Jason's Blog, page 123

Sigh

El Dorado Silverado

El Dorado: A variation on Rio Bravo, by Howard Hawks, with Robert Mitchum in the Dean Martin role, James Caan as Ricky Nelson, Arthur Hunnicutt as Walter Brennan and Charlene Holt as Angie Dickinson. John Wayne is still John Wayne. It even has the same scene of a bad guy being shot and hiding in a saloon and the sheriff going in after him. But they're not able to recapture lightning in a bottle, the magic is mostly gone.

Silverado: The first time I saw this film, by Lawrence Kasdan, I didn't care for it too much, but rewatching it now, it's actually pretty good. It's more of a pastiche, though, with Kasdan putting in every scene he loved from watching Westerns as a kid, leading up to the gun duel at the end. There's something slightly mechanical about the film, and politically correct as well. But there's also the guy falling off the roof scene, so I can't really complain.

Next Stop, Greenwich Village

1953: Lenny Baker is an aspiring actor from Brooklyn, moving to Greenwich Village. Also starring Shelley Winters, Christopher Walken, in a small part Jeff Goldblum, and in a blink and you'll miss him part Bill Murray, directed by Paul Mazursky.

Maybe not quite a masterpiece, but it's a great, affecting film. Baker looked like a mix between James Woods and Jean-Paul Belmondo, Winters plays the ultimate Jewish mother. The story takes place in the jazz / beatnik era, before the folkmusic boom. I like that it's a slow film, with really long scenes, and Mazursky is very generous to the characters, even the cheating girlfriend. I remember seeing this film on tv as a kid, and thinking that this is what adult life will be like.

Doomsday

Virus in Scotland, death and chaos, quarantine, big wall, 30 years later, Now. Written and directed by Neil Marshall. 
I can admire the concept of this film: Escape From New York meets Mad Max 2. It shows balls. Someone like a young Tarantino could maybe have gotten away with it. Marshall does not. Why is it that all modern action films look like they were directed by the same guy? There's no real style. And how do you make a film like this and not have a single piece of quotable dialogue? No Ayatollah of Rock'n Rollah? No Call me Snake? It has the NOW text line, a Carpenter-ish synth theme, even two characters named Miller and Carpenter, all fine and good, but shouldn't it also have some juice of its own? The one original idea, the gimmick with the woman's camera eye is pretty silly, even if it plays a role at the end of the film. Most of all it makes you want to rewatch the films it's ripping off.

Rio Bravo

After Assault on Precinct 13, good as it is, I wanted to see the real thing: Rio Bravo! John Wayne is the sheriff, and Dean Martin his deputy. Also starring Ricky Nelson, Walter Brennan and Angie Dickinson, directed by Howard Hawks.

A great Western, and one of the most entertaining and rewatchable films ever made. The story takes its time, but we enjoy the company of the characters, so what's the rush? And no matter what people say, John Wayne was a good actor! He doesn't mind being made to look like a fool in front of Angie Dickinson. Dean Martin is terrific as well. I love the sequence where he and Ricky Nelson sing. Would it even be possible to get away with something like that today? Outside of maybe a Wes Anderson film, I think not, and it's our loss. A movie has to be more "realistic" today, but often end up just being less fun - the Assault on Precinct 13 remake being an example.

Il Mistero del Falco

I don't remember a half naked woman in The Maltese Falcon...

Happiness is...

Or does it?

Happy birthday, Michael Caine!

80 years today!

Sam Pezzo

After seeing the Vittorio Giardino exhibition in Bologna I started re-reading his books, Hungarian Rhapsody and Orient Gateway. I also got the Jonas Fink / A Jew in Communist Prague books and the Collected Sam Pezzo, his private detective strip.  It's always interesting to see a cartoonist's early work, how it changes from this 
into this, in just a couple of years. You can see some of both Jacobs and Tardi in the strips. He even has the Tardi AAAs in wordballoons, when someone is shot! I haven't read No Pasaran!, his Spanish Civil War book yet, but should get that next.