Gilmore Girls - Season 4 (2004 Amy Sherman-Palladino)

Rory starts at Yale, opening up a whole slew of new characters, like Naked Guy in the hall.

Of playing Emily Gilmore, Kelly Bishop says she hates women like that so loves playing the character and really goes for it, but recognises there's a vulnerability to her - she's actually playing her grand-mother, who treated her daughter badly. A former dancer, she actually played another mother figure in Dirty Dancing.

Stars Hollow is of course a set on the Warner Bros lot in Burbank. So is 'Yale'!

Good episode 'The Incredible Sinking Lorelais' in which both the girls are suffering under the weight of college / inn. Also death of grandmother, Emily and Richard falling apart, good writing. Rory being duped by Dean their marriage is over, sleeping with him, falling out with Lorelai and going abroad with granny, also good.   

Vivement, Dimanche! / Finally, Sunday (1983 François Truffaut & co-scr)

Charles Williams' novel 'The Long Saturday Night' adapted by Truffaut, the ever-dependable Suzanne Schiffman and Jean Aurel, Truffaut's nod to American mystery / detective / film noir, shot in gorgeous monochrome by Nestor Almendros. The sets and costumes were all monochrome also, and Almendros even found old Fresnel studio lamps to give added harshness to the lighting.

Delightful, playful, energetic and amusing - a return almost to the form of Tirez Sur le Pianiste. Fanny Ardant is a resourceful and fearless amateur detective; John-Louis Trintignant plays the unfortunate accused in sort of the style of Tom Ewell in The Seven Year Itch, confused but determined to get somewhere. It's full of great little touches, too, like the fact that Ardant has to spend some of it clothed in the amateur dramatic outfit she had on for rehearsal!

Music by Georges Delerue. Edited by Martine Barraqué.

With Phillippe Laudenbach (solicitor), Phillippe Morier-Genoud.

True to form, Truffaut was in a relationship with his leading lady at the time. About the only leading lady I can think of he didn't have a relationship with was Jacqueline Bisset in La Nuit Américaine!

Ill Met By Moonlight (1957 Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger)

Crete (actually the Alpes Maritimes, Southern France), 1944. Two plucky English soldiers, Dirk Bogarde and David Oxley, hatch a plan to kidnap a senior German officer and take him to Africa. It's a true story. But it seems Emeric wanted a more factual telling and Michael wanted romance and adventure added in.. and they never agreed, in fact fell out so badly that their partnership was dissolved. (The film was made with them barely speaking - Emeric oversaw the post-production.) Perhaps as a result, it's probably one of their least successful films.

But what remains is still entirely watchable, though the schoolboy humour seems forced. Christopher Challis's photography is wonderful, often in deep focus as we're high up, looking down. The actual kidnap is handled well. The film picks up towards the end, as they attempt to reach the coast, the German (Marius Goring) attempting to shed bits of his belongings to leave a trail, then trying to bribe a local boy to betray the English. Cyril Cusack's character is ghastly.

Paul Stassino and Christopher Lee appear briefly, and David McCallum (uncredited).

The music by Mikis Theodorakis brings something new. Arthur Stevens is the editor.

Pale Rider (1985 Clint Eastwood & prod)

Do you think the ending, in which Sydney Penny's cries after The Preacher has gone, is meant to deliberately echo the ending of Shane? There certainly seem to be nods to Leone throughout.

Clint's Preacher is standing up for the little guys mining for gold, as evil Richard Dysart and his son Chris Penn attempt to oust them. They're also ruining the landscape with their high pressure drilling, something we know is going to be outlawed. Michael Moriarty is the brave man standing up to them, hoping to marry Carrie Snodgrass and thus inherit her daughter Penny (who actually was around 14). Richard Kiel is a nice bad guy, Doug McGrath (Black Christmas) is the idiot who gets himself shot, John Russell (Rio Bravo. The Outlaw Josey Wales) is the Marshal from the Past.

