn't an uplifting one. Scott, for all his eloquence, will always be remembered for a disasterous failure. In terms of the film, I personally find it rather dull. It is worth noting John Mills portrays Scott as a man blinded as much by his own ego and reputation as he is by the Antarctic snow. Amundsen [who barely appears] was more singleminded than Scott, more egodriven too, but at least he thought carefully and logically about his task and ultimately succeeded. Didn't Sean Connery play Amundsen in The Red Tent?
Small-time criminal Eddie 'Fingers' Coyle (Robert Mitchum), is caught up in a desperate game of survival.
While supplying guns to a bank-robbing crew and facing several years of jail time for a truck hijacking case, Coyle has turned into an informant for the ATF.
What Coyle doesn't know, is that every 'friend' in his circle is ratting on everyone else.
With friends like these...who needs enemies.
Directed by Peter Yates (Bullitt), 'The Friends of Eddie Coyle' is an expertly made American crime noir, with great performances by Robert Mitchum, Peter Boyle and Steven Keats.
Bond fans will recognise this as a hybrid of the last two Bond films of the time - Live and Let Die, with two of the Golden Gun cast, as James Bond is called by MI6 on investigate a mysterious Scottish island - it's an MI6 matter because due to some shadowy history it's unclear whether it falls under British jurisdiction or not, but after a fellow agent goes missing Bond flies out solo to investigate, whereupon he encounters snide, jeering locals, the suave hospitality of Christopher Lee and the seductions of Britt Ekland.
Okay, I wouldn't mind seeing a film like that, but like Golden Gun it has an odd, morally vapid vibe, there is something emotionally unengaging or at least unsettling about it, the difference being it's meant to be like that here.
This was shown as a repeat of the BBC's Moviderome evening, zippily introduced by Alex Cox and shown as a double bill with Don't Look Now, as it had been in the cinema. However, the film they actually showed was the Director's Cut, or Original Cut, before it got shorn of some scenes with some scenes rearranged. Myself, I'm not sure I don't prefer the hacked about version which must have been good or it wouldn't have acquired cult appeal. The added scenes heavy handedly emphasise Sgt Howie's Christianity by showing him in a dour Church at the opening, setting things up as a battle of two attitudes. I also wonder if you wouldn't be better able to grasp how things turn out in the end with the added running time. It shows some of the 'depraved' attitudes of the locals on the sergeant's first night, shagging around the local cemetery I guess, though the characters all look like they're off The Joy of Sex manual, all beardy and pale. It reorders the attempted seduction by Ekland to the final night which is all very well but in pure cinema terms, I think it works best for his first night there, it has greater impact. I'm not sure I'd find her too alluring after a few days in that God-forsaken place, having found out what they're all like.
There's another Bond connection as Diane Cilento ( Connery's wife, not sure if she still was then) has a recurring role.
One thing I noticed is that when Howie (an excellent pre-Mackay from Porridge character played by Edward Woodward) first encounters Lord Somerisle (Lee), Lee plays it like suave and jovial civil servant Humphrey Appleby dealing with an increasingly outraged Jim Hacker, as if to say, 'Yes, this is my territory, and you just have to see how these things play out here!' The film preceded Yes Minister by some years though both Lee and the actor who played benign advisor Bernard were Hammer regulars.
James Gunn resets the DC cinematic universe with a new take on the Man of Steel. When Superman intervenes in an international conflict, his nemesis Lex Luther sees a way to manipulate the situation and finally get the upper hand on his hated rival.
After Zack Snyder's entertaining but downright Wagnerian take on the character Gunn goes for a kinder, gentler and more optimistic Superman. David Corenswet plays him as a down to Earth farm boy who just wants to do good and belong, take care of his super powered dog Krypto and help people, truly the red and blue boy scout of so many Superman stories. It's a performance that harkens back to Christopher Reeve's interpretation and his chemistry with Rachel Bronahan's Lois Lane feels convincing and authentic.
Jimmy Olson, Perry White and the rest of the usual crew from the Daily Planet also make appearances and actually get to do some investigative reporting instead of just waiting around to be rescued.
In another departure from the Snyderverse, this Superman's world is already populated by all manner of super beings such as Guy Gardner, the biggest jerk in the Green Lantern Corps, the technical wizard Mr. Terrific, and the fierce warrior Hawkgirl to name but three. It all feels very reminiscent of the Superman animated series and the Justice League Unlimited animated show. Nathan Fillion's comic relief as Gardner and Edi Gathegi's Mr. Terrific were particular standouts for me.
Turning to the villains, Nicholas Hoult plays what must be the most evil and contemptuous Lex Luthor yet. At turns maniacal, petty, violent and even pathetic, he oozes anger, jealousy and hate. He is aided and abetted by two super powered lackeys who are equally vile and pose quite the challenge for Superman to overcome.
I enjoyed this movie a lot but I can see how it might be a challenge for movie goers who are not familiar with the expansive DC comics universe. James Gunn loves to mine the obscure corners of the comic book world for quirky characters to flesh out his movies and he does that here. There is no origin or setup to help prime new viewers; a few lines of exposition are given and you're then thrown straight into the action and expected to keep up. It made for a somewhat disjointed and scattershot start to the movie and it took about a half hour for it to find its stride and settle into a rhythm. In the end though I really appreciated the movie's earnestness, its willingness to embrace the medium from which it derives and the brighter and more optimistic tone.
Remarkably well made follow-up to the hit TV show from the 60's, Mission Impossible (1988-1990) ran for two seasons and consists of 35 episodes, 19 for Season 1 and 16 for Season 2.
Starring the seasoned Jim Phelps (Peter Graves) and his new team of counterespionage agents, the Impossible Mission Force (IMF) is sent on extremely difficult missions and always end up outwitting their enemies and escaping in style.
We see a variety of scenarios in the episodes.
Crackpot dictators, arms dealers, smugglers, rogue agents, drug cartels...this series has it all.
Another unique aspect of this series is the exploration of the world of the supernatural i.e., voodoo, death cults, banshees etc, which is very different from the Cold War oriented episodes from the 60's.
The Mission Impossible team might have come in handy for Plane, a recent movie shown on Film4 tonight with Gerard Butler as the pilot of a small passenger airline that is flying out of Singapore on New Year's Eve, is hit by lightening and forced to ditch on a hostile island full of nasty militia. On board is a handcuffed prisoner played by Michael Colter, he's suspected of murder or some such thing so we are in Con Air territory (it was just recently pointed out to me that Con Air is a play on Air Con, I am probably the only one not to spot that).
Plane is pretty good, I got what I expected, it's unpretentious rubbish but played straight and Butler is very good at this kind of thing, Colter was good too though the passengers were thinly drawn compared to say, the sort we got in the film The Lost Horizon where we get thumbnail sketched of them all early on. Oddly I wonder if The Lost Horizon, a 30s or early 40s film I recommend, is longer than Plane, even though it seems to be and covers more ground.
One snag, there is a slim back-up support arriving to help our ditched civilians but I'm not sure how they got there - did they parachute in? If not, where is their transport?
Another snag is that they didn't quite seem to know how to end it, it didn't quite tie in nicely. That can be a challenge can't it, I mean Bond films always used to end with a happy shag, the punchline to the film, the that tended to fall flat once Moore left, but then it's a case of, okay, how do you end a movie? How do you sign off?
PLANE is one of those really standard actioners that is elevated considerably by the committed cast and by some unexpected plotting. It's one of those 'better than it has any right to be' kind of films.
I enjoyed watching Dog Day Afternoon at London's Prince Charles cinema yesterday. It was the first time I'd seen it, and the print was a bit crackly - it had the 'X' certificate at the front, though I'm not sure why.
