I need another film catch up. In fact I need a general catch up with a house clean and tidy, a financial clean and tidy and a lifestyle clean and tidy. For the past three years I have undertaken mini trips on average once a month because of the £9 a night room offer by Travel Lodge. As his year progressed the arrangements for the offers changed and on the last occasion I failed to gain accommodation for an end of the year London trip.
Today I returned from an early morning swim, visit to Morrison’s and then Staples, returning via South Shields town centre to pick up a pocket diary at the pound shop only to switch on the computer, check the email and find that Travel Lodge were holding what is reported to be their last ever £9 sale with accommodation available for the whole year. This posed a dilemma because as reported in the last writing I need to reign in expenditure, but equally I did not want a situation where I am unable to make trips later because of having to pay the full price when the opportunity now arose. In the event there were few £9 rooms available for consecutive days and I had to settle to three trips of three nights with only two rooms at £9 and the rest at £19, although this also included a Saturday. I will have another look in a moment to see what is still on offer.
The first film update is Outlander which someone has described as cross between the Highlander series and Braveheart. The film cost nearly $50 million to make and is reported to have taken less than a seventh of this at the box office. I can understand why although given other offering of the same ilk it deserved better. The story is of a warrior soldier in an advanced planet in 709 AD, the time of he Viking domination of Northern and central Europe. The planet is attacked by a specie of fiery devilish flesh eating monsters. Alien and Monster, that seems to be the title for another film attack each other’s worlds and on returning to his home world the warrior soldier finds that his wife and child have been killed and he goes off seeking revenge only to crash on earth bring a stowaway family of monster with him. These set about terrorising the Viking community which captures the warrior after the space ship crashes into the sea. The Warrior gains the confidence of the local king played by John Hurt, the King’s adventuring daughter, his previously chief warrior and a young orphan lad who takes a shine for new arrival. There is an overlong and at times improbable doing battle with the monsters during which the King and his chief warrior are killed, the daughter is captured alive, the reason for this in inexplicable so there is not attempt to do so, and she is rescued. The monsters are slain as a result of creating a special sword from the metal of the space craft. The film ends as the visiting warrior turns off his distress beacon and settles down to become the king, marry the former King’s daughter with the adopted orphan and fires the lighted arrow to set of the sailing pyre carrying the bodies of the old king and his chief warrior.
The director of the film, Howard McCain wrote the original published story two decades before inspired by a rebuilt Viking ship on he cover of Archaeology Magazine and the teals of Beowulf and such remained his enthusiasm that he created a replica village and ship for the film set. The creature has two forms, a prehistoric beast which becomes a translucent fiery dragon. At two hours the film could have been shortened without altering is impact.
Toast is made for TV 90 minute film of the published autobiography of food critic and writer Nigel Slater, and award winning journalist with the Observer Newspaper. At the close of the film he leaves home, goes to London and obtains a job in the kitchen of the Savoy Hotel. Toast is in fact the story of a childhood and adolescence rather than the blow by blow rise of a cook into writer about food. I am not sure if it is the intention of the director but Slater does not fare well in the story. He is brought up in Wolverhampton with an insensitive lump of a father played by Nigel Stott and an insipid and neurotic mother who suffers from severe asthma and who dies when he is only nine years of age. His mother has an aversion to cooking and relies on tins, which she also gets wrong and then relies on making Toast to satisfy the appetite, hence the title of the original autobiography and film. Slater the child is revealed as wanting to change the situation and tries to introduce the family to Spaghetti Bolognaise.
After the death father commences a relationship with the a cleaning lady, more attractive, sexy and a good cook, played by Helena Bonham Carter and whose tour de force is a Lemon Meringue pie which according to Slater his step mother refused to divulge the recipe so he spent years trying to work out her success and when he achieves this his father rejects because it is produced at the wrong time.
What I do not understand from the film and obviously the book may make the situation more clear is why Nigel took against his step mother so badly given that the relationship with his mother was not a great one. The answer could be what I suspect is made more fundamental in the book but skated over in the film, the relationship between food and sex and his development as a homosexual. The film suggests hat during his childhood his birth mother and father had a comfortable but sexually unadventurous relationship while that with the step mother was of a different order and there is the hint of the step mother turning to adolescent 15 year old for comfort when her husband suddenly dies. What the film also fails to mention is that Nigel has two older brothers.
