Silent Witness: Season 7 (2008)

Sins. Declan Croghan. Who beheaded the prison governor? Halfway through, I think his daughter (Alexandra Moen) bashed his head in and her creepy psychiatrist boyfriend (Michael Maloney) did the decapitation. Though I suspect Ruth Gemmel of something too... Possible suspects include David Schofield and Tony Maudsley.

Far From the Madding Crowd (1967 John Schlesinger)

We're on something of a Frederic Raphael retrospective. This was his Thomas Hardy adaptation. Why are they making this film at the height of the swinging sixties? I wondered. Well partly, I guess, because a strong and independent woman is the heart of the story. Julie Christie had just won the Oscar for Darling (as had Fred). I wonder whose idea it was. Alexander Walker claims that the plot reflected Darling too much and that Christie didn't have the presence to play Hardy's heroine. And it had a mixed response commercially and critically.

All I can say is we loved it. It's a seriously well made film. Nic Roeg's photography alone is wonderful: John Harris is the operator and Anthony Richmond the focus puller (later to win BAFTA for Don't Look Now).

Without knowing the original you can tell Fred's done a great job with the adaptation resulting in a 2 hour 40 film that never releases the attention. Its pull - that Bathsheba hopelessly falls for cad Troy but he has lost his heart to Fanny (Prunella Ransome); in fact the biggest surprise is that he ultimately does try and help her. With the added irony that both the other suitors Alan Bates and Peter Finch are much better suited - but love doesn't work that way.

It's a noticeably well edited film as well. Malcolm Cooke is credited but actually fell way behind and Jim Clark was summoned to help. Jim was responsible for example for that brilliant opening with the mad dog killing the sheep, a sequence which builds beautifully and which he put together silent. He also cut the action sequences: fire, barn dance, storm, and the scene where Stamp woos the girl with his skills in swordsmanship; while Cooke managed the dialogue scenes. I noticed also some distinctive uses of sound anticipating the next scene - thus over the fire we hear the water running from the shot coming up. Clark thought it was Schlesinger's best film.

What else? A good cast, and we got to see Freddie Jones for the second time in one day (he was in The Duchess of Duke Street earlier). Alison Leggatt, Fiona Walker, Paul Dawkins, lots of unknowns but good.

Great score too by Richard Rodney Bennett. Very good production design, costumes, use of locations.

The Duchess of Duke Street - Season 2 (1977)

We were delighted to learn that season 2 has another 16 episodes; less delighted that Louisa's long lost brother Martin Shaw turns up for a job and begins to disrupt the entire staff; her mum is also taking the piss, outstaying her welcome at the hotel. Writer Julia Jones.

Then is Jeremy Paul's story, two undergraduates conspire to set up Louisa with their college professor Freddie Jones - he falls for her. Julian Fellowes is one of them!

Nothing But the Best (1964 Clive Donner)

Written by Frederic Raphael, based on a short story by Stanley Ellin. In order to get on, Alan Bates enlists the help of fallen blue blood Denholm Elliott (along with Saint Jack one of his best performances) but ultimately succumbs to murder. The frequent uses of ' he/she'll have to go' don't prepare you for what actually ensues. It's thoroughly funny and properly bitter about upper class twattishness. The irony is that Bates cannot help but become one of the types he detests.

We noticed a moment when Bates and Millicent Martin are in bed and she says something that isn't in the audio. Martin also sings the theme song.

Some of Fergus McDonnell's editing is quite loose.

Photographed by Nic Roeg with some slightly ragged camera operating by Alex Thomson. I don't know if it's just me but there's something very modern about the way this is shot:

Commonplace now but not in 1963 when it was filmed?

Lovely cast: Harry Andrews, Pauline Delaney (the landlady, also Young Cassidy), Godfrey Quigley (property developer), Alison Leggatt, Nigel Stock, James Villiers, William Rushton.

Loved Elliott draining his hip flask with the line "We're all out of lighter fuel".

And "You seem a bit metholated".

Martin on seeing giant country pile "How did you know my size?"

And "Possibly the worst play I've seen since last Tuesday".

The BBFC required several cuts for it to receive its 'A' certificate, which were not restored for the DVD  release:

Reel 1 Remove "You really do talk round objects."
Reel 5 Change "balls" to "Hunt ball" in "I am sorry about the balls".
Reel 6 The scene in Mrs. March's bedroom must end as soon as Brewster enters the room and shuts the door.
Reel 7 Stop the bedroom scene before Brewster puts Mrs. March on the bed.
Reel 9 Remove "brothel-weary".
Remove "Mon chauffage central" ('my central heating'??) and "You great bastard".
Remove "Encore une fois" and shot of couple sinking back on the bed. (That's the bit referred to above where her lips move but there's no audio.)
Reel 10 Alter the dialogue between Mrs. March and Brewster, so as to remove the idea that it is necessarily sexual.
Remove "odds and sods".

