Remembering Marcia Lucas: American Graffiti (1973 George Lucas)

There are four people who helped make this film as great as it is, though most people won't know the names. The first two are the film's editors, Verna Fields (who the studio wanted for her experience) and Marcia Lucas, neither of whom are mentioned at all in the 'Making of' feature. Oscar-winning cameraman Haskell Wexler is credited as 'Visual Consultant' and helped immeasurably to get the night photography as good as it is. And Walter Murch, who does an amazing job of the sound mix, artfully weaving bits of Wolfman Jack's radio show in and around the action. More jottings this way.

Marcia Lucas died May 29. She was a major force behind the shaping of Star Wars, for which she shared the Oscar with Paul Hirsch and Richard Chew. She'd worked on The Rain People for Coppola and assisted Verna on Medium Cool, cut Alice Doesn't Live Here Any More for Marty and is credited as the supervising editor on Taxi Driver (that I did not know) and New York, New York.

Happy Birthday Clint Eastwood: The Bridges of Madison County (1995 Clint Eastwood)

"I get the distinct feeling that I'm lost," says photographer Clint to Italian housewife Meryl Streep, and so a Brief Encounter begins, even down to a chatty neighbour who comes in right at the end and interrupts his departure. I particularly liked the beautiful oner at the candlelit table (Jack Green's the DP) that lasts four and a half minutes - hope it was a first take. And the scene with the cars in the rain - up until then the pace has been leisurely, with lots of dissolves, intimate filming and quiet - but here the pace is more jagged, the camera is her POV looking out of the truck as it first follows, then leaves, Clint's truck ahead. It's a great bit of direction. (Joel Cox edited.)

This is the one where Clint tears up in a scene but keeps his back to the camera, when most actors would be making the most of it - give me the Oscar. When asked why he replied "No one wants to see Clint Eastwood cry." Streep loved the first take spontaneity of the filming and the two worked well together.

It was a Malpaso / Amblin co-production, interestingly. Amblin held the rights to Robert James Waller's novel and Spielberg was at one time going to direct it. The screenplay is by Richard LaGravenese (The Fisher King, A Little Princess, The Mirror Has Two Faces, The Horse Whisperer, P.S. I Love You, Water for Elephants, Behind the Candelabra). Good music from Lennie Niehaus. Note the first scenes where they're together all the music is naturally occurring - what's on the radio.

I remember the first time I saw The Mule I wished I'd seen more smiley Clint like he is at the beginning. Of course here he is, and no doubt also in things like Bronco Billy. It's a most refreshing change.

The kids are Annie Corley and Jim Haynie.

Can't quite see the attraction of the covered bridges - and why cover a bridge at all - but thought the film wonderfully tangy - port and stilton.

Weird the credits say it was filmed in Panavision when it wasn't. Nice bits of Clint's beloved jazz here and there. Intriguingly, the film won the Cahiers Du Cinéma Best Film of the Nineties award (tied with Carlito's Way and Goodbye, South, Goodbye). Unforgiven was also in the Top Ten.

Tom Stern isn't on this one - he was working on French Kiss and Dangerous Minds at the time.

Remarkably Bright Creatures (2026 Olivia Newman & co-scr)

Based on a novel by Shelby van Pelt, we open on a captive octopus telling us about the great days it was free - immediately gaining our sympathy. Its only friend is a reclusive widow, the cleaner, Sally Field. Her life changes when a young man turns up in town searching for his father, Lewis Pullman.

Her friends are Joan Chen, Kathy Baker and Beth Grant. Colm Meaney is the shop owner, Sofia Black-D'Elia the surf girl. The octopus was voiced by Alfred Molina.

An unusual film; good. Actually filmed in Canada, British Columbia.

Wings (1927 William Wellman)

Something of an epic World War 1 movie over 2 hours 20, notable for its elaborate and exciting aerial sequences and impressive ground combat footage. Charles Rogers thinks he loves Jobyna Ralston but she really loves Richard Arlen. Rogers' girl-next-door Clara Bow is nuts about him but he doesn't realise. The rivals go to war but end up buddies; thus the ending is suitably ironic when Rogers kills his friend, who's stolen a German aircraft (cue an early version of a plane flying into a house).

