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 (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 Thursday".

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