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Brokeback Mountain my arse! The original Gay Cowboy flick was Red River. Although todays audiences may want it all spelt out for them, in 1948 it just wasn’t on to be explicit or your film just didn’t see the light of day. But those in the know - and that surely included a goodly proportion of those in the industry, as well as fans of male-bonding films like this one - would have read the signs and smiled inwardly.
No, I don’t mean the central relationship between Tom Dunston, the want-it-all-and-want-it-now tyrant who wants his cows driven to Missouri at all costs, and his young protegé Matthew Garth who eventually stands up to him and leads a mutiny to take the cows to Abilene through safer country. That is important, but it is essentially a father-son relationship. No, I’m referring to the more discreet one between Garth and Cherry Valance, the gunslinger taken on to add extra muscle to the drive. Watch them size each other up when they meet and these days it’s impossible not to see it’s not each other’s guns they’re comparing.
As it happens, Montgomery Clift and John Ireland were rutting away together off-camera, and the wily Howard Hawks projected that into the fiction. You can probably imagine how John Wayne reacted to that, along with his sidekick Walter Brennan. Perhaps that’s what put the extra bit of fire into Wayne’s performance that had John Ford allegedly remarking to Hawks, “I didn’t know the son of a bitch could act!” He could, here, too. This is, to my mind, Wayne’s finest hour.
Howard Hawks, of course, is best-known for his wacky comedies and his strong women - Hepburn, Russell, Bacall. He makes a fine job of this more sombre work, but it doesn’t stop him weaving a thread of humour through the piece, and although this is almost entirely an all-male film, there’s a good sassy cameo for a newcomer, Joanne Dru. She never made the big time but became the staple of dozens of those Western TV dramas that I used to enjoy so much. Whatever happened to them? The Western is still what Hollywood did better than anybody and this is quite possibly the best Western of them all.Current Mood:  content |
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Well, you asked for it!
The one that everybody thinks is Hitchcock, but isn’t.
That’s probably something to do with the casting, which teams a rather chubby Cary Grant with Audrey Hepburn. And a lot to do with a Hitchcockian plot in which nobody is quite quite who they seem (and not anyone for all that long), and events squirm this way and that until you get dizzy. And Stanley Donen wasn’t renowned for thrillers; he had form as a director of jolly song-and-dance flicks. He’s probably still best known for having Gene Kelly twinkling his toes with the umbrella and the policeman.
There’s no doubting that Stan loves Alfie because Charade is full of homage to the master. My favourite moment has to be the scene in which Cary Grant is clinging by his fingertips to the side of a Paris hotel with George Kennedy’s boots hovering over them. Now where have I seen something like that before, only with Thomas Jefferson’s nose taking the part of the Paris Hotel? But there’s the rub. Donen tries valiantly to emulate the master, and in the end he comes up with a great piece of edge-of-seat cinema that, in any other context, might be up there with the greats. But while anybody could come up with a Paris (or Chicago) balcony to cling to, it took the genius of Hitchcock to use Jefferson’s nose and get away with it.
So, a very good film indeed, but not a truly great one.Current Mood:  pensive |
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Here, for what it’s worth, is a slightly modified (to protect the guilty) version of something I posted as a comment in Another Place this morning, and tried in vain to post as a comment on the Fabian Society blog. (As a paid-up Fabian I resent not having the same rights to publish my thoughts as the Great And Good of that organisation)
( Read it here )Current Mood:  frustrated Current Music: Nancy Sinatra - Sugartown |
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It’s a truth universally acknowledged, is it not, that all politicians are in it for what they can get. And that the present wave of MPs’ expenses so-called scandals is all the damning proof ever needed.
Well, no, actually. Something in all of this has never quite rung true. I’ve known quite a few MPs past and present, and while I’m sure that there are a few who know their way around the labyrinthine rules and are prepared to twist them to their own advantage, this hasn’t applied to any of the members I have known personally. Whatever one thinks of their political point of view (and I’ll suspend my usual Bevanite view of the Conservative Party in this case), I have no doubt that all of them went into politics out of a genuine desire to influence change for the better. When names like Elliot Morley’s pop up, I know there’s something fishy going on. Mr Morley is not a crook and he’s not a fraudster. I say that with certainty.
As it happens, I passed part of this evening with the wife of an ex-MP (one who, as it happens, I have never met so far). So I was able to invite her to confirm or rebut my theory, which is this:
Most MPs don’t like filling in expense claim forms any more than you or I do. They do a demanding job (and get precious little appreciation for it) and simply don’t have the time to sit poring over the form wondering whether they can get away with this dodgy video or that bathplug or the cleaning of the moat. Instead they do what thousands of self-employed people do: they engage an accountant to do the donkey. The accountant, as accountants will, instructs them to retain all receipts, and periodically they hand over to the accountant a carroer bag full of receipts. It’s the accountant who does all the dealing with the Fees Office.
That, says my informant, is exactly how it happens. So perhaps, instead of besmirching the name of the honourable, underappreciiated and much put-upon politician, whe should all turn our fire on that dishonourable rabble, the bean-counters.
Mine is a small voice in the wilderness, but it’s there if it brings any comfort to the unjustly dishonoured.Current Mood: annoyed |
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I’ve got a lot of little things done today so I should feel quite pleased with myself.
I’ve made a load of pea and ham soup, and I’ve made the kitchen presentable, and I’ve mucked out the wormery (and ensured that there are still worms in there even if they are a bit sluggish), and I’ve watched Les Enfants Terribles.
I should feel contented, and in a way I do, but I have the beginnings of a cold and a rasping throat and I need some TLC.Current Mood:  sick Current Music: Leonard Cohen - Democracy |
| » Sausages and candles |
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Here's the sausages I made today, flanked by a couple of the candles I made this week.
