Things that make me happy

Huzzah! At long last, the wonderful score to Island at the Top of the World has been released by Intrada! Thank you!! I've literally been waiting my whole life for this one to come out. When I was young, I'd recorded the beautiful main title by holding a tape recorder up to the television when the movie was aired. I think I finally wore that tape out. My, but this is so much better! This is a gorgeous, pristine copy of the score, with lovely packaging, and, needless-to-say, it's been playing on the stereo non-stop since I received my copy.

This soundtrack is my favorite Maurice Jarre film score of all time.

Grrr

So, what's up with the inability to have post comments emailed to you on blogger anymore?? The radio button to select the email option is gone on everyone's comment forms, and and I get zero email notifications except on my own blog. This vexes me greatly, as now, the only way to see if there's a response to my comment is to go remember where I commented the next day, and go back and manually check. I don't have time for that! I barely have time to post/read around here anyway. Email notifications were lovely and necessary and kept everything neat and tidy and timely.

This is annoying me greatly. Anyone have a suggestion or solution? Thanks!

The Assassination Bureau (1969)

Well! It looks like Netflix got a bunch of replacement DVDs in finally. All of a sudden, stuff that’s been in my “unavailable” section for months and months is back and ready to ship! I was expecting the next Mario Lanza movie yesterday, but this one came instead. That’s okay, I’m always ready for an Oliver Reed movie.

I'd guess you'd call this one a black comedy, and I would almost dismiss it… except one can never dismiss Oliver Reed, (nor Diana Rigg, his lovely co-star), and the film went all awesomely cool in the ending.

The movie is set in the early 1900s, and the plot involves Diana Rigg as a feminist journalist who uncovers the titular Assassination Bureau. To destroy it, she commissions a hit – on the head of the group, Ivan (pronounced the Russian way, thank goodness) Dragomiloff, played by Oliver Reed. And he accepts and turns into a challenge to his group. What follows is a romp across Europe as he evades his corrupt fellow board members and takes them out before they can get him. Diana Rigg follows him and gets sucked into it, of course. It’s more complicated than that, with Ivan upset that the Assassination Bureau, originally created to rid the world of truly evil people, has become nothing more than a hitman squad that takes money for their work and ignores the rest. Then, there’s the true villain of the piece, played by Telly Savalas, who takes over the Assassination Bureau when Reed goes on the run. Savalas intends to use the group start a war in Europe, and Reed becomes the good guy. Curt Jergens co-stars as one of the bad guys. Interestingly, this movie was based on an unfinished story by Jack London!

Anyway, mildly entertaining with some quite amusing almost-cartoon-like parts (not a bad thing at all) – mostly because Reed and Rigg are so very good at their acting jobs they make anything do they do enjoyable. And the ending! The ending made me sit up and grin. Minor spoilers ahead...

All the heads of state in Europe are meeting at one castle, and Telly's character intends to wipe them all out. How? By dropping a bomb from a zeppelin! Now, really, if you want to make a movie better, throw in a blimp. Blimps are awesome. Then let Oliver Reed loose on it. With a sword. Trying to stop the bad guys and their nefarious plan. And let him sword fight with the bad guys on the skinny little walkways inside. Oh yeah, I’m all over that. I don’t care how corny the special effects are. Oliver Reed, sword fight, a blimp... those three in the same sentence make me one very very happy girl.

So yeah, enjoyed it quite a bit in the long run! I only wish Diana Rigg had more of a part to play in the ending, though at the same time, the role she did have made sense. I just wanted more. I loved a section in the middle where she hears a persistent ticking in her hotel room and suspects a bomb is planted somewhere.

That Midnight Kiss (1949)

I grew up on Mario Lanza records (my dad loved listening to him), but strangely, I've never seen any movies with him. Well, after catching this clip of him singing one of the greatest and most exciting tenor arias of all time, I wanted to see more. You see, very few tenors can actually sing this aria well, and to my great surprise, Mario Lanza is one of them. (This is a short version of the aria, cutting out the best part of it, but what is there is fun.) When Lanza sings straight, he really is good. When he starts scooping up to his notes and getting schmaltzy, well, it's harder for me to listen to.



