BBC's top hundred movies directed by women

The BBC polled film critics and it may just be that they're as dumb as the rest of us. I know there aren't many women directors, but it's worse than I thought when Big, Sleepless in Seattle and Fast Times at Ridgemont High make it onto the top 100 list of movies directed by women.

Remember when Barbra Streisand fans were outraged that she didn't get an Oscar for Yentl? Nothing she directed made the list.

Agnes Varda passed away this year. Some of the streaming channels focused in her movies which may be part of the reason why she's as prominent on the list as she is.

I heard it suggested that directing is so male-dominated that we should stop focusing on directors. They're not ALL auteurs. George Lucas's wife was the editor who saved Star Wars from her husband's incompetence and people suspected that Peter Bogdanovich's ex-wife Polly Platt was responsible for any of his successes. Those "New Hollywood" guys were terrible sexists who thought their wives should give up their careers to be their helpmeets.

I was just thinking about Harlan County, USA, a few minutes before I came across the list, and last night I tried watching another Czech New Wave movie from the '60's or '70's and thought about how much I disliked Daisies, 

For some reason I put the ones I've seen in bold, but I can't imagine it's of any interest to anyone but me. Some of those things I watched thirty years ago just because they were on TV or I got dragged off to them or someone else wanted to watch them on TV. Please don't judge me too harshly.


100. The Kids are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko, 2010)
99. The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg, 2019)
98. Somewhere (Sofia Coppola, 2010)
97. Adoption (Márta Mészáros, 1975)
96. The Meetings of Anna (Chantal Akerman, 1977)
95. Ritual in Transfigured Time (Maya Deren, 1946)
94. News From Home (Chantal Akerman, 1977)
93. Red Road (Andrea Arnold, 2006)
92. Raw (Julia Ducournau, 2016)
91. White Material (Claire Denis, 2009)
90. Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Amy Heckerling, 1982)
89. The Beaches of Agnes (Agnès Varda, 2008)
88. The Silences of the Palace (Moufida Tlatli, 1994)
87. 35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis, 2008)
86. Wadjda (Haifaa Al-Mansour, 2012)
85. One Sings, The Other Doesn’t (Agnès Varda, 1977)
84. Portrait of Jason (Shirley Clarke, 1967)
83. Sleepless in Seattle (Nora Ephron, 1993)
82. At Land (Maya Deren, 1944)
81. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Ana Lily Amirpour, 2014)
80. Big (Penny Marshall, 1988)
79. Shoes (Lois Weber, 1916)
78. The Apple (Samira Makhmalbaf, 1998)
77. Tomboy (Céline Sciamma, 2011)
76. Girlhood (Céline Sciamma, 2014)
75. Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010)
74. Chocolat (Claire Denis, 1988)
73. On Body and Soul (Ildikó Enyedi, 2017)
72. Europa Europa (Agnieszka Holland, 1980)
71. The Seashell and the Clergyman (Germaine Dulac, 1928)
70. Whale Rider (Niki Caro, 2002)
69. The Connection (Shirley Clarke, 1961)
68. Eve’s Bayou (Kasi Lemmons, 1997)
67. The German Sisters (Margarethe von Trotta, 1981)
66. Ratcatcher (Lynne Ramsay, 1999)
65. Leave no Trace (Debra Granik, 2018)
64. The Rider (Chloe Zhao, 2017)
63. Marie Antoinette (Sofia Coppola, 2006)
62. Strange Days (Kathryn Bigelow, 1995)
61. India Song (Marguerite Duras, 1975)
60. A League of their Own (Penny Marshall, 1992)
59. The Long Farewell (Kira Muratova, 1971)
58. Desperately Seeking Susan (Susan Seidelman, 1985)
57. The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2014)
56. 13th (Ava DuVernay, 2016)
55. Monster (Patty Jenkins, 2003)
54. Bright Star (Jane Campion, 2009)
53. The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel, 2008)
52. Happy as Lazzaro (Alice Rohrwacher, 2018)
51. Harlan County, USA (Barbara Kopple, 1976)
50. Outrage (Ida Lupino, 1950)
49. Salaam Bombay! (Mira Nair, 1988)
48. The Asthenic Syndrome (Kira Muratova, 1989)
47. An Angel at my Table (Jane Campion, 1990)
46. Near Dark (Kathryn Bigelow, 1987)
45. Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl, 1935)
44. American Honey (Andrea Arnold, 2016)
43. The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola, 1999)
42. The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Lotte Reiniger, 1926)
41. Capernaum (Nadine Labaki, 2018)
40. Boys Don’t Cry (Kimberly Peirce, 1999)
39. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma, 2019)
38. Paris is Burning (Jennie Livingston, 1990)
37. Olympia (Leni Riefenstahl, 1938)
36. Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt, 2008)
35. The Matrix (Lana and Lilly Wachowski, 1999)
34. Morvern Callar (Lynne Ramsay, 2002)
33. You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay, 2017)
32. The Night Porter (Liliana Cavani, 1974)
31. The Gleaners and I (Agnès Varda, 2000)
30. Zama (Lucrecia Martel, 2017)
29. Monsoon Wedding (Mira Nair, 2001)
28. Le Bonheur (Agnès Varda, 1965)
27. Selma (Ava DuVernay, 2014)
26. Stories we Tell (Sarah Polley, 2012)
25. The House is Black (Forugh Farrokhzad, 1963)
24. Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig, 2017)
23. The Hitch-Hiker (Ida Lupino, 1953)
23. We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsay, 2011)
21. Winter’s Bone (Debra Granik, 2010)
20. Clueless (Amy Heckerling, 1995)
19. Orlando (Sally Potter, 1992)
18. American Psycho (Mary Harron, 2000)
17. Seven Beauties (Lina Wertmüller, 1975)
16. Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1970)
15. The Swamp (Lucrecia Martel, 2001)
14. Point Break (Kathryn Bigelow, 1991)
13. Vagabond (Agnès Varda, 1985)
12. Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow, 2012)
11. The Ascent (Larisa Shepitko, 1977)
10. Daughters of the Dust (Julie Dash, 1991)
9. Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold, 2009)
8. Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade, 2016)
7. The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2008)
6. Daisies (Věra Chytilová, 1966)
5. Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003)
4. Beau Travail (Claire Denis, 1999)
3. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)
2. Cléo from 5 to 7 (Agnès Varda, 1962)
1. The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993)

E.T. was an objectively bad movie

I wrote my ET anecdote in the last entry. Then I looked at the news this morning and it turns out that Comcast made a two minute commercial using the hideous space alien and a now middle aged Elliott (ElliotT--get it?)