Amusing scene in Paris where Rogers is so drunk he doesn't recognise Bow; then she is sacked when military police think they're having a thing - most unfair!

The restoration is great - the flames from the aircraft have been coloured giving the battle scenes an extra vividity (if that is a word). Spectacular scenes of destruction e.g. bombings, with synchronized sound.

Gary Cooper has a brief but telling appearance; Roscoe Karns features briefly.

It was the fist time I'd encountered the 'It Girl' Clara Bow - found her a bit OTT.

Wellman himself has been a WW1 flyer so he knew his stuff. DP Harry Perry had dozens of cameramen, Russell Harlan among them.

The Best Silent Films

The Last Command (1927) Underworld (1928) and Docks of New York (1928). Josef von Sternberg.

7th Heaven (1927), Street Angel (1928) and Lucky Star (1929). I was already a fan of silent, but Frank Borzage sent me on a journey in a big way. I encountered these three masterpieces in the Spring of 2026.

The Wind (1928). Victor Sjostrom.

The Crowd (1928) and The Big Parade (1925). King Vidor.

The Lodger (1927). Hitch.

The General (1926). Clyde Bruckman / Buster Keaton.

Pandora's Box (1929) / Diary of a Lost Girl (1929). G.W Pabst. Once you've met Louise Brooks, there's no turning back.

The Last Laugh (1924). Murnau.

The Student Prince (1927), So This Is Paris (1926) and The Marriage Circle (1924). Lubitsch.

Broken Blossoms (1919). D.W. Griffith.

Greed (1924). Eric von Stroheim. I was lucky enough to get hold of the four hour version that was broadcast on TCM.

Safety Last (1923). Fred Newmeyer, Sam Taylor. 

Man With a Movie Camera (1929). Dziga Vertov. One of the most stunning endings to a film ever.

Sunrise. If you look at the first Oscar ceremony in 1929, you'll see that Wings won the Oscar for Best Picture, Production (7th Heaven was nominated) and Sunrise won for Best Picture, Unique and Artistic Production (The Crowd was nominated). Janet Gaynor won Best Actress for 7th Heaven, Sunrise and Street Angel and Emil Jannings won for The Last Command! 7th Heaven won again for Best Writing, as did Underworld, Frank Borzage won Best Director and Sunrise again for Best Cinematography.

Used Cars (1980 Robert Zemeckis)

A cheerfully silly comedy from Zemeckis and Bob Gale, who were later to write Back to the Future. Kurt Russell is a hustling car dealer who also wants to run for Senator, a suitably ironic plot point. But he's in competition with dirty dealer Jack Warden (who also plays his brother) in the lot opposite. That's pretty much it, but it's daftly enjoyable.

With Gerrit Graham, Frank McRae (mechanic who keeps falling asleep), Deborah Harmon. And a useful dog. And a camel.

It's expertly edited by Michael Khan.

Q thought she'd recognised Al Lewis from TV's Batman but in fact he played Grandpa Munster.

The Door in the Floor (2004 Tod Williams & scr)

 Almost ten years ago I wrote:

It's a John Irving novel 'A Widow For One Year' adapted by the director, whose only previous credit was The Adventures of Sebastian Cole (1998) with Entourage's Adrian Grenier.

I can't comment on how it relates to the source novel (which itself has very mixed reviews) but what we have here is a brilliantly written film which reveals its plot in pieces, some of which are very subtle (e.g. the age at which the boys died and the fact you are misled into thinking the girl has known them). Also the way the wife knows everything about what her husband is doing and can predict his next move. And that the husband is an alcoholic and has presumably been banned for drink driving (but is he actually fucking his art subjects?)

Good stuff involves photography and art, story-telling and how to write. Flashes of humour are welcome, such as boy's encounter with picture framer.

Young Elle Fanning is great in great cast featuring Jeff Bridges, Kim Basinger, Jon Foster (who didn't make it) and Mimi Rogers.

