Day: April 3, 2024

Strange Interlude

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Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (’77) was the third and final Sinbad film. VFX by Ray Harryhausen, of course. Shot in ’75, the release was delayed two years due to Harryhausen’s exacting visual standards. And yet all of Harryhausen’s creatures used the exact same body language and exaggerated gestures. And who came up with that cyclops “erp” sound?

I’d never seen so much as a snippet of footage from this film until tonight. Clearly a bargain basement effort. It’s the visual equivalent of eating french fries at a Burger King

Directed, believe it or not, by distinguished stage and screen actor Sam Wanamaker (The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, Death on the Nile, Private Benjamin, The Competition, Raw Deal), who was in his mid 50s in ‘75. Talk about a paycheck gig.

The film stars Patrick Wayne (36 at the time), 22 year-old Taryn (daughter of Tyrone) Power, 24 year-old Jane Seymour and Patrick Troughton.

Stop-motion creatures were riveting in their early to mid 20th century heyday (early 30s to mid 50s). From the ‘60s onward it seemed as if Harryhausen alone kept this increasingly passé but surreal-seeming technique going…the exotic unreality, the rareness of it…an odd-bird visual realm that was neither “real” nor animated nor CG’ed.

And yet Harryhausen’s Sinbad films were curiously arresting as far as they went, and even the stiff and hokey Clash of the Titans (‘81) had its brief diversions. I still love the shadowy, torch-lit confrontation scene between Harry Hamlin and the Medusa serpent with the bow-and-arrow.

The constant problem, of course, was the difficulty of blending live-action humans with these creatures. They were almost always in separate shots. And of course, the action was always about the same choices — run or fight and possibly be killed ad infinitum.

I had never seen this scene from Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger before Wednesday night, and I’m sorry but I felt immediately underwhelmed. That midday, too-much sunshine visual palette, for one thing. And I instantly recognized those Spanish boulder-strewn hills from the battle scenes in King of Kings (’61). And what was the horn-headed cyclops looking to accomplish exactly?

Randy Brando

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Although born 100 years ago today, Marlon Brando is still “alive” in a sense, at least by the measure of a fair percentage of Millennials and Zoomers knowing his name and at least one of his great performances — Vito Corleone in The Godfather.

I’d be surprised if most of them have even heard of On The Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Desire, Last Tango in Paris, Viva Zapata, etc. Everything that seems eternal and granite-like crumbles and collapses into rubble and dust.

Posted on 9.30.17: Director-producer George Englund has died at age 91. The only half-decent film he directed was The Ugly American (’63), which starred Marlon Brando as a naive and somewhat arrogant Ambassador to “Sarkhan” (Thailand crossed with South Vietnam) during a politically tumultuous period.

It costarred Eiji Okada, the good-looking guy who played Emmanuelle Riva‘s lover in Hiroshima mon amour and also costarred in Woman in the Dunes.

The Ugly American, which had almost nothing to do plot-wise with Eugene Burdick and William Lederer’s 1958 best-seller, is not a top-tier film but a moderately good one, and it foresaw, of course, the misguided U.S. policies toward resentful Vietnamese patriots that would lead to so much horror and death for so many years.

Englund’s well-written book about Brando, “The Way It’s Never Been Done Before,” was published in 2004. It mentions a late-night soiree Englund shared with Brando in 1955, and which concluded with the two of them shooting the shit in a Santa Monica parking lot. Their conversation was interrupted by a cop, who wanted to know if they were up to something:

Alec Guiness, In This Order

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HE’s list of my most admired films of Alec Guinness is as follows, and I’m telling you right now that if a person puts Star Wars at the top of their list they’re lacking in cultural and educational refinement..

1. The Bridge on the River Kwai
2. The Lavender Hill Mob
3. Smiley’s People / Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
4. Dr. Zhivago
4. Great Expectations
5. Our Man in Havana
6. Tunes of Glory
7. Oliver Twist
8. Kind Hearts and Coronets
9. Last Holiday
10. Star Wars / The Empire Strikes Back

Regarding The Suicide of Ed Piskor

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Around 9 am eastern an HE commenter called “Really?” wrote a response to last night’s post about (a) the Monday morning (4.1) suicide of cartoonist Ed Piskor over social media accusations of inappropriate texting conversations between Piskor and two women in their late teens, and (b) Jeff Sneider‘s 4.1 post about this tragedy (“Murdered by Internet Bullies“).

“Really?” to HE: “Did you google Piskor and the case for one moment? There’s obviously more to the story than somebody being ‘murdered by the internet.’ Pity that your obsession for cancel culture cancels your ability to be a critical thinker.”

HE to “Really?”: “Are you saying that speaking or texting suggestively or even lewdly to a young girl or two (young but above the age of consent) is a cancellable offense? Which can harm or kill a career or worse, as we’ve just seen with Piskor.

“Unwanted sexting sounds a bit icky, agreed, but if Piskor crossed a line the girl in question could have said ‘no way and hasta la vista’ and terminated the chat or conversation, no?

“Plus the age of consent in Pennsylvania is 16. Doesn’t that mean that in situations involving unwanted attention, lawmakers trust or expect or assume that teens 16 and over can and should exercise agency on their own part?

“It’s unfortunately part of the rough and tumble of life for teenagers to occasionally get hit on by older persons. (My mother used to warn me about predatory older women.) It’s obviously gauche and uncool but if it’s just a texting or phone situation there’s a fairly easy remedy.

“I clearly recall being hit on by an older gay guy in a Connecticut work situation when I was 17, and finding the idea highly distasteful. I told a couple of friends but did I write a complaint to his boss? No. Did I write a letter of condemnation to my local Connecticut newspaper? No. I simply said ‘nope, no thanks’ and moved on with my life. Imagine!”

“’Nobody gets moral unless they want to get something or get out of something.’ — Paddy Chayefsky, 1964.

Reply/comment from Sasha Stone an hour later:

“The same culture that pretends Poor Things is about sexual empowerment is shocked, shocked that sexuality is going on here. They order their little chess pieces to make sure everything is in strict compliance…”her agency” this and “grooming” that. They go along with an entire system that thinks it’s okay to confuse toddlers with conversations about their private parts to “decide” what gender they are. They go along with extreme and overt sexuality UNLESS — God forbid — a heterosexual male enters the chat.

“Even though certain younger but legal women are attracted to him, come on to him, pretend that they’re interested in him, if he takes the bait — PREDATOR!

“This is the most hedonistic, end-of-empire, Caligula-like culture I’ve ever lived through with one exception: masculine men cannot partake because eeww, icky predators. Give me a break. Hypocrites. And don’t bother lecturing me about power this and consent that. Text messages — please.”

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