Kiss of Death - let's toss an old lady down the stairs

WHY I LOVE STREAMING

 You know, I consider myself something of a film buff - I'm a life long film fan and my leanings tend to go more towards classic movies.

 

Westerns, - love those.

Film Noir - Bring them on.

 I've got a large DVD, Bluray and 4K collection - I've been buying DVD's since day one, and over the years have moved to Bluray. I also pick up a 4K issue from time to time - Mind you, my 4K collection is a lot smaller than my DVD or Blurays, but then I don't consider 4K to be that much of a jump from Bluray, in terms of picture and audio quality, but that's an argument for another post. 

 

It's streaming I want to talk about and why I think, as a physical media collector it is the best thing to happen since those cranky old VHS tapes were replaced by the shiny discs. 

You see, I do stream shows - I've binged the new remastered Beatles Anthology on Disney this past week, and I do enjoy Prime's Bosch. Netflix too, has some gems amongst a lot of crud.

 

When I settle down of an evening - a glass of whisky, feet up then it's an old movie I reach for - Last night I watched the new 4K restoration of John Ford's Quiet Man. Blown away is an understatement! 

That was physical media, of course since finding a classic movie, that something you fancy, on the various streaming platforms is....well, good luck with that. 

And when you do find something you fancy they are never broadcast in the same quality as a good physical disc. Bandwidth, you see. 

And of course titles can be removed from streaming platforms at the drop of a hat, but my discs are always on my shelves.

 So why love streaming?

 All I've done above is illustrate how inferior streaming is compared to owning the film physically.

I've highlighted how owning titles physically is the only option for the true cinephile. 

 

Still I love streaming.

Why? 

 Well you see, since streaming became mainstream the bottom of the market as fallen out of the physical market, which means you can now pick up blurays for next to nothing. This week I trawled the charity shops and got ten blurays, one of these was a 4k Apocalypse Now, for ten quid.

 

That's thanks to streaming. 

I love streaming! 

 

The Rise, fall and rise of Hollywood

 1946 was a bumper year for Hollywood - demobbed soldiers were eager for films to entertain them and their dates . after the uncertain war years. That year American cinemas sold more than 4000 million tickets and produced a total box office take of just under $1700 million. That figure would not be matched until 1974 when cine

mas sold only a quarter of the number of tickets but inflation made things look better than they truly were.

Today the cinema is as vibrant as ever(financially if not creatively) but in the years immediately following 1946 movie moguls were convinced they were witnessing the death of cinema. Not only were they selling less and less tickets each year as the new medium of Television worked its way into more and more homes but the industry was altered by new laws which created distrust and paranoia in the creative camps. Between 1946 and 1948 movie attendances dropped by 16.9% but what was worse for the major American studios was the interest the government was showing in the cosy cartels that controlled Hollywood. From the mid-Thirties, the Department of Justice had been trying to break the stranglehold the major studios had over independent cinemas. The aim was to force the majors into selling off their highly lucrative cinema chains. But as the majors made most of their money from distribution they resisted. AS far back as the early Thirties the Department of Justice had brought legal cases against the major studios but these were delayed by the war. However in 1946 the Department of Justice started to strip away the powers of the major studios.

The war years had already seen Hollywood have to make major changes in the films they produced - their foreign markets, with the exception of Britain, had become out of bounds. Attempts had been made to create a larger market in South America with the Carmen Miranda films but this would never replace the loss suffered by the closing of the lucrative French, German and Italian markets. When the war ended and the markets opened back up it would seem Hollywood was once again onto a certain winner but soon the way they did business would be gone forever. Old Hollywood and the so called studio system was about to die, killed by the Department of Justice and their anti-trust laws.

When the world market opened up after the war it was only the US that had an abundance of film stock - in 1946 20 films were made in the Soviet Union, 54 in Italy and 432 in America. Films from the US dominated Europe with most of the profits coming back to the Hollywood studios. In 1948 France would rebel against the system and only allow only $3.6 million of a $14 million take to go back to America. The UK for their part would only allow £17 million to go to the US while $40 million remained tied up under foreign exchange regulations.

The next problem for Hollywood was with their labour. Post war prices meant that wage structures had to be improved. There was a major strike at Warner Brothers in 1946 and now that the unions were being closely scrutinised by the government it made the earlier practice of the studios paying off union bosses impractical. Ronnie Reagan was a union leader during this period.

The movie industry was in a state of turmoil when in the late 40's the House Un-American Activities Committee starting to take an interest in the film industry. The flimsy alliance between the US and Russia broke down after the war and there was paranoia that movies made in America, by American were spreading communist propaganda. At the infamous hearings Jack Warner, eager to explain several pro-Soviet movies made during the war, said that communist writers were poking fun at the US political system and picking on rich men. Blacklists were quickly drawn up of actors, writers and directors suspected of having communist leanings. It was revealed by the committee that Danny Kaye's real name was Daniel Kamirsky and June Havoc was actually June Hovick. This was enough to stop these two performers finding work for a long while and of course there was the jailing of the infamous Hollywood Ten

Communist paranoia entered the American psyche. John Wayne played Big Jim Mclain, an heroic investigator for the committee in 1952. And such was the paranoia felt by the studios that by the time McCarthy arrived on the scene in 1951 Hollywood was politically clean.

