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Kirk Douglas in Champion
Guest blogger Mark Fertig writes:
Director: Mark Robson. (Significant films as director: The Bridges at Toko-Ri, The Trial, The Harder They Fall, Peyton Place, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, Von Ryan’s Express)
Cinematographer: Franz Planer (Golden Globe winner for this film, Academy Award nominee.)
(Significant films as DP: Criss Cross, Cyrano De Bergerac (1950), Death of a Salesman (1951), Roman Holiday, 99 River Street, The Caine Mutiny, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Breakfast at Tiffany’s.)
Screenplay: Carl Foreman, based on a story by Ring Lardner.
Starring: Kirk Douglas, Arthur Kennedy, Marilyn Maxwell, Ruth Roman, and Paul Stewart.
Released by: United Artists
Running time: 99 minutes
Champion is usually described as a cautionary tale about the bitter price of success and the perils of ruthless ambition. Rubbish. The character of Midge Kelly is heroic, admirable, and downright glorious. A son of a bitch? Certainly. But I envy him, and you should too.
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Guest contributors Bob Campbell and Victoria Balloon write:
Under the old studio system movie moguls groomed promising new stars by first creating for them a new name. Today we look at the curious screen career of a B-movie star who acted under three different names, but is remembered today mostly for his many roles as cowboy star Tom Keene.
Keene was born in New York State in 1896 and eventually began an acting career in live theater and the movies using his birth name, George Duryea. Following a dozen worthy film roles in Hollywood, RKO Radio Pictures developed Duryea into a popular B-movie cowboy star after first changing his name to Tom Keene.
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Guest contributor Bob Campbell writes:
Traditional movie Newsreels, produced between their theatrical debut in 1911 and their demise in 1967, are wondrous windows on the world that once was, and collectively serve as a perpetual record of our shared history and popular culture.
Today we have instant and worldwide access on our televisions, computers and hand-held devices to witness news in real time as it happens. Prior to the advent of the newsreel, Americans primarily depended on radio and print media for news and information. Only by going to the movies and watching the newsreels could one see and hear history in relatively real time. The newsreels superbly fulfilled that important purpose until television came along and access to filmed news went from twice weekly on the silver screen to daily broadcasts on the TV screen.
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Guest writer Joshua Lucht writes:
10 ) The Killing – Stanley Kubrick (1956) - Sterling Hayden as Johnny Clay is the ultimate badass. He’s tall, tubby and middle-aged, but who the hell cares? He’s the smartest, toughest guy in the room. Seeing the cops get their man in this movie is just heartbreaking.
9 ) Reservoir Dogs – Quentin Tarantino (1992) – The only things I wanted when I saw this film was for Mr. Orange to pull through and for Mr. Pink & Mr. White to find a way to get out of this mess with their hard-earned bag of diamonds. Mr. Blonde, Joe and Nice Guy Eddie, who really cares about them? I just like to tell myself Mr. Pink, in all the shouting and gunshots we hear at the end, managed to blast his way through the cops and get away. Probably not, but still.
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Trainspotting A Reexamination
Guest blogger Simon Columb writes:
"Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?"
Introduction
I didn't see this film for ages. It was released in 1996, I don't think I watched it until 2003 or 2004. Embarrassing. Then again, I didn't watch Pulp Fiction the whole way through until 2002. But I did watch The Godfather in my mid-teens, which is pretty good I think. So many people miss out on watching Coppola's masterpiece until their mid-twenties. I knew this would be good though. I don't know why, but from all the footage I have seen, I knew it was going to be hip and cool and, ultimately an entertaining movie. Turns out, it is also incredibly well-acted with Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle, Jonny Lee Miller, Kelly MacDonald and Ewan Bremner. All of whom, folowing this film, were set up for life. In my opinion, the film began the whole drug/clubs/fast-paced adreneline movies of the '90s. So, 1996, Trainspotting. Run Lola Run in 1996 and then, both Go and Human Traffic in 1999.
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Guest blogger Rick 29 writes:
"Big," "epic," and "sprawling" are the words critics frequently use to describe this now-revered 1968 Spaghetti Western. Yet, despite its lengthy running time and visually massive backdrop, Once Upon a Time in West focuses tightly on the relationships among four people over a relatively short period of time.
