I remembered to write my Pick of the Week column this week for Cinema Sentries and then I totally forgot to link to it here. So, I’m a few days late, but I think you will forgive me.
Since the Fourth of July fell on Tuesday this year (which is when most Blu-rays are released) the powers that be decided that nobody will be buying movies this week and so the release schedule is pretty wimpy. But there is a Tintin double feature out and that’s what I picked. You can read all about it here.
The Driver is a professional. He’s the best at what he does. He won’t take a job if he doesn’t like it. He’ll never work with you again if you don’t follow his rules. He has no attachments. He gets the job done. He’s paid well for his services. He takes a job he shouldn’t have. He gets entangled with a woman. Things get complicated
If that plot synopsis sounds familiar that’s because The Driver (1978) was a clear inspiration for both Drive (2011) and Baby Driver (2017). I’d argue both of those later movies are better than The Driver, but certainly, it has its merits. The car chase sequences alone are worth the price of admission. Director Walter Hill uses every ounce of his relatively small budget in several automobile-heavy action sequences. They aren’t as stylish as the ones in Drive or Baby Driver but they do pack a punch.
Ryan O’Neal plays The Driver (none of the characters are given names in the film, they are named by their functions in the credits) as a man of few words, who keeps everything close to his chest. He won’t take a job if he feels it is too risky, or if he knows guns will be involved, yet he is not afraid to deal out violence when he feels it is needed. He’s being chased by The Detective (a snarling Bruce Dern), who sets up a trap for The Driver in which he forces three other cons (who are named Glasses, Teeth, and Fingers) to talk The Driver into doing a job with them. The idea is that The Detective will know all the ins and outs of the job and will be able to catch The Driver red-handed. The Driver recognizes it is a setup and refuses to have anything to do with it, but then basically The Detective dares him to do it and like Marty McFly in Back to the Future, our hero can’t back down when someone calls him a chicken.
There is a love interest, of sorts. She’s called The Player (Isabelle Adjani) and she was a witness to the first job we see in the film, but she refuses to name The Driver to The Detective. He paid her off and they do a little flirting, but not much more. There’s also The Connection (Ronee Blakley) who works as The Driver’s handler. But all of this is just a way for the film to give us another action sequence.
I don’t want to sell those scenes short. They really are terrifically staged. I really dug a scene in the middle where The Driver is showing off. He runs the car all around a big underground garage, running it in and out of cars and those big concrete pillars. Then he very strategically smashes into things knocking bits and pieces of the car off. There is something very down and dirty to the way Walter Hill films those scenes. Drive is sleek and noirish, and Baby Driver is set perfectly to pop songs, but The Driver shoots them like fight scenes – rugged and brutal.
Definitely a film worth seeking out.
For a while now I’ve had this idea of creating a list of my favorite films from every year that I’ve been alive. I was born in 1976 so I’d start there and then move forward. I’ve never actually gotten around to it because I figure I need to make sure I’ve seen all of the “classic” movies from each of those years. I don’t want to talk about my favorite films from say 1982 and have somebody chastise me for having never seen Fanny & Alexander or whatever. From there I figure I need to designate a month to each year and watch as many films from that year in that month and then I can really tackle that project. Then I realize I’m 47 years old and it will take me a few years to do that and I just give up.
The other day I randomly watched The Cassandra Crossing which was made in 1976, the year I was born. A new idea was born in my mind. What if I watched one film from every year that I’ve been alive, and do it in chronological order? That seems fun. The only rule would be it has to be a movie I’ve never seen before. And so here we are.
The Duellists is one of those films that’s been on my list to see for a very long time. It was Ridley Scott’s first film and while he is not by any means my favorite director, when he’s good he’s really good and I’d heard this one was really good. I heard correctly.
Based on a Joseph Conrad short story The Duellists focuses on two French soldiers during the Napoleonic Wars. It begins with Lieutenant Gabriel Feraud (Harvey Keitel) dueling with a young man, whom he promptly skewers with his sword. Turns out the young man was the son of the mayor of Strasbourg which puts Feraud into hot water. The higher-ups send Lieutenant Armand d’Hubert (Keith Carradine) to put Feraud under house arrest. He’s having none of that and immediately challenges Armand to a duel. Armand initially thinks the whole idea is ridiculous, dueling with a man he has been sent to arrest for dulling, but Feraud is relentless and the two eventually do duel. The fight ends when Armand knocks Feraud unconscious and is then clawed in the face by his mistress.