At the end of the 50's Television had gained a place as the entertainment of choice for the masses. However more films were made in 1950 than 1946 as a leaner and fitter Hollywood emerged.

2015 and all that

2015 was a busy year for me - as well as penning a new western, Riding the Vengeance Trail (out May 2016), I found myself working on two major non fiction projects Cardiff and the Valleys in the Great War saw publication from Pen and Sword Books during the summer, while Dark Valleys, a look at historical murders that have taken place in and around the South Wales Valleys will see print during 2016.

I'm still writing and polishing the latter title - my deadline looms a month away, and I'm pleased with the way the work is shaping up. The research threw up some interesting avenues of investigation, and I was able to share some new information with the police regarding a cold case from 1993 - but you'll

be able to read about that later in 2016 when the book sees print. Ive also signed another contract for a follow up to my first world war study, -  Cardiff at War 1939-1945 will likely see print during mid 2017, but I'll be starting the work on this title immediately following the delivery of the manuscript for Dark Valleys to my publisher.

During the summer, May to be precise my western, The Man From Jerusalem saw print, and sadly turned out to be my last western for Robert Hale, the publishing house that first put me into print. In Dec 2015 Robert Hale shut up shop after more than 80 years in the publishing business. They had my forthcoming, Riding the Vengeance Trail under contract and to say I was dismayed is an understatement. Still there was a silver lining in the shape of Crowood Publishing who are to continue the Black Horse Western line and my book is to see publication in May as originally scheduled. Still I'm going to miss Robert Hale and owe them a great deal.

Several of my older titles are to be republished by the wonderful Piccadilly Publishing - Tarnished Star and Wild Bill Williams will be the first two - Tarnished Star now goes under a different name, LawMaster in order to tie into a film version, that director Neil Jones is developing.

I'm pleased to be publishing with Piccadilly Publishing and plan to pen a new western for them during the first few month of 2016. And I'm hoping that the company will be able to put me westerns before a new and larger audience.

Piccadilly Publishing is the brainchild of longtime Western fans and Amazon Kindle Number One bestselling Western writers Mike Stotter and David Whitehead (a.k.a. Ben Bridges). Since 2012 the company has been bringing back into 'e-print' some of the most popular and best-loved Western and action-adventure series fiction of the last forty years.

They certainly have a high profile on the Internet and as you can see from the new cover art for, Wild Bill Williams they  mean business. As soon as the new editions are available I'll let you all know.

What have I enjoyed this year? Well there was a new Bond movie, Spectre and although not as strong as Skyfall it was a damn entertaining ride, Quentin Tarantino delivered a great western in The Hateful Eight and there was another bloody Star Wars movie. I didn't visit the big screen as much as usual in 2015 (Im getting tired of superhero movies) but I did follow some great TV - the second season of Fargo was even better than the excellent first, and The Walking Dead returned for a new season and seemed to be back on form. Hell on Wheels also returned to the small screen and so far the first half of the fifth and final season has been aired - I enjoyed it overall but think the show is starting to power down. Still the mid-season climax was exciting stuff and I'm eager for the conclusion early in the new year. There was also a TV pilot, thanks to Amazon, of Edge, the western character created by George G. Gilman. And whilst not brilliant the pilot did show promise so fingers crossed.

What books stick in my mind? Well I very much enjoyed the new Bond novel, Trigger Mortis by Anthony Horowitz. Stupid title aside it was a bloody good read that managed to feel like Fleming was once again pounding the keyboard. This year also saw Stephen King publishing the first two books in the Bill Hodges Trilogy and I think these books are among the best he's ever written - Mr Mercedes and Finders Keepers kept me turning the pages. A lot was made of the fact that these were straightforward crime thrillers with no supernatural elements, but to me they felt like vintage King and the characters were as good as ever. End of Watch, the final book in the trilogy will be published this coming summer and I can't wait to finish the story.

I also read a fair few westerns this year - going through the entire Lonesome Dove series in chronological order rather than publication order, and found that I was noticing a lot of continuity errors when read in this way. I also caught up with classic westerns thanks to new eBook editions and have especially enjoyed rediscovering Herne the Hunter. I also  read a lot of crime fiction this year - The Girl in the Spider's Web was a worthy continuation of Stieg Larsson's Millenium series. No one could have expected this book to stand up alongside the original classics but author, David Lagerchrantz seems to have managed it. We lost Ruth Rendell this year and Dark Corners was published as a posthumous work. The author had all but completed the book when she died in May and all that remained was for some polishing. I very much enjoyed this book and was deeply saddened by the death of the author. The world of fiction also lost another of its great voices this year, when Terry Pratchett passed away in March. His final Discworld novel, The Shepard's Crown came out during August and although I picked up a copy on publication day I have yet to read it. It sits in my TBR pile and will be tackled soon.

