First Man (2018 Damien Chazelle)

Written by Josh Singer (The Post, Spotlight, The West Wing), from James Hansen's biography.

Has a doozy of a soundtrack - moon rocket sounds include horses, lions and even hissing snakes. Or as supervising sound editor Ai-Ling Lee puts it, 'The craft is like a howling creature they are riding in'. I'm as guilty as the next man for not paying enough attention to sound design, but on this film it's pretty difficult to ignore. (With Mildred Iatrou.)

Damian's decision to make a documentary style recreation of events, to make the audience feel the primitivity and danger, is well caught. He shot over a million feet of film, and Tom Cross found himself looking for little zoom cuts and flashes and other things he would normally steer around. The on board footage is often so jumpy and jerky that it's like being in an experimental film.

And then the silences...

This is all well carried by Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy, and particularly makes the most of the emotional journey following the death of their daughter.

Rest of cast: Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler, Corey Stoll, Patrick Fugit, Christopher Abbott, Ciaran Hinds, Olivia Hamilton.

Justin Hurwitz' score memorable - not often you hear a theremin these days. Linus Sandgren's photography remarkable as ever - he seems to have a particular knack for magic hour sequences.

Like last time, it wasn't until I came to take screen shots did I realise the film is in a variety of aspect ratios

I enjoyed it more than last time and disagree with most of my own 'notes'.

Spielberg was an executive producer.

Babylon (2022 Damian Chazelle & scr)

So I asked Q (the original author of the thought) 'So if Whiplash was Damian's pain, and La La Land his joy, what the hell is this?' And for once, she didn't know.

I think that it's both a love letter to and condemnation of Hollywood - I think the Hollywood of old - not sure I could discern any modern day critique. Was it too un-PC for the Oscars? (Only production design / costumes and music were nominated.)

It's the story of four disparate characters who do all connect, but sometimes only fleetingly. Leonardo Di Caprio plays a sort of Douglas Fairbanks type star who loves foreign women, Margot Robbie is fabulous again as a wannabe star, Diego Calva (good) is a resourceful gofer who wants to be in movies, and British Jovan Adepo is the jazz trumpeter.

The film does contain some slightly off-putting moments of excess, to be sure (like the dungeons of depravity) which may or may not reflect a certain aspect to Hollywood of the era. But overall we really enjoyed it. It's bitter-sweet, loud and funny, with great moments e.g. snake fight, first sound scene, Margot walking into the darkness.

It's as visually dynamic as La La Land, with the same cinematographer Linus Sandgren (in 35mm widescreen), who should have been Oscar nominated. In fact all the same team are there - Tom Cross has a snappy way of getting you from one place to another, Justin Hurwitz is deliberately evoking passages from the previous film whilst writing great new stuff (loved his theme for the couple on out-of-tune piano), Mary Zophres has a massive job in costuming everyone; Florencia Martin on production design is a new addition.

I was surprised to see hand-cranked cameras in 1926.

With: Li Jun Li (a sort of Anna May Wong?), Jean Smart (acerbic journalist), P.J. Byrne. Lukas Haas (suicidal one), Olivia Hamilton (film director), Max Minghella (Thalberg), Tobey Maguire, Katherine Waterstone, Flea, Jeff Garlin, Eric Roberts (Margot's dad), Rory Scovel (drug dealer), Ethan Suplee, Samara Weaving (rival actress) and Olivia Wilde.

I mainly got what was going on in the closing montage, but not what those coloured cloudy images were - the future?

P.S. I Love You (2007 Richard LaGravenese & co-scr)

Yes, he and Steven Rogers adapted Cecilia Ahern's novel. Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler argue, then he dies. The End. Or is it? No. The Not End.

There you go - that was easy. Swank & Butler sounds like a high end fashion store or furniture designer or something.

I should explain - I watched Babylon yesterday, and it's blown my mind.

So, um. Let's start with the film clips. The two Bette Davis movies I didn't get were Dangerous and Jezebel; Now Voyager and A Star Is Born were more familiar.

