Man, this whole taking time off is getting tough. Arising from my crypt at noon, watching five films in a day, researching stuff on the web (just putting the finishing touches to a couple of monthly film masterclass things), taking a stroll down the East London watersides in the occasional sunshine – hard work my friends, hard work. I have been catching up (more harrowing than ‘Audition’ or ‘Ichi’, strong stuff but great) with some of my DVD backlog, some stuff on my web memberships, some arty stuff and some movies on the TV as the choice on the big screen has been patchy at best over the past couple of weeks, more on this below.
I’m not sure quite why I’m collating clips of Chevy Chase but life is full of mysteries. I watched ‘Fletch Lives’ over the weekend which was predictably awful but there’s just something about the man that cracks me up in certain sequences of generally bad films. All the clips I’ve seen of him and Bill Murray on the old Saturday Night Live show have generally left me cold but when he’s portraying that WASPish, cheeky rogue he can conjure up some fantastically hilarious and unique moments. One of the few vaguely watchable John Carpenter films since the late 1980’s is this which has its moments, thinking about both their careers I guess you really have to make the most of it when your star is in the ascendent.
I’ve also been catching up with the many podcasts I subscribe to, given that it took me a bloody month to get hooked up after I moved I have over 100 broadcasts to wade through. Strongly recommended is the Creative Screenwriters podcast which features excellent one hour plus interviews with the writers behind many of the better recent US mainstream films including the guys behind ‘Cloverfield‘, ‘Children of Men‘ and well, just look at the list. I also like this for a different perspective, a Melbourne based public service show that has turned me on to a few Australian pictures and filmmakers over the past couple of years. Ripper. I’m a bit jealous as my friend in Melbourne has just e-mailed me this years film festival programme which includes a retrospective of George Romero including screenings of all the Zombie movies on the big screen. Cool.
As I said there’s not much out at the moment so I’ve reverted to tracking down some old classics, this week I caught the terrific ‘Double Indemnity‘ at the Stratford Picturehouse, it’s Billy Wilder’s landmark film noir with perhaps the screen’s most iconic femme fatale. Family man Walter Neff (Fred McMurray, a wholesome Disney actor wonderfully cast against type) falls for the icy Barbara Stanwyck who convinces him to murder her husband so they can make off with the insurance money – you can guess the rest. I’m not inclined to bother with a full Minty review so I’ll just leave you with these great reviews.
Film clip time. I’ve finally joined the 21st century and got my first two Blu-Ray disks last week including this and a Special Edition Super Elite copy of ‘Close Encounters Of The Third Kind’. Manipulative? Sure. Dated effects? Obviously. However, there is just something about this film and of course E.T that will always occupy a fondness with me, given that they were amongst the first films I recall ever seeing and actually making me think about who makes these films, how did they do it and why did they do it the way they did? The boxed set contains all three cuts of the film along with an old (made for the 20th anniversary) two hour documentary on the making of the picture along with a short updated interview with Spielberg for the 30th Anniversary. I must concur that they should have never gone into the Mothership for the Special Edition and left that experience to the audiences imagination which would have been more spectacular and satisfying than what they finally threw up on screen. Spielberg has always maintained that the final 25 minutes of the film has always been the most difficult editing job of his entire career and he only concurred to the re-release so he could shoot and insert some of the earlier sequences he had to drop due to budgetary constraints – he was under enormous pressure as the studio was effectively bankrupt and the whole company was riding on the success of the movie. Paramount agreed only if he would include material inside the Mothership as this would give them a very strong hook on which to re-sell the picture. Stick to the original cut I reckon. At the risk of being annoying, Blu-Ray on my big TV is quite special and it is a genuine treat to re-visit some of these films I know backwards again – coming soon……
