A friend suggested a list of the Ten Best American Crime Flicks of the ‘70s.
By which he meant films that spend more time on criminals than people trying to catch them, or no time with the catchers at all.
No cop movies, he said, which eliminates Dirty Harry, The French Connection, The Seven-Ups, etc. Also no period caper or con movies (The Sting, The Great Train Robbery), no historical gangster flicks (The Godfather I and II). Strictly contemporary crime pictures in which the protagonists are engaged in criminal activity. Hence Friedkin’s Sorcerer (desperate struggle over rough terrain) and Don Siegel’s Escape From Alcatraz don’t qualify. And no Juggernaut because it’s told almost entirely (98%) from the point of view of the catchers.
Three of his picks I immediately scratched off — Richard Brooks‘ $ (aka Dollars), Michael Cimino‘s Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (fuck Cimino) and Walter Hill‘s The Driver (too loud, brutalist, mechanical). Which left seven.
I then added seven more for a total of 14 films, all released between 1.1.70 and 1.1.80.
Three of my top ten opened in ’77 and ’78, but the other seven were released between ’71 and ’73. In order of preference…
1. The Day of the Jackal (’73)
2. The Friends of Eddie Coyle (’73)
3. Get Carter (’71)
4. Badlands (’73)
5. The Outfit (’73)
6. The American Friend (’77)
7. Who’ll Stop the Rain? (’78)
8. Charley Varrick (’73)
9. The Hot Rock (’72)
10. Straight Time (’78)
Slightly second tier but at the same time smart and engaging:
11. The Taking of Pelham 123 (’74)
12. The Getaway (’72)
13. The Silent Partner (’78)
14. Going in Style (’79)
I’m going to stick my neck out by saying I’m probably the only tristate area guy with a Red River belt buckle and a “Kennedy for President” sticker on my car’s rear bumper.
The non-binary Jane Schoenbrun began life as a bio-male, or so I gather.
I’ve never been able to give myself over to Sam Peckinpah’s Major Dundee, a 1965 Civil War–era western, and I’ve frankly stopped trying.
Was the 156-minute version ever seen by anyone except R.G. Armstrong? The 136-minute version is longer but is it necessarily, positively better? I’ve only seen the shortest version (126 minutes) with the Mitch Miller sing–alongers on the soundtrack.
I know two things — during the ‘60s, ‘70s and early ‘80s Peckinpah allowed his career to be stained and diminished by raging alcoholism, and that with the exception of three films (Ride The High Country, The Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs) everything he was involved in was to varying degrees colored by rage and snarls and waste.
Over the years his persistent asshole-ishness overwhelmed his creative visions, and people just got sick of him.
I own a Bluray of Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia (‘74) and I’ve watched it exactly once. There’s a reason for that. The nihilistic finale leaves you with nothing. Maybe I should give it another go.
I’ve seen Cross of Iron (1977) once, and while I have a favorable recollection of James Coburn and Maximilian Schell’s lead performances, I mostly recall Gene Shalit calling it “a movie of bad.”
All this aside, I sure do envy Joe Dante for having seen the 152-minute version of The Wild Bunch (7 minutes longer than the official, definitive 145-minute Bluray) during the 1969 Bahamas press junket.
Dante recalls as follows:
Frances McDormand‘s Fern was strong but mule-stubborn and at the end of the day self-destructive, and this stunted psychology led to an idiotic ending.
Her old white van was indisputably on its last legs, and 60ish David Straitharn, lonely but harmless, clearly would’ve settled for simple, no-big-deal companionship.
I’m sorry but there’s this notion out there that choosing a healthy or constructive path in life requires (a) not being a stubborn egoistic purist and (b) understanding that opting for common-sense security isn’t necessarily a death sentence or a prison term.
The curious ending of Nomadland refuses to acknowledge this. It basically says “better to die destitute and alone on a two-lane blacktop while shitting in a bucket in the middle of the night than to accept kindness and sensible adult friendship.”
This Marlon Brando drawing was composed nearly 51 years ago by New York Review of Books illustrator David Levine. It appeared alongside a 5.17.73 Norman Mailer review of Last Tango in Paris, titled “A Transit to Narcissus.”
In paragraph #6, Mailer writes that early in the Bernardo Bertolucci film “Brando abruptly cashes the check Stanley Kowalski wrote for us twenty-five years ago — he fucks the heroine standing up. It solves the old snicker of how do you do it in a telephone booth? — he rips her panties open.
“In our new line of New Yorker–approved superlatives, it can be said that the cry of the fabric is the most thrilling sound to be heard in World Culture since the four opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth.”