With Clint's usual team behind him. Bruce Surtees's interiors are incredibly, riskily and realistically dark. And his love of hard and bright blue skies puts him totally at odds with Conrad Hall, who was for some reason 'uncomfortable' with the colour blue!

It was filmed in Idaho and opened at the Cannes Film Festival (in competition).

The Docks of New York (1928 Josef von Sternberg)

I watched the version with the orchestral Robert Israel score (which was very good), but the music aside, the film struck me as like an opera. Its story is simple. A rough ship furnace stoker, played by George Bancroft (also Underworld), on shore leave, rescues a girl who had jumped into the water. In something of a wild night, he marries her, then leaves in the morning on his next voyage, after clearing her murder charge. But he jumps ship and goes back for her..

As for she, Betty Compson - what a great performance! I don't even know who she is.

Sternberg elicits moody steam in boiler room, pulsing, vibrant action in the 'Sand Bar', where Bancroft punches out lecherous Mitchell Louis (a simply vile character) who has deserted his wife Olga Baclanova, serio-comedy in wedding performed by Gustav von Seyffertitz, dockside wildlife in apartment by the jetty. Harold Rossen is the gifted cameraman at work, pushed by JVS to try new things but not always to do what the director told him - "We'll try it your way, and if it works out, we'll use it". 

Not as great as Sternberg's masterpiece The Last Command, but still fascinating stuff.

And did I mention Betty Compson - what a great performance! She was a huge silent star in the twenties, career diminished thereafter. Oscar nominated for The Barker (1930).

Written by Jules Furthman from a John Monk Saunders story. Editing: helen Lewis. Art director: Hans Dreier.

Gilmore Girls - Season 3 (2002 Amy Sherman-Palladino)

Loved the moment when Rory pulls the horrible Francie (Emily Bergl) into the wash room and reverses the intimidating speech she's been given herself - withdrawing herself from role of mediator, which is her normal mode - it's the most gutsy thing we've seen her do. And she does this of course because Paris is now her friend, even though she's incredibly irritating - Rory always finds the good in everyone. Whether this bold move will bite back at her is another matter...

And Richard's incredibly annoying mother - who can even silence Emily - is back. She's Marion Ross, Richie Cunningham's mum from Happy Days. 

One of the highlights is Adam Brody's speech to Mrs Kim, Emily Kuroda, and she finally relents to let him see her daughter. Another is the flashback episode, young Lorelai on her own in hospital about to give birth, the German version of '99 Red Balloons' on the soundtrack ... somehow a powerful mix.

And love the fact that it's Paris's maid's family who comes to the Graduation - she can speak Portuguese fluently to them all, of course.

Gilmore Girls - Season 2 (2001 Amy Sherman-Palladino)

Why is Paris such a bitch? (We hear from our niece she was originally auditioning for Rory - no! no!) Liza Weil.

The moment future husband Max (Scott Medina) start wondering if Rory and Dean have been outside on the porch too long is the moment we know the relationship's in danger.

Luke's nephew comes to stay - dial T for Trouble. We thought he looked familiar - it's only a young Milo Ventimiglia!

Film references galore - some of these are from Season One, but most from here: Casablanca's last line is quoted by Rory, Chinatown's last line quoted by Lorelai. We have a double reference in the episode that is titled 'Nick & Nora / Sid & Nancy'. We have a discussion about a Ruth Gordon retrospective of Harold and Maude, Rosemary's Baby and 'that episode of Taxi'. A nose twitch from Bewitched is referenced, as is Hannibal Lecter and (inevitably) Frank Capra. And Oscar and Felix (The Odd Couple) and Abbott & Costello. Then Bringing Up Baby, Misery, On The Town, Mystic Pizza, The Thomas Crown Affair, GF3, Purple Rain, Silkwood, From Here To Eternity, 'Tara' (the house in GWTW), Julia, Young Frankenstein, Risky Business, John Cleese and Life of Brian, Cocktail, The Yearling and 'Grasshopper' from Kung Fu! Autumn in New York I did not know, but it doesn't look very good; Billy Jack is supposedly even worse, though the girls seem to enjoy taking the piss out of it.