During 2015 eBook sales seem to have levelled off but the industry is still strong - of course the year started with the tremors resonating from the Amazon/Hatchette book pricing row but now that the industry has matured somewhat it was inevitable that sales would even off. Though eBooks are still doing the business and look set to continue doing so. All in all though it was a calm year with Amazon upgrading the excellent paperwhite device, and admitting that their prestige Voyage eBook reader failed to find the market. In truth the Paperwhite device is so good that there is no need to try and top it. And whilst the Voyage may be the best eBook reader out there it is simply too expensive and is, let's face it, not that much better than the Paperwhite.

And so we fast forward into 2016 - on a personal note I've got the birth of my first grandchild to look forward to, and I'm hoping to get a couple more books written. As well as the contracted titles, I've set myself a target of writing at least three novels during the coming year. I certainly need to get the fourth Granny Smith novel done and somewhere in the back of my mind I can feel another Jack Martin novel taking shape-still we'll talk about all that at the end of the year.

Why I'm fed up of Movie Blockbusters

One of the movies I was looking forward to in 2013 was Man of Steel, the umpteenth reboot of the Superman franchise. As soon as I heard Batman's Christopher Nolan was involved and that the Supes story would be given a darker edge, somewhere along the lines of the Dark Knight trilogy I was hooked, but what did I get? - a generic blockbuster that was big on spectacle but low on heart. This Superman was mean and moody and whilst there were some nice touches the film quickly turned into a video game. It may have been breathtaking to see a skyscraper being brought down but gazillions of them suffering the same fate was overkill. And Lois Lane on a spaceship talking to Superman's dad - WTF?

And then there was The Hobbit, Peter Jackson's return to Middle Earth after the triumph of his Lord of the Rings trilogy. But the money men get involved and one slim story was stretched out into three movies. The first part was far too long, with too little happening for large chunks of the running time. We've still got the final two movies to go but I certainly won't be going to the cinema, not after the yawnfest that was the Hobbit. I certainly don't want to sit through another two movies if the first was any indication of how they would go - in fact I'd find it less painful to have my testicles chewed on by a rabid hamster. I never thought it

would happen but after the Hobbit I am finding myself Bored of the Rings.

What happened to characters? Storytelling? And all that jazz?

The problem is that even truly stupid franchises like Transformers make big bucks, no scub that, - massive bucks, so they'll keep making them. It is likely that the forthcoming Superman/Batman movie will make huge profits and yet, believe it or not, I can't be bothered to muster up a single iota of excitement. I might have been more interested had the Man of Steel been better.

I usually go to the cinema at least twenty times in a year but we're about to enter the final month of 2013 and I've only been to the cinema five times this year. I ended up skipping Iron Man 3 and catching it on DVD and although I really enjoyed the Avengers I think I've had enough of superhero movies. I loved the Nolan/Batman series but the third film let the side down with those tacked on endings that undid everything good about the franchise. I can just about excuse the Alfred/Bruce cafe scene. That made sense given revelations in the movie, but the autopilot thing - I mean,come on!

Amongst all this there was one summer blockbuster that was rather cool and yet it bombed at the box office - I'm talking the Lone Ranger, a summer blockbuster that was actually good but as I say it bombed. Ah well there's no accounting for public taste...or maybe the lack of it. We live in a world where the Lone Ranger fails and Pacific Rim rakes in the cash.

Ah well...I guess the cinema is no longer the place for me but at least I have DVD and those movies made by true giants - the Hithcock's , the Ford's, the Scorcese's. And if I do want something not designed to sell action figures I can always turn to the television where the real deal resides these days. Television has traditionally been second to cinema but not any more. Shows like The West Wing, Sopranos, The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad stand head and shoulders above most of the travesties playing at your local multiplex.

So it's goodbye big screen and hello widescreen TV.

Confessions of a Teenage Movie Fan

Star Wars, Grease, Saturday Night Fever, scores of Kung Fu movies, Rollerball, Death Race 2000, Logan's Run, Django, The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, Dirty Harry, The Wild Bunch, Carrie, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Dracula AD 1972, Herbie goes Bananas - and those are just a few of the movies I remember seeing as a kid in my local cinema, The Workingmen's Hall in Gilfach Goch. Of course most of those movies were not suitable for a youngster, some of them were even certified X (the equal of today's 18) but when I was a kid you could walk into any movie. I remember even going to see Confessions of a Window Cleaner when I must have been about ten years old. The Confessions movie came out in 1974 when I was nine years old but that means nothing as films often took a good year to reach a small valleys town like Gilfach Goch. There were no video recorders in those days and often a film would be a couple of years old before it played the Workingmen's Hall.

