Now Screening - What Are You Watching Right Now?

[walpurgis]

'Midnight Run' (1987)

Just bought the DVD. Don't think I've seen it before.

[struth]

Callan, 1974. Directed by Don Sharp and starring Edward Woodward, Eric Porter, Peter Egan and Carl Möhner.





This was based on the original TV pilot "A Magnum for Schneider"

[struth]

Red 2, 2013. Directed by Dean Parisot and stars Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Mary-Louise Parker, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Lee Byung-hun, Anthony Hopkins, and Helen Mirren.

[struth]

High Plains Drifter, 1973. Clint Eastwood stars and directs..




Universal wanted Eastwood to shoot the feature on its back lot, but Eastwood opted instead to film on location. After scouting locations alone in a pickup truck in Oregon, Nevada and California, he settled on the "highly photogenic" Mono Lake area. Over 50 technicians and construction workers built an entire town—14 houses, a church, and a two-story hotel—in 18 days, using 150,000 feet of timber. Complete buildings, rather than facades, were built, so that Eastwood could shoot interior scenes on the site. Additional scenes were filmed at Reno, Nevada's Winnemucca Lake and California's Inyo National Forest. The film was completed in six weeks, two days ahead of schedule, and under budget.

The character of Marshal Duncan was played by Buddy Van Horn, Eastwood's long-time stunt double, to suggest that he and the Stranger could be the same person. In an interview, Eastwood said that earlier versions of the script made the Stranger the dead marshal's brother. He favored a less explicit and more supernatural interpretation, and excised the reference. The Italian, Spanish, French and German dubbings restored it. "It's just an allegory," he said, "a speculation on what happens when they go ahead and kill the sheriff, and somebody comes back and calls the town's conscience to bear. There's always retribution for your deeds." The graveyard set featured in the film's final scene included tombstones inscribed "Sergio Leone" and "Don Siegel" as a humorous tribute to the two influential directors.

[Barry]

'Picnic At Hanging Rock' (1975)

Third time I've seen this, still don't know what to make of it. Gives the impression that it is based on a true story, but it isn't. The authoress of the book wrote it after being inspired by a vivid dream. Could have been rubbish but Peter Weir directs and he is always good and adds an extra dimension to it.

You might like it or you might think you've wasted 2 hours of your life. Hard to say. 'Mrs Mangle' off of 'Neighbours' is in it.

I've seen it a couple of times, and would watch it again. A beautifully shot and enigmatic film - I ought to add it to my collection.

[Barry]

Callan, 1974. Directed by Don Sharp and starring Edward Woodward, Eric Porter, Peter Egan and Carl Möhner.




This was based on the original TV pilot "A Magnum for Schneider"

It's a good film and have it on DVD. Must get around to getting the spin-off series made for TV.

[struth]

Key Largo, 1948. Directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson and Lauren Bacall.





A high point of the film comes when Robinson's alcoholic former moll Gaye Dawn (Claire Trevor) is forced to sing a song a cappella before he will allow her to have a drink. Trevor was nervous about the scene and assumed that she would be lip-syncing to someone else's voice. She kept after director Huston to rehearse the song, but he put her off and said "there's plenty of time". One afternoon, he told her that they would shoot the scene right then, without any rehearsal. She was given her starting note from a piano, and then sang in front of the rest of the cast and the crew. It was this raw take that was used in the film. The song was "Moanin' Low", composed by Ralph Rainger with lyrics by Howard Dietz, introduced on Broadway in the 1929 revue The Little Show by Libby Holman. It became a hit and was Holman's signature song.

Author Philip Furia, whose books focus on the lyricists of the Tin Pan Alley era, writes that the song is about a woman who is trapped in a relationship with a cruel man, and Gaye slowly realizes as she is singing that she is in that very situation herself. He suggests that Trevor's performance in the role slowly breaks down during the song; "her voice falters and she sings off key." After the song, Bogart pours her a drink, saying "you deserve this". "It's a wonderful use of a song in a non-musical picture," according to Furia. He also suggests that Trevor won the Academy Award "based purely, I think, on that performance."

Another of Bogey's best, and the 5th of 5 collaboratons with Edward G Robinson and the only one where he was billed first(mostly)

[walpurgis]

Key Largo, 1948. Directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson and Lauren Bacall

A proper classic that one!

[struth]

Went The Day Well, 1942. Adapted from a story by Graham Greene and directed by Alberto Cavalcanti. It was produced by Michael Balcon of Ealing Studios and served as unofficial propaganda for the war effort. It tells of how an English village is taken over by German paratroopers. It reflects the greatest potential nightmare of many Britons of the time, although the threat of German invasion had largely receded by that point.






Starring Leslie Banks, Mervyn Johns(who also narrates), Basil Sydney, C.V. France, Valerie Taylor, Thora Hird, Patricia Hayes and David Farrar.

The film reinforced the message that civilians should be vigilant against fifth columnists and that "careless talk costs lives". It was based on a short story by the author Graham Greene entitled "The Lieutenant Died Last". By the time the film was released the threat of invasion had subsided somewhat, but it was still seen as an effective piece of propaganda, and its reputation has grown over the years. It has been noted that by opening and closing in a predicted future where not only had the war been won but a (fictitious) full-scale German invasion of Britain defeated, and by presenting a scenario where all echelons of British society unite for the common good (the lady of the manor sacrifices herself without hesitation, for example), the film's message was morale-boosting and positive rather than scaremongering. Anthony Quinn, a film critic for The Independent on Sunday, commented in 2010: "It subtly captures an immemorial quality of English rural life—the church, the local gossip, the sense of community—and that streak of native 'pluck' that people believed would see off Hitler".

[struth]

Cop Land, 1997. Written and directed by James Mangold, and starring Sylvester Stallone, Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta, and Robert De Niro.







Had mixed reviews but was popular in the Box Office... Good film.