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Originally posted by Mark Olivarez:
sure there are some of the usual flag waving scenes and over the top patriotic dialogue.

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Originally posted by dantoris:
What's wrong with that?

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When Shogun was first shown in 1980 I was intrigued enough to read the book and from there I got really interested in Japanese history.

Wonderful swashbuckler movie with a great score by Victor Young, which I previously knew from Marco Polo's Captain Blood CD.

But I'm a bit confused: One track on that CD is called "The Magic Box / Roses and Napoleon", and ends with a short quote of the French anthem. I saw the magic box sequence, and "Roses" refers to the marriage at the end of the movie - but then they cut it off, as they usually do before the end credits. But, did they really only cut off the credits? What's up with the "Napoleon" part? Did they leave out more?

I've taped a few things and am about to tape THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS on TCM later this morning but have only seen the one film in this month so far.

-THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY:
Pretty good story. Script was extremely good. Jude Law was good, Matt Damon was excellent, as were Gwentheth Paltrow and Cate Blanchett.

-SWEET AND LOWDOWN:
Low budget Woody Allen Docu-Drama starring Sean Penn(He got an oscar nomination for Best Actor in this movie) . I loved it. I recomend it to anyone.

-RETURN TO PARADISE:
Pretty god moral drama. Vince Vaugn(SP) and Joaquin Phoenix were both excellent.

-THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY:
Incredibly distateful, and incredibly funny movie. I haven't yet decided if I love it or hate it, but I could hardly stop laughing.

-THE PERFECT STORM:
I didn't like it at all. The script was miserable. The acting was pretty bad, overall pretty disappointed.

I would like to hear some comments of my reviews...

Andrew

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Originally posted by Andrew:
-SWEET AND LOWDOWN:
Low budget Woody Allen Docu-Drama starring Sean Penn(He got an oscar nomination for Best Actor in this movie) . I loved it. I recomend it to anyone

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A wonderful movie, which I actually also saw in July. Sean Penn was good, but the outstanding performance is by Samantha Morton, who was also nominated for an Oscar.

Directed by Jerry Thorpe
Written by E. Jack Neuman
Photography by Jack A. Marta
Music by Richard Hazard

Main cast: Van Johnson, Ray Milland, Fritz Weaver, Clu Gulager, Susan Oliver, John Saxon

Good start. Feeling of nostalgia (brought up on this stuff). Almost Peckinpahesque (?) snowy tilted-camera opening. Realisation of boredom soon looms. Were all TV Movies like this? Too many guest stars spouting corny hard-boiled dialogue. Bad acting, like Thunderbirds puppets (John Saxon VERY Thunderbirds). Not much action. Apprehension caused by thinking about how so many characters were going to be resolved at the end (oh no, more running time). Thankfully they're all left in mid air and it ends.

But rather excellent music by Richard Hazard, when music had room to breathe, even on TV. Exceptionally Lalo Schifrin. (Listen to the Mission Impossible Lalo CD, track 19 I think, Hazard is the composer but Lalo is the sound).

Earlier: REINDEER GAMES, for a second time. I'm even more impressed by John Frankenheimer's direction than I was before, because he manages to gloss over the fact that the script makes NO sense at ALL. Watching it a second time, I realized how completely jerry-rigged everything is, how utterly arbitrary everything that happens is, and yet -- mmmm -- those Frankenheimer frames! Good work by Gary Sinise and the rest of the supporting cast, but Charlize Theron's character made no sense, and Ben Affleck was completely out of his depth (so far, he only believably plays romantic comedy.) Music by Alan Silvestri is ordinary but workable.

ROMEO MUST DIE. You know who the three main, secret villains are -- the black one, the white one, and the Asian one -- as soon as you lay eyes on them. Jet Li is ingratiating, sort of an interesting low-key contrast to the increasingly relentless mugging of Jackie Chan. However, Chan isn't (at least not yet, that I've noticed) doing these ridiculous MATRIX-inspired flying-through-the-air kicks that could only have been done digitally. Not Li's fault, though. Direction by Andrzej Bartkowiak (normally a cinematographer) is relatively modest and laid-back for a picture like this, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, except the plot is so hole-ridden that a faster, less methodical approach might have helped it out. Most of the other actors do not register except for Delroy Lindo and Isaiah Washington and, in his few scenes, Russell Wong. The score was serviceable, but I already forgot who did it (there were two of them, right?) One last thought: this movie has the worst title for an action movie in recent memory.