A few months later they duel once again and Armand is seriously wounded. Over the next decade, they duel several more times. It is never made clear why Feraud insists on dueling Armand every time they meet. For his part, Armand wants no part of it, but he is duty-bound. If Feraud claims some offense and demands a duel, then he must agree. They cannot duel if Armand outranks Feraud, nor if France is engaged in war. Luckily for Armand, Napoleon is in charge, and Napoleon is always at war.
The film never lets us know if there was an offense to begin with. It sometimes hints that it might have been over a woman, or perhaps Feraud thinks Armand is not loyal enough to Napoleon. But it doesn’t really latch onto either of these ideas. Maybe Feraud hates Armand for some imagined slight. Or perhaps he just likes to duel. The film mostly follows Armand, only letting us see Feraund during the duels, so maybe he spends all of his free time dueling as many people as he can.
The film was influenced by Barry Lyndon (1975) the only Stanley Kubrick film I have yet to watch. The cinematography is lush and beautiful. Keith Carradine is one of those actors whose name always rings a bell, but I can never remember who is he or what he’s starred in. Until I see his face and hear his voice, then I remember how good he is in everything. He’s terrific here. He is a man who wants a simple life, and mostly finds it, but that life is constantly interrupted by Feraud and his demands for duels. When he sees Feraud in a cafe, Armand promptly leaves. He doesn’t want to fight. Yet he always does because he feels honor bound.
The movie is all about honor and duty and how those are often foolish and futile things. Feraud wants to kill Armand over some perceived slight that is so minuscule Armand doesn’t even know what it is. Armand is willing to die (or to kill) to uphold his honor. One could easily expand these thoughts broadly into the futility and foolishness of war between nations. The movie doesn’t get bogged down into these high-minded ideas. It keeps things grounded.
It is amazing to think this was Ridley Scott’s first film. It is an ambitious film for any filmmaker and for it to be his first time as a director it is rather stupendous. That he followed this with Alien(1979) and then Blade Runner (1982) is astounding. Sadly, the rest of his career has not always been so monumental, but for those three films alone he may stand tall.
I watched 46 movies in the month of June. Thirty-eight of those were new to me. Twenty-five of them were made before I was born.
I didn’t have a theme this month though I did have quite a bit of review material to watch which dictated my viewings somewhat. I also went down a bit of a 1980s rabbit hole for a little while.
I’ve started a series where I plan to watch one movie from every year I was born in chronological order. I’ll talk more about that in a different post, but that will explain why, here at the end of the month, I started watching a bunch of movies from the late 1970s.
Favorite new watches of the month include The Duellists, Ace in the Hole, and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (a rare film watched in the theater).
James Coburn has entered my list of Top Actors Watched this month, he’s tied with Courteney Cox and Roger Jackson with six films watched this year. Randolph Scott and Wilbur Mack also enter the list with five films. I got a Scott boxed set for Father’s Day and have watched several films from it. Wilbur Mack starred in all of the Mr. Wong movies and I watched them for a review.
William Nigh jumps up to the number two spot for the Top Directors Watched list, he directed the Mr. Wong movies.