Rory is the strongest, kindest, most hard-working, loyal, empathic, beautiful and delightful of characters. The episode where she falls out with her mum so badly that she takes off for grandparents' house is most memorable. And the sequence of punishments she has planned for herself when running off to NYC.

Loved Lorelai's made-up fast food expressions like ordering 'An Adam and Eve - and destroy it' (two eggs scrambled) and 'Burn one, and a pink stick with mud on it' (a burger and ice cream and chocolate sauce)!

The Loved One (1965 Tony Richardson)

Evelyn Waugh's 1948 novelette was adapted by Terry Southern and Christopher Isherwood for MGM, who wanted to cash in on Richardson's Tom Jones success and the British New Wave. But for some reason the film is more silly than satirical and would I think have worked better 'straighter'. Robert Morse is the visiting 'British' poet who becomes involved in the financially slimy funeral business when his uncle John Gielgud kills himself following being fired from the film studio he works at. Becomes obsessed by funeral worked Anjanette Comer, who's also being courted by camp Rod Steiger. Jonathan Winters is rather good as the funeral home CEO and his brother.

Well made: photographed by Haskell Wexler (who also co-produced); edited under the supervision of Tony Gibbs by Hal Ashby and Brian Smedley-Aston, with stand out moments including a scene where Morse playing priest and Comer recognise each other in quick cuts, and a scene where Steiger's corpulent mother gorges a suckling pig. But it doesn't really hold up that well.

With Roddy McDowell, Robert Morley, and cameo guest stars including Lionel Stander, James Coburn, Dana Andrews, and Margaret Leighton.

The Sailor From Gibralter (1967 Tony Richardson & co-scr)

Richardson's film, an adaptation of Marguerite Duras, seems something like a shaggy-dog story. It has a fabulous beginning with couple Ian Bannen and Vanessa Redgrave in Florence and nearby, he utterly disillusioned with life; he leaves her and hooks up with a mysterious 'American' Jeanne Moreau, who's cruising the Mediterranean trying to find a lost love. The journey takes us to Greece, then Africa, and finally Alexandria, where nothing is resolved.

It's a rare film now, for some reason, though luckily TCM had screened it at some point, in a nice clean copy, albeit at 1.6:1 cropped from a wider ratio. It looks lovely, photographed by Raoul Coutard. Tony Gibbs is the supervising editor, working with Brian Smedley-Aston and Bill Blunden, and the music's by Antoine Duhamel.

Orson Welles and Hugh Griffith pop up briefly.

Christoper Isherwood and Don Magner also worked on the script. Truffaut's Suzanne Schiffman is the script girl. No credit for whoever designed the fabulous credits scene.

Tony Richardson's autobiography 'Look Back in Anger' tells us that though he and Vanessa Redgrave were still in a relationship, he was also dating Jeanne Moreau at the same time. And that Ian Bannen was a hideous person - he couldn't act anything like an emotional or love scene, and at one point punched Moreau in the face. Unbelievable. I would have fired him. And pressed criminal charges.

Actually it's not called that - it's called 'The Long-Distance Runner'. I only bought it in the hope that I'd find out more about his relationship with Tony Gibbs - but on that subject he had nothing to say.

Stagecoach (1939 John Ford)

Ford: "I still like that picture. It was really 'Boule-de-Suif', and I imagine the writer, Ernie Haycock, got his idea from there and turned it into a western story which he called 'Stage to Lordsbourg'." Maupassant's short story, from 1880, and first filmed in France in 1934, is about a cross-section of society fleeing the Prussians in a stagecoach; one of them is a prostitute. Dudley Nichols wrote the screenplay.

This is a definitive western, one of the classics, and the making of John Wayne. It's also the first Ford picture to feature Monument Valley. With lots of fast on-location action and great characterisations.