In the movie, ET had latched onto Elliott and was keeping himself alive by sucking the life force out of him. He was murdering Elliott. That's why Elliott and ET were both dying. Elliott's entire family could have been wiped out and it wouldn't have affected his health---why would he be on the brink of death because he loved his new space alien friend so much?

If they really wanted to capture the flavor of the original movie, ET would keep revealing new super powers even if they made no sense. If he could fly, why didn't he do that in the first place?

I have to be careful who I say this to. I have a six-year-old neighbor who was named after Elliott, even though, in the movie, Elliott's parents were divorced and his father long gone.

The Irishman

It's like the time my sister forced us all to watch E.T. She had seen it and thought it was the most deeply moving experience of her life. When it was over, she asked my brother what he thought.

"It's just like all those other movies," he said.

Which is how I feel sitting here with The Irishman on Netflix.

It's just like all those other movies.

I don't think the digital de-aging was that bad, but why not just hire younger actors? Give someone else a turn.

The Fugitive being remade

I never liked The Fugitive, the TV show or the movie. It was one of those shows where a guy travels from place and place and helps people with their problems. The movie with Harrison Ford had to skip all that and just remade the pilot and the series finale. He escapes from the train taking him to prison and -- SPOILER ALERT -- finds the real killer.

Now they're doing a remake.

If they want to make a movie that's REALLY based on the TV show, they'll skip the origin story and have the Fugitive appear in a small Peyton Place-like town where he begins helping everyone solve their emotional problems. That way, they can do sequels.

In fact, instead of an escaped surgeon, he should be a psychiatrist who's been wrongly convicted of killing his wife. And to ease the main character's psychic pain, they should make it clear that his wife was a horrible person and that he's better off without her even if he has to be a fugitive.

The origin story isn't that interesting. They could cover it during the opening credits, or not even that. Just state it on the movie poster. People can read it on the way in.

But it sounds like the only thing they're going to do different is make Dr Richard Kimble an African-American.

Ryan Reynolds, Fifteen

I still haven't seen Ryan Reynolds in anything but the teenage soap opera Fifteen, the least operatic soap opera imaginable. It was a weekly show on Canadian TV and on Nickelodeon.

The main things I remember about him---there was the time his character was kicked out of a band because of his poor drumming, and an episode where he says, "Go ahead! Hit me! If it'll make you feel like a BIG MAN!"

Much like Saddam Hussein's last words. The group gathered to witness his execution were a rather vocal in their approval. "Do you feel like men?" Hussein shouted. Made up a little for his pitiful surrender.

Hussein's tween grandson picked up an AK47 and started shooting when Uday and Qusay were killed. The poor boy was killed immediately, but he didn't come crawling out of his spider hole begging them not to shoot like his grandfather did.

But I'm way off the subject.

Fifteen was awful, but it could have used elements of its awfulness to it's advantage.

There was an episode where a kid who had never shown any sign that there was anything wrong with him announces that he's going into treatment for alcoholism. He talks blandly about his shame at being an alcoholic.

"Now that I'm an alcoholic..."

It was so easy. That axiom writers keep spouting---"Show don't tell"----meant nothing. They could have effortlessly done anything, any crazy plot twist, just by having a kid say it.

"A therapist convinced me I had repressed memories of satanic abuse, so I falsely accused my parents. Now my Mom is in a prison gang and wants to get even with me. And it turns out my foster parents really are Satanists but no one will believe me. Sort of a boy who cried wolf thing."

But I don't remember any conflict or drama. I saw one kid from the show later in a TV docudrama about Amy Fisher and I saw on IMDb.com that a few of the kids went on to bigger things on Canadian TV, but nothing came of it for most of them, poor devils.

I just googled it. Season One is available on Amazon Prime.

Dragnet vs Trackdown

It's weird how influential Dragnet was in the 1950's. Even TV westerns tried to be Dragnet-like. One such show was Trackdown starring Robert Culp as a Texas Ranger. The title and theme music were vaguely Dragnet-like. There was also a show called 26 Men based on real cases of the Arizona Rangers.

The trouble was that Dragnet was a police procedural and people in the Old West didn't have any procedures to follow. It would be like a medical drama set in the Old West. They didn't know enough for it to be of any interest.

Westerns are about ignorant people with guns who follow a simplistic moral code that they still can't understand or explain.

I watched an episode of Trackdown over the weekend. Robert Culp tries to arrest a guy who appears to be trying to break into a hotel room. The guy tries to flee. He's clearly unarmed and is trying to climb out a window, so Robert Culp shoots him. And apparently this wouldn't be a problem except it turns out to be young teenager he just killed.

The town turns against him. The narrator explains that the townspeople forgot all the times Robert Culp killed people who WEREN'T high school kids.

It doesn't really make sense, but he is somehow proven right when it turns out that the kid's father had been the criminal robbing people and the young fellow was trying to get his loot, maybe to return it, I guess. The boy's mother kills his father because she blames him for her son being killed, which also doesn't make complete sense.

In the end, the woman who runs the town newspaper (Ellen Corby) assures Robert Culp that, in a week or two, the town will forget all about him shooting a helpless unarmed teenager in the back.

Hunter Biden's a terrible degenerate

DNA has reportedly proved that Hunter Biden fathered a child in Arkansas while he was still sleeping with his dead brother's widow. In May, he secretly married a woman he'd known for week.

As I've said before, I think it's a Cain and Abel thing. Joe Biden carried on and on about his dead son, Beau---how he was the finest human being he had ever known, how he exemplified his own finest qualities and how he would make a great president one day. And there was Hunter Biden, the drug addict, listening to all this. THAT'S what made him go after his dead brother's wife.

"NOW who's the better man!" Hunter Biden probably thought.