Here’s the complete list
Taste of Fear (1961)
Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966)
Mad Max (1979)
The Driver (1978)
The Duellists (1977)
The Cassandra Crossing (1976)
Waterworld (1995)
Christine (1983)
The Old Dark House (1963)
The Mosquito Coast (1986)
Footloose (1984)
Bloody Hell (2020)
Cold Eyes of Fear (1971)
Queen Christina (1933)
Ace in the Hole (1951)
Cocaine Bear (2023)
The Stranger Wore a Gun (1953)
Hangman’s Knot (1952)
The Mad Miss Manton (1938)
Doomed to Die (1940)
Boom Town (1940)
The Shout (1978)
The Fatal Hour (1940)
12 Feet Deep (2017)
Mr. Wong in Chinatown (1939)
The Scarlet Claw (1944)
The Mystery of Mr. Wong (1939)
The Bribe (1949)
Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982)
Meyer from Berlin (1919)
The Oyster Princess (1919)
Basic Instinct (1992)
Maggie (2015)
Caliber 9 (1972)
Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed (2004)
Rise: Blood Hunter 2007
Doctor Who: Black Orchid 1982
Mr. Wong, Detective (1938)
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
The Package (1989)
Bus Stop (1956)
Harakiri (1962)
The Night Runner (1957)
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Special Effects (1984)
Step Down to Terror (1958)
On Friday nights me and the family usually go upstairs to my room and watch Doctor Who. Afterward, the wife and daughter remain in our room to watch Youtube videos, while I go downstairs and watch a horror movie. Tonight, the daughter is staying over at a friend’s house. Which leaves me and the wife here alone.
Friends, I have to admit I didn’t know what to do with myself. We were too tired and poor to really go out for a date night. It is too hot outside to go to the park or anything. So, we had a little dinner and watched a movie. Two movies, actually.
Because I am a creature of habit I could only watch a horror movie tonight. That’s just what I do on Friday nights. Also, I write this article and I couldn’t let you all down, could I? I know every single one of my readers waits for me to tell them what horror movie I watch on Friday nights. 🙂
But my wife doesn’t like horror movies. So, I had to find something she could enjoy as well. Enter Hammer Studios. They made a whole lot of horror movies in the 1960s and 1970s that are not too scary, or gore-filled but are also a lot of fun. My wife can enjoy that sort of thing, and actually quite likes Hammer Horror as a genre.
The first film we watched was Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966) which is the third film in Hammer’s Dracula series and the second to star Christopher Lee as the vampire (the second film The Brides of Dracula (1960) doesn’t actually have Dracula in it at all). It wasn’t great and since we decided to watch another film after that one, and it is actually quite good, I’ve decided to talk about it instead.
Taste of Fear (sometimes called Scream of Fear) is a wonderful bit of gothic psychological horror. It stars Susan Strasberg as Penny Appleby a wheelchair-bound heiress who has been away from home for ten years. When her father summons her she returns to his estate on the French Riviera. Strangely, when she arrives she finds that her father has just left on business. Stranger still, that night she sees a light on in the no longer used summer cottage attached to the estate. Upon investigating she finds the corpse of her father sitting in a chair.
Fleeing, she accidentally falls into the pool and knocks herself unconscious. When she awakes she is assured by everyone that it was all just a hallucination caused by fatigue and too much wine. As an avid moviegoer, I know at this point she’s being gaslit, but the reasons why are unclear.
The film has a lot of fun (very slowly) unveiling those reasons. Penny continues to see and hear things that make her believe her father is at the house, but no one will believe her. Well, almost no one. The chauffeur (Ronald Lewis) eventually does and becomes the love interest. The film gives us so many twists and turns that it is hard to know what is real and what isn’t. Just when I thought I knew what was happening the film mixed things up and I was completely surprised.
It is a bit of a slow burn, it takes its time to get interesting, but it is beautifully shot in black and white and is filled to the brim with atmosphere and mood. Once things do take off it becomes really quite wonderful.
This film had a notoriously troubled production and was, at that time the most expensive film ever made. I still remember newscasts breathlessly talking about production delays and cost overruns. It became one of the more famous cinematic bombs.
The story is actually pretty cool – the polar ice caps have melted covering all the land with water, creating an apocalyptic world where everyone survives on boats and you have to barter for everything. It is like Mad Max, but on water instead of the desert.
The sets and effects are all practically done, and I love that. They built a huge floating atoll and shot it on the ocean just off of Hawaii. The world-building is very cool.
The script is bad. It is filled with a lot of cheesy gags and ridiculousness. Kevin Costner is half-fish for some reason. Dennis Hopper, as the villain, is way over the top and just awful. The direction is sloppy. I kept thinking if it had been directed by George Miller it would have been a stone-cold classic. As it is, it is marginally worth watching, but just barely. I watched the studio cut which runs just over 2 hours. There is an extended cut that lasts over three. Maybe that one is better, but I can’t imagine sitting through it.
