My 2600th Blog - The Global Gap

The Global Gap

My 2600th Blog

Long term readers to this blog will know that I mark every 100 posts with a small article, piece of art or, as of late, full blown rant about an aspect of the film industry or other pop cultural phenomenom. And so, on the occasion of my 2600th blog post, I think it’s time to turn my gaze onto the, once much embraced but now sadly tolerated, dependence on the global marketplace for basic physical media purchases and the short sighted reasons behind the increase in importing said items for myself and others in the UK (and quite possibly the US, I suspect).

Okay, let me remind you of the fairytale era known as the dawn of the DVD age, when the serious cinephile and casual viewer alike would own a multiregion DVD player easily bought from the local Tesco (we knew from the internet which players could be hacked with a few numbers typed into the remote... just as we all do today with our cheap, multizone Blu Ray players). The reasons for doing this were many and here are a few I remember...

The first being specific to the UK... most of the films and TV shows etc were just not available in a UK version (unless you wanted to wait 6 or 8 years down the line until popular taste in this country caught up with you... oh, look, gialli are now popular in the UK after I had to buy them all from the US decades ago) and, even if they were, many of them would be harmed/cut/molested by the UK censors, so you would need to get it from another country in order to get a real version of the film anyway (this, sadly, is in some cases still true... I’m looking at you Aquaman... and films of your ilk).

Another reason was availability of new titles. I could often get them on a nice Region 1 DVD way before a film had gotten a cinema release in the UK and, if it’s one I knew I was going to like, why bother waiting all those months (sometimes a year) to get a version from my own shores which, as it happens, might have been cut anyway. I remember sitting in a UK cinema watching Josie And The Pussycats for the umpteenth time (if you know the brilliance of this movie then well done... an absolute classic ripe for rediscovery or, even a basic acknowledgement) even though the US DVD was had arrived through my letterbox that very morning.

And then, coupled with this and the dollar being so low against the pound (in those days), even with the import/postage fees you would still be paying only half of what you would be paying for the barely adequate UK release months later. And there were also shops in London which were doing a roaring trade in US Region DVDs at the time... if you knew where to look (I can remember at least four of them).

As the decades passed, things levelled out a bit. Especially by the dawn of the age of the Blu Ray (and I’ve not gotten into 4K UHD and will resist that route for as long as possible).

The biggest problem these days is the postage which, with the pound having had a reversal of fortune against the yankee dollar, means you will often be paying as much as the value of the goods again (if not double) on top of the purchase price. However, in what is technically a new golden age of physical media (as directors and producers try to get the best physical release of their films on the shelves to be remembered by, before low quality streaming versions are the only other reference point), it is still sadly necessary to get stuff from boutique labels abroad, since there are no equivalent versions in the UK (or sometimes they are coming out a year or two later than the US version). So beautiful editions like Severin’s Al Adamson - The Masterpiece Collection, All The Haunts Be Ours, House Of Psychotic Women, The Sensual World Of Black Emanuelle or Vinegar Syndrome’s Forgotten Gialli series of boxed editions, to name just a few, are only available to the British consumer by throwing our grappling hooks farther afield than this small minded country’s boundaries, in terms of what the studios... and the censors... want us to have available over here.

So, yeah, you take a hit because it’s the only way to get certain stuff.

That being said, it’s all gone horribly wrong of late... because new, Hollywood first run films are not getting physical releases over here (and often in their home country in the US) due to streaming rights issues. And talking of the evil of the streamers... there are films on these ‘stations’ which don’t even make it to a cinema release when they should do, let alone a physical companion. I’m looking at films like Beverly Hills Cop - Axel F, for example... reviewed here.

I was in a venue I won’t name the other day, somewhere related to a certain form of entertainment where I and a friend had popped into the accompanying café to get something to eat. I was served my hot chocolate and cake by a person who, it turned out, was one of the big physical media buyers for a set of stores and dealt with the various companies who put out blu rays and DVDs. Well, not anymore because there were horror stories to be told, it turns out. I don’t know if, as I was told, Sony have now decided to stop physical media for UK release but, if true, then things are only going to get grimmer for people who, you know, actually like the art of film and want to see it treated with respect. In a time when HMV were only just recently telling everyone that their physical media movie sales were growing...he told me that all of the conversations with the companies at the moment were about streaming rights. Nobody was interested in pursuing physical media and, even when he proved a point to one company by getting them to release a physical edition of a certain set of films in the UK (a direct port over of a US edition) which promptly sold out... he just couldn’t get said company to realise (or perhaps, to quote Clark Gable, “give a damn”) that there is actually a buoyant market for Blu Rays and even DVDs still out there.

It’s something which the boutique Blu Ray labels such as the likes of Severin, Vinegar Syndrome, Criterion, Arrow, Melusine, 88 Films, Imprint, Indicator, Umbrella and various others have known for years... but for the big studios I’m guessing the attitude is... ‘that’s not enough quick return money for me to bother investing the time to reap that particular reward.’ So, yeah, when it comes down to it... here he was instead filling my cup and saucer and making sure I knew where the serviettes were. It’s absolutely crazy.

And so it comes to pass. I’m shocked at how hard it’s getting to get the newer, recent films on physical versions not so long after their initial release (either cinematically or on a selfish and uncaring streaming service). Over the last year, four of the releases I’d originally just assumed I could grab in domestic or even US releases have caused me a lot of stress and, it has to be said, three times the amount of money to buy. But I’d still rather do that than stream these things (for however long company X decides to make them available for) and, some of them were for gifts...