A typical Workinmen's Hall interior

Ahh those were the days - There was nothing much to do in Gilfach Goch and we would visit the Workman's Hall whenever we could scrounge up enough money to do so. I don't think I ever missed a Sunday afternoon and more often than not I would go on a Friday night too. Friday was the night you took your girlfriend, if you had one, but if your mates were there you'd leave your girl to watch the movie while you larked about, throwing crisps or hardboiled sweets over the balcony. It was slightly more expensive to sit upstairs and so what we would do is pay for a downstairs seat and then when the movie started and the lights went down we'd go to the toilet and then sneak upstairs. Sometimes you'd get caught but more often than not you'd get away with it. Afterwards we would visit Mike's Chip shop and get a bag of chips before catching the bus home. If you didn't have enough cash for chips you could often scrounge a bag of scrumps (the small bits of batter left in the fryer)  for a couple of pence. These may sound horrid but they were actually quite delicious.


As incredible as it sounds I remember the local priest and his flock of bible bashers protesting outside the hall when the Exorcist was being shown, warning us that our soul would be dammed if we went in and saw the movie. I think that was the only film we were turned away from for being under-age. Absurd when we used to get into watch soft porn comedies like the Confessions and Adventures movies. In fact it wasn't until years later that I finally saw The Exorcist on video tape and what a load of tedious crap I thought it was.


The Workingmen's Hall closed sometime around the early 80's and then one Sunday afternoon vandals broke in to steal the old copper piping for scrap value and set a fire. The building was declared unsafe and demolished soon after. I was there that Sunday afternoon, walking past, when it happened and I remember watching the fire engulf the building and thinking even then of all the hours I had spent within its walls as a kid. In fact it was the Workingmen's Hall that gave me my life long love of the movies.

It's gone forever now as have many of the other Workingmen's Halls in the valleys. They were called Workingmen's Halls or Miner's Institutes because they were built with donations taken weekly from the wages of local workingmen.

"Gilfach Goch (English: Red Valley) is a small former coal mining village. It is reputed to have once been home to the author Richard Llewellyn who based his novel How Green Was My Valley in a fictional town assumed to be based on Gilfach Goch. Llewellyn would spend long summer holidays with his grandfather in the village."


It's sad and it's only when something's gone that you realise the true worth of the place. It was more than a building and over the years it had served as a place for communities to meet. When I was a kid in the 1970's the Hall was already past its best but for many years it served as venue for local dances, amateur dramatics presentations, Bingo nights and of course as a movie house. It also doubled as a soup kitchen during many of the various miners strikes.

It is as a cinema that I will always remember it and none of the multi-screen modern cinemas have the character that this building had. It's just a pity that we never really appreciated it as a kid. It was just a place to go and hang out, somewhere to take your girlfriend and get a kiss on the cheek or if you were lucky she'd let you stick your hand up her blouse. And when I struck lucky I don't think I washed my hand for a week afterwards.

Whenever something monumental like that happened we would boast to our mates - "She let me have top!". I can't recall anyone ever saying they were allowed to have bottom too. That would have been too much - you'd crash your skateboard just thinking about it.

I guess we never thought that one day it would be gone, as a kid you don't really think like that. But everytime I walk past the place where it once stood, and look at the modern houses built there, I think of the many happy hours spent in the Workingmen's Hall, of all the movies I saw there and of course of the first time I ever had top.

The lonesome cowboy

He rides alone, entering the screen while the main titles play and exiting, if alive, in the same way at The End. He is the movie and the landscapes and characters that make up the story would not exist if not for him. He is alone and will remain alone, never able to form a relationship, forever haunted by things he has seen or things he has done.

The lonesome cowboy, the drifter, has been a part of the western for as long as western movies have existed - from the early silents when Harry Carey and William S. Hart defined the character to the modern day with actors like Clint Eastwood carrying on the tradition. In the silents the drifter was usually a amiable fellow, a good bad guy if you like and it wasnt't until the 1950's when Hollywood began to tinker with the stereotype and create the derivative of the character that we know and love today, that the template was set.

He became the anti-hero.

 Alan Ladd's Shane (1953) is a perfect example of the mysterious drifter. He seems a good guy, a gentle soul but there is something about him that suggests he could become meanness personified at the turn of a coin. And with the coming of this hero the western landscape changed too as  the film noir style began to make its way into the western  - previously the landscapes had been clear, bright,  representing the spirit of the hero but with the later westerns the landscape became dark, twisted, crippled almost. There was now a surreal feel about the plains and deserts that had previously seemed so pristine. The lighting styles became more dramatic, moody and with this the drifter became a twisted mass of considerable complexity.

James Stewart played a great lonely avenger as Will Lockhart in The Man from Laramie and John Wayne gave us an even darker version of the same man as Ethan Edwards in The Searchers - both men have violent pasts, the precise details of which remain a mystery to the viewer.

Ethan Edwards though can not sit comfortably alongside the mythic drifter, for he is driven by a hatred, not of an individual or gang, but of an entire race. The characters played by James Stewart may have been driven by the lust for revenge also but that revenge is usually directed at those that have wronged the character, though Ethan Edwards hates the Indians simply because they are there. Ethan Edwards is not a nice character but The Searchers may be the finest western ever made.

