Before I get into Candy (1968), I’d like to say a few words about my Netflix queue - specifically about the Saved queue. That’s the list of films that I want to see that Netflix doesn’t have. It includes some new movies that aren’t out on DVD, but there are a lot that are just ... there. My Saved queue is usually just a little shorter than my regular queue - 100-150. A lot of movies have been there forever. I think I queued Candy up shortly after I joined Netflix. It’s probably been there around 10 years.
Recently, things have been coming off the Saved queue, into the real queue. Saved is down to ~80 titles, although some have probably gone away because Netflix isn’t even offering the option of saving them. But I have seen some old choices popping up (like Straight to Hell). Then I have to decide if I really want to watch them.
I was pretty worried about Candy, a famously counter-culture sex farce from the high 60s. It was taken from a Terry Southern book, adapted by Buck Henry, directed by Christian Maarquand, a French actor. Would it still be funny? Would it be inept? Would it be gross? Well...
Candy is Ewa Aulin, a Swedish beauty queen. There’s a slightly psychedelic intro, indicating that perhaps she is a being from another planet. But we soon find her in high school, day dreaming through the class taught by her father, John Astin. She’s probably thinking about the poetry recital she’s going to attend, with sexual poet McPhisto (Richard Burton), whose hair and ascot are perpetually blowing in the non-existent wind. She catches his eye and he drives her to her house, where, for reasons I forget, he has to take his pants off. But he doesn’t have his way with her.
That’s because Candy gets the Mexican gardener, Ringo Starr, to help. He rapes her. But the rape probably isn’t as offensive as Ringo’s accent, with is vaguely Italian mixed with maybe Dutch? Anyway, his sisters are angry that he has been defiled, and chase Candy to the airport, where she takes off on a military flight with General Walter Matthau. He presses the Jump button while chasing her around the cockpit, and everyone on board parachutes out, including him.
And so it goes - Candy bounces from one situation to another, making men horny all around her. Some are sexy like surgeon James Coburn. Some are gross, like her leering uncle, also John Astin, or the hunchback Charles Aznavour. She also meets a New Age guru who has a temple in the back of a tractor-trailer truck - Marlon Brando.
I won’t spoil the ending, but that’s kind of impossible.
So - this wasn’t inept. It’s a well made film with good production values. It’s counter-culture, but not sloppy counter-culture. (Ringo’s accent is inept, but on purpose, I assume.) It’s pretty funny, although maybe not laugh out loud funny. It’s pretty gross, what with all the rape and harassment, but there’s a lot less skin than I expected: maybe a few breasts and possibly some Brando butt. All in all, a fun watch. Not my favorite movie written by Buck Henry, but I’m glad it came off the Saved queue.
Monday, September 17, 2018
Tuesday, September 11, 2018
Hare with Body
Burke and Hare (2010) sounds like a sure thing: John Landis directs Andy Serkis and Simon Pegg as celebrated body snatchers Burke and Hare. It comes off as a pretty good pilot for a comedy series that never got picked up.
Pegg and Serkis are two Ulstermen in Edinburgh, a city famed for its medical community. In dire need of funds now that the canals are all dug, they come up with the idea of selling corpses to Dr. Knox. Since one of the lodgers in their tenement has died, they happen to have one handy. This works so well that they try graverobbing, but find it too risky (they dig up an ancient skeleton instead of a fresh corpse). They find another dying lodger, but this time they help him along.
They celebrate by getting some nice clothes and going to a finer type of drinking establishment, where Pegg meets Ilsa Fisher, a whore who wants to take to the stage - be the first woman to play Hamlet.
And so it goes, with Burke and Hare comically killing for corpses, while Burke (Pegg) romances Fisher. It’s funny but not all that funny, and the whole Ilsa Fisher theater subplot kind of takes over the second half. Considering that it was made by Ealing Studios, it just didn’t live up to its potential.
I guess it couldn’t have been made into a series, since Burke is hanged at the end (SPOILER!).
Pegg and Serkis are two Ulstermen in Edinburgh, a city famed for its medical community. In dire need of funds now that the canals are all dug, they come up with the idea of selling corpses to Dr. Knox. Since one of the lodgers in their tenement has died, they happen to have one handy. This works so well that they try graverobbing, but find it too risky (they dig up an ancient skeleton instead of a fresh corpse). They find another dying lodger, but this time they help him along.