We're on the Lower East Side, that much I can tell you. It's below the Village - between Soho and Chinatown. An apartment round there now would cost between $2 and $20 million.

Anything about the film? Yes. Harry Connick Jr is in it, as are Lisa Kudrow, Gina Gershon, James Marsters, Kathy Bates and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. I did not spot Steve Zahn in gay club scene (because he isn't in it) but weirdly someone called Sarah Zahn is in the karaoke scene.

The strong Irish flavour of the film is welcome, as is the visit to Ireland. It's an enjoyable film with an ending straight out of How To Murder Your Wife.

Edited by David Moritz, photographed by Terry Stacey.

Dalgleish: Death of an Expert Witness (2023 Geoffrey Sax)

P.D. James' seventh Dalgliesh novel, published in 1977, has been adapted by Helen Edmundsen.

My problem with these is I never remember characters' names and usually get a bit lost. Somehow though managed to identify the culprit early on.

His character is so reserved and polite and stoic and quiet that it's almost like Bertie Carvel is providing a pastiche of himself. With he and Carlyss Peer, we have Richard Harrington, Sam Hoare, Margaret Clunie (good as utter bitch, also in Victoria), Deborah Findlay, Dominic Rowan, David Hargreaves, Lara Cohen, Stuart Graham.

DP Ian Moss and production designer Nicola Moroney evoke a dark 1970s.

"Everything all right, sir?"

La La Land (2016 Damian Chazelle & scr)

"Sidney Bechet shot someone because they said he played the wrong note."

Lots of stuff about Linus Sandgren's cinematography here. For example, the famous Mulholland Drive duet dance was rehearsed all day and shot between 7:20 and 7:40 pm. And the difficulty in coordinating the camera into the pool at the same moment the stunt man goes in. And just how the street night scenes were lit.

The film is so cinematic and emotional that it just wipes me out every time.

It was only our ninth viewing, actually. No it wasn't - it was our 10th - Q was right. (She always is.)

The Oscars went to:

Emma Stone
Damian Chazelle
Linus Sandgren
Justin Hurwitz
David Wasco and Sandy Reynolds-Wasco - Production Design
Best Song - City of Stars, music Hurwitz, lyrics Benj Pasek and Justine Paul. (Audition (The Fools Who Dream) was also nominated. On reflection, I think they picked the wrong song - Audition is better)

and the nominations:

Picture
Ryan
Tom Cross
Mary Zophres
Damian for Screenplay
Sound Mixing - Andy Nelson, Ai-Ling Lee (rather remarkable credits), Steven Morrow
Sound editing - Ai-Ling Lee, Mildred Iatrou

P.S. 7/10/23. Is there an echo of A Star Is Born to it? No, not really.

Junebug (2005 Phil Morrison)

An art dealer (Embeth Davidtz) is enthused by a North Carolina artist (who's amusingly terrible), she and her husband Alessandro Nivola (The Many Saints of Newark, American Hustle, Amsterdam) go to visit his dysfunctional family - particularly uncommunicative brother Ben McKenzie (The O.C.) and his simple and trusting pregnant wife Amy Adams, plus parents Scott Wilson (In Cold Blood) and Celia Weston (The Intern, Far From Heaven, Igby Goes Down).

Adams - who's fabulous - is absolutely smitten by the sophisticated Davidtz.

There's something about a half-brother who's no longer there... the two brothers don't get on well at all; the McKenzie character is only happy at work; the father is a borderline dementia case?

A quiet little film which is truly bizarre and subtle (both husband and wife smoke, but don't tell the other). Written by Angus MacLachlan.

The Diplomat (2023 Creator Debora Cahn)

Eight part Netflix series about an American war-experienced ambassador (Keri Russell, The Americans, Waitress) who's sent to London following the bombing of a British aircraft carrier. Finds it a frustrating experience, particularly with machinating husband Rufus Sewell butting in.

