I’m fond of this goofy 1980s com­edy about two whiz-kids who are scammed into work­ing on a mil­i­tary laser project by a mega­lo­ma­niac sci­en­tist. William Ather­ton played his patent­ed “ass­hole” vil­lain. Val Kilmer, who played the extro­verted stu­dent, went on to a high-pro­file film career. Gabriel Jar­ret, who played the intro­vert, did not (it was per­haps an omen that his name was mis­spelled in the cred­its). His role was writ­ten with a degree of psy­cho­log­i­cal real­ism, despite the absurd com­edy plot. For once, the love inter­est isn’t a bomb­shell babe who is “plain” because she wears glass­es and ties her hair back, then sud­denly whips them off and unties her hair in the final scene. Instead, she is rep­re­sented as extreme­ly geeky. Boy geek falls for girl geek in a rel­a­tively cred­i­ble way. For that alone, the film deserves some kind of award.

Amer­i­can film­mak­er Robert Fla­her­ty found fame pro­duc­ing and direct­ing what we would today call “docu­d­ra­mas”, about peo­ple in exot­ic places. His first film, Nanook of the North (1922) about an Inuk hunter in the Cana­di­an arc­tic, was a world­wide suc­cess. The film was act­ed out and staged in a way that dis­qual­i­fies it as a “doc­u­men­tary” in the sense we use the word today — Nanook was real­ly named Allakar­i­al­lak, his “wife” was­n’t his wife, and so on, but there were no rules about such things at the time. It real­ly amount­ed to what his­tor­i­cal re-enac­tors do today. Fla­her­ty fol­lowed this suc­cess, over the years with Moana (1926), set in Poly­ne­sia, Man of Aran (1934) set on an Irish coastal island, and Ele­phant Boy (1937), which turned a young Kan­nadi­ga boy from Mysore, Sabu Dasta­gir, into a Hol­ly­wood movie star.

But to my mind, Fla­her­ty’s great­est achieve­ment was his last fea­ture film, Louisiana Sto­ry (1948). It was com­mis­sioned by the Shell Oil Com­pany to con­vey the “romance” of the intro­duc­tion of an oil rig to the Louisiana bay­ous. This is the sort of idea that would leave an audi­ence cold today, but it no doubt was com­pletely sin­cere in 1948. But Fla­herty wasn’t much inter­ested in oil rigs. He was inter­ested in the exot­ic atmos­phere of Cajun life in the bay­ous and in the inno­cent won­der­ment of the boy. Fla­herty usu­ally took real peo­ple and made movies about them. But in this case, a nar­ra­tive was con­trived, and a local boy, Joseph Boudreaux played a char­ac­ter in rea­son­ably true-to-life scenes. He was so pho­to­genic that the cam­era hard­ly ever left him. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy, by Richard Lea­cock, was crisp and evoca­tive, all the more impres­sive because the light­ing con­di­tions must have been dread­ful. The swamps of the bay­ou loomed like some fan­tas­tic, alien land­scape. A bonus was the superb music by Vir­gil Thomp­son, a com­poser who once loomed large in Amer­i­can con­cert halls, but is unfor­tu­nately neglect­ed today. Boudreaux, by the way, grew up to be an oil rigger.

Fla­her­ty prepar­ing Joseph Boudreaux for a scene.

The plot is lift­ed straight out of Wal­ter Scott’s The Tal­is­man. The char­ac­ters spout ridicu­lous speech­es, espous­ing mod­ern sen­ti­ments, which would be high­ly improb­a­ble com­ing out of the mouths of twelfth-cen­tu­ry peo­ple. But who cares? The bat­tle sequences at the end are mag­nif­i­cent. Medieval siege tech­niques, with rolling siege tow­ers and tre­buchets, were every bit as spec­tac­u­lar as mod­ern attacks with smart bombs and mis­siles. Visu­ally, the his­tor­i­cal detail seems fair­ly accu­rate to me. Rid­dley Scott always does some­thing worth look­ing at, even if he some­times has struc­tural prob­lems in sto­ry-telling. Visu­ally, his instincts are always on the mark.

(Fletch­er 1986) Black­ad­der II: Bells
(Fletch­er 1986) Black­ad­der II: Head
(Fletch­er 1986) Black­ad­der II: Potato
(Theak­son 1994) Cadfael:Ep.4 ― Monk’s Hood Read more »

I’ve nev­er under­stand why this won­der­ful film had such a poor crit­i­cal recep­tion. Crit­ics com­plained that they could not fol­low the sto­ry. In fact, this medieval mys­tery, a lov­ing trib­ute to Conan Doyle’s Sher­lock Holmes sto­ries, by Umber­to Eco was very faith­ful­ly trans­lat­ed to the screen. Every­thing is per­fect­ly clear if the view­er actu­al­ly pays atten­tion (which I have not noticed film crit­ics being par­tic­u­lar­ly good at). All the per­for­mances are good, but Sean Con­nery, as the Frances­can detec­tive William of Baskerville, is superb. You can tell when an actor under­stands, not only the mean­ing and con­text of his lines, but their impli­ca­tions as well. Yes, the film is slow­ly paced, and requires some effort from the view­er to appre­ci­ate. But it has moments of great beau­ty, espe­cial­ly when William’s char­ac­ter is revealed in his inter­ac­tions with his novice, Adsel of Melk (Chris­t­ian Slater). I strong­ly rec­om­mend this film.
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Cyra McFad­den’s odd­ball satire of life in Marin Coun­ty, an afflu­ent sub­urb north of San Fran­cis­co, dur­ing the late 1970’s, was made into a film in 1980. I showed this won­der­ful lit­tle piece of cul­tur­al time-trav­el to a young friend. Noth­ing could bet­ter show how much a cul­ture can trans­form in a gen­er­a­tion or two. For him, it was a voy­age to anoth­er plan­et, with incom­pre­hen­si­ble val­ues, cus­toms and jar­gon. Even for me, who was exposed to Marin coun­ty not too many years after­ward, the movie seemed bizarre. A lot of water has passed under the bridge. The film, star­ring Mar­tin Mull in the lead role of a mid­dle-aged hus­band over­whelmed by incom­pre­hen­si­ble trends and psy­chob­a­b­ble, cap­tured the ambiance per­fect­ly. McFad­den’s work was noth­ing like the scor­pi­on vicious­ness of a New York­er’s satirist— it was pure Stephen Leacock.

