To answer these trivia questions, please email me at scinema@earthlink.net.
Brain Teasers:
Which Spanish actor, who made Westerns, retired to become a painter?
It was Leo Anchóriz.
Which American actor who made Italian Westerns remembers getting along with Klaus Kinski both on and off the set?
No one has answered this question yet.
Which Italian actress who made an Italian Western found Klaus Kinski very easy and charming with which to work?
No one has answered this question yet.
Which American actress who made an Italian Western was reported by Klaus Kinski to be the object of lust from Marlon Brando?
No one has answered this question yet.
Which American director of a Western made in Spain used to be a film editor at Universal Pictures?
No one has answered this one yet.
Which Mexican actress appeared in an Italian Epic film alongside an actor born in Spain to a Puerto Rican father?
No one has answered this one yet.
Complete the lyric: "Clayton. Oh, Clayton. ______ ____ ____>"
Bertrand Van Wonterghem knew that it was "Forget your hate." from LO VOGLIO MORTO, aka I WANT HIM DEAD.
Which actress born in France to Russian aristocracy appeared in movies about Spartacus, Mata Hari and Attila the Hun?
Bertrand Van Wonterghem knew that it was Ludmilla Tchérina.
Which American actor made an Italian Western, a Spanish crime thriller, an Hammer film, an Amicus Production and played both Scrooge and Long John Silver?
Bertrand Van Wonterghem and Charles Gilbert knew that it was Jack Palance.
And now for some new brain teasers:
Charles Gilbert asks, "Which actor born on October 13, 1929 and who played in the NFL, can be seen along side Dan Vadis, Gordon Scott, and Mark Forest in Italian cinema?"
Name the movies from which these images came.
Rick Garibaldi identified last week's photo of Angelo Infant and Dana Ghia in CUATRO DOLARES DE VENGANZA, aka FOUR DOLLARS OF REVENGE.
Above is a new photo.
Can you name from what movie it came?
Above is a new photo.
Can you name from what movie it came?
No one identified the above photo.
It shows Rita Silva in NOVE OSPITI PER UN DELITTO, aka NINE GUESTS FOR A CRIME.
No one has identified the above frame grab.
Can you name from what movie it came?
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I am interested in knowing what movies you have watched and what you enjoyed or not. So please send me an email at scinema@earthlink.net if you'd like to share. Here's what I watched last week:
Highly enjoyed:
(500) DAYS OF SUMMER - This movie had me from its opening narrative title: "AUTHOR'S NOTE: The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Especially you Jenny Beckman. Bitch." Though I was put off by ending with the b-word. "This is a story of boy meets girl. But you should know upfront, this is not a love story." Zooey Deschanel is adorable in this, as is Jason Gordon-Levitt, and it is wonderfully warm and funny. And it's a great portrait of downtown Los Angeles, though they never seem to go to Spring Street or Chinatown. And it's nice to see the inside of the Bradbury Building brightly lit.
Enjoyed:
CRAZY RICH ASIANS (2018) - From Jon M. Chu, the director of G.I. JOE RETALIATION, comes one of the most enjoyable American romantic comedies in years. How could it fail with Lisa Lu and Michelle Yeoh in the cast? Ever since I saw the Marina Bay Sands in the background of BBC News reports from Singapore, I've wanted to see more of it, and this movie thankfully gave it to me.
ECHO IN THE CANYON (2018) - Reportedly Jakob Dylan and Eric Barrett were watching director Jacques Demy's MODEL SHOP (1969) and were inspired to do an album and a documentary about the musicians who lived in Laurel Canyon in the 1960s. Jakob assembles a bunch of contemporary musicians to cover the music from the past, which isn't all that exciting, but he also interviews Lou Adler, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Roger McGuinn, Graham Nash, John Sebastian, Ringo Starr and Michelle Phillips, among others, about the old times, and that is exciting. There are alot of clips from MODEL SHOP, including the clip showing the back of John Crummett's car on Wilcox. Complaints about not mentioning The Monkees, Jim Morrison and Joni Mitchell may be valid, but then maybe we wouldn't see Fiona Apple performing.