The Cassandra Crossing which is one of those star-studded disaster movies that was so popular in the 1970s. It is about how an eco-terrorist accidentally contaminates himself with a deadly virus and then boards a train. Once the government learns what’s happened they seal up the train and make sure no one can get off. They reroute it to Poland where they will be quarantined until a cure is found. To get there they have to cross a disused and likely hazardous bridge called the Cassandra Crossing.
Richard Harris plays a neurologist who just happens to be a passenger on the train and becomes the defacto hero. Burt Lancaster is the government, military guy back at the base barking all the orders to keep everybody aboard. The cast also includes Sophia Loren as the neurologist’s wife, Ava Gardner as the wife of an arms dealer, Martin Sheen as her plaything, OJ Simpson as the world’s worst priest, and Lee Strasberg as a Jew who is none too keen to be returning to Poland (apparently the train is going to quarantine them at an old concentration camp.
That’s a good cast and the basics of the story are interesting, but like so many of these star-studded disaster movies it spends too much time giving each actor a good scene or two, and not enough making me care. Or at least be thrilled by the suspense.
It is confusing, too, I’m not 100 percent sure they were headed towards the concentration camp. Wikipedia says so, and Strasberg’s character has a nervous breakdown, but I didn’t hear any dialogue expressly stating that was their destination. I’m not really sure why they have to go to Poland anyway. The train was originally a Geneva to Stockholm exchange. It seems like they could just park it somewhere relatively isolated, board it up, and wait until the doctors figure things out. A lot of the plot is like that – confusing.
The actors, for the most part, seem to be having fun, and I always like watching lots of cool actors in a film together. But I wish they’d tightened things up a bit and concentrated on making this thing as tense as possible. Instead, it is a bit of a bloated mess.
Things do get a little exciting toward the end when our heroes do battle with the military goons in order to stop the train before it pummels off the bridge and it’s got one of those terrifically bleak endings. But it takes far too long to get there to make this a recommendation.
Though I started this blog in 2004 it wasn’t until 2008 that I started posting bootlegs for download. That’s approximately fifteen years (more or less, there have been some stops and starts along the way) of me posting shows on this blog. I don’t have any real idea of how many shows I’ve posted in all those years. I’ve got 6,960 of them that I’ve labeled “Bootleg Bonanza” which is what I used to call those posts. But that doesn’t include any of the shows that are still locked away in private mode, nor any of the more recent shows that I’ve thrown up on Google Drive. That’s a lot of sharing. I’m proud of that.
Five years ago I did a series of posts where I celebrated Ten Years of Bootlegs. I did a little countdown of my Top Ten most popular bootleg posts, according to my hit counter. I thought it would be fun to revisit that post with an update for the 15 Year Anniversary.
As always there are caveats. My hit counter is wrong. Over the years I have switched a time or two between WordPress and Blogger. I’ve had my own website, I’ve downloaded counters, and relied on whatever WordPress uses internally. I went private for a few years, blocking all search engine access. I urged everyone to sign up for my e-mails (which means most people never actually come to the site, they just download from the e-mail.) And now that I’m doing daily posts where I mostly link directly to Google instead of doing individual posts for each show. All of that has massively messed with my stats.
But with all of that in mind, I still think it is fun to see what is most popular.
Here’s the original list, with original stats.
10. Bob Dylan – Abandoned Desire – 2251 hits
09. Bob Dylan – 1978 Tour Collection – 2125 hits
08. Bob Dylan – The Genuine Never Ending Tour Covers Collection (1988-2006) – 2345 hits
07. Bob Dylan & The Grateful Dead – The Entire Tour – 3015 hits
06. Bob Dylan – The Complete Supper Club Soundboards – 3302 hits
05. Bob Dylan & Mark Knopfler – The Complete Recording Session – 3254 hits
04. Bob Dylan – Santa Cruz, CA (03/15-16/00) – 2874 hits
03. Bob Dylan – A Couple More Years – 3646 hits
02. The Allman Brothers Band – San Francisco, CA (12/31/73) – 3552 hits
01. Bob Dylan – The 1974 Soundboard Collection – 4367 hits
And here’s the updated list.