Hunter Biden married South African Melissa Cohen ten days after they met. The have matching Hebrew tattoos. Biden's wife divorced him in part because he spent large sums of money on drugs, prostitutes and gifts for his lady friends.

“Thank you for giving my son the courage to love again,” Joseph Biden told Cohen.


There's no telling how soon they'll get divorced.

Surely Hunter Biden knows he's not helping his father's campaign.

"I got married because I thought it would help you!" Hunter will no doubt tell his father.

"How would it help me to have you marry a stranger?"

Then, in another week:

"Well, I divorced Melissa like you wanted!"

"You WHAT?"

And a week after that:

"You got nothing more to worry about! I took care of EVERYTHING!"

"What do you mean?"

"I got married again! That's what you wanted, isn't it?"

"Married to whom?"

"Doris."

"What's her last name?"

"Biden, of course."

"What was her last name before you married her?"

"I'm not sure."

Old Charlie's Angels

I was sitting here with Charlie's Angels, the old '70's TV series on. It was so bad. So very, very bad. 

I read somewhere that film schools focused on the wrong things. The writing, the acting and the music were more important than the directing.  I wonder if that's true. The show was so poorly made, would better music have helped? Maybe better or more idiosyncratic content would have compensated for the terrible form.

In this show, the girls were driving around in Ford Pintos and Mustang II's, and Bosley was driving one of those enormous Ford's.

Just better cars would have been a vast improvement. Emma Peel drove a Lotus Elan on The Avengers. Mazda later based the Miata on the Elan.

And Bosley---it wasn't his fault, but he was terrible. 1970's clothing was too tight. It looked uncomfortable and if you were the least bit overweight it looked REALLY uncomfortable. Bosley would have been better wearing comfortable clothing made from natural fibers and driving a midsize car he could easily park or turn around in. And if he were a different person. 

They put no thought into anything. They all had snub-nosed .38's. They could have broken that up. Given them a variety of revolvers and automatics.

And why were the women so helpless? They showed one of them learning police Jiu-Jitsu in the opening credits. They couldn't put in fake TV karate fights? Again, Emma Peel should have been their model.

I haven't watched many episodes. There was one where one of the girls goes undercover in a women's prison. The scene where she's first brought to the prison was filmed in what looked like the waiting room in a dentist office with the bad art hanging on the walls. The scene in the prison yard was filmed at a public swimming pool. You know how swimming pools have high fences topped with barbed wire so drunks won't climb over at night and drown? I guess they figured this would work well enough as a prison, but they made no effort to conceal the fact that there was a swimming pool. One of the angels gets into a cat fight with another inmate and knocks her into the water.

It was terrible, but you'd think zero budget filmmakers could show the same---well, I wouldn't call it creativity exactly. 

A 1952 murder case

There was a murder about twenty minutes down the freeway from here 67 years ago.

I had gone digging through microfilm for the local newspaper at the library. I was looking for a theater review from 1952. I didn't find it but I started reading the local news. Back then, a married woman with a baby was sentenced to sixty days in jail for drinking a beer because she was under 21, a blind couple got five years for writing bad checks, and a sixteen-year-old boy got six months for vagrancy.

I was shocked at how expensive things were. A clock radio cost $50 ($485 today). I looked at the classified ads. A lot of people lived in single rooms and, adjusting for inflation, rent wasn't cheap even in a small city.

I guess gas wasn't all that cheap then. There were ads for a brand of English car I never heard of and its only selling point was gas mileage.

At the university, frat-boys staged a failed panty raid, but it inspired a charity clothing drive.

And a 15-year-old was the youngest person in state history at the time to be charged with first degree murder. His name was Elmer.

I read the news that Elmer was found guilty of the crime first. It disturbed me because law enforcement and juvenile justice must have been terrible back then. I wondered if he really did it. So I looked at the newspapers from several days earlier and read about the trial.

The victim was an 18-year-old girl named Mary. She lived on a farm near the defendant's home. She was deaf and mute. She had never gone to school because of her disabilities. She was pregnant and had been shot in the back of the head with a .22 caliber pistol while she was picking flowers.

I don't know what made them suspect Elmer, but the evidence against him was that the girl was shot with a Colt Woodsman pistol that belonged to his father and footprints made by his boots were found in the mud. The boots were later found stuffed in a hollow tree trunk.

Elmer was the only defense witness at the trial. His attorney asked him a question to get him started and he told the story.

He said that he and another guy were doing some farm work, hauling something in a Model A truck. The engine quit. He started working on getting it started again. While doing this, a mean-looking old man came walking up behind him. He was startled and almost jump two feet.

Your father got any guns? the mean-looking old man asked.

Yes, sir, he does, Elmer replied.

Go get me one!

Oh, no, sir, Elmer said.  I'm not allowed to touch any of the guns.

But the old man looked really mean, so Elmer went in and got one.

Now gimme them boots! the old man said.

Elmer gave him his boots. The old man put them on. He walked off to Mary's house. Elmer saw the old man motion to Mary who was inside. She came out. They walked off. Elmer heard a shot. Then the old man came walking back. He gave Elmer the gun and told him to put it back where he got it, gave him boots back and told him to get rid of them and warned him to tell no one about it or he would kill him, too.

He said he didn't know who the old man was at the time, but now he knew that it was the victim's grandfather.

The prosecutor ripped him apart on cross examination.

Elmer was convicted. He was sentenced to life in prison. He went to regular adult prison. He would be eligible for parole in seven years and people thought he'd probably be released then.

There was an editorial in the paper after his conviction. They speculated about what would become of him in prison. "He will probably become a homosexual," it actually said.

It was probably twenty-five years ago that I read about that case. I've told a few people the story over the years. I thought it was funny how stupid this kid was, but the story just seems depressing now.

I started thinking back to it for some reason. I googled it and with some effort was able to find the old newspaper articles online.

The only new thing I found in the news about Elmer was published three years later. When he was eighteen, it was reported that he had escaped from prison. This turned out not to be the case. He was in the prison hiding in a pile of hay to avoid going to the dentist the next day. I imagine that would have kept him in prison longer.

Obviously he wasn't the brightest guy in the world.

I did some google searches. It's surprising how many people there are with the same name, but I found him. I don't know when he got out of prison, but he was living in Idaho. He died about ten years ago at 72.

I did some more searching on an ancestry site. He had two siblings who died in infancy, his grandfather was born in Kentucky and moved to Oregon and was in the Spanish-American War. His paternal grandmother died at a young age. I got the impression that his family wanted to forget he existed or at least wanted other people to forget. I found obituaries for other members of his family and he wasn't listed as one of their survivors.

According to the newspaper, his mother cried when he was convicted, but, really, did she want to take him home after that?

If you're going to have guns in the house, at least lock them up.

Mr Rogers Neighborhood

The only times I watched Mr Roger's Neighborhood was in pre-school. A couple of times they'd roll a TV in and turn it on. It started out great, with the miniature houses and the toy cars. I wanted to see more of that, but instead we have this guy changing his sweater and his shoes. The puppets were terrible.

It was no Sesame Street. Sesame Street was flashier, tried to use advertising tricks to teach phonics which probably isn't all that great either. Which was more cerebral?

I never liked Captain Kangaroo, either. I didn't like his hair and the stuff on it wasn't interesting or amusing. I guess I watched it enough that I knew they had a moose and Mr Greenjeans. They had a clown who would sweep up spotlights on the floor which was funny for about two seconds.

And then there was Art Linkletter. I watched his show only once in preschool. He was interviewing children, asking them each the same question. This must have been around 1967. He asked them, "What do your mommy and daddy hit you with?"

I'm sure this new movie about the guy is fine, though. Fred Rogers always seemed like a nice guy.

New Cats musical cost $300 million

They could have made one and a half MCU movies for that!

There was a time when musicals were considered educational for some reason. Maybe they thought they were expanding the limits of your attention span by making you sit through three solid hours of that crap.  I got dragged off to see Oliver! There was The Sound of Music, of course, but I only remember seeing that on TV.

But now Cats is a motion picture. Has actors with computer generated fur. And word is that the thing cost just under $300 million.

I don't know if this formula still applies when you get into absurdly expensive movies, but in general, they have to gross two and a half times their budget just to break even. In theory, this thing will have to gross $750 million or it will lose money. Nothing on Broadway is THAT popular.

What is it about, anyway? Does it have a plot of any kind?

It's something comic book fans can wave in your face next time anyone brings up the vast sums thrown away on idiotic superhero movies. They should start working out carefully crafted arguments now.

For those making the case against comic book movies, when their fans bring up Cats, just say, "That's whataboutism!"

Polanski movie doing pretty well in France

I don't know what this means or to whom this is some kind of victory, but Roman Polanski's movie, An Officer and a Spy, is doing pretty well in France in spite of the accusation that Polanski raped an 18-year-old actress in France in 1975. The gross is between $8.7 and $11 million. They've sold

I don't know how big the French market is or how most French movies do there. I don't know if doing well in France is enough. Maybe the French are more open-minded, or maybe there's not much else to watch, or maybe movies in general don't perform especially well there.

From Variety:

Ticket sales for “An Officer and a Spy” grew over the weekend. Eric Marti, general manager for Comscore France, said the uptick was a sign that the film is enjoying strong word-of-mouth and will likely continue to perform well in the weeks to come.

“‘An Officer and a Spy’ has enough legs to sell between 1.2 million to 1.5 million admissions (and gross between $8.7 million to $11 million) in France, slightly more than Polanski’s 2010 film ‘The Ghost Writer,'” Comscore said.

But Marti said the film would have done substantially better without the controversy surrounding Polanski, whom former actor Valentine Monnier recently accused of raping her in 1975, when she was 18.

Polanski's Pirates was his biggest hit in France selling two million tickets. It was in English like a lot of Polanski movies, but the French are open to dubbing.

I just saw a dubbed movie on Netflix. I don't know what it was and I didn't watch it all. But I'm tired of reading subtitles. I want to watch movies on TV like it's TV, so you can watch it while sitting on the computer, reading a magazine, doing some housework or whatever else people do with the TV on. I don't want to have to sit there with my eyes glued to the set so I don't miss what's going on. The dubbed version was fine.

Now, there was Luc Moullet's New Wave French western A Girl is a Gun. Perhaps getting into the spirit of bad dubbing, Jean-Pierre Leaud's dialogue was dubbed in a deep voice that was nothing like his. And I've seen dubbed foreign films where thirteen-year-old boys sound like middle-aged cigarette smoking alcoholics. But this thing I saw, whatever it was, was great. I wasn't used to seeing stuff dubbed so it took me a second to realize it was even through they weren't that careful matching up the syllables. Which is good.

I saw this old Italian crime movie. It was awful. But judging from the opening credits, one of the three stars was an American and was presumably speaking English, so I watched their mouths trying to tell which one was English dubbed in English, and I couldn't tell. The dubbing was so well done it could have been any of them.

Which is why I didn't trust it. I want them to translate for accuracy, not to get the syllables to match.

Back in the days before video, there were books on film making which argued passionately for dubbing. You could change lines, you could hire actors for looks and have real actors dub their voices, you could use any camera even if it wasn't normally suited for live sound, you don't have to worry about background noise and the director could talk to the actors while they film the scene.

And, really, with digital video, you'd still have those advantages and do-it-yourself dubbing would be easier now than in the old days when you had to figure out how to dub dialog without the projector noise.

Something I read

I read an attack on Jojo Rabbit. I guess it was an attack. I don't remember.

But they pointed out that, in the movie The Producers, the play "Springtime for Hitler" that becomes an unintentional hit comedy wasn't actually funny.

And now that I think back to it, what exactly were they laughing at?

The Hunting Party (1971)

I was watching an episode The Rifleman. It was directed by Don Medford.

"Who's that?" I thought.

I googled him.

Don Medford was a TV director who also directed a couple of movies one of which was The Hunting Party, a 1971 British/US co-production filmed in Spain. Oliver Reed is head of a large band of outlaws. They kidnap Candice Bergen because they think she's the schoolmarm and Oliver Reed wants her to teach him how to read. They don't say why he wants to become literate and I don't think school teachers in the Old West had any special skills back then. They knew how to read but I doubt they knew much about teaching.