Though he may have become a figure of darkness, the lonesome drifter is still a heroic character - a man who is self reliant and can survive any hardship thrown at him, and at his core he has strongly defined ideas of what is right and what is wrong.

Maybe the actor who has best personified this drifter is Clint Eastwood who played the character taken to the extreme in the dollar westerns, and  played variations of that character several times since in movies like, High Plains Drifter, Pale Rider and The Unforgiven. Eastwood's character could murder without remorse though still maintain a basic goodness at his core. The character was a result of the anti-hero being filtered through the ambiguous morality of the Sixties.

The character is still out there now, waiting to ride across the  screen again one day, reinvented for an all new generation.

For one things is certain - the lonesome cowboy will drift our way again.

The 3D headache

 FROM THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER

Hollywood's 3D revolution has changed the shape of the modern blockbuster and helped boost box office income for studios in an era of financial uncertainty, but not everyone thinks they're getting their money's worth and a minority complain of dizziness and headaches. Now, new research has for the first time supposedly offered proof that 3D offers no measurable improvement in enjoyment for the vast majority of film audiences.

According to a study of 400 filmgoers by L Mark Carrier, of California State University, 3D movies do not allow viewers to experience more intense emotional reactions, are no more immersive, and do not offer any advantage over their 2D counterparts in terms of enhancing the ability to recall a film's details. Carrier's study did, however, suggest that watching films in stereoscope increased threefold the risk of eyestrain, headache or trouble with vision.

"All other things being equal, I would say you're increasing your chances of having some discomfort," said Carrier at the America Psychological Association's annual meeting on Sunday. "There aren't going to be any benefits in terms of understanding the movie better or making the movie more meaningful, as far as we can tell," he added.

Participants in the research were asked to watch one of three films – Alice in Wonderland, Clash of the Titans and How to Train Your Dragon – in either 2D or 3D. They were then asked to detail their responses using a list of 60 words ranging from the mild, such as "enjoyment", to the more intense, such as "anger" and "rage". Carrier says there was very little difference between the response of those who watched in 2D and those who viewed in 3D, which surprised researchers.

"Many of us were like, 3-D movies are so cool, it's gotta do something," Carrier said. "It didn't seem to enhance your memory at all. That's an unfortunate implication."
The research is just the latest suggestion that the tide is turning against 3D. Many recent films shot in the format – a notable exception is Transformers: Dark of the Moon – have failed to offer a 3D box-office boost in the US, and film-makers are beginning to turn against studios that authorise cheap post-production conversions in the hope of achieving a short-term financial return.

Speaking at a presentation of his own 3D movie, The Adventures of Tintin, Steven Spielberg said at Comic-Con in San Diego last month that he hoped to see ticket prices for 3D and 2D films converge in the future.

"I am certainly hoping that 3D gets to a point where people do not notice it. Because once they stop noticing it, it just becomes another tool and helps tell a story," he said. "Then maybe they can make ticket prices comparable to a 2D movie and not charge such exorbitant prices just to gain entry into a 3D one. Hopefully someday there will be so many 3D movies, prices will come down – which I think will be fair to the consumer."

Horror's Golden Age

Horror tends to thrive during times of crisis, offering catharsis, escapism and a metaphoric means of coping with problems that seem unsolvable.

 
Historically this has always been the case. It certainly was true during the Great Depression, when Universal Pictures was rescued from bankruptcy by its golden age of horror film – Dracula, Frankenstein , The Invisible Man , the Creature from the Black Lagoon  and all the other creepy creatures that lit up the silver screen, offering escapism to cash strapped moviegoers. Right across the spectrum of modern media horror is booming – take the two biggest successes in popular literature over recent years – Harry Potter and Twilight and whilst neither are strictly horror they both use many of the conventions of the genre. TV shows like The Walking Dead and American Horror are massively popular, and of course HBO’s True Blood is still holding its own. The horror novel is most certainly on a high. There are some great writers out there from the well know masters such as Stephen King, Clive Barker, Jack Ketchum and others to relatively new names like Christopher Ransom, Joe Hill, Max Brook and (dare, I say it) Vincent Stark. The latter of course is wishful thinking since his debut horror novel, following a string of bestselling westerns,  isn’t due out till the end of the month and he is me

So why is it that during shitty times we turn to the dark side? Maybe it’s the increasingly polarized political landscape, generating so much us against them rhetoric. Perhaps it has something to do with all the  college students’ fears of  being unable to find work or middle-aged parents’ worries about keeping their homes.