It's a about a trio of misfits who attempt a heist at a small New York bank, but things start to go wrong almost immediately. It's directed by Sidney Lumet, and it reminded me of his film The Anderson Tapes with Sean Connery some years earlier. The criminals are hapless, in over their heads, you feel sorry for them compared to the State operatives who come across as corrupt and oppressively all-powerful. There's a sense of overkill, and there a lot of films like this in the 1970s, the sense that whatever the crims were getting up to, they still weren't as bad as the State police, politicians and law enforcers.
It plays better than The Anderson Tapes imo, I felt that was a bit of a one-note film - you know everyone is on to the criminals from the start, so there isn't much sense of jeopardy, whereas in this one Sonny does show at times he isn't actually that daft.
Al Pacino is the ringleader Sonny, looking his Paul McCartney mid-Wings best and channelling his inner Dustin Hoffman and one of his co-conspirators is John Cazale from The Godfather, looking troubled as ever. It's not quite clear why or how these other two agreed to be recruited by Sonny given his later stated motive. Actually, as the heist draws out - and themes that were later echoed in films like Die Hard emerge; the interference of the media, the sinister arrival of the FBI and a hierarchy of incompetence - I found it a little tiring. Revelations about Pacino's character didn't quite match the performance he was giving, it seemed to me, though the social and sexual politics of the film is very much Rod Stewart's Killing of Georgie from around the same time frame. Even though it's a true story, it didn't seem to be to quite add up, but I will look it up on Wiki.
Anyway I enjoyed it - there's a lot of dry humour throughout the first half. No real reason for the movie's title, though we do see a dog in the opening credits.
A million-selling soundtrack of soul covers by a ten-piece band cobbled together from various actor-musicians around Ireland and Northern Ireland is probably the best thing about this obscenity filled comedy from the pen of Roddy Doyle and the stealth-like adaptive skills of Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais. Otherwise, Alan Parker’s tale of the chaotic rise and horrendous fall of a Dublin covers band fails to hit the mark on almost every level. Cliched, devoid of irony, chock full of eejits – including comedian Sean Hughes as the boss of a record label named Eejit – and painting a faintly dreadful picture of the Irish capital, the thing this film misses most is a heart, so obsessed are the characters with their own personal gains and satisfactions. The lead character [Jimmy Rabbitte] is a fantasist of enormous proportions, interviewing himself as his dreams collapse around everyone – he’s an unreliable narrator, which should prove a fertile ground for satire, but nobody in the writing department noticed the possibilities. The stupefied faces of the band members sum up my general reaction to Jimmy’s parade ground pontificating about the merits of soul music.
Basically, The Commitments is glorified blarney karaoke; about as much fun as a the open mic nights at O’Neill’s or Scruffy Murphy’s in Sutton c.1991. In 1991, we just didn’t notice through the haze of fag smoke and Guinness.
A thrilling espionage adventure broadly based on Alistair MacLean's book of the same name, but differing in some aspects.
A Soviet spy satellite, containing stolen British and American photographic technology malfunctions in orbit and jettisons a capsule towards earth, containing imagery of sensitive US and Russian military sites, which parachutes onto an Ice Pack in the Arctic.
A race now begins to collect this capsule and its precious film.
American Navy Commander James Ferraday (Rock Hudson), his submarine crew and a contingent of Arctic trained marines are dispatched to the North Pole under the guise of rescuing the personnel of a British weather station, code named Ice station Zebra, that has been struck by a severe blizzard.
Accompanying them on the trip is none other than John Drake from 'Secret Agent'...the legendary Paddy Fitz a.k.a., Patrick McGoohan.
All jokes aside, in this film Mr McGoohan plays David Jones, a British secret agent who is tasked to recover the capsule and is the only one on the submarine who knows the real story behind the mission.
What follows is a gripping adventure to the Arctic and a tense standoff with Russian Special Forces in the end.
Beautifully shot in Super Panavision, 'Ice Station Zebra' is an entertaining and realistic espionage film, that I have watched countless times and enjoyed thoroughly.
The Quatermass Xperiment (US title The Creeping Unknown)
Quatermass 2 (US title Enemy From Space)
Two early Hammer horror/sci-fi movies based on a BBC tv series, now reissued in glorious boxed sets inc 4K, Blu-Ray, the TV version, a book, the stories as comic strip (you'll like them, @CoolHandBond), postcards, a poster, a ridiculous amount of commentaries, interviews, and no doubt other stuff I've missed.
The "father" of Dr Who and a great influence on other shows such as The X Files. The sfx are very dated now but the stories still hold up. In the first, an astronaut returns from a space trip but his two companions don't, or have they? In the second an alien conspiracy to take over the Earth is discovered bit by bit.
A meticulous attempt to recreate the drama, death and disaster surrounding the battle in the skies of August – September 1940 when the German Luftwaffe was charged with destroying Britain’s air defences as a prelude to invasion. By 15th September, the now famous Battle of Britain had been as good as won, although many civilians subjected to air raids for the next five years probably didn’t notice. Statistics are a grand thing and the losses are stated for the viewer before the end credits. The sheer volume of Luftwaffe planes destroyed is staggering. Allied losses were high for the numbers despatched but low in comparison. They say Hitler never trusted Goering again; maybe he didn’t, but you sense some calamitous tactics on the German half.
Indeed, the problem with Harry Saltzman’s expensive production isn’t that it lacks flair or star power. It is an all-round competent exercise and passes the time idly enough, but it isn’t particularly engaging as the script bounds between men at war, men in love, men in politics, decision makers, civilians, pilots, WAF recruits and then periodically jumps over the channel and into subtitle territory to demonstrate the confidence being eroded from the German faces. There was an attempt by many ‘big’ Second World War movie productions of the sixties to humanise the enemy [The Battle of the Bulge, The Great Escape, Is Paris Burning, to name three] but the one thing learned by modern filmmakers, such as the crew who pieced together Top Gun: Maverick, is that if you spend time with the antagonists, you lose all the character and drama of the story as seen by your protagonists – and that is what happens here. The number of scenes of German’s bailing out of aeroplanes, or watching the skies, taking off, celebrating, debating, etc, dilutes the message the film wants to deliver. The Allied hero pilots become less interesting as individuals than the machinations of the rival air forces. It becomes a game of ‘who outwits who’ instead of ‘well, we beat the crap out of them’. The latter, as attested by escapist nonsense such as Where Eagles Dare tends to be more enjoyable.
So, the film ponders on and on and delivers airborne dogfight after dogfight. The people? Well, slivers of interest and some decent performances just about keep the bubble afloat before they burst. Michael Caine is killed off early. Laurence Olivier is dignified in the lead role. Susannah York is horrendously miscast. Christopher Plummer and Robert Shaw add extra glamour and a tinge of pathos. A host of stars of old or stars soon to be pepper the cast. Guy Hamilton directed. Perhaps we should be thankful his efforts here meant he was not available for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
I don’t know.
Maybe I am being picky. Battle of Britain is alright, not much more, but it looks impressive at times and the music scores billow wonderfully. There are two: William Walton’s was binned other than the climatic Ballet of the Skies at the movie’s climax – an excellent symphonic rendering of the war in the air – and Malcolm Arnold wrote the rest, although with only a ‘conductor’ credit. It’s a little underwhelming and that’s a pity because the subject deserves a decent telling.