Candice's wealthy impotent sadist husband (Gene Hackman) was out on a hunting trip with his business associates. He bought them each a high powered rifle with a long old-timey telescopic site that gives it a range of 800 yards. When they get word that his wife has been kidnapped, they go after them. They figure they'll find the band of outlaws and pick them off from a great distance so they can't shoot back.

The movie was lousily received. Everyone hated it. Starts with Oliver Reed and his friends cutting up a cow they killed. They eat raw meat fresh from the cow.

There's something they warn film students about. Don't use toy guns in your movies. That goes for airsoft guns and BB guns, too, although I've seen movies where people used them and they worked fine. But in this movie, the rifles with the long telescopic sites were obviously fake. They clearly didn't weigh anything. You could see that the barrels were light tubes rather than heavy gun barrels.

The gimmick with the rifles might have been better if they didn't all have one. They don't explain why Gene Hackman didn't simply kill Oliver Reed---he could have done it a couple of times but didn't bother.

There just wasn't much of a plot.

The emotionally repressed British and an American TV director tried to make their own overwrought Italian western, but it just wasn't in their nature.

You know how, in old episodes of Barnaby Jones they always tried to build up to a big dramatic conclusion and it never, ever came out anywhere near as good as they thought it would? Same thing here.

Let the fools have their movie theaters

Maybe comic book movie people are right.

Variety reports that Warner Brothers is making a fortune on that stupid-looking Joker movie, but may still lose money because they set out to make a lot of regular, non-adolescent grown-up movies, too.

Things have been moving in that direction for years. In the '80's. Siskel & Ebert would put down films that had any serious purpose as made-for-TV movies. And some probably were. There was one where Robert De Niro plays an illiterate who learns to read.

There was one review I remember---Gene Siskel said when it started he thought it would be something better suited for TV. It started out showing how teenagers caught up in the juvenile justice system can have their lives destroyed, but he was relieved when a delinquent's lady attorney fell in love with him, helped him escape and, I assume, molested him as they became fugitives on the run from the law.

I don't remember who it was, but one guy years ago who worked in TV was asked about it. He said it was the more serious medium. Movies were empty entertainment. Only TV had anything to say.

Now this has gone all the way. Only mindless crap can make money theatrically. If it's any good, it's streaming video. We may as well accept it.

I don't really understand the obsession with having movies shown in theaters anyway. You can make a lot of money if you get a cut of the gross I guess.

Even now I see hopeless, unemployed film school graduates who dismiss anything short of Spielberg-like success. They don't dream of directing movies, only of being movie directors, and TV just isn't up to their standards.

Woody Allen's Another Woman, 1988

I'm sitting here with Another Woman on TV, a Woody Allen drama. Gena Rowlands begins to realize that nobody likes her. I kind of like it. It doesn't have some of the crap his other dramas have had---in Interiors, for example, Diane Keaton played a celebrity poet, something I don't think exists. In September, Mia Farrow was unaware that her house she had put up for sale wasn't actually her property. Like Allen doesn't know how the world works. 

In one scene in this movie, a father arranges for his son to work for a company producing paper products. It's far more plausible than job opportunities in his other dramas. In Interiors a woman turns down a high-paying job in advertising, a field she's never worked in, because she thinks it's beneath her. In September, Mia Farrow needs to find work so she figures she'll be an art photographer.

I don't know if the son was going to be an office boy, a factory boy or a warehouse boy, but it sounded like a pretty good job to me. He threw a bit of a tantrum over it.

With Sandy Dennis, Mia Farrow, Ian Holm, Gene Hackman; John Housman plays Gena Rowland's father--David Ogden Stiers plays a younger version of the same character. 

Something about TV series

I like old episodes of Perry Mason. But you have to take it as kind of an anthology. You can't sit there adding up how many murders Perry Mason solved because it was an absurd number. You have to take each case as a stand alone thing, as if none of the other episodes existed.

Matt Dillon shot 407 people over the course of the TV series Gunsmoke including the made-for-TV movies. That was four hundred men and seven women. I doubt he shot any children or very many teenagers. Some were "only" wounded, of course, but a lot of those probably died of their injuries later.

Dillon himself was shot 56 times. The show was on for twenty years (635 episodes) so he was shot two or three times a year. It's nice that there were at least a couple of hundred episodes where he didn't shoot anyone.

I never liked Matt Dillon. I was just a little kid when I watched that show, but seeing Matt Dillon with Miss Kitty turned me off completely to any sort of cowboy sexuality. Remember when MSNBC's Joy Reid said terrible things about Brokeback Mountain because she was outraged at the very thought of homosexuality? I was repulsed at the thought of it only because they were cowboys.

But I'm getting off the subject.

I guess my point is just that TV shows should stop that thing where they're all continuing stories. Every episode should be stand alone. Inconsistencies were part of the aesthetic. For example, on Gilligan's Island, when the Howells think their fortune has been wiped out, the girls try to teach Mrs Howell skills like cooking and sewing that she'll need now that she's poor. Mrs Howell already showed that she could cook and sew in previous episodes.

Of course, TV is a lot less violent than it used to be so this stuff doesn't matter as much.

8 Million Ways to Die (1986)

I was still working that job in 1986?

I worked with a woman whose sister was a bodybuilder who had gotten a role in this movie as a police woman, but her scene didn't make it into the final cut. But my co-worker went to see the movie anyway. The theater was empty. Nobody liked it. A theater employee said they'd give her her money back if she wanted, but she could gaze at Jeff Bridges all day and was happy to watch it.

I just watched it on Amazon Prime. Terribly violent, but I liked it okay. I didn't follow the middle part.

Alcoholism ends the career of a Los Angeles County Deputy. He wants revenge on the drug kingpin who murdered a prostitute he met in an AA meeting and tried to protect.

Based on the novel by Lawrence Bloch. Script by Oliver Stone, Robert Towne and R. Lance Hill. Directed by Hal Ashby.

Surprised Jaguars were so popular back then.

It was Hal Ashby's last feature film. He directed a couple of TV pilots after that. His health was bad and he finally went to see a doctor who diagnosed him with cancer which killed him. He was only 59 when he died.