It sort of made me think We Need to Talk About Kevin. It's melancholy and moving and really rather splendid. Terry Stacey (50/50, Dear John, Adventureland, The Nanny Diaries, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen) photographed it on Long Island harmoniously and the music's by Marcelo Darvos. It was another film from our collection we'd neglected far too long (eight years).

Today: The stuff in the children's books he's writing is very relevant to his own life - he even takes a comment of his daughter as a new story title. What is the meaning of the enigmatic ending? We liked the only thing you can see in the flashback is the indicator light. And the sacked groundsman getting a new job. The editor is Affonso Gonçalves (who worked on Hamnet and Carol and Winter's Bone).

We did though think it was entirely unfair of the mother to deprive her daughter of all the photos that she's come to know so well (and herself).

Rental Family (2025 Hikari & co-scr)

Mental health stigma is an issue in Japan, so firms like this 'Rental Family' do really exist. Brendan Fraser is an American living in Japan who joins such a firm and becomes 'father' to a young girl to help her get into a posh school. (There's a poignant moment in the girl's apartment where she's playing hide and seek with a friend and there's literally only about two places to hide it's so small.)

The company he works for becomes like a family. They are Takehiro Hira, Mari Yamamoto and Kimura Bun, and the funniest moment is when two of them are pretending to be lawyers and come across the third pretending to be a detective! The girl is Shannon Mahina Gorman, her mother Shino Shinozaki and the aging film actor is Akira Emoto (Shoplifters).

There's a shimmeringly immersive score by Josni and Alex Sommers which helps add tone. Photographed by Takuro Ishizaka. Edited by Alan Baumgarten (The Trial of the Chicago 7, American Hustle, Molly's Game, Trumbo, Charlie Bartlett) and Thomas Krueger.

Hikari has been in the US since she was seventeen. Her only previous feature is 37 Seconds.

It's a sweet film, rather good. Japan is a strange country. It's one of the few first world countries that hasn't legalized same sex marriage.

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927 F.W. Murnau)

Murnau's first film in Hollywood took over the Fox studios in 1927. A farmer is having an affair with a City Girl, who wants him to murder his wife so they can sell up and move to the city. And he takes the wife out on the lake with that plan. He can't go through with it but naturally she's terrified.

The town / city conflict caught in artful back projections

Then they end up in the City, and she begins to thaw. There's a great moment where they are so into each other that they blithely cross the road not noticing the traffic speeding all around them, and then the background dissolves into the countryside, so oblivious are they...

Murnau does a lot of this sort of thing, artfully using dissolves. And the sets are amazing, particularly the indoor funfair, and how it is transformed when a storm hits.

This is some film. Still regularly features in Best Film lists.  Still remarkable.

Our players are Janet Gaynor and George O'Brien, with Margaret Livingston.

Charles Rosher had been with Murnau in Berlin for Faust - Rosher was a consultant though that film was shot by Carl Hoffman. Rosher borrowed the idea of suspending a dolly from railway tracks in the ceiling. It's a very mobile film. Right from the off when we follow the City Woman through the night streets, the camera with her - it's very modern. Then when the couple are on the tram, and you can see outside becoming more industrialised, then into the city - that was all built for the film - even the city was a giant set. Designed (according to Brownlow) by Rohrig and Herlth, or Rochus Gliese (IMDB) with assistance from Edgar G Ulmer.

Rosher would have stuck with Murnau, they had become friends, but his first allegiance was to Mary Pickford. His co-cameraman was Karl Struss, and they won the first Oscar for Cinematography.

And it not only has a full orchestral score composed for it but synchronized sound effects too.

The Family Next Door (2025)

Based on a novel by Sally Hepworth, adapted by various writers, no clear evidence of a showrunner.

A woman posing as a journalist, Teresa Palmer, moves into a coastal close and starts nosily investigating her new neighbours. Who are property developer Bella Heathcote and photographer Bob Morley, new mum Phillippa Northeast and husband Tane Williams Acra, Jane Harber and depressed husband Daniel Henshall and gay couple Maria Angelico and Jane Harber. Plus Catherine McClements.

