'THE NIGHT THEY RAIDED MINSKY'S'......TAKE 10 TERRIFIC GIRLS, BUT ONLY 9 COSTUMES...

The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968)   Since this nervous, percolating farce came out toward the end of the catastrophic 1968, we thought of it as the perfect way to see out the catastrophic 2017.....

             You can't make this claim about too many movies, but the driving artistic force in putting this film together turned out to be its editor, Ralph Rosenblum.......

              The film's young director, William Friedkin (still several years away from his roaring successes "The French Connection" and "The Exorcist") apparently finished the production leaving the producers with a mass of uncuttable footage.....

              Enter Rosenblum to the rescue, who employed virtually every then fashionable 1960's editing trope to turn "Minsky's" a nostalgic snapshot of 1920's New York, into a frenzied, up-to-the-minute imitation of a Richard Lester Beatles movie.......

              In the same way that Lester sliced and diced the vaudeville routines in 1966's "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum", Rosenblum attacked the ancient double-entendre skits of Minsky's Burlesque.......a snip here, a snip there, then on to something else.....

             If you don't blink, bobbing around in all this churning footage is an amazingly eclectic once-in-a-lifetime cast of characters.........Jason Robards and Norman Wisdom as song-'n-dance men, Britt Eklund as an Amish naif who wanders amid the strippers, Joseph Wiseman and Elliot Gould as the father and son Minskys, Forrest Tucker as a 'Guys And Dolls' type gangster.  And if that isn't enough for you, the film throws in  iconic Brits Denholm Elliott as a sanctimonious anti-Burlesque prude and Harry Andrews as Eklund's raging father.

              Ralph Rosenblum's ever-snapping editing scissors rarely let the film stop to catch its breath, but as the scenes go flying by, you can quickly enjoy Robards and Wisdom's catchy routines, and the riotous, would-be salacious dances from the pudgy platoon of Minsky chorus girls.......(bored stiff as they motorize their butts in the direction of the howling crowd of guys who've packed the theater)

              To be fair to Rosenblum, some of his work here stands out by itself in its sheer creativity......particularly his seamless, black-and-white-to-color mixing of archival footage with the film's own recreation of teeming, working class New York neighborhoods. And he faced the added burden of reconstructing the supporting role played by beloved comedian Bert Lahr, who passed away during the film's production......(without CGI to make a duplicate Bert Lahr, Rosenblum relies on cleverly composed shots of  a shadowy stand-in)

               A mixed bag overall, but 49 years later, still highly watchable for its wonderfully game cast. The biggest surprise for us......the film's final moments,  totally owned, by of all people, Britt Eklund, as she slowly transforms on the Minsky stage from Amish sweetheart to accomplished stripper. (Her work here even eclipses Natalie Wood's finale bump-and-grind in "Gyspsy".....)

               Rosenblum's strenuous editing may have given the film a hip 1960's vibe, but its main pleasures still come from the actors, the hummable tunes, those hoary Burlesque skits......and without a doubt, those 10 terrific girls.....3 stars (***).......and a most happy (and happier) New Year to all BQ visitors......see you in 2018.

'BAYWATCH'..........WHERE'S HAL NEEDHAM WHEN WE NEED 'IM??

Baywatch (2017)    The beginning of the BQ's long sojourn in the brave new world of video movies happened to coincide with the Golden Age Of Hal Needham, the veteran stunt man turned movie director.......

                The late Needham, the auto-chase auteur behind the "Smokey And The Bandit" and "Cannonball Run" movies, brought back a bizarre genre that hadn't been attempted since the Frank Sinatra & His Rat Pack films,,,,,,,,,the throwaway movie, the slapdash junker put together for the sole amusement of the actors starring in it.  (Not surprising that Sinatra and some surviving rat-packers show up in the Cannonball Runs....)

                 You could tell nobody showed up to work hard on throwaway movies.......they were all there to horse around and have a good time......and maybe transfer some of the infectious fun they were having to anyone sitting down to watch them. (Only in a Needham movie could you encounter Roger Moore playing a guy named Seymour Goldfarb who, in delusion, thinks he's James Bond....)

                  Hey, sometimes it worked. Needham probably only yelled "Cut!" if the actors bumped into the furniture......other than that, he mostly sat back and let them try to crack each other up with their own barrage of goofy ad-libs.

                 Stunts aplenty, but nothing costing mega-millions......and mercifully, long before the plague of CGI.

                 We lovingly bring up Hal and his disposable movies as a comparison to what the corporate studios have done today with their own versions of throwaway junk movies.......

                 The modern day throwaways now cost unimaginable millions, require multiple special effects companies and hundreds upon hundreds of digital artists laboring at computer terminals....

                  Fun? Forget it.  In pouring so much money and resources into concocting these cinematic landfills, all the fun gets drained out of them. Unlike Hal Needham's breezy, lazy farces, you can sense all the sweat and strain that goes into today's equivalent junkheaps......they're exhausting to watch, and exhausted in spirit themselves.

                  Now here's the sad part about the roundly villified and despised "Baywatch".........deep, deep inside the Mt. Everest of manure that comprises this film, there's a funny little Hal Needham movie struggling to get out from under the piles of Summer Tentpole dung. You can spot it in the honestly funny byplay between that oddest pairing of Alpha Males, Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron.

                 Yes, the movie's a blazing atrocity, but we laughed out loud at those brief, funny back-and-forths between the King and Prince of rippled abs.  If the studio and filmmakers had been smart enough to jettison all the required Summer Tentpole garbage (endless CGI action sequences, ludicrous attempts to provide a dramatic arc for Zefron's character, a fetishistic abundance of penis jokes mainly to juice up the trailer) they might have had themselves a happy little throwaway......

                  But they stuck firmly to the Summer Movie playbook and vomited out a giant, lumpy mess that richly deserved all the ridicule heaped upon it. The moments of giggly Hal Needham-ish stuff quickly get buried under rivers of toxic CGI lava......

                   So we recommend this way of viewing for anyone who meets up with "Baywatch"......keep your finger positioned on your remote's 'Fast Forward' button........enjoy the antics between The Rock and Mr.High School Musical........but be ready to hit the "FF" button and skim through everything else.  1 star (*).......oh how we miss you, Hal........

             

'THE SALZBURG CONNECTION'.....SPY VS. SPY VS. SPY VS. SPY VS. SPY. VS.... (YOU KNOW THE REST...)

The Salzburg Connection (1972)   Not that this movie would ever be worth the trouble, but you'd need a wall-sized NCAA 'March Madness' bracket chart to logistically keep track of the various secret agents running around through the plot.

             In this trash-compacted 93 minute version of a Helen MacInnes espionage thriller, a virtual global convention of spies (CIA, KGB, Israel's Mossad, Neo-Nazis and for all we know, the Girl Scouts too...)  pile up the dead bodies in their search for a lock box stuffed with the names of Nazi collaborators.

              Incomprehensible from first minute to last, it's 'directed' (and we use that word very loosely) by a television hack named Lee H. Katzin, a great lover of freeze-frames and inadvertent slow motion shots. Remember this guy's name........if you ever see it on any film or TV show, flee for you sanity.

              When stuck watching a cinematic trainwreck, we always make a game try to pluck out a few saving graces amidst the smoldering debris.......and so.....