I suspect interest and enjoyment in the film rests on the extent to which the audience comprised those who had read his column, or used his books or become a fan through his TV work. I must confess not to have known anything about him and therefore had none of the usual curiosity about his background which I do have with those whose work I appreciate.
I thought I had seen The Long Goodbye before, a 1953 Raymond Chandler Philip Marlow Story with a young Elliott Gould in the role of this 1973 made film. It was only when reading the background that I remembered the other film was the Big Sleep with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall and hen remade with Robert Mitcham. No one has been able to better the Bogart Philip Marlow or the Bogart anything and Elliott has played too many roles as Elliott Gould to be anything other than Elliott Gould so this is in fact an Elliott Gould detective film and where I am on the side of the police who find him insufferable and unhelpful , This arises because I am inclined to have a favourable view of the British Police Detective in general and forget that the USA film portrayal of their police as being as best lacking any kind of professionalism and at worst prejudiced and corrupt.
The story begins with Marlow brought in for questioning after the discovery of the murder of the wife of a long standing friend who contacted Marlowe on the night of the murder, met him in an anxious and afraid state and admitted he had a row with his wife. The friend is then found dead while Marlow is in custody, and apparent suicide and therefore the police in their stock fashion decided to close the case. Marlow had in fact taken the friend from Los Angeles to border with Mexico at Tijuana.
Marlow returns to his day job and accepts a request to locate the alcoholic writer husband of the stock platinum blonde curvaceous female who feature in the Chandler writings. His first call is the detox clinic previously used where he is told lies only to find that the writer is there, wanting to break out and appears to be held against his will for non payment of previous fees. Marlow then learns that the writer and his wife knew his dead friend and the writer’s wife reinforces Marlowe’s view that someone else killed the wife and the suicide verdict is questionable.
Marlowe is then taken temporary prisoner by a vicious gangster so dangerous that he physically hurts his mistress to demonstrate that, her I love, You I don’t even like, thus making the point as directly and strongly as he can that he wants the third of a million dollars owed him by the suicide dead friend. He then finds the gangster relationship with the writer and his wife.
However before the significance of this is explained Marlow learns that the writer as having an affair with the wife of his dead friend and that the writer’s wife, who appears to have set her cap at Marlow, believed that her husband was capable of killing the woman and who then appears to take his own life drowning in the sea. The police do not believe this story saying that he alibi has been checked and confirmed. They are right you see.
Marlowe returns to Mexico where he discovers that his friend is alive and has bribed official over his suicide death story. He admits that he killed his wife because of an affair with the wife of the writer, and not the other way around. So the police were right about this too. Worse has followed. The writer’s wife admits she was holding the money for her lover and returns it to the vicious criminal who lets Marlow go. He then passes the woman on her way to her lover in Mexico, having shot him dead for the killing betrayal and the hassle Marlowe has experienced. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays the vicious gangster and Stirling Hayden the writer (Ernest Hemingway style). Critics generally shared my view that Altman and Gould appear half heartened in their realization of Chandler’s Marlowe.
I had wanted to go and see Me and Orson Welles in theatre although never a great Orson Wells fan in the way of other actors of the same generation although I do accept that Citizen Kane is a great film and always enjoy his appearance in the Third Man. Anyway this films is a rites of passage film in which Christian McKay who plays Wells shows 17 year old Richard Samuels the facts of life. Richard comes to New York to study and by good fortune which stretches belief gets a part in a low budget, save the off Broadway theatre production of Julius Caesar. The larger than life actor playing actor is having an extra marital affair with his leading lady, something which shocks the well brought up innocent 17 year old. He is taken under the wind of the older (Mrs Robinson) production assistant.
The night before curtain up Welles insists the cast go off in pairs to enjoy the night, draw at random, although the 17 year old fixes it to go off with the production assistant and they spend the night together. He falls in love and despite being told the reality the ambitious get to Hollywood production assistant then sleeps with Wells which causes the 17 year old to give Wells a piece of his mind. Wells keeps the lad in the play which is a great success, but only until he can arrange a replacement. The young man learns his lesson.
At the start of the film he meets a young ambitious rather plain looking young woman in music store who is setting out to become a writer. They meet up again just after he has got the part and she is feeling low about her lack of success. He offers to pass one of stories through a connection gained at the theatre. They meet for a third time at the end of film after her story is accepted and she is on the way to success.
The film was made in England, including the Isle of Man. Pinewood studios and Crystal Palace. The film had a budget of $25million and is reported to have made less that $3m yet received good media reactions as a film about putting on a play. It appears that the portrayal of Wells was a good one as the part gained a Best support actor BAFTA nomination. I was pleased to have got the film out of my system and that I had not taken the time and expense to view in theatre.