So... Glass Onion I had to procure as an Asian bootleg Blu Ray (which, I have to say, is absolutely amazing quality, as good as any commercial Blu Ray transfer I’ve ever seen). Ditto for Mr. Monk’s Last Case... which I suspect still hasn’t even aired on television over here yet. Reality (reviewed here) which I was hoping to get for a Birthday deadline didn’t make it (although it’s still on the way), because I had to get a German edition (English language, at least) imported and, yeah, it keeps getting delayed. And again, I was completely shocked to see that one extremely successful independent horror film from much earlier this year, Late Night With The Devil (reviewed here) has not had any kind of physical release in either the UK or US and I’ve had to set things into motion to get it shipped over to me from foreign shores in a ridiculously expensive edition (thanks to the wonderful geezah in Fopp who informed me that, as far as he knew, no UK distributor had stepped in to buy it). And don’t get me started on Godzilla Minus One (reviewed here) which I am, at presently, patiently waiting to get a UK release, even though a much lesser but later film, the US made Godzilla X Kong - The New Empire (reviewed here) is already on UK Blu Ray (I’m just not wanting to purchase my modern films out of their release order thanks very much... if I show my family the latter first then their desire to bother with the far superior Japanese movie will certainly deteriorate, for sure).

And so here I am again... lamenting the absolute lack of respect of the cinematic art form from certain companies and now spending way more money and time researching alternative ways of getting films which, quite frankly, I should be able to pick up for a quarter of the price just by walking down to my local high street store and seeing what is on the shelf.

Anyway, rant over. If you’ve made it this far then, thanks for reading my 2600th blog post and if you have any other stories of ‘the violation of physical media’ then please post a comment below (I have to clear the comments once submitted at the moment because of crazy Russian blog spamming but, yeah, I will read and then publish every genuine one for sure... whether I agree with it or not). And, as always, thanks for wandering onto here and taking a look. It’s always much appreciated.

The Bodies Beneath

Flipping Celluloid

The Bodies Beneath
by William Fowler and Vic Pratt
Strange Attractor Press
ISBN: 9781907222726

The Bodies Beneath, a curious tome by William Fowler and Vic Pratt, was something of a blind buy for me. One of those books you come across as an interesting looking Amazon recommendation when you’re searching for something else and, to be fair, it certainly turned out to be a better, more informative purchase than the book I set out to order (I’m keeping the review of the other tome I bought to myself because it was so dire). That being said, however, I think it’s fair to say that I found the book fairly interesting rather than out and out saying I enjoyed it. Not that this reaction  to the book should in any way negate the value of the tome in question, by any stretch.

The book is subtitled... or at least marketed with the tagline... The Flipside of British Film and Television and this is because the two writers, William Fowler and Vic Pratt, are the two minds behind the BFI’s Flipside screenings of recent, not too long gone days and also the spin off DVD/Blu Ray Flipside label where a wealth of truly interesting treasure has found a modern audience. So, whatever I personally think of the writing in this one, they certainly have proven themselves to be valuable members of the film community in this country (and globally, as it happens) and have done some valuable work for the cause of the moving image.

Their modus operandi here... or at least their justification for both a title parodying an old Andy Milligan movie and a binding rationale for the contents of the book... is that they are unearthing long lost gems of British cinema, TV and short works which have mostly long been hidden (debatable) or inaccessible to the degree that they have vanished almost without trace from contemporary memory.

What this really means is that the writers do dredge up some interesting works along the way as they each write separate reviews of vanished (and not so vanished) gems from the past and combine a few reviews apiece into each, thematically binding chapter. Those chapters being The Tunnel Of Love, Out Of Towners, Kid’s Stuff, True Stories, The War Room, Music And Movement, Fantastic Fictions and Tales Of Terror. Although, it has to be said, I found some of the linking themes unconvincing in some cases and there are many works described here that, of course, would easily cross over into other chapters.

What surprised me is that, amongst the truly obscure stuff such as the Cornish dance documentary Oss Oss Wee Oss, the sadly lost Cricket Match On A Fishing Smack During A Heavy Sea or the depiction of Anthony Newley’s big budget self destructive, not so cleverly disguised fictional autobiographical feature Can Heironynous Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe And Find true happiness?... there’s also quite a few things that are both not forgotten by anyone and quite often easily available with your Amazon click finger. For example, there’s a whole section on Danger Man in the Tunnel Of Love chapter, which is a chapter dealing with sexuality. To be fair, it brings in Patrick McGoohan’s reasons for turning down playing James Bond (he was sought out for the role and offered it before Connery) and how he didn’t allow the frivolous sexuality of those kinds of characters on his shows but... yeah, obscure it isn’t. And, I’m sorry, the writers may think that nobody these days know about Arthur Lucan when one of them is detailing the interesting events which lead to the movie Old Mother Riley Meets The Vampire, where Lucan (Old Mother Riley) co-starred with Bela Lugosi... but I think he’s dead wrong about that. In fact, as I type this, I know that there’s a DVD box set downstairs of Old Mother Riley films ripe for borrowing and exploration if I ever get the time (I was privileged to see Arthur Lucan’s surviving stand in doing the Old Mother Riley act at a seaside theatre once, as a teenager).

There’s some interesting stuff too, of course, which would no doubt still be fairly obscure such as Secret Rites and Legends Of The Witches, if it had not been for the phenomenal efforts of the two writers to get such films resurrected on Blu Ray in recent years (you can read my review of these two gems right here) and also ‘banned by Government from transmission TV’ films like The War Game are certainly things I may keep on my radar for viewing at some point. But there are also a lot of errors in even some of the 'not so obscure' stuff. For instance, on a section about the first of the two live action TinTin films, TinTin and the Golden Fleece... the writers appear to be too young to remember, or even know of, the hugely popular, much loved cartoon show which was later replaced by something quite different and modern... a TV phenomenon which really has vanished and has since become a holy grail object for people of a certain age (not to mention the unreleased 1947 stop motion movie of The Crab With The Golden Claws... which also gets no mention here and is arguably a lot rarer).

I think the thing which rubbed me up the wrong way a little is that one of the writers... and I won’t say which one... seems to be more interested in delivering clever puns and somewhat condescending commentaries about the subject he’s purportedly attempting to lionise (somewhat) rather than giving clear and concise facts and opinions, which is more the territory of the other writer, it seemed to me. Certainly, while I love spending time with people talking about films over a nice whisky and coke, one of these guys would just have had me clamming up whereas, the other person comes across as way more friendly and willing to learn, I think. Of course, the personae coming across in the text is not always a significant overlap into the real life version of a human being so, yeah, I’ll reserve judgement for now.

So, yes, it’s a rag tag gallery of non-sequiter review choices where easily available stuff, such as Colin Baker’s portrayal of The Doctor in the Doctor Who season where the stories were bound together by the overall Trial Of A Time Lord arc, rubs shoulders with Vincent Price’s six episode Cooking Price-Wise series or the much loved movie Electric Dreams but, like I said, I can’t actually say I enjoyed The Bodies Beneath and I am glad to be finished with it, to tell the truth. Having said that, if you are interested in finding out about some relatively obscure gems midst the various dishes on offer here... and if you’re reading this blog with any regularity then you possibly are of that ilk... then I would certainly recommend this one as being something worth picking up for your book shelf because, yeah, a few of the things in here are such that you probably won’t find them referenced anywhere else, I suspect. Not much more to say about this one though... a fascinating and possibly ‘useful in the future’ tome which is worth retaining for when certain titles ‘come up’, so to speak.

Scala Cinema 1978-1993

Scala’d Lady

Scala Cinema 1978-1993
Slipcase Edition
Written by Jane Giles
FAB Press ISBN: 978-1903254981

I have a confession to make. Although I remember going into the lobby/box office area at least once to check it out back in the day, I don’t think (I may be wrong) that I ever saw an actual film at the famous Scala Cinema near King’s Cross (now, sadly, deceased). That being said, I jumped at the chance to back this Scala Cinema 1978-1993 book on Kickstarter, reprinting all of those distinctive, rough and ready movie timetable posters because of what the Scala meant to me at the time and for the atmosphere it was bound to capture.

You see, I was a college student in London from around the mid 1980s to very early 1990s, first on a general Art and Design Diploma in the Clerkenwell area and then onto my Graphic Design Degree at the London College Of Printing, Elephant And Castle. So I used to pick up those ‘what’s on’ posters all the time and marvel at the world of films which I loved, often showing on these things. I was big on what has come to be known as ‘world cinema’ at the time and the programmers at the Scala would often schedule these in, alongside movies I’d often never heard of at that tender age. I’m sure I wasn’t the only student who used to grab these and then use them to decorate my cubicle at college, both signalling my interest in film to other kids while putting up free advertising for the cinema. These colourful and chaotically designed posters were beautiful things in their own way and, I wish I’d kept more of them. I may have one or two in the loft somewhere but... that’s about it.

Jane Giles, who put this book together and wrote the accompanying text for each and every month of the Scala’s total schedule, was one of the programmers there for a while. She was also, near the end, the one prosecuted when the council finally cottoned on to one of the ‘illegal’ screenings of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. I guess the younger generation of film enthusiasts don’t realise how good they have it these days. A Clockwork Orange was banned for public consumption until after Kubrick’s death and the only way you could really see it back in the day, asides from the odd cheeky screening at the Scala, was to hop on a train to Camden Town and, more often than not, you would find a guy selling bootleg VHS copies of the film for a tenner a shot (that’s how I first saw it).

But getting back to Jane Giles and her beautiful book...

If it was just the wonderful, full colour reproductions of the fronts and smaller reprints of the backs of the Scala programmes, then the book would be cheap at half price. It’s an attractive tome with a slip case showing a lovely black and white shot of the cinema on one side and a new Graham Humphries poster style artwork commemorating the cinema on the back. The book itself is a monster and has attractive black covers with a gold foil blocked Scala logo on the front and, on the back, a gold blocked portrait of one of the Scala cats (I don’t know which one).  However, it’s not just about the posters and packing, as I soon found out when starting to read it.

It turns out that, not only is Jane Giles a thorough researcher, she’s also a highly entertaining and informative writer and what I thought was going to be the lesser part of the book, her quite voluminous text is actually, on reflection, at least as valuable (possibly more so) than the souvenir and nostalgia rush of the programmes themselves.

The book starts off with a big introduction section where she talks about a lot of things which will spark memories for Londoners. So, for instance, the importance of Time Out magazine to people in the days long before the internet. She also goes through the whole history of the area since the 18th Century and talks about the various buildings and performances in those venues. Additionally, due to its importance to this kind of cinema programming, she talks a bit about The Other Cinema, which I used to go to when it was renamed as the Metro on Rupert Street before... in its final years... it reverted back to being called The Other Cinema again. Saw a lot of good movies there.

And, of course, she goes heavily into the conditions that the cats/staff laboured under and, once the intro is finished, we are into squidzillions of pages of posters set out in double page spreads. On the right hand page is a full colour reproduction of the original poster for a specific month... not quite as large as the originals if memory serves but nevertheless a treat. The left hand page will have a smaller reproduction of the back of the poster, a few stills from films showing that month (or various other ‘items of interest’) and... some accompanying text from Jane.

Which is half of what this book is all about, as far as I’m concerned. She starts off each page with an account... or flavour... of just what was showing that month and this is sometimes accompanied by an explanation of why film x or y might have been included in the programme. She also tells you just what else politically or financially was happening at the cinema that month, makes notes on famous guests and live performances etc and also, and this really brought back the time period for me, tells you what other important events were going on in the UK or the rest of the world in that month. So yeah, Hillsborough disaster, Lockerbie bombing, Hungerford massacre, Steel worker strikes, UFOs in Rendelsham Forest, Thatcherism... it’s all here along with the terrible fire which claimed so many lives at King’s Cross station. It seems one of the late shift cashiers had a lucky escape and I remember a lot of my ‘class mates’ did as well that night. I recall we’d all been staying late to do some life drawing and so we were all travelling home when the fire broke out. I was alright because I was travelling from Farringdon back into Liverpool Street but many of my friends went the other way and I remember stories of lucky escapes the next day. It was a close one but... not for a lot of people that night.

It’s all good stuff and, despite the depressing ponderings of some of those world changing events mentioned above, the book is also full of fun and really captures both the atmosphere of the time (living in London in that period) and, presumably, the heady atmosphere of attending a screening there (not that I’d know that bit, more’s the pity). And some of these double bills, triple bills and all nighters were unbelievably quirky and often didn’t follow any logic... at least that’s the way it seemed to me back then. This was all a part of the cinema’s charm of course. It was certainly postmodern if nothing else... but it was also everything else too.

For instance, you could see a Pigs And Robots Revolt double bill of Blade Runner and Razorback. Or a double bill which somehow connected the 1966 Batman movie with Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. And where else could you watch an all nighter on 22nd March 1980 which would include movies like She Demons and Attack Of The Crab Monsters (one of my favourites, reviewed here) and then follow it up the next day with a screening of Kurosawa’s masterful Dersu Uzala before returning on the Monday for a triple bill of three of The Marx Brother’s early Paramount treasures? Nowhere is where, except maybe for the Everyman at Hampstead but, that’s a different story and quite a different atmosphere, to be sure.

It’s all good stuff and the, actually massive, textual contribution which is the real meat of the book elevates this tome far above and beyond being just another ‘movie book’ for sure. For me, this one is ‘right up there’ with my other favourite and most precious book about an aspect of the cinema, the equally cumbersome to hold and read hardback edition of Tim Lucas’ Mario Bava study, All The Colours Of The Dark. Scala Cinema 1978 - 1993 is that good, a true treasure of a book on movies (and it has my name listed in the back as a financial contributor, to boot... yay, me!). If you’ve been sitting on the fence about purchasing the now dying breed that is the first (and probably only) print run of this book then you really should get on it. It perfectly captures a time and place that many will remember and I certainly wouldn’t want to forget in a hurry. A rich, visual fusion of celluloid themed imagery and some very informative and sometimes even quite moving text. Snap this beauty up while the snapping’s good... I doubt you’ll ever regret it.

You can buy the book from the Fab Press website here www.fabpress.com and from all good book retailers.

Moving Images

Moving Images

Warning: Some major spoilers on numbers 10, 7, 6, 5

Get the hankies out!

You know, I rarely do 'list articles' but I thought, during the lead in to Christmas, I’d do at least one to break up the usual format a bit and this one has been on my mind to assemble for a couple of years now. Film is often seen by many as an engaging and encapsulating experience. Perhaps director Sam Fuller says it the best, or at least the most credibly, in his cameo appearance in Jean-Luc Godard’s French new wave movie Pierrot Le Fou, when questioned by a character on the nature of cinema...

“Film is like a battleground. Love. Hate. Action. Violence. Death. In one word . . . emotion.”

Yeah, that’s right, emotion.

Now, while I don’t agree that all film or television has to engage us in this capacity, I’m no different than the next audience member when it comes to being caught up in the emotions of various moving image presentations and so I thought I’d compile a list of some of the moments in both cinema and television that I have personally found the most moving, over the years. Of course, it’s a completely subjective list and I’m sure that there are many more I’ve got filed away in the back of my head which I’ve forgotten to include here... so maybe I’ll do a follow up sometime. I wasn’t originally going to include any television moments on here, actually, but the one I have included leaves me such a shivering, emotional wreck every time I see it that, well, there’s just no way I could leave it off this list. I’ve actually put that in on the number two spot because it’s so powerful... to me at least.

I realise, of course, that one person’s emotional trigger is another person’s lack of the same and that a few, or even all, of these choices may leave some of you puzzled and scratching your heads. That’s okay... that’s all part of the fun and the discovery of the fact that we really are all different and we all respond and react to things in a completely different manner to everyone else. So please, if you have some specific scenes/sequences of moments of film or TV which absolutely move you then... well... it would be great if you could tell me and my readers about them in the comments section below. It’s nice to know and share this stuff.

So that’s that. Nine of these ten moments have links to an accompanying clip I found on YouTube, so click away and watch the moment and, hopefully, you'll remember to come back to look at the next "moment" in this article. Here are my top ten (for now) moving movie/TV moments... in ascending order.


10. Tracey’s Return in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
What’s this? A Bond movie on a list of most moving moments? Yeah, okay, give me a break... it’s easily the best made and emotionally mature Bond movie in the history of the series. I’m not going to cite the end sequence where Bond and Teresa (aka Tracey) leave their wedding but, before they reach their honeymoon destination, the love of Bond’s life is gunned down in a hail of machine gun fire. Instead, it’s the moment where Bond has just escaped Blofeld’s fortress on Piz Gloria for the first time that I’d like to highlight here because it shows Bond at his most vulnerable and reliant on the so-called fairer sex to complete his world saving mission. George Lazenby’s 007 has escaped his imprisonment but he can’t escape Blofelds goons, who are tracking him and stopping him getting any assistance. Bond is desperate. He has absolutely no way of escaping his predicament and no way out... and then Diana Rigg’s Countess Tereza skates into the shot. She has been looking for Bond and she is here when he needs her most... with her car. She effectively rescues him and it’s not long after this emotional moment, where we see a down on his luck Bond, that he proposes to her. Sorry, this is the only one of these entries where I couldn’t find the accompanying clip on the internet... my apologies. Watch the movie... it's cool.