But somehow the mention of cocaine wasn't deemed objectionable!

Waking the Dead: Season 7 (2008)

Missing Persons. Declan Croghan.

A woman who powerfully protects her children in a mugging is found to have DNA links to a 15 year old cold case murder. International terrorism is at work. Beatriz Batarda, Justine Mitchell, Daniel Cerqueira (This City Is Ours, The A Word, Judy), Angus Wright, Gemma Lawrence (the daughter).

Chef (2014 Jon Favreau & scr)

 Nothing to add to this.

The Great Escape (1963 John Sturges)

A curious film, really, considering its beloved reputation.. there’s a clue right at the beginning - these people may be able to keep escaping but they’ve all been recaptured - and that’s ultimately what happens here as the various types - tunneller Buchowski who’s afraid of tunnels, forger Pleasance who’s going blind, cool kid McQueen, dogged escape virtuoso Attenborough - don’t stay escaped. And in fact you wonder about the plan - wouldn’t it be better if a few people at a time had escaped.? (The Germans suddenly say “ ‘Ere , where is everyone?”) The Little Escapes. As it is, everyone’s on the lookout for them and one by one… I think Coburn is the only one who (may) get to safety.

I was looking at Dan Fapp’s lighting of the scenes in the tunnels thinking if this was filmed now it would all be so dark you could barely see anything 

Ferris Webster is editing on the many performances. James Donald impresses once again as the sober camp leader. With James Garner, Hanes Messemer, David McCallum, Gordon Jackson, John Leyton, Angus Lennie (McQueen’s cell neighbour).

Still, it was quite enjoyable. Best bit - subtle signals that the coast is clear.

Wasabi (2001 Gérard Krawczyk)

Another Luc Besson idea (script) involving Jean Reno and a young girl - this time, a suddenly discovered daughter in Japan, Riyoko Hirosue. It’s fairly comic book stuff e.g. Yakuza types all in shades, villain with scarred face, ‘comic’ action scenes involving funny-eared sidekick Michel Muller. Watched it in French (it was luckily set in Tokyo, Kyoto and other French speaking parts of Japan), but despite this I’m not sure we missed much.

Yang Hervin edited. Carole Bouquet is in it, though didn’t understand her role.

Green Book (2018 Peter Farrelly & co-scr)

Yes, I think I pegged it quite well here

http://nicksfilmjottings.blogspot.com/2019/07/green-book-2018-peter-farrelly.html

Had a couple of screen shots in mind; can’t remember them now.

Disturbing racist behaviour in the lovely USA most unpleasant.

The trap the Ali character has fallen into: neither white nor black. I think he got it wrong - should have been performing for black audiences, both well off and poor.

Vigo Mortensen’s way of eating is disgusting.

Waking the Dead - wrapping up Season 6 (2006)

Double Bind. Richard Warlow. The hippy trippy one. In the sixties a pioneering / deluded therapist helps patients by prescribing strong acid which leads to murder. But who did what? Miles Anderson is in a perpetual mania  - we were quite relieved when it was over  

Yahrzeit. Declan Croghan. And a chilling one about eugenics. It seems that before dying Mel started to investigate the murder of a Polish child in London in 1945. It leads back to the frightful experiments of Mengele and a contemporary German family with secrets. 

The Comedy Man (1963)

 Should definitely be required watching for anybody thinking of taking up acting as a career. It’s not for the faint hearted.

Moment where Kenneth More is in the theatre watching another actor audition and knows his lines better than he does is cool

Waking the Dead Season 6 cont. (2006)

Mask of Sanity. Laurence Davey & Declan Croghan.

Nicholas Beveney is released from prison after serving term for three murders he's confessed to. Starts to hang out in deserted former home where - through flashbacks - we learn he's been seriously abused as a boy. (How come the BBC showed this one but not the other one?) He actually sees his boy-self, which is a good move. And then starts walking about like a zombie.

Boyd and the team don't believe he did it, particularly when former parties come into play: Paul Ritter, Jemma Redgrave, James Fox, Martin Marquez, Richard Dillane, Dominic Letts.

I'd had an idea watching a former episode, thinking 'Why don't the abused teenagers gang together and overpower the abuser?' Maybe Davey & Croghan did too.