               Salzburg.....flavorful location filming all over town.....makes you wish they'd have come up with a real movie to match the locations....

                Anna Karina........forced to spend the entire movie as a victimized deer-in-the-headlights character, but oh my God is she beautiful. All the spies in the movie want to grab her......so do we.

                Klaus-Maria Brandauer......Hilariously, 'introduced' in the credits as if he's a fresh-faced Miss Golden Globes starlet. But he earns that extra billing, stealing every scene he's in with his deceptively lazy 'I know something you don't' smirk. If you remember anything from this severely forgettable film, it's the shots of Brandauer cackling insanely with joy as he tears through the Austrian countryside, driving what looks like Patton's leftover armored jeep.

                Karen Jensen.......although just another blonde, studio xeroxed starlet of the era, she gives it her all as a cold, cold two faced KGB operative, effectively posing as a cute 'n dreamy footloose American college girl. Whenever she drops the mask to reveal her true self,  she's icier than a Moscow winter.  We could have watched a whole movie about her character alone.......

               Barry to the rescue......even without his "Vanishing Point" Dodge Challenger, actor Barry Newman still finds a unique spin on a standard car chase, as he races after thugs who've kidnapped Anna Karina. Upending the usual trajectory of  these sequences, Barry manages to position himself ahead of the Thugmobile, thereby slowing the traffic till the cops arrive.  Not bad, given that it's the only action set-piece in the entire film......

               Now that we've itemized these high points, it makes us a little sad that this film didn't have a better director, someone who might have delivered a fully realized, suspenseful spy caper instead of this sorry, chopped-up mess of disconnected, inexplicable footage.  1 star (*) and the only reason for even one, that watchable trio of Anna, Klaus and Karen.  How 'bout a remake.....with Margot Robbie taking over Jensen's role as a mini-skirted Mata Hari...........

'THERE'S SOMEONE INSIDE YOUR HOUSE'........A SLASHER BOOK? REALLY?

There's Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins (2017)    Been a while since we did one of these posts about a book or film utterly outside of our demographic........so once again, we plucked a worthy candidate out of Beloved Daughter's skyscraper piles of Young Adult novels........

            Because we're forever on the lookout for tongue-in-cheek jokiness, we at first thought this might be some kind of meta gag........a novelization of a non-existent 1980's teen slasher movie.....the kind of films that used to so aggravate Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel, who despised these simple minded splatter-fests and their single minded mission to rack up massive body counts of dead teenagers, especially those in mid-orgasm.

           Which begs the question.........why would anybody waste their time reading about a slasher carving up luckless high schoolers.......when they could just as soon sit back and watch any of hundreds of movies that display all the adolescent carnage in living color?

            Author Perkins makes an enthusiastic attempt to compete with those movies in both her body count and the overly descriptive gore. But what a lame, low ambition she's set for herself......the book equivalent of that ludicrous Gus Van Sant attempt to do a shot-for-shot color carbon copy of "Psycho". Such a waste of time.

            What's worse, she falls far short of even the worst of the slasher films when she arrives at the big reveal of the killer and the motive . The slasher's a minor nobody of a character and this loon's reason for killing is laughably pathetic. This book sets a bar so low, the bar's already on the ground.

             The BQ's all for reading (after all, we raised a librarian).....but when it comes to this book, you're better off watching any old "Friday The 13th" entry......that way you'd only waste about 82 minutes of your life. 1 star (*).....rivers of blood, but a thin puddle of a novel.

'GIFTED'...........THE MATH AND THE FURIOUS.........

Gifted (2017)  mashes up two surefire, attention getting movie storylines.......the dazzling genius uncomfortably stuck in an average-intelligence world ("Little Man Tate", "Good Will Hunting") and that guaranteed heart-squeezer, the child custody battle instigated by someone you know is the wrong choice to raise this child.

               We usually roll our eyes even more upward than a 'Walking Dead'  zombie when we're forced to deal with manipulative movies, but damn it all, "Gifted" managed to push our buttons with its lovable cast and skilled direction.

                The genius here is first grader Mary (McKenna Grace) a beyond brilliant mathematics savant in the care of her uncle Frank (Chris Evans), an emotionally casual bachelor eking out a living as a boat mechanic.

                  Frank, a former philosophy teacher who's opted for a simpler life, maintains his fierce determination to give his late sister's child a normal upbringing......especially in the aftermath of her mother's suicide shortly after Mary's birth. His fairly monstrous mother Evelyn (Lindsay Duncan) a cold, demanding academic who most likely pressured and pushed her daughter, also a math whiz, into depression and misery, now arrives seven years later to seek her granddaughter's custody.

                  No problem choosing sides here, eh?

                 All the expected pathos and thorny issues roll out......including Mary's barely controlled impatience at Frank's insistence on placing her in an elementary school where she's decades ahead of her classmates.

                 Truthfully, we didn't mind at all having our heartstrings yanked around by such a likable bunch of actors........including the both noble and comedic support provided Octavia Spencer as the standard don't-mess-with-her protective next door neighbor and Jenny Slate as the little wunderkind's teacher.
 
                So, just like in school, we'll stick 4 gold stars (****) on this smartly done film about raising a super smart tyke......a worthy addition to the pantheon of 'genius-walks-among-us' movies.

             

'THE FLAME AND THE ARROW'............ACROBAT-MAN BEGINS.......

The Flame And The Arrow (1950).........is the first of three films that drew heavily on star Burt Lancaster's youthful experience as a circus acrobat....(the others, the wonderful, spoofy "The Crimson Pirate" and the modern drama "Trapeze",  we solemnly promise to cover in future posts...)

             If you can't tell from the title alone that this movie's a rip-roarin' swashbuckler......you need to watch more movies.  For both this film and "Crimson Pirate", Lancaster brought along his original circus-days partner, Nick Cravat to play his mute sidekick....(effectively hiding Nick's unmistakable New Yorkese inflections).

              The plot? Not that it matters.......something about medieval Italian peasants oppressed by snotty, sneering German nobles. All we need to know.....

               Coming to the downtrodden's rescue.......Dardo (Lancaster) their very own homegrown Robin Hood, who's so breezily carefree, he barely wants anything to do with his rebellious countrymen.

               But he does have a serious bone to pick with principal heavy Count Ulrich (Frank Allenby) ever since Ulrich appropriated Francesca (Lynne Bagget), the mother of Dardo's young son.  While this sounded like a pretty damn serious plot point to us, worthy of some heavy melodrama, screenwriter Waldo Salt skims over it, using it only as a quick way to get the bodies leaping and the arrows flying......

                And leap and fly they do, with Lancaster and Cravat jumping, somersaulting, twirling and generally defying gravity as they also defy the nefarious Ulrich and Marchese (Robert Douglas), another slimy noble.

                 Plenty of Saturday Matinee derring do unfolds, all of it relentlessly underscored by old pro Max Steiner. We especially liked the idea of Dardo's peculiar vulnerability..... unlike Errol Flynn's Robin Hood, Lancaster's Dardo is strictly an archery guy. Since his swordfighting sucks, he has to even up his lethal clash with Marchese by swiping out all the candles and forcing the villain to duel in the dark.

