2003-TOKYO SCANNER, a kind of cool short film.

Shot with a high definition video camera flying around part of the city of Tokyo.

The camera was mounted on a stabilizing gyro which made the images perfectly steady.

The camera was able to zoom down into the crowds of people with pretty clear and impressive definition.

Tokyo looks like a hell of a big place.

1928 - WHITE SHADOWS IN THE SOUTH SEAS, good South Pacific adventure

An alcoholic doctor finds redemption on a remote south Pacific.  That's all the plot in this film.

Made during the period when movies were transitioning from silent to sound, White Shadows in the South Seas has music and some synchronized sound effects but not actual dialog.  MGM hired Robert Flaherty to film this story and sent him and a crew to Tahiti.  Flaherty was never a film maker who could develop or film a story with the usual cookie cutter production approach,  His pondering and indecision was a major frustration to the production team and he was eventually fired and replaced by W. S. Van Dyke a studio director. 

The film has impressive and very beautiful on location photography.  A lot of the actors appear to be actual natives.  The exception, the actor Rachel Torres a stunning woman with the very non native plucked eyebrow look.

Critical of the corrupt influence of white European culture on the natives, White Shadows in the South Seas for the most part contains the typical white man fantasy about living on a tropical island with a beautiful native girl worshiping everything about him.

W. S. Van Dyke may have been a studio director but he definitely put together an impressive film.

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1949 - THE BEAUTIFUL BLONDE FROM BASHFUL BEND, Preston Sturges rides into the sunset

The writer/director Preston Sturges had his run of frantic clever comedies when he worked at Paramount from the early to mid 1940's. By the time he signed with 20th Century Fox his hot streak was pretty much over.

In 1949, he released his western spoof The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend.  The film turned out to be a flop with audiences and critics and was the first flop for Fox's big female star Betty Grable. 

This film has all the usual Sturges stuff, the frantic playing of the slapstick situations, the legendary cast of Sturges character actors going through their goofball antics and the hyper kinetic dialog mostly shouted out by and at the actors.  The garish color in this film makes the studio sets look even more unreal than usual and some of the performances really got on my nerves.  Sterling Holloway, who usually did voice work for Walt Disney cartoons particularly annoys playing some kind of mentally deficient country rube.

Probably the big mistake in this film was casting Betty Grable.  Grable 20th Century Fox's popular female performer known for her all American sexiness was out of her comfort zone.  Grable  an actress with a seriously good figure and a nice pair of legs  usually performed in very inane musicals for Fox.

These silly musicals emphasized her wholesomeness and non threatening sex appeal, the "girl next door" as it were.  In The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend, she played something of a shrewish harpy who was also good with a gun, a major change from her usual bland film roles.  Like Sterling Holloway she also came off equally grating as well and just didn't seem to have any idea how to play this farce.  The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend was just not what the audience expected of their "the girl next door." 

The film  only 77 minutes long  tells me that everyone associated with it must have realized they had a flop on their hands and cut it down to make the film move as fast as possible.  The whole thing comes off as pretty desperate and not funny.

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1958 - THE BLOB, so called teenagers vs. space alien parasite

Criterion's tribute to silly 1950's science fiction/horror films.  A very classy release with 2 audio commentaries and some special features.  A good looking disc, the film had an excellent transfer.  The Blob the DVD looks really good.  The Blob the film only so so.

The director Irwin S Yeaworth stages scenes either incompetently or almost proficiently.  His work with the actors shows a lack of understanding on how to judge or even capture  good performances from his cast.

According to the audio commentaries, Steve McQueen at the start of his career was already a big pain in the ass to deal with.  McQueen a Prima Donna during filming was something that continued throughout his career.  DVD audio commentaries on his films are loaded with comments from his coworkers about his unprofessional behavior on set.

Revolutionary War historians take note, The Blob shot on location at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania making it an important part of our national heritage

The grain of an amusing idea floats around in this film.  Having teenagers take on a parasitic space alien pile of goo that absorbs people is at least original and the mechanical special effects are  pretty well done for such a cheap ass film.  Still, the so called actings mighty stiff and the actors playing the teenagers look to be in their mid to upper twenties McQueen looked a little long in the tooth.   No one expects Noel Coward quality dialog but the stuff coming out of their mouths, pretty lame.

Probably not a film really worth any one's time especially the time the Criterion's technicians put in on restoring it. The Blob comes in under 90 minutes for what it's worth.

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1968 - MURDER A LA MOD, entertaining early Brian DePalma film

It's all here for Brian De Palma fans, the unusual camera angles, the sick sense of humor, violence directed towards women, a fractured narrative style and the filmmaker as voyeur.  Murder A La Mod is Brian DePalma's first real film and incorporates almost all of his future favorite themes. 