I last viewed THE END OF THE AFFAIR (GB 1955 movie ***1/2 score ***1/2) October 20 1999, and quite enjoyed it. Here’s what I said about the movie at my Benjamin Frankel posting at the thread ‘I’m sure this has been done before’ on April 6 2000.

“THE END OF THE AFFAIR was a very classy character drama set in wartime London. Edward Dmytryk directed with authority, and putting the adequate Van Johnson aside, the movie contained three stunning performances. Deborah Kerr was amazing as the wife drawn into an extra-marital affair, just look at all the great films this lady has appeared in both sides of the Atlantic. Peter Cushing is superb as her dull, long suffering, though forgiving husband. John Mills adds a beautifully comedic performance to his gallery of characterizations as a particularly thorough and efficient private eye. Frankel’s music is by turns romantic and heartrending.”

A full description of my appreciation of Benjamin Frankel’s and Max Steiner’s work can be found at the same thread.

http://www.moviemusic.com/mb/Forum1/HTML/002138.html

MANIAC (GB 1962) movie ** score **1/2

Low-grade ‘thriller’ with a boringly twisting and implausible plot and a second-string cast. The setting is Mediterranean France, and Kerwin Matthews makes for a stilted hero, whilst Donald Houston a pathetic villain. The rest of the cast consists of British actors struggling with their French accents.

July 3 2000

CURTAIN UP (GB 1952) movie *** score ***

Malcolm Arnold provides an effective score to this small but valuable movie. Robert Morley is a small-time provincial theatre producer struggling to adapt Margaret Rutherford’s stage-play for next week’s performance. Despite bitchy and back-biting cast members, obstreperous stage-hands and the constant interference of the delightfully dotty Rutherford, Morley somehow succeeds in his task. A winning film that even boasts an appearance by the ubiquitous Sam Kydd…..here playing an ambulanceman.

July 6 2000

THERE WAS A CROOKED MAN (US 1970) movie **1/2 score ***

Pleasing, slight and very childish comedy western/prison drama with a rather ‘gone to seed’ Kirk Douglas matching wits with lawman Henry Fonda (excellent, as always). The movie begins with Douglas robbing Arthur O’Connell of a fortune, murdering his partners in crime, and then stashing the loot in a safe place, before promptly getting incarcerated. The rest of the story involves Kirk’s attempts to escape from prison by whatever means come to hand. A very jokey and rather endearing score from Charles Strouse is perfectly in keeping with the movie’s light atmosphere. Great support from a sterling cast including, amongst others, Hume Cronyn and John Randolph as a pair of loveable con-men, Burgess Meredith as a lifelong inmate of Fonda’s prison, Alan Hale Jr as a prison guard and Warren Oates as an incompetent gunman.

The movie does have its moments of ineptitude….but there are enough amusing passages to more than compensate.

July 7 2000

THE TOAST OF NEW ORLEANS (US 1950) movie *** score ****

Mario Lanza’s second movie is a rather clumsy and garish affair that doesn’t really capture the flavour of New Orleans. That said, the script is rather good, David Niven is fine as an opera-house producer, Kathryn Grayson is in fine voice, and J Carrol Naish has a field-day as Lanza’s very French uncle.

July 8 2000

THE GO-BETWEEN (GB 1971) movie ** score ***1/2

Wonderful Norfolk location-shooting, a splendid Edwardian atmosphere and a smashing score from Michel Legrand do not quite compensate for the slow and rather simple story that unfolds. Alan Bates is always good, here playing a gardener engaged in a secret affair with ‘lady of the manor’ Julie Christie. A young boy is their ‘go-between’. However, despite the charming story and characters (Trigger from ONLY FOOLS AND HORSES has a major role), and a fine cast including, Edward Fox, Michael Gough, Michael Redgrave, Margaret Leighton and Edward Fox, the picture as a whole is rather tiresome.

July 8 2000

THE SEVEN HILLS OF ROME (US 1958) movie ***1/2 score ****

After SERENADE, Mario Lanza’s best movie vehicle. THE SEVEN HILLS OF ROME is a far more easy going movie than most of Lanza’s other movies. Here, Lanza, in his penultimate movie outing, is allowed to indulge in comedy, romance and fisticuffs…..and despite his lacking in good looks, his weight problem, and a lack of true acting ability, he makes a valiant effort.