Wayne's relationship with tart with a heart Claire Trevor is great - he immediately says to Carradine 'Why don't we ask the opinion of the other lady?" Excuse me, that's John Carradine the gambler, Thomas Mitchell the drunken doctor, Donald Meek as a whisky salesman and lady Louise Platt. Driving are Andy Devine and George Bancroft. Chris Pin-Martin is the Mexican who's less worried about his wife running off than his horse she's run off on. (The Lucky Luke story, 'The Stage Coach' borrows shamelessly all these characters.)

Bert Glennon photographed, Otho Lovering and Dorothy Spencer edited. That's Yakima Canutt doubling for Wayne in that amazing stunt leaping across the horses.

An independent Walter Wanger production.

Made for Each Other (1939 John Cromwell)

Young James Stewart and Carole Lombard - a fine pairing if ever there was one, both excellent - marry in haste and then have a really shit time, culminating in a dreadful New Year's Eve party - the sight of Lombard rushing through the drunken revellers in tears, the camera dollying backwards ahead of her, is enough to make a grown man weep... but the baby gets sick... and that's when the film changes direction totally and becomes a different film entirely involving the adventure of a brave pilot with a life-saving serum, something that was lifted from Selznick's 1933 Gable picture Night Flight (the terrifying Rockies aerial footage may well have been taken from that film). And that horrible Charles Coburn emerges as a kindly uncle is just weird. So, an odd film, to be sure, written by Jo Swerling.

Gorgeous photography from Leon Shamroy. The music is uncredited. That was Ward Bond in the pilot's office.

Lucile Watson is the annoying mother-in-law, Eddie Quillan the office rival and Louise Beavers the cheerful maid. (And a word for Esther Dale who plays cook #1 and is horrible.)

Gilmore Girls - Season 1 (2000 Creator Amy Sherman-Palladino)

Our niece Ella had been watching this and recommended it - though all the film references would have gone straight over her head - had we realised it was from Ms Sherman-Palladino we would have been on it much quicker. It has the same quick humour and warmth, and family interaction dynamics, as The MMM, though probably with a younger demographic in mind.

Lauren Graham (Parenthood 2010-15) and Alexis Bledel (pronounced 'Bled-elle', who had no previous acting experience) are Lorelai and Rory, and we were pleased to see another familiar face from MMM, Alex Borstein, as an argumentative harpist. In fact she was supposed to play the continuing character Sookie but couldn't get out of her Mad TV contract. We're somewhere near Hartford, Connecticut, and the townsfolk are straight out of Capra.

Lorelai at one point says 'I've just become a Jewish comedienne', which made us laugh.

The cast: Melissa McCarthy (chef), Keiki Agena (friend), Yanic Truesdale (FOH), Kelly Bishop and Edward Herrmann (mom and dad), Scott Patterson (coffee shop), Liz Torres (flamboyant dance teacher), Jared Padalecki (boyfriend), Ted Rooney (teacher).

The Mask of Dimitrios (1944 Jean Negulesco)

Based on an Eric Ambler novel, adapted by Frank Gruber for Warner Bros. A complex and murky tale, shot in pools of light by Arthur Edeson, has fiction writer Peter Lorre sucked into the true story of the criminal Dimitrios (Zachary Scott at about his best; his debut). He learns all about him in flashback, from Turkish police detective Kurt Katch, Eduardo Cianelli, Sydney Greenstreet - who has some agenda of his own - former lover Faye Emerson and Swiss resident Victor Francen, who reminisces about the downfall of unfortunate government employee Steven Geray (good). Actually it's not that complex, it just spans a number of stories in different European locales, painting an increasingly dark portrait of the man, and Lorre's growing interest. It's rather good.

Did help with my geography too...

Underscored by suitably dark music from Adolph Deutsch, orchestrated by Jerome Moross, with some lovely art direction / set decoration by Ted Smith and Walter Tilford.