Today I returned from an early morning swim, visit to Morrison’s and then Staples, returning via South Shields town centre to pick up a pocket diary at the pound shop only to switch on the computer, check the email and find that Travel Lodge were holding what is reported to be their last ever £9 sale with accommodation available for the whole year. This posed a dilemma because as reported in the last writing I need to reign in expenditure, but equally I did not want a situation where I am unable to make trips later because of having to pay the full price when the opportunity now arose. In the event there were few £9 rooms available for consecutive days and I had to settle to three trips of three nights with only two rooms at £9 and the rest at £19, although this also included a Saturday. I will have another look in a moment to see what is still on offer.
The first film update is Outlander which someone has described as cross between the Highlander series and Braveheart. The film cost nearly $50 million to make and is reported to have taken less than a seventh of this at the box office. I can understand why although given other offering of the same ilk it deserved better. The story is of a warrior soldier in an advanced planet in 709 AD, the time of he Viking domination of Northern and central Europe. The planet is attacked by a specie of fiery devilish flesh eating monsters. Alien and Monster, that seems to be the title for another film attack each other’s worlds and on returning to his home world the warrior soldier finds that his wife and child have been killed and he goes off seeking revenge only to crash on earth bring a stowaway family of monster with him. These set about terrorising the Viking community which captures the warrior after the space ship crashes into the sea. The Warrior gains the confidence of the local king played by John Hurt, the King’s adventuring daughter, his previously chief warrior and a young orphan lad who takes a shine for new arrival. There is an overlong and at times improbable doing battle with the monsters during which the King and his chief warrior are killed, the daughter is captured alive, the reason for this in inexplicable so there is not attempt to do so, and she is rescued. The monsters are slain as a result of creating a special sword from the metal of the space craft. The film ends as the visiting warrior turns off his distress beacon and settles down to become the king, marry the former King’s daughter with the adopted orphan and fires the lighted arrow to set of the sailing pyre carrying the bodies of the old king and his chief warrior.
The director of the film, Howard McCain wrote the original published story two decades before inspired by a rebuilt Viking ship on he cover of Archaeology Magazine and the teals of Beowulf and such remained his enthusiasm that he created a replica village and ship for the film set. The creature has two forms, a prehistoric beast which becomes a translucent fiery dragon. At two hours the film could have been shortened without altering is impact.
Toast is made for TV 90 minute film of the published autobiography of food critic and writer Nigel Slater, and award winning journalist with the Observer Newspaper. At the close of the film he leaves home, goes to London and obtains a job in the kitchen of the Savoy Hotel. Toast is in fact the story of a childhood and adolescence rather than the blow by blow rise of a cook into writer about food. I am not sure if it is the intention of the director but Slater does not fare well in the story. He is brought up in Wolverhampton with an insensitive lump of a father played by Nigel Stott and an insipid and neurotic mother who suffers from severe asthma and who dies when he is only nine years of age. His mother has an aversion to cooking and relies on tins, which she also gets wrong and then relies on making Toast to satisfy the appetite, hence the title of the original autobiography and film. Slater the child is revealed as wanting to change the situation and tries to introduce the family to Spaghetti Bolognaise.
After the death father commences a relationship with the a cleaning lady, more attractive, sexy and a good cook, played by Helena Bonham Carter and whose tour de force is a Lemon Meringue pie which according to Slater his step mother refused to divulge the recipe so he spent years trying to work out her success and when he achieves this his father rejects because it is produced at the wrong time.
What I do not understand from the film and obviously the book may make the situation more clear is why Nigel took against his step mother so badly given that the relationship with his mother was not a great one. The answer could be what I suspect is made more fundamental in the book but skated over in the film, the relationship between food and sex and his development as a homosexual. The film suggests hat during his childhood his birth mother and father had a comfortable but sexually unadventurous relationship while that with the step mother was of a different order and there is the hint of the step mother turning to adolescent 15 year old for comfort when her husband suddenly dies. What the film also fails to mention is that Nigel has two older brothers.
I suspect interest and enjoyment in the film rests on the extent to which the audience comprised those who had read his column, or used his books or become a fan through his TV work. I must confess not to have known anything about him and therefore had none of the usual curiosity about his background which I do have with those whose work I appreciate.