The story begins in America, but Lanza is soon jetting off to Rome in pursuit of his fickle sweetheart. Once in Italy, he rooms with a distant cousin (whose ancestor sat six away from Garibaldi….watch the movie to find out more). This delightful movie has a wonderful score directed by George Stoll and featuring Victor Young’s title song, superb locations, and a wonderful Italian cast.

We get to see most of Rome from the air, surely the most beautiful city in the world, and Lanza even finds time to brilliantly impersonate Perry Como, Dean Martin, Frankie Lane, Louis Armstrong and others.

With this Lanza outing, the musical focus shifts from opera, to some rather more contemporary and intimate music……..a movie for all tastes.

July 9 2000

LES MISERABLES (US 1998) movie ** score ***

Victor Hugo’s classic has to be one of the most telling demonstrations of human nature, at its best and at its worst, ever committed to paper. The 1935 movie version, with Fredric March, Charles Laughton and Sir Cedric Hardwicke was a masterful recreation of Hugo’s story…..the 1998 version manages to expunge virtually all trace of meaning and emotion from the story, despite being, technically, a reasonably faithful telling of events.

Indeed, locations and costumes are brilliant and effective, and Poledouris’ STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE homage is excellent. But, though the composer’s music evokes the passions and despair and tragedies of the story, the performances, scripting and direction do not.

Liam Neeson is just as wooden a Valjean as he was a Rob Roy MacGregor, and the ‘larger than life’ Australian actor Geoffrey Rush was sunk by the leaden screenplay. Uma Thurman was hopeless, and Peter Vaughn wasted. The rest of the cast seemed to have been dredged up from second-rate British television soap operas….that didn’t really help the movie sustain credibility.

July 10 2000

CLEOPATRA (US 1963) movie * score ***

Richard O’Sullivan as Celopatra’s brother is one of this movie’s many hilarious and inept touches. However, nothing beats the monumental absurdity of casting Elizabeth Taylor in the title role. She is absolutely hopeless…..a description that applies to most of her movie appearances. Only Rex Harrison’s performance as Caesar manages to transcend the howlingly awful script.

A gigantic and extremely boring fiasco.

July 12 2000

ROBBERY (GB 1967) movie ***1/2 score ***

Straightforward account of Stanley Baker’s robbery of a Glasgow to London Royal Mail money train. The movie boasts excellent London, Dublin and New York locations, a fine jazz score from Johnny Keating, taut and unflashy direction from Peter Yates, and a cast of stalwart British character actors, including Barry Foster minus the neck-tie.

The story begins with one of the best car chases ever committed to celluloid…..brilliant stuff made even more exciting by Keating’s thumping score. Some of the acting is a little wooden, and the script is often stilted, but the excellent photography captures wintry England to perfection…..great atmosphere.

July 13 2000

MAYTIME IN MAYFAIR (GB 1949) movie *1/2 score **1/2

Colourful but vacuous and witless musical/comedy follow-up to the infinitely superior SPRING IN PARK LANE. Much of the cast is reunited, including Michael Wilding, Anna Neagle and Peter Graves, but everyone overacts, the script is dire, and the musical numbers are particularly bland.

The movie should’ve been charming…..but everyone just tried too hard.

RUSH HOUR (US 1998) movie ***1/2 score **** (!!!!!!there follows a spoiler or two!!!!!!).

Very entertaining family action movie with a likeable cast and non-stop comic action sequences.

RUSH HOUR has a plot that is only marginally more credible than FIGHT CLUB, THE TRUMAN SHOW or LAST OF THE MOHICANS (1992)……and yet, RUSH HOUR doesn’t take itself in the least bit seriously, unlike the three aforementioned ponderous and sanctimonious soporifics.

RUSH HOUR begins on the last day of British rule in Hong Kong, and the soon to be disbanded Royal Hong Kong police force, including Jackie Chan and Commander Griffin (played by the usually excellent British actor Tom Wilkinson), is celebrating the smashing of a major Hong Kong crime syndicate. Soon the action switches to Los Angeles where one of the former British Chinese police officers is making his home. It’s not long before the policeman’s young daughter is kidnapped and held to ransom…..in steps the FBI, an avenging Chan, and Chris Tucker of the LAPD.

Not only are the good-guys ingratiating, but ‘evil Brit’ Tom Wilkinson makes an excellent chief villain.

Other highlights during the movie include an exciting billiards-room bust-up, and Lalo Schifrin’s fabulously cheesy and entertaining score. It’s great to see most veteran film composers, such as Schifrin and Williams, continue to adapt to the ever-evolving challenges that the successful application of CMS presents.