                  Watch, enjoy and savor this movie as a now-extinct artifact of a long lost genre.....the swift, joyous, lighter-than-air swashbuckler that depends solely on the athleticism and charm of its cast. (As opposed to the lugubrious, CGI-laden monstrosities like the last few "Pirates Of The Caribbean" bombs)  4 bullseye stars (****) for Burt and his busy bow-and arrow......

'CHRISTMAS INHERITANCE'......THE VERY LAST CHRISTMAS MOVIE WE'LL TALK ABOUT.....THIS YEAR.

Christmas Inheritance (2017)  Some years ago, when our unhealthy addiction to TV Christmas movies began, we silently bemoaned our solitary status in this obsession.....

              Little did we realize that there were thousands........no, possibly millions of us out there, consuming these shamelessly machine-tooled movies.......gobbling them up like a bowl of Hershey's Kisses while we wrapped presents.

               This year, things changed. TV Christmas movies finally hit the pop culture radar.......with entertainment pundits having themselves a fine old time mocking the films and their many strange locked-in conventions.

                 Here's a prediction......remember, you heard it here first from the BQ. Next holiday season will bring about one or more feature length spoof-sendups of these films.......mark our words, this is inevitable. It will be Open Season on our Hallmark holiday bon-bons.......prepare yourselves.

                 "Christmas Inheritance", another finely polished Netflix imitation of a Hallmark Christmas movie, includes all the tropes we've come to expect........sophisticated Executive Girl, saddled with a cold-hearted Executive Fiance, travels to warm 'n fuzzy small town, where she rekindles her humanity and Christmas spirit......not to mention falling in love with warmhearted local guy (but not before an unhappy 3rd act misunderstanding....)  All ends well with a romantic kiss carefully calibrated to occur 2 minutes before the credits roll.....

                 But being a Netflix creation, the filmmakers can take some outrageous liberties with the normally carved-in-granite features of the genre.....such as....

                A Black Fiance!  A special BQ Hero Award and a tip of our hat to Michael Xavier for taking on one of the most thankless, worthless roles ever handed to any actor.......playing the obnoxious, self-absorbed, destined-to-be-dumped fiance of the film's leading lady.  In accepting this role, he's bravely paved the way for fellow actors of diverse backgrounds to play equal-opportunity jerks in TV Christmas movies........a pioneer, indeed.

                Homeless people!  You would never, never see such a thing in a Hallmark Christmas film. But Netflix, in their daring blasphemy, populates their picture-postcard village with a few artistically grungy street people..........used strictly as plot devices, of course, but we applaud Netflix for throwing in at least a few exiles from the upper middle and millionaire class.

                 So with a 3 star rating for this one(***) we'll now wave a fond goodbye to TV Christmas movies........they served their purpose in that they kept us from committing scissors suicide during gift wrapping.  We can now move on with our lives........for about 10 months until they start up again.......

             

'SCROOGE'.......THANK YOU VERY MUCH.......

Scrooge (1970)   Everybody has their favorite 'Christmas Carol', with most classic movie buffs partial to the great Alistair Sim version.......

             Call us crazy, but we've always had a soft spot for this little seen musical, a robust attempt to  re-do the story as...... well, our favorite way to describe it was "Oliver!"-Lite.

             The cozy street sets were actually resurrected from construction left over from 'Oliver' and the still young Albert Finney, properly Scrooged up by the makeup artists, gives the role his full commitment.......he only appears bored and uncomfortable in the flashback scenes when he plays close to his real age....

             Leslie Bricusse fell into that strange category of songwriters who could cobble catchy tunes without the ability to read or write music. His 'Scrooge' score doesn't stand among his more memorable earworms (like "Talk To The Animals" from 'Doctor Dolittle') but he came up with at least one rousing can't-get-it-out-of-your-head ditty, "Thank You Very Much".....

              What we found funny about this rollicking number: its placement in the film......the joyful upbeat tune, performed by a whole crowd of singers and dancers, is ironically revealed as a celebration of Scrooge's death, as presented to Scrooge by that ultra creepy Ghost Of Christmas Future.....

               Since Bricusse wrote the script as well, we applaud his nerve for positioning his big showstopping number as an "F*** You' to his title character. Well done, Les. We can picture millions of people around the world singing it when Trump finally shuffles off to his well deserved room in Hell........

               Lots of other bright ornaments hanging from this cinematic Christmas tree include Alec Guiness floating around as Marley's ghost and Kenneth More, decked out like Henry VIII as the Ghost of Christmas Present.....(unfortunately More's stuck with a Bricusse song that sounds recycled from "Sesame Street")

             We know you can choose from a vast menu of holiday movies these days.....but if you're in the mood for something overwhelmingly Christmas-y and heartwarming.....and offers singing and dancing too......we'd give this one a try on December the 25th......(which is, we kid you not, the title of one the film's songs you'll want to hum along to....)  3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2)  

'MAGNUM FORCE'..........THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY.......

Magnum Force (1973)  "Their minds are dead....."

              In a movie jam packed with quotable lines ("A man's got to know his limitations"), that nasty little one-liner still sticks in our head more than all the others.....(Sometimes we feel like using it when we see the MAGA redhats at Trump's rallies....)

                It's spoken at the very start of the film by thuggish labor kingpin Ricca (Richard Devon) who's just skated out of the court system, wrongly exonerated for executing his rival, along with his victim's entire family. Ricca and his entourage are so slimy, even his high priced lawyer has bad dental work.

                Ricca and gang get promptly point-blank perforated by an unidentified motorcycle cop who stops them for a minor traffic violation, thereby circumventing the paperwork of writing out a ticket.

                 And here's where you know that the two young up-and-screenwriters, John Milius and Michael Cimino will brilliantly rock the rough-justice world of Clint Eastwood's San Francisco homicide Inspector, 'Dirty' Harry Callahan.

                  Turning the tables on Harry, who treats criminals' rights as more of a guideline than a rule,  Milius and Cimino pit him against a cadre of vigilante cops who've taken Harry's attitude to the ultimate extreme.......efficiently serving as judge, jury and executioners to the town's most prominent slimeballs.

                  And they're expansive and inclusive in their choice of victims.......everyone from coke-sniffing penthouse crime lords to the neighborhood pimp who pours drano down the throat of a whore holding out on him. (This movie spews out a non-stop festival of death throes......lingering shots of twitching bodies as numerous folks gasp out their last breath....)

                Eastwood's Harry  normally loves mowing down miscreants with his cannon-sized .44 Magnum,  especially those who have the audacity to interrupt his lunch breaks, But our scripting team, soon to carve out their own major careers as writer-directors, clearly stun and perplex Harry with this collection of scary self-possessed, fresh-faced stormtroopers........putting Dirty Harry in the bizarre unlikely position of defending the judicial system that he himself has little use for.

                That's why this particular Harry movie stands out for us more than any of the others.....the way the controversial politics of Don Siegel's stylish introductory film get flipped upside down and backwards.......depicting a nightmarish new world in which justice and morality become strictly in the eye of the beholder.  In that regard, when watching it today, the film seems creepily ahead of its time......

               Forced to restore a semblance of law and order by wiping out the rogue cops, Dirty Harry as much an anybody else in the movie, learns a surprising lesson in knowing his limitations.  4 gory, twitching stars (****).....a magnum opus for an unsettled age.

