I can’t unsee this Psycho set photo, and particularly John Gavin’s man-toes and especially those hush-puppy slip-ons. I’m sorry but the man’s stock has just dropped a few points, and I mean eternally.
BTW: This was shot during filming of the Phoenix hotel room scene, and Janet Leigh’s satin or silk bathrobe is the same one that “Marion Crane” wore just prior to taking a shower in cabin #1 at the Bates Motel.
I’ve watched and re-watched TheBigCountry since it hit Bluray in 2011, and especially since the much improved KLStudioClassicversion was released in ‘18. I know this film cold, every scene and line and Technirama shot, every bridge and stanza in Jerome Moross’s score, etc.
But until last night, I hadn’t noticed a very glaring element in the final shot, the one in which Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons and Alfonso Bedoya ride down a rugged mountain trail and into a large valley below.
Throughout the entire film the dominant outdoor color (aside from the sky) is pale straw…the landscape is seemingly under-watered and parched as far as the camera can see, the dry prairie grass covering the plains and hills in every direction.
And then in the final shot and for the first time in the film, the entire valley is covered in green.
Was this a visual metaphor that director William Wyler decided upon, signifying health and ample water and a happy ending as far as human nature allowed? Or had nature simply shifted gears or seasons by sprouting fresh grass toward the end of principal photography?
I know that I can’t recall another outdoor film, western or not, in which an entire eye-filling landscape changes its mind so completely at the very last moment.
Imagine being so clueless, so bottom-of-the-barrel and perverse in your movie brain that when somebody asks “favorite GeneHackman film?”, you actually respond “Superman”!
In no particular order: CrimsonTide, TheFirm, Hoosiers, NightMoves, AllNightLong, DownhillRacer, TheFrenchConnection (Friedkin & Frankenheimer), TheConversation, BonnieandClyde, AnotherWoman, YoungFrankenstein, MississippiBurning.
All my professional life I’ve regarded Amy Taubin as a first-rate, tart-tongued Manhattan film critic and essayist. So it came as a mild surprise to read the other day that (a) she was once a fledgling, semi-noteworthy actress/filmmaker, such that (b) casting director Lynn Stalmaster included her among a list of possibles to play Elaine Robinson in TheGraduate.
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I’ve just read Adriane Quinlan’s 4.7 “Curbed” piece about Paul Schrader’s life these days at TheCoterie, a pricey (at least $15K monthly) luxury high-rise for interesting (read: fairly loaded) seniors. It’s called “Paul Schrader’sVeryPaul SchraderDaysinAssistedLiving.”
This is a dry, well-written observational that almost reminded me at times of Didion’s “Play It As It Lays.” But unlike his well-tended wife Marybeth, Paul doesn’t seem to be living “in” assisted living, or at least not according to my limited understanding of that term.
Living in The Coterie is easy and luxurious, sure, but with Paul churning out screenplays, planning to shoot a kind of Ivan Ilyich-type drama with Richard Gere later this year and thinking about visiting a Manhattan dive bar in order to counter-balance a feeling of too much sterility and perhaps keep in touch with the hurlyburly to some degree, he seems to be living in a fashion that’s more adjacent to assisted living (out of necessity for his wife) than “in” it.
I’m hearing that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (6.30.23) is “another Top Gun: Maverick in that it’s a love letter to a bygone moviegoing experience.”
Director James Mangold, I’m told, is “very deft in mining the same turf as Rocky Balboa, depicting an aged actor and character taking a valedictory lap. Harrison Ford brings the goods, but it’s Phoebe Waller Bridge who truly ups the game, playing her part like a young Diana Rigg. Audiences will love her character and performance. The film will pack theaters.”
Fine, I said, but I don’t trust Mangold AT ALL. The trailer tells me they’re recycling old jokes and old bits. It looks like a slick franchise tribute and that’s all.
Reply: “Once again, Phoebe Waller Bridge is the key to the film. She gives it heart and soul and wit.
“Contrasting the proverbial disgruntled and grumpy older Ford against hippies in the 60s is what works. He’s an old man yelling at clouds and kids to get off his lawn, but he’s the only one that perceives the dangers of the assimilated enemies working for the American government at NASA.
“Mads Mikkelsen‘s villain is a former Nazi scientist like a WernervonBraun, now working for NASA. Basically a sardonic and philosophical Doctor Strangelove type. Mikkelsen uses a little PeterLorre-styled menace laced with sinister humor.”
“A sloshed Chet Huntley speaking to an equally hammered David Brinkley during New Year’s Eve coverage in 1966: “You know, David…sometimes I wish I was single. I’m fairly wealthy, I’m famous and there are all these women around. I’m telling you it’s a tragedy. And my wife and I…all right, I won’t go there. But God, would I love to sow a few wild oats before it’s too late! I mean, let’s face it, David…we’re both gonna be dead some day.” — from HE’s 1.1.17 coverage of Don Lemon’s inebriated New Year’s Eve coverage in New Orleans.