So, on to That Midnight Kiss, which was Lanza's screen debut. It's light-weight, cheesy but sweet, fluff. It made me smile; it made me roll my eyes. Lanza co-stars with Kathryn Grayson, whose soprano voice is a bit of an acquired taste, and a bit ear-piercing on those super high notes they insist she hit. Plot was slight, but that was just fine. It didn't need plot. Lanza plays a truck-driving opera singer who is overheard by Grayson and given a chance to replace a famous (but obnoxious) tenor in their new opera house. There's minor romantic complications that inexplicably get resolved simply by seeing each other again. Very Hollywood. I have no idea what the title has to do with the movie. And, they spend the whole opera rehearsing Lucia Di Lammermoor only to perform something else (non-operatic) in the finale. Um, okay then. Glad you guys worked so hard on that duet!

Ignoring all that, what made this one fun was the cast. Jose Iturbi (as himself) gets the funniest parts, as does Keenan Wynn and Jules Munshin. Ethel Barrymore is under-used, but always a presence in any movie she's in. The two leads are fine, with Lanza earnest and likeable in his screen debut. There's a few opera arias sung for me to enjoy.

So, not one I'd want to own, but I'm definitely glad I saw it.

The Big Bang (2011)

I can't say I'd recommend this film to anyone who usually follows me here -- it's a hard R film with lots of bad language, nudity, sex, etc. -- but this neo-noir film amuses me greatly, so I'll review it here anyway. I caught it on Netflix's streaming video a few months back, loved it so much, I immediately bought a copy of the DVD the very next day. I watched the DVD yesterday evening for my second viewing.

When I saw it the first time, the first thing that I loved was the fact that the film had opening credits! Full-on opening credits. Woo! Then the film begins, and I thought I was watching a re-make of Murder, My Sweet. The hero, a private detective named Ned Cruz (played superbly by Antonio Banderas), blinded, is sitting in an interrogation room with three cops. He's concerned about a woman, but none of the cops will tell him if she's okay until he tells them what happened to get him in this mess. The movie is mostly told in flashback, with Cruz narrating his story. The case Cruz was working on was locating a missing stripper for a giant of a man just released from prison. Things rapidly get complicated (as they do in Murder, My Sweet), this time with Russian mobsters, diamonds, and most uniquely -- with a reclusive billionaire who's built himself his own private particle accelerator under a town in New Mexico. Seriously. It's awesome.


This movie takes the classic old school detective movie formula and mixes it up with a bunch of physics! And it does it with a lot love and respect for old noir films from all involved, with the end result: a movie that satisfied my love of old movies with some new, interesting twists. Sure, I absolutely could have done without the language and graphic images, but I liked the rest enough to really enjoy it anyway. The first time I saw it, I wasn't expecting the physics angle, and the more references that kept popping up (a warehouse called Schrodingers, Planck's Constant Cafe, etc,), the wider I kept grinning. I used to work in the Physics & Astronomy dept at college, so this stuff is familiar and right up my alley.

So what do I love about this movie?

Well, first off, the cast. Two of my favorite modern actors star in this: Antonio Banderas and Thomas Kretschmann. They're why I watched the film in the first place, and both were great. Kretschmann, Delroy Lindo, and William Fichtner play the three cops, and they're all perfect, all distinct characters. Sam Elliott plays the crazy, obsessed billionaire, Sienna Guillory is the missing lady, and Robert Maillet plays Banderas's 7-foot-tall client. Everyone of them, and the other actors I didn't mention, fit their roles very nicely.

Second -- I really really love the way this movie is filmed. It uses color, smoke, and geometric shapes the way a b&w noir film would have. It's lovely, surreal, and since so many modern films seem to be flat and monochrome, the vivid colors here are a breath of beautiful, fresh air. I love that in the interrogation room, the colors are black, grey, or white (clothes/walls/etc.), where the flashbacks are all colors: vivid yellows, reds, blues, purples. It's a striking contrast that subtly feeds the narrative. The camera angles, the juxtaposition of circles and squares and triangles in just about every shot, the set decorations... all give this the feel of a noir film. Cruz's detective office has the classic neon sign outside flashing red letters. Love it! The houses at the end of the film seem almost like a bit of an homage to the beach house in Kiss Me Deadly.