9. Rachel confronts Deckard from Blade Runner
This is the scene that starts with my favourite moment of the movie, where Deckard is surprised by Rachel in the lift up to his apartment and he is so shaken by her presence that he drops his key and can barely get to open his front door because of it. Once inside she confronts Deckard about what he learned about her in the Tyrell interrogation scene and we watch Deckard unsuccessfully try to hide from her the fact that she’s a replicant, before hitting her with the brutal truth. Rachel flees the apartment while Deckard goes to fix her a drink. Here’s a low quality clip from youtube... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BYSYE1zXUw


8. Death Of A Soldier from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Towards the end of Leone’s epic feature, Clint Eastwood’s ‘The Good’ comes across a dying confederate soldier in the aftermath of a battle. Ennio Morricone’s touching score comes into its own here as Eastwood, realising the soldier doesn’t have long to live, lays his coat on him to keep him warm and takes the cigarette from his own mouth, holding it to the soldier’s mouth so he can have a final smoke. Eastwood looks round as he is distracted by the sound of a horse... when he looks back the soldier is already dead. He takes back his cigar, grabs a poncho by the soldier and is on his way. Eastwood does this beautifully... his almost unchanging face deliberately underplaying the emotion which is bolstered by the amazing score, making this one of the most haunting moments in a Leone western.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBn0Afu8mE8

7. The Children Return from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom 

Yeah. So the fights and chases are all played out and the slave children have been freed from the Thuggee temple. Our three heroes - Indy, Willie and Short Round - return to the village where they took on their unplanned mission. There’s a moment when they are standing at the threshold of the village and all the children come running into the village from behind them, John Williams score swelling as we see the reaction shots of the various villagers who now have their young ‘uns restored to them. I break down in tears every time I see this scene (even out of context when revisiting that clip for the purposes of this list... like many of these here, as it happens). The special moment starts about thirty seconds into this long section I found on You Tube and goes on for about a minute and a half... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV1z85b64vw


6. The Return Home from It’s A Wonderful Life
Okay... possibly one of the greatest American movies ever made but, certainly, the greatest Christmas movie ever made. The final scene of It’s A Wonderful life is one of those great tension-release moments. After he’s about to kill himself, James Stewart’s George Bailey character is visited by his guardian angel Clarence, played delightfully by Henry Travers. After Clarence shows George what life would have been like if he’d never had lived, George once more embraces life and returns home to his family to face some serious jail time for some missing money which he doesn’t realise the bad guy of the piece has stolen from his company. However, practically the whole town is waiting for him and they have donated all the missing money and more, making him realise just how many friends he has to come to his aid in times of trouble. We hear a ringing on the foley and Bailey’s daughter reminds him, and the audience, that “every time a bell rings, another angel gets its wings.” As the saying goes... not a dry eye in the house. There’s the whole long sequence here on youtube... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxNXtjGY_Us ... skip to the end.


5. Confronting the Jaguar Shark from The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
This beautiful movie by Wes Anderson tells of the fictional equivalent of Jacques Cousteau, documentary film-maker Steve Zissou, and his quest to find and kill the bizarre ‘Jaguar Shark’ that ended his friend’s life. On the way, another friend who may or may not have been his son (only two characters in this movie know the truth of the situation, and Bill Murray’s Steve isn’t one of them), is killed in an accident and after the funeral, at the wake on Steve’s boat, the trail of the Jaguar Shark gets warm again. Steve and an absolute load of his friends and crew, most played by quite famous actors and actresses, load into his mini submarine in search of the shark. However, once he’s finally caught up with his aquatic nemesis, he realises he really doesn’t want to kill such a beautiful creature anymore. Some kind soul has put the clip on youtube here...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyyosKJWXkE


4. Revolution scene from A Fistful Of Dynamite (aka Duck You Sucker aka Giù la Testa)
Well this film is Leone’s masterpiece as far as I’m concerned... even if the IRA theme is kind of an anachronism bearing in mind the time this movie is set in. James Coburn’s character John has escaped betrayal at the hands of his IRA chums... something that is constantly referred back to throughout the course of the movie through a series of beautifully scored, moving flashbacks which reveal just a little more of why he is who he is, as the movie progresses. In the West, he has sneakily enlisted the aid of Mexican bandit Juan, played by Rod Steiger, without him even realising at first, to try and instigate another ‘glorious revolution’. John is the educated one and Juan is the stupid peasant who doesn’t realise what’s going on... or does he? There’s a wonderfully moving scene where Juan explains to John just what a revolution really is. The grim poignancy of this is backed up later in the film when Juan’s whole family have been wiped out by the bad guys (who are a curious metaphor for Nazi Germany in a Western).

“I know what I am talking about when I am talking about the revolutions. The people who read the books go to the people who can't read the books, the poor people, and say, "We have to have a change." So, the poor people make the change, ah? And then, the people who read the books, they all sit around the big polished tables, and they talk and talk and talk and eat and eat and eat, eh? But what has happened to the poor people? They're dead! That's your revolution. Shhh... So, please, don't tell me about revolutions! And what happens afterwards? The same fucking thing starts all over again!”