Hal Ashby directs.

Prince Andrew on the BBC

The Guardian referred to his reputation as an "arrogant dolt" in their report on the interview.

Prince Andrew gave a long interview with the BBC about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. He didn't help himself. The interviewer being so respectful made it worse.

From The Guardian:

What is the excuse, given the seriousness of Giuffre’s allegations, for the reverential set-up, for burnishing this pitiful, misogynistic nonsense with an audience in a massive gilded chamber, like a scene discarded from The King’s Speech for looking too comically servile?

I figured the accusations against Andrew and the others were most likely true, but how would anyone know? Now we know. He should be locked up.

Adult babies out for revenge on Scorsese?

What 76-year-old wouldn't want to watch this?

I remember long ago. Roger Moore was being interviewed around the time he was making an especially idiotic James Bond movie, the one where he's in Venice and he has a special hi-tech gondola loaded with weapons. A lady asked him if he was ever going to make a serious film. He told her how much the movie cost to produce and that he thought THAT was pretty serious.

But, he added in the interview, he knew what she meant.

An article in Variety suggests that petty, money-grubbing comic book movie makers will retaliate against Martin Scorsese come Oscar time. Scorsese's $180 million The Irishman was made for Netflix which means that billionaire Steven Spielberg will have his panties in a wad over it. Spielberg has made a fortune getting a cut of the box office for his big budget exploitation films. This is why he's outraged at the thought that his movies might not be shown in theaters.

So Scorsese will have Spielberg and his ilk plus the sulking adolescent comic book "movie" "people" against him. They see themselves as being like Peter Parker or the Avengers, persecuted social outcasts---no one understands how extra-special they are.

I never understood why they care so much about Oscars. They're rich celebrities who get to make movies. That's not enough for them?

How many millions did Amazon pay Woody Allen?

No word yet on how much Woody Allen's getting out of Amazon. I just hope it's enough to leave Dylan Farrow sobbing in a fetal position and Ronan Farrow wondering how his father managed to outwit them once again.

I've said all this before but, according to the internet, Woody Allen has a net worth of $80 million. He doesn't need any more money. If he wants to, he can bankroll his own movies. They're low budget by Hollywood standards but cost a fortune compared to European movies. He can still cut his budgets way down.

He's hiring all these stars, paying them the union minimum. They're willing to do it in part because some of them get Oscars out of it. But if he would start casting people who actually need the money, he would quickly amass a veritable army of grateful actors coming to his defense.

On the other hand, he may use experienced stars because he doesn't know how to direct actors. It's hard to imagine anyone going to his movies because they want to see Leonardo DiCaprio or whoever else he puts in those things, but, what do I know. Maybe his movies would fail without them.

It's always amusing to tell wealthy celebrities how to conduct their lives, but few of them are total morons. They have some idea what they're doing.

Woody Allen settles suit with Amazon---Mia Farrow and Polanski

Polanski with adoptive mothers Mia Farrow (left) and Joan Crawford.

Woody Allen settled his lawsuit with Amazon. They didn't say what the settlement was. Amazon must have paid him something and he was already loaded with all his Midnight in Paris money.

Meanwhile, I don't know if Mia Farrow has come to the defense of her "close friend" Roman Polanski. She flew to England in 2005 to testify for him in his libel suit against Vanity Fair, something she obviously didn't have to do.Vanity Fair had claimed that Polanski started hitting on women immediately after the murder of his wife, Sharon Tate.

Polanski was somehow able to sue in a British court even though he couldn't step foot in Britain without being arrested for being an escaped child rapist. I don't know how you can damage the reputation of someone who plead guilty to that crime, but Vanity Fair managed to pull it off.

Now French actress Valentine Monnier has come forward to claim that Polanski raped her in 1975 when she was 18-years-old.

The woman who Polanski plead guilty to raping when she was thirteen commented on the accusations against Woody Allen in March, 2018. This, from Showbiz 411:

Samantha Geimer is crossing swords with Dylan Farrow on Twitter right now. Geimer, now over 50, was Roman Polanski’s rape victim when she was 13 in 1977. Geimer has time after time asked for leniency toward Polanski and supported the vacating of charges against him.

Now Geimer is taking on Dylan Farrow on Twitter. Dylan was the adopted daughter of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen who claims that Allen molested her when she was 7 in 1992. Investigators found no proof Allen did anything and did not recommend charges against him. Still Farrow–via her mother Mia Farrow and brother Ronan– has turned the persecution of Allen into her life’s work. (She has never, however, addressed the fact that Mia’s brother John Farrow is serving 10 to 25 years in prison for molesting two little boys.)

She writes on Twitter: “I object to those using the #MeToo only for their narrow interests when it is for all of us, about all of use, to support all our choices. We all should be reaching down pulling others up, not reaching up to pull people down.”

Dylan Farrow upbraids actress Cate Blanchett for not speaking out against Allen, who directed her to an Oscar in “Blue Jasmine.” Blanchett said in a TV Interview about Allen: “If these allegations need to be re-examined which, in my understanding, they’ve been through court, then I’m a big believer in the justice system and setting legal precedents. If the case needs to be reopened, I am absolutely, wholeheartedly in support of that.”

Geimer’s response is that Dylan could still file a civil action against Allen to prove her claim. But Dylan won’t do that– she doesn’t have a case, despite her mother and brother attempting to poison anyone they can against Woody based on hearsay.

Good for Geimer for calling out Farrow. She writes: “Ridiculous to attack those who think crimes should be investigated and tried in Court and ask instead that Twitter is now judge and jury for all accusations. You do not have to pursue charges as an adult, but if you do not, the consequences is there will be no guilty verdict.”

Mia Farrow (left) with her pedophile brother and sister.

If Polanski had gone to prison in 1977, he'd have been released about forty years ago. I don't know if it would have had a greater or lesser effect on his career if he'd gone to prison instead of making a run for it. I don't know why anyone would want him coming back to the United States. I think he was jerk for leaving Poland after the people of the country paid for his education and bankrolled his first movie.

Polanski raped 18-year-old actress in 1975

Not terribly surprising. French actress Valentine Monnier has reported that Polanski raped her in 1975 when she was 18.

