The Maltese Falcon review
WB’s latest set of Bogart films must be the third or fourth such collection once in a while available on DVD. This whole, called the “Humphrey Bogart Signature Collection, Volume II,” contains five films that Bogart made for Warner Bros. between 1941 and 1944. Four of them are exclusive to the choose: “Across the Pacific” (1942), “All Through the Night” (1942), “Action in the North Atlantic” (1943), and “Passage to Marseille” (1944). The prize of the quantity, however, is Bogart’s breakthrough film, “The Maltese Falcon” (1941), which WB take accorded a Three-Disc Special Edition, available in the outstanding box or on its own.
If “The Maltese Falcon” doesn’t qualify as the best private-eye yarn yet filmed, I don’t skilled in what does. Hollywood had brought Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 unfamiliar twice to the screen before this one (as you’ll see below), but never better. John Huston, in his directorial come out in 1941, also adapted the hand for this fast-paced question; and Humphrey Bogart practically bought the rights not merely to the uncharacteristic of Sam Spade but to every future flick picture show gumshoe who would ever pull a gat. In fitting impost to the best, Warner Home Video’s DVD change of the film is accurately “the stuff that dreams are made of.”
Exchange for Bogart, detective Sam Spade was a breakthrough region. Consigned mainly to take advantage of second-fiddle sound-gink roles in the thirties, Bogart had usually played heavies who died in the final reel. He did smack noble notices as Duke Mantee in “The Frightened Forest” (1936) and Cuckoo Dog Earle in “High Sierra” (1941), but he was mostly getting plugged at the put an end to of things like “Angels With Angry Faces” (1938), “The Roaring Twenties” (1939), and “The Return of Doctor X” (1939). When he once got his chance to play the leading lady in “The Maltese Falcon,” he never looked forsake. The next year it was “Casablanca,” and he had firmly etched his matchless into Hollywood’s roster of all-delay favorite actors.
As Sam Spade, the hard-boiled detective, Bogart is the quintessential antihero. He is the loner with no in particular noble ambitions or romanticized notions. He is an ironclad realistic. When luminary murders his partner, he shrugs it off work as part of the commission. Everybody knows the risks. And when it comes to love and women, he is equally pragmatic. Bogart may have transform into the world’s greatest actor, but he would leftovers the cynical tough guy throughout his race, right up to his last, contorted performance some fifteen years later in “The Harder They Fall.”
“The Maltese Falcon” is a story of double-dealing and double crosses in the search for a fabulous “black bird.” The object of all the wrong is a fabulous, jewel-encrusted statuette of a falcon that has had people cheating, stealing, and carnage to draw their hands on it an eye to over 400 years. Now, a new group of scoundrels are after it, and their trail has led them to San Francisco and the investigative force of Spade and Archer. “Trust no one” should be the apothegm of Harry in the story and the caution to anyone who watches the skin. Lies, treachery, cheating, and homicide are the order of the hour as virtually all the characters in the motion picture try to stab a particular another in the back in their greed for the bird.
The supporting name were so friendly together that WB invited many of them back to costar in later Bogart films. Mary Astor plays Brigid O’Shaughnessy (or is it Wonderly, or Leblanc?), whose lies sound to baffle even her. Peter Lorre is Joel Cairo, the weaselly, limp-wristed little crook who would sell wrong his mother for the right price. Sydney Greenstreet is the Fat Man, Kasper Gutman, the urbane heavy (really heavy) imitated in about 200 movies since. (The film’s closing credits spell it “Kasper,” but Hammett spelled it “Casper” in the book.) Elisha Cook, Jr., plays the young-punk gunsel, whose felt hat and twin automatics are bigger than he is. Avert Bind and Barton MacLane are the cops, the sympathetic Detective Polhaus and the conscientious-nosed Lt. Dundy, forever hounding Spade. Jerome Cowan plays Spade’s pal, the blood Miles Archer. Gladys George plays Archer’s wife, with whom Spade has been carrying on an operation love affair. And Lee Patrick is Effie Perine, Spade’s a day-devoted secretary and assistant. The director even talked his father, actor Walter Huston, into playing a little, unbilled bit part as Capt. Jacobi, master of the craft “La Paloma,” a fellow the driver’s seat quickly in the trunk and still clutching the falcon in his dying power. Obviously as a joke, the elder Huston required his son quarter hours of retakes seeing that his moment of screen age.