Once again. Morricone’s score plays in the background to enhance the already high emotions of the scene. This clip is here... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAxJb1v-SnU


3. Owen’s Coin Collection scene from Throw Momma From The Train
Billy Crystal plays Larry and Danny DeVito plays the simple-minded Owen in this scene which takes you totally by surprise about half way through it. Owen pesters the long suffering Larry to look at his coin collection and, when he does, he finds it comprises of a bunch of worthless nickels, quarters and pennies. However, when he digs a little deeper as to why Owen has kept these exact coins, he finds that they were all coins given to him in change from when his long dead father used to take him to shows or baseball games. The scene suddenly switches from comedy to a poignant moment of the loss of a loved one. Unbearably emotional. There’s a clip of it here... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZpfHrTcS4Y


2. Pretty much all of The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe - Doctor Who 2011 Christmas Special
I can’t tell you how much of an emotional wreck this leaves me. After the first watch, the end is pretty devastating but, once you watch it again and know what’s coming, the whole thing will keep you crying all the way through, most probably. This episode must have so many triggers for me... I can’t even listen to the soundtrack to it on my iPod on the bus every Christmas without breaking down into badly hidden tears. Don’t watch this episode if you are with people you don’t want seeing you cry.
Here’s one of many little touching moments throughout the whole episode, which is set during World War Two... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVC9WFlg2V4



1. Bretodeau’s Memory Box from Amélie (aka Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain)
Wow. Amélie is another of those 'greatest movies ever made' and it’s a film full of moving moments from start to finish. A work of joyous wonder and surreal, dreamlike moments. There are so many bits I could have chosen to represent this movie but I’ve chosen the scene where Amélie has tracked down the owner of a box of childhood possessions, hidden behind the walls of the apartment she now lives in, over 40 years prior to her accidental discovery of said box. She arranges a stealthy way to return this 'little boy's' box to him as he approaches his 50th birthday, without appearing to be involved in the reconciliation between the former owner and the memories that the contents of this hidden treasure invoke in him. I’ve chosen this moment because it’s always the first of many bits in the movie where my mouth starts quivering and my eyes start leaking profusely. Some kind soul has provided a fairly low quality youtube clip of this here... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpjlQSCbhjw


And that’s it for my short collection of moving moments from the world of the moving images. I hope you enjoyed this little voyage among what I feel are some of the emotional highlights of this particular art form over the years. It even had a Christmas movie in there to give it a seasonal feel. Two if you take into account part of the time frame of the Bond film.

Please come back here on Sunday/Monday for my review, I hope, of the new Star Wars movie and again on Tuesday for this year’s edition of my fiendishly puntastic Cryptic Movie Quiz for Christmas. Hope to see you soon.

Five years of NUTS4R2

Live And Let Five

Hello there.

Five years ago today I started writing this blog. 

I must have been fairly enthusiastic about it because, looking at it, I posted three articles on the first day. Five years on, it’s safe to say, I don’t post quite as many reviews as I used to but, then again, it’s swings and roundabouts when you compare what I was writing when I first started up to what I am writing now. 

And by that I mean that, in the first year or two, I was writing much shorter reviews by the looks of things. These days, the majority of them are, at the very least, twice as long as what I was writing then... which I think probably means I’m more confident in finding my voice as a writer of reviews now than I ever was before. Or, just possibly, that I’m getting more rambley and irrelevant the older I get. One of those, you decide.

Over the years, one of the things which has helped me develop a, fairly, consistent style is the fact that I seem to have a nice bunch of readers who are generally wonderful people. I’ve had the odd bad comment, to be sure, and sometimes... quite inadvertently... invited the frowning comments of writers who think I have wronged them on here (for some reason it’s usually the writers, rather than the directors, who tend to comment on here, when it comes to opening a dialogue with me). However, for the most part, I’ve generally had some pretty good feedback over the last half a decade... so that really helps me sometimes.

The reason that really helps me is because... well... life seems to get really tough sometimes. I get depressed the older I get and as opportunities diminish (the chance to have kids, raise a family, become a multi-millionaire or live on an island with a harem of appreciative women-folk... for example), I often find that writing about stuff on my blog is the only escape route I have to get away from the curveballs and general insanity that reality sometimes throws my way. I’ve felt like quitting the blog, too, on occasion but... something keeps pulling me back and part of that is because you readers have been so nice and generous with your time for me over the years.

I have to say, the reviews I write here must satisfy some part of my psychological make-up I never realised I had before getting into the whole NUTS4R2 thing. It’s almost like I’ve become addicted to writing over the years but, make no mistake, it’s not always as easy as it sounds to sit down and churn out an article or review. Even after all these years, I will still worry about certain films or books I’ve read and imagine I don’t have anything much to say about them. Luckily, once that pen hits the page... or in my case, once those fingers start pecking at the keys... something inside tends to take over and I find something I can write about. Make no mistake though, certain films cause me a lot of anxiety because, no matter how easy it is to get going, it can sometimes be quite a daunting prospect to start writring about something. 

Take, for instance, my two favourite directors, Akira Kurosawa and Andrei Tarkovsky. It seems to me that I am not worthy to even begin to cast a critical eye over what was in the minds of these two great people. That being said, it strikes me that not an awful lot of people are familiar with directors of this calibre so it’s a pleasure to sometimes be able to highlight the works of classic film directors and hopefully spark some interest in the occasional reader who will then go away and look at an example of their work (as I know has happened every now and then). So that’s all good.

Also, it’s a good way of clarifying my own thoughts and applying my own theories as to why the minds behind the movies have reached their finished product in just the way they have and, I hope, readers feel that I’ve brought a little knowledge into their lives, from time to time. Well, yes, probably not in all the articles on here but, it’s my hope at least, that some of my writing on film has met with the beginnings of enlightenment for some, when it comes to decoding those flickerings of shadow and light that dances across our collective retina and takes so much of our hard earned cash... one way or another. 

I’ve also watched some remarkably odd films which I’ve sometimes only bought with the blog review in mind (see my recent review of The Vixens Of Kung Fu here to find out what happens when this processs backfires). And, quite often, it gives me the opportunity to get away with watching some real trash cinema and some of that stuff churned out to make a quick bundle of cash has some very surprising, “way beyond competent” technical skills thrown into the mix, too.  