For a film shot on a low budget and in black and white it's a pretty sophisticated piece of work.  De Palma uses the multiple narrative structure of Rashomon to present a killing (or maybe it's a killing) with multiple points of view.   He also throws in some really screwy humor with the actor William Finley playing some weirdo named Otto who may or may not have killed someone.  Then there's some Three Stooges like stuff with a real ice pick and a fake ice pick which keeps getting mixed up.

So what does it all mean?  Beats me, this film was made by a gifted young guy with a lot of film making talent and to put it mildly a rather strange outlook on life.

If you like Brian DePalma's films give this a look but don't go expecting one of his super slick studio films this isn't one of them.  However Murder A La Mod if a highly inventive and clever film by someone who knows how to put a film together.

Running time 80 minutes, written by  Brian De Palma.

1997 - TITANIC, junk the first time still junk 13 years later

How do you spend a Friday night when the family's home sick, you watch Titanic on TBS of course. This was as bad as I remembered it to be when I first saw it in 1997.  I had just purchased my first cell phone and played with it constantly during the film to keep myself entertained.

Even in 1997 the state of the art computer effects looked kind of fake and time has not been very kind to that aspect of this film.  During the climatic sinking scene, DiCaprio and Winslet are acting behind a green screen and lot of the birds eye camera shots of the ship have people who are obviously computer generated.

As a production, it was big and at the time it came out the most expensive film ever made.  The original plan was probably to sell the film as a disaster spectacular.  However, something strange happened, teenage girls responded to the love story aspect and made Titanic a big hit by going to it over and over and over.

The story and dialog are still pretty horrible, James Cameron may be a master of special effects in the film business, but he sure couldn't create interesting situations or believable characters which kind of amazes when you consider the story of the Titanic should have enough built in drama to it.  Cameron's need to juice it up with a romantic triangle with Rose's evil fiance, mighty lame.  Cameron makes him a villain so unbelievably clownishly evil that it manages to make the film sink into even more ridiculous melodrama than actually possible.

The actors do what they can to make this dumb film somewhat credible. Kate Winslet's stupid character of Rose the spoiled rich girl who sees the light must mean that Winslet can act because she  actually  makes her kind of interesting. Leo DiCaprio's Jack, the "good looking man of the world"  isn't much better. but DiCaprio actually manages to bring him to life as well.    

James Cameron directs the film with most of his interest appearing to be in staging creative ways to drown people in freezing water.

I have just never understood the incredible popularity of this film.

194that sinking feeling minutes.

1968 - THE SECRET CINEMA, stop me if you've heard this plot before

A woman is having her life secretly filmed and shown to the public.  At first unaware of what is going on she slowly begins to uncovers the truth.

Yup it's The Truman Show 30 years earlier and only 30 minutes long.  Nobody much remembers the director Paul Bartel anymore.  He mostly worked on low budget films and was kind of a mild satirist of American culture and society.  Bartel is probably best known for Death Race 2000 and Eating Raoul a couple of OK films. 
 

The Secret Cinema is Bartel's little shot at the film world.  30 years ago when this came out it would have been considered almost science fiction.  Today not so much.  This film's message seems to be, we are all a compulsive bunch of snoops feeding on other people's lives for our entertainment but oh well. 

Weird, funny, probably a little stupid, if anyone connected with The Truman Show can say with a straight face that they never saw this film or were not influenced by it....

 Written by Paul Bartel.

1940, NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNICH, not a sequel to THE LADY VANISHES

Carol Reed directed this comedy thriller, which used the same leading lady and the same two supporting British boob characters Charters and Caldicott from The Lady Vanishes.  But the film was not a sequel to the Hitchcock film.  Carol Reed was about four years away from hitting his peak period as a filmmaker, the real auteur's of this film were the writers Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder who had written The Lady Vanishes and were none to happy that Hitchcock got most of the credit for that film.

This is a very 1930's film with a lot of plot.  The basic story is about the Nazi's capturing an important scientist and his daughter from the British, and a British spy's attempts to get them back.  It is a pretty dated but clever story, with the writers mixing in comedy and suspense.  The film uses a lot of model and miniature work which gives  the whole thing a kind of quaint charm.

The acting is very good with a young Rex Harrison standing out as the British master spy trying to save the scientist and his daughter.  Harrison gets to sing a couple of music hall songs and really hams it up in disguise as a Nazi officer, in a lot of ways he's the whole show.  Margaret Lockwood gets the very thankless role of the daughter of the scientist but she looks pretty good in that English actress kind of way.

The finale features a shoot out on a cable car between Harrison and the Nazis which is a combination of more miniatures and rear projection, yeah it looks pretty phony but it's a lot of silly fun. 