I won't be watching my grubby from VHS TNT print again, that's for sure. (It was the only way to see it back in 2010, the last time we watched it.)

The Corn Is Green (1945 Irving Rapper)

Alexander Walker: "It is certainly Davis's intelligence which shines through The Corn Is Green. Directed by Irving Rapper, it was Casey Robinson's last screenplay for her [he wrote Now Voyager, Dark Victory, and The Old Maid]: no doubt about it, this Cornell graduate, who had entered silent films as a title writer in 1927, had the measure of Davis's emotional range better than any other scenarist at Warners, and constantly used what he knew she could do to extend her means to do  what she wanted to do. He refined her talent in the writing so as to feed her mind as well. The studio may have hoped that the spark of learning which her didactic school-marm ignited in her Welsh scholarship boy [John Dall] could be fanned into something warmer. Davis would have none of it. Her dedication has just the right hint of fanaticism: it is as selfless a piece of work as any she did." Based on Emlyn Williams' hit play.

I liked the way she entices Nigel Bruce into doing her bidding; but against cunning bitch Joan Lorring (again) there's not a lot she can do. With Rhys Williams, Rosalind Ivan, Mildred Dunnock, Arthur Shields.

Music by Max Steiner, orchestrated by Hugo Friedhofer, shot by Sol Polito. Montages get a credit for James Leicester.

I'll Never Forget What's 'Isname (1967 Michael Winner)

Swinging Sixties, anti-Establishment, empty comedy-drama of this sort:

"Were you hoping I'd go to bed with you?"
"Yes."
"All right then."
"Why?"

One of those distinctly sixties films in which scenes crash cut into each other, though does benefit from one quite imaginative sequence which cross cuts public school oiks' pursuit of a man with them as schoolboys. (School scenes filmed at Highgate School.) Reed is an ex ad exec with about fourteen different girlfriends and a little daughter called 'Thing'. Q found Harry Andrews' behaviour so off-putting that she quit after 55 minutes.

Oliver Reed, Orson Welles, Wendy Craig, Carol White, Marianne Faithfull, Norman Rodway, Michael Hordern, Harry Andrews, Frank Finlay, Ann Lynn, Harvey Hall (a memorable bully), Edward Fox.

One of the earliest "fuckings" on British film.

Gorgeously photographed in and around London by Otto Heller, music by Francis Lai, admittedly admirable editing by Bernard Gribble (Man in the White Suit, The Jokers).

It was OK.

The Sand Pebbles (1966 Robert WIse)

"What happened?" are Steve McQueen's last, anguished words. And so might they be mine. Why did I once think this was the greatest film ever made? I have no idea, really, except that Young Nick was beginning to take to anti-authoritarian themes; it's also refreshingly an anti-war film, set in 1926.

But there are some rather maddening plot details (it was written by Robert Anderson from Richard McKenna's novel). So brutal sailor Simon Oakland knocks Mako's cup out of his hand, and Steve McQueen decks him. So why is there then a fight between Oakland and Mako and not between McQueen and Oakland? Also what is the San Pablo doing moored up in the river for so long and why didn't they leave when the tide was right? And how did they survive through the Winter with no food?

The first half ends well with that horrible lynching of Mako and McQueen shooting him to death, which is still a harrowing and powerful scene. But part two, with its stationary boat, the plot feels like it's run aground too, before everyone starts dying - almost all the main cast. And the McQueen-Candice Bergen love story doesn't ever really work or come to life.

Great Jerry Goldsmith score, nicely photographed by Joe MacDonald, great production design by Boris Leven, edited by William Reynolds, huge scenes filmed in Taiwan and Hong Kong, where my parents recalled seeing it going on. But like most of the fifties and sixties 'epics' it's a bit flat, and for such a big production, the fight scenes are quite badly choreographed. Though I have to say, when we first meet McQueen and he's carrying his kitbag to the ship, it looks properly heavy, and that attention to detail I did like.