By four I have warmed up to this strong-willed woman, who can even make the President see sense. Everyone is starting to respond more warmly to her.

Ali Ahn (CIA), David Gyasi (Defence Secretary), Ato Essandoh (Ambassador's No. 2), Rory Kinnear* (good as arsehole PM), Michael McKean (President), Georgie Henley (the Narnia films), Penny Downie (efficient head of ambassador's residence), Pearl Mackie, Celia Imrie.

I like the little device that she won't eat, so her husband keeps leaving half finished food around so she'll have some.

Has a sudden shocking ending in which she concludes that the Russian mercenary who bombed the aircraft carrier was hired by the PM; and in some strange sub-story, someone her husband was keen to meet is blown up in a car bomb (to 'The Great Gig in the Sky').

Cahn was a prominent writer / producer on The West Wing (now that makes sense), Grey's Anatomy, Vinyl, Fosse/Verdon and Homeland.

* He's a tricky customer, Kinnear. I'm not sure he's ever been better than in Southcliffe, but if you don't rein him in he can go too far, like Man Up.

Great Expectations (2023 Stephen Knight)

A typically dark and gloomy rendition from the Dark Knight, attenuated over six hours.

Quite liked the innovation that Pip is a good scholar, and thus already wants to make something of himself (I don't think that's in the original). Knight seems to have dispensed with all Dickens' humour, thus it's not as enjoyable as it might be.

In episode 2 Knight goes bonkers. Pip's sister and Mr Pumblechook are into S&M, Miss Havisham gets Pip laid, and she and her step daughter indulge in opium. I can see where he's going... I just don't like where he's going. So we stopped there.

With Johnny Harris, Olivia Colman, Fionn Whitehead, Shalom Brune-Franklin, Hayley Squires, Matt Berry, Bashy (Jaggers) - quite a bizarre cast, overall.

The 'authentic' lighting makes it often hard to see anything.

I was amused to see - at the time of writing - that the IMDB rating is 4.7. 

I like the overgrown house - production design Sonja Klaus

Good Boys (2019 Gene Stupnitsky & co-scr)

Three twelve year olds may swear a lot but they know jack shit about sex (a nymphomaniac is someone who has sex both on land and sea - that sort of thing). A broken drone leads them on an adventure so they can attend a kissing party.

The three are Jacob Tremblay (Room, The Book of Henry, Wonder), Keith L Williams and Brady Noon, with Molly Gordon and Midori Francis two older girls involved. (Loved the moment they turn up at the party off their heads.)

Quite fun really.

Born Yesterday (1950 George Cukor)

Broderick Crawford plays a Tony Soprano prototype - he's in metals rather than waste management. Garson Kanin's play adapted by Albert Mannheimer. It feels like a filmed play, unfortunately, but it's a good one, well acted by Judy Holliday (of course), William Holden, Crawford and Howard St, John.

Loved the gin rummy scene, filmed mainly in one take.

Judy died in 1965 aged 44 (breast cancer). Her career had been derailed by involvement with HUAC. She ended up with Gerry Mulligan.

Woody Allen reused the plot in Bullets Over Broadway and Small Time Crooks.    

The Electric Horseman (1979 Sydney Pollack)

I don't know why this was off radar - if I'd realised it was about a waning cowboy star stealing / saving a racehorse I'm sure I would have been there earlier. Robert Garland and Paul Gaer adapted Shelly Burton's story. I think the title has always put me off, because I didn't understand it.

Features megawatt star chemistry between Robert Redford and Jane Fonda. The horse, we are disappointed to note, is not credited.

Well directed film has a good, fast momentum, well edited by Sheldon Khan and photographed by Owen Roizman. The music's from Willie Nelson.

With Valerie Perrine, John Saxon (Black Christmas, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Joe Kidd, The Reluctant Debutante), Willie Nelson, Nicolas Coster, Allan Arbus (lots on TV including MASH), Wilford Brimley. And - blink and you'll miss him - Pollack himself.