I must admit I don't quite know why he confessed in the first place. Good scene where he joins Redgrave's book reading kids.

Waking the Dead - Season 6 (2006)

OK it's not quite as mad as the last one, but Deus Ex Machina does begin with a man sewing his own lips together, cut against the British Army in Sudan in the 1860s - Nicholas Blincoe is the writer (also 8 Minutes Idle). Alex Jennings, Polly Walker (Enchanted April, Rome), Graham Crowden (always nice to see him) and Adam James are involved in the shady disappearance of an ancient skull, and a club of oiks which turns out to be  breeding ground for future Intelligence operatives.

Jennings plays a professional 'truth getter' i.e. torturer of political prisoners, so he and Boyd have a merry conversation about ethics and for once Boyd can't rattle him.

The Fall. Damian Wayling. Two lovers are found mummified in a disused bank - 'Adam and Eve'. Goes back to bank collapses in 1992.

Peter Capaldi (Local Hero) and Stanley Townsend (primarily a stage actor, Happy Go Lucky) were the names I maddeningly couldn't recollect. With Terence Harvey, Nick Dunning, Oliver Ford Davies. The action moves to Dublin where amusingly Spence is usurped by Townsend as Boyd's No. 2. Catherine Walker is the journalist.

Sue Johnston's been fabulous from the word go.

Columbo: It's All in the Game (1993 Vincent McEveety)

Fallen-from-grace Faye Dunaway was already looking weird through plastic surgery. She and girlfriend Claudia Christian have bumped off serial adulterer Armando Pucci in quite an ingenious way, but it doesn't hold water for our doggedly persistent detective. Peter Falk wrote it and exec produced.

Dunaway's all over him, to try and distract him from the case, which is frankly embarrassing. And doesn't work - obviously.

Dunaway's career never really recovered after the disastrous Mommie Dearest in 1981. The famous post-Oscar photo by Terry O'Neill:

Taken March 29 1977 the morning after her win for Network

Waking the Dead - Season 5 / 6 (2005-6)

Undertow. Oliver Brown. Unsuccessful estate agent Steven Hunt is suspected of killing several women. Grace works out he has a water fetish, and at one point he drowns a victim in a busy swimming pool without anyone noticing, even Spence and Stella, who are supposed to be keeping an eye on him. Mum Cheryl Campbell is over-protective, dad Peter Wight equivocal. When he finds the evidence the son did it, he drowns him in the bathtub.

Things pick up with Cold Fusion, an exciting tale in which Ed 'Tall Tales' Whitmore (largely) acquits himself. Young Spence was on the beat when he and colleague Mark Lewis Jones find a horrific double homicide of anti-nuclear protestors. It's now being re-examined. Stolen evidence suggests Spence had something to do with it; then Stella starts acting really suspiciously, so we have these good internal conflicts.

Then two things happen: a supposed nerve gas attack in the station, cut against Spence finding himself and suspect Paul Copley (Downton, Last Tango in Halifax) pursued by an assassin. All through this we're thinking 'top level MI5 cover up' and it turns out that Commander David Calder is highly involved. A slight failing is when we leave Spence isolated and injured, then go back to a debate about morality between Boyd and Calder - too long. It all ends thrillingly enough.

Richard Standeven directed.

Boyd 'assuring' the Commander of his cooperation

In the Season 6 opener we notice with some relief that Spence is not dead (and Q reckons he's dressing more informally); also that Stella has not been fired; and there's a mysterious new pathologist, Tara Fitzgerald (with no explanation of where Felix went).

Wren Boys by Declan Croghan is one of those unfortunate ones that doesn't know what it is. We quickly cross cut between young nun with stigmata Carey Mulligan, ritualistic goings on in the woods at night and bare knuckle boxing, all to percussive sound effects. Features alarmingly aggressive dogs, gypsies, men with silly animal heads on and psychedelic woad!

Great scene where Boyd makes thick boxer confess with the aid of a small skeleton and the suggestion that they don't talk about the 14 years the boxer is going to get if convicted, is small atonement.

Singapore (1947 John Brahm)

Written by Seton Miller and Robert Thoeren. Pearl smuggler Fred MacMurray returns to Singapore to retrieve stashed jewels - finds his wife he thought dead Ava Gardner is alive but with amnesia and now married to plantation owner Roland Culver. Policeman Richard Haydn is after him, as is criminal Thomas Gomez and henchman George Lloyd. Spring Byington and Porter hall are tourists; Maylai a former servant.

Shot at Universal by Maury Gertsman, scored by Daniele Amfitheatrof. Edited by William Hornbeck.