STRANGER FRUIT (2017) - In addition to laying out the evidence that Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson murdered unarmed Michael Brown, Jr. in 2014, filmmaker Jason Pollack reveals the cover-up by the authorities in an attempt to justify the killing. From misinformation given out by Chief Jon Belmar of St. Louis County to Ferguson Police Chief T. Jackson issuing a videotape of what he falsely called a mini-mart robbery, they created a false narrative repeated by the news media. Also joining in the cover-up were Police Union Head Jeff Roorda, St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch and Missouri Governor Jay Nixon. By also documenting that policing in the United States started with the South Carolina Runaway Slave Patrols in 1704, Pollack presents the case that in the United States, the police was always about controlling Black people. He also documents the May, 1917 East St. Louis Massacre, where-in White mobs murdered Blacks trying to flee their homes which the Whites had set aflame. This has been called the worst massacre in United States history for which no one was ever prosecuted.
Mildly enjoyed:
CHLOE (2009) - If anyone could talk Amanda Seyfried into doing a nude bed scene with Julianne Moore, director Atom Egoyan would be the one. I am unfamiliar with NATHALIE, the French film directed by Anne Fontaine, but from what I read it isn't as melodramatic as Egoyan's remake. Egoyan's film is kind-of like FATAL ATTRACTION, except that it is the mother's infidelity which causes the problem. POISON IVY also came to mind in terms of unrequited lesbian love. The cast and the production are top notch, but the screenplay by Erin Cressida Wilson, who wrote SECRETARY, fails to result in a compelling movie. This could be an infomercial for Raised By Swans, a band I've before never heard. Should we blame director James Cameron and TITANIC for the cliche of hand palms hitting steamy glass for erotic symbolism?
THE LIMITS OF CONTROL (2008) - Even before the 34 minute mark when Tilda Swinton shows up to say, "Are you interested in films by any chance? ... Have you seen THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI? Orson Welles. That one makes no sense. Rita Hayworth as a blond. I think its the only film she's ever a blond in. It's like a game. Deception. Glamour. A shootout. Shattered mirrors. She dies in the end." the viewer should have guessed that this film is a goof. Writer/director Jim Jarmusch shows Isaach de Bankole getting an assignment in an airport and then traveling to Spain and we are not told what or why. There's a nice travelogue of Madrid with multiple visits to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, but it all means nothing plotwise. This film is made to look like an international thriller, but there are no thrills and no real plot either. And no shootout and no shattered mirrors. In the end de Bankole gets into a secure guarded room, and when asked how he did it, he responds "I used my imagination". Bill Murray shows up in the end to be murdered with a old guitar string, but there is no explanation for why this had to happen. We could only guess that it was dictated by the cinematic game Jarmusch was playing. Paz de la Huerta shows up, naked on a bed with a pistol, perhaps to fulfill Jean Luc Godard's dictom that "All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun." She leaves the movie for a good stretch only to turn up naked and dead near the end without explanation - also part of Jarmuch's cinematic game. The pacing is never hurried, and the deadpan humor of it all pays off with a couple of laugh out loud moments, but surely this could have been accomplished with a shorter running time. Did some Spanish producer approach Jarmusch with the financing to make a movie in Spain, and that's how this movie came into being? Cinematographer Christopher Doyle provides the movie with a lovely look, while Boris keeps the music track sounding dramatic. Other guest stars include John Hurt and Gael Garcia Bernal.
THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (2016) - Making the villain a murderous capitalist is an interesting variation on the theme, but turning the plot into a revenge story completely negates the point of the original tale. Director Antoine Fuque was given the budget and a cast to make something worthwhile, and if they weren't going to do something new, they could have come up with something that didn't remind one of SILVERADO. Am I the only one concerned that the town will have alot of trouble with the state authorities regarding the death of such a famous businessman, an army of private detectives and the deed to the gold mine?
Nicolas Le Floch "L'Homme au ventre de plomb" aka "The Man with the Lead Stomach" (2008) - Interestingly, the TV version of the novels by Jean-Francois Parot begin with an adaptation of the second novel in the series. Le Floch is a Police Commissaire during the time of King Louis XV before the Revolution. Expectedly, he has to deal with the governmental politics and the class society of the time. Like Philip Marlowe, he is honest and gets clobbered over the head twice in the first film. Like Sherlock Holmes, he has the help of street children, ala The Baker Street Irregulars. "The Man With the Lead Stomach" has a novel's worth of material which the filmmakers stuff into a fast paced 90 minutes. Perhaps to those who speak French, the material doesn't seem rush, but as a subtitle reader I was kept on my toes to follow along. The producton values are high and the cast is compelling.