From the sublime to the ridiculous, Mechanic: Ressurrection (2016)
This appears to be a sequel to The Mechanic, which I haven't seen, and stars Jason Statham who begins the film without any particular explanation or backstory, rather like 007 in a new James Bond film. He's assumed to be dead - shades of the next Bond film perhaps? - but villains emerge and want him to carry out some kills, he isn't happy so kills most of the henchman, there is more Bond malarky as this takes place at Rio de Janeiro and there's a scene with a cable car. Soon this becomes 'spot the Bond movie' in virtually every scene - there's the Golden Gun island and Michelle Yeoh appears, there are other nods to the opening of NSNA and Bond's yacht infiltration in Licence to Kill and so on. Actually, with a beer in my hand this should have been great fun but the beer was forced to do a lot of heavy lifting because if you have too many Bond references it takes you out of the film, and anyway Statham is more a beer and peanuts film, which Bond isn't, so it doesn't sit right.
Other than that, the love interest Jessia Alba really doesn't work with Statham, I found there was little or no chemistry and she arrives about 25 mins into the film and kind of sank it for me.
Tommy Lee Jones is cast but he's only in it for the last 15 minutes or so - in fact the last half hour is Mission Impossible-type tasks for our hero. It's really too perfunctory to enjoy.
Wasn't it Ron Goodwin who stepped in for soundtrack work on The Battle of Britain?
@Napoleon PluralWasn't it Ron Goodwin who stepped in for soundtrack work on The Battle of Britain?
Ah, yes, my mistake. I must have blinked when Ron Goodwin's name came up on the credits and only saw the Walton / Arnold credit which comes after it. I was aware Walton's piece was deemed unsatisfactory by the producers. I read somewhere that the only reason his overture was retained was Larry Olivier threatened to remove his name from the credits if his mate Willy Walton was cast aside. Compromise, compromise.
THE BEATLES: EIGHT DAYS A WEEK – THE TOURING YEARS (2016)
A largely superfluous documentary about the Beatles concert experience c.1961 – 1966 (+ briefly 1969). Superfluous because there is very little new to learn about the Beatles, certainly not since the outstanding Anthology series that charted in depth and with much empathy their rise and fall. American director Ron Howard admits to being a huge fan and as such he brings a biased perspective, only scratching the surface of the conflicts between the stars and the media, their fans and each other, concentrating instead on the glory days of chumminess and Liverpudlian cheek. He also isn’t very interested in the concerts themselves. Eight Days A Week may be subtitled The Touring Years, but the overriding subject isn’t the tours themselves so much as the development of the Beatles as writers and artists beyond the confines of the Cavern Club, the Empire Arena, Shea Stadium and Candlestick Park. Half-way interesting for half the time, the movie is saved by numerous clips of the band in concert – was the ABC Manchester 1963 gig really filmed in colour? – but the interviewees, both the two surviving bandmates Ringo and Paul and a clutch of celebrity names, do not exactly offer tremendous insight. The producers [of which there are many] should have tracked down some genuine fans and asked their opinion of the Beatles’ impact. Frankly, I don’t really care that Richard Curtis liked them, but I’d like to know if the squawking American girl with horn-rimmed spectacles still believes George Harrison had beautiful eyelashes.
Whatever. A good raft of songs keep us occupied and humming. The early years are sketchily presented. For instance, if you didn’t know Pete Best was the band’s original drummer, you might have thought Ringo Starr had travelled to Hamburg and back. The albums are periodically listed alongside their chart runs, each new LP registering a lower span at Numero Uno until Sgt Pepper. Original theatrical versions showed all 35 minutes of the 1965 Shea Stadium gig, but the version shown now omits all but one song. Disappointing. The later sections where Lennon’s songwriting really takes off [the Rubber Soul to Revolver period] prove more interesting. The Abbey Road roof top gig really ought to have been shown in its entirety also, given it was their final live appearance.
In my opinion, and I would hate to argue against a super fan like Ron Howard, he hasn’t a clue about how to construct an informative and entertaining documentary about a rock n roll band. This is mostly neither. Where’s Martin Scorsese when you need him?
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 30,873Chief of Staff
was the ABC Manchester 1963 gig really filmed in colour?
Yes, it was.
you might have thought Ringo Starr had travelled to Hamburg and back.
He did. He was there before the Beatles were…he did sit in for Pete Best when he was ill…and he was with them when they toured there in June 1966.
@Sir Miles Thanks for the additional info. re: RIngo Starr, the documentary mentioned the Beatles going to Hamburg when Harrison was 17 (this is 1960) and although there did use Hamburg photos of them with Ringo from late 1962, there is no mention of Pete Best. I think the grainy Cavern Club footage from 1962 also shows Pete Best. As far as the doc is concerned, Best may as well have not existed; I get Ringo is the top man, but it is a poor oversight on the filmmakers.
There's some good stuff - the actress Signourney Weaver is shown as a young teenager attending one of the concerts, and it's nice to hear Whoopi Goldberg explain why the Beatles made a mark with black people, not just because they played to mixed audiences and had no truck with segregation but because they were so idiosyncratic as an act that it kind of surpassed ideas of race anyway.
The additional footage that was shown separately in cinemas at the time did offer one of the best clips - firstly, an unsung Brian Epstein standing at the side of the stage, proprietorial, watching the act and gazing out at the audience, smart and just of a different generation even though not really much older, and a close up of John and Paul singing together, pouting their lips and overplaying the homoerotic aspects it seems to me.
What irked at the time is that Paul and Ringo normally look quite turned out - in recent Twitter pics Ringo can look in his 40s though I guess his hair is not the original article, while Paul on the Graham Norton show shortly after almost nodded to the Band on the Run era but here both look ruddy awful, I mean it's a movie for crying out loud, couldn't they book in for Botox beforehand?
I agree the documentary is a bit bland. Opinions differ on just how wild and promiscuous the tours were, and how much money would have been thrown at the cops to keep things sweet, but we don't get that here. I do recall one odd moment, on the first American tour, where the stage isn't set up right and two of the Beatles have to get down and manually turn it around themselves, it's all quite basic at that stage.
Ron Howard later said that Paul and Ringo went silent when he broached the subject of how they missed out on to touring in the early 70s, because that was when improved amplification kicked in, and also the really big money.
"This is where we leave you Mr Bond."
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 30,873Chief of Staff
The grainy footage from The Cavern Club would be them performing ‘Some Other Guy’ and it does have Pete Best on drums…
I guess the issue the filmmakers had were that there is almost no footage of the Beatles touring with Pete Best…so did they decide to deliberately not mention him as they would then have had to tell the story of why he was replaced…?…and this is a film that is about the touring years…🤔
YNWA 97
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 30,873Chief of Staff
I agree the documentary is a bit bland. Opinions differ on just how wild and promiscuous the tours were, and how much money would have been thrown at the cops to keep things sweet, but we don't get that here. I do recall one odd moment, on the first American tour, where the stage isn't set up right and two of the Beatles have to get down and manually turn it around themselves, it's all quite basic at that stage.
Yes, it’s very much a powder puff piece, I think bland is quite harsh though.
The tours were very wild and promiscuous…read Kenneth Womack’s book on Mal Evan’s - based on Mal’s own diaries 👀
It was actually Mal Evan’s that jumped up on stage to move Ringo’s drum riser around at the Washington Coliseum, this was done three times…plus George Harrison had a faulty microphone during this gig.
I may be wrong but I think it's on the very first, mega important Ed Sullivan show that Lennon has a mic fail on I Wanna Hold Your Hand and it's left to Macca to carry the vocals, not too bad as it's one of the very few Beatles songs that is double-tracked, in that both John and Paul are singing the main verse, so Macca is doing his bit, otherwise the song would be a dud. It's one of the examples of Macca saving the day, it's his song All My Loving I think that kicks off the Ed Sullivan show. Generally it was all Lennon back then but with songs like that and I Saw Her Standing There, Macca is no slouch at all.