Tango premiered at the 1972 New York Film Festival (10.14.72), but opened commercially on 2.1.73 at Manhattan’s Trans Lux East (Third Avenue between 57th Street and 58th Street). Tickets went for a then-unheard-of price of $5.00.
USA Today: “Today Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee gave Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis until Feb. 2 to formally respond to explosive allegations that she has been in an improper romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the private lawyer she hired as a special prosecutor overseeing the election fraud case against former President Donald Trump and 14 alleged co-conspirators.
“McAfee also scheduled a Feb. 15 hearing — likely to be televised — to hear arguments on the issue from Willis and a lawyer for Michael Roman, the Trump-co-defendant and 2020 campaign official who made the allegations last week.
“Willis has declined to specifically address the accusations that she was having an affair with Wade, and that she hired him for the job and paid him more than $650,000 even though he is unqualified to oversee the high-profile case.”
HE reaction #1: Willis and Wade possibly schtupping each other while working on the prosecution of Trump’s Georgia-election-interference case is technically no one’s business but their own. Intimate relationships between high-powered people who work together (whether attached or unattached to others) are fairly common. However…
HE reaction #2: If the rumors of an intimate relationship are true, it was astonishingly arrogant and stupid of Willis and Wade to have opened themselves up to potential ridicule and wagging tongues, and thereby compromise, at least in terms of public image, the integrity of the prosecution’s case against Trump.
What matters at the end of the day is whether or not Willis, Wade and their prosecutorial colleagues have the proof to convict Trump or not — that’s the bottom line. It shouldn’t matter what Willis and Wade were up to after-hours. But that aside, what mind-blowing carelessness on their part…God! This is out of a Harold Robbins novel.
Trump co-defendant Michael Roman, repped by Atlanta lawyer Ashleigh Merchant, is contending that the allegations are serious enough to have Willis, Wade and the entire Fulton County DA’s office disqualified and thrown off the case.
In a 1.4.24 N.Y. Times essay titled “The Case for Disqualifying Trump Is Strong,” columnist David French focused mainly on the legal argument for disqualifying Donald Trump from the presidency on the basis of the text and history of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
French: “I made the case that the plain language of the amendment should disqualify Trump regardless of the consequences, which many observers — including some strongly opposed to Trump — believe would be dire and violent.
Today (1.18.24), in a piece titled “What the Civil War and Reconstruction Teach Us About The Proper Use of the 14th Amendment“, French argues that “even the consequences argue for Trump’s disqualification. Or, put more directly, that the consequences of not disqualifying the former president are likely to be worse than those of disqualifying him.”
Every year there are negative reactions when this or that deceased Hollywood veteran has been omitted from the Oscar telecast’s “In Memoriam” segment.
Well, what if the Oscar producers were to notify the families of late Hollywood veterans in advance that their beloved and departed might not make the cut?
I’m asking because it was reported earlier today that BAFTA had recently sent a dispiriting email to Kate Beckinsale, stating that her recently deceased stepfather Roy Battersby, who died on 1.10.24, “will be considered for the [forthcoming] in memoriam segment for BAFTA TV awards ceremony, but it is not guaranteed.”
Beckinsale bitterly complained, prompting BAFTA to quickly issue a follow-up statement: “We confirm [that the late Roy Battersby] will be honoured in our forthcoming BAFTA television awards in May, and on the ‘in memoriam’ section on our website.”
Last year the Oscars’ “In Memoriam” segment omitted Paul Sorvino, Anne Heche, Leslie Jordan, Gilbert Gottfried, Tom Sizemore, Cindy Williams and Triangle of Sadness costar Charlbi Dean.
Imagine if AMPAS had decided a year ago to follow in BAFTA’s footsteps, and you were in charge of writing the necessary letters to the families of the deceased….in advance.
Example: “Dear family of Paul Sorvino — As much as the Academy has always admired the late Mr. Sorvino and deeply respected his unforgettable performances in Goodfellas, The Gambler, The Brink’s Job, Cruising, Reds, That Championship Season and Dick Tracy, we must inform you that the producers of the forthcoming Oscar telecast might not be able to fit him into the ‘In Memoriam’ segment.
“Please understand that while we may cut the late Mr. Sorvino from the segment, we also might not. It depends on the breaks. If we cut him we would do so with the utmost regret. We hope that you understand that this happens to deceased Hollywood professionals each and every year, and that no one takes these matters more seriously than ourselves.
“If we can somehow fit Paul in at the last minute, we will not hesitate to do so.”
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