THE BQ'S MAD DISNEY BINGE........JUST BEFORE DISNEY-FOX SWALLOWS THEM UP!

              It suddenly dawned on us that come the new year, the Disney company would no longer automatically farm out their big expensive feature films to Netflix.....where we could eventually get to them, if at all, at our leisure......

                No, not anymore........with Disney spending billions to gobble up 21st Century Fox and creating its very own streaming service......

                 Many repercussions will result, including all the chest-bursters in the next "Alien" movie breaking into a rousing rendition of "Be Our Guest"......and no more Disney films on Netflix.

                  So in a daring race against time, the BQ hunkered down and watched 5 big-budget Disneys before the new Dis-Fox conglomerate reclaims them........

                  Word of warning:  don't try this at home. Nobody should attempt to watch these films in succession.......it's akin to swimming in a huge vat of soft-serve ice cream.....

                  Pete's Dragon (2016)   Surprisingly, this turned out to be the most tolerable of the bunch, reducing the studio's 1977 animation/live action musical to a basic primal boy-and-his-misunderstood-pet movie........sort of "E.T." with a huge furry CGI dragon.

                   We laughed to ourselves at the thought of a whole generation of tykes who will only know Robert Redford as a kindly old codger in a Disney film......and thoroughly enjoyed watching the aerodynamically unsound dragon struggling to get up in the air.  We rolled our eyes, however, at the carved-in-stone, mandated CGI shot of the lead child character (a Disney-fied version of the Feral Kid from "The Road Warrior")hurling himself off a cliff.  Oh my.....what will become of him?  Oh joy, the dragon caught him in mid-air.....what a relief......yawn.   2 &1.2 stars (**1.2).....mostly for the dragon......

                    Finding Dory (2016)  Yes, we know it's heresy and blasphemy not to bow down and worship this movie for its stunning visuals and inventiveness. But unlike the rest  of the known civilized world, we find Ellen Degeneres' short-term-memory-loss fish to be amusing for about 20 seconds at a time......after that, we want to forget about it, just like Dory. An hour and 40 minutes of it?  Sigh......  Adored Ed 'O Neill's octopus though.......best use of tentacles since "It Came From Beneath The Sea"......2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2).....almost entirely for the octopus.

                    Alice Through The Looking Glass (2016)  The bottom of the Disney barrel on multiple levels. One of those movies whose existence owes itself solely to naked corporate greed. It's a waste of time to discuss acting, direction or writing in an atrocity like this. It wasn't created in any sense....more like formulated by Disney accountants and board room executives.......then duly executed by vast armies of CGI digital scribblers. What a waste. What a mess. Zero stars (0).  A candy-colored toxic waste dump.

                     The BFG (2016)  Rest easy, we've neither the inclination or the strength to engage in yet another tiresome comparison of this film to "E.T.", the previous collaboration between Steven Spielberg and the late screenwriter Melissa Mathison.  The most technologically wondrous of all the director's family films.........and the most strangely lifeless and paint-by-numbers of them. Here and there you can spot flashes of the old Spielberg magic in the shot composition and visual gags......but there's no spark here, no real enthusiasm. It just looks like more hard work for the teeming armies of CGI minions. And dare we say it, Spielberg's choice of child actress to anchor the film doesn't do it any great favors......she isn't terrible, but she's far from captivating.....a bland, uninteresting kid. 2 stars (**) and they're mostly for Mark Rylance's motion-capture BFG....

                   Beauty And The Beast (2017)  Refer to our review for "Alice Through The Looking Glass."  Everything applies.......except replace "dark" for "candy colored"...

                  As for the future Dis-Fox streaming services, we'll pass. They'll do fine without us, flush with the cash from their permanent Trumpian corporate tax cuts (as opposed to the fleeting ones for the rest of us....)  They don't need our money......and we don't mind waiting until all their future live-action versions of  animated films (98% of their agenda)  finally come to rest on basic cable....

                    

MYSTERIOUS ISLAND'........FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM......

Mysterious Island (1961)     Film composer Bernard Herrmann gifted the movie universe with two legendary collaborations........one with Alfred Hitchcock ("The Man Who Knew Too Much", "Vertigo", "Psycho", "The Trouble With Harry", "North By Northwest" and "Marnie")......

             ........and the other with stop-motion special effects master Ray Harryhausen ("7th Voyage Of Sinbad", "3 World Of Gulliver", "Jason And the Argonauts".....and this little gem we're posting about today...)

               For those of us who grew up in the pre-CGI era, Harryhausen's three-dimensional animated creatures were wondrous to behold, jaw-dropping mythical creations who roared, hissed, squawked and strutted on real landscapes, interacting with flesh and blood actors.  In short, waking dreams made real.

               No composer was ever better suited with supplying Harryhausen's menagerie of monsters with the perfect musical accompaniment.  Unlike many of his contemporaries, Herrmann didn't smear his music on to a film like a thick layer of mayonnaise. Precise and exacting in his scoring, he composed striking themes that almost scientifically matched the real yet slightly unreal, stuttering movements of the stop motion beasts.

               In each individual sequence, the blending of a Harryhausen monster with Herrmann music becomes a kind of a spectacular dance number, a symphonic ballet for behemoths, if you will.

               "Mysterious Island", taken from the Jules Verne novel, has a fairly simple set-up.......an odd assortment of castaways find themselves on the island refuge of no less than Captain Nemo. Nemo functions as their hidden, secret benefactor while they encounter the literally enormous results of his biological tinkering with the island's wild life.....

                And these experiments include, along with Bernard Herrmann's indelible music for them a giant crab, a riotously multi-colored giant tropical bird, equally enlarged bees and underwater, a rather pissed off, tentacled cephalopod.  Cue the richly scored thrills 'n chills.......

                Always one of the BQ's forever favorites, the film maintains the simple values of heroism and high adventure that were the hallmark of films made by Harryhausen and his producer Charles H..Schneer.  Even as they headed into the turbulent, ever-changing world of the 1960's and beyond, Shneer and Harryhausen's films espoused the old fashioned decency of bygone eras.

                 Maybe that dates films like this, but we don't care.  When the classic artistry of Ray Harryhausen and Bernard Herrmann came together......you had timeless cinema. And that, to us, is worth 5 stars (*****), a FIND OF FINDS.

LEAST FAVORITE THINGS........SPECIAL TRUMP-BOT/TAX SCAM EDITION........

               We're not sure who those people are in the above photo.......either Imperial Stormtroopers or Republicans marching in lockstep to celebrate their triumph of screwing over the majority of Americans to make the super rich even richer......

                 Come to think of it, it doesn't matter........whenever either group gets together, it means bad news is well on the way......

                 Baby Orange Robot debuts at Disney's Hall Of Presidents......Clever Disney "Imagineers" remembered to accurately render the necktie draping down to crotch level.  The rest of him resembles one of Vincent Price's "House Of Wax" figures as it melts down in the middle of a raging fire.......similar to the real Baby Orange when he hears Mueller's probe will go way into 2018.......Only major problem: as Robot activated, it attempted to grab Snow White's genitals, muttering "I'll move on her like a bitch....."