Their kids are all a bit of a nightmare in one way or another.

It takes a long time in six 40 minute episodes to understand what's going on and what she's searching for - too long, in my estimation. Which is one thing. But I thought the ending was terrible. (New sister doesn't want to know, her mum is shopped to the police.)

This Life - Season 2 (1997 Amy Jenkins)

The style isn't sustainable: everything in close up, whip pans, sudden edits. It's exhausting.

The Pantomime Bitch Queen turns up. Rachel - Natasha Little - is so passively grasping and insinuating we want to shout at her and hurl rotten eggs and fruit at her.

Egg has started work in a café. Millie is so nice to everyone - it's about time she wasn't. Then she has an affair and we go right off her

And Kira is trying to keep Joe at arm's length - will she push him away? Luisa Bradshaw-White was latterly in Eastenders for a mere 693 episodes. Steve John Shepherd was only in it for 314 episodes. We just saw him in the Silent Witness film Discovery - didn't even recognise him! And most recently in both seasons of Karen Pirie!

21 episodes.

Silent Witness - the missing episodes (1996)

Darkness Visible, by Ashley Pharoah, was originally episodes five and six of the first season of Silent Witness, but they're not available as part of the entire series on BBC iPlayer. You have to find the original DVD.

It's about a gay man who is locked up in a cell with a drunk man and found dead in the morning. The drunk man can't remember if he's done anything and is advised 'Anyone would push him away - it's only natural' so perhaps it's content like that the BBC were trying to disassociate with. Or it's the fact that we pretty much straight away figure out there's some kind of police cover up going on, which was deemed unsavoury?

Or maybe it was this quasi-torture by police moment:

Despite obstacles, Sam finds out, whilst reviving an old relationship with Brendan Coyle, now a poet. Who delivers a good speech about how Sam's dad should be remembered with affection, not solely as a victim.

Good cast includes Ken Stott, Michael Troughton, Philip Glenister and Ian Shaw, and Clare Higgins. Plus recurring detectives James Aubrey and Ruth Gemmell.

Interesting to reflect on the changes between these early shows and the version thirty years on. This one has a completely orchestral score, for example, and sounds like more work than the synth-led moderns. Also I noticed in the earlier ones the bodies in the morgue were always nude, which you would have though they really would be. But lately they're covered for modesty. Was that the BBC being over-woke?

The direction and editing is less snazzy (do you remember that season when the last shot of the episode blew out into white, for example?) The stories have generally remained good and hard hitting. The performances have generally been good.

Ashley Pharoah (who sounds like he should be black, but isn't unfortuately) started out as an Eastenders writer, progressed on to things like Life on Mars, Wild at Heart and The Living and the Dead. Made me think the BBC is a bit like one of the old film studios with lots of in-house talent that can be pushed in good directions. A great example being Sue Tully, who started out as a teenage actor in Grange Hill and Eastenders, but has developed into a respected director on things like Silent Witness, The A Word, Line of Duty and Strike.

Believe Me (2026 Jeff Pope)

The story of the victims of the Black Cab rapist, beginning with Aimee Ffion-Edwards (whose ex doesn't believe her) and taking in Miriam Petchie and Aasiya Shah (who cannot bear to tell her family). Danny Mays is the unrepentant bastard. Philippa Dunne and Rachael Stirling (who we just saw in Their Finest) take matters to court.

Unfortunately there were so many appalling police errors in the handling of the earliest victims that they were successfully sued.

Screenplay feels like it's a well balanced presentation of a true story. And remind us that only 3% of rape charges ever stick.

Four x 45 for ITV. Directed by Julia Ford, acror-turned-director, who all did Unforgivable (2025) and Showtrial Season 2 (2024).

The Mountain (1956 Edward Dmytryk)

After a somewhat dull looking studio plane crash, we find farmer Spencer Tracy in Chamonix. He's a famous mountaineer but the mountain doesn't like him any more. That will not deter his much younger brother Robert Wagner, whose character is totally irredeemable - he wants to loot the corpses of their money and valuables. Somehow Tracy won't let him do the climb alone - cut to doubles in long shots and studio set mountain climbing - quite tense, actually.