They celebrate by getting some nice clothes and going to a finer type of drinking establishment, where Pegg meets Ilsa Fisher, a whore who wants to take to the stage - be the first woman to play Hamlet.
And so it goes, with Burke and Hare comically killing for corpses, while Burke (Pegg) romances Fisher. It’s funny but not all that funny, and the whole Ilsa Fisher theater subplot kind of takes over the second half. Considering that it was made by Ealing Studios, it just didn’t live up to its potential.
I guess it couldn’t have been made into a series, since Burke is hanged at the end (SPOILER!).
Monday, September 10, 2018
Winchester 2018
Before I start discussing the movie Winchester (2018), I want to talk about the Winchester Mystery House that it is based on. It is a mansion in San Jose built by Sarah Winchester, of the Winchester Rifle fame. She believed that she was haunted by all the people - especially Indians - shot by her company's guns. She thought she could avoid these spirits by continually building a confusing mansion with stairs leading nowhere, doors that opened to walls and windows between rooms. It is now a tourist attraction that we've never visited, although we only live a few miles away. When we moved here many years ago, we thought about going and found out it cost $17 - a fortune in those days. Who knows how much it costs now?
Anyway, we can see it in a movie now.
We meet louche psychologist Jason Clarke at his home, doing laudanum with two whores. A representative from the Winchester company comes with a business proposition: Interview Mrs. Winchester, have her declared unfit to manage the company, and be paid handsomely. He resists, but they offer to pay his debts and opium bills, so he finally agrees.
Although the makers did get permission to shoot at the house, I think we see him show up at the CGI mansion. It’s a beautiful gingerbread contraption, but he immediately senses strangeness. He hears thumping coming from a cabinet, which turns out to be a hidden door and the maid is cleaning the other side. But that night he sees more scary stuff that can’t be explained so easily. Of course, he has had a nip at the laudanum...
But when he meets Sarah Winchester (Helen Mirren!), she sternly lets him know she does not hold with the “soldier’s disease”, that is, abuse of opiates, and makes him go cold turkey. That does not make the apparitions go away.
So that is pretty much the rest of the movie: the cast is pretty much Clarke, Mirren and Sarah Snook as Winchester’s daughter/secretary, and the little boy who is her son. They all experience more or less violent apparitions and possessions, until the San Francisco earthquake knocks down half the building. That’s OK, though, it was perpetually under construction anyway.
On the positive side, Mirren is great as always, and the look and setting are sumptious. Also, this is a real ghost story, with real scary spirits, not one of those “she’s probably just crazy - or is she?” type movies. On the negative, it’s all kind of scattershot and unfocused, and it doesn’t add up to much in the end. Also, of all the angry spirits killed by the Winchester, only two or three are Indians, plus a few slaves. Needs more Indians.
Anyway, we can see it in a movie now.
We meet louche psychologist Jason Clarke at his home, doing laudanum with two whores. A representative from the Winchester company comes with a business proposition: Interview Mrs. Winchester, have her declared unfit to manage the company, and be paid handsomely. He resists, but they offer to pay his debts and opium bills, so he finally agrees.
Although the makers did get permission to shoot at the house, I think we see him show up at the CGI mansion. It’s a beautiful gingerbread contraption, but he immediately senses strangeness. He hears thumping coming from a cabinet, which turns out to be a hidden door and the maid is cleaning the other side. But that night he sees more scary stuff that can’t be explained so easily. Of course, he has had a nip at the laudanum...
But when he meets Sarah Winchester (Helen Mirren!), she sternly lets him know she does not hold with the “soldier’s disease”, that is, abuse of opiates, and makes him go cold turkey. That does not make the apparitions go away.
So that is pretty much the rest of the movie: the cast is pretty much Clarke, Mirren and Sarah Snook as Winchester’s daughter/secretary, and the little boy who is her son. They all experience more or less violent apparitions and possessions, until the San Francisco earthquake knocks down half the building. That’s OK, though, it was perpetually under construction anyway.
On the positive side, Mirren is great as always, and the look and setting are sumptious. Also, this is a real ghost story, with real scary spirits, not one of those “she’s probably just crazy - or is she?” type movies. On the negative, it’s all kind of scattershot and unfocused, and it doesn’t add up to much in the end. Also, of all the angry spirits killed by the Winchester, only two or three are Indians, plus a few slaves. Needs more Indians.