                 GOP rams through their Tax Scam...We gotta hand it to these guys, they make the 'Ocean's 11' crew look like subway pickpockets.  What an inspired caper......"We'll stick a low-taxes pacifier in their mouths for a couple of years......the suckers'll never notice the millionaires get their tax cuts forever.....and.those pathetic dummies won't even remember we're stickin' their kids with a Trillion dollar I.O.U...heh, heh, heh...."   Nice work, guys. What's next? Steal the "Mona Lisa" from the Louvre in broad daylight?  Heist the Crown Jewels during Harry and Meghan's wedding?

                 Changing the subject to a lighter form of lunacy.....

                 Disgruntled Star Wars Fanboys want Disney to scrap "The Last Jedi" and remake the film over again.....Actually this photo depicts your young children and grandchildren when the GOP Trillion Dollar Debt arrives on their doorsteps.......and they realize their Social Security will come to $3.98 per month and their Medicare will consist of 2 aspirins and a Band-Aid when they've fallen and can't get up.....

                  As for the Fanboys......Memo From BQ:  Never mind about 'Star Wars'.....when's the last time you changed the sheets on that bed you sleep on in your parents' basement?  You're only a few feet away from the washer and dryer.....get your lazy asses in gear, pick up all that dirty clothing off the floor and put a load in already.....

                   Memo to Fanboys Moms from BQ:  You're welcome......

'THE WALKING STICK'...........THE CANE MUTINY.......

The Walking Stick (1970)......arrived at the very tail end of Britain's domination of international pop culture and cinema......

             But boy oh boy, was it fun while it lasted......

             James Bond. The Beatles. The Rolling Stones. Carnaby Street fashions. All the gifted, exciting new movie stars.....Peter 'O Toole, Richard Harris, Albert Finney, David Hemmings, Julie Christie, Sean Connery......to name only a few.

               As the 70's kicked off, it seemed like all the worldwide filmmaking attention had shifted to Italy and France.......British filmmaking slid down to the point of making movies strictly for  home consumption, with numerous film versions of popular local TV shows.

              Exceptions still existed, such as this film, taken from a novel by the prolific Winston Graham, author of "Marnie" and the Poldark series.....

              Similar to 'Marnie', "The Walking Stick also presents a romantic relationship corrupted by the criminality of one of the lovers. In this case, it's the man.

              The sheltered, vulnerable Deborah (Samantha Eggar), a polio survivor, ambles about with a her walking stick and a guarded heart.  But it doesn't take long for struggling artist Leigh (David Hemmings) to break down her defenses and commence her first love affair.

                Leigh's love and affection, it turns out, comes with a huge ulterior motive.......he's part of a gang who plan to rob all the expensive goodies from the auction house where Deborah works. And guess whose inside information on guards and alarm systems they desperately need?

                And this is where the movie expects you to take a giant leap of faith. Faced with such a monumentally cruel betrayal by the man she thought loved her for herself, Deborah allows herself to be talked into helping Leigh and his bunch pull off their caper.  If you can swallow that, then you're still along for the sour ride this movie takes you on. If not, you probably shouldn't even start watching it.....

                We haven't read the book, but we're assuming that Winston Graham makes the romantic obsession here more palatable........and hence the plot twist more believable. It's clear the film version needed the same go-for-broke all out romantic abandon that Hitchcock brought to "Marnie".....a admitted risky move that leaves "Marnie" still either celebrated or ridiculed, all these years later.

                 You're not getting any of that craziness from "Walking Stick"s director Eric Till, who keeps the film on a low key, steady-as-she-goes course right up to the end.

                 The film never amounts to much of a thriller or a romance. When it at last chugs along to its finale, the last camera shot seems more inevitable than surprising.

                 For the simple pleasure of watching David Hemmings and Samantha Eggar still in their youthful prime, we'll scrape together 2 stars (**)......a faint reminder of how London ruled the world back in the swingin' 60's........

              

              

'SIX WEEKS' & 'UNFAITHFULLY YOURS'..........THE SHORT STARDOM (NO JOKE INTENDED) OF A HUGE TALENT.....

Six Weeks (1982) & Unfaithfully Yours (1984) 

             Some movie stars endure for decades........others, for one reason or another, enjoy only a relatively brief time in the Hollywood sun.

             Dudley Moore, diminutive but fiercely talented British comedian/musician/ composer, found himself the most unlikely of Hollywood superstars during the l980's. Hitting the box-office jackpot in Blake Edwards' "10", Moore went on to further comic glory as the filthy rich but lovably alcoholic wastrel in "Arthur". For a few golden years, he sat on the top of the A-List heap when it came to casting romantic leads in American comedies..........not an insignificant achievement for a five foot, two inch Brit.

            Deteriorating health and less than successful films ultimately diminished and ended his period of superstardom, but while still in the glow of the spotlight, Moore pumped out movie after movie......

             Unfaithfully Yours, a panting farce more frenetic than genuinely funny, played to Moore's strengths as a master of comic timing and physical shtick. A remake of a 1948 Preston Sturges comedy, the film gives the star the role of a world famous symphony conductor convulsed with fevered jealously......he's obsessed to the point of madness that his young voluptuous wife (Nastassja Kinski) might be carrying on an affair with the orchestra's star violinist (Armand Assante)

             Massive misunderstandings and misconstrued behavior ensue, right on schedule. Amidst all the huffing and puffing, the movie has at least two things going for it........first, .a riotous, stunning violin duel between Moore and Assante, a showstopping competitive clash of the two male divas, driven by Moore's raging suspicions. Second, an extended sequence freely borrowed from the Michael Caine/Shirley McClain caper "Gambit"......in which Moore's diabolically plotted, perfectly executed murders of his wife and lover turn out a wishful daydream,  followed by the actual event itself, a frantic collection of gags where Murphy's Law rules.

             You might even smile, once or twice.....

             Six Weeks is another animal altogether. It stands out as the oddest item in Moore's filmography......and a prime, uncomfortable example of what happens when movie stars shoehorn and miscast themselves into projects completely unsuited for them.

             A blatant tearjerker whose only mission is to cynically reduce its audience to sobs, the movie unwisely casts Moore as a........wisecracking liberal California politician running for Congress.

             Huh? Say what?

             Obviously not written with Moore in mind, the revised script bends itself into pretzels describing how the snarky Enlishman with a ready supply of one liners somehow became a United States politician.

               The film moves on to its main event....... Moore crossing opposites-attract paths with a wealthy CEO  (Mary Tyler Moore) and her aggressively cute 13 year old daughter, a budding ballerina due to shortly expire from Leukemia. (We don't recall if the movie ever explains what happened to this kid's father, but nobody seems to care....so neither did we)

               The doomed little dancer, for the benefit of us delicate viewers, suffers from that familiar malady, Movie Cancer......that peculiar form of the disease that allows its sufferers to appear robustly healthy until it's time for them to conveniently drop dead in the last fifteen minutes or so.....just in time for the film to wrap up and yank its viewers' tear ducts with the cold efficiency of a cow-milking machine......

             To insure that all goes as planned, Dudley Moore, also functioning as the film's composer, generously and loudly scores the movie with a lachrymose piano and swelling strings that scream out to an audience, "You can start crying now, you pathetic suckers."   It's the audio equivalent of a gallon of maple syrup poured over a stack of already pre-sweetened pancakes.