Nicholas Le Floch "L'Énigme des Blancs-Manteaux" aka "The Blancs-Manteaux Enigma" (2008) Like most successful TV shows, this has a likable cast of regulars, who all get their moment to shine in this second episode. When Le Floch gets clobbered over the head, he is laid up in bed to recover.
THE PREDATOR (2018) - This feels like a movie remade in the editing room. Once the "loonies" squad comes together, the film starts to work, but the opening scenes involving our hero being detained by a shadowy government agency and his son being the target of school bullies are irritating. As it is, when the buddy comedy involving Boyd Holbrook, Trevante Rhodes, Keegan-Michael Key, Thomas Jane, Alfie Allen and Augusto Aguilera kicks in, it feels like we're in a different movie. But at least this movie is entertaining. When Olivia Munn joins the group, the fun really begins. Now if only Yvonne Strahovski could have joined in things would have been better, but having her character dropped from the story seems a mistake. Director Shane Black shares writing credit with Fred Dekker, but were they also responsible for the reportedly redone ending? What was the original ending that preview audiences reportedly hated? In any case, this film is an improvement over producer Robert Rodriguez's PREDATORS.
Uncnsrd "Omari Hardwick" (2020)
Did not enjoy:
BEETHOVAN'S TREASURE TAIL (2014) - While filming his eighth movie on location, the big St. Bernard becomes depressed and won't do his signature jump - so Morgan Fairchild fires him and his trainer Jonathan Silverman. The production won't pay to fly the two back to California, but they provide an old Volkswagen Beetle for them to drive. Of course, the car breaks down near the coastal town of O'Malley's Cove. There the hero dog saves Bretton Manley from his latest attempt to find the missing O'Malley treasure on the side of a cliff. Manley's mother, Kristy Swanson, has an on and off romance with Silverman while the dog eventually helps Manley to find the treasure. The evil Jeffrey Combs steals the treasure from the boy and the dog, but finally Udo Keir shows up with the police to arrest Combs for identity theft. Fairchild telephones Silverman to say they want to rehire Beethovan as the effort to replace him with a chicken didn't work out. Silverman convinces the town that they can make their own movie with the treasure. Ron Oliver directed this Universal 1440 Entertainment direct to home video release with the usual results.
BIGGER FATTER LIAR (2017) - This film is unrelated to BIG FAT LIAR (2002) aside from the premise of a teenage boy and girl pranking an adult who cheated them. Here Barry Bostwick once again proves himself willing to look the fool as the victim of the pranks done to him by Ricky Garcia and Jodelle Ferland. I've wanted to see more of Ferland since I noticed her in the American TV miniseries version of Kingdom Hospital (2004), but this is not much of a showcase for her. It is better than her role in THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE (2010) though.
DICK TRACY VS. CUEBALL (1946) - Gordon Douglas directed this, the second of RKO's series based on the comic strip by Chester Gould. Aside from the character names, there is little here that's different from most of the crime flicks of that time. Bald headed thug Dick Wessel kills a diamond courier and steals his package. Our hero, Morgan Conway, is called away from his home to investigate before his girlfriend, Anne Jeffreys can spring a surprise birthday party on him. Conway soon figures out that it's an inside job, and the diamond dealer's secretary, Rita Corday, is part of the ring. Byron Foulger is supposed to cut the diamonds so that they can't be traced and Douglas Walton will sell the gems. Hot-tempered Wessel starts killing people right and left and threatens Jeffreys before Conway comes to the rescue. The film ends with Jeffreys confident that the birthday party will finally happen only to see Conway rush out the door on a new case.