Thursday, September 6, 2018
Rudie Can’t Fail
I know exactly when and why I queued up Alex Cox’s Straight to Hell (1987): When I saw it mentioned in a Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule Film Quiz, 2 years ago. For all that time, it’s been languishing in the Saved queue. I even saw a friend pull it out of the Bargain bin at the Logos bookstore in Santa Cruz when they were going out of business. Well, Netflix finally came through.
It stars Dick Rude, Sy Richardson (who seems to be doing Pulp Fiction’s Sam Jackson, 7 years in advance), and Joe Strummer (of the Clash). They play incompetent hit men, who miss their chance at the target because they oversleep. Courtney Love, playing Richardson’s fat whiny girlfriend, wakes them up and they gop rob a bank, so that the day won’t be completely wasted. It’s a very sloppy affair, with bills flying everywhere, and the getaway car breaks down in the desert.
They find their way to a rough little town that seems to be run by a petro-gang of coffee-drinkers (or caffeine gang of oilmen), played by the Pogues. There’s a bar, some hookers, and a folk singing hotdog man, who everyone beats up (Zander Schloss from the Circle Jerks). Elvis Costello plays a butler. Dennis Hopper and his girlfriend Grace Jones blow in, arm everyone and leave. Jim Jarmusch, the guy who ordered the botched hit from the beginning, wants the gang dead. By the end, pretty much everyone has shot everyone else.
All of this is good low-budget fun, but not as much as I expected. First, there’s less good music than you’d think - one Pogues, one Costello, one Strummer, and that’s about it. It looks low-budget, but not aggressively so. Cox (Repo Man) is too much of a pro for that. So it doesn’t look goofy and cheesy, but it doesn’t look exactly polished. The plot is a shambles (in the classic sense), which isn’t a problem, but isn’t exactly a point in its favor.
So in the end, it was fun to see all our punk faves, even if they aren’t doing much. It was worth the watch, but maybe not worth the wait.
It stars Dick Rude, Sy Richardson (who seems to be doing Pulp Fiction’s Sam Jackson, 7 years in advance), and Joe Strummer (of the Clash). They play incompetent hit men, who miss their chance at the target because they oversleep. Courtney Love, playing Richardson’s fat whiny girlfriend, wakes them up and they gop rob a bank, so that the day won’t be completely wasted. It’s a very sloppy affair, with bills flying everywhere, and the getaway car breaks down in the desert.
They find their way to a rough little town that seems to be run by a petro-gang of coffee-drinkers (or caffeine gang of oilmen), played by the Pogues. There’s a bar, some hookers, and a folk singing hotdog man, who everyone beats up (Zander Schloss from the Circle Jerks). Elvis Costello plays a butler. Dennis Hopper and his girlfriend Grace Jones blow in, arm everyone and leave. Jim Jarmusch, the guy who ordered the botched hit from the beginning, wants the gang dead. By the end, pretty much everyone has shot everyone else.
All of this is good low-budget fun, but not as much as I expected. First, there’s less good music than you’d think - one Pogues, one Costello, one Strummer, and that’s about it. It looks low-budget, but not aggressively so. Cox (Repo Man) is too much of a pro for that. So it doesn’t look goofy and cheesy, but it doesn’t look exactly polished. The plot is a shambles (in the classic sense), which isn’t a problem, but isn’t exactly a point in its favor.
So in the end, it was fun to see all our punk faves, even if they aren’t doing much. It was worth the watch, but maybe not worth the wait.
Wednesday, September 5, 2018
Pray, Pray
It turns out that Ms. Spenser has never seen Rosemary's Baby (1968). Since she wants more horror, I queued it up.
Mia Farrow (Rosemary) and John Cassavetes are a young couple apartment hunting in New York. They wind up at the “Branford”, played in exterior shots by the Dakota. It seems an old woman had just died, so the apartment opened up. Rosemary made friends with a young woman, Victoria Vetri, in the laundry room. She had been a drug addict before an older couple took her in. We meet this couple when Vetri throws herself off the roof.
The couple are Roman and Minnie Castavet (Sidney Blackmer and Ruth Gordon). Minnie is nosy but nice, pushing her way into the apartment and chatting in her broad NY accent. She would always push until just before Rosemary would break. Roman is a well-travelled raconteur, with some vague show business connections. He offers to help Cassavetes, a struggling actor, with his career. In fact, Cassavetes gets a part that he thought he had lost when the first choice actor suddenly went blind. But that couldn’t have anything to do with the neighbors, could it?
