Saw a Takashi Miike picture called The Great Yokai War. "Yokai" is a Japanese term for monsters from folklore, as opposed to the more familiar kaiju. It's a kids' picture, about a young boy from Tokyo sent out to live in the countryside with his older sister and his intermittently senile grandfather. When a vengeful spirit appears, the boy gets caught up in a war between warring groups of yokai and must find his courage to become the "Kirin Rider", the hero who will set everything to rights. It's not a bad picture - nothing deep, but an amusing story. Some of the yokai are really trippy, Japanese folklore can get pretty "out there", apparently.
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A reformed outlaw becomes stranded after an aborted train robbery with two other passengers and is forced to rejoin his old outlaw band.
I recorded this off TCM, but my recording had a big jump in it. I watched it on Prime as an included movie. Gary Cooper is too old for the part, but he did a good job. Robert Wilke was shot in the back by Grace Kelly in High Noon. Six years later he is shot in the front by Gary Cooper. Pre-Hawaii 5-O you will enjoy watching Jack Lord play a psycho killer.
There is a bit wrong with this film. Gary Cooper's age versus Lee Cobb's. The coincidental stranding of Julie London and Arthur O'Conell after the train robbery. The abrupt ending.
There is quite a bit not wrong also. The outdoor photography. The interior train scenes seem to have been entirely shot on a real train going down the tracks, not a set with rear projection. All the settings are real looking not Hollywood whitewash. Gary Cooper is low-key but builds his conflicted character well. The villains are among the nastiest ones you can see in pre-1960's westerns. They really lay the groundwork for the stock western psycho in later Spaghetti Westerns. Jack Lord plays a real maniac!
Anthony Mann's eye for visual composition really adds to the psychological atmosphere. You can see the influence on Leone and it seems like Leone imitated a couple of shots from this film. The set design for the town of Lasso could have been used in any Italian western.
Last week I did watch the new animated moved Predator: Killer of Killers. Presented in 4 chapters. 1st one sucked, I almost bailed out of the entire thing. 2nd chapter was amazing! 3rd so-so, but kind of unbelieveable, even in the Predator universe. The final was pretty good, and obviously sets up for a future move. The director was the same one who directed Prey, which I thought was pretty bad myself, but others liked it. The animation was incredible though. I do recommend it, if you are a fan of the series.
We watched it, too. We found a lot of it preposterous -- the American sure was a quick study! -- but we were entertained. Nice animation! Yeah, sequel obviously planned, complete with Amber Midthunder.
This is not the well-known 1944 version starring Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten and Angela Lansbury. I need to rewatch that one soon to compare them. When the 1944 version was released, the new studio wanted all copies of the 1940 version destroyed for (stupid) reasons. It didn’t happen completely.
This 1940 movie only has one actor I recognized in a minor role: Robert Newton, who later would be famous as Long John Silver in the 1950 Treasure Island.
A couple of terms have gone into our everyday language. “Gaslighting” has come to mean deluding people with lies and, among other things, convincing the victim that what you did was done by them. For the last ten years this has been done in U.S. politics.
The hero in the 1940 version is a retired London cop who says he used to be a “Peeler.” Later, he would have been called a Bobby. Both terms are derived from the man who created the British police force in 1829: Sir Robert Peel, who became Prime Minister a few years later.
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I've never seen this picture, because I always had the vibe that it was so bad that even the Forresters wouldn't use it.
Not a movie, but creator Larry Gelbart talks about the death of Hanry Blake in M*A*S*H.
Larry Gelbart on killing off "Henry Blake" on "M.A.S.H" - EMMYTVLEG...
Man of the West (1958)
A reformed outlaw becomes stranded after an aborted train robbery with two other passengers and is forced to rejoin his old outlaw band.
I recorded this off TCM, but my recording had a big jump in it. I watched it on Prime as an included movie. Gary Cooper is too old for the part, but he did a good job. Robert Wilke was shot in the back by Grace Kelly in High Noon. Six years later he is shot in the front by Gary Cooper. Pre-Hawaii 5-O you will enjoy watching Jack Lord play a psycho killer.
This review is on the nose:
Tough gritty western that influenced the Spaghetti Western
There is a bit wrong with this film. Gary Cooper's age versus Lee Cobb's. The coincidental stranding of Julie London and Arthur O'Conell after the train robbery. The abrupt ending.
There is quite a bit not wrong also. The outdoor photography. The interior train scenes seem to have been entirely shot on a real train going down the tracks, not a set with rear projection. All the settings are real looking not Hollywood whitewash. Gary Cooper is low-key but builds his conflicted character well. The villains are among the nastiest ones you can see in pre-1960's westerns. They really lay the groundwork for the stock western psycho in later Spaghetti Westerns. Jack Lord plays a real maniac!
Anthony Mann's eye for visual composition really adds to the psychological atmosphere. You can see the influence on Leone and it seems like Leone imitated a couple of shots from this film. The set design for the town of Lasso could have been used in any Italian western.
A good, if depressing, alternate western.
Last week I did watch the new animated moved Predator: Killer of Killers. Presented in 4 chapters. 1st one sucked, I almost bailed out of the entire thing. 2nd chapter was amazing! 3rd so-so, but kind of unbelieveable, even in the Predator universe. The final was pretty good, and obviously sets up for a future move. The director was the same one who directed Prey, which I thought was pretty bad myself, but others liked it. The animation was incredible though. I do recommend it, if you are a fan of the series.
We watched it, too. We found a lot of it preposterous -- the American sure was a quick study! -- but we were entertained. Nice animation! Yeah, sequel obviously planned, complete with Amber Midthunder.
GASLIGHT (1940) (on TCM streaming until July 10)
This is not the well-known 1944 version starring Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten and Angela Lansbury. I need to rewatch that one soon to compare them. When the 1944 version was released, the new studio wanted all copies of the 1940 version destroyed for (stupid) reasons. It didn’t happen completely.
This 1940 movie only has one actor I recognized in a minor role: Robert Newton, who later would be famous as Long John Silver in the 1950 Treasure Island.
A couple of terms have gone into our everyday language. “Gaslighting” has come to mean deluding people with lies and, among other things, convincing the victim that what you did was done by them. For the last ten years this has been done in U.S. politics.
The hero in the 1940 version is a retired London cop who says he used to be a “Peeler.” Later, he would have been called a Bobby. Both terms are derived from the man who created the British police force in 1829: Sir Robert Peel, who became Prime Minister a few years later.
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