I must admit, though, that without you reading this now, this humble blog is nothing. I love the virtual  friends and readers I’ve made through this blog as I have promoted it on Twitter over the years and some of the minds I’ve been privileged to share ideas with. People like Katrin Jenny of Twitterland, for example, who reminded me only yesterday evening, that today is indeed my five year blog anniversary. I’d completely forgotten it this year so... thanks for that lady... I owe you some mind numbing alcohol when you are next in the country! 

So, as you can probably guess, this blog entry was completely unplanned but, hey, at least it gives me the chance to articulate my appreciation of you readers, without whose regular visits, would mean these pages and words would stack up to being considerably less than, to invoke a time honoured, classic movie legend, “a hill of beans”. So thank you readers, old and new, for sticking with me and paying my writing the occasional visit now and again. It means so much to me and helps ease the insanity of my less than tranquil life. 

All the best to you all and... stick around... if you think some of the films I’ve reviewed over the past five years have been either special, moving, thought provoking or downright odd, well... you ain’t seen nothing yet.

All the best,

NUTS4R2

Quizwoz 2013 answers

Hi again.

Thanks to all who entered this year’s Quizwoz.

This years winner is...

Eamonn Clarke  

who can be found here on twitter @eamonnclarke1 and who beats out all competition with a cool 20 out of 20 set of full marks. His blog, which is mostly about 2000AD and Doctor Who can be found here... http://eamonn1961.blogspot.co.uk/

So congratulations to him. And here are the answers for all of you who didn’t get them all.

Q1.
Which franchise, the first movie of which was based on an original novel, has had eight movies, a TV show and even a cartoon series in it?
A1. 
Planet Of The Apes.


Q2. 
What is remarkable about the Jessie Royce Landis character in North By Northwest? 
A2.
She was only 8 years older than Cary Grant, whose mother she was playing in the movie.


Q3.
What is James Bond’s family motto and which is the first of the EON James Bond films in which this information is disclosed?
A3.
The World Is Not Enough is the family motto and it’s first mentioned in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.


Q4.
Akira Kurosawa’s movies Seven Samurai, Yojimbo and Rashomon have what interesting post-production fact in common?
A4.
They were all remade as Westerns... The Magnificent Seven, A Fistful Of Dollars and The Outrage.


Q5.
In A Good Day To Die Hard, the Russian taxi driver near the start of the movie sings New York, New York in Frank Sinatra fashion to Bruce Willis. Why is this especially appropriate to the Die Hard franchise?
A5.
Because Die Hard was based on the sequel novel to the original Sinatra film The Detective. When Sinatra turned down the option to play the character again in the sequel (based on the original novel’s sequel), the character was renamed John McClane and Bruce Willis was cast in the role.


Q6. 
Which biblical epic features footage from the sequel in it, as the sequel was already being shot while the first film was still being edited?
A6.
The Robe. It contains some footage from the sequel, Demetrius And The Gladiators.


Q7.
Which 90s action thriller featured three prior Bond super-villain actors in the film... who never meet in any scene together. Also, who are the actors and which Bond films were they the main villains in?
A7. 
The film was John Frankenheimer’s Ronin. The actors were Michael Lonsdale - who played Drax in Moonraker, Sean Bean - who played Alec Trevelyan in GoldenEye and Jonathan Pryce who played Elliot Carver in Tomorrow Never Dies.


Q8. 
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?
A8.
The Shadow knows.


Q9.
Which two famous characters were teamed up this year in a novel celebrating their 80th anniversary?
A10.
Doc Savage and King Kong, both of whom began their fictional lives in 1933. Their joint adventure can be found in Will Murray’s Doc Savage: Skull Island.


Q10. 
Which actor played a character in a series of films in this century, who is the father of a character he first played in 1981? And what are the two roles in question?
A10. 
Ian Holm. In 1981 he played Frodo Baggins for the epic BBC radio series adaptation of Lord Of The Rings and, this century, he has played that character’s father, Bilbo Baggins, in both the Lord Of The Rings movies and in brief appearances in the first and third parts of The Hobbit movies.


Q11. 
In which two movies does a character being played by Mark Hamill get his hand cut off by a light sabre?
A11.
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back and Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back.


Q12. 
Which Dario Argento movie was originally supposed to be a sequel to his earlier film, The Stendahl Syndrome?
A12. 
The Card Player. The lead female police detective character was originally supposed to be Asia Argento, reprising her earlier role.


Q13.
Which Doctor Who monsters first appeared in a single story opposite Patrick Troughton in 1967 and then took 40 years to return to the series when one of their hands was glimpsed in a David Tennant episode?
A13.
The Macra from The Macra Terror (1967) and Gridlock (2007).


Q14. 
In Captain America: The First Avenger, there is an oblique reference to another Marvel Comics hero of that era. Who is the character and why is that ironic in the case of this specific movie?
A14.
The original golden age incarnation of The Human Torch is referenced at the start of the movie. The irony is that Chris Evans, who plays Captain America in this film, played the silver age version of The Human Torch in the Fantastic Four movies.


Q15.
Which famous director, who died in 1986, is alleged to have died from a specific type of cancer, along with a couple of other people, caused by the location in which he shot a movie released seven years earlier? And what was the film which held the deadly location?
A15. 
Andrei Tarkovsky, Stalker.


Q16. 
Which often controversial director, mostly famous for the films he shot in the 1960s and 1970s, turns up playing a small role in a famous 1950s sci-fi paranoia classic... and what is the name of that movie?
A16.
That was Sam Peckinpah, before he became a director. He turns up in a very small role in Don Siegel’s original version of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.


Q17.
Alfred Hitchcock’s remake of his own The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Bryan Forbes’ Deadfall (1968) and Peter Jackson’s remake of King Kong (2005) all have something very specific and unusual in common. What is that specific thing and, once you’ve figured that one out, which of these is the odd one out and why?
A17. 
The three composers hired to do the scores for those movies: Bernard Herrmann, John Barry and Howard Shore... all appear as conductors in their respective movie. However, Howard Shore’s score for King Kong is the odd one out because, by the time the movie was released, Shore’s score was rejected and replaced with one by James Newton Howard. Shore is still in the movie, however.