It was in 1978 that he fled the US after pleading guilty to "unlawful sexual intercourse" with a thirteen-year-old girl.

You can read about it in Variety. 

The article ends:

Polanski himself had reacted to the backlash in an interview published in the press notes of “An Officer and a Spy” which triggered even more criticism. Comparing himself to his film’s protagonist, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, the French-Jewish officer who was unfairly accused of spying for Germany in the late 1890s, Polanski said “I can see the same determination to deny the facts and condemn me for things I have not done.”

What's he saying he didn't do? The stuff he plead guilty to?

Europeans had more sympathy for Polanski than Americans. Polanski's parents were in a concentration camp where his mother died, he escaped from the Krakow ghetto through a sewer, he saw people murdered by Nazis. Two Germans took turns shooting at him when he was ten.

There are Americans who will defend Israel's right to commit any atrocity because the Nazis were mean, but they feel nothing for Polanski.

Me, I hate Israel, but I can't see putting Polanski in prison at this stage. Let him run out the clock in France. I can't understand people who want to drop the charges against him so he can return to the United States. France isn't good enough for him? Why would they want him here?

If Polanski did go to prison, it would be like Bill Cosby. I would be concerned for about ten minutes then forget all about him.

In any case, the French won't extradite him and it's too late to prosecute him for the latest accusation.

James Dean was just the best actor for the role

South African Director Anton Ernst is baffled by the backlash over plans to cast a CGI James Dean in a Vietnam War dog movie. From The Hollywood Reporter:

When searching for an actor to play Rogan, Ernst said he and his co-director did audition live actors. They ultimately decided Dean was the perfect fit for the role, as Rogan is a "very brilliant, complex character" which is "pretty much how James Dean was perceived."

Ernst has directed one movie now in post-production. He's produced thirteen not counting those in pre- or post-production. All seem to be South African. One was an international production starring  Jean-Claude Van Damme.

I don't think he knows how acting works.

His movies have all been pretty cheap. The Van Damme movie was $14 million, but the others where they list the budgets were all under $2 million. So I don't think this thing is going to be very good.

So far, James Dean is the only "actor" listed for this abomination on IMDb.com.

A low cost alternative to CGI

Remember the old '70's version of King Kong? They announced they were constructing a giant, full sized animatronic King Kong for the movie. And they did, but it only appeared on screen for a few seconds and it barely moved. The other shots of King Kong were of a guy in a gorilla suit.

I was a kid when I saw it, and I only went to it because of the nude stills from the movie in Time magazine. I don't really remember, but I think I sat there like an idiot assuming I was watching the giant animatronic King Kong.

There were some fake sound movies at the beginning of the sound era. One filmmaker had a couple of actors in the projection booth of the theater dubbing their lines, trying to match to their lip movement on the screen.

Fooling the audience into thinking they're witnessing a technological marvel is as old as cinema itself.  

If this CGI resurrection of James Dean goes over well, it seems like zero budget filmmakers could jump on that bandwagon. Hire a celebrity impersonator for your movie and claim or at least imply it was CGI.

"We did our own CGI James Dean, but we made him look a little different so his family can't sue," they could tell the press, "and we call him James Daen. And we hired an actor to stand in for the CGI, but only in a few shots. You'll hardly notice. The CGI cost us millions and we didn't have much left for the rest of the movie, but the chance to see a resurrected James Dean should make it well worth watching."

It used to be you didn't need a professional impersonator. You could walk down the street and see Burt Reynolds lookalikes. I knew guy who looked and sounded weirdly like Neil Diamond and two guys who looked and sounded like Emilio Esteves.

What they sound like doesn't matter. Get someone else to dub the dialog.

James Dean to star in new movie

I don't know what the point is. The guy's been dead 64 years. Would anyone recognize him if they saw him? I never liked his looks and I thought his acting was terrible. He never behaved like a normal person. 

But they're going to digitally resurrect James Dean for a "secondary lead role" in a Vietnam War movie called Finding Jack, about dogs used by the US military that were abandoned. 

“We feel very honored that his family supports us and will take every precaution to ensure that his legacy as one of the most epic film stars to date is kept firmly intact,” producer Anton Ernst said in a statement. “The family views this as his fourth movie, a movie he never got to make. We do not intend to let his fans down.”

He has fans?

I saw Rebel Without a Cause. He didn't seem like much of a rebel wearing slacks and sport coat to high school. His main complaint seemed to be that his parents didn't give him easy-to-follow commands to obey. When he screams, "YOU'RE TEARING ME APART!" it's because they don't agree whether he should abstain from alcohol completely or drink in moderation if he's going to drink.

But what do I know. Maybe a digitally simulated James Dean is exactly what the public wants.

Local horror movies, Oregon

I've seen two of the three regional horror movies made in my state, Unhinged (1982) and Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot (1977). The one I didn't see was Deafula (1975), a vampire movie performed in sign language.

I saw Unhinged on DVD. It turned out it was banned in Britian for some reason. It was about three girls who head to a rock concert. They wreck their car and are brought to a mansion built in the woods, completely isolated from the outside world. 

I watched it and thought it looked like Portland. When it got to the mansion, I wondered if it was the Pittock Mansion, the home of a rich family now a tourist attraction. I was only there once about forty years earlier. But it turned out I was right.

There was one bloody scene in it and a couple of gratuitous shots of the women showering. Other than that, it was pretty inoffensive. I don't know why the British were so upset by it.

There's a bonus feature on the DVD, an interview with the director and star on Portland TV. The director says that he thinks it's scarier not to show anything scary and to let the audience use their imagination.

Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot was a pseudo documentary. The director, Ed Ragozzino had been a high school drama teacher turned Community College drama teacher and voice-over actor. He was known here for directing lavish productions of broadway musicals. Local investors would invest. They were like really big high school plays but with non-high schoolers.  It surprised me how many serious local actors there were. He accepted the job directing this because he wanted to direct a movie. One of the producers was the daughter of a prominent local family that owned a chain of shoe stores---she went on to produce real documentaries. I was slightly acquainted with her. She liked telling people about her Sasquatch movie. 