             We can't even call it ironic that the movies that served as stepping stones to Moore's short reign of stardom were far better than the ones he made once he sat atop Hollywood's Mt.Olympus. That's just Hollywood, baby......standard operating procedure.

              For "Unfaithfully Yours", 2 stars (**) ....and only that many for the violin duel. For "Six Weeks", 1/2 a star (1/2)......and the only reason we gave it that many.......well, it's close to Christmas......and the film's dying little diva gets to dance in "The Nutcracker" before she takes the dirt nap. We're suckers for "The Nutcracker"......and hope you're all enjoying the holidays!

              

              



          

LEAST FAVORITE THINGS........SPECIAL 'BANNED WORDS' EDITION.......

              We all knew that Doug Jones' victory in Alabama was only a brief ray of sunshine in the ongoing evil storm enveloping the country.....

               But it was fun while it lasted.....

              Baby Orange bans words at the CDC.....like "Fetus", "Transgender", "Science Based".......also banned....."Idiot", "Psychopath", "Racist", "Sex Predator"....and "Unfit"

               Baby Orange appoints a completely unqualified dumbass as a Federal Judge....fulfilling his campaign promise to staff the government with "the very best people"......or at least people as worthy and qualified as himself.....

               Omarosa kicked out of the White House......But why? She was the perfect symbol of the Baby Orange Presidency.........a duplicate of her mentor and boss....an empty-headed, mean spirited TV clown, constantly begging for attention.....

               and moving away from the horrors of Washington......

               Jabba The Weinstein revealed to have sabotaged Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino's careers......Memo to producers and directors......used your medical benefits to go get a spine transplant and return these talented women to the big screen. Memo to Jabba The W.......here's hoping there's multiple multi-million dollar defamation lawsuits filed against you real, real soon. Until then, just crawl into a hole and throw some dirt over yourself......your natural habitat.....

'LADY IN CEMENT'.......A MOVIE THAT'S LESS THAN FRANK WITH US......

Lady In Cement (1968)  Nothing but sour memories come to mind with one......and not just because it's a weary, lazy, exhausted followup to Frank Sinatra's 1967 Miami Beach private eye romp "Tony Rome".........

            We spent our college Christmas holiday break working along side our Dad at his Hi-Fi electronics store.....(we still sold 8 track tapes......Google 'em if you have no idea what we're talking about....)

             After our mild, uneventful adolescence, Dad and I had finally hit a brief patch of time when we couldn't stand each other, when every minute together seemed to end in a nasty petty argument. 

             Generation gap strife? Political divide? None of the above.......it just seemed like we rubbed each other the wrong way, in every possible way.......more like the kind of fights you'd see between two brothers rather than a father and son.....

             And so after a long day at the downtown Philadelphia store, we took in one of the many movies that opened Christmas week, "Lady In Cement".......a perfect father-son movie night.

              Except that we kept up the peeved snapping squabbles (over what I can't even remember) right up to arriving in the theater lobby. At one point, one or the other of us threatened to walk out of the theater and catch the Market Street street train to go home.......

              We can't say watching this film together made things any better. Sinatra wandered through the movie, barely staying awake. Raquel Welch, in her prime, showed up for the camera to linger over her spectacular superstructure.   Assorted shootings and murders occur, poorly staged and never really explained in any detail. You could smell the disinterest coming from Sinatra and rest of the cast......

               With two startling exceptions......a funny turn by "Bonanza"s Dan Blocker as a mountainous thug who periodically shows up to pound people senseless and toss Sinatra around as if he were a naughty toddler......and young Lainie Kazan, long before her days of playing hefty Jewish mothers, as a cheerfully seductive Go Go dancer. Her brief scene with Sinatra, dripping with sexual innuendo, dwarfs any similar posing by Raquel Welch, who in comparison, comes off like a slightly animated inflatable woman......

               The good news.......that bad time between the BQ and Dad quickly passed......we spent the rest of our days together as a loving, supportive father-son duo. The bad news.....49 years later, "Lady In Cement" still stinks on ice. And we're officially done ever returning to it. 1 star (*)    And Dad....if there's an afterlife and you check in on this blog.....love you.

'FITZWILLY'.........HAPPY 50TH TO A HAPPY HOLIDAYS GEM......

Fitzwilly (1967)   We've spoken often enough about movies that showed up uncomfortably out-of-step with the world in general at the time of their release.....

              But you'll never hear the BQ begrudge  this movie's anachronistic attempt to replicate the lovable, fanciful whimsy of 1930's screwball comedies......especially the ones that centered around a clever rogue slyly outwitting the powers-that-be......

              50 years after its Christmas holiday release, we found it's still a delight........and its funny, frenetic last half hour of a shoppers' riot at Gimbels more than qualifies it to join the pantheon of beloved must-see movies for the holidays......

              Dick Van Dyke, at the height of his light comedy leading man film career, played Fitzwilly, the strictly professional butler to his wealthy benifactress and employer Victoria Woodworth (Edith Evans, deftly warm-hearted and imperious at the same time...). Miss Woodworth, however, in reality is penniless......but unknowingly remains in her lavish lifestyle, funded by Fitzwilly and his gang of loyal household servants.

              Fitzwilly and his gentle collection of domestics amass wads of cash by running elaborate charge account shoplifting scams on all of New York's major department stores.  Complications arise with the arrival of Juliet, a young secretary hired by Miss Woodworth to help her with her proposed book about commonly misspelled words. (Juliet's played to perfection by "Get Smart"s Barbara Feldon, criminally adorable with her soft purr of a voice, horn-rimmed glasses and pixie haircut)

             As the only innocent cast into this den of thieves, it doesn't take the sharp Juliet too long to figure out what's going on.......but as fate and movie magic decree, she and Fitzwilly fall in love and she ends up joining in the final big caper with Fitzwilly's promise to go straight thereafter....

             This finale caper, worthy of the 'Ocean's 11' crew, involves swiping Gimbel's Christmas shopping profits out their safe by creating mass chaos among the shoppers on the first floor. (As ambitiously funny as this plays out, it may remind you of news footage of today's  Black Friday mobs at Wal-Mart, assaulting each other over flatscreens)

              Keep in mind, though, that this movie comes from a much gentler age, so the physical slapstick here is on a par with any competing Disney movie......

              We probably don't have to tell you that all ends well for everyone concerned, just in time for Christmas. The many, many pleasures here include a catchy can't-get-it-out-of-your-head theme from that up-and-coming film composer, young 'Johnny' Williams........and one of the most incredible arrays of comedic character actors assembled for one movie....

               John McGiver, Cecil Kelloway, Harry Townes, John Fiedler, Norman Fell, Anne Seymour, Paul Reed, Helen Kleeb, Laurence Naismith, Billy Halop..........what faces. what talent. Tragically, as the old studio system began to collapse in 1970's, so too did the whole machinery of keeping these unique performers steadily employed at their craft.  So take a good look and enjoy them........you're not likely to see such a wonderfully varied bunch ever again.

                 We'll happily add this little bauble of a movie to our pre-holiday plate of cinematic cookies......4 shining stars (****) to hang on our movie tree........

             

'GHOST IN THE SHELL'........FRANKLY, SCARLETT, WE DON'T GIVE A DAMN....

Ghost In The Shell (2017)     We got the same exact vibe watching this one that we did with that new "Power Rangers" re-do we posted about not too long ago......

           Same feeling........that had it been released 25 years ago, this movie might have been all the rage, a dazzling delight for fanboys and fangirls......

           But now? Today?   The movie smells like stale leftovers.......like junk food you parked way in the back of the fridge since God knows when and you just came across.........you can try eating it cold, but proceed at your own risk.

            We will not put anyone, including ourselves, into a deep coma discussing the film's origins as a beloved, celebrated Japanese anime epic........and all the swirling controversy over casting Scarlett Johansson as a Japanese girl who gets her brain implanted in a robotic body that bears a striking resemblance to.....oh my.....Scarlett Johansson's body.

             The Johannson casting came down to a simple economic equation......Scarlett plus skin tight outfits plus superheroics equal box office cash. Asses in seats, as they say.  You don't have to take notes. It's just basic movie business greed.

             So we're back in Big Future City, heavily influenced by Big Evil Corporation, who decorate the town with jumbo holograms the size of Macy's parade balloons.  (Unlike "Blade Runner"s L.A., there's no rain, no teeming throngs and nary a noodle bar in sight.....)

             Scar-Bot, now weaponized as a super terrorist fighter by Big Evil Corporation, kicks off her crime-fighting with that groan-inducing cliche......the CGI free fall off a tall building.  Which would have been really cool if we hadn't already seen it in the last two hundred superhero movies......

             Naturally, as you'd expect, Scar-Bot finds out she's nothing but an innocent pawn in the nefarious plots of the Evil Corporate Executive of the Big Evil Corporation.  For all we know, this outfit might be a subsidiary of "Resident Evil"s Umbrella Corporation.......you know, like the new Disney-Fox mashup......

              Mayhem ensues.......with Scar-Bot shooting and kung-fu-ing many, many Big Evil Corporate Minions into oblivion, with the help of her Big Sidekick, who looks like a steroid-pumped Kiefer Sutherland. (Big Sidekick, at some point, gets his eyeballs blown out and replaced with robotic bottle-caps, in keeping with the film's idea of mechanical upgrades for one and all.....)

              That's it......we'd start nodding off if we described any more of this film. For anyone who wants or needs another guided tour through the every special effect action sequence you've seen in the last 20 years.......well, here it stands.

              For us, a major struggle to stay awake through it.  We'll grudgingly graft on.......
......1 & 1/2 bottle-cap eyeballs (* 1/2) Appropriate title, though...."Ghost In The Shell".    An empty shell of a movie, stuffed with ghosts of movies you've already seen.....

ALABAMA SURPRISE.........SANITY AND DECENCY PREVAIL......

                A break in the dark clouds........

                A stunning rebuke and defeat for Baby Orange and his pet pedophile, the Phantom Of The Mall, Roy Moore........

                 It's worth a satisfied smile, but we're not jumping up and down, screaming "Woo hooo!".......keep in mind there were still thousands of Alabamans who thought God and Baby Orange told them it was okay to vote for a guy who would diddle their young daughters.....as long as he wasn't a Democrat......

                  But there's a comforting take-away from all this chaos.......

                  .........and it's this. The majority of us do not live in the Dark Kingdom Of Trump.....a scary, foul place where truth, civility, morality and common decency do not exist.  Only the Orange Emperor's red-hatted zombies still live there..... the people who've sacrificed their humanity, their moral compass and their common sense to worship at his altar......

                 The rest of us still live in the United States Of America.......as it was conceived 241 years ago.

               And the United State Of America is about as far from the Dark Kingdom Of Trump as the Earth is from the moons of Jupiter.

                So we celebrate this moment in time.......when decency triumphed over lunacy, when enough people said "Enough" to Baby Orange and his anointed candidate, a degenerate predator as repulsive and inhuman as the so-called President who endorsed him.

                A break in the dark clouds.......and maybe one day, full sunshine. And the return of the United States Of America.

                We can only hope. And resist.

             
           
               

'A CHRISTMAS PRINCE'........DEAR NETFLIX,.....SCREW YOU.....SINCERELY, THE BQ..

A Christmas Prince (2017)   So some Netflix executive, a massive asshole suddenly afflicted with Trump-itis, jumped on Twitter to sarcastically mock 53 subscribers who watched the service's imitation-Hallmark movie, "A Christmas Prince" every single day for 18 days......

              BQ Memo To Whoever Posted That Tweet:

                         You simpering tool. Who are you exactly, to judge what your subscribers watch?  Or how often they watch it?  Maybe you're just pissed off cause you can't charge them per each viewing.

                          And by the way Numbnuts, how 'bout if you release what you're watching on Netflix.....and how many times you've watched it?  Afraid we'll find out you've watched "Fuller House" episodes 'round the clock for the last 2 weeks?

                         Oh....and your oh-so-cute sarcasm (asking the 53 viewers "Who hurt you?").......what in the holy hell ever possessed you to think for even one second that you're funny?  How did that happen.......pop a few opioids with your eggnog at the office Christmas Party?  Then staggered to the bathroom mirror and dreamed you turned into Jimmy Kimmel??

                       Our strong recommendation to you:  Shut your piehole (which appears unconnected to your brain), turn off your Twitter, crawl back into your spacious office, get down on your knees and thank God for every one of your Netflix subscribers and whatever stuff they choose to watch. 

                       This part bears repeating.......Shut. The. Hell. Up.
                                                            Sincerely...and Happy Holidays,....The Beached Quill.

                      Ah, before we forget......the movie itself.  Basically a very slick replica of Hallmark
 Christmas movie directed by Alex Zamm, whose filmography includes.......surprise, surprise,
surprise.........Hallmark Christmas movies.....not a stretch for him.

                    What we scarfed up with holiday abandon....

                     * The weird alternate-universe version of "Jingle Bell Rock" that plays over the credits, barely avoiding a copyright lawsuit with the original.....

                      *The appearance of Sarah Douglas as a cranky Royal Palace minion.....we fondly remember her as the creepy/sexy Ursa in the first bunch of 'Superman' movies.

                       *The shameless steal from 'Beauty And The Beast'......yes, the Prince gets to rescue our sweet little heroine from a snarling wolf......

                       *The liberties allowed to director Zamm that he'd never get away with if he'd made this for Hallmark.  Our young lovers get to.....oh my jingle bells......actually kiss BEFORE the final 2 minutes of the film. (A huge Hallmark no-no).......and when the final kiss does arrive, Netflix permits Zamm to swirl his camera in 360 circles around the young lovers.....like a real romantic movie.

                      For that Netflix executive.....Zero Stars (0)....see the memo. For the film itself.....if you love ooey-gooey TV Christmas movies, deck the halls with 2 & 1/2 stars. (**1/2)

'THE DOLL FUNERAL'......A HAUNTED TEEN AND HER HOST OF GHOSTS......

The Doll Funeral by Kate Hamer (2017)   We admire the sheer bravery and creative ambition of any author who attempts to tell a contemporary story in the form of a dark fable.....a grim fairy tale, if you will.....

