I have seen Loneliness of the Lost Distance Runner (it shows in the US on TCM in April). I know it's supposed to be a pro-rebellion indictment of how horrible poverty in class-conscious Britain is supposed to be, but the guy's a jerk, he could just cross the line and it would save him a lot of trouble. Oh sure, it's a personal victory on two levels, he knows he's the best and he didn't bow to Redgrave's pressure, but he now has a couple of years of tough life in the slammer to wonder if he made the right move after all.

I saw one of Brian DePalma's early films again, one which I'd raved about here a while back. It's called HI, MOM!, and on second viewing it was still great! Robert De Niro is a voyeur who has a short-lived career making porno films (or "Peep Art" as he calls it) - filming the neighbours from the window of his flat. Anyway (don't ask why), he ends up involved with a black urban guerrilla group.

The narrative logic may be evasive, but it doesn't matter: this film had me laughing out loud consistently, that is up until the one-hour mark when things turn extremely disturbing with a lengthy mock documentary. That bit, though brilliantly done, kind of left a bad taste, but on the whole HI, MOM!, with its semi-improvised dialogues and exaggeratedly naturalistic performances, is a gas, and it's interesting to see how, even back then, DePalma was doing Hitchcock homages. Other parts look ahead to everything from TAXI DRIVER to Woody Allen (De Niro's hilarious seduction of one of the neighbours, for example). Or maybe that's just New York.

The music is a mixture of folky/ pop/ blaxploitation instrumentals and songs, very much of their time.

HI, MOM! (USA 1969)

Directed by Brian De Palma
Screenplay by Brian De Palma
Photography by Robert Elfstrom
Music by Eric Kaz

Main Cast: Robert De Niro, Jennifer Salt, Gerrit Graham

Here's another one -

MALLRATS (USA 1995)

Directed by Kevin Smith
Screenplay by Kevin Smith
Photography by Paul Dixon
Music by Ira Newborn

Main Cast: Jeremy London, Jason Lee, Shannon Doherty, Claire Forlani, Michael Rooker, Ben Affleck

Young loafers hang around a shopping mall, and one of them plots to win back the girl he's just lost.

I'm too old for teen comedies, but this starts off quite well, with a much more perceptive and acidic script than the norm. Sadly, it does degenerate into just another crass teen movie, and it's sad to see a good actor like Michael Rooker looking so uncomfortable. Incidentally, the version I saw was apparently twenty minutes shorter than the original release, but I'm not complaining.

Hi, Mom--this is 60s radical indie to be sure. If someone had told me this guy'd be making Mission: Impossible with Tom Cruise, I'd be like, "What?!" And yes, when the street theater people start torturing those folks, the comedy goes and it is indeed disturbing. Maybe that's the point--to shake you up with very different tones and events.

I'd be interested to see those other early De Palma's - GREETINGS, and...what were the other ones...THE WEDDING PARTY (?) and GET TO KNOW YOUR RABBIT (?). De Palma really seems to have lost it.

One scene in Ben Hur that always bugs me is when the guard opens the door of the cell where Ben Hur's mother and sister have been kept. When he actually sees them he has the most intense look of horror on his face, heightened by the music, while he exclaims "Lepers". I remember, as a child seeing this scene, and I was terrified at what we were going to see when the mother and daughter crawl back to their home, judging by the guards horrific expression. As it turns out, they still look quite attractive with just a few sores on their faces and grey hair. I reckon that guard must have been a righ woolly-woofter the way he reacted and was lucky that Caesar didn't find out as he would have surely sacked him on the spot!!
The film still has the ability to move the viewer and quite a few times I was holding back the tears, especially in the scenes between Ben Hur and his mother and sister when he discovers them again etc.

Gae

Everyone---OK, I caught a few more original series Star Trek episodes, but I'm not going to discuss them in any detail. Except one--I did see the Return to Tomorrow episode mentioned earlier. Yes, Sargon and the bunch haven't had bodies for a half million years so it's amazing the restraint they show when they are able to get it on. Nimoy is great as Hennock, one of the charms of the show are those rare episodes where Spock loses his Spock character to take on other persona. The "problem" with this episode is that so many people are changing consciousness with each other that it's pretty hard to know who is who and who is where by the end: "Ok, let's see, Sargon's in the Enterprize hull, Spock is in Nurse Chapel who Hennock in Spock thinks is under his mental control, and...." One subtle but great moment, even more than Kirk's grin at having been able to help Sargon make out, is when Nurse Chapel, who forever has the hots for Spock, explains where Spock's consciousness was. She says, "we exchanged consciousness," as if it were like sharing something special with Spock, and you can see Spock just stiffen up like he's embarrased by the whole thing and wants nothing to do with her.

Caught a wonderfully fun episode of The Avengers from 1967: Dead Man's Treasure, directed by Sidney Hayers who directed Burn Witch Burn (and maybe Circus of Horrors as well, I'm not sure). In any case, this was a blast. A dying agent hides the papers in a lock box that is the prize for a benefit auto rally. Steed and Peel have to drive through the English countryside with other contestants finding clues to where the box is. There are 2 foreign spies, a freelancer, a butler who might have done it, a racecar arcade game that gives off deadly electric shocks, Peel jumping and judo-ing some guy, a quirky English lass whose fiancees have all come to bitter ends, a great sign switch gag, and all sorts of neat British cars zooming around. And, on top of all that, is the hot hot hot Diana Rigg and a neat Laurie Johnson ditty for the motor race. A delight.

The Roots of Heaven (1958) directed by John Huston and scored by Malcolm Arnold. Arnold's score may be one of the finest ever written for a film, but I'm used to hearing it on its own as music rather than as a companion piece for visuals. Neat to see the shots that inspired all the phrase changes, but the sparse use of score (35 minutes of a 130 minute film), while it may help the film, diminishes the scoring: while watching the film and hearing one brief cue every 10 minutes, you don't come away realizing what a masterpiece it all adds up to. As for the film itself, while I wish Hollywood was still making Technicolor widescreen films in Africa, this one did have its weaknesses. The cast was great--Trevor Howard, Errol Flynn, Paul Lukas, Herbert Lom, and the absolutely wonderful to look at Juliette Greco. The story less so. For all it's talk about saving elephants, we only see them in a few shots and at a distance, so that they always remain an abstraction, a cause for these people to fight for but never a reality you understand. It also seems as if the characters are trying to recover from their psychological guilts and wounds from WW2 more than act in favor of the elephants. The shifting alliances become confusing and inexplicable. Habib is paying the ivory hunters, then joins with Morell and the pro-elephant bunch, then changes back, attacks the elephants and captures Morell, and then lets him go. Morell too goes from someone working within the system to a renegade to someone with serious doubts and maybe even a martyr complex to going back to being a renegade again. In any case, this film is much more about personalities and politics than it is about action. It's remakably pro-environment for the 50s, and it has a Black nationalist as a key character, but the film still considers women 2nd class participants and the African natives as mere decoration--whatever the cause, it's only White Man that can effect change for the good. So, despite the actors, the visuals, the score, and good intentions, the film is a bit of a mixed bag. Maltin gives it 2 1/2 stars which seems to me about right.

Gae