It was four-walled. They would rent the whole theater and heavily advertise it hoping to draw large crowds and keep all the money from ticket sales rather than split it with the theaters. It didn't work. The movie bombed and took several ad agencies down with it.

I always wondered how people felt about their failed movies. Turns out they're amused by and secretly proud of them.

It's so easy to make a plausible fake documentary. But this one was obviously fiction. First they had people feeding data about Bigfoot into a computer---then the computer prints a picture of Bigfoot, and it looks just like Bigfoot! Then the computer directs them to the epicenter of Bigfoot activity. 

It was 1977. People knew nothing about computers buy they STILL knew how idiotic that was.

The Bigfoot investigators go to this spot. They have a chuckwagon and several stock western characters, like an old prospector whose only friend was his mule.

I've seen bigfoot documentaries that were far less ambitious and infinitely more convincing. 

Elaine May to direct again?

Vanity Fair is enthusing that 87-year-old Elaine May is set direct a new movie called Crackpot. 

I've seen three or four of her movies and they were good. I saw Walter Matthau in an interview somewhere about A New Leaf say that the results were good, but she was a terrible director. She was disorganized and always behind. Her movies have all gone way over budget. At one point, while filming Ishtar, she spent two days filming countless retakes of a single scene that wasn't important to the movie. She never told Beatty and Hoffman what she wanted them to do different. They just spent days wasting film.

On Mikey & Nicky, she kept the camera rolling after the scene ended. The actors left the set to go down the street to a convenience store. The camera operator said "cut" and stopped the camera and May was angry at him. She wanted the camera to keep running.

He pointed out that the actors had left.

"They might come back!" she reasoned.

Maybe at this age, she'll be lower energy and not do things like that.

But, what do I care. Warren Beatty was angry over the press coverage of the making of Ishtar. Sure, they wasted millions, but that didn't affect the public and it shouldn't have had anything to do with critical response.

It's like the time Bryan Singer directed some comic book movie. I was slightly acquainted online with a devout ultra-right-wing Christian who was enthusing over the movie even though Singer was, at that point, accused of sexually assaulting teenage boys. Was that movie fan an amoral monster who cared nothing about sex crimes against children as long as he got to see another idiotic super hero movie, or was he a bigger man than I was, willing to separate the art from the artist, judging an artistic work by the work itself, not by the monstrous sex crimes committed by the director.

Planet of the Apes TV series

I tried to watch that show when I was a kid. The humans talking and living at a medieval level bothered me. They couldn't speak and lived like monkeys in the movies.

But I was also disillusioned by it. After watching all the publicity for the movies where they talked about the terrible grueling process for applying the ape make-up, it turned out they could do that for a lousy TV show. Later, Mystery Science Theater 3000 had Professor Bobo using the same make up for a series of skits.

They never looked much like apes anyway. It was like the old show Kung Fu. Why did everyone call David Carradine a "Chinaman" [sic]? The audience knew he was supposed to be half Chinese, but how did the cowboys on the show know?

In the novel, by the way, the apes spoke French. Or maybe they spoke some different ape language. SPOILER ALERT -------------- in the book, the planet of the apes wasn't Earth.

When the author, Pierre Boulle died, the writer of his obituary did the same thing kids do in school. He watched the movies instead of reading the books. There was no William Holden character in Bridge on the River Kwai and there was no ruined Statue of Liberty in the novel Planet of the Apes.

Here's a joke you can use. It's not mine. Comment on the end of the movie when Charelton Heston was so upset about the apes blowing up the Statue of Liberty.

"YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! THAT WAS MY FAVORITE LANDMARK! DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!"

The Magnificent Seven Ride! (1972)

Watched the tail end of Guns of the Magnificent Seven then The Magnificent Seven Ride! I don't know how these qualify as sequels since most of the magnificent sevens are killed in each movie.

All the movies are about North Americans intervening in Mexican civil conflicts. They could have reversed things and made one of them about seven Mexicans intervening for some Anglo farmers battling the Cattlemen's Association.

They all have 1970's hair styles. That bothered me even back in the 1970's. The cast of M*A*S*H* for example had hair styles unheard of in the '50's. Robert Altman didn't like the TV series M*A*S*H* because it got the public used to the idea of never-ending war. If they had had less stylish hairdos, it would have given it a greater feeling of it being in a different time.

Yul Brynner starred in the original film. Lee Van Cleef played his role (not the same character, just served the same purpose in the plot) in this movie. A few years earler, Brynner had taken over Van Cleef's role in a sequel to Sabata.

Brynner was born in Soviet East Asia. His grandmother was Mongolian. They should have gotten a Soviet or other Asian actor to star in this one. Maybe a Norwegian. Remember when Omar Sharif co-starred in the western McKenna's Gold?

They were protecting a town full of women, so it had that going for it.

It's sad that they traumatized a lot of horses for a movie that wasn't very good.

With Stephanie Powers, Mariette Hartley, Pedro Armendariz, Jr, Ralph Waite, Gary Busey, James Sikking, William Lucking, Ed Lauter.

There's no money in movies anyway

I'm not sure there is any disadvantage to digital video taking over. The world is awash with video. Any bum off the street can make some kind of movie. Even if you make something good, the field is far more competitive now and your work may be lost in the flood of crap being made.

I've been reading Brian Albright's Regional Horror Films, 1958-1990, A state-by-state guide with interviews. I haven't gotten far into it yet, but the filmmakers don't seem to have made much money from their movies. Most made few movies, and I was just reading one interview with a filmmaker who lost all interest in the movie he once poured his life into. He could get it shown on TV with a little effort but it's not worth it to him. He's moved on.

I had written on here somewhere about Deluxe---if you looked at movie credits, it would often say "Color by Deluxe". Deluxe had a vault full of movies they were trying to give back to people, back to their owners. In a lot of cases, no one wanted them. The companies had gone out of business or the filmmakers had died, or the movie may have been such a bad experience that they just didn't want to see them again.

Filmmakers sometimes feel the same about their work as disappointed movie-goers. 

Think of how much less humiliating it would have been for everyone involved to have lost a thousand dollars instead of a couple of hundred thousand (millions today when you adjust for inflation).

You still have to figure out how to make it worth the trouble.