THE LITTLE RASCALS SAVE THE DAY (2013) - I was never a fan of the original Hal Roach comedies, but I'll give anything a look-see in the hope of being surprised. The surprise here is that the only effort to make this material contemporary is with the annoying rich kid having an Ipod. Doris Roberts' bakery is about to be foreclosed by banker French Stewart, so the kids, who live in a treehouse next to the bakery, set about to try and earn $10,000. Redoing various money-making efforts from the original short films, the kids continually fail, though no mention is made of how much money got wasted in their attempts. Their last effort is a talent show, which Drew Justice feels they can win if they could get Eden Wood to sing "I Got You Babe" with him. Wood partners with rich kid Grant Palmer in a dance, but quits the rich kid when she catches him trying to sabotage the Rascals' performance. She joins Justice in singing the song, the Rascals win the $10,000 with the result that Roberts' bakery and their tree house are saved. Did the intended kid audience really enjoy this straight to home video release? Universal must have been pleased with the result for they hired director Alex Zamm to make the straight to home video JINGLE ALL THE WAY 2 starring Larry the Cable Guy.
NOCTURNE (1946) - Former and future Alfred Hitchock associate Joan Harrison produced this for RKO and while it has some nice photography by Leigh Harline, it is pretty awful. Some say that the film is a satire on crime movies. Why else would they make star George Raft a junior detective living at home with his mother? Is that why the dialogue is so ridiculously silly? One pleasure to be had is the location work around Hollywood, including the Pantages Theater and the Brown Derby.
SCOOT AND KASSIE'S CHRISTMAS ADVENTURE, aka K-9 ADVENTURES: A CHRISTMAS TALE (2013) - I am not the intended audience for this movie, so it is probably not surprising that I didn't enjoy it. Bank robbers Taylor Negron and Jake Suazo are getting away, but Police Dog Jake is in pursuit. Jake gets helplessly tangled in some barbed wire. Negron picks up the post to which the wire is attached and throws it in the river, which takes the dog with it. Meanwhile widower Luke Perry moves to a new town with his two daughters Ariana Bagley and Camrey Bagley. Ariana finds the injured dog, renames him Scoot and nurses him back to health - keeping it a secret from her "no pets" father. Ariana is having trouble finding her place in the new town, until she brings her choir skills, learned from watching her late mother, to the local church. Ariana finds out about a Toys For Tots fundraiser at the bank at which her father works and organizes the kids in school to help get more money. Negro and Suazo work as bank guards and steal the Toys For Tots money. Ariana, Scoot and the other kids thwart the robbery, but Negron takes off with Ariana as an hostage. Scoot leads the father and the police in chasing the robber down. The story plays on TV and the dog's original police partner shows up to take the dog back. On Christmas, Scoot is returned to Ariana, and she leads the entire church in a choreographed choir performance. This movie was shot in Utah so it is probably not too surprising to find that other Bagley children are in the cast: Anson Bagley and Mia Bagley. Luke Perry and the Bagley sisters returned in the sequel: K-9 ADVENTURES: LEGENT OF THE LOST GOLD.
SEAL TEAM EIGHT: BEHIND ENEMY LINES (2014) - I didn't know that 2001's BEHIND ENEMY LINES was the excuse for a series of three unrelated action movies released directly to home video. The proposed TV series wasn't picked up. Shot in South Africa, this film concerns a Seal Team sent into the Congo to rescue a CIA asset captured by a rebel warlord possibly linked to Al-Qaeda. They think they've rescued Aurélie Meriel, but she informs them of a sale of illegal yellow cake uranium in 36 hours. So our heroes are retasked to stop the sale. Naturally, after Meriel does a "Joanne Dru in RED RIVER" stoic response to a wound, she has sex with Lex Shrapnel (That's his real name? Honestly?) and turns out in the end to be the real bad guy. It turns out that Meriel hired the warlord and his army to protect her mining operation and then convinced the CIA to send in our Seal Team to destroy them when the warlord took her prisoner in an effort to extort more money from her. She then used the Seal Team to get back to the mine, and then tried to kill them all, but took Anthony Oseyemi as prisoner. Shrapnel ends up seeming to take on an entire city to rescue Oseyemi, but he succeeds and Meriel dies horribly. Oseyemi plays the only black member of the team, so it would seem that the filmmakers needed him to survive so that our heroes wiping out about a hundred or so black fighters wouldn't seem racist. Occasionally, our heroes talk about needing to resupply with ammunition, but they never seem to run out of copious amount of bullets - and grenades - and RPGs. Heck, the action in this movie makes the action in James Bond movies seem realistic.