Pollack was always an interesting director. He worked his way in from television - his first feature was The Slender Thread in 1965 with Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft. My favourite's Three Days of the Condor.

Choreography in Billy Wilder

Kim Novak deftly avoiding getting her bum slapped twice in Kiss Me Deadly.

The way Audrey Hepburn manages to elude Gary Cooper in bedroom in The Ritz in Love in the Afternoon.

How a line of ballerinas is subtly replaced by a line of male dancers who think he's gay, in PLOSH.

Another dance, on a table, in One Two Three.

'I'm just meeting my date' Lemmon tells MacLaine in The Apartment, motioning across the foyer. As he walks towards her, so smoothly orchestrated, her real date enters stage right and they walk off and Lemmon ends up at the shop behind them.

More, I'm sure...

(Originally 19 October 2021.)

Here's another one. Ray Milland's at the hotel in The Lost Weekend and overhears his girlfriend's parents and realises he doesn't want to meet them. She turns up and he's stood with his back to them with a group of three chatting in between them. As the group breaks up each of the three go off in a different direction and Milland beautifully moves away with one of them as though he's been part of that group.

Blue Lights (2023 Gilles Bannier)

Could have been called Blue Lines with all the unnecessary horizontal blue line effect that someone thought was a good idea to plaster all over the place. It's my only carp.

Good characters, good cast.

Nathan Braniff and Richard Dormer

Martin McCann and Sian Brooke

Joanne Crawford

Katherine Devlin (The Dig)

Hannah McClean

With Valene Kane, Jonathan Harden, John Lynch (The Fall, Shetland), Andi Osho (receptionist - lovely scenes between her and Dormer).

Brilliant '12 hours earlier' episode (4) when a police ombudsman investigates a death on chaotic Full Moon Fever night, finds everyone in the station is lying.

Well directed and edited (Peggy Koretzky, Helen Sheridan) series, well written by Fran Harris, Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson.

Bannier was assistant director on La Gloire de mon Pere and Le Chateau de ma Mere, later work as a director includes episodes of Spiral and Marcella.

Liked the line: "Don't let what's for you pass you by."

The Lost Weekend (1945 Billy Wilder & co-scr|)

Interesting that at the beginning of 1945, co-writer and producer Charles Brackett comments "I have begun to hate the first part and see nothing but its faults; the second part looked very good to me. Billy very depressed about the whole thing, finds it vastly inferior to his hopes." There followed several months of previews and recutting, before in 1946 it won the Oscar for Best Screenplay, Best Film, Best Director and Best Actor - Ray Milland (Wilder: 'surely not an Academy-Award-worthy actor...He's dead now, so I can say it.'). Weirdly, Brackett doesn't mention the writing of the film at all. Though he clearly liked the author as from 1944 they often lunch together. In fact changing trains in Chicago, Wilder had picked up Charles R Jackson's novel in paperback as a time killer and decided to film it.

Jackson had a long list of complaints with the film being too 'articulate', including 'all the most effective speeches. We will change none of it'.

Wilder met Audrey on set - she played a hat check girl. "I saw the arm of the hatcheck girl come in with the hat of Ray Milland. They throw him out, then they take the hat and throw it out with him too. And I only saw the arm, and I fell in love with the arm."

The bit that really gets to me is he turns up drunk at Doris Dowling's apartment - she's clearly got a massive crush on him - after standing her up, and she says "I waited up half the night, like it was my first date". Crushing line. Good performance.

Full of brilliant little tricks of direction - love the way Jane Wyman puts his cigarette the right way round - then he does it himself. Loved the way the bottle rolls out from under the bed and the brother Phillip Terry tries to make out he's the alky.

Lots of on location East Side Third Avenue filming.

With Howard da Silva as the barman, Frank Faylen in drunk tank, and that is Fred 'Snowflake' Toons as the washroom attendant.

Powerfully photographed by John Seitz, great score from Rozsa, supervising the editing - Doane Harrison.