Haven't seen anything since Company Of Killers, but there's a Boris Karloff documentary on tonight. I'll let you all know what it is/was like.

Can't wait for the score CD to arrive - which I've already ordered some days ago, before seeing the movie. Yet another Jerry masterpiece (there! I remembered his name!)

Thanks Graham, it’s good to be back.

At the ‘What Have You Seen In JUNE?’ thread you mentioned DEAD OF NIGHT being a personally important movie to you. I remember seeing the movie at the cinema in 1948, and being scared stiff. It was something quite new then, particularly for a British movie. The ventriloquist section was particularly frightening to me at the time. In fact, when the movie turned up on television twenty or thirty years later my kids were scared stiff as well. After the movie, I remember calling out to them from behind curtains and doorways ’….Sylvester…..’ - they’ve never forgiven me!

DEAD OF NIGHT had so many memorable sequences…..none more so than Mervyn Johns’ sudden compulsion to murder the psychiatrist. What a good career Johns had….particularly for someone who was so unremarkable to look at. But DEAD OF NIGHT gave him a ‘starring’ role, and he proved his skill and versatility throughout the movie. I also loved his sinister chuckling villain in the Will Hay comedy MY LEARNED FRIEND (GB 1944 movie ***1/2 score ***1/2). DEAD OF NIGHT star Roland Culver’s a favourite of mine also…..he really was the quintessential Englishman.

ENEMY OF THE STATE (US 1998) movie *** score ****

Hi-tech low-intelligence pseudo-‘paranoid’ chase thriller.

If the authorities are even half as stupid as they are portrayed in this film, even the Joe who’s afraid of his own shadow can sleep safely at night.

This is the sort of movie that is less believable than a Martian peanut-butter factory….but, it is good harmless fun. Good guys Will Smith and the seemingly ageless Gene Hackman are up against government boss Jon Voight and a shady congressman played by ‘evil’ Brit Stuart Wilson. Fortunately the plot conspires to be Smith’s guardian angel, but the events move swiftly, and the two hours is up before you know it.

Despite being a remarkably silly movie, it still manages to be more convincing than FIGHT CLUB. I’m beginning to wonder if there is a movie in existence that outdoes FIGHT CLUB in the childish stupidity stakes.

ULZANNA’S RAID (US 1971) movie ** score *

Very dated, low-key, and tepid tale that gets well and truly bogged down during an endless climactic canyon shootout between Ulzanna’s Apaches and the pursuing US cavalry.

The movie is most notable for two reasons. Firstly, Burt Lancaster stars as an all-seeing, all-knowing, worldly-wise scout, and the whole movie tends to revolve around his character. All of the movie’s other characters fall silent whenever Lancaster ponderously spouts his ‘pearls of wisdom’….even Lancaster’s comically laboured (and much caricatured) chuckle gets a good workout.

Secondly, the movie is cursed with an absolutely terrible score from Frank DeVol. Not only is his music consistently inappropriate, the score sounds like a diluted medley of a hundred other western scores……and yet overall is about as valuable as the stock music used in THE LONE RANGER series.

Once again, ULZANNA’S RAID provides a perfect example of how so many movies made during the 60s and 70s have aged more markedly than movies from the 30s and 40s. The first two decades of talking cinema not only have more quality movies per square inch than the 60s and 70s, but also many of the movies have a timeless quality. This is partly to do with the pacing of many 60s and 70s movies. Too often movies from the 60s and 70s are ponderously plotted and leadenly paced. Thankfully, 90s Hollywood has recaptured the quality and pure entertainment value of 30s and 40s cinema.

The only purpose old clinkers like ULZANNA’S RAID, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, and 2001 serve today, are as quaint reminders of a less enlightened period of movie-making, and the relatively immature state of society as a whole.

Despite the dull humdrumness of ULZANNA’S RAID, it still manages to be far more amusing than the determinedly witless YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN.

THE HARDER THEY FALL (US 1956) movie ***1/2 score ***

It is rather fitting that Bogart’s final movie is a typically high-quality production…..vividly photographed in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, well-scripted, superbly performed and tautly directed. Bogart is one of the most famous of all of the movie legends, up there with John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe, etc…..and it is gratifying to know that Bogart remained at the top of his profession right up to his death, thus his legendary status remains untarnished.

THE HARDER THEY FALL involves jobless reporter Bogart being cajoled into joining crooked boxing promoter Rod Steiger’s match-fixing schemes.