10. Bob Dylan & The Grateful Dead – San Rafael, CA (06/01/87) – 3802 hits
09. Bob Dylan – 1978 Tour Compilation – 3891 hits
08. The Grateful Dead – The Entire Warfield Theatre 1980 Run – 3963 hits
Van Morrison – Shows by Year – 4251
07. Bob Dylan – Santa Cruz, CA (03/15-16/00) – 4459 hits
06. Bob Dylan – The Genuine Never Ending Tour Covers Collection (1988-2000) – 4641 hits
05. The Allman Brothers – San Francisco, CA (12/31/73) 4880 hits
Grateful Dead: Shows by Year – 5103
04. Bob Dylan & Mark Knopfler – The Complete Recording Sessions 1979-1986 – 5191 hits
03. Bob Dylan – Complete Supper Club Soundboards – 5323 hits
02. Bob Dylan – 1974 Soundboard Collection – 6487 hits
01. Bob Dylan & The Grateful Dead – The Entire Tour – 8139 hits
So as you can see it mostly stayed the same, which makes sense, I guess. What was popular then stayed popular now. The positioning has changed a bit which is interesting.
The Dead’s Warfield run of 1980 joined the list. It wasn’t posted until the middle of these anniversary posts which explains why it wasn’t on the original list. And a single Dylan and the Dead show also entered the list. I’m not sure why that particular one is popular. Pushed out were two Dylan outtake sessions – Abandoned Desire and A Couple More Years.
And there you have it. I don’t know if anyone but me cares about this stuff but I think it is pretty interesting. It does sadden me a little to realize that the way I post shows now pretty much eliminates my ability to know which shows are the most popular. Maybe someday I’ll go back to posting individual posts for individual shows, but that day isn’t today.
I was supposed to have written this article for Cinema Sentries and I totally forgot about it. Luckily, my buddy Gordon picked up my slack and you can read all about his picks here. But I thought I’d go ahead and talk about my picks anyway. If nothing else this keeps me in shape for writing about it next week.
But I shall be brief.
Empire Pictures was one of those low-budget studios that seemed to pop up pretty regularly in the 1980s, but this one had the good taste to put out some pretty good films (sort-of). Films like Ghoulies, Re-Animator, Dolls, and my beloved Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity.
The always-great Arrow Video is releasing a terrific-looking boxed set of five films from Empire Pictures which include The Dungeonmaster, Dolls, Cellar Dweller, Arena, and Robot Jox. It is loaded with extras and comes with some spectacular packaging. Consider me there. Call this my pick of the week.
Also coming out this week that looks interesting:
Pasolini 101: The Criterion Collection is releasing this collection of seven films from the controversial Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini. I’m not overly familiar with his work, but I trust Criterion to deliver the goods.
Creepshow: Shout Factory brings us this absolutely brilliant-looking release of a not-all-that-great film. Creepshow is one of those horror anthology films that was so popular back in the day. They are all written by Stephen King and directed by George A. Romero which is pretty cool. I know I’ve seen this, but I don’t remember much other than I was disappointed by it. But the sweet is really cool. It’s got a 4K transfer, and lots of extras including posters, lobby cards, and pins.
Cold Eyes of Fear: I just watched this Italian Giallo last Friday night. It’s a pretty average little flick about a home invasion by two guys – one who is after money, another who needs some private papers locked away in a safe. It starts out strong, but then pulls the rug out and becomes much safer and less interesting.
The Old Man and the Sea: Warner Archive is releasing this adaptation of the Ernest Hemingway story with Spencer Tracy in the lead.
Angel Face: Another Warner Archive release. Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons star in this film noir about a simple man who falls for a complicated femme fatale. Otto Preminger directs.
Waterworld: Arrow Video gives us a 4K special edition (complete with three different cuts) of this Kevin Costner vehicle that at one time was the most expensive film ever made. I just watched it today and I’ll have a full review soon. Probably.
Evil Dead Rise: I love the original Evil Dead Trilogy. Evil Dead 2 is one of my all-time favorites. I liked what I saw in the Ash Vs Evil Dead TV show. But I wasn’t much for the more recent Evil Dead movie. It was straight-up horror and gore with none of the fun. I hear this one is the same.
themidnightcafe.org 