It's been a creative week all round!
27th Feb, 2009 @ 16:56
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| » Cuisine Mincer |
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This is the fruit of my first attempt at sausage-making.
These are chicken sausages, which isn't ideal but I had some chicken and I wanted to practice handling the sausage shins, which isn't all that easy although I'm sure there's a knack.
Both the chicken and the skins come courtesy of N & S Rhodes Butchers on Barrow Market. The skins were free. The chicken wasn't...
The chicken I put in the slow cooker with onion, roots, herbs and bouillon. After an hour the chicken came out and I let it cool a little before taking the meat off - this is the meat that went in the sausages. Then the rest of the carcasee goes in the pot for a few more hours. The broth I put aside for soup. Such well-cooked meat as fall away from the bones I set aside for risotto. The rest of the carcase went in a hot oven for half an hour to make crispy nibbles.
7th Feb, 2009 @ 22:45
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| » Film Diary: I know where I'm going (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1945) |
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When I lost my internet connection for a couple of weeks at the end of November I filled much of my time watching films. By the time it was back I had such a backlog of Film Diaries to write up that I couldn't be arsed doing them. Well, I'm back now, starting with last night's entertainment, and back also on Livejournal to save those wretched double postings and perhaps get a better class of comment.
I'm a big fan of Powell and Pressburger and although this is perhaps not as well known as The red shoes or A matter of life and death, it's still a delight. It reeks of allegory of course - the headstrong young woman hell bent on marrying a tedious industrial magnate on a remote Scottish island is thwarted by bad weather, and during a week stranded in Tobermory realising that her way is with the impoversished young laird after all. Films set in the Western Isles tend to be hideously over-sentimentalised but this one avoids that trap. Live in the Hebrides looks almost as tough as it is. Wendy Hiller and Roger Livesey may not be celluloid superheroes but they have more than enough stage nous to make this fable both believable and rewarding. It doesn't outstay its welcome either.
1st Feb, 2009 @ 16:09
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Why won't the spell checker on my phone recognise Barrow? It's a good and common English word.
26th Jan, 2009 @ 11:19
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| » Update |
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Just back from FGH where I had my X-Ray done.
What's up with the bloody NHS? How am I supposed to get any books read when they're ready for you within five minutes of reporting to reception?
14th Jan, 2009 @ 13:39
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No snow at all in Barroy. How is it where you are?
4th Dec, 2008 @ 11:46
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Broadbean bulletin: should be back up and running on Monday. Bright sunshine here but icy underfoot.
3rd Dec, 2008 @ 10:45
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The bad news is, it looks like I have no broadbean for a week or so. I am bereft!
1st Dec, 2008 @ 18:51
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Woo hoo! Bring on Middlesbrough!
30th Nov, 2008 @ 14:43
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I have no broadbean at the moment while I change phone suppliers. Bet you miss me really! Barrow 2 Brentford 1! Come on you Bluebirds!
30th Nov, 2008 @ 14:28
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| » Almost winter |
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It's been a lovely day today. I was almost tempted to go off to the Lakes for the day, but I didn't. Silly of me, really.
So because it was so gorgeously sunny and crisp and clear, I went off to admire my favourite view instead. I can never make it show up really well with the Nikoff, but you should be able to see that there is a dusting of snow on the high fells, above about 800 metres. It was clear enough to see Fairfield and Helvellyn today and they seemed to have a good covering but weren't clear enough to photograph.
25th Nov, 2008 @ 21:42
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| » Film Diary |
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It may not be the first title to spring to mind when you think of Alfred Hitchcock, but I bet you can hum the song!
The Man Who Knew Too Much (take two) is over in Enitharmon's Cave.
23rd Nov, 2008 @ 23:38
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| » An announcement |
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Some very rum people have been trying to befriend me lately on Livejournal.
Since I have no need of genital enlargement, performance-enhancing pharmaceuticals, or a Russian wife, I am going Friends Only for my future postings.
This has been a public information broadcast.
12th Nov, 2008 @ 09:43
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| » Film Diary |
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So, how do you make a film about a distinguished mathematician and get away with it to the extent of winning a fistful of Oscars for it?
You turn it into a thriller about a terrorist plot against the US that may be completely imaginary, and you release it in the shadow of 9/11 and its fallout. Oh, and you put Russell Crowe in the lead.
Read all about it.
10th Nov, 2008 @ 21:49
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| » Well done America! |
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I stayed up until 3 am and by then it all looked in the bag from where I was sitting. I have to go out in half an hour and I feel wrecked!
It's the first time I've sat up for an American election, which says a great deal about the importance of the occasion. I have no vote but it's important for the world I live in, so all I could do was be there waiting and willing Obama on while wearing all three of my Obama buttons.
It's a strange experience. There's none of the excitement of a British election night; no results coming thick and fast in the small hours, no "over to Aldbrickham Widdershins where a recount is in progress", no dramatic declarations, no Portillo moments. It just seems to evolve. Suddenly the patchwork of red, white and blue on my screen changes suddenly, the numbers rack up, and it dawns on me that Obama only has to run up the west coast to get his majority. Time for bed, said Barack.
Yes, I was for Hillary. I wanted to see a strong (ie not Mrs Moose) woman in the White House and I thought that Obama was all mouth and no trousers. I have thought that less and less as the election drew nearer and Obama kept his cool under the most appalling onslaughts, and I have high hopes for him.
I haven't felt this good about the world since the beginning of May 1997. Maybe that should be a caution, but hey, let's give the guy the benefit of the doubt.
5th Nov, 2008 @ 09:09
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