Carol Reed was a very talented director but at this stage in his career he was no Hitchcock, he just didn't seem to be able to stage this spy stuff the way "The Master of Suspense" could.  Reed always liked working with actors and he did get pretty good performances out of the cast but visually the film is pretty dull for the most part. In 1944, Carol Reed kicks it into gear and has a very impressive run of films for the next 10 years. 

An entertaining if rather unmemorable film, proabably best to stick with Hitchcock's British thrillers instead.  The running time is 95 minutes.

1965 - DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, David Lean's Russian soap opera

The second in David Lean's trilogy of super epics, Doctor Zhivago was at the time of filming  10 months in actual production.  This larger scale production has everything great photography, big sets, and crowds, an impressive film to watch.

At the time of release in 1965, the film got some of the worst reviews that David Lean had ever received, the chief focus was on Robert Bolt's screenplay which many critics felt cheapened and simplified Boris Pasternak's book.  The reality probably was that not a lot of people had actually read this very long and difficult novel.

What appears to have appealed to David Lean about Doctor Zhivago was the story of the gifted poet tormented by his love for two women.  Lean himself had a very messy personal life, so he probably could relate to the basic situation.

This was the film where I discovered how important photography could be in a film.  The cinematographer F.A. Young really outdid himself.  You could probably pull a still out of almost any part of the film and frame it.  Young filmed in 35 mm and blew it up to 70mm, you couldn't even tell, it's that good  Watching the film today, the photography's impressive if maybe a little glossy, still it's a real pleasure to watch this gorgeous film. 

After all the careful filming and planning, MGM forced Lean to rush through the post production and editing process to get the film into theaters due to their poor financial position.  The composer Maurice Jarre had very little time to score the film, he ended up writing a love theme called "Lara's Theme" which they used a lot throughout the film.   The song became very popular and was covered by just about every mainstream crooner in the world.

Doctor Zhivago's a very fine film that  didn't really turn out to be the masterpiece that David Lean had hoped for.   But he really knew how to put a film together and move the story along. Not a boring moment can be found in the entire 3 hours and 20 minutes. 

This film was extremely popular with audiences at the time of release and made a lot of money.

2005 - A BITTERSWEET LIFE, is a philosophical revenge fantasy

Another one of these violent Asian action films where everyone gets blasted with lots of bullets or repeatedly bashed in the head over and over and over and over and over and over.

A Bittersweet Life is very well made, the action scenes are at a high caliber, the acting is good and the story is pretty interesting.  For reasons I can't exactly understand these types of films always seem to have scenes where the protagonist gets all philosophical about the meaning of life and his  place and relationship to it in the world.  I call this The Guns of Navarone syndrome.

The Guns of Navarone was a large scale World War II action adventure where every so often Gregory Peck and David Niven would stop to debate the relative merits of the war they were fighting.   I believe the purpose of these scenes were to make the film seem more important than what it actually was, just another World War II movie. 

A Bittersweet Life has The Guns of Navarone syndrome in spades, there is lots of time to reflect on the meaning of life before somebody gets a burning stick shoved into his eye, or shot in the chest or has his head rammed through a car window, etc.

The film is not without a sense of humor, there is a long scene with a gun dealer that is very funny. Our so called hero and the gun dealer race to put together the guns they have taken apart so they can shoot each other, funny stuff.

Still, you get what you pay for with this film lots of over the top violence that for some reason Asian cinema is really good at pulling off.

120 minutes.

1958 - THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD, children's fantasy with some sick stuff thrown in for fun

An acknowledged classic from Ray Harryhausen, his first film in color which was not a film stock he was anxious to work in since he had perfected his technique of merging previously photographed live action with his stop motion animation monster in black and white.

Watching the film last week, a lot of the shots do look a little rough particularly during the famous skeleton fight sequence where Sindbad's action clearly looks like a rear projection screen fighting a more substantial monster. 

Still a good film overall, the monsters look pretty impressive and have lots of that famous personality in their animation that Ray Harryhausen was known for.  The acting is probably what it should be for a children's fantasy film.  Sinbad played by Kerwin Matthews is a classic true blue hero in the traditional sense, the evil magician played by Torin Thacher is just about perfect with just enough larger than life acting in his performance without going completely over the top.

The director was Nathan Juran, whose credits were pretty ordinary as he straddled between directing unimpressive films and TV shows throughout his career.  Somehow Juran always managed to crank it up a notch when he worked with Harryhausen, it was like he understood how to integrate the special effects in the Harryhausen films he worked on.