Q18. 
Who is the only “Avengers girl”, from the various British TV shows featuring the adventures of John Steed and his companions, who has not turned up in a James Bond movie?
A18.
Linda Thorson.
The other three all did: Honour Blackman was in Goldfinger, while both Diana Rigg and Joanna Lumley were in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.


Q19.
Which actor played a professor suffering from a sped up version of the disease “acromegaly” in a Clint Eastwood film and, which iconic character actor of the 30s and 40s suffered from and was killed by a side effect of this disease in real life?
A19.
Leo G. Carroll played the character in the 1955 b-movie classic Tarantula (in which Clint Eastwood briefly appears), although I would have also accepted Eddie Parker who played two lesser acromegaly suffering roles in the film, one of them a professor. The actor who suffered from this in real life was Rondo Hatton, best known for playing The Creeper in the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes film The Pearl Of Death (and subsequent spin offs featuring The Creeper, even though the character died in the aforementioned Sherlock Holmes film). The Rondo Awards are named in his memory.


Q20. 
Which incredibly famous actor was fired by (or left the employment of, depending on who tells the story) Akira Kurosawa after less than one day working on a film? What was the title of the film and who replaced the lead actor after this incident had occurred?
A20. 
Famous Zatoichi actor Shintaro Katsu was relieved of his duties by Kurosawa on the set of Kagemusha. He was replaced by Kurosawa regular Tatsuya Nakadai.


And that's that, for this year's quiz. Hope you all had a good time with it... and I hope some of you learned some new movie trivia if you didn't already know this stuff.

Studies in Terror: Landmarks of Horror Cinema

Terror Firma

Studies in Terror: Landmarks of Horror Cinema 
by Jonathan Rigby
Signum Books ISBN: 0956653448

I don’t often review the books I read. Mostly because there’s always “the next film” to write about and sometimes I just don’t have time to do absolutely everything. However, I just wanted to give a little shout out to this book, Studies In Terror: Landmarks Of Horror Cinema by Jonathan Rigby because, although I have my usual reservations about this kind of tome, I did find it very helpful and had a few good times off of the back of it.

To explain...

I did a seven day countdown to Halloween back in October with a different horror movie reviewed every night. Quite unusually, for me, I actually liked pretty much every movie I reviewed for that week and I’d seen none of them before (also a bit unusual). Three of those titles were watched and included from among a fistful of movies that I’d not heard of before reading this book... so if it hadn’t been for this invaluable volume, I wouldn’t have been able to include Pontypool (reviewed here), Outcast (reviewed here) and Splinter (reviewed here) in my Halloween week reviews.

Now this book does have some large gaps in that the author is more into “favourite moments” from his favourite horror films... as opposed to what many would regard as essential. The original Universal incarnations of Dracula and The Bride Of Frankenstein, for instance, aren’t even included. Horror purists are really going to be driven crazy by many such omissions like these. To be fair to the author, though, he does at least try to tackle these omissions in his opening salvo and his insistence that the book is a collection of “moments of terror” is, at least, a token response to the obvious one that you also have gialli or common or garden thrillers highlighted over some of the more ‘classic’, actual horror films he could have included.

I confess, I wasn’t happy, but...

He kinda won me over. This is an excellent book and whatever you may think of Mr. Rigby’s skills in the ‘list compiling’ department, he does have a very good eye for digging out some really great movie experiences which, so far, have all turned out to be well worth my time. I was also secretly pleased he was happy to include a couple of movies which I personally would consider classics of the genre, but which writers of such compendiums seem to be largely ignoring so far... namely Werewolf Of London and The Descent.

The design of the book is very pleasing to somebody like myself who likes a simple, functional structure to the reading material on offer. Each decade from the early 20th Century up until present is represented, with a little introduction on the decade in question. This is followed by a load of movies, each of which take up exactly two pages of description of his favourite moments of that movie, along with a small overview on what else was going on simultaneous to this movie (including any influences it may have had), an incomplete set of statistics of the film (director, some of the main actors, composer etc.) and then a tiny sampling of extracts from reviews of the film, almost all of which are cotemporary to the time in which the film was released. This last little section from each movie is something to particularly relish as it does include a lot of very bad, ill tempered reviews of movies which have outraged various reviewers... many of which have gone on to become the classics of today. Wonderful stuff.

Once I’d accepted the inclusion of such ‘totally non-horror” movies as Les Diaboliques and Psycho 3, I was able to allow myself to enjoy reading the work of someone who has especially good taste in movies and the way in which they get under your skin. Using the option of ‘buying stuff really cheap for a couple of quid each’ at Amazon, in combination with some of the films in this book, I ordered not only the three I mentioned above, but also The Skull, Anatomie, The Tenant and Left Bank, and am greatly looking forward to watching and reviewing those ones for you also.

All in all, a very different kind of book than I was expecting, and not just your run of the mill ‘book of lists’ that have passed for expensive paperweights in recent years. Once you can get past the worrisome and always problematic issue of the author’s twisted view of what defines a horror movie, you will find this book well worth your time and a much more helpful book than some others you may have resting eruditely on your shelves of late. One word of warning though... because of the nature of the main thrust of this book in finding the best, unsettling moments, this one does kind of weigh in as a massive book of spoilers. While I was grateful for the discovery of Pontypool, for example, I knew what was going to happen to one of the characters long before it actually does. This is a shame but it is a kind of double edged sword so, I guess its “caveat emptor” time as to whether you want to risk the trade off. I’m glad I did... and can only recommend this book heartily to any fans of horror movies out there.