Steiger has discovered a hulking ‘unknown’ South American heavyweight, and intends to use him to have a crack at the world title…..the only problem is the guy has a glass jaw, so Steiger has to fix every fight in the run-up to the title-bid.

Bogart ends up managing the South American on Steiger’s behalf, and with each fixed fight, his conscience becomes just that bit more strained, particularly when he starts to lose friends, people start getting killed and even his marriage is threatened.

Steiger and Bogart are great together, aided by a smashing script and believable plot development. The movie’s only major drawback is the unconvincing nature of the fights themselves (apart from the bruising final title challenge). Having boxed myself (a long time ago now), the fights were just too obviously choreographed…..even my wife, who knows very little about the pugilistic arts, was disappointed with that aspect of the movie.

However, the rest of the movie was great, including Friedhofer’s excellent 50s urban score, very much in the same mould as Bernstein’s ON THE WATERFRONT, whose theme Goldsmith copied virtually note for note for 1997’s LA CONFIDENTIAL…..however, there is far more variety, subtlety, intelligence, jazz colour and thematic depth to Friedhofer’s scoring of THE HARDER THEY FALL than there is to the spartan and conservative ‘ON THE WATERFRONT’ facsimile that Goldsmith applied to LA CONFIDENTIAL. With Friedhofer’s THE HARDER THEY FALL, harsh orchestral statements intermingle with smooth jazz sequences, to create the perfect musical contrast between the cold realities of life in the cut-throat world of the fight scene and Bogart’s own decency that gradually asserts itself as the movie progresses.

A fine movie made at a time when Hollywood was sadly beginning to slip into the immature and naive rut that characterized 60s and 70s cinema.

Suprisingly good. Lots of fun action. Score is much better in the film.

Produced and directed by Kevin Burns

Fascinating documentary which confirms that Boris was a great old guy!

Confirming what we all knew were people like Roddy McDowall, Robert Wise, Peter Bogdanovich and Forrest J. Ackerman. What was really nice though was to have the programme hinged around Boris' daughter. Bela Lugosi Jr. also popped up, looking remarkably like his dad, to say that, contrary to old rumours, there was no animosity between the two stars.

The best of all was the, what I presume to be, rare footage, both home movies and from the studio vaults: so we got to see Boris playing tennis, Boris playing with babies, "Uncle Boris" reading children's stories, Boris on This Is Your Life, and, the best of all, Boris in colour test footage for Son Of Frankenstein strangling makeup man Jack Pierce!

THE COURT MARTIAL OF BILLY MITCHELL (US 1955) movie ** score ***

An important historical incident is reduced to childish irrelevance in this simplistic account of General Mitchell’s desperate attempts, in the 1920s, to convince the US army of the need for air defences…..he even predicts the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.

Gary Cooper is his usual charming, but extremely wooden, self, as the General with foresight, and Rod Steiger turns up as a cunning prosecutor. Cooper is too stilted and Steiger too florid, and the script is particularly juvenile. Ralph Bellamy is good as Cooper’s attorney, Charles Bickford is fine as a sceptical general, but Fred Clark is wasted playing Steiger’s co-prosecutor as a buffoon. Plenty of other good character actors round off the cast-list.

WATERFRONT (GB 1950) movie **1/2 score ***1/2

1930’s dockside depression-era Liverpool is the setting for this ‘kitchen-sink’ drama involving the dour ‘working-class’ McCabe family. Robert Newton plays the drunken and violent merchant seaman and head of the McCabe clan. Kathleen ‘Lorks!’ Harrison is his dutiful and long-suffering wife, and Susan Shaw plays one of his feisty daughters who is being courted by ‘honest-guy’ Richard Burton, an out-of-work ship’s engineer. Meanwhile, McCabe’s younger daughter is being romanced by a spivvy Kenneth Griffith. Life is tough on the streets of urban England, and it’s not long before the drunken bilker Newton murders a shipmate outside of a waterfront tavern…...

A ludicrous story, made worse by some exceptionally bad acting, makes the dramatic side of the movie quite hilarious. And yet…..the superb waterfront locations, dimly lit and moody atmosphere, and the skilled use of Liszt’s Les Preludes as musical score (also memorable for its use in the Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon series), all make the movie very watchable, if only as a mood-piece, and as a valuable record of Liverpool-life between the wars.