The best epic movies are always centred on one individual and their accomplishments and losses. Ben Hur, El Cid, Cleopatra, Lawrence of Arabia, Andre Rublev, etc. Spartacus follows the well-trodden path. In fact, in may just have invented it. Stanley Kubrick directs, but the project is highly influenced by its producer and star, Kirk Douglas, whose robust characterisation sets the tone and gravitas of this gladiatorial actioner. The screenplay is by Dalton Trumbo, a black listed communist screenwriter, and is based on the novel by Howard Fast, another Marxist writer. Fast wrote it in prison following a conviction by the House of Unamerican Activities and the story is laced throughout with the legacies of free speech, slavery and social togetherness [let’s not call it socialism, although that is clearly the intent]. Spartacus is far more politically inclined than Ben Hur, which errs towards the religious in its politics, or El Cid, which chooses patriotism. Cleopatra is a grand love story. Spartacus reflects the contemporaneous times of its making: the colour bar, mistrust of democracies, social upheaval, etc.
That it is also able to be entertaining on a visceral level is a tribute to the director and producer, who between them manufacture a product that is both intelligent and physical. Indeed, there is probably less action in Spartacus than many three-hour epics, just two swift gladiator combats, a montage of a rebel army marauding across Italy and a climatic pitched battle. The real action, the real danger, comes from the machinations of the Roman senate where general and consul Marcus Licinius Crassus – a real person, sometimes named as the richest man ever in Rome – is manoeuvring for power with his feckless brother-in-law Glabrus. Lawrence Olivier is brilliant as the scheming, bitter, ambitious, bisexual military fascist, betraying all the signals of his intent with a rare twitch of authority. He brings every ounce of his Shakespearian wiles to play in making Crassus a sympathetic, yet completely despotic villain. John Dall’s Glabrus is a puffed up, grinning, incompetent; the actor gives the character an undeserving, curious dignity as his downfall approaches. Opposing these two are the ancient statesman Gracchus and his young charge Gaius Julius Caesar [John Gavin]. Charles Laughton, enjoying a late renaissance to his career, is superb as the slightly bored, ever wary senator Gracchus, a man given over to corpulent bliss, his brand of politics played out in steam baths and with untold riches, beautiful women hanging on his arm. The gladiator trainer Lentulus Batiatus [also a real character, identified by Plutarch] is his subordinate; played by Peter Ustinov, Batiatus is a weaselly, yet curiously enjoyable man, effortlessly able to summon a certain carefreeness from adversity, sensing every opportunity to make a fortune. He even attempts to bribe Crassus: captured by the dictator, Batiatus suggests that during the inevitable conflict “… Spartacus may cross the battlefield seeking you” to which Crassus responds with alacrity: “And I have no doubt it will be with your help.”
While these men bicker and outwit one another, Spartacus [Kirk Douglas, bristling with muscular intent as only he can] launches his slave rebellion and attempts to flee the country with the aid of the sympathetic Silesian pirates, represented by Herbert Lom’s conniving Tigranes Levantus. Thrown into the mix is beautiful slave girl Jean Simmons, who captures Spartacus’s heart. Woody Strode makes an impression as a negro gladiator whose death incites the first rebellion. Tony Curtis crops up with his unfortunate Brooklyn accent and his role as the Sicilian ‘singer of songs’ Antoninus is the one which feels least developed. He arrives in chains at Crassus’s villa – actually William Randolph Hearst’s Californian estate – is propositioned by his new master in a scene of homo-erotic tension, then turns up uninvited at the rebel camp. He becomes Spartacus’s right-hand man because he is literate, but one feels the relationship between Antoninus and Crassus should have been deeper, reflecting the later professions of father-son love between he and Spartacus. Otherwise, the main characters feel well-rounded, individual and motivated. The talky scenes do not distract us as they do in some long films, rather they draw attention to the disguised modern day aspects of the screenplay, how it assiduously reflects those 1960 times.
So, what else do we have? Well, the film looks super; hats off to photographer Russell Metty [Oscar winner, like Ustinov] and the sets and costume design are more than adequate for this kind of fare. Surprisingly the interiors and many of the outside scenes were shot in the Hollywood hills; only the major battles were filmed in Spain. It also sounds great, not the voice track, but Alex North’s lush score, which utilises traditional sounding instruments like Spanish flutes, Arab drums, harps and lutes to create a musical framework that attempts to recreate the audial landscape of Rome. The editing is mostly crisp. One might say it dawdles a little, at a shade over three hours that’s a justifiable complaint, but the whole is big enough to absorb any slight defects and Spartacus is one of the more affecting and therefore more emotionally successful epics, its story being founded less on the articles of war and more on the human, intimate scale of love, freedom and honour, of all kinds, guided and misguided.
Apparently, Kirk Douglas – who dismissed director Anthony Mann two weeks into shooting – also dismissed Stanley Kubrick towards the close and took over direction himself. The cracks do not show. Mann’s scenes in the gladiator training school were considered too blood thirsty, making the picture too grimly masochistic. Kubrick leans towards the political intrigue, but perhaps loses the voice of Douglas’s character, the voice of freedom so central to the story’s sentiment. Peter Ustinov too interfered with his scenes, which perhaps explains why he is so good. The messiness behind the camera is not evidenced in the result and Spartacus remains a supreme example of the historical epic, presenting a fictionalised, but highly believable account of a real man’s life and the story that surrounds and defines him. There is certainly action, but this film is more about those inherent freedoms and how they are won, lost and subjugated, at all levels of society.
Lieutenant Commander Murrell (Robert Mitchum), commander of the American destroyer USS Haynes is pitted against Captain Stolberg (Curd Jürgens), skipper of a Kriegsmarine U-boat in this very fine war film detailing WW2 anti-submarine warfare.
The USS Haynes, on patrol in the South Atlantic detects a U-boat via sonar which is on its way to its mission. What follows is a tense battle between the two naval vessels, as they both try to get a shot at the other, climaxing in a pyrrhic victory for Murrell.
An overall excellent film with great performances by its lead and supporting actors.
Comments
I agree on your points. I would also ad that Nansen and Amundsen were good at learning from Sami and Inuit peoples, something Scott didn't do.
I can recommend the 2019 Norwegian movie "Amundsen" for a more recent look at the topic seen from the Norwegian viewpoint.
From a Bond fan point of view it's worth noting that Roald Amundsen's romantic interest's name was named Kristine Elisabeth Bennett, but she was known by the name Kiss Bennett. We need a return to that sort of Bond girl names.
A very different movie about Roald Amundsen is "Titina" (2022). It's a Norwegian/Italian animated movie about one of his later expedition were he wanted to reach the North Pole by air ship together with the Italian engineer Umberto Nobile (and his little dog Titina). Maybe you're tired of watching Frozen for the millionth time and wish to learn more about polar exploration too?
@Number24 Thankyou for the great movie recommendations. It would be very interesting to see the Norwegian side of the story.
Thank you.
