First up, another page of Gabe Stein's comic epic:
The Hunter II page 4
Been on a bit of a classic movie kick lately. In the mood for more James Caan after The Killer Elite, this week I checked out the Michael Mann directed classic Thief.
I remember seeing this when it came out way back when, but I couldn't remember anything about it except the poster (really cool poster) and the ending which it turns out was the opposite of what I'd remembered. This is another one of those films that has somewhat classic status but isn't really all that great by today's standards. Caan is great in it, but there isn't really a strong antagonist for him to go up against. You never really feel like Robert Prosky is that much of a threat to James Caan. There's a couple of safe-cracking sequences where everything goes perfectly according to plan. And the moral of the story is pretty much "you don't fuck with James Caan". I kinda felt like I knew that from the get-go. Still an interesting movie, but not all that gripping. This is probably one of those cases where a film has been very influentially stylistically, broke some new ground in it's time, but has been done better in subsequent films.
On the other end of the spectrum is a film that just never seems to get old - Ridley Scott's Blade Runner.
It's been about 15 years since I watched the first director's cut of this, and I recently picked up the final cut - so I decided to watch that too. Since I bought it and all. Well, it really just keeps getting better with every viewing. The effects hold right up to today's standards. Pretty spectacular considering this was pretty much the last big sci-fi film with 100% on-camera effects. No CGI to speak of. And it still looks gorgeous. Still probably Harrison Ford's best performance. And a stunning example of art direction and world-building unequaled to this day. I also checked out the three-hour plus documentary Dangerous Days: The Making of Blade Runner. Absolutely fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the evolution of the film from script all the way up to the release of the first director's cut. All the key players were interviewed about the process in 2007 and it seems like everybody is pretty brutally honest about the problems and tensions during production. The best making-of documentary I've ever seen. You can actually watch quite a bit of it in ten-minute chunks on YouTube. Recommended for any serious film geek.
So on the weekend me and the lovely lady enjoy watching romantic comedies, as couples often do. Since most of the recent stuff has been a bunch of dreck, I thought we oughtta check out some of the classics of the genre that we'd never seen.
First up was Breakfast at Tiffany's with Audrey Hepburn.
Directed by Blake Edwards from a book by Truman Capote, this one is a beloved classic by all accounts. Well, I'm here to tell you... it blows. It's not funny. It's not charming. You know how in Romantic Comedies the lead girl is often all quirky and kooky in what is supposed to be a charming way but is usually just grating and annoying? Well, Hepburn's Holly Golightly is the mother of all those irritating characters. You really just want to punch her in the face. George Peppard plays the boringest man on earth. And Mickey Rooney plays a caricature of a Japanese man that is so jaw-droppingly racist you want to punch him in the face twice. I mean, I know it was a different time and all, but jeez, the sixties weren't that long ago. There is exactly one good scene in the movie, when Hepburn and Peppard go to Tiffany's to get a ring from a crackerjack box engraved. The guy who plays the Tiffany's clerk is pretty funny. Otherwise - godawful film to avoid like the plague.
The other one we watched was better. In fact, The Philadelphia Story was fucking teriffic.
This ones a black and whiter starring Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart. They are all great in it. The writing is razor sharp, the situations are funny, the characters are multi-dimensional, and I swear I didn't really know who Katherine Hepburn was gonna end up with until the last scene of the movie. I really liked this one. I gotta say though, Katherine Hepburn was one weird-looking movie star. She really has a touch of Skeletor about her. It works here though. It pretty much works for her in most movies I've seen her in. Guess she was just a really good actress.
Finally finished the book I've been working on for a couple of months. A real doorstop called A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry.
This book is about life in India from the 1960's to the 1980's. It centers on a young woman who runs a sewing business out of her home. She eventually hires two itinerant tailors from the countryside to help out, and takes in a college student as a boarder to help make ends meet. This book is a masterpiece. It will open your eyes and rip out your heart and leave you curled up in a whimpering ball of sorrow. You and me? We've got nothing to complain about, sunshine, let me tell you. Read this book. It is great. And despite the kick in the guts it doles out, it's really an easy-to-read page turner, not a drudge-filled slog through history. Can't recommend it highly enough.
Finally, here's yet another snippet of my secretive Zuda submission. Man, I really hope this makes the cut. I'm all hoppity eager to show this off.
Oh yeah, it's been kinda quiet over at the Hammerblog for awhile. But there's a rumble in the distance....
Later for now!
