Although I haven't seen anything yet this month. Oops. ::Shrugs::

Bring 'em on!

Looks like they're shorter nowadays though, so I'll give it a try.

I finally saw Bad Taste two days ago. What an amazing piece of **** , in the best possible way! It's incredible what Peter Jackson managed to do with virtually no money at all. The special effects look great for no-budget effects, and the direction shows that Jackson really was and is a master. I agree with someone who posted a comment at the IMDb - if there is any proof that you can grow up to be anything you want, it's got to be this film. Only ten years after shooting this crazy homemade film, PJ was at the helm of one of the most daring and expensive movie projects ever!

I have to admit though that while I kept looking for him, knowing that he was one of the actors in the film - I never thought that he played Derek. Reading that in the credits was very confusing. I have to go back and watch it again.

Now I can't wait to see Forgotten Silver - if only DV-Depot would finally ship my DVDs!

On Sept. 1st I caught a German film from 1946, THE MURDERERS ARE AMONG US with Hildegard Knef. Very Noir in its look, lots of shadows and odd camera angles. Shot on-location in the literal rubble of Berlin, it's a story about a former Nazi who's become a factory owner and talks about the peacetime rebuilding of Germany in almost fascist terms. During the war he was responsible for a massacre that his medic tried to stop. After the war, when the medic learns the Nazi is alive, he tries to kill him for the war crime. Heavy stuff told at times with a heavy hand but engrossing all the way.

Locations: Burrowhead, Isle of Whithorn, Scotland, UK; Dumfries, Scotland, UK; Galloway, Scotland, UK; Plockton, Highlands, Scotland, UK; St Ninian's Cave, Physgill, Luce Bay, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, UK

Directed by Scott Hicks
Screenplay by William Goldman, from material by Stephen King
Photography by Piotr Sobocinski
Music by Mychael Danna

Main Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Anton Yelchin, Hope Davis, Mika Boorem, David Morse

Young boy's summer of 1960 and his relationship with a mysterious old gent.

Perhaps not the correct choice of viewing for a Sunday afternoon after the lunchtime wines - I wasn't needing any additional insomnia treatment. Completely unmemorable, with little in the way of narrative drive, the themes surface and disappear again to little effect. We're on familiar ground here - it's a typically thin Stephen King evocation of growing up (to be fair to King, many of his meatier ideas didn't make it into the shooting script).

Directed by Jeff Lieberman
Screenplay by Jeff Lieberman
Photography by Joseph Mangine
Music by Robert Prince

Main Cast: Don Scardino, Patricia Pearcy, R.A. Dow, Jean Sullivan, Peter MacLean

Killer worms come out of the ground after getting electrified during a storm.

SQUIRM was one of my favourite films from 1976 when I saw it back then as a young horror weirdo. How come it didn't look so good when I saw it again yesterday? It's really mild for most of the running time, and inevitably cheap-looking. The worms themselves look like ten tons of spaghetti sliding off the back of a lorry. And they don't really pose any threat, because although there's one gory face-devouring scene (perhaps just a mere excuse for an early-days Rick Baker-devised shock effect), we subsequently learn that the worms are actually afraid of light, and so they part like the Red Sea to allow the hero to walk through them holding a candle.

But talent is on show. Writer/ director Lieberman effectively tightens the screws after a bland (I was going to say "sluggish" - hee hee) first half, and there are some commendable attempts at a kind of naturalistic humour which humanizes some roles no end. Don Scardino is particularly personable as the wimpy hero (he looks like a film score geek!)

Directed by Charles Vidor
Screenplay by Philip MacDonald, Michael Blankfort and Albert Duffy, from the play by James Warwick
Photography by Lucien Ballard
Music Direction by Morris Stoloff

Main Cast: Chester Morris, Ralph Bellamy, Ann Dvorak, Melville Cooper, Rose Stradner, Marc Lawrence

Escaped convict plus gang hide out in a psychiatrist's house. The doc gradually breaks the killer down through psychoanalysis of his dreams.

And although, as in most films which took this angle, the explanations are rather pat, BLIND ALLEY seems to be one of the first Hollywood movies to address the issue. And apart from the influential psychoanalytical details, the bare backdrop of an escaped killer holed up with a family subsequently made it into a dozen other things.

Leaving aside the film's place in history, it is in itself a well done, brisk piece. Quite conventionally handled overall, but it does seem to be at least trying to be more. Interesting dream sequence printed in negative, impressive CALIGARI-like expressionistic sets for the key flashback scene, and some nice directorial/ script touches - the killer's moll seems to get all hot under the knicker elastic every time her lover kills someone, whilst he rejects her more with every new crime.

Maybe the film's makers would like THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE to be as highly regarded as ROSEMARY'S BABY, but with its extravagance (and lesbian bits) it's more akin to Michael Winner's stupendously grotesque 1977 horror THE SENTINEL.