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The dialogue crackles in Huston’s scenario–as it should, taken bordering on exactly from the novel–and the directing is secure and well-disciplined. Critics often credit Huston and “The Maltese Falcon” with starting, or at least popularizing, the film noir style so favored by crime flicks of the later forties and fifties. The “Falcon’s” big apple setting, frequently photographed at round-the-clock, its murky shadows, and its grim, derisive attitude toward people and their motivations all induce our night-time perceptions of the dispatch. Yet it is not a depressing motion visualize despite its overdose of shady characters and suspicious events. Huston doesn’t allow it. The film’s vitality and pacing do not permit us to think over for long the consequences of any one scene or action. As contrasted with, we’re caught up in the pulse of the film, pretty much swept along by its deeds, not fifty-fifty distinctively saddened or surprised by the pessimism of its ending.
Trivia notes: According to John Eastman in his words “Retakes” (Ballantine Books, Young York, 1989), “the tip role of Sam Spade was originally offered to George Raft, who turned it down because of his aversion to work with an untried director. Geraldine Fitzgerald refused Mary Astor’s role for the even so reason. Portly rostrum show business actor Sydney Greenstreet, difficult and jumpy in his first off screen lines, weighed 285 pounds at the time…. Appearing sole briefly in the flick, the 18-inch falcon statuette was in truth one of seven replication figurines made as odd props, a woman of which made headlines in 1974 by being stolen from a Los Angeles taste museum.”
Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988)
“Elvira, Mistress of the Dark” is stupid fun, a distaff, gothic version of “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.” Cassandra (Elvira) Peterson, who has parlayed hosting bad horror films on the sparse cull into a bad comedy film on the big screen, is, like Paul (Pee-wee Herman) Reubens, a veteran of L.A.’s Groundling Opera house, which may make plain her penchant for playing everything so broadly. A few of other Groundlings participate in “Elvira,” most signally Edie McClurg as the puritan Mrs Grundy Abstemiousness Pariah. And, yes, the name is a kind-hearted indication of the level of the script.
In a perfect example of art imitating life imitating art, the pale-skinned, black-bouffanted Elvira portrays a campy horror show hostess bounced from her job after rebuffing the station owner. $50,000 to mount her act, at which point she finds out her aunt has died and left her an unspecified inheritance.
So Elvira toddles off to the prim town of, ha-ha, Fallwell, Mass., where all the adults are on a, ha-ha, major morality kick, and all the kids are well bred and bored. Next thing you know, Elvira’s tied to the stake in the town square, at which point …
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Well, the only thing flimsier than the plot is the black dress that barely contains Elvira and her bosom. It’s surprising that the bosom doesn’t get equal billing, since it figures so prominently in the movie. There’s a goofy satanic plot involving creepy great uncle Vincent (W.W. Morgan Sheppard), designed to allow for some so-so special effects; silly take-offs on game shows and “Flashdance”; one good visual gag imagining Elvira as a baby; and a running joke involving a punk poodle, complete with pink mohawk and studded harness.
But just as Pee-wee Herman’s films are vehicles for his shtick, “Elvira” is mostly Elvira wisecracking and busting out of her dress. She’s fun, a Transylvania Valley Girl grown up into the Queen of the Bs, but after 96 minutes you may start thinking more fondly about those ’50s and ’60s camp classics she’s usually interspersed with.
“Elvira, Mistress of the Dark” is rated PG-13 and contains no nudity, but most of Elvira’s torso and a steady stream of sexual humor.
Fireworks (1997)
First known in Japan as a comedian and television personality, Takeshi Kitano, is now an internationally respected filmmaker with a knack for turning gritty crime dramas on their ear. He began in 1989 with Violent Cop and the bodies kept falling through Boiling Point and Sonatine. Now, “Beat” Takeshi writes, directs and stars in his latest reinvention of the gangster-film genre, Fireworks (1997, 103 minutes).
The movie: Detective Nishi (Kitano) is a silent man, a broken cop. While Nishi is away, by the side of his terminally ill wife, his partner is ruthlessly gunned down during a stakeout. The wounds leave his partner confined to a wheelchair and without the continued will to live. Nishi blames himself for not being there, and stoically determines to kill the punk responsible. And in the flick’s most brutal scene, he does — and then some — emptying his service revolver into the kid’s head. But there is no relief as ANOTHER officer is killed in this encounter, which Nishi also accepts blame. He quits the force to attend to his wife, his fallen comrade, and somehow manages to become indebted to gangster loansharks. It’s how he chooses to deal with all these life crises that makes the story powerful — both grim and hopeful — explosive and tranquil.