With Richard Crenna, Richard Attenborough, Marayat Andriane (aka Emmanuelle Arsan, yes, that one), Larry Gates, Charles Robinson.

Broken Flowers (2005 Jim Jarmusch & co-scr)

We wanted more Jeffrey Wright - here he's Bill Murray's amateur detective neighbour, married to Heather Alicia Simms, who helps him to track down an ex who may have had his kid.  And in the women he meets, it tells us quite a lot about his character through his choices. So he confronts carefree Sharon Stone and her daughter 'Lolita' Alexis Dziena, middle -of -the-road Frances Conroy, animal communicator Jessica Lange (and Chloe Sevigny) and Tilda Swinton and her biker friends. And doesn't find a grown-up son. Though does notice pink things and typewriters.

Are the 'broken flowers' the women he has damaged?

Who sent the letter, then? It's a Jim Jarmusch film - don't ask silly questions.

The leather armchair on the left looks like a comedy dog

Murray is almost as impassive as Buster Keaton.

Music: Mulatu Astatke, photography Frederic Elmes, editing Jay Rabinowitz.

American Graffiti (1973 George Lucas)

A delightful film. With help from 'visual consultant' Haskell Wexler, the film looks as hard and sharp and glossy as one of those incredible cars - the DPs are Jan D'Alquen and Ron Eveslage, neither of whom really did anything else - Lucas was planning to light it himself. In fact he was having real trouble filming the night scenes, i.e. most of the movie, finding it so hard to get a depth of field - if the actors moved at all, he joked, they'd go out of focus - and after a week, Wexler came up every night for five weeks to help him (after spending the day making commercials for American Airlines and the like).

That's Lucas hanging off the side of the car

Because, like Halloween, it's a film that takes place over a single evening and night in the early sixties, and charts the adventures of friends before two of them leave for college.

They are Richard Dreyfuss, having doubts about leaving, Ron Howard, fighting with girlfriend Cindy Williams, hot rod racer Paul le Mat, having to entertain young Mackenzie Phillips, and nerdish Charles Martin Smith, who ends up with an unlikely girlfriend in Candy Clark.

It was written by Lucas and Gloria Katz & Willard Huyck, edited by Verna Fields and Marcia Lucas. And the stunning sound design throughout is the work of Walter Murch.

Particularly funny are the scenes in which Martin attempts to buy booze, and the scene with the Pharaohs and the cop car.

Note film being shown: Coppola was the producer

It was a huge hit, but I suspect it may not have been made at all had not Bogdanovich brought out the earlier nostalgia pic hit The Last Picture Show (1971).

American Fiction (2023 Cord Jefferson & scr)

A wonderfully witty and enjoyable film which skewers political correctness and an unhealthy bias of whites towards black matters, nailed at the outset when a white student complains about having to look at the word 'Nigger' and Wright drily comments that he's got over it so can she. Failing but brilliant writer Jeffrey Wright writes a book from the 'gangsta' point of view and (of course) it becomes a bestseller, then a film ('The dumber I behave, the richer I get'). In the meantime he's looking after his demented mom, reconnecting with sister Tracee Ellis Ross and arguing with no good brother Sterling K. Brown, whilst romancing neighbour Erika Alexander. Issa Rae is a rival writer. With Adam Brody, John Ortiz (publisher). We noticed Wright being so good in The French Dispatch so it was good to see him in the lead role.

Wright was also Oscar nominated

So yeah, it's also about family, and it's also very funny.

Warm sub-plot features treasured housekeeper Myra Lucretia Taylor and policeman Raymond Anthony Thomas (I think).

Jefferson is a publisher turned TV writer (including on Master of None and Watchmen) and this is his debut film, which won the Oscar and BAFTA for Best Adapted Screenplay (from 2001 novel 'Erasure' by Percival Everett). 

Very good interesting jazzy piano led score from Laura Karpman, DP Cristina Dunlap, editor Hilda Rasula, all unknowns to me.