Then again maybe its something to do with the fact that we, in Britain at least, have the Dark Party in government. Or maybe it’s just the fact that we, viewers,readers, like the safe scares that films and books provide. And whilst it is true that thought-provoking horror works are few and far between recent years have seen several horror novels of real depth – Låt den rätte komma by  John Ajvude Lindqvist , known by its Anglo title of Let the Right One In (I’ve not enjoyed a novel as much as this is years)is a masterpiece of literature whatever the genre, and Christopher Ransom has taken age old themes and twisted them through modern sensibilities. Both of these writers need to be read by anyone interested in the horror genre.   And it’s the same with film and TV and for every predictable slasher of the week flick you will find films and programs of true worth. Horror as a genre is changing, mutating and it is at last gaining some of the acclaim that has been denied it through snobbery for far too long. Stephen King is no longer considered a hack writer and real critics are dissecting his work  and finding relevance to the society we live in – something  all great writing mirrors.   And this is a good thing because for too long horror has been consigned to the ghetto and looked down upon with disdain and yet TV shows like American Horror Story, Being Human, The Walking Dead and True Blood are popular with mainstream audiences, horror novels are read by millions and fright films are always popular.


Yep this truly is a golden age for horror – and ain’t that just fine and dandy!

Conan and the apes

Been catching up on the summer movies now that the DVD screeners are doing the rounds - The new Conan was just awful, while Captain America was pretty good fun and Rise of the Planet of the Apes was bloody brilliant.

Why was Conan such a letdown? Well it was just battle after battle and some of these fights were so fast paced that it was difficult to see what was going on, who was besting who - not that it mattered since the film is just boring and there is no characterization of Conan other than just a beefcake with a sword. Such a shame because the world author, Robert E. Howard created for Conan deserved so much better than this.

Now Captain America on the other hand was a pretty good super-hero movie which was at least up to the standards of Iron Man and way better than either of the Hulk movies. It was a shrewd move to make the movie in period and give us the 1940 origins of the super soldier. The film could so easily have ended up ridiculous but instead Marvel have another triumph on their hands and the forthcoming Avengers movie which will team up the Marvel heroes we've seen in recent movies, is going to have a lot to live up to.

The real cracker of the bunch was Rise of the PLanet of the Apes - I'm a big fan of the original movie and wasn't expecting much from this one but WOW - this even wiped away the bad taste left by Tim Burton's naff remake. It presents a different origin to the ape rulers than we are used to, but if you think about it it doesn't contradict the events in the original Apes movie. Charlton Heston is still able to find the ruins of Lady Liberty and make the same conclusions, but maybe he was wrong. I'm not sure if the dates from the original movie tally up with Rise which is present day, but that's just too geeky.  And I'm certainly not going to look for continuity issues with the original ape sequels.

At the end of the day Rise is a great movie that adds to the Ape franchise, rather than sullie it.

The chimp, Ceaser who starts off the Ape revolution is an awesome creation and the biggest reason for the success of the movie. Created in the same way Gollum was brought to life in Lord of the Rings, and using the same actor Andy Serkis, the ape is an absolute triumph. Ceaser comes across as a real animal and we can really believe that he is a super intelligent ape, the result of his mother being injected with a new experimental drug. And by the end of the movie we are rooting for Ceaser and his ape army as they make moves to liberate themselves from the human masters. A sequel has been announced and on the strength of Rise it is something I'm very much looking forward to.

Changling

Eastwood directs the hot bird

The DVD's been sitting on my shelf for a few months now, but for some reason I hadn't gotten around to watching it till now. And you know I thought it was excellent. I knew nothing of the true story upon which it was based and I had purposely avoided all reviews of the film. I loved Clint Eastwood as a cowboy, cop and country crooner and I love him even more as a director. He makes the type of films they used to make - where story, acting and plot are much more important than special effects. I guess you could say he makes films for an intelligent, grown up audience.

Angelina Jolie is excellent in the role of the mother whose son is missing and so nuanced is her performance that the viewer is often unsure if she is indeed suffering from delusions and whether the kid the police have returned to her is indeed her missing son.  Of course any familiarity with the true life case upon which this film is based will forewarn the viewer about what is really happening, but the story is so gently yet powerfully played out, that the viewer is sucked into the movie. There's no escape until the final frame.

This is not the sort of movie I would usually watch and were it not for the fact that Eastwood, an all time idol of mine, directed it I probably would have avoided it.

Clint is known for being a very straight forward director. He shoots short days, he uses essentially the same simple score in all his movies and he avoids visual effects for the most part, all the while, however, he manages to make a lot of great movies and this is one of them.  There are two main special features on the DVD, one focusing on Angelina Jolie becoming the main character of Christine Collins, while the other is a quick, thirteen minute featurette on the making of the film.

Ahh well it's Invictus next for me, which has also been sitting, unwatched,  on my shelf for quite some time.

Hobo with a Shotgun

This is an astoundingly demented and brilliant film - it's in the tradition of exploitation cinema and indeed is a based on a winning trailer of the same name from Robert Rodriguez's South by Southwest Grindhouse trailers contest. The film has stoked up the ire of Britain's Daily Mail newspaper and as we all know anything that angers the  morons at the Mail is usually good. And this is good - better than good. OK it's extremely violent but it's cartoon violence and each and every time a character is decapitated or blown apart the body gushes gallons upon gallons of the red stuff.

