Casablanca is movies

Said Umberto Eco after going on and on about semiotics and other fancy concepts, and I agree. It sums up Old Hollywood as well as can be imagined. It's amazing how a script that was written as the filming took place and was a compromise between writer Koch's and director Curtiz's intentions can work so perfectly. One of the films that kicked off my interest in older movies.

Books about westerns

Yay, a new package in the mail!

Edward Buscombe's 100 Westerns is part of the BFI Screen Guides series. It's a handy pocket-sized book that devotes a couple of pages to each selected film.

Stagecoach to Tombstone: The Filmgoers' Guide to the Great Westerns by Howard Hughes (not that one!) uses a different approach. It focuses on 27 movies, and also discusses similar or related westerns in each chapter. For example, the Tombstone chapter mentions Wyatt Earp, Dead Man, Open Range and other modern westerns.

A weepie for guys

You know, when Maximus triumphs but dies soon thereafter and walks into Elysium... I did find some extra moisture in the corner of my eye. This would be Gladiator, of course, this time the extended edition on Blu-ray. It's one of my favorite historical epics. The aforementioned moment feels so wrong and so right. I guess I have some sort of a built-in trigger for heroic death stories. The Alamo, King Leonidas with his Spartans (and assorted other Greeks who tend to be forgotten) at Thermopylae, The Wild Bunch, Maximus...

Note that I'm not saying only boys' weepies have this effect. I am a big old softie sometimes.

Very different action movies

Green Zone could almost be a prequel to the Bourne series, showing what David Webb was like before he volunteered to become Jason Bourne. Paul Greengrass' direction is similar, Matt Damon plays the protagonist again, and they even got John Powell to score it and Christopher Rouse to edit it. It's a solid action thriller even though the idea of there being no WMDs to be found is hardly surprising in 2010. Some of the characters are based on real people and many members of Bourne's... I mean Roy Miller's team are actual veterans, not actors.

The Warriors is anything but realistic, but highly entertaining. Somehow I had avoided seeing it until now. It's an urban fantasy about one heroic gang versus a hundred others, populated by a cast of (mostly) unknowns, and executed perfectly to this specification.

Carpenter's masterwork

John Carpenter's, that is. I am, of course, talking about The Thing, which may be my favorite horror movie of all time. It stood up to a 5th or 6th viewing brilliantly, and the BD release reveals all kinds of new detail. Rob Bottin's spectacular creature effects do not suffer at all from the high-def treatment.

I miss the signal

Just watched Serenity, and I think I appreciated it even more the second time around. But it did make me miss Firefly something fierce.

The book pile grows taller

Thankfully, only by two titles - my backlog is long enough already.

Foster Hirsch's The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir (2008) is the author's revised version of his 1981 book.

Casablanca: Script and Legend (1992) by Howard Koch is also an update of an earlier edition. Koch is uniquely qualified to write this book, as he was one of the original scriptwriters. In addition to the script, there are some still photos and thoughts by various writers, including Umberto Eco.

"Look at what they make you give"

The Bourne Ultimatum wraps up the trilogy in grand fashion. Either I got used to the camerawork after watching Supremacy, or it is a little calmer now, but the frenetic style was fine. I liked the narrative trick of having part 3 happen both during and after part 2. The actors continue to shine. There are many standout moments, but Bourne's line to Paz (quoted in the title) was among the finest, neatly mirroring his encounter with The Professor in Identity.

For my money the Bourne trilogy is the most satisfying and smartest film series of recent times, and ranks pretty high on the all-time list as well. They could've stopped after the first movie and the story would've been complete, but the additional exploration of Bourne's character and history in the latter two works. All three are kickass action movies, too, which is equally important to the franchise. They mix American-style stories and indie/European-style filmmaking well.

Bourne again

Tonight's movie was The Bourne Supremacy. Paul Greengrass takes over from Doug Liman, and while I am not bothered by the camerawork like many people seem to be, I think I prefer the photography of the first film. Both returning and new cast members are excellent and it's a worthy sequel, all things considered.

Two great directors

Strangers on a Train has Hitchcock in excellent form. One more and then we get to his Grace Kelly triple.

The Deadly Companions was Sam Peckinpah's first feature film. This one I hadn't seen before and knew nothing about, except that Maureen O'Hara was in it. It's an offbeat western to be sure, with plenty of quirky characters. A promising start.

Where the modern Bond learned his tricks

The complete Bourne trilogy on BD arrived in the mail today. I started watching it right away with the first movie, The Bourne Identity. It was the third or fourth time I saw it, and it still works damn well. Acting, photography, direction... it's all there. I remember being very pleasantly surprised when I rented the film for the first time, having read the book once.

I think the creators of Casino Royale took a long hard look at the Bourne franchise when rebooting Bond with Daniel Craig.

Book of old sins

I ordered an ex-library copy of Mark A. Vieira's Sin in Soft Focus: Pre-Code Hollywood (1999) over a month ago and it finally got here. I'd forgotten how slow surface mail was.

Anyway, it seems to have been worth the wait. For those interested in the book or the era, you can start with this review or the Wikipedia entry. Since this censorship lasted until 1968, I feel this topic is very much worth visiting.

Going country again

I was wondering which movie to watch this Sunday evening and happened upon Peter Bogdanovich's The Thing Called Love. I thought it would be a good counterpoint for Crazy Heart, and indeed it was. It's about four young people who've come to Nashville and hope to make it in the music business. They are ably portrayed by Samantha Mathis, River Phoenix (almost the last film he did), Dermot Mulroney and Sandra Bullock (on her way to fame) - all of whom sing their own songs and participated in the songwriting. The ending is open to multiple interpretations. This film was a nice little surprise.

Oh, and there's an actual musical connection to Crazy Heart, too: T-Bone Burnett, a friend of River Phoenix, worked on some of the music even though he's not credited on IMDb. He seems to be quite the seal of quality; see also Walk the Line, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and others.

New old reading material

I visited a second hand bookstore today and grabbed a couple of cheap film books: Mitä Missä Milloin -elokuvaopas (1995) by Asko Alanen, which is his list of 1000 classic movies, and The Hollywood Professionals Volume 1 (1973) in which Kingsley Canham discusses the work of Michael Curtiz, Raoul Walsh and Henry Hathaway.

The 4th decade

Today we started on Hitchcock's fourth decade as a filmmaker with Stage Fright. Some very funny scenes, Marlene Dietrich pretty much playing herself, and a great turn by Alastair Sim as Jane Wyman's father.