A day in the life, Jan 25, wine and cheese evening
Saturday, January 27, 2018
Last Man Standing (1996)
A drifting gunslinger-for-hire finds himself in the middle of an ongoing war between the Irish and Italian mafia in a Prohibition era ghost town.
Yet another remake of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo is an interesting, but not fully satisfying mixture of genres, especially of Western and gangster movie; good star cast and expertise direction make it watchable, though.
Halliwell*: "A Hollywood Western influenced by other schools of film-making. The wit and charm of Kurosawa's original, Yojimbo, has been replaced by a raw energy and gunfights in the style of John Woo; but its glum, conscienceless protagonist lacks the style of Toshirô Mifune or even Clint Eastwood in the spaghetti Western version, A Fistful of Dollars."
Maltin**: "...rife with gunplay, but overcome by sheers boredom."
Un Amour de Swann (1984)
When the elegant and educated bachelor Charles Swann falls in love with a courtesan, his friends in the most powerful and fashionable circles of Paris in the 1890's warn him against marriage.
Well produced with top credentials in all departments, the result is a unloving, coldly calculated adaptation of Proust's story; alone Hans Werner Henze's excellent score gives an impression of what this movie could have been.
Halliwell**: "Reasonably successful attempt to film part of an unfilmable book. Comparisons with Letter From an Unknown Woman are inevitable."
Maltin**1/2: "Lavish but lifeless telescoping of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past with Irons surprisingly stiff...Redeemed somewhat by the latter [Ornella Muti] and Delon (as a homosexual baron), a sexy under-the-covers scene, and Sven Nykvist photography. "
Toys From My Childhood
Zerak toy robot
The Zeroids were a line of toy robots from the Planet Zero introduced by the Ideal Toy Companyin 1967 and re-licensed by Toyfinity in 2013 along with the later "STAR Team" revival. Consisting of Zerak, Zintar and Zobor, the Zeroids powered their way into the imaginations of young boys for nearly a decade. Zeroid robots were powered by a small DC electric motor that could be removed. These DC motors appeared as the brand name "Motorific" in Ideal Corp racing slot cars, and "Boaterific" powered scale motorboats.
The original sales pitch read, "Moving across the landscape, overrunning all obstacles as inexorably as the Future itself, these amazing, efficient and powerful automatons have but one purpose - to serve their masters at work and play!"
The storage cases in which the robots came could be used for other purposes. The robots were battery operated, and had wheels with rubber treads to propel themselves across the floor. There was a bottom mounted reversing switch that would allow the robot to reverse when it touched a special plastic plate, or turn the robot off, when in backed up into its display case.
Zerak, the blue robot, was originally the "commander" of the three robots. Zerak came with hook hands, and interchangeable magnetic hand and a throwing cup hand. Zerak's right arm could be cocked, and made to throw objects. [Wikipedia]
Friday, January 26, 2018
First Lines: Geoffrey Household - A Rough Shoot
It all began on an autumn evening so silent and peaceful that no one who had the luck to be out-of-doors, with copse and downland stretching away from him till the folds of England vanished into a mist of grey and green, could have a thought of human violence.
Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)
In a twist to the fairy tale, the Huntsman ordered to take Snow White into the woods to be killed winds up becoming her protector and mentor in a quest to vanquish the Evil Queen.
A fairy tale is turned into a dark and violent fantasy film in a style more like The Lord of the Rings than a children's movie; one also wonders what was wrong with the classic tale to be expanded into such a heavy Hollywood production.
Maltin*1/2: "Poisonous retelling of the famous fairy tale...Grim in every sense of the word. Theron's performance has no nuance or shading (just shouting) and Stewart has little presence. Novelty of familiar, full-sized British actors as the seven dwarfs offers too little too late in this long, violent, ponderous production."
Argo (2012)
Acting under the cover of a Hollywood producer scouting a location for a science fiction film, a CIA agent launches a dangerous operation to rescue six Americans in Tehran during the U.S. hostage crisis in Iran in 1979.
Well-crafted, entertaining political thriller with a good cast manages to mix tension and humour; however, the audacity of the true story seems more fascinating than what the movie actually offers.
Maltin***1/2: "Incredible true story...Affleck's sure-handed direction...manages to shift seamlessly from incredible tension in Iran and internecine politics in Washington, D.C., to the absurdity of the scheme in Hollywood. As the old pros in Movieland, Arkin and Goodman are hilarious, and every one of their punch lines scores a bull's-eye. Smart, enormously satisfying entertainment..."
New Stuff: American Noir
Contains:
The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M.?Cain
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? by Horace McCoy
Thieves Like Us by Edward Anderson
The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing
Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham
I Married a Dead Man by Cornell Woolrich
The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
Pick-Up by Charles Willeford
Down There by David Goodis
The Real Cool Killers by Chester Himes
Thursday, January 25, 2018
First Lines: C.S. Forester - Lieutenant Hornblower
Lieutenant William Bush came on board M.M.S. Renown as she lay at anchor at the Hamoaze and reported himself to the officer of the watch, who was a tall and rather gangling individual with hollow cheeks and a melancholy cast of countenance, whose uniform looked as if it had been put on in the dark and not readjusted since.
Wednesday, January 24, 2018
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