I hope you like the movies. Titina was a real dog who really went on a polar expedition on an air ship. 😊
Robert Falcon Scott is wrongly celebrated in the UK as some kind of tragic hero. Tragic, yes, but hardly heroic. He may well have been an excellent scientific explorer and a commendable, respected leader of men, but his preparation for an attack on the South Pole was foolhardy and owed more to an imperialistic sense of entitlement than any genuine thought. While I understand why he might believe technology and durable pit ponies could benefit his attempt, the evidence it would not is very obvious. The poor ponies were half-starved by the time he reached the Antarctic and would never be suitable for traversing snow and ice; the badly maintained snow tractors were a liability before he even set off. I find it rather ridiculous British society and media constantly venerate failure - knighthoods for underachieving sportspersons spring to mind - celebratory warmongering during the First World War would be another - seeing something endearing in the 'nearly man'. The only thing endearing is he has a tale to tell, but it isn't an uplifting one. Scott, for all his eloquence, will always be remembered for a disasterous failure. In terms of the film, I personally find it rather dull. It is worth noting John Mills portrays Scott as a man blinded as much by his own ego and reputation as he is by the Antarctic snow. Amundsen [who barely appears] was more singleminded than Scott, more egodriven too, but at least he thought carefully and logically about his task and ultimately succeeded. Didn't Sean Connery play Amundsen in The Red Tent?
THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE (1973)
Small-time criminal Eddie 'Fingers' Coyle (Robert Mitchum), is caught up in a desperate game of survival.
While supplying guns to a bank-robbing crew and facing several years of jail time for a truck hijacking case, Coyle has turned into an informant for the ATF.
What Coyle doesn't know, is that every 'friend' in his circle is ratting on everyone else.
With friends like these...who needs enemies.
Directed by Peter Yates (Bullitt), 'The Friends of Eddie Coyle' is an expertly made American crime noir, with great performances by Robert Mitchum, Peter Boyle and Steven Keats.
Excellent film.
(103 minutes)
The Wicker Man (1973)
Bond fans will recognise this as a hybrid of the last two Bond films of the time - Live and Let Die, with two of the Golden Gun cast, as James Bond is called by MI6 on investigate a mysterious Scottish island - it's an MI6 matter because due to some shadowy history it's unclear whether it falls under British jurisdiction or not, but after a fellow agent goes missing Bond flies out solo to investigate, whereupon he encounters snide, jeering locals, the suave hospitality of Christopher Lee and the seductions of Britt Ekland.
Okay, I wouldn't mind seeing a film like that, but like Golden Gun it has an odd, morally vapid vibe, there is something emotionally unengaging or at least unsettling about it, the difference being it's meant to be like that here.
This was shown as a repeat of the BBC's Moviderome evening, zippily introduced by Alex Cox and shown as a double bill with Don't Look Now, as it had been in the cinema. However, the film they actually showed was the Director's Cut, or Original Cut, before it got shorn of some scenes with some scenes rearranged. Myself, I'm not sure I don't prefer the hacked about version which must have been good or it wouldn't have acquired cult appeal. The added scenes heavy handedly emphasise Sgt Howie's Christianity by showing him in a dour Church at the opening, setting things up as a battle of two attitudes. I also wonder if you wouldn't be better able to grasp how things turn out in the end with the added running time. It shows some of the 'depraved' attitudes of the locals on the sergeant's first night, shagging around the local cemetery I guess, though the characters all look like they're off The Joy of Sex manual, all beardy and pale. It reorders the attempted seduction by Ekland to the final night which is all very well but in pure cinema terms, I think it works best for his first night there, it has greater impact. I'm not sure I'd find her too alluring after a few days in that God-forsaken place, having found out what they're all like.
There's another Bond connection as Diane Cilento ( Connery's wife, not sure if she still was then) has a recurring role.
One thing I noticed is that when Howie (an excellent pre-Mackay from Porridge character played by Edward Woodward) first encounters Lord Somerisle (Lee), Lee plays it like suave and jovial civil servant Humphrey Appleby dealing with an increasingly outraged Jim Hacker, as if to say, 'Yes, this is my territory, and you just have to see how these things play out here!' The film preceded Yes Minister by some years though both Lee and the actor who played benign advisor Bernard were Hammer regulars.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Superman
James Gunn resets the DC cinematic universe with a new take on the Man of Steel. When Superman intervenes in an international conflict, his nemesis Lex Luther sees a way to manipulate the situation and finally get the upper hand on his hated rival.
After Zack Snyder's entertaining but downright Wagnerian take on the character Gunn goes for a kinder, gentler and more optimistic Superman. David Corenswet plays him as a down to Earth farm boy who just wants to do good and belong, take care of his super powered dog Krypto and help people, truly the red and blue boy scout of so many Superman stories. It's a performance that harkens back to Christopher Reeve's interpretation and his chemistry with Rachel Bronahan's Lois Lane feels convincing and authentic.
Jimmy Olson, Perry White and the rest of the usual crew from the Daily Planet also make appearances and actually get to do some investigative reporting instead of just waiting around to be rescued.
In another departure from the Snyderverse, this Superman's world is already populated by all manner of super beings such as Guy Gardner, the biggest jerk in the Green Lantern Corps, the technical wizard Mr. Terrific, and the fierce warrior Hawkgirl to name but three. It all feels very reminiscent of the Superman animated series and the Justice League Unlimited animated show. Nathan Fillion's comic relief as Gardner and Edi Gathegi's Mr. Terrific were particular standouts for me.
Turning to the villains, Nicholas Hoult plays what must be the most evil and contemptuous Lex Luthor yet. At turns maniacal, petty, violent and even pathetic, he oozes anger, jealousy and hate. He is aided and abetted by two super powered lackeys who are equally vile and pose quite the challenge for Superman to overcome.
I enjoyed this movie a lot but I can see how it might be a challenge for movie goers who are not familiar with the expansive DC comics universe. James Gunn loves to mine the obscure corners of the comic book world for quirky characters to flesh out his movies and he does that here. There is no origin or setup to help prime new viewers; a few lines of exposition are given and you're then thrown straight into the action and expected to keep up. It made for a somewhat disjointed and scattershot start to the movie and it took about a half hour for it to find its stride and settle into a rhythm. In the end though I really appreciated the movie's earnestness, its willingness to embrace the medium from which it derives and the brighter and more optimistic tone.
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE TV SERIES (1988-1990)
Remarkably well made follow-up to the hit TV show from the 60's, Mission Impossible (1988-1990) ran for two seasons and consists of 35 episodes, 19 for Season 1 and 16 for Season 2.
Starring the seasoned Jim Phelps (Peter Graves) and his new team of counterespionage agents, the Impossible Mission Force (IMF) is sent on extremely difficult missions and always end up outwitting their enemies and escaping in style.
We see a variety of scenarios in the episodes.
Crackpot dictators, arms dealers, smugglers, rogue agents, drug cartels...this series has it all.
Another unique aspect of this series is the exploration of the world of the supernatural i.e., voodoo, death cults, banshees etc, which is very different from the Cold War oriented episodes from the 60's.
Its all here and it is fantastic.
Highly recommended.
The Mission Impossible team might have come in handy for Plane, a recent movie shown on Film4 tonight with Gerard Butler as the pilot of a small passenger airline that is flying out of Singapore on New Year's Eve, is hit by lightening and forced to ditch on a hostile island full of nasty militia. On board is a handcuffed prisoner played by Michael Colter, he's suspected of murder or some such thing so we are in Con Air territory (it was just recently pointed out to me that Con Air is a play on Air Con, I am probably the only one not to spot that).
Plane is pretty good, I got what I expected, it's unpretentious rubbish but played straight and Butler is very good at this kind of thing, Colter was good too though the passengers were thinly drawn compared to say, the sort we got in the film The Lost Horizon where we get thumbnail sketched of them all early on. Oddly I wonder if The Lost Horizon, a 30s or early 40s film I recommend, is longer than Plane, even though it seems to be and covers more ground.