Under the heading, Run This Hobo out of Town, The Daily Mail wrote - This noisy, bloody, aggressively decadent exploitation flick,  in which a homeless alcoholic ‘cleans up’ a preposterously corrupt American town — is based on a fake trailer attached to Grindhouse, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s 2007 celebration of all things brutal and sleazy.Its idea of fun is to show a girl having all her fingers chopped off by a lawnmower or a man having his head ripped off by a gangster while a hot babe in a bikini dances orgiastically in the ensuing fountain of blood.

But we ignore The Daily Mail and besides the Hobo of the movie isn't an alcoholic and the Mail are, as always, missing the point. The plot is of the seen it all before variety, but then that's the point with exploitation movies. It's supposed to be like that, you see and any movie starring the great Rutger Hauer is always worth watching.

"You can't solve all your problems with  shotgun."

"I've got to try."

It's hardcore splatter that tries to be as offensive as possible and to my mind is far better than Machete which was the other movie that sprung up from the fake trailers attached to the Grindhouse movies. The Hobo's highest aspiration is  the acquisition of a lawnmower in this convincingly excessive homage to cheap 1970s movies,



"Put the knife away or I'll use it to carve welfare cheques on your skin!"

I loved this movie - it looks like it was filmed in the 1970's, is acted and written in that style and never fails to entertain. There ain't nothing wrong with this movie which really isn't meant to be taken seriously and it does provide a brilliant ride. You'll be laughing one moment and wincing the next, on times your stomach will even churn. The climax is truly jaw dropping.

The violence is indeed extreme - people get blown away, splattered, cut up, burned up, arms and legs get broken, but it's all done in an absurd fashion. None of it is meant to be taken seriously and  there are flashes of demented brilliance in this hardcore crassploitation splatter pic.

You know what....I'm gonna's give the disc a second spin.

How the West was Won

HOW THE WEST WAS WON
Warner DVD set
Region 2


This land has a name today, and is marked on maps. But, the names and the marks and the maps all had to be won, won from nature and from primitive man.
I love this film but, as per usual, the Region 2 release comes with much less than the US region 1 issue. With region 1 you get two versions of the film - the super new widescreen version, the original cinerama cut as well as a forty page booklet.

The region 2 version contains the new widescreen cut split across two discs as well as all the supplemental material on a third disc. But no cut of the original three panel Cinerama release.

Cinerama was a short lived process in which the action was shot on three cameras set up parallel to each other, this giving a wider screen area. The trouble was it was an expensive process and only a few cinemas existed that could show it in true cinerama which projected the image onto three curved screens via three separate projectors. The third disc in this set contains an interesting documentary that looks at the shoot in great detail and contains some excellent behind the scenes shots of the film's legendary stars. In fact How the West Was Won was one of only two movies ever made using this process.

Still the new widescreen cut means that the film has never looked better.

And what a cast list.
John Wayne, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Debbie Reynolds.Gregory Peck, Karl Malden,Richard Widmark, Elli Wallach, Walter Brennan. Add to that galaxy of stars is Spencer Tracy doing the narration and a list of guest starts that would get top billing in most movies.

The film is split into sections and shows the fortunes of one family from the opening up of the west to the modern day. Indeed the final shot shows an American landscape transformed with miles upon miles of concrete roads with cars tearing across land that once carried wagons and horses. At the time the shot was intended to show how far Americans had come but these days the shot looks rather sad. In the modern age of global warming it shows how much of the landscape has been destroyed in the name of progress.

Each segment of the film has a different director - Henry Hathaway, John Ford and George Marshall with the Mountain Men and Civil War sequences particularly standing out.

The new DVD cut where computers have removed the cinerama effect and created a true widescreen image containing the full screen image is without doubt the best cut of the film available - but it would have been nice to have the original cinerama cut - though with cinerama the three dividing lines were visible (look at the Civil War image above) and from a distance actors faces became unfocused. The other pictures above are from the widescreen cut and from the vista behind James Stewart is is evident how good this cut is.

Some critics have called the film disjointed, the result of so many directors, but all the same it is a truly classic western and at 162 minutes is epic in every sense of the world. I'm glad this film is finally available on DVD and even without the original cinerama version it takes pride of place in my collection.

TRVIA :Stuntman Bob Morgan was seriously injured, and almost died, while performing a stunt in this picture. Toward the end of the film, there is a gunfight on a moving train between the sheriff and a gang of train robbers. Morgan was one of the stuntmen playing a robber and was crouched next to a pile of logs on a flatcar. The chains holding the logs together snapped, and Morgan was crushed by the falling logs. He was so badly hurt it took him five years to recover to the point where he was able to move by himself and walk unaided.

Plot holes: There is no explanation of why Sheriff Ramsey is fine in one scene and wearing a bandage on his forehead in the next, immediately following. (there was a deleted or unfilmed scene where Zeb knocked Ramsey out when the Sheriff tried to stop him from going after the train robbers).