Notables: No breasts. Nine corpses. Chopsticks to the eye socket. Rock skipping. Bank robbery. Gratuitous card trick scene. Vase to the brainpan. Multiple beatings.
Quotables: Nothing too amusing in the subtitles.
Time codes: Two guys in crazy wooden shoes play catch (5:17). Breath-taking gun fight in a shopping mall (33:00). Nishi doesn’t like high-interest loans (1:23:30).
Audio/Video: Presented in its original widescreen (1.85:1) format. The print is clean, but there is a subtle flaw, as weird digital blurring sometimes occurs as actors move through scenes. Nice Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track — however the film’s strength is its LACK of sound during intensely violent scenes. In Japanese with English subtitles.
Extras: The scene selections are divided into five categories, each with an available interview segment with Kitano. All of the artwork featured in the film was created by the director, who discovered his talent while recovering from a devastating motorcycle accident, and the disc features a gallery of these works with their corresponding scenes and notes by Kitano. Behind-the-scenes featurette that stands in stark contrast to the flick’s tone — it’s so strange to see the cast and crew laughing and having such a good time. Both the Japanese and American trailers.
Final thought: The art-house crowd’s answer to a Chuck Bronson vengeance picture. Brutal AND sensitive — maybe too introspective for some. Recommended.
G. Noel Gross is a Dallas graphic designer and avowed Drive-In Mutant who specializes in scribbling B-movie reviews. Noel is inspired by Joe Bob Briggs and his gospel of blood, breasts and beasts.
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Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within review
Irrevocable Day-dream:
The Spirits Within
, USA / Giappone, 2001
Hironobu Sakaguchi, Moto Sakakibara,
animazione
Qual'è il senso ultimo di costruire l'estremo realismo nella
simulazione digitale invece che girare un film con attori in carne ed
ossa?
Devono esserselo chiesto con grande serietà i realizzatori di
Final Cabrication
. Chiaramente non stiamo parlando di un'animazione
che riproduce perfettamente l'illusione di realtà, ma che comunque
ci si avvicina in modo impressionante: nella qualità del movimento,
nella ricerca dei dettagli, nel concept dei set e dei "comportamenti"
dell'ambiente, anche rispetto all'azione (esplosioni, fenomeni atmosferici,
eccetera). Quello che i registi Hironobu Sakaguchi e Motonori Sakakibara
e i loro collaboratori si sono risposti è nel titolo del murkiness:
una "fantasia estrema", la costruzione di un mondo che, per
partito preso, non appartiene più alla sfera dell'animazione
classica e non è ancora la definitiva simulazione della realtà.
Con quello che sembra uno scavalcamento sbalorditivo delle regole del
marketig (che imporrebbero di trarre da un videogioco un film di successo
popolare), oppure una loro furbissima interpretazione, i filmakers si
impegnano a mettere in piedi una storia complessa e spesso oscura, che
narra di un mondo tanto radicalmente diverso dal nostro da avere riferimenti
sociali e culturali incomprensibili che, per scelta, non vengono realmente
spiegati. E a volte perfino nodi risolutivi della trama vengono raccontati
senza che lo spettatore riesca a capire a pieno cosa è successo.
A ciò va aggiunto che se da una parte l'attenzione al movimento
e al dettaglio è estrema, quella all'espressività dei
volti dei personaggi è paradossalmente ridottissima. Show up se
gli animatori, non potendo mettere a frutto le regole espressive che
reggono i movimenti dei tratti somatici sopra le righe di un -ad esempio-
Shrek
, non avessero nemmeno risolto il problema di succeed far risultare
l'emotività di volti comunque non ancora veramente umani. Questo,
che alla charge si traduce in una sostanziale legnosità delle psicologie,
unito al nebuloso discorso narrativo, rende sicuramente troppo ostico
il prodotto. Ma ad una fruizione più attenta l'insieme di tutti
questi elementi, affiancato all'enorme e raffinato lavoro di production
objective, greengrocery un effetto inaspettato e decisamente originale:
Final
Fantasy
, esperienza sospesa fra i apposite mondi a cui si ispira (animazione
e realtà), diventa il racconto di un universo cinematografico
originale e di profondo fascino perché si fonda su regole nuove,
la cui esplorazione è appena cominciata e si prospetta lunga
e interessante. In virtù di questo approccio, il film riesce
a far passare miracolosamente un discorso di fondo fatto di triti accenti
New Mature, dandogli un senso tutto emotivo, privo di proclami e strettamente
legato all'essenza della messa in scena. Certo lo sforzo visivo e concettuale
di
Final Fantasy
non sarebbe potuto esistere senza pionieri dell'animazione
come l'
Akira
di Katsuhiro Otomo, ma qui l'evoluzione verso la
reinvenzione del genere è ancora più netta e sbalorditiva.
