'The Message'
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
I'm watching Touch of Evil. wtf Orson Welles? Charlton Heston as a Mexican!? I can't get past it and enjoy the movie.
You ever see ED WOOD, Laga?
I love TOUCH OF EVIL. I actually rather like Heston in it. Lord knows, he's far from the loopