Before the BQ returns to our happier world of films, books and other entertaining stuff......
MEMO TO: The World at large....
FROM: The Beached Quill
We humbly ask you to always remember, no matter how bad things get....
Baby Orange is not us. We're not him....(Never the majority of us......that's what torments him the most.....which is why he formed his Election 'Integrity' commission....to seek out the non-existent millions who supposedly materialized to deny him the Popular vote.... Make no mistake, World....real people voted against him, real people, a majority,know him for what he is....
Unlike Baby Orange, we know that Putin hacked us.......and we have no trouble saying this out loud because unlike Baby Orange, Putin doesn't have photos of us pissing on whores........and unlike Baby Orange, we don't embrace and celebrate bullies, thugs and murderers......we distrust and despise them.....
We're every bit as worried as you about the climate......unlike Baby Orange, we do not live our lives in a self perpetuating cloud of narcissism and stupidity.....
Baby Orange rode in to power on a wave of anger and anxiety among the electorate......like a toxic, stinging jellyfish that rode in on a crashing wave.......He lucked into a windfall of cash gifted to him by his father to start a business career......and similarly, he lucked into a deeply flawed opponent gifted to him by the Democratic Party to start his political career....
Unlike Baby Orange, we don't incestuously ogle our own daughters......or weirdly fantasize about blood pouring out of women who've have the temerity to offend us......
As you do, we laugh hysterically at the thought of Mrs. Baby Orange adopting anti-cyber-bullying as her personal crusade.....
And we're well aware that what we say 10 minutes from now doesn't automatically erase what we said 10 minutes ago,,,,,,,truth may be a foreign concept to Baby Orange, but millions of us still hold it dear....
We could go on and on......but you get the idea. For millions of us here, Baby Orange does not represent America or our values in any way, shape or form. Never did. He is an aberration.....and the only thing he represents with any accuracy: the profound deficiency of himself as a human being, the smallness of his mind, heart and soul.
Ultimately, we all pray that he shares Richard Nixon's fate.......that his countless flaws will finally undo him, that the never ending cascade of lies he tells will finally catch up with him......even among those red-baseball capped suckers he so brilliantly conned at his rallies......
Just thought we'd let you know.......the America created 241 years ago still stands, even though currently afflicted with its most un-American of representatives.....
Like a bad case of stomach flu, he'll dissipate and disappear one day.....a piece of crumpled trash blown by the same winds of change that blew him in......we'll still be here, still wanting to preserve the planet and stand against tyrants along side you......
Sincerely Yours.....The Beached Quill.
Sunday, July 9, 2017
Saturday, July 8, 2017
'ZULU'..........BLACK AND WHITE LIVES MATTER.....
Noting the vast number of Zulus shot down in the battle scenes, Cambridge claimed he could see the warriors lining up so one British bullet could take out a bunch of them in a row.....(He supposedly heard the Zulus cry, "Get in line, baby.....save bullets!")
True, it's a strictly by-the-book traditional Rule Britannia epic, steeped in every cliche of its 1960's spectacle filmmaking, but in re-visiting it, we detected no condescension or inherent racism toward the Zulus.........the movie maintains a healthy amount of respect and awe fpr them. Far from the shoot-em-off-the-horses hordes of Indians in American westerns, the film impressively details the Zulus' vast skills at tactical warfare,....not to mention their infinite reserves of strength and courage
Most people remember this movie for its unlikely casting of young Cockney actor Michael Caine as the preening, posh, uppercrust aristocrat, Lt. Bromhead.......in the film's early scenes, we're encouraged to hate this entitled snobbish brat, especially when contrasted with down-to-earth, practical army engineer Lt. Chard (The ever stalwart and sturdy Stanley Baker) But as the titanic battle progresses, Bromhead proves himself Chard's equal as a lionhearted warrior......you can tell this by how much close combat with the Zulus tussles and tangles Caine's wavy golden hair.
We'd also almost forgotten about the brief, opening sideshow provided by the film's father-daughter team of daffy, dysfunctional missionaries, Otto and Marareta Witt...(Jack Hawkins, Ulla Jacobsson) Otto's a raving drunk and Margareta's so sexually repressed, the sight of a mass Zulu wedding drives her into an orgasmic panic attack. No wonder Baker can't wait to rid himself of these two deeply disturbed evangelicals before the movie gets down to business......the primal clashes of the Zulu onslaught......
BQ visitors well know how much we value the classic film epics for their wildly profligate use of thousands of real people for crowds and battles........these films couldn't rely on computers to generate their teeming casts.....and 'Zulu' prominently features.....what else, over 800 real Zulus. Director Cy Endfield displays a properly expansive eye in arranging vivid shots of the Zulu army in battle formations.......and we credit him for the remarkable close shots of the fierce hand to hand fighting, which show the Brits and Zulus filled with both valor and terror as they pit bayonet and spear against one another.
In the two hours of non-stop sieges,though, we found the film's most superb action sequence not in the mass fighting, but involving a single soldier, the malingering, lazy lout, Private Henry Hook (James Booth, playing the role that Caine coveted before he was cast as Bromhead) The movie Hook was strictly the screenwriters' flight of fancy,....the real Hook was nothing like the whining, gambling screw-up well played by Booth. When Hook finds himself trapped in the outpost's burning hospital, surrounded by rampaging Zulus, he finally unleashes the simmering, repressed rage you know has been slow boiling deep inside him since the film began......and it's a bummer for the Zulus.
It's a true time capsule movie,of its era, as nothing remotely like it, in content and production technique could ever exist today. (And before we wrap this post up, we dare not forget to mention the thunderous score by John Barry and the performance of Nigel Green as the stiff-as-a-steel-girder Sergeant Bourne, a living embodiment of the British Empire........(Bourne efficiently bayonets Zulus who've already been mesmerized by his unforgiving stare....) We plunge 4 spears into 'Zulu' (****)......and contrary to Godfrey Cambridge, we saw no warriors getting in line to save bullets.....
Friday, July 7, 2017
'THE SILENT CORNER'.....GONNA WASH THAT BRAIN RIGHT OUTTA MY HAIR....
"The Silent Corner" ranks as as top-the-line Koontz, a thriller that may have you turning the pages so fast, the resulting breeze could ruffle your hair and air condition your house....
Koontz masterfully takes a well worn thriller template - the FBI agent forced to go rogue to battle an in-house government/corporate conspiracy - and welds it to a witty homage to the classic Richard Condon chiller "The Manchurian Candidate". (In fact, Koontz's updated re-invention of all the 'Manchurian' brainwash tropes proves far more clever and current than the misbegotten 2004 film remake with Denzel Washington....)
In FBI agent Jane Hawk, Koontz creates an irresistible heroine......resourceful, courageous, lethal when required and relentless in her search to uncover the mystery of her husband's so-called 'suicide'. (Our favorite passage involved her comparing herself to the super-posse that pursues Paul Newman and Robert Redford in "Butch Cassidy And the Sundance Kid", prompting them to ask, "Who are those guys?" In this book, Jane Hawk is all those guys.....a drop dead gorgeous avenging angel who's more than capable of causing bad buys to drop dread themselves....)
The overwhelming, sinister forces arrayed against Jane are everything you'd want in thriller adversaries.......wealthy, powerful, well-connected, brilliant, creepy, and bottomless in their capacity for evil and destruction of innocent victims......the kind of people whose overdue comeuppance by Jane will make you stand up and cheer.
We'll stop gushing now......before we're tempted to start talking about all the plot twists, turns and suspenseful sequences, which you should discover and savor on your own. The BQ says to lose yourself in this one immediately........a perfect summer cooler (or any other time of the year).....5 action packed stars (*****),a FIND OF FINDS......we despise the dead of winter, but the promised January 2018 arrival of Jane Hawk's continued adventures should warm things up for us considerably.......
Thursday, July 6, 2017
'BERLIN SYNDROME'.......YET ANOTHER CAPTIVE AUDIENCE......
Another entry in that singularly peculiar sub-genre: the young girl held captive by her seemingly normal-on-the-surface but in reality, deeply disturbed captor.
Novelists and filmmakers periodically return to this basic story.......it's a never ending wellspring for horror movie creators.......thriller novelists, on the other hand, prefer to concentrate on the aftermath of the captivity. (Even 'Gone Girl's Amazing Amy spends some time, albeit brief, imprisoned by a fervent admirer...)
Mainstream Hollywood launched the sex-slave genre with William Wyler's 1965 adaptation of the John Fowles novel "The Collector"......but we don't think this came from any great interest by Wyler in psycho-sexual depravity........for him, it was just Standard Operating Procedure to make a movie out of whatever book hit the top of the New York Times bestseller lists.,,,,(we get the feeling if "Green Eggs And Ham" had sold more copies than "The Collector", Wyler would have filmed that one instead....)
Subsequent screenwriters and directors plunged into the genre with more abandon.....after all, it contains the key ingredients to hold an audience.....a vulnerable heroine, a creepy villain, overwhelming suspense (will she or won't she escape?), the constant threat of violence.....and the genre's prime directive and raison d'etre......the continuous rape of the obsessive stalker's heart's desire.....
This film, an Australian-German co-production, has a backpacking photographer in Berlin (Teresa Palmer) falling into a one night stand with a Berlin English teacher (Max Riemelt). Well, she thought it was one night stand until realizing she's trapped and confined in his apartment, the only occupied space in what looks like a building that used to house the entire German army.
The rest of this long, dreary film spreads out the usual connect-the-dots stuff you expect in the captor/captive genre.......we feel no need to re-hash them here. A few strange quirks, though.....Palmer starts out appearing strangely haggard and exhausted, as if she's already been held captive in every other European city she stopped in. (She gives her work the full Kristin Stewart mope....)
But to give her credit, once she's in Riemelt's clutches, she fully commits herself to the tormented performance required of her. Riemelt's little or no match for her....as the smooth, blandly handsome psycho, he brings nothing to the role,,,,he's like a prop villain, moved around by stagehands. It's strictly Palmer's show here and for what it's worth, she's superb.
Nothing much to see......and it's all been done before. And will again. And again. We'll chain up 2 stars (**) for "Berlin Syndrome" and the only reason it earns that many comes strictly from Teresa Palmer's all-in due diligence as the abused captive. Someone please give this talented actress a better movie than this one.......
Wednesday, July 5, 2017
'DARK OF THE SUN'.......APOCALYPSE THEN........
Dark Of The Sun (1968) The admiration for this movie by Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino is well documented.......Tarantino, in particular, paid great homage to the film in "Inglorious Basterds", casting its star, Rod Taylor, in a small role of Winston Churchill (his last before his passing) and borrowing parts of the ominous, haunting score written for it by Jacques LoussierRobert Aldrich's 1967 summer blockbuster "The Dirty Dozen" broke ground in depicting warfare as amoral savagery best practiced by depraved psychotics (see our previous post on this)...,but in the great tradition of the phrase "You ain't seen nothin' yet", MGM's next annual summertime bloodbath not only pushed the envelope, it set the damn envelope on fire.....
For 1968, anyway, the brutal Congo mercenaries of "Dark Of The Sun" made the Dirty Dozen look like Sesame Street characters.....
And what a fitting year for this movie to arrive.......with Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy freshly buried, their brains blown out by assassins, the Vietnam War raging on, and more horrors still yet to come....the Chicago riots amid the Democratic convention.....and the ghastly climax to the traumatic year, the election of Richard Nixon as President,
Audiences who roared with approval at the rollicking humor of "The Dirty Dozen" got something way more than they bargained for here. What master cinematographer turned director Jack Cardiff crafted was more akin to Conrad's "Heart Of Darkness" than any previous war film......ending with its lead character's descent into unspeakable, inhuman rage and atrocity. Designed as a popcorn crown-pleaser, "Dark Of The Sun" established over the decades, a reputation as a pre-cursor to "Apocalypse Now".
But instead of an obese, balding, mumbling Brando, the film centers around the muscular, battle-hardened mercenary Curry (Rod Taylor) a hot-tempered commando-for-pay given the task of rescuing a town of French colonists from rampaging Simba rebels in the 1960's war torn Congo.
The true purpose of Curry's mission, given the film's bleak view of humanity, has nothing to do with extracting innocent people from their remote jungle outpost......it's to retrieve a mining company's stash of 50 millions dollars worth of uncut diamonds. The lure of the stones attracts the attention of the worst of Curry's fellow mercenaries, Henlein (Peter Carsten), an unrepentant ex-Nazi thug who proudly sports a swastika on his uniform. (Carsten's a villain for the ages, but unfortunately, for many of his scenes, he's redubbed by veteran voice artist Paul Frees, making him sound at times like Boris Badenov from "Rocky And Bullwinkle".)
As the mercenaries travel through the Congo via a commandeered train, the practical, benevolent, even-tempered Sgt. Ruffo (Jim Brown) functions as Curry's conscience, moral compass, wrangler of Curry's volcanic nature and the closest thing he has to a best friend. It's a thankless, unbelievable role for Brown, only his second acting attempt after "The Dirty Dozen", but he acquits himself with as much dignity as his stilted dialogue allows him....(obviously written by white guys who conceived Ruffo as even more angelic than some of Sidney's Poitier's characters)
Murphy's Law, in which everything goes wrong, fully applies to Curry's mission and the film barrels ahead from one hellish scene to another......Henlein slaughters two innocent children, claiming they're Simba spies and later unwisely provokes a chainsaw brawl with Curry, who responds by almost beheading Henlein under the wheels of the train.
All of this leads up the movie's signature, unforgettable set piece......in which the Simbas, after seizing a trainload of the oupost whites, conduct an all night orgy of rape (of both sexes), torture and murder. Even after obvious, heavy editing of this sequence by MGM, nobody had ever seen anything so unrelentingly horrific and brutal in a major studio film. It made you cringe at the thought of what they might have left on the cutting room floor......
Even sliced and diced, Jack Cardiff's imagery here burns into your eyes forever......and MGM couldn't take much more of it, further editing out much of Curry's final reckoning with Henlein, which you can only imagine from the sound of Henlein's pleading and agonized screams.
We'll finish up with the highest praise for the film's MVPs......the criminally under-appreciated Rod Taylor whose character here may well be the most dangerous, most conflicted, yet most ultimately vulnerable action-adventure hero ever seen in cinema.....you didn't normally see bravura acting of this caliber in a 1960's studio genre offering.....Taylor grabs you by the neck, takes you on his dark journey and dares you to look away......and that stunning Loussier music score, spooky and strangely beautiful all at once.....with a special shout-out to his music for
the sequence where Curry and Ruffo assemble the mercenary train, scored with screaming horns and pounding piano....welded to Cardiff's stunning montage of grinding wheels and enraged, impatient men, it's a perfect visual harbinger of all the terrible events that lay ahead...
The BQ stands right along side our pals Marty and Quentin (in our dreams, we do lunch all the time....)in declaring this movie a true cinema touchstone.....even with its flaws and MGM's largely futile efforts to dilute its power, we still give it 5 blood-soaked stars (*****), a FIND OF FINDS.....if you haven't found it yet, start that train rollin'........
Tuesday, July 4, 2017
'1776'........AT LAST, A SONG 'N DANCE CONGRESS THAT GETS SOMETHING DONE....
Watching the founding fathers belt out their opening number at the beginning of '1776' is akin to that pivotal moment in "West Side Story", when Russ Tamblyn and his juvenile delinquents start executing Jerome Robbins dance moves while they finger-snap their way down the street........film musicals, by their nature, freed from the artificiality of a theater stage, demand a much greater leap of faith from their audiences....
These people are going to sing and dance? Okaaaay.......
To those robustly baritone 4rth of July boys, we say......'sing out, you guys! The BQ is loving it....' If there's an alternate universe where Ben Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson do three part harmony while they create America, we want to live in it.....
The making of this film, the last one personally produced by mogul Jack L.Warner carries with it the deepest irony. Having retired from running his namesake studio, Warner made '1776' as an independent producer, with Columbia releasing and distributing the film....
Warner apparently never got over the amount of ridicule and criticism he endured for his bypassing of Broadway role originator Julie Andrews for "My Fair Lady" in favor of Audrey Hepburn. To Warner's everlasting humiliation, Walt Disney made a movie star and Best Actress Oscar winner out of Andrews in "Mary Poppins".....the same year as "My Fair Lady". The mogul's ego must have come close to exploding when Andrews, to the roar of the Oscar audience, paid a backhanded compliment to Warner for denying her "My Fair Lady", thereby paving her way to 'Poppins'.
Since he considered the film adaptation of '1776' as his legacy, milestone achievement, Warner curbed his Hollywood star casting impulses and assembled, almost intact, the entire creative team of the Broadway show......cast members, writer Peter Stone, director Peter H.Hunt, choreographer Onna White, composer and lyricist (and creator of the show) Sherman Edwards.
Here comes the irony we promised: Despite his worthy effort to exactly reproduce the musical that entertained Broadway audiences, Warner's film version, opening in the Fall of l972, arrived in a butchered condition, with over a half hour of footage sliced out of it, including its main titles and a key musical number. A block-headed Hollywood reptile to his core, Warner managed to wreak heavy damage on his last produced film.......with the help of his good buddy, the future un-indicted co-conspirator himself, President Richard Nixon.
Nixon didn't much care for the show's lengthy song "Cool, Considerate Men", sung by the Continental Congress's most conservative, independence-resistant members.....(as they trumpet their cautious strategy, they sing of dancing...."to the right, always to the right, never to the left...") Tricky Dick asked Warner to take the number out and on the eve of the film's nationwide release, the malignant mogul excised the song out of the release prints......along with other key footage.
Now the good news: Warner, as was his custom when he ruled his own studio, ordered the cut footage destroyed. But lucky for all of us, in the case of '1776', Warner did not rule his own studio.....and Columbia merely parked the footage in one of its archive warehouses.......thankfully recovered and fully restored to the film's DVD and Blu-Ray editions.
The BQ couldn't recommend a better cinematic 4rth of July celebration than watching the full 2 hour and 45 minute version of '1776'....(along with our other summer holiday fave, "The Devil's Disciple", covered in a previous post).....we'd never miss paying a yearly visit with William Daniel's gloriously rambunctious John Adams, Howard De Silva's ever quipping Ben Franklin, Ken Howard's stalwart Thomas Jefferson.....and Broadway belter John Cullum as South Carolina's aristocratic slavemaster Edward Rutledge....(a character who more than ever reminds us of a Frankenstein mixture of Trump and Jeff Sessions....a preening, egotistical bigot in one nasty package)
For the JackWarner/Richard Nixon version of the movie, we assign no stars....but for the restored Director's Cut....a full flag waving 4 stars (****)......(our only regret: Onna White choreographed "Cool Considerate Men" as a delicate minuet for the cast.....we secretly hoped they'd break into Onna's legendary chicken dance from "Bye Bye Birdie".....)
Monday, July 3, 2017
'OKJA'............MIGHTY JOE PIG.......
How to describe this guy.......he's like a rogue Spielberg with liberal helpings of Ken Russell/Paul Verhoven over-the-top madness.....especially with Verhoven's penchant for angry satire of government/corporate cruelty and idiocy. And, oh yes, he's a hell of a fantasist, deploying the technical wizardy of CGI not only to dazzle, but put across his worldview with sledgehammer force.....
But unlike Spielberg, he's no smooth craftsman......his films raggedly swing back and forth from heartfelt pathos to breathtaking action and violence.....he has no interest in or takes no time to suck up or stroke his audience......though filled with unforgettable monsters, these movies won't sell any action figures or stuffed animals.....(though Bong unfortunately, to his detriment, encourages some of his actors to indulge in cartoonish performances....)
Like his breakout, monster-horror 2006 hit "The Host", "Okja" throws together a fantastic creature and a little girl......only this time in a far more benevolent pairing.
To us, anyway, the movie seems modeled on the 1949 "Mighty Joe Young", in which innocent teen Terry Moore's lovable pet giant gorilla gets whisked away to the U.S., to be abused, humiliated and exploited by a showbiz impresario.
"Okja"s version of Terry Moore is a young Korean mountaintop villager (Seo-Hyun Ahn) whose grandfather has signed up to raise and nurture one of a slew of genetically oversized creatures meant to feed the world as new improved pork product.....(they resemble a jumbo cross of pig, hippo and in behavior, an overweight overly affectionate hairless dog).
Ahn and her grandfather's plus-sized, deftly computer generated 'Okja', as you correctly guessed, have bonded with endearing love and loyalty in the great tradition of all girl-and-her-pet movies......and inevitably, Okja and his fellow test tube porkers are reclaimed and siezed for social media publicity and eventual slaughter by their corporate creators and various simpering minions.
Here's where you might find the movie problematic...... in its jarring, weirdly abrasive depiction of its villains......with Tilda Swinton's take-no-prisoners lunatic portrayal of the corporation's rapacious twin sisters and Jake Gyllenhaal's downright embarrassing turn as a frenzied TV reality show veterinarian. Swinton, who already embraced the crazy in Bong's previous haves-versus-have-nots sci fi parable "Snowpiercer", knows how to precision calibrate this kind of goony acting.....poor Gyllenhaal, however, doesn't have that skill set and he suffers an actor's worst nightmare, made to look like a desperate, gasping, foolish amateur way out of his depth. We honestly ached for him as he tore through his scenes like they were 'Saturday Night Live' skits.
When not devoted to Swinton and Gyllenhaal's exaggerated ravings, the movie feverishly concentrates on elaborate, eye-popping action set pieces involving the implacable Ahn rescuing Okja from the Swinton's army of security goons, aided and abetted in these efforts by a determined crew of animal rights activists led by Paul Dano (as intense a true believer here as he was playing Daniel Day Lewis's nemesis in "There Will Be Blood")
As we warned you before, all this stuff may sound like Spielberg territory, but director Bong follows his own heart here......it may touch your heart from time to time, but that might come more from casual coincidence rather than calculated design......this director's way more interested in wringing corporate necks than wringing tears out of viewers. (And you can forget about kid-friendly.....Swinton and her odious crew drop F-bombs with R-rated abandon....)
BQ recommends you adopt 'Okja' for a couple of hours.....you don't find too many quirky, iconoclastic directors of special effects epics......most of those guys live and die by their weekend box office receipts.....Jooh-ho Bong does fantasy his way, take it or leave it.....with its all in tonal shifts and questionable acting, we'd still take this big Piggie to market.....3 & 1/2 stars (*** 1/2)
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