A cast of usually excellent actors give terrible performances…..it seems that Robert Newton only has to catch the merest whiff of salt air, and his eyes start rolling, his head starts twitching, and his shoulders hunch to support an imaginary parrot…..all that was missing here was a ‘Shiver me Timbers’. He was absolutely dreadful as McCabe….completely over the top. Newton is far more effective when he underplays……he’s already a dominant character, he doesn’t need to try to be effective. Anyone who has watched the wonderful 1944 version of Noel Coward’s THIS HAPPY BREED will know what I mean.

Another point of interest in WATERFRONT was the array of familiar British character actors in the supporting cast. No Sam Kydd, but there was Duncan Lamont, Michael Brennan, Glyn Houston, James Haytor, Cyril Chamberlain, Charles Victor…..and probably a few others I didn’t spot.

THE SANDWICH MAN (GB 1966) movie * score ***

Anglo-Peruvian comic Michael Bentine makes a rare movie appearance as a wandering sandwich man and pigeon trainer in this unfunny comedy. Dozens of famous British actors, mainly comic, make cameo appearances, including Norman Wisdom, Ian Hendry, Sir Donald Wolfitt, Ron Moody, Harry H Corbett and Stanley Holloway, and there are some nice London locations, and a pleasant jazz/pop score typical of the time.

Directed by Elia Kazan
Screenplay by Paul Osborn, from novels by Borden Deal and William Bradford Huie
Photography by Ellsworth Fredericks
Music by Kenyon Hopkins
Main cast: Montgomery Clift, Jo Ann Fleet, Lee Remick, Albert Salmi, Jay C. Flippen

Water authority man needs to flood a valley (all for a good cause), but gets loads of problems from the old matriarch who won't budge, the young widowed grand-daughter who wants him to settle down with her and her kids, the local bully boys who don't like him paying black people a decent wage, etc.

That about sums it up. A very busy story which addresses compromise, tolerance, and adapting to change, sometimes a little laboriously.

Good to look at, all autumnal browns, and Monty Clift gets to show that no one could look as awkward and tortured as him. Even when lovely young Lee Remick professes her undying love for him he just sits swamped in a big chair, looking lost. He was good at it though.

Kenyon Hopkins provides a score which treats the period (1933) and the location very coolly, no orchestral flourishes even when Monty eventually embraces Remick. Just trumpet, guitar, harmonica and a small string section, effective in its avoidance of melodrama. Kenyon Hopkins didn't seem to ever hit the big time, though he has some important films to his name.

NONE BUT THE LONELY HEART (US 1944) movie **** score ****1/2

Hollywood’s recreation of the East End of London may lack authenticity, but this is the kind of story that is universal….it’s about people and human nature…..it didn’t really matter whether the movie was set in London, Paris, New York or Rome.

Cary Grant plays sharp Cockney drifter Ernie Mott, and an Oscar-winning Ethel Barrymore is his ailing mother….their relationship is rocky, to say the least. The story takes place in the 30’s, a time when life in London (for most), was blighted by poverty, hunger, gang-warfare and the establishment of powerful crime syndicates.

The story begins, very movingly in Westminster Abbey, as Grant and Barry Fitzgerald pay respect to the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior. It is clear that Grant is unhappy with life, and dreams of better days. The news that his mother is terminally ill forces him to change his ‘drifting’ ways….he spruces up her shop, but then gets involved with crime-boss George Coulouris.

Part wartime propaganda, part ‘noirish mood-piece’, NONE BUT THE LONELY HEART is extraordinarily successful. Despite Grant’s unsuitability for the role, his magnetic screen presence and acting ability sees him through. Barrymore is absolutely superb, as is Coulouris, Fitzgerald, and a smouldering June Duprez as Grant’s love interest.

The movie’s atmosphere is breathtaking. The rain-soaked streets of London, the boisterous taverns, the colourful crooks, the cosmopolitan make-up of London’s people, the reliable and hard-pressed cops, and the overflowing shop-fronts spilling out onto the streets, create a version of London that only Hollywood could conjure. The essence of London is there; it’s just that some of the detail, such as the accents, doesn’t quite ring true. Still, you would have had to have lived there to realize this….for anyone else, this is how one may imagine London’s East End to be.

Hanns Eisler’s Oscar-nominated score is quite exceptional. Rather than reflect the saloon pianos and accordions of the taverns or the smooth jazz of the night-clubs, Eisler concentrates on the emotion of the movie, thus providing a score with a universal quality….the string work, solo and massed, is exquisite.

Without giving any of the plot away, the movie ends as it began, with a stirring tribute to the people of Great Britain in their attempts to repel The Hun, and their desire to better their existence.