S.W.A.T.: FIREFIGHT (2010) - Lots of shaky-cam intercut with first person shooter imagery makes the action scenes in this flick incredibly irritating. Benny Boom is the director. Dark Ops guy Robert Patrick wants revenge on S.W.A.T. team leader Gabriel Macht because Macht didn't stop Kristanna Loken from killing herself to get away from Patrick. That's a motivation I've not before heard.
TOPPER TAKES A TRIP (1938) - This tiresome sequel to TOPPER (1937) begins with Verree Teasdale convincing Billie Burke to divorce Roland Young as part of a plot to have her marry French Baron Alexander D'Arcy. Ghost Constance Bennett, with the help of special effects, both practical and optical , drags Young to France to create the chaos needed to reunite the elderly couple.
THE YELLOW HANDKERCHIEF (2008) - In October 1971, the New York Post published a story by Pete Hamill called "Going Home". In June 1972, the story was reprinted in Reader's Digest and was read by songwriters L. Russell Brown and Irwin Levine, who turned it into the song "Tie A Yellow Ribbon 'Round The Ole Oak Tree". When Hamill sued, the songwriters had folklorists turn up previously published versions of the same story. In 1977, Japanese director Yoji Yamada, famous for the long running Toro-San films, bought the screen rights to Hamill's story and made a film starring Ken Takakura as the returning convict (which is something Ken had portrayed in countless Yakuza movies). Swiss born producer Arthur Cohn loved the Japanese film and bought the remake rights, which was turned into this movie, shot in Louisana, USA, by India born but U.K. based director Udayan Prasad. With William Hurt, Kristen Stewart, Eddie Redmayne and Maria Bello, Cohn assembled a remarkable cast. Unfortunately, the screenplay by Erin Dignam, which is filled with flashbacks, makes the misfits rather unappealing and the resulting film is a drag. You know the ending, and it works very well. Getting to it provides alot of travelogue shots of Louisana.
Women Make Film - 20. Home, 21. Religion. 22. Work.
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Charles Gilbert watched:
SAVAGE PAMPAS (1966) Robert Taylor plays an Argentine cavalry officer whose men have been defecting with rogue soldier Ron Randall. Seems the solution is to get some women for morale, despite their duty status. Hordes of threatening indians pose another menace in this off beat oater shot in Spain.
On Heroes and Icons channel (Weigle Broadcasting out of Chicago) an Untouchables marathon of episodes:
The George 'Bugs' Moran Story Lloyd Nolan
Ain't We Got Fun Cameron Mitchell
Mexican Stake-Out Vince Edwards
The Artichoke King Jack Weston
The Tri-State Gang William Bendix
The Dutch Schultz Story Lawrence Dobkin
You Can't Pick The Numbers Daryl Hickman
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David Deal enjoyed:
COLT .45 (50)
FLETCH (85)
THE DOOR WITH SEVEN LOCKS (62)
Mildly enjoyed:
THE WHIP HAND (52)
CASTING THE RUNES (79)
THE ADVENTURER OF TORTUGA (64)
VOODOO MAN (44)
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Bertrand Van Wonterghem enjoyed:
Chomyeon-e Saranghamnida / The secret life of my secretary – season 1 – episodes 11 to 16
Point blank (1967, John Boorman)
Il moralista (1959, Giorgio Bianchi)
High anxiety (1977, Mel Brooks)
Ildan Ddeugeobge Chungsohara / Clean with passion for now (2018) – episodes 1 & 2
Le rouge est mis (1957, Gilles Grangier)
Mildly enjoyed:
Cobra kai – season 1 – episodes 9 to 10
Capitaine Marleau - épisode « l’arbre aux esclaves » (2049, Josée Dayan)
The restless breed (1957, Allan Dwan)
Locke & key – season 1 – episodes 1 to 10
Did not enjoy:
La vie pure (2014, Jeremy Banster)
A babysistter’s guide to monster’s hunting (2019, Rachel Talalay)
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