           It can't be easy.......kind of a literary magic trick to pull off and few writers possess the gifts to do it right.....(not that plenty of them don't try anyway.)

           The last time we cracked open something similar: Rene Denfeld's  most excellent "The Child Finder" (covered in a previous post), a literal excursion into deep, forbidding woods in its dreamlike story of a woman who specializes in rescuing kidnapped children from predators.....a short novel that moved swiftly to its satisfying conclusion.

           Sorry, we can't say the same about "The Doll Funeral". Kate Hamer's lead character, 13 year old Ruby is afflicted with a lethally abusive stepfather on the verge of killing her. And if that's not enough.......she sees and attracts ghosts. The wandering, restless spirits of the dead hover around her...

            The problem here.......Hamer's narrative becomes as wandering and formless as Ruby's ghosts. This story should grip us by the throat, but we lost count of how many times we put the book down, tired and bored with its lack of direction or any real forward momentum.

            As in a fairy tale, Ruby's heart wrenching situation leads her to flee into the woods, where she finds shelter, solace and love with teen siblings Tom, Elizabeth and Crispin. Abandoned by their bohemian, globe-trotting parents, they barely survive in the mansion left to them, shooting and skinning rabbits and depending on money and supplies from a mysterious man who shows up to harvest and market the marijuana crop left on the property by Mom and Dad.......

            And on and on it drags, with alternating flashback chapters depicting the impossibly sad circumstances of Ruby's birth and the woeful trajectory of her real parents, a star crossed couple heading for disaster.........

             Hamer unveils twists along the way as Ruby's determined search for her biological mother and father brings her back into the household of her toxic step-parents.......and in the excruciatingly slow final chapters, the book lays out its final revelations.

              "The Doll Funeral"  tries mightily to break you heart into a thousand pieces by the end.......but it's a tossup as to whether you'll tear up or just feel grateful that the damn thing has at last wrapped things up.  For us, it was the latter.  We're suckers for manipulative sentiment.......but not if it makes us yawn after every chapter.

             If you have an inexhaustible supply of patience,  this book might entrance you......but BQ wanted a page turner, and that didn't include draping the book across our chest after it lulled us into a nap.........1 & 1/2 stars (*1/2).....may it rest in peace.

             

         

'THE CHRISTMAS COTTAGE'........A QUICK 'N EASY GUIDE TO HALLMARK'S 'COUNTDOWN TO CHRISTMAS'.....

The Christmas Cottage (2017)   Whew......that was the sound of the BQ breathing a sight of relief....

            So nice to find out that we're not alone in our strange, weird, beyond-all-rational-explanation obsession with those most guilty of guilty pleasures.......the Hallmark Channel Christmas movies.

             Beloved Daughter pointedly asked us, during a viewing of this latest entry in the vast Hallmark holiday canon, "why don't they ever do a Hallmark Christmas movie about two Wal-Mart employees who find love during the holidays.....or two Target cashiers?"

               Blasphemy! Sacrilege!

               Another question B.D. posed....."can't they ever kiss before the last 2 minutes of the movie?"

              Blasphemy!  Sacrilege!

              Let us quickly review the carved-in-stone commandments of these movies.......which are configured and rigorously executed by Hallmark with the absolute rigidity of Haiku poetry and Kabuki theater.....

               Pay no attention to the First Boyfriend.......Hallmark worships that milestone of romantic comedy......the un-triangle. Our adorable leading lady may start out with a perfect studmuffin, high-powered attorney/CEO/fiance/boyfriend, but that doofus is doomed for rejection......(at about the 1 hour, 45 minute mark of the 2 hour running time, depend on him to receive his walking papers.)  It's the other guy who'll get the long awaited final smooch, exactly 2 minutes before the credits roll, the small town doctor/shopkeeper/widower-with-cute-young-kid....)

               The Hallmark Christmas Movie Princess.......as scientifically engineered as the Stepford Wives......hovering between 28 and 33 years old, a hard charging professional(doctor/lawyer/business exec, no struggling Wal-Mart salesfolk allowed)......with a secret mushy heart-of-gold that will take about 1 hour and 45 minutes for the small town doctor/shopkeeper/widower to thaw out....

               Hallmark towns and their weather.......Though the films may open to views of sprawling cityscapes, fear not.......the action will soon transfer to Quaint-Little-Town, consisting of one main shopping street adorned with carefully arranged small decorative piles of snow. Speaking of the snow, in Quaint-Little-Town,  it perpetually comes down in Currier And Ives postcard flurries....(very similar to the Upside Down in 'Stranger Things'). Even if the script calls for a raging snowstorm that closes all the roads and forces our romantic couple to spend an evening together on separate couches, the snow depicted will never look like anything more than a dusting......

               Lovable Old Farts and diversified BFFs.......these characters make up the remainder of the populace of Quaint-Little-Town........Grannies, Grampies, Aunts and Uncles with a twinkle in their eye and one foot in the grave.......the LOF's, naturally, in their infinite wisdom, spend all their time encouraging the finale get-together of our romantic couple. In the casting of the couple's various best friends, Hallmark sometimes allows a few black and Asian actors to sneak in........(but in their chirpy cheerfulness, they tend to remind us of what happened to the black victims in "Get Out")

              The 9:58 Kiss  We used an 8pm starting time as a guideline......in a 9pm start, the kiss would occur at 10:58, and so on and so on. You get the idea.  In a Hallmark Christmas Movie, you can compare this rule to crossing the streams in 'Ghostusters'.......to violate it would mean the end of all life in the Universe as we know it.  Our Hallmark romantic duo must never, never lock lips until 1 hour and 58 minutes of their story has elapsed. They're allowed to come close before that pivotal time period......but no touchy-touchy.  And when the kiss does arrive, no tongues and certainly no moves such as the Hallmark Princess jumping up to wrap her legs around her guy's waist so he can carry her back to the Christmas Cottage......(hey, we can dream, can't we?)

             Variations to avoid......Yes indeed, sometimes Hallmark lets their writers and directors off their very short leash to deviate from the standard template. We personally don't care for these allowable sub-genres;  The Contest ones......where our guy 'n gal meet while competing with each other in various Holiday competitions.....ice sculpting, tree decorating, cookie baking.....yawn. The Royal Romances......where one of our duo is a Royal, complete with forbidding King and Queen who disapprove of their choosing a commoner.......double yawn.  The Santa ones......the absolute worst of these sub-genres, where it turns out that one of our romantic leads is Santa's son/daughter/niece/nephew/whatever.......and the old guy himself shows up to put things right. Yuk, avoid at all costs......

              Despite all the snark we just indulged in, we have to say that there's nothing more
Holiday-ish and soothing than wrapping presents with a Hallmark Christmas movie playing in front of us. Call us crazy, but we find them as shamelessly comforting as cup of hot chocolate that we've dumped 3 packages of chocolate powder into.  Probably not the healthiest thing in the world.....but what the hell, it's almost Christmas,,,,,

             Since they're so precisely mass-produced, the cinematic equivalent of a Hickory Farms sampler package, we'll assign one rating to all Hallmark Christmas movies (with the exception of those variants we can't stand).......2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)).......now pardon us while we stop in to another Quaint-Little-Town.....we heard there's flurries in the forecast....