When they decide to have a baby, Gordon interrupts their romantic pre-coital dinner to drop off dessert, a chocolate “mouse”. Rosemary only eats a bite of hers, but suddenly collapses. She has a bizarre vision of being raped at her neighbors apartment by a diabolical beast. The next day, she discovers that she has had sex - her husband said she had passed out, and he didn’t want to miss baby-making night.
This is about where Ms. Spenser dropped out. The horror isn’t the supernatural, it’s what the ordinary people do.
So, now Rosemary’s pregnant. The neighbors get her the best OB/GYN in town, who prescribes an herbal drink that Ruth Gordon fixes for her. She gets pale and loses weight, and starts feeling horrible pains, but everyone tells her this is normal. Around here, she gets her Mia Farrow pixie cut, declaring, “It’s Vidal Sassoon”. But everyone tells her it looks horrible.
The horror in the movie is mostly about what pregnancy does to a woman’s body and mind, but also about the horror of neighbors. It’s about living in the city, crushed up against every random idiot, and discovering your husband prefers them to you. It’s clever and sort of funny in places. I have to admit that as a youth, I was very fond of Ira Levin, and read several of his novels, including Rosemary’s Baby and a Brave New World ripoff, This Perfect Day. This is a very faithful adaptation. It also has some great performance’s, especially Gordon’s. There are a bunch of older actors, like Elisha Cook Jr. and Ralph Bellamy.
Ms. Spenser’s verdict, however, is that this is not a scary movie, just a creepy one. In the end, I have to agree.
Mia Farrow (Rosemary) and John Cassavetes are a young couple apartment hunting in New York. They wind up at the “Branford”, played in exterior shots by the Dakota. It seems an old woman had just died, so the apartment opened up. Rosemary made friends with a young woman, Victoria Vetri, in the laundry room. She had been a drug addict before an older couple took her in. We meet this couple when Vetri throws herself off the roof.
The couple are Roman and Minnie Castavet (Sidney Blackmer and Ruth Gordon). Minnie is nosy but nice, pushing her way into the apartment and chatting in her broad NY accent. She would always push until just before Rosemary would break. Roman is a well-travelled raconteur, with some vague show business connections. He offers to help Cassavetes, a struggling actor, with his career. In fact, Cassavetes gets a part that he thought he had lost when the first choice actor suddenly went blind. But that couldn’t have anything to do with the neighbors, could it?
When they decide to have a baby, Gordon interrupts their romantic pre-coital dinner to drop off dessert, a chocolate “mouse”. Rosemary only eats a bite of hers, but suddenly collapses. She has a bizarre vision of being raped at her neighbors apartment by a diabolical beast. The next day, she discovers that she has had sex - her husband said she had passed out, and he didn’t want to miss baby-making night.
This is about where Ms. Spenser dropped out. The horror isn’t the supernatural, it’s what the ordinary people do.
So, now Rosemary’s pregnant. The neighbors get her the best OB/GYN in town, who prescribes an herbal drink that Ruth Gordon fixes for her. She gets pale and loses weight, and starts feeling horrible pains, but everyone tells her this is normal. Around here, she gets her Mia Farrow pixie cut, declaring, “It’s Vidal Sassoon”. But everyone tells her it looks horrible.
The horror in the movie is mostly about what pregnancy does to a woman’s body and mind, but also about the horror of neighbors. It’s about living in the city, crushed up against every random idiot, and discovering your husband prefers them to you. It’s clever and sort of funny in places. I have to admit that as a youth, I was very fond of Ira Levin, and read several of his novels, including Rosemary’s Baby and a Brave New World ripoff, This Perfect Day. This is a very faithful adaptation. It also has some great performance’s, especially Gordon’s. There are a bunch of older actors, like Elisha Cook Jr. and Ralph Bellamy.
Ms. Spenser’s verdict, however, is that this is not a scary movie, just a creepy one. In the end, I have to agree.
Saturday, September 1, 2018
His Mind is Clear
I can't quite understand how there can be so many unknown Altman films. He's an acknowledged master, but who has heard of Buffalo Bill and the Indians (1976)?