"We should really be drinking Gin Slings with this," I said to Q.
"Any excuse," she said. "You don't even know what they are."
"It would be a good way to find out."

For the record it's Dry Gin, lemon juice, cane sugar syrup and soda water. Quite nice, I would have thought.

It's not the best film in the world, but quite engaging. Stock footage of Singapore is interesting.

It's a surprise to see Culver in a Hollywood film. Apparently he was signed to Paramount for a two year contract beginning with To Each His Own in 1946, also appeared in Down to Earth, 1947, Rita Hayworth, The Emperor Waltz, 1948 Bing Crosby and The Great Lover, Bob Hope 1949.

Waking the Dead - Season 5 cont. (2005)

Subterraneans has a fatal overuse of a man in captivity going mad - show us a bit of it but don't keep forcing it down our throats. In fact two bodies have been found and they are somehow linked to a medical researcher, Toby Stephens, who begins to behave very oddly indeed. 'Did Ed  Whitmore write this?' Q asked at one point. 'How did you guess?' Turns out he (the researcher, not Ed) has never been even qualified as a doctor and has been claiming to have a good, globe-trotting career for 12 years! (I know, it's not very credible, but tell that to 'Tall Tales' Ed.)

Spence is still in a surly mood but at last Stella is fitting in better - in the next one, Straw Dog, she wins Boyd's approval by slapping a witness! Grace is caught up in a retrial of an old case, with seventies flashbacks where she's played by Emma Lowndes opposite DI David Norman. With Paul Freeman, Angela Bruce as the judge. It's written by Declan Croghan. It's a race against the clock as an imprisoned unfortunate is having his fingers removed, televised, one by one. (I kept thinking of Scream and Scream Again.)

Boyd is still periodically shouting at people, which is quite amusing.

The Mosquito Coast (1986 Peter Weir)

Paul Schrader has adapted Paul Theroux's novel faithfully - it's the exact same plot. And really something of a tragedy as Harrison Ford wants to get his family back to basics so they relocate to La Mesquitia, Honduras. Things start well with building and farming, then he gets carried away and builds a monstrous and hideous ice factory, which ends up causing his downfall. And ironically, which is so chemical based it poisons the river. The explosion is a bravura sequence, quite unsettling, made more so by the inclusion of some ghastly sound effects (like animals) - a big team  - all I can suggest is that Mark Berger is the Supervising rerecording Mixer (The Pledge, The Talented Mr Ripley, The English Patient).

Anyway it makes him crazier and more determined to get away from civilization which his sons, River Phoenix and Jadrien Steele are beginning to resent. He's so selfish. I don't know why 'Mother' Helen Mirren doesn't put her foot down - I guess she's not as strong a character.

River narrates, trying to balance his dad's craziness with his own sense of loyalty.

Andre Gregory plays a preacher who's on the brink of madness himself. Martha Plimpton's his daughter. And believe it or not, there's a small appearance from Butterfly McQueen.

It's a vivid film, well acted and put together, filmed with two crews in Belize. John Seale is the DP, Maurice Jarre the composer. John Soddart's the production designer, Thom Nobel the editor.

I remember not enjoying it the first time round. It's a depressing tragedy, but ironic and interesting, and at least he dies in the end! (And neither of his sons have had to kill him.) Unsurprisingly, it didn't do particularly well at the box office.

La La Land (2016 Damian Chazelle & scr)

The car horn that 1. blasts Mia in her car 2. signifies Seb is outside and ready to pick her up 3. tries to identify Mia at home.

The theatre where she performs her play is the closed down cinema.

'Le Cafe' by Miguel Dominguez

The Killers Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner

13.

Waking the Dead Season 5 cont. (2005)

We started watching Brangelina Mr & Mrs Smith but became quickly bored. Then we were going to watch Downton Abbey: A New Era which Google had told me was on Netflix - it wasn't.

'Andy', Georgia Mackenzie, is gone already. Boyd tries not to employ half-French Félicité du Jeu (Stella) but she turns up for work anyway. At a particularly bad time, as Boyd has been drugged and led to believe he drunk drove and injured a motor bike rider - that Spence believes this shit is incomprehensible. And it's not written by Ed Whitmore. I don't know why they've made the same mistake as Silent Witness - bring in a load of new writers who don't understand the characters / dynamics well enough.

So Boyd's suspended but carries on with the case etc etc. David Hayman, Diane Parish. How funny, I was only thinking Peter Polycarpou the other day and there he is.

Black Run was written by Raymond Khoury. I thought I'd had this one all worked out at the beginning - I was nowhere near close.