I thought I had seen The Long Goodbye before, a 1953 Raymond Chandler Philip Marlow Story with a young Elliott Gould in the role of this 1973 made film. It was only when reading the background that I remembered the other film was the Big Sleep with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall and hen remade with Robert Mitcham. No one has been able to better the Bogart Philip Marlow or the Bogart anything and Elliott has played too many roles as Elliott Gould to be anything other than Elliott Gould so this is in fact an Elliott Gould detective film and where I am on the side of the police who find him insufferable and unhelpful , This arises because I am inclined to have a favourable view of the British Police Detective in general and forget that the USA film portrayal of their police as being as best lacking any kind of professionalism and at worst prejudiced and corrupt.
The story begins with Marlow brought in for questioning after the discovery of the murder of the wife of a long standing friend who contacted Marlowe on the night of the murder, met him in an anxious and afraid state and admitted he had a row with his wife. The friend is then found dead while Marlow is in custody, and apparent suicide and therefore the police in their stock fashion decided to close the case. Marlow had in fact taken the friend from Los Angeles to border with Mexico at Tijuana.
Marlow returns to his day job and accepts a request to locate the alcoholic writer husband of the stock platinum blonde curvaceous female who feature in the Chandler writings. His first call is the detox clinic previously used where he is told lies only to find that the writer is there, wanting to break out and appears to be held against his will for non payment of previous fees. Marlow then learns that the writer and his wife knew his dead friend and the writer’s wife reinforces Marlowe’s view that someone else killed the wife and the suicide verdict is questionable.
Marlowe is then taken temporary prisoner by a vicious gangster so dangerous that he physically hurts his mistress to demonstrate that, her I love, You I don’t even like, thus making the point as directly and strongly as he can that he wants the third of a million dollars owed him by the suicide dead friend. He then finds the gangster relationship with the writer and his wife.
However before the significance of this is explained Marlow learns that the writer as having an affair with the wife of his dead friend and that the writer’s wife, who appears to have set her cap at Marlow, believed that her husband was capable of killing the woman and who then appears to take his own life drowning in the sea. The police do not believe this story saying that he alibi has been checked and confirmed. They are right you see.
Marlowe returns to Mexico where he discovers that his friend is alive and has bribed official over his suicide death story. He admits that he killed his wife because of an affair with the wife of the writer, and not the other way around. So the police were right about this too. Worse has followed. The writer’s wife admits she was holding the money for her lover and returns it to the vicious criminal who lets Marlow go. He then passes the woman on her way to her lover in Mexico, having shot him dead for the killing betrayal and the hassle Marlowe has experienced. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays the vicious gangster and Stirling Hayden the writer (Ernest Hemingway style). Critics generally shared my view that Altman and Gould appear half heartened in their realization of Chandler’s Marlowe.
I had wanted to go and see Me and Orson Welles in theatre although never a great Orson Wells fan in the way of other actors of the same generation although I do accept that Citizen Kane is a great film and always enjoy his appearance in the Third Man. Anyway this films is a rites of passage film in which Christian McKay who plays Wells shows 17 year old Richard Samuels the facts of life. Richard comes to New York to study and by good fortune which stretches belief gets a part in a low budget, save the off Broadway theatre production of Julius Caesar. The larger than life actor playing actor is having an extra marital affair with his leading lady, something which shocks the well brought up innocent 17 year old. He is taken under the wind of the older (Mrs Robinson) production assistant.
The night before curtain up Welles insists the cast go off in pairs to enjoy the night, draw at random, although the 17 year old fixes it to go off with the production assistant and they spend the night together. He falls in love and despite being told the reality the ambitious get to Hollywood production assistant then sleeps with Wells which causes the 17 year old to give Wells a piece of his mind. Wells keeps the lad in the play which is a great success, but only until he can arrange a replacement. The young man learns his lesson.
At the start of the film he meets a young ambitious rather plain looking young woman in music store who is setting out to become a writer. They meet up again just after he has got the part and she is feeling low about her lack of success. He offers to pass one of stories through a connection gained at the theatre. They meet for a third time at the end of film after her story is accepted and she is on the way to success.
The film was made in England, including the Isle of Man. Pinewood studios and Crystal Palace. The film had a budget of $25million and is reported to have made less that $3m yet received good media reactions as a film about putting on a play. It appears that the portrayal of Wells was a good one as the part gained a Best support actor BAFTA nomination. I was pleased to have got the film out of my system and that I had not taken the time and expense to view in theatre.
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