Oh, William Klein, how I love you. Delphine Seyrig in a spangly leotard, three rockin’ wrestlers, and a superhero-cum-quarterback-cum-fascist cowboy delight. Oh, and Serge Gainsbourg (off-screen) playing the piano. So much to admire in MR. FREEDOM’s (1969) bombast.
Little Richard Attenborough’s “choirboy’s looks and killer’s cold stare” in BRIGHTON ROCK (1947). Perhaps inspiration for his naturalist brother’s nature series on reptiles and amphibians: Life in Cold Blood?
Eldridge Cleaver and fellow African revolutionaries in Algiers, meeting during the Pan-African Cultural Festival. My favorite of his diatribes: “F*@# Queen Victoria to her bones!”
Klein works the Helvetica credits, as per usual, here hurtling at us, in ELDRIDGE CLEAVER, BLACK PANTHER (1970).
And as much as Cleaver likes to talk, this guy, below, doesn’t want to. See the ringing telephone that gleams menacingly in the extreme foreground? SHE PLAYED WITH FIRE (1957) and this one may have helped her do it.
Really, in this case, the hackneyed blogger speak of “le sigh” is warranted. QUI ÊTES-VOUS, POLLY MAGGOO? (1966):
And “le purr” if you were the cinematographer on THE OCTOBER MAN (1947). I’m talking about you, Erwin Hillier:
Train whistles really do a number on the psyches of post-war Brits, here and in Brief Encounter especially. Are there other films where train whistles toot themselves into the plot? Maybe Strangers on a Train?
Did Cassius Clay invent the media circus? Here he is, by that point Muhammad Ali, manipulating the *#@! out of his image.
By the way, he does admit that he shouldn’t have been calling himself “The Greatest” back in ’64, as Allah takes that heavyweight title.
SO EVIL MY LOVE (1948) seemed like it would never end. As a rule, the period Brit Crime films (like this one, set in the Victorian era) are duds.
So—how stunning was this print of FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH (1982)? Not a scratch on it, super-duper color, wowoweee! And, let’s face it, the film holds up to multiple viewings. Glad to finally have seen it on the big screen. Jesse Hawthorne Ficks of Midnites for Maniacs treated us to some choice trivia: there was a sequel to this movie, called The Wild Life, with Sean Penn’s brother, Chris Penn, playing the role of Spicoli. What?!
And another question: whatever happened to Judge Reinhold?
Is it just me? Or is the typography for THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN (1982) apt for the film’s “penetrating” dissection of teenage lust?
The best part of this double feature—esp. for a night devoted to “Cocky White Guys”? Both films depict abortion frankly, realistically, and with nary a batted eyelash. As Jesse pointed out, would that Knocked Up and Juno were so cool.
By the by: had a terrible experience taking the all-night BART home (due to the Bay Bridge closure). Picture the scene:
2 a.m.
Hundreds of drunk people.
Hundreds of drunk people who never used BART before.
Hundreds of drunk people who had never used BART before stampeding through the doors of the car X and I had ambled into at 24th Street.
I won’t go into any more detail than to tell you that the below cocky white guy STOOD ON MY REAR BICYCLE WHEEL, with all his weight. Yes, he was that drunk and that much of a mischievous monkey. I did get him to give me 20 bucks in exchange for my having to true my back wheel.
By the way, his name is Robert Harris—or so he claimed—and he builds and races bikes, and works at Mike’s Bikes, and lives somewhere in the East Bay.
You have been warned.
No, Jimmy, your butt certainly does NOT look fat in those swim trunks.
I MET A MURDERER (1939) barely made it out of the silent era, with all those dramatic close-ups, overwrought orchestral crescendoes, and awkward edits. Plus, the leading lady’s eyebrows were about tweezed out of existence. (I know, I’m overly obsessed with eyebrow fashion through the ages.) But she did call their car “Auntie” and James Mason’s character shot his wife because she shot his border collie. Fair enough.
Oh, yeah, there was another movie in this double bill:
Even three-strip Technicolor couldn’t save this. When the lights went up, one of the PFA regulars loudly pronounced it a “stinker.”
FOOTSTEPS IN THE FOG (1955).
Director George A. Romero as a priest in MARTIN (1977)…
…and John Sayles as one of the Men in Black in THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET (1984). Okay, this is Joe Morton below, of course, not John Sayles; I didn’t get a picture of the latter. But: <squeeeeeee>, that high-pitched noise he and David Straithairn made—ooh, I just about peed my pants with laughter.
How much of a coincidence is it that both directors of tonight’s films had amazingly well-acted cameos in their own films? Romero played a practical, sweet-liqueur-loving priest not about to put up with a lot of mystical guff. And Sayles? I didn’t even recognize him as the taller twin of the alien “slave”-hunters.
And, just ‘cos I’m a sentimental twit, a lovely dawn picture of the other twins:
When a pissy Raymond Burr throws a bowlful of flaming spirits at his ladyfriend, the RAW DEAL (1948) gets flambéed!
Maybe Babs Stanwyck wouldn’t have NO MAN OF HER OWN (1950) if her makeup artist didn’t insist on clowning up her upper lip! But you better believe that trying on another woman’s wedding ring is bad luck—did you see how those two pregnant gals got tumble-dried in their train carriage? An implausibly delightful (or delightfully implausible) little lady film noir.
The tell-tale buzz of a motor boat; cuckolded Claude Rains using a damning playbill as a coaster; the sweat on Ann Todd’s brow as she contemplates going under the Underground. David Lean flushes us down the flashback in THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS (1948).
Why doesn’t the head of the MPAA affix his signature to the bogus ratings they give American films?
NOW, VOYAGER (1942) lap dissolves. Bette Davis confirms what we women have always suspected: a groomed eyebrow changes everything.