fixed. grammar / writing is not my best skill. thanks.
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I wasn’t sure that I’d like that movie, but my spouse got me to try it out. You are so right, it was really good! (though I did laugh at the cats)
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Spoiler alert for “Let the Right One In” follows:
The idea of the child becoming the old man took me out at the knees. We’re cheering for Oskar to move forward with Eli and break out of his shell…until we realize that the poor bastard has been drawn in by the overpowering charisma of the vampire, and he’s fucked for life! Run, Oskar, you silly bastard!!! But he won’t, because he’s found … dunno … someone who he can ultimately trust? Eli never lied to him, so there’s that… In any case, Eli never tells us how long s/he’s been alive but we can surmise that it’s been a long, long time, so poor, lovely Oskar is just another fly brought into Eli’s millennial web. Between that and the cinematography–that starkness and brutality of landscape! Hell, we learn early on that just walking through the woods and giving a stranger the time might get you hung up by the ankles and ready for the draining.–it’s obvious I loved it.
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movie 2 from this quarter makes up for the good film last week.
Scream Of The Wolf with Peter Graves, Clint Walker, and Jo Ann Pflug.
What appears to be a werewolf is killing people and Peter Graves a famous hunter is called on by the sheriff.
Peter is puzzled by the nature of the tracks and does not go in for the supernatural theory. He calls on his old hunting partner Clint Walker for help who is a bit of recluse and a manly I hunt with only one bullet and a knife man. No spoilers but there was there is a feeling that Clint Walker is all upset that Peter Graves likes girls and a feeling of ‘oh it is the old love’ from Clint Walkers man friday that really made the film a lot more fun.
Direction by Mr Horror TV Dan Curtis and a script by Richard Matheson help hold the movie together more than anything as everyone in it seems to be acting in ‘only in it for the paycheck’ mode.
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Black leather, black leather, crash, crash, crash!
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What kind of class is this?
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The “class” is Schlock Cinema 101 though the continuing ed program at North Seattle Community College. Mostly it is a way Fred can share copyrighted films with an audience and consistently the most popular class they offer. It is a bit pricey but he does donate his pay for teaching to Seattle Children’s Hospital so I don’t feel too bad about the cost. You can watch him host public domain movies online on Friday nights at 9pm PST or Saturday afternoons at 3pm PST.
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Here’s another film (Modesty Blaise) from the same director, Joseph Losey:
Based on the comic strip of the same name. It seems that all of the fans of the original strip hate the movie. I’ve never seen the strip but loved the movie. To be fair to the haters, Losey does come at the material from a rather odd angle, combining the chaos of the spoof Casino Royale (intentional chaos, in this case) and the thinly veiled contempt for the genre of something like John Huston’s The Kremlin Letter.
Starring Monica Vitti as Modesty, Terence Stamp as sidekick Willie Garvin (who gets a musical number with Modesty!), Dirk Bogarde as the very camp (although apparently heterosexual) villain, Harry Andrews, and Clive Revill in a couple roles.
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I watched Black Narcissus last night. I think I just don’t get Powell & Pressburger. A Matter of Life and Death was better but I didn’t like that too much either.
It did look nice, though.
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I know this is going to seem OT, but your post reminded me of Billie Holiday. Yes, Billie Holiday. Her range was just under one octave. Re-read that last sentence! Can you believe it?
My point is, range alone isn’t enough to determine brilliance.
edited to add: geez, it’s been a while since I read this thread, huh?
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I saw that in a theater quite a few years ago now. It is an interesting film a bit fun but mostly kind of incoherent. Absolutely great soundtrack with fun costumes but not enough to save the film.
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Yes, well seeing as how two of my favorite films are Godard’s King Lear and Fulci’s Fear in the City of the Living Dead, I obviously have a weakness for incoherent films. Actually, I first heard about Modesty Blaise in a Film Comment article that did a good job (as I recall) of making sense of it all.
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Oh you like Fulci, ahh that explains things a bit. I finally saw one of his movies last year at an Italian horror triple feature and pizza party. I now totally understand the phrase “Italian film logic” from the Greatest Movie Ever Podcast.
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Ever see Apollo 54?
Caught that at SIFF a few years ago.
(damn, I miss living between the Harvard Exit and Egyptian, and I’m still pissed off at Landmark for closing both of them)
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I am gonna have to check Scarecrow now…
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Hmmmm… I know what you mean by “Italian film logic” and that phrase can be applied to some of Fulci’s work, but I think House by the Cemetery is rather more coherent (at least subtextually) than you apparently do. You probably won’t care to read all this, but here’s Braineater’s (Will Laughlin’s) take on the film:
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Oh for that it was mostly the creepy nanny who by all reasons previously seemed to be in on the killings ends up a victim and the whole audience was wait wasn’t she helping with this? Plus the other 2 movies Demons and Burial Ground were much better at crazy what the hell stuff.
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reminds me of What a Way to Go!, a pretense to get hot-assed young Shirley McClaine to star with Hollywood’s biggest leading men while wearing the freshest gear of the day. Campy, self-indulgent, toungue-in-cheek chaos like Casino Royale (original) and later Austin Powers, but romance rather than spy genre. kind of like 80s Flash Gordon in the sense that the mis-en-scene is the real star of the show.
I’ve embedded to the time of my favorite scene, which demonstrates the idea pretty succinctly, but the whole thing is available if you rewind it:
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Hsssssssss. Back SATAN!!!
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I’m not going to pay for it, but I do kind of fancy watching it.
Annoyingly, the library doesn’t even seem to have ordered it or Mortdecai yet.
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