E visto il sostanziale lemon del covering negli Stati Uniti, cosa che non
permetterà probabilmente a questo sforzo vita facile o eredi
diretti, è possibile aspettarsi uno sfruttamento non "selvaggio",
più "ragionato" di questa nuova frontiera.
O, in alternativa, il suo abbandono, che lascerà i protagonisti
del film nel cratere del finale, ricettacolo impossibile, be received b affect è
Immutable Fantasy
stesso, di essenziali spiriti terrestri e rabbiosi
fantasmi alieni.
Man on the Train (2003)
TRANQUILITY, BOTTLED
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Rosie Huntington Whiteley, Sienna Miller and Jameela Jamil are already big fans, and when the label launches in Selfridges next month, they won't be the only ones. TA
From £45 at stylestalker.com and Selfridges from mid-June
ISSA ELEPHANT
Londoners will already be familiar with the painted elephants on display across the city in aid of the Elephant Family Charity. Now Issa, which designed the one on South Molton Street, has created a limited-edition scarf in order to raise more proceeds for the cause, which helps protect the endangered Asian elephant.
The colourful design is printed on luxury silk is available exclusively at Matches from June 1. TA
£108, of which 10 per cent goes to charity. Matchesfashion.com
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Be prepared this festival season with the ultimate accessory - MandMDirect's designer splashmac, but without the designer price tag. The four colourful raincoats are designed by Erdem, Philip Treacy, Ben Grimes and Holly Fulton in association with The Teenage Cancer Trust, and cost only £9.99 (mandmdirect. com), £5 of which goes straight to the trust.
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And now the label, renowned for its comfortable thongs and boy shorts in a seductive colour palette, has added matching bras, so you can be perfectly co-ordinated.
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Bras cost £34, boy shorts, £26. Available from selfridge (0800 123 400).
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Just in time for festival season, Dorothy Perkins' latest collection for The Woodland Trust looks set to be coming to a field near you.
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Mulberry is famed for turning out It bag after It bag - but the new Neely style, which launched today, looks set to be a modern classic.
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From £450 for a shoulder bag. Available now at mulberry.com
JEAN GENIUS
Net-a-porter.com has launched a one-stop shop for all your jeans needs with their new denim boutique. It offers labels including J Brand, superfine, Notify, Ksubi and Drkshdw by Rick Owens. And look out for Victoria Beckham Denim, set to be a mainstay for jeans addicts.
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A favourite stateside since its delicate flirty dresses, BCBGMAX AZRIA is a favourite with stars from Angelina Jolie to Poop Girl's Leighton Meester.
Now Londoners can finally get in on the act as the label is opens its first UK store next week.
Created by the designer behind the Herve Leger label, the colourful current collection looks set to be a must-have for the summer party season. TA
Opening Friday May 28 at 23-25 Kings Road, London SW1. Also available at www.my-wardrobe.com
DAISY, DAISY
Daisy started in the Seventies as a humble stall in London's Portobello market, but today it could not be more glamorous. The jewellery brand now boasts nearly 200 styles of its signature stacking rings and skinny bangles, and its fans include Sienna Miller, Lindsay Lohan and Jacquetta Wheeler.
We especially love the website, which allows you to see how your chosen 'stack' of rings will look. TA
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ROUND THE CLOCK
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Eight Hour Cream 100th Anniversary Celebration set is available larger Boots and selected department stores from May, £29
COLLABORA-TED
From one British designer to another, Ted Baker is joining forces with Nina Campbell for limited edition collection built around Campbell's signature Orchard Blossom print. The silk satin fabric is adorned with a trail of blossom bearing branches. Receive a free notebook when you order online. Now you can have a wardrobe to match your home…
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www.tedbaker.com
Nouvelle Vague, £16, Chanel, 020 7493 3836
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Dolce and Gabbana in Petal, £16, Selfridges, 0800 123 400
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Bourjois in Beige Sorcery, £5.49, superdrug.com
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St James' Park, £10.50, nailsinc.com
Fatal Bonus, £12.50, Givenchy, 01932 233 824
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Vernis in Dahlia Rouge, £14, Dior, 020 7216 0216
FOOD, RECIPES & COOKING
DANIEL BOULUD'S DESSERTS