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Guest blogger Red Beard writes:
I read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road during my move from Texas to Washington, DC. I started at the airport and ended one morning in my bed in DC while my girlfriend was sleeping next to me. It scared me. It wasn’t my first book or film about the end of the world as we knew it. (That would be Mad Max.) But it was the first one to make me truly fear that we could be approaching a time where everyone is forced to fend for themselves. A time where survivors would fear the open road, and who might be on it. It’s a scary thing to fear your neighbor. It’s a scary thing to feel as if cannibalism isn’t the plot device of a horror story, but rather a likely outcome for the weak.
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Guest contributor Bob Campbell writes:
Today we pay homage to the film legacy of Will Rogers. He was brilliant at teaching common sense to the common man during the Roaring Twenties and Great Depression; a populist who manipulated the media to educate his fellow citizens about what the Washington politicians were up to - and what the barons of Wall Street were doing to Main Street. Sound familiar? So popular and influential was Rogers prior to his untimely death in 1935, that many encouraged him to run for governor, senator and even the presidency.
Will Rogers entered life as part Cherokee Indian in 1879 Indian Territory, 25 miles NW from what is now Tulsa, Oklahoma. His father, Clement Rogers, was a rancher, a judge and a five-term Cherokee Democratic Senator. Young Rogers often quipped "My ancestors may not have come over on the Mayflower, but they met 'em at the boat." His mother died when he was only 11 years old.
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Guest blogger Stacia writes:
Duel at Diablo (1966) is an odd, unique Western, a rare collage of individual desires in a genre that routinely celebrates the successes of partnership and camaraderie.
One of the most talked-about aspects of Duel at Diablo is the music which, at first, seems wildly out of place, far too cheerful and lighthearted for the subject matter. But listen closely to Neal Hefti's score: The theme for the Apache is a strummy guitar track laid over a driving beat that mimics stereotypical "Indian drums". Underneath the jazzy main theme track is a sweeping, orchestral score that would be right at home during a majestic scenery shot in any VistaVision Western of a decade earlier.
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Guest contributor Bob Campbell writes:
Where on television today can you find short subjects starring Betty Boop, Laurel & Hardy, Our Gang or Flash Gordon? Hollywood studios stopped producing short subjects altogether in the late 1950s as television became a household fixture, but in their heyday the shorts were the equivalent to what would become the sit-coms, variety shows, sports shows, cartoon series and news programs audiences could enjoy at home on the small screen.
Among our favorite theatrical shorts were the Hollywood behind-the-scenes newsreels produced during the 1930s, like The Star Reporter, Hollywood on Parade, Voice of Hollywood and Broadway Highlights. These little jewels foreshadowed today's Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood, American Idol and America's Got Talent TV shows.
The Star Reporter newsreels were hosted by veteran sports commentator Ted Husing and served to introduce new and evolving talent, some going on to stardom. In one episode, nine-year old Bennie Bartlett sings his own original composition, and in another Ina Ray Hutton and Her All-Girl Orchestra let loose with some hot notes and hot moves, raising the roof until balloons descend to cover the orchestra in a grand finale.
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Guest blogger Moira Finnie writes:
Lured (1948), directed by Douglas Sirk in high style, presents George Sanders as a good guy detective from Scotland Yard and Lucille Ball as a woman working with Scotland Yard who presents herself as bait to help draw a murderer out of hiding in London in this slightly satirical but enjoyable "gaslight melodrama". Among the suspects are Boris Karloff, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Alan Napier, and George Zucco. Btw, Boris Karloff's brief, highly amusing madman alone makes this movie worthwhile, but all the actors look as though they are having stylish fun, and I don't think that Lucy ever looked more beautiful than she does in this role. What a shame that Hollywood never seemed to know what to do with her in the '40s, leaving us with just a handful of screen appearances in better than average movies that decade, such as this movie, Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) and The Big Street (1942). Each in their own way hint at her considerable dramatic as well as comic potential.
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Guest blogger Marcello Milteer from Japan Cinema writes:
Japan Cinema presents: Oldboy, which is hands down the best film from South Korea. Period. It is arguably my favorite movie of all time and I will explain why.
Dae-su (Min-sik Choi) is on his way home from a drunken rage after his best friend bails him out of jail. It’s his daughters birthday and he wants to get home to give her a present, but before he can make it someone mysteriously kidnaps him and they vanish without a single trace. He awakes in some sort of strange apartment. It’s not a prison, which is odd, because it means some private individual has created this carpeted one-room hell-hole, with a television and a fake view of the Dutch countryside. He’s fed every day through a little opening, and occasionally the room fills with some sort of knockout gas while his captors change the towels. After 15 years, he is finally released and he must seek revenge against his captors and find the secrets as to why he was imprisoned in the first place.
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