It starts in the Wild West (and stays there). Savage Indians are attacking a lone woman in a cabin. But as the camera draws back, we see that it is only a rehearsal for the Indian attack in the Buffalo Bill's show, with Joel Grey as the producer/director. Maybe they should set the cabin on fire?
Altman does his usual thing for a while, letting his camera roam and rest on a few random subjects - the old veteran telling tall tales of Indian slaughter to a band of Indian kids, some wranglers, Ned Buntline (Burt Reynolds), the author of the penny-dreadful novels of the old West that made Buffalo Bill famous. We hear many stories about who "discovered" Cody and made him famous, in fact. And finally, Buffalo Bill Cody himself, Paul Newman, on his white horse.
In the back room, the boys cook up a scheme to boost ticket sales: Get the biggest, baddest Indian of all times - Sitting Bull, recently surrendered to the US Army. So the call goes out and a great Indian (Will Sampson, Chief Broom) and his tiny, wizened companion (Frank Kaquitts) come into the compound. Of course, the small, silent Indian is Sitting Bull. He stays nearly mute for the whole movie, with Sampson speaking on his behalf.
The movie seems to be set up to compare the bluster, half-truths and mythologizing of Buffalo Bill and his crew against the deep dreams and clear mind of Sitting Bull. In one climactic scene, Bill sends Sitting Bull out in front of the audience with no script, no back up, nothing but an introduction. Sitting Bull rides around the ring once, and the audience boos. Silently, he rides around a second time and the audience cheers wildly.
This is a fun movie, in all the usual Altman ways - the scope, the busy-ness, the lived in world it creates. That's all without Kaquitts as Sitting Bull. Kaquitts is a native of the Stoney Indian First Nation in Canada, where this movie was filmed, and was elected their chief. He has amazing presence, silent and still. He also has more than one chance get a few digs in at the Cody, and through the power of his dreams, summons President Cleveland to the show.
I have not managed to mention Geraldine Chaplin as Annie Oakley, who is a great straightman to her nervous Frank Butler, John Considine. But now that I have, I should mention that Shelley Duvall plays the First Lady, newlywed Mrs. Cleveland. Somehow, I feel that having both Geraldine Chaplin and Shelley Duvall in the same movie is redundant.
It starts in the Wild West (and stays there). Savage Indians are attacking a lone woman in a cabin. But as the camera draws back, we see that it is only a rehearsal for the Indian attack in the Buffalo Bill's show, with Joel Grey as the producer/director. Maybe they should set the cabin on fire?
Altman does his usual thing for a while, letting his camera roam and rest on a few random subjects - the old veteran telling tall tales of Indian slaughter to a band of Indian kids, some wranglers, Ned Buntline (Burt Reynolds), the author of the penny-dreadful novels of the old West that made Buffalo Bill famous. We hear many stories about who "discovered" Cody and made him famous, in fact. And finally, Buffalo Bill Cody himself, Paul Newman, on his white horse.
In the back room, the boys cook up a scheme to boost ticket sales: Get the biggest, baddest Indian of all times - Sitting Bull, recently surrendered to the US Army. So the call goes out and a great Indian (Will Sampson, Chief Broom) and his tiny, wizened companion (Frank Kaquitts) come into the compound. Of course, the small, silent Indian is Sitting Bull. He stays nearly mute for the whole movie, with Sampson speaking on his behalf.
The movie seems to be set up to compare the bluster, half-truths and mythologizing of Buffalo Bill and his crew against the deep dreams and clear mind of Sitting Bull. In one climactic scene, Bill sends Sitting Bull out in front of the audience with no script, no back up, nothing but an introduction. Sitting Bull rides around the ring once, and the audience boos. Silently, he rides around a second time and the audience cheers wildly.
This is a fun movie, in all the usual Altman ways - the scope, the busy-ness, the lived in world it creates. That's all without Kaquitts as Sitting Bull. Kaquitts is a native of the Stoney Indian First Nation in Canada, where this movie was filmed, and was elected their chief. He has amazing presence, silent and still. He also has more than one chance get a few digs in at the Cody, and through the power of his dreams, summons President Cleveland to the show.
I have not managed to mention Geraldine Chaplin as Annie Oakley, who is a great straightman to her nervous Frank Butler, John Considine. But now that I have, I should mention that Shelley Duvall plays the First Lady, newlywed Mrs. Cleveland. Somehow, I feel that having both Geraldine Chaplin and Shelley Duvall in the same movie is redundant.
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