They get there - there's only a survivor! Anna Kashfi, you know, from Cowboy, and Sirk's Battle Hymn, pretending not to understand English (she was, reportedly, Welsh). Wagner immediately wants to kill her. I mean what a cunt! Why does Tracy put up with this at all? (In fact they were quite close on set.) Where Tracy attacks him the look on his face is sheer rage.

Franz Planer films all this without derision, and in VistaVision, and Daniel Amfitheatrof sets it to music. Ranald MacDougal wrote it from a short novel by Henri Trouat that Tracy had spotted some time before. With Claire Trevor, William Demarest as a priest, Richard Arlen, E.G. Marshall.

Tracy wears the same red shirt throughout

Q's sensible question was 'why didn't they just go up in a helicopter?' There are limitations to the height helicopters can reach - specialized ones have landed on Everest. I thought they said the summit was 6000 feet... which may have been beyond the reach of 1956 helicopters.

During filming Tracy and Wagner were in a cable car that partially broke down leaving them suspended thousands of feet in the air. They were of course rescued but Tracy 'looked twenty years older' than when he'd got in - that night was a drinking night, oh yes.

We wondered whether Wagner really was that unpleasant a person.

Lucky Star (1929 Frank Borzage)

A Frank Borzage production from 'Three Episodes in the Life of Timothy Osborn' by Tristram Tupper.

The third and final Janet Gaynor-Charles Farrell pairing (though the couple would appear in several other films together). I think he was great. Observe here the energy he puts into the (first) scene where he's trying to make his legs work with crutches. Whilst he made plenty of talkies, his career wound down in the thirties, when he established the Palm Springs Racquet Club with Ralph Bellamy! He's my favourite new discovery.

This is real sweet. Farrell loses the power of his legs in WW1. Develops relationship with poor farm girl Gaynor and teaches and refines her. And, of course, they fall in love. But her horrible mother (Hedwiga Reicher) wants her to have nothing to do with the 'cripple', preferring her to marry ex soldier Guinn Williams, who's in fact a fraud. And we've already seen he's a lowlife from his behaviour in the war (to local women and to his own men).

In a somewhat incredible third act, struggling through the snow, Farrell remarkably gains his lower limb motion and catches her just before the wedding. Hurrah! 'Why don't your legs work?' she had enquired earlier. 'I'm saving them for a special occasion.' In the end, where she sees him standing upright and without aid, she sinks to her knees grabbing him around the legs and asks 'Is this the special occasion?' SWEET!

It's one of those moments of triumph, of obstacles overcome, like the blind man struggling against the crowd to get back to his apartment in 7th Heaven.

Great Borzagy moments - he washing her hair; then suggesting she washes the rest of her! The two looking at each other through the window which she has broken. The breakfast which has to take place with her sitting outside the door.

Absolutely beautifully photographed by Chester Lyons (also Bad Girl and Mad Love) and William Cooper Smith, and designed by Harry Oliver.

Like all these other silent Borzage pictures a William Fox film. He lost his fortune in the Wall Street Crash followed by losing control of the company the next year; Fox merged with Twentieth Century in 1935. I'm amazed to find good copies of these great old movies on YouTube!

The second half was shot with sound but I guess there was a silent print made.

One thing - no idea why it's called 'Lucky Star'.

Two Weeks in August (2026 Catherine Shepherd)

Jessica Raine and Damien Molony, Nicholas Pinnock and Antonia Thomas (and Maria Almeida), Leila Farzad and Hugh Skinner, plus the laziest au pair in the world Florence Banks. And the most annoying man on the island Tom Goodman-Hill, and Dolly Wells.

Friends gather in rather run-down villa on Greek island (actually Malta). Husband A snogs wife B; wife A has always fancied husband B. Wife A keeps seeing Greek Moirai who predict fates.

A generally annoying 8 x 45 BBC presentation which feels like the writer made it up as she went along. OK, that's also the way I write, but I mean it in a bad, unthought-through way. Then there's a fire and everyone has to run away. The music makes it sound like it's trying to be The White Lotus.