The Tomb of the Unknown Warrior rests in the nave at Westminster Abbey…..close by there is a monument to one of Britain’s known heroes…..Major John André, a loyal officer of the British Empire serving under the command of the British General Sir Henry Clinton, Commander of the British Army in New York.

Major John André was executed as a spy by the Americans in l780. The monument at Westminster Abbey was designed by Robert Adam and built by Peter Mathias Van Gelder at the request King George III of England. It shows a mourning figure of Britannia with a lion, seated on the top of a sarcophagus. On the front of this is a relief showing George Washington in a tent receiving a petition for André’s pardon, and Major André being led away to execution. The inscription reads.

SACRED to the MEMORY of MAJOR JOHN ANDRE, who raised by his Merit at an early period of Life to the rank of Adjutant General of the British Forces in America, and employed in an important but hazardous Enterprise fell a Sacrifice to his Zeal for his King and Country on the 2nd of October AD l780 Aged 29, universally Beloved and esteemed by the Army in which he served and lamented even by his FOES. His gracious Sovereign KING GEORGE the Third has caused this Monument to be erected.
The Remains of Major JOHN ANDRE Were, on the l0th of August l82l, removed from Tappan, By JAMES BUCHANAN, His Majesty's Consul at New York, Under instructions from His Royal Highness The DUKE of YORK, And, with the permission of the Dean and Chapter, Finally deposited in a Grave Contiguous to this Monument, On the 28th of November l82l.

Early in the War of Independence, John was captured and interned at Lancaster, Pennsylvania and exchanged for some American prisoners in November l776. He came to the attention of the British authorities because of the detailed secret maps he had drawn while a prisoner. In l779 he was appointed Adjutant General, with the rank of Major, to General Sir Henry Clinton, Commander of the British Army in New York. André was sent on a secret mission to General Benedict Arnold to negotiate the surrender of West Point to the British. However he was captured within the American lines, in civilian dress (contrary to orders given by General Clinton), with incriminating plans of West Point concealed in his boot. He was taken before General George Washington and in spite of every effort to obtain his pardon, he was hanged as a spy on 2nd October l780 and buried beneath the gallows at Tappan, New York. Even before his execution André had aroused the sympathy of the British and the Americans. As he walked to the gallows he was watched by many sobbing women, one of whom gave him a peach which later grew into a tree above his grave. After the war the monument was erected in Westminster Abbey and it was proposed that his bones should be brought back for burial. In l82l his remains were, at the Duke of York's request, brought from America and buried with the funeral service in front of his monument in the Abbey. A small lozenge stone marks the grave. The wooden chest in which the bones were enclosed is still in the Abbey's triforium, but is not accessible to the public.

A monument, with an inscription written by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean of Westminster, was erected in l879 by Cyrus Field on the site of André's execution at Tappan. Also on the monument at Tappan are the following lines.

He was more unfortunate than criminal,
An accomplished man and a gallant officer.

George Washington

Michael Wilding brilliantly played André in the 1955 Hollywood movie, THE SCARLET COAT (movie **** score ***).

The Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, also found in the Nave at Westminster Abbey, is a lasting memorial to those British war heroes lying in unmarked graves throughout the world.

As plans were being drawn up for a simple unveiling ceremony on November 11th 1920, there was a proposal that the body of an unknown soldier be returned to England for burial at the same time. It is generally agreed that the original idea came from the vicar of Margate, the Reverend David Railton MC, who had served as a padre in France in 1916. Years later he wrote.
I came back from the line at dusk. We had just laid to rest the mortal remains of a comrade. I went to a billet in front of Erkingham, near Armentieres. At the back of the billet was a small garden, and in the garden only six paces from the house, there was a grave. At the head of the grave there stood a rough cross of white wood. On the cross was written in deep black-pencilled letters, "An Unknown British Soldier" and in brackets beneath, "of the Black Watch". It was dusk and no one was near, except some officers in the billet playing cards. I remember how still it was. Even the guns seemed to be resting.
How that grave caused me to think. Later on I nearly wrote to Sir Douglas Haig to ask if the body of an "unknown" comrade might be sent home...
In 1920 he wrote to the Dean of Westminster Abbey, Doctor Ryle, who in turn made the suggestion to the government. It was realised that this one symbolic burial could stand for all the hundreds of thousands of missing men with no known grave.