Brilliant framing. Milland in foreground lies to Wyman way in the background at reception that he can't make it, her parents - the cause of his anxiety - between them

Doris Dowling - Billy's one time girlfriend

Sam & Kate (2022 Darren Le Gallo & scr)

Jake Hoffman has forsaken his career as an artist to return home to look after his dad - played in a not uninspired piece of casting by Dustin Hoffman. Bumps into bookstore owner Schuyler Fisk (Orange County, Restless) whose mom Sissy Spacek is a hoarder.

It was filmed in Georgia, should anyone but me care.

Hoffman Sr. plays something of a shit. It's a low simmer film, quite likeable.

Jake was in The Irishman, The Wolf of Wall Street and She's Funny That Way as a bellboy.

It Should Happen To You (1954 George Cukor)

Headstrong Judy Holliday (fabulous) bumps into documentary maker Jack Lemmon in Central Park in Garson Kanin's wonderful romantic comedy and satire on American business. She basically becomes famous for doing nothing - hmm... seem to have heard of that elsewhere more recently. Many great moments, lots of location filming in Manhattan - their Upper West side apartment block sure looks similar to The Apartment's setting.

Charles Lang and Frederick Hollander also worked together on Sabrina the same year.

With Peter Lawford, Michael O'Shea, Vaughn Taylor, Whit Bissell (The Time Tunnel).

There was certainly something special about Judy Holliday.

Columbus Circle, for those interested, is a roundabout on the bottom west corner of Central Park.

Red Dust (1932 Victor Fleming)

Terrific romantic drama set in rubber plantation. Clark Gable is good in gruff, he-man form as plantation owner. Initially dallies with (clearly) prostitute Jean Harlow, then changes his sights when newly married Mary Astor shows up - what a cad! And he and Harlow are clearly a much better match anyway - great chemistry in the second of their six pairings (they had appeared together in The Secret 6 a year earlier but not as star-costar). Great dialogue between these two - screenplay by John Mahin, additional dialogue from Donald Ogden Stewart (originally a play by Wilson Collison).

Rest of cast: Gene Raymond (husband), Donald Crisp, Tully Marshall, Forrester Harvey (The Invisible Man, Rebecca, Mrs Miniver), Willie Fung.

Photographed by Hal Rosson, edited by Blanche Sewell, art direction Cedric Gibbons. Music: none.

The way she calls him 'Fred' pre-dates a similar Howard Hawks thing. In fact with its isolated setting, macho men and a love triangle, it could be seen as an early version of Only Angels Have Wings.

Deconstructing Harry (1997 Woody Allen & scr)

I realised today that the device of a couple looking at past events whilst actually standing in the scene (e.g. Anne Hall) is from Bergman - Wild Strawberries. Some IMDB reviewer suggests the whole film is a remake - which it sort of is - an academic looks back on his life en route to collecting an award. ("I can't believe that my old school wants to honor me and I show up with a hooker and a dead body.") This is a more complex film though, as flashbacks alternate with scenes from the writer's own fictions - his characters start commenting on his life!

Messy editing, long takes, stellar cast (all of whom reappear at the end when he receives his 'real' award), provoking the conclusion that he is only comfortable existing within fiction rather than real life.

Judy Davis, Julia-Louis Dreyfus, Richard Benjamin, Billy Crystal, Tobey Maguire, Robin Williams, Julie Kavner, Kirstie Alley, Mariel Hemingway, Demi Moore, Stanley Tucci, Bob Balaban. Hazelle Goodman, Elisabeth Shue, Eric Bogosian, Paul Giamatti, Philip Bosco, Gene Saks, Caroline Aaron, Tony Sirico.

Photographed by Carlo di Palma in NYC, edited by Susan Morse (with Mark Livolsi an assistant).

Great opening/closing song 'Twisted' by Annie Ross. (Even this is abruptly cut off after the credits!)

Out-of-focus Woody with Hazelle Goodman

'Bosch' according to Q - Santo Loquasto is the designer

Woody, Crystal, Elizabeth Shue