One snag, there is a slim back-up support arriving to help our ditched civilians but I'm not sure how they got there - did they parachute in? If not, where is their transport?
Another snag is that they didn't quite seem to know how to end it, it didn't quite tie in nicely. That can be a challenge can't it, I mean Bond films always used to end with a happy shag, the punchline to the film, the that tended to fall flat once Moore left, but then it's a case of, okay, how do you end a movie? How do you sign off?
Roger Moore 1927-2017
PLANE is one of those really standard actioners that is elevated considerably by the committed cast and by some unexpected plotting. It's one of those 'better than it has any right to be' kind of films.
I enjoyed watching Dog Day Afternoon at London's Prince Charles cinema yesterday. It was the first time I'd seen it, and the print was a bit crackly - it had the 'X' certificate at the front, though I'm not sure why.
It's a about a trio of misfits who attempt a heist at a small New York bank, but things start to go wrong almost immediately. It's directed by Sidney Lumet, and it reminded me of his film The Anderson Tapes with Sean Connery some years earlier. The criminals are hapless, in over their heads, you feel sorry for them compared to the State operatives who come across as corrupt and oppressively all-powerful. There's a sense of overkill, and there a lot of films like this in the 1970s, the sense that whatever the crims were getting up to, they still weren't as bad as the State police, politicians and law enforcers.
It plays better than The Anderson Tapes imo, I felt that was a bit of a one-note film - you know everyone is on to the criminals from the start, so there isn't much sense of jeopardy, whereas in this one Sonny does show at times he isn't actually that daft.
Al Pacino is the ringleader Sonny, looking his Paul McCartney mid-Wings best and channelling his inner Dustin Hoffman and one of his co-conspirators is John Cazale from The Godfather, looking troubled as ever. It's not quite clear why or how these other two agreed to be recruited by Sonny given his later stated motive. Actually, as the heist draws out - and themes that were later echoed in films like Die Hard emerge; the interference of the media, the sinister arrival of the FBI and a hierarchy of incompetence - I found it a little tiring. Revelations about Pacino's character didn't quite match the performance he was giving, it seemed to me, though the social and sexual politics of the film is very much Rod Stewart's Killing of Georgie from around the same time frame. Even though it's a true story, it didn't seem to be to quite add up, but I will look it up on Wiki.
Anyway I enjoyed it - there's a lot of dry humour throughout the first half. No real reason for the movie's title, though we do see a dog in the opening credits.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
THE COMMITMENTS (1991)
Oh, how we liked this in 1991.
A million-selling soundtrack of soul covers by a ten-piece band cobbled together from various actor-musicians around Ireland and Northern Ireland is probably the best thing about this obscenity filled comedy from the pen of Roddy Doyle and the stealth-like adaptive skills of Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais. Otherwise, Alan Parker’s tale of the chaotic rise and horrendous fall of a Dublin covers band fails to hit the mark on almost every level. Cliched, devoid of irony, chock full of eejits – including comedian Sean Hughes as the boss of a record label named Eejit – and painting a faintly dreadful picture of the Irish capital, the thing this film misses most is a heart, so obsessed are the characters with their own personal gains and satisfactions. The lead character [Jimmy Rabbitte] is a fantasist of enormous proportions, interviewing himself as his dreams collapse around everyone – he’s an unreliable narrator, which should prove a fertile ground for satire, but nobody in the writing department noticed the possibilities. The stupefied faces of the band members sum up my general reaction to Jimmy’s parade ground pontificating about the merits of soul music.
Basically, The Commitments is glorified blarney karaoke; about as much fun as a the open mic nights at O’Neill’s or Scruffy Murphy’s in Sutton c.1991. In 1991, we just didn’t notice through the haze of fag smoke and Guinness.
ICE STATION ZEBRA (1968)
A thrilling espionage adventure broadly based on Alistair MacLean's book of the same name, but differing in some aspects.
A Soviet spy satellite, containing stolen British and American photographic technology malfunctions in orbit and jettisons a capsule towards earth, containing imagery of sensitive US and Russian military sites, which parachutes onto an Ice Pack in the Arctic.
A race now begins to collect this capsule and its precious film.
American Navy Commander James Ferraday (Rock Hudson), his submarine crew and a contingent of Arctic trained marines are dispatched to the North Pole under the guise of rescuing the personnel of a British weather station, code named Ice station Zebra, that has been struck by a severe blizzard.
Accompanying them on the trip is none other than John Drake from 'Secret Agent'...the legendary Paddy Fitz a.k.a., Patrick McGoohan.
All jokes aside, in this film Mr McGoohan plays David Jones, a British secret agent who is tasked to recover the capsule and is the only one on the submarine who knows the real story behind the mission.
What follows is a gripping adventure to the Arctic and a tense standoff with Russian Special Forces in the end.
Beautifully shot in Super Panavision, 'Ice Station Zebra' is an entertaining and realistic espionage film, that I have watched countless times and enjoyed thoroughly.
An amazing film.
(149 minutes)
Thanks for the quick review @Sonero Have you checked out my Alistair MacLean thread?
https://www.ajb007.co.uk/discussion/55972/the-alistair-maclean-thread/p1
@chrisno1
Very impressive.
I am going to enjoy reading your MacLean thread.
Thank you for the link.
The Quatermass Xperiment (US title The Creeping Unknown)
Quatermass 2 (US title Enemy From Space)
Two early Hammer horror/sci-fi movies based on a BBC tv series, now reissued in glorious boxed sets inc 4K, Blu-Ray, the TV version, a book, the stories as comic strip (you'll like them, @CoolHandBond), postcards, a poster, a ridiculous amount of commentaries, interviews, and no doubt other stuff I've missed.
More info on Quatermass https://www.ajb007.co.uk/discussion/52758/quatermass#Comment_992673
The "father" of Dr Who and a great influence on other shows such as The X Files. The sfx are very dated now but the stories still hold up. In the first, an astronaut returns from a space trip but his two companions don't, or have they? In the second an alien conspiracy to take over the Earth is discovered bit by bit.
BATTLE OF BRITAIN (1969)
A meticulous attempt to recreate the drama, death and disaster surrounding the battle in the skies of August – September 1940 when the German Luftwaffe was charged with destroying Britain’s air defences as a prelude to invasion. By 15th September, the now famous Battle of Britain had been as good as won, although many civilians subjected to air raids for the next five years probably didn’t notice. Statistics are a grand thing and the losses are stated for the viewer before the end credits. The sheer volume of Luftwaffe planes destroyed is staggering. Allied losses were high for the numbers despatched but low in comparison. They say Hitler never trusted Goering again; maybe he didn’t, but you sense some calamitous tactics on the German half.
Indeed, the problem with Harry Saltzman’s expensive production isn’t that it lacks flair or star power. It is an all-round competent exercise and passes the time idly enough, but it isn’t particularly engaging as the script bounds between men at war, men in love, men in politics, decision makers, civilians, pilots, WAF recruits and then periodically jumps over the channel and into subtitle territory to demonstrate the confidence being eroded from the German faces. There was an attempt by many ‘big’ Second World War movie productions of the sixties to humanise the enemy [The Battle of the Bulge, The Great Escape, Is Paris Burning, to name three] but the one thing learned by modern filmmakers, such as the crew who pieced together Top Gun: Maverick, is that if you spend time with the antagonists, you lose all the character and drama of the story as seen by your protagonists – and that is what happens here. The number of scenes of German’s bailing out of aeroplanes, or watching the skies, taking off, celebrating, debating, etc, dilutes the message the film wants to deliver. The Allied hero pilots become less interesting as individuals than the machinations of the rival air forces. It becomes a game of ‘who outwits who’ instead of ‘well, we beat the crap out of them’. The latter, as attested by escapist nonsense such as Where Eagles Dare tends to be more enjoyable.