The body was taken to Boulogne under escort where it was placed in a coffin made of English oak, and a crusader-style sword presented by the King was fixed to the coffin. A French military escort went with the body to Boulogne, where Marshal Foch paid his own homage. British troops then took over guard duties and the body crossed the Channel in the destroyer Verdun, receiving a Field Marshal's nineteen gun salute on arrival at Dover. Crowds gathered at every station on the way as the Unknown Warrior's train travelled north from the Kent coat to London's Victoria station.

The train thundered through the dark, wet, moonless night. At the platforms by which it rushed could be seen groups of women watching and silent, many dressed in deep mourning. Many an upper window was open and against the golden square of light was silhouetted clear cut and black the head and shoulders of some faithful watcher....In the London suburbs there were scores of homes with back doors flung wide, light flooding out and in the garden figures of men women and children gazing at the great lighted train rushing past.
from the Daily Mail 11 November 1920

On the morning of 11 November the body of the Unknown Warrior was drawn to the Cenotaph on a gun carriage pulled by six black horses, followed by twelve distinguished pallbearers, including Haig, Beatty and French. Many of those who lined the streets watching the procession pass had been waiting all night.

At eleven o'clock, "the eleventh hour", as Big Ben began to chime, the King turned to face the Cenotaph and, by a touch on a button, released the flags veiling the monument. As the chimes died away, everyone fell silent for two minutes, and the Last Post sounded.
The solemn journey continued down Whitehall to Westminster Abbey where the nave was lined by 100 soldiers who had been awarded the Victoria Cross. The Royal Family had pride of place, but the congregation was primarily composed of widows and mothers who had lost sons. The service was brief and according to The Times, 'the most beautiful, the most touching and the most impressive this island has ever seen....’.

It had been planned that the grave of the Unknown Warrior would be closed after allowing a pilgrimage of three days. The organisers were taken completely by surprise by the response of the people, not only in London, but throughout Great Britain and the British Empire. Once the ceremony was finished the thousands of people who had lined the streets began to queue to pass the Cenotaph. Most of them had brought wreaths or bunches of flowers to place at the base of the memorial.

At least 40,000 people passed through the Abbey before the doors were closed at 11pm an hour later than the scheduled closure time and thousands more passed the Cenotaph. There were still long queues at midnight, and people continued to visit the site through the night.

Most impressive of all was the night scene in Whitehall. The vast sweep of the road was almost silent save for the ceaseless murmur of footsteps. Under the brilliant glare of the lamps that were softened by the foggy air the long, dark lines of people stretched from Trafalgar Square to the Cenotaph from whose base they could be seen vanishing in the distance, two narrow lines of slowly moving people separated by a wide pathway on which stood here and there vague figures of policemen on horseback.
from the Daily Mail 12 November 1920.

The pilgrimage went on throughout the weekend, with Saturday bringing large numbers of pilgrims from outside London. The Daily Express told the story of two wounded soldiers who walked sixty miles to lay wreaths at the Cenotaph; they had both lost brothers in the war. There were pilgrims from Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

One policeman spoke of old women who had come from remote country villages to pay homage to the dead. "One old lady came from the far north of Scotland. She carried a bunch of withered flowers, and told me with tears in her eyes that the flowers came from a little garden which her boy had planted when he was only six."

from Daily Telegraph 12 November 1920.

On Monday 15 November traffic began to move along Whitehall, but the great pilgrimage carried on. As buses passed the Cenotaph, the drivers slowed out of respect, and their passengers stood and removed their hats. Up to the time the grave was closed on 18th November an estimated 1,250,000 people visited Westminster Abbey, but the pilgrimage continued long afterwards, with the space enclosing the grave remaining filled with flowers and other tributes for almost a year.

It was probably the greatest public outpouring of emotion that Great Britain had ever seen……

Scary Movie - Alternately gross, gruesome and gut-busting, this is not a perfect comedy, but it is a good one. The in-jokes are hilarious, and that scene in the movie theater with the girl who WOULDN'T STOP TALKING was one of the best. 4/5
David Kitay's score is, as usual, great; a fine rip on Marco Beltrami's work for... well, virtually every film he's done up to this point (meaning the horror films). It baffles me that Kitay's work has been ignored by record labels. 5/5

Chicken Run - After the Wallace & Gromit shorts, I expect nothing less than pure art from Aardman Animations. Happily, I was not disappointed. This is a wonderfully written and voiced film, and it can easily stand with the Disney classics 5/5
The score by Harry Gregson-Williams and John Powell equals the film in sheer greatness.
Tim, you were right. It is better than ANTZ.
5/5