AVATAR BLASTS STAR WARS

The Chicago Tribune carries the report than James Cameron's Avatar has now taken more than Star Wars in domestic ticket sales - "Avatar's" domestic total stands at $491.8 million after taking in another $41.3 million over the weekend, The Associated Press reports.

"Star Wars" made $460.9 million domestically in its original run and several reissues. Factoring in today's higher admission prices, "Star Wars" is ahead on tickets sold.

"Titanic" made $600 million; "The Dark Knight," $533.3 million.

PORK CHOP HILL 1959

Directed by Lewis Milestone
Starring Gregory Peck, Harry Guardino, George Peppard, Rip Torn and Harry Dean Stanton (early uncredited role)
97 mins black and white

This is a damn fine war movie and one of the few really good movies centered on the Korean conflict.

Gregory Peck is L.t. Joe Clemons a man in charge of leading his company against the Chinese at Pork Chop Hill. The hill is of no strategic value but for some reason that will become apparent as the film progresses the top brass are determined to take and hold the hill.

There's a deep anti-war message behind this story which is based on a true story and there are some great character scenes that highlight the mixed feelings the soldiers are experiencing.

Hard hitting and gritty and Peck is, as aways, magnificent.

The film is available in a pristine print in a budget release from MGM Video. The only extras are the original trailer but at this price it is a bargain.

Filmstar

Blackfish, a small independent publisher from Bath, are set to take on the big boys with their launch of their new film magazine, Filmstar. The company have had a huge success with their SCI-FI magazine, Deathray and they have now decided to take on the likes of Empire and Total Film with their new magazine.

In the first editorial, editor Mark Ramshaw outlines the fact that although Filmstar will cover all new releases it will also have a healthy amount of classic cinema features - The Archive praises this because there is definitely a gap in the market for classic film coverage.

Western fans should pick up the first issue for a great feature on John Wayne and the movies the magazine considers the Duke's core work. The films are The Big Trail,Stagecoach, They Were Expendable, Red River,She wore a yellow ribbon, Sands of Iwo Jima, The Quiet Man, The Searchers, Rio Bravo, The Alamo, The Man who shot Liberty Vallance, McLintock, True Grit. MQ and The Shootist. There are interesting reviews for each movie and the article makes great reading and published just in time for Wild West Monday too.

The magazines contains all the expected cinema news and reviews and certainly looks interesting - more intelligent than Total Film and with a broader reach than Empire.

Out now £3.99

GRINDHOUSE

Grindhouse
2007
Directed by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez

The deal is that these two movie would be stitched together, along with fake trailers and film damage to replicate the grindhouse theatre experience of the 70's but the film did poor business at the US box office and over in the UK, as well as many other European markets, we had to see the films separately when they were released as two separate movies.

This afternoon I replicated the grindhouse experience by watching both movies back to back.

Death Proof, billed as the fifth movie from Quentin Tarantino, Kill Bill (which was also originally intended to be one movie before being split into two) is film four, both of them.

Now back to Kill Bill - what disappointed me with this movie was how bereft it was of Tarantino's usual long pop culture dialogue sections which is pretty stupid in my opinion, take those away and all your left with is an action movie without a specific identity. Death Proof I'm pleased to say has those long sections, particularly in the diner for the first act of the movie, where there's pretty much nothing going on except for dialogue. And what brilliant dialogue it is as a group of young women discuss their boyfriends, jobs, blow jobs and lap dancing. They are being watched however by the sinister Stuntman Mike who sits at the bar nursing his drink and offering lifts to unsuspecting hikers.

Stuntman Mike has a very special car which he's made death proof, well as long as your sitting in the drivers seat that is. The stunts are incredible and there is only limited CGI used so most of what you're seeing was done for real. As a stand alone movie I would rate Death Proof as better than Kill Bill.

The second movie - I believe this was the first movie when the films came out - is Planet Death which is basically zombie hokum done with a sense of humour and some quality hammed up performances. There's a lot more CGI in this movie but then given some of the effects that is probably inevitable.


Grindhouse worked well for me as a double feature and did very much remind me of those days during the late Seventies when I would sneak into the cinema to watch all of those X rated movies. It didn't seem to matter how young you were in those days, our local cinema used to let us in to see anything that was on, including the soft porn of the Confessions movies.

Ahh those were the days - Grindhouse with its sections of damaged film and soundtrack problems replicates those days wonderfully.

GRAN TORINO

If this does turn out to be Eastwood's last acting role then it's a worthy swansong for the screen legend. I've just returned from the cinema where the audience didn't murmur for the surprise climax.

The film's still quite new and doing good business at the cinema so I don't want to give away anything for those of you yet to see the movie and I won't go into any major detail.

The films is coated with a thick vein of good humor which makes some of the darker sections that much more palatable but what the audience are really here for is to see Clint kick arse, which he does. But this is far from a mindless action flick and I must admit to having a lump in my throat at the end.

Excellence from a true Hollywood legend.

An absolutely wonderful movie.