Thrilling Days of Yesteryear
Sunday, December 17, 2006The wheat from the chaff
For the past two weekends, I’ve been spending a little spare time watching some DVDs in order to decide whether to keep them or sell them to DVD Empire…and get more DVDs. (This is what is known as a “vicious circle.”) In doing this, I’ve sort of surprised myself at how my cinematic tastes have changed with the passage of time—movies that would normally have received an enthusiastic reception I’ve discovered to be much ado about nothing (well, that’s a bit harsh—it would be better to say that there’s nothing in them that would make them “keepers.”) and ones that I probably would have dismissed have something in them that forces me to keep them for an encore.
An example of the latter would be Dolores Claiborne (1995), an exhilarating psychological thriller directed by Taylor Hackford and based on the Stephen King novel about a hard-as-nails domestic (Kathy Bates) reunited with her estranged daughter (Jennifer Jason Leigh) after being accused of murdering her bitch-on-wheels employer (Judy Parfitt). I caught Claiborne on television—probably on one of the Encore channels—when I still had my satellite dish and was impressed enough with the movie to buy it on DVD (letterboxed, the way the Good Lord intended) a few years later…though apparently not too impressed to open it up, since I’d be willing to bet it’s been sitting on a shelf for the better part of two years in its original plastic wrapping. I watched it this weekend, and it still holds up marvelously, primarily due to Kathy Bates’ outstanding eccentric performance (she copped an Oscar for portraying another King heroine in Misery—but she’s much better in this role) and superlative support from Leigh, Parfitt, Christopher Plummer, TDOY fave David Strathairn (he’s nasty in this one), Eric Bogosian, John C, Reilly and Ellen Muth. Bates’ character has a colorful way with insults—the one that makes me laugh out loud is when she calls Plummer’s dedicated police detective “the Grand High Poobah of Upper Butt Crack.” As I was watching the film, I kept wondering where I had seen Parfitt and it wasn’t until I finished Claiborne that I remembered her from a 80s sitcom called The Charmings (she played the evil Queen), a one-joke show in which Snow White (Caitlin O’Heaney, who was replaced by Carol Huston) and Prince Charming (the always hilarious Christopher Rich) fall asleep in the Enchanted Forest and wake up in 20th Century Burbank. Parfitt added the only real life to the program, assisted by the sublimely bitchy Paul Winfield as her Magic Mirror.
Other movies that I’ve found myself throwing on the “To Keep” pile include Silkwood (1983), based on the true life story of whistle-blower Karen Silkwood (Meryl Streep) whose mysterious death in a 1974 car accident (it has been suggested) may have been connected to her revelation of hazardous practices at the Kerr-McGee nuclear plant in Crescent, Oklahoma. Mike Nichols’ film is still engrossing (even when you know the outcome) and as they used to say in the closing credits of the old Universal films, a good cast is worth repeating—Kurt Russell, Cher, Craig T. Nelson (who played more than his fair share of bastards before Poltergeist and the TV sitcom Coach came along), Fred Ward, Ron Silver, David Strathairn (yes, he’s in this one, too) and Savannah native Diana Scarwid (who always got billed in every newspaper review and movie theater ad as “Savannah’s own Diana Scarwid”—I swear I’m not making this up). I’m also hanging on to Rancho Deluxe (1975), an offbeat comedy-western about a pair of drifters (Jeff Bridges, Sam Waterston) whose occupation is that of cattle rustling. Deluxe has become sort of a cult item since the music was contributed by everybody’s favorite Parrothead, Jimmy Buffett (he has a small role as himself in the film, and performs Livingston Saturday Night), and its ginger-and-wry screenplay was written by novelist Thomas McGuane, who also wrote and directed that same year a seldom seen picture called 92 in the Shade that I would love to see on DVD. Both pictures feature an eclectic cast: in Deluxe, you not only get Bridges and Waterston but Clifton James, Elizabeth Ashley, Slim Pickens, Harry Dean Stanton, Richard Bright and a topless Patti D’Arbanville (if you look close enough, you’ll also see Warren Oates—star of Shade—playing harmonica in Buffett’s band).
As for the discs that didn’t make the cut, the one that immediately springs to mind is The King of Marvin Gardens (1972)—a critically acclaimed character study that reunited the team behind Five Easy Pieces, director Bob Rafelson and star Jack Nicholson. Nicholson’s a late-night Philly DJ whose irresponsible brother (Bruce Dern) comes back into his life; Dern fancies himself a major deal-maker but is in actuality a blowhard who’s all style and no substance. Gardens’ problem is that there’s no real narrative, just a look at a bunch of losers who remain big dreamers; Ellen Burstyn has a nice turn as a faded beauty queen who can’t face reality but I was more impressed with the immortal ‘Scatman’ Crothers (billed as Benjamin ‘Scatman’ Crothers) as Dern’s successful mentor. There are some nice attributes in this film, my favorite is Laszlo Kovacs’ cinematography which shows a down-and-out but fascinating 1970s Atlantic City (before Donald Trump got his skeevy paws on it) and in fact, Gardens isn’t much different from Louis Malle’s Atlantic City…except Malle’s film is better.
I’ve never considered myself a huge Sam Peckinpah fan—apart from the fantastic Ride the High Country and Straw Dogs (The Wild Bunch is a film I’m only partially fond of; I agree with Howard Hawks’ famed dictum “I can kill forty guys in the time it takes him to kill one”) I’ve just never seen any reason to subscribe to his cult of machismo. I did, however, manage to catch Junior Bonner (1972) last weekend—the film that comes closest, in my opinion, to capturing the “dying west” of Country—and for the most part thought it was pretty good. The King of Cool, Steve McQueen, plays rodeo cowboy J.R. Bonner—a drifter who returns to his hometown of Prescott, Arizona for its annual July Frontier Days, and has a bittersweet reunion with his father Ace (Robert Preston), mother Elvira (Ida Lupino) and slick salesman brother Curly (Joe Don Baker). Ace is a dreamer who’s struck out at everything he’s attempted in life, and though he should be put out to pasture continues his get-rich-quick schemes by planning a venture to
- Posted by Ivan G. Shreve, Jr. - 11:38:39 PM - comment []
What fools these immortals be
The DVD Gods can be kind…or cruel...or just incredibly finicky. I previously reported that I had received a communiqué from Oldies.com stating my order for the
Well, Saturday morning’s mail brought me the set in all its slightly-beat-up glory—the box it came in, I mean. I snuck a peek at a few of the opening moments from the shows contained herein (and Bobh is right, the Bonanza episodes don’t look too shabby) and for public domain product, they look pretty good. I’ll have a rundown on the set when I get the time (of which there never seems to be enough) to look at it in closer detail.
Speaking of Oldies.com, they’ve got a clearance sale on some of their Warner Brothers titles for $6.98 a pop—a nice price to pay for classics like Angels With Dirty Faces (1938), The Big Red One (1980—and it’s the 2-disc special edition), King Kong (1933) and The Philadelphia Story (1940). As for myself, I made do with copies of Night Moves (1975—one of my favorite 70s films) and The Killing Fields (1984).
- Posted by Ivan G. Shreve, Jr. - 11:13:48 PM - comment []