The Guardian says 'it will give you a well-earned break from bad TV' but I've also seen 'BBC viewers beg 'make it stop' as loathsome new psychological drama is slated'. We did laugh, but not I think at things we were supposed to laugh at. I found Raines' transition from super-nice to empowered new woman entirely unbelievable. The whole thing gets more staggeringly implausible as it goes along. Also never seems as hot as Greece would in August. And one minute they're walking everywhere, the next they have hire cars?

The River (1928 Frank Borzage)

 .. at least what's left of it. The Cinémathèque Suisse have restored what's left of the film and added in stills and titles to fill in the blanks to its current 52 minute running time. Thus two of the main characters we never see on film, and what looks like the highlight of the film - he rescuing her from the whirlpool - no longer survives. (The picture was also adapted to add sound in sections.)

'He'? 'Her?' Where are my manners? She is the alluring Mary Duncan, also to be seen in Murnau's City Girl (1930), he the deliciously diffident Charles Farrell (Borzage favourite from 7th Heaven and Street Angel). What does survive is the undeniable eroticism between the couple (there's something about her in that first dress!), which is fine as the plot overall sounded a bit melodramatic. That scene of her getting in to bed to try and revive his frozen body also great.

Unseen: Ivan Linow, Margaret Mann, Alfred Sabato, Bert Woodruff.

I think Borzage liked his lead actor to be a lot taller than the actress.

The A team is in evidence: DP Ernest Palmer and designer Harry Oliver, whose mining camp is another work of art.

Dinner Rush (2000 Bob Giraldi)

Possibly the inspiration for The Bear. Rick Shaughnessy and Brian Kalata have set the film over one night in a busy Tribeca Italian restaurant (that's below the Village and near the East River). Owner Danny Aiello is dealing with the murder of partner by rival bookies. His son Edoardo Bellerini wants to run it not just cook. (Funnily enough his dad thinks the food poncey and not good like the old days.) Two gangsters are trying to muscle in; the sous chef is in debt to them. There's a pretentious art critic, and an unpleasant food critic, a detective and a loner at the bar. It all wraps together very satisfyingly.

Mostly unknown cast. Kirk Acevedo, Ajay Naidu, Vivian Wu, Polly Draper, Jamie Harris (bartender), Alex Corrado, Michael McGlone, John Corbett, Lexie Spurduto, Sandra Bernhard.

Photographed by Tim Ives (Fosse / Verdun, Girls, How To Make It in America), edited by Allyson C Johnson, who together catch well the furious pace of the large and busy kitchen, chefs and waiting staff, perhaps even better than Boiling Point did.

Yeah - we thought it was pretentious too

Another one that we'd last watched so long ago it was like seeing it for the first time.

Family Plot (1976 Alfred Hitchcock)

Loosely based on Victor Canning's 'The Rainbird Pattern', which features the two parallel stories, but then very much Hitchcockized with Ernest Lehman. To somehow completely contradict myself, it's quite un-Hitchcocky in a way, more plotty, more scenes of exposition, but the story and performances are fun, and the ending moves properly into his famous 'pure cinema' mode.

Lehman greatly disapproved of the ending which we have now but I think Hitch was right to stick to his version - in particular Barbara Harris's into camera wink at the audience.

Nice track in to diamond (DP Leonard J South):

Good casting of supporting characters as usual: Cathleen Nesbitt, Ed Lauter, Katherine Helmond, Nicholas Colosanto and Charles Tyner:

Their Finest (2016 Lone Scherfig)

Or, 'Mustard under a bomber's moon.'

Must watch the same director's Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself again. And check out The Shift (Dag & Nat), two series hospital drama. Oh yeah... The Kindness of Strangers... that was good.

I thought about Blimp again whilst watching it and realised what an incredible achievement it was for the Archers to get that film made, with that subject matter, in colour, in World War 2.

It's very enjoyable.

'Cut it down by half.'
'Which half?'
'The half you don't need.'