James Newton Howard's intelligent scoring is devilishly effective, in fact I got the CD because of a brief combination of notes blasted out during the climactic conflagration scene.

THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE (USA 1997)

Directed by Taylor Hackford
Screenplay by Jonathan Lemkin and Tony Gilroy, from the novel by Andrew Neiderman
Photography by Andrzej Bartkowiak
Music by James Newton Howard

I always find it amazing though how Keanu Reeves always gets to play with actors like these.

Yes, well after all, he's still on his acting apprenticeship and needs all the help he can get!!! Its been a long apprenticeship though and if he ever graduates from it...who knows?!!

Tom Hanks seems to be a closed book in this, but his continually pained expression does convey his inner torment. Either that or it conveys a permanent desire to let go a really big jobby. Paul Newman is beginning to show his 77 years - he's got Laurence Olivier old man crinkly bits around the mouth now and John Voight floppy jowls.

Thomas Newman is instantly recognizable as Thomas Newman, with his kazoos, Bulgarian banjos and minimalism, and he's also hugely effective. I particularly liked the music for the journey to Chicago, and the Alex North style plucked strings and agitated percussion which covers the bank robbery sequence. All dubbed in at a decent volume, hooray!

ROAD TO PERDITION (USA 2002)

Directed by Sam Mendes
Screenplay by David Self, from the graphic novel by Max Allan Collins illustrated by Richard Piers Rayner
Photography by Conrad L. Hall
Music by Thomas Newman

High Crimes. Jim Caviezell, husband of Ashley Judd, is arrested by the Army
because “supposedly” he killed innocent civilians in a war in Central America.
She is a lawyer who hires Morgan Freeman, an alcoholic who loves to jar the
military system, to prove that her husband is a victim of an Army cover up.
It is an interesting movie. Glad I waited for the video as it worked fine
on a small screen. This movie kept my attention, and Judd has been very
appealing in almost every movie of hers I’ve watched.

Welcome back, Graham. We missed you!

a cracking good adventure film.
I wasn't sure Jim Caviezel (who looks like Antonio 'how you say?' Banderas on the cover) or Guy Pearce could pull it off, but they did. Loved Ed Shearmur's score.

Changing Lanes

Also well-made for the most part. This could've been a mundane, typical thriller, but it just keeps going. A really bad day in two completely opposite people's lives.
Also quite enjoyed David Arnold's eclectic score, though I'm not real sure how it'd work as a 39 minute suite on the Varese CD.
camera work in this movie was annoying in spots. Does the camera really need to drift from left to right to show me that appearing in court can indeed be stressful?

City by the Sea

A slow movie directed by Michael Caton-Jones. I'm surprised this film works as well as it does because there it is simply so convoluted in terms of De Niro's character.

John Murphy's score is bland and inappropriate. What was the point of the Middle Eastern influence in the score? to create a droning sound?
If so, fine, but I contend that there are many other musical ways more appropriate to a film set in New York.

When was this film made (obviously pre-9/11/01)? The WTC features very prominently in several shots.

One Hour Photo

Monsters Inc. Cute Pixar movie. Great voices and creative story. I did,
however, expect to laugh a lot more. I had a few chuckles here and there.
The end credits which feature blooper out takes are an absolute riot.
Nice Newman comedic score.

pretty good movie.
For whatever reason, I live movies set in the old British Empire. (cue rabid D2 just waiting to paste together another dissertation).

Stuff like this and The Man Who Would Be King.

JJH, do you really think we'll be getting more history lessons from D2 about the glories of the British Empire? It's been a while now - don't you feel that our education has suffered somewhat since?

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

got the DVD yesterday. Outstanding movie; I don't know why I never got around to seeing it earlier...or reading the book.

Jean-Pierre Melville: A Portrait in 9 Poses--Documentary interview with JPM, French noir director

Breakfast at Tiffany's w/Hepburn & Peppard

Heading Home w/Gary Oldman & Joley Richardson

Don't feel like saying much about any of them.[/

I think that says more than a thousand words Lou

JJ, The Man Who Would Be King has always been one of my all time favorite films, considering the chemistry between Connery and Caine I've always been surprised film makers have never got these two together again? nice score by Maurice Jarre too!

Just back from Mr Night Shamalamadingdong's SIGNS. Haven't even begun to gather my thoughts, but my gut reaction was one of disappointment. Important themes alright, like faith, coincidence and all that, but I felt it was infuriatingly subdued and talky for most of the way. Then that baseball to the head philosophy? No, I didn't get it at all. Ignoramus me.

James Newton Howard does wonders though with three notes. The Herrmann "less is more" technique works a treat here. Great main titles, the way the names surge out of nowhere, to the accompaniment of a Howard thud.