Third -- I love that Ned Cruz is a true good guy, in the old sense. He's honest, he does his job well (even when he doesn't like what he's doing), he's smart, and he figures things out. He does his best to protect his client and make things come out right. His detective character was quite refreshing.

Fourth -- the plot gets more and more entertaining as it goes along, as the missing person's case intertwines with the billionaire's design to be the first to see the God particle. The wild finale was crazy and wonderful and just exactly right for what came before. (There is an epilogue that feels a bit tacked on, though. I kind of wish it ended before that, after this last hilarious line of Banderas's.)

Anyway, the dialogue is sharp and quite a few of the lines made me laugh out loud. I read some reviews and some people had trouble catching all the dialogue, and yes, Banderas's accent seems a bit thicker than normal, but I didn't have any trouble understanding him. Kretschmann is German, so this is a movie filled with lots of lovely accents. One of my favorite lines is from Banderas to Kretschmann: "We're just two migrant workers in the land of opportunity." LOL. My other favorite line (from Krestchmann) makes little sense out of context, but it makes me laugh and grin just thinking about it: "See, I like my aftershave, and I like the color of my shoes..." and I can't quote the rest because it might be a bit of a spoiler.

And I also love the Burma Shave signs.

Gun Glory (1957)

Ah, a Stewart Granger Western. Finally. This one co-stars Rhonda Fleming, Chill Wills, and James Gregory. I enjoyed it a lot, particularly the last twenty minutes. The rest of it is pretty standard Western fare, but the ending action and confrontations upped this movie a bit for me. It was just the right level of rousing and exciting and went exactly the way I wanted it to go to end satisfactorily.

Granger plays Tom Early, a man who turned to gambling and gunfighting and abandoned his wife and son and who is now seeking to return home and make amends. He has, of course, That Reputation, the one that young men fast with a gun want to challenge, the one the makes Early unfit company in a law-abiding town. The bitter, local shopkeeper (Jacques Aubuchon) wants Early out of town, especially when Jo (Rhonda Fleming), who lives at the general store, treats Early nicely. Chill Wills plays the local preacher who tries to keep the peace among everyone.

But Early has returned home too late, and he finds his wife has died and his son is now a young man full of bitter resentment at being abandoned. Early sets about trying to reconcile with Tom Junior. The son is played by Steve Rowland, and I personally felt he was the weakest link in the film. Not the character of the son, but the actor portraying him. He just didn't seem to fit the role he was playing.

The cool part of the movie is the main antagonist: James Gregory, playing one of those wealthy, I-can-do-what-I-want types that he's so good at. He intends to drive his herd of 20,000 cattle right through the valley where the new town is located on his way to the railroad -- right over the farmers that have have deeds and legal rights to that land, including Early. This was kind of different, and I really enjoyed the conscienceless James Gregory's attitude: "There weren't any people here the last time I drove cattle through, too bad they're here now, but they're in my way..." Having his cattle feed on their rich farmlands to fatten up is a nice bonus for him. His character of Grimsell is really quite despicable. Of course, he hadn't counted on Early (who he knows) living and owning land in this particular town, and he knows where the townspeople couldn't stop him on their best day, Early poses a distinct problem to his plan.

And so the fun begins.

I really loved everything having to do with the Cattleman vs. Town main plot. I loved how Chill Wills' preacher tries everything in his power to settle things honestly and legally and protect his people. I loved every time Gregory and Granger had a confrontation. I particularly love everything about Granger's single-handed plan to thwart James Gregory and how it plays out. It's pretty darned awesome. These are the strong points in the movie. Intermixed with those are the inevitable love story between Rhonda Fleming and Granger, and the father/son resentment/reconciliation. The script does nicely weave everything together so the subplots play into the main plot to reach the final outcome, so I really shouldn't complain. I just loved the action so much I wanted more of it. Granger fit very well in Western territory, I'm pleased to say, and I'm looking forward to more.

Moonfleet (1955)

Love the title of this film, though I was a bit disconcerted to find out it's just the name of the town in the film. This was a very dark movie, quite literally as well as figuratively-- there's only one scene filmed in daylight! This film drips with creepy, gothic atmosphere, accentuated by... guess what! Another Miklos Rozsa score! This film offers one of the creepiest statues I've ever seen. It was directed by Fritz Lang.