Ray Harryhausen and his producer Charles H. Schneer managed to get the composer Bernard Herrmann to score the film.  Apparently the always very crabby Herrmann watched a very beat up work print of the film on a movieola, not the best condition to see the film and signed on. The film's fantasy aspects must have appealed to him and gave him a chance to indulge himself with some of his unusual musical arrangements.

What jumped out at me on this viewing were the number of sick touches that Harryhausen stuck into the film.  The dance of the Cobra Woman ends up with her own snake tail trying to strangle her.  The Cyclops captures Sinbad's men and cooks them like they were on a rotisserie, a very funny joke since rotisserie grilling was all the rage in 50's suburban households. 

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad is a very entertaining film in the fantasy genre even after 40 years.

88 minutes, written by Kenneth Kolb.

1960 - THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN is really the pretty good seven or maybe OK seven

Not much to add here, everyone knows that this is a remake of the Kurosawa film transported to Mexico as a western.  The director is John Sturges and while Sturges is a good director, he's no Kurosawa. 

At  over two hours watching the film was kind of a long slog.  Sturges strong points as a director were always in staging action and working with composition in wide screen.  Unfortunately Sturges probably should have put a little more time into the screenplay.  The film mostly takes the Seven Samurai plot line and condenses a  lot of that film's story structure which makes some of the film look a little choppy in places.  Towards the end the bandit leader traps the "Seven" and then lets them go with their guns.   The reasons the Mexican bandit leader gives for not killing the "Seven" make absolutely no sense and the scene itself really has no reason to even be in the film.

The dialog also leaves a lot to be desired,  there are some pretty corny lines that come out of the mouths of these tough guys.  The gunfighters in this film are so nice they would fit right into a Mary Kate and Ashley Olson movie.  The Seven Samurai runs over three hours so it probably should be expected that The Magnificent Seven would lose a lot of the emotion and characterization that the Kurosawa film had. 

What the film does have going for it besides excellent action scenes, is the super cool cast, almost iconic roles for every actor playing the "Seven."

The German actor Horst Buchholz plays a Mexican named Chico in a very silly piece of casting.  Horst Buchholz got stuck playing the inexperienced and reckless kid and he's OK although it's a pretty impossible part for any actor much less a German pretending to be a Mexican to play.

In the end the film is probably to mired in it's early 1960's conventionality to be the classic that a lot of people think it is.  Everything is spelled out and every plot point is very obvious throughout the film in that 1960's kind of way.

Sergio Leone must have watched this film a few times before he made the first of his spaghetti westerns.  The Mexican bandit leader played by Eli Wallach is clearly a warm up for Wallach's Mexican outlaw "Tuco" character in The Good The Bad and The Ugly.

128 minutes, either overlong or not long enough. Written by William Roberts and uncredited writers, Walter Bernstein and Walter Newman.

1956 - RUN FOR THE SUN, remake of a story that has been remade about 30 times

The basic situation of the big game hunter tired with hunting animals and now trapping humans as game has been remade a lot starting with The Most Dangerous Game and currently the 2010 release of  Predators.  Even an episode of Gilligan's Island used this plot line. 

This version was shot on location in Mexico and features every one's favorite movie villains, the Nazis. 

This is a very good thoughtful remake.  The screenplay is by Dudley Nichols, who was an old Hollywood professional when it came to putting together something with entertainment and substance.

Richard Widmark was always Mr Intense in his films and he doesn't disappoint here basically playing Ernest Hemingway if Hemingway were to get stuck in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of Nazis trying to kill him.  Jane Greer who played femme fatales when she was a teenager in the 1940's is the love interest.  Trevor Howard is cleverly cast as a traitorous Englishman hiding out in Mexico.  The film is directed by Roy Boulting who was usually known for directing comedies.  Everyone's on top of their game for this film. 

The film comes in at a tight 90 minutes with strong emphasis on characters and story situations along with the action scenes.

1956 - THE BURMESE HARP a good anti war film

Kon Ichikawa filmed this thoughtful film about the end of World War II and how death profoundly affects one of the soldiers who has surrendered to the Allies. 

After witnessing the deaths of a company of Japanese soldiers who refuse to surrender to the Allies after the war, the Japanese private Mizushima,  steals a Buddhist monk's robes. While wandering around the countryside he has a spiritual crisis which results in his decision to stay in Burma and bury the bodies of all the dead Japanese soldiers laying around there.

The film has beautiful black and white photography, particularly of the temples and the landscape of the country.  It's a very well made film.

The Burmese Harp is kind of a product of it's time. The antiwar theme is really hammered into the audience in that 1950's kind of way. and the film has a lot of sentimentality throughout. Still in spite or maybe because of this approach it's a very moving film. 

A quiet sense of resigned sadness about the aftermath of war and death  hangs over the film which probably could have only come out of a country that had payed a big  price in the loss of life during World War II.