I love all of the “Mid­Somer Mur­ders”. John Net­tles (as the Chief inspec­tor) and Daniel Casey (as his bone-head­ed side-kick). The pro­duc­tion val­ues are first-rate, the act­ing top-notch, the scripts are well-writ­ten. Every one of the tiny, pic­turesque vil­lages in the fic­tion­al Eng­lish coun­ty of Mid­Somer is seething with hate, jeal­ousy, secret sins, thwart­ed ambi­tions, star-crossed love, kinky sex, and mur­der, mur­der, mur­der. Detroit and South L.A. have noth­ing on Mid­Somer vil­lages like Bad­ger’s Drift, Ferne Bas­set, Aspern Tal­low, and Mid­somer Mal­low. Styl­is­ti­cal­ly, the def­i­nite­ly sits in the “cosy” tra­di­tion of Eng­lish mys­ter­ies, the her­itage of Agatha Christie. Net­tles cre­ates one of the most like­able fic­tion­al detec­tives on the screen. There are plen­ty of neat lit­er­ary ref­er­ences to catch (espe­cial­ly to Jacobean dra­ma) for those who take plea­sure in such things, and plen­ty of wit­ty jibes at con­tem­po­rary mores for those who are more present-ori­ent­ed. The mys­tery plots are absurd­ly improb­a­ble, in the best Agatha Christie tradition.

This is the final episode in Schama’s series, and the best. The “two Win­stons” of the title are Win­ston Churchill, and “Win­ston Smith”, the fic­tion­al hero of George Orwell’s 1984, which Schama uses to refer to Orwell him­self. Fol­low­ing the lives of these two obvi­ous­ly very dif­fer­ent men, Schama explores sev­er­al dimen­sions of Britain’s social and polit­i­cal his­to­ry in the 20th Cen­tu­ry. His nar­ra­tive is wit­ty, intel­li­gent, and orig­i­nal. His com­ments on both men are right on the mark. I can tell that Schama got to know Orwell through his remark­able diaries and jour­nal­ism, which were pub­lished in paper­back in the 1970s, and made a pro­found impres­sion on all sorts of peo­ple (myself included).

Schama is an aston­ish­ingly pro­lific Eng­lish his­to­rian who has pro­duced some of the most read­able his­tory books of this gen­er­a­tion. It turns out that he has a good per­son­al­ity to present his ideas on tele­vi­sion, and this series is extreme­ly enter­tain­ing. It also gets bet­ter as the series goes. Schama is most at home in “mod­ern” his­tory (i.e. six­teenth cen­tury onward). So he rush­es through through every­thing up to the Nor­man con­quest in the first episode. The next two episodes focus on the Nor­man and Angevin kings and their soap-oper­at­ic strug­gles (every­one hold up their hands who pic­ture Eleanor of Aquitaine as Kather­ine Hep­burn). The first three episodes are not as good as the ones that fol­low. When Schama gets into the areas of social and eco­nomic his­tory that he’s most com­fort­able in, the series becomes excellent.

I have to be the only per­son who went to this movie to see the scenery and the sheep. A long time ago, I was a shep­herd. I spent two and a half years work­ing var­i­ous sheep farms. So I’ll skip mak­ing the obvi­ous com­ments about this movie. The March­ing Morons, in their tens of mil­lions, are no doubt up in arms about this “gay west­ern”. But there’s no point in debat­ing with igno­rant sav­ages, so I won’t waste my time doing so. See the film. It’s not a mas­ter­piece, but it’s a well-craft­ed love sto­ry and char­ac­ter study with some superb act­ing. Now, I wasn’t par­tic­u­larly eager to see a sto­ry about true love mud­dled and thwart­ed by a dumb cul­ture. But Rodri­go Pri­eto is a good cin­e­matog­ra­pher, and I am home­sick for moun­tains. Well it didn’t take me more than a few min­utes to fig­ure out that it couldn’t have been filmed in Wyoming, where the sto­ry is set. A few of the estab­lish­ing shots were of the Tetons, but most of the time the moun­tains looked all wrong. Those huge diag­o­nal slabs with caste­late peaks, and unbro­ken mass­es of dou­glas fir and spruce sweep­ing down into crys­talline lakes in deep intra­mon­tane trench­es — well, that’s Cana­dian Rock­ies [see pho­to above]. Wyoming moun­tains have a dif­fer­ent look.

The bane of film authen­tic­i­ty: inac­cu­rate sheep.

The sheep. Well, there was some stuff that was right. The old Euskalduna with a beret is some­thing you would have seen in that time and place. Some of the work the main char­ac­ters where shown doing was cor­rect. But all the sheep were fresh­ly shorn and marked, and they were still fresh­ly shorn and marked after they had sup­pos­edly been pas­tur­ing up in the moun­tains for months! There wasn’t a din­gle­berry in sight. The main char­ac­ters where not shown inter­act­ing with the dogs, which were nowhere to be seen, most of the time. Take note, Ang Lee, I’ll be watch­ing… next time, get the sheep right.