So, the film ponders on and on and delivers airborne dogfight after dogfight. The people? Well, slivers of interest and some decent performances just about keep the bubble afloat before they burst. Michael Caine is killed off early. Laurence Olivier is dignified in the lead role. Susannah York is horrendously miscast. Christopher Plummer and Robert Shaw add extra glamour and a tinge of pathos. A host of stars of old or stars soon to be pepper the cast. Guy Hamilton directed. Perhaps we should be thankful his efforts here meant he was not available for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
I don’t know.
Maybe I am being picky. Battle of Britain is alright, not much more, but it looks impressive at times and the music scores billow wonderfully. There are two: William Walton’s was binned other than the climatic Ballet of the Skies at the movie’s climax – an excellent symphonic rendering of the war in the air – and Malcolm Arnold wrote the rest, although with only a ‘conductor’ credit. It’s a little underwhelming and that’s a pity because the subject deserves a decent telling.
From the sublime to the ridiculous, Mechanic: Ressurrection (2016)
This appears to be a sequel to The Mechanic, which I haven't seen, and stars Jason Statham who begins the film without any particular explanation or backstory, rather like 007 in a new James Bond film. He's assumed to be dead - shades of the next Bond film perhaps? - but villains emerge and want him to carry out some kills, he isn't happy so kills most of the henchman, there is more Bond malarky as this takes place at Rio de Janeiro and there's a scene with a cable car. Soon this becomes 'spot the Bond movie' in virtually every scene - there's the Golden Gun island and Michelle Yeoh appears, there are other nods to the opening of NSNA and Bond's yacht infiltration in Licence to Kill and so on. Actually, with a beer in my hand this should have been great fun but the beer was forced to do a lot of heavy lifting because if you have too many Bond references it takes you out of the film, and anyway Statham is more a beer and peanuts film, which Bond isn't, so it doesn't sit right.
Other than that, the love interest Jessia Alba really doesn't work with Statham, I found there was little or no chemistry and she arrives about 25 mins into the film and kind of sank it for me.
Tommy Lee Jones is cast but he's only in it for the last 15 minutes or so - in fact the last half hour is Mission Impossible-type tasks for our hero. It's really too perfunctory to enjoy.
Wasn't it Ron Goodwin who stepped in for soundtrack work on The Battle of Britain?
Roger Moore 1927-2017
@Napoleon Plural Wasn't it Ron Goodwin who stepped in for soundtrack work on The Battle of Britain?
Ah, yes, my mistake. I must have blinked when Ron Goodwin's name came up on the credits and only saw the Walton / Arnold credit which comes after it. I was aware Walton's piece was deemed unsatisfactory by the producers. I read somewhere that the only reason his overture was retained was Larry Olivier threatened to remove his name from the credits if his mate Willy Walton was cast aside. Compromise, compromise.
THE BEATLES: EIGHT DAYS A WEEK – THE TOURING YEARS (2016)
A largely superfluous documentary about the Beatles concert experience c.1961 – 1966 (+ briefly 1969). Superfluous because there is very little new to learn about the Beatles, certainly not since the outstanding Anthology series that charted in depth and with much empathy their rise and fall. American director Ron Howard admits to being a huge fan and as such he brings a biased perspective, only scratching the surface of the conflicts between the stars and the media, their fans and each other, concentrating instead on the glory days of chumminess and Liverpudlian cheek. He also isn’t very interested in the concerts themselves. Eight Days A Week may be subtitled The Touring Years, but the overriding subject isn’t the tours themselves so much as the development of the Beatles as writers and artists beyond the confines of the Cavern Club, the Empire Arena, Shea Stadium and Candlestick Park. Half-way interesting for half the time, the movie is saved by numerous clips of the band in concert – was the ABC Manchester 1963 gig really filmed in colour? – but the interviewees, both the two surviving bandmates Ringo and Paul and a clutch of celebrity names, do not exactly offer tremendous insight. The producers [of which there are many] should have tracked down some genuine fans and asked their opinion of the Beatles’ impact. Frankly, I don’t really care that Richard Curtis liked them, but I’d like to know if the squawking American girl with horn-rimmed spectacles still believes George Harrison had beautiful eyelashes.
Whatever. A good raft of songs keep us occupied and humming. The early years are sketchily presented. For instance, if you didn’t know Pete Best was the band’s original drummer, you might have thought Ringo Starr had travelled to Hamburg and back. The albums are periodically listed alongside their chart runs, each new LP registering a lower span at Numero Uno until Sgt Pepper. Original theatrical versions showed all 35 minutes of the 1965 Shea Stadium gig, but the version shown now omits all but one song. Disappointing. The later sections where Lennon’s songwriting really takes off [the Rubber Soul to Revolver period] prove more interesting. The Abbey Road roof top gig really ought to have been shown in its entirety also, given it was their final live appearance.
In my opinion, and I would hate to argue against a super fan like Ron Howard, he hasn’t a clue about how to construct an informative and entertaining documentary about a rock n roll band. This is mostly neither. Where’s Martin Scorsese when you need him?
was the ABC Manchester 1963 gig really filmed in colour?
Yes, it was.
you might have thought Ringo Starr had travelled to Hamburg and back.
He did. He was there before the Beatles were…he did sit in for Pete Best when he was ill…and he was with them when they toured there in June 1966.
@Sir Miles Thanks for the additional info. re: RIngo Starr, the documentary mentioned the Beatles going to Hamburg when Harrison was 17 (this is 1960) and although there did use Hamburg photos of them with Ringo from late 1962, there is no mention of Pete Best. I think the grainy Cavern Club footage from 1962 also shows Pete Best. As far as the doc is concerned, Best may as well have not existed; I get Ringo is the top man, but it is a poor oversight on the filmmakers.
There's some good stuff - the actress Signourney Weaver is shown as a young teenager attending one of the concerts, and it's nice to hear Whoopi Goldberg explain why the Beatles made a mark with black people, not just because they played to mixed audiences and had no truck with segregation but because they were so idiosyncratic as an act that it kind of surpassed ideas of race anyway.
The additional footage that was shown separately in cinemas at the time did offer one of the best clips - firstly, an unsung Brian Epstein standing at the side of the stage, proprietorial, watching the act and gazing out at the audience, smart and just of a different generation even though not really much older, and a close up of John and Paul singing together, pouting their lips and overplaying the homoerotic aspects it seems to me.
What irked at the time is that Paul and Ringo normally look quite turned out - in recent Twitter pics Ringo can look in his 40s though I guess his hair is not the original article, while Paul on the Graham Norton show shortly after almost nodded to the Band on the Run era but here both look ruddy awful, I mean it's a movie for crying out loud, couldn't they book in for Botox beforehand?
I agree the documentary is a bit bland. Opinions differ on just how wild and promiscuous the tours were, and how much money would have been thrown at the cops to keep things sweet, but we don't get that here. I do recall one odd moment, on the first American tour, where the stage isn't set up right and two of the Beatles have to get down and manually turn it around themselves, it's all quite basic at that stage.