This film tells the tale of a newly orphaned boy, John Mohune (Jon Whiteley), sent by the dying request of his mother to stay with Jeremy Fox (Granger). Fox and the mother had fallen in love in their youth, with dire consequences for both. The mother presumes upon that brief, painful past to find a home for her son from a marriage to another man. Fox is wealthy, unmarried, dissolute, and leads a secret life -- wants no part of being responsible for a child. But John impresses Fox enough with his spunk that he ends up keeping him on. When John stumbles onto Fox's secret -- he's the ringleader for a bunch of smugglers in town -- Fox opts to send the kid to America, but things rapidly start going wrong. There's also various subplots. One about a lost treasure dovetails nicely with the smuggling aspect. There's multiple betrayals, some exciting escapes and chases, and that oppressive darkness that pervades everything.

I quite enjoyed this movie. Granger's a bitter, but self-assured and selfish bastard on the surface, but the movie gives him quite a bit of complexity beneath that. He has a sad, violent back story that explains why he won't let himself love anyone or care about anything anymore. His harsh past also explains why he leads the smugglers now. And because he has that past, and he slips and lets show what kind of a good man he could have been if fate hadn't derailed him, he maintained my sympathy throughout the film. The boy, of course, gets to him, brings out the better side of him. I liked their relationship, how much the boy sticks up for Fox, despite how Fox initially treats him. I liked watching priorities and goals shift for Fox throughout the film, how he changes because of both the boy and circumstances. Redemption is one of those themes of which I simply never tire.

There's one nice sword fight in the film... where Granger's opponent cheats and grabs a poleaxe instead of the proffered sword! Eep! Was a little worried how that lopsided match would turn out!

The always excellent George Sanders co-stars as an aristocratic friend of Jeremy Fox, who isn't exactly on the side of right himself. And Joan Greenwood, who was Granger's co-star in Saraband for Dead Lovers, is in this film as Sanders' wife, who also very openly and brazenly chases Granger. I can't say there's that many honest or upstanding people in this film! A young but unmistakeable Jack Elam has a small humorous part as one of the smugglers. And the poleaxe-bearing opponent is played by Sean McClory, who I love in Plunder of the Sun.

So, good cast, very creepy direction, great score, great dialogue... all in all, I have to say I really liked it. I watched this one on youtube and would really like to see it again on DVD (not sure it's available), as it was so dark on my computer monitor, I couldn't always make out the details. I think viewed on my television, it'd be considerably brighter.

I'd be remiss if I didn't add how much I have always loved this time period's clothes -- and how well Granger wears them. I think this is my favorite time period look for him, from the pigtail and tri-cornered hats, to the shirts and boots. Just adore it.

Which leads me into one other thought, switching topics... All those not interested in opera... fell free to click away now!

Since I'm such an opera lover, and since Tosca is my favorite opera, my sister and I often play casting games, where we try to select various sets of people to put in the lead roles. Sometimes it's combinations of opera singers who never performed together, sometimes it's actors. Tyrone Power is still my idea of the perfect cinematic Mario Cavaradossi (I went on about that once here). And I've always thought Deborah Kerr would make a perfect Floria Tosca. Scarpia has always been trickier, because there's so many different types of Scarpias, whereas the two protagonists are pretty cut and dried. So, depending on the dynamics I'm craving in Act 2, I often settle on very different casting choices. George Sanders would make an absolutely ideal Scarpia, along the Cornell MacNeil lines -- elegant and scheming, his dangerous, evil side camouflaged by that oh-so-suave exterior. So also, I realized while watching this movie, would Stewart Granger play a perfect cinematic Scarpia, but he's more the Sherill Milnes type -- more outright threatening physically, charming but not so smoothly urbane, and twice as dangerous a villain because he's sexy on top of it all.

In Moonfleet, Granger's character's entrance was so much like Scarpia's entrance in Tosca that I was singing Scarpia's first words "Un tal baccano in chiesa! Bel rispetto!" for him. Kind of shocked me when he didn't start speaking Italian like the moment required. LOL! But the flung-open door, the pose, the whip, the outfit, the expression of distaste... wow. Quite utterly perfect. I haven't had the chance to share that entrance with my sister, but I can't wait to!