Ron Howard later said that Paul and Ringo went silent when he broached the subject of how they missed out on to touring in the early 70s, because that was when improved amplification kicked in, and also the really big money.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
The grainy footage from The Cavern Club would be them performing ‘Some Other Guy’ and it does have Pete Best on drums…
I guess the issue the filmmakers had were that there is almost no footage of the Beatles touring with Pete Best…so did they decide to deliberately not mention him as they would then have had to tell the story of why he was replaced…?…and this is a film that is about the touring years…🤔
@Napoleon Plural said
I agree the documentary is a bit bland. Opinions differ on just how wild and promiscuous the tours were, and how much money would have been thrown at the cops to keep things sweet, but we don't get that here. I do recall one odd moment, on the first American tour, where the stage isn't set up right and two of the Beatles have to get down and manually turn it around themselves, it's all quite basic at that stage.
Yes, it’s very much a powder puff piece, I think bland is quite harsh though.
The tours were very wild and promiscuous…read Kenneth Womack’s book on Mal Evan’s - based on Mal’s own diaries 👀
It was actually Mal Evan’s that jumped up on stage to move Ringo’s drum riser around at the Washington Coliseum, this was done three times…plus George Harrison had a faulty microphone during this gig.
I may be wrong but I think it's on the very first, mega important Ed Sullivan show that Lennon has a mic fail on I Wanna Hold Your Hand and it's left to Macca to carry the vocals, not too bad as it's one of the very few Beatles songs that is double-tracked, in that both John and Paul are singing the main verse, so Macca is doing his bit, otherwise the song would be a dud. It's one of the examples of Macca saving the day, it's his song All My Loving I think that kicks off the Ed Sullivan show. Generally it was all Lennon back then but with songs like that and I Saw Her Standing There, Macca is no slouch at all.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
SPARTACUS (1960)
The best epic movies are always centred on one individual and their accomplishments and losses. Ben Hur, El Cid, Cleopatra, Lawrence of Arabia, Andre Rublev, etc. Spartacus follows the well-trodden path. In fact, in may just have invented it. Stanley Kubrick directs, but the project is highly influenced by its producer and star, Kirk Douglas, whose robust characterisation sets the tone and gravitas of this gladiatorial actioner. The screenplay is by Dalton Trumbo, a black listed communist screenwriter, and is based on the novel by Howard Fast, another Marxist writer. Fast wrote it in prison following a conviction by the House of Unamerican Activities and the story is laced throughout with the legacies of free speech, slavery and social togetherness [let’s not call it socialism, although that is clearly the intent]. Spartacus is far more politically inclined than Ben Hur, which errs towards the religious in its politics, or El Cid, which chooses patriotism. Cleopatra is a grand love story. Spartacus reflects the contemporaneous times of its making: the colour bar, mistrust of democracies, social upheaval, etc.
That it is also able to be entertaining on a visceral level is a tribute to the director and producer, who between them manufacture a product that is both intelligent and physical. Indeed, there is probably less action in Spartacus than many three-hour epics, just two swift gladiator combats, a montage of a rebel army marauding across Italy and a climatic pitched battle. The real action, the real danger, comes from the machinations of the Roman senate where general and consul Marcus Licinius Crassus – a real person, sometimes named as the richest man ever in Rome – is manoeuvring for power with his feckless brother-in-law Glabrus. Lawrence Olivier is brilliant as the scheming, bitter, ambitious, bisexual military fascist, betraying all the signals of his intent with a rare twitch of authority. He brings every ounce of his Shakespearian wiles to play in making Crassus a sympathetic, yet completely despotic villain. John Dall’s Glabrus is a puffed up, grinning, incompetent; the actor gives the character an undeserving, curious dignity as his downfall approaches. Opposing these two are the ancient statesman Gracchus and his young charge Gaius Julius Caesar [John Gavin]. Charles Laughton, enjoying a late renaissance to his career, is superb as the slightly bored, ever wary senator Gracchus, a man given over to corpulent bliss, his brand of politics played out in steam baths and with untold riches, beautiful women hanging on his arm. The gladiator trainer Lentulus Batiatus [also a real character, identified by Plutarch] is his subordinate; played by Peter Ustinov, Batiatus is a weaselly, yet curiously enjoyable man, effortlessly able to summon a certain carefreeness from adversity, sensing every opportunity to make a fortune. He even attempts to bribe Crassus: captured by the dictator, Batiatus suggests that during the inevitable conflict “… Spartacus may cross the battlefield seeking you” to which Crassus responds with alacrity: “And I have no doubt it will be with your help.”
While these men bicker and outwit one another, Spartacus [Kirk Douglas, bristling with muscular intent as only he can] launches his slave rebellion and attempts to flee the country with the aid of the sympathetic Silesian pirates, represented by Herbert Lom’s conniving Tigranes Levantus. Thrown into the mix is beautiful slave girl Jean Simmons, who captures Spartacus’s heart. Woody Strode makes an impression as a negro gladiator whose death incites the first rebellion. Tony Curtis crops up with his unfortunate Brooklyn accent and his role as the Sicilian ‘singer of songs’ Antoninus is the one which feels least developed. He arrives in chains at Crassus’s villa – actually William Randolph Hearst’s Californian estate – is propositioned by his new master in a scene of homo-erotic tension, then turns up uninvited at the rebel camp. He becomes Spartacus’s right-hand man because he is literate, but one feels the relationship between Antoninus and Crassus should have been deeper, reflecting the later professions of father-son love between he and Spartacus. Otherwise, the main characters feel well-rounded, individual and motivated. The talky scenes do not distract us as they do in some long films, rather they draw attention to the disguised modern day aspects of the screenplay, how it assiduously reflects those 1960 times.
So, what else do we have? Well, the film looks super; hats off to photographer Russell Metty [Oscar winner, like Ustinov] and the sets and costume design are more than adequate for this kind of fare. Surprisingly the interiors and many of the outside scenes were shot in the Hollywood hills; only the major battles were filmed in Spain. It also sounds great, not the voice track, but Alex North’s lush score, which utilises traditional sounding instruments like Spanish flutes, Arab drums, harps and lutes to create a musical framework that attempts to recreate the audial landscape of Rome. The editing is mostly crisp. One might say it dawdles a little, at a shade over three hours that’s a justifiable complaint, but the whole is big enough to absorb any slight defects and Spartacus is one of the more affecting and therefore more emotionally successful epics, its story being founded less on the articles of war and more on the human, intimate scale of love, freedom and honour, of all kinds, guided and misguided.
Apparently, Kirk Douglas – who dismissed director Anthony Mann two weeks into shooting – also dismissed Stanley Kubrick towards the close and took over direction himself. The cracks do not show. Mann’s scenes in the gladiator training school were considered too blood thirsty, making the picture too grimly masochistic. Kubrick leans towards the political intrigue, but perhaps loses the voice of Douglas’s character, the voice of freedom so central to the story’s sentiment. Peter Ustinov too interfered with his scenes, which perhaps explains why he is so good. The messiness behind the camera is not evidenced in the result and Spartacus remains a supreme example of the historical epic, presenting a fictionalised, but highly believable account of a real man’s life and the story that surrounds and defines him. There is certainly action, but this film is more about those inherent freedoms and how they are won, lost and subjugated, at all levels of society.
Excellent entertainment.
THE ENEMY BELOW (1957)
Lieutenant Commander Murrell (Robert Mitchum), commander of the American destroyer USS Haynes is pitted against Captain Stolberg (Curd Jürgens), skipper of a Kriegsmarine U-boat in this very fine war film detailing WW2 anti-submarine warfare.
The USS Haynes, on patrol in the South Atlantic detects a U-boat via sonar which is on its way to its mission. What follows is a tense battle between the two naval vessels, as they both try to get a shot at the other, climaxing in a pyrrhic victory for Murrell.
An overall excellent film with great performances by its lead and supporting actors.
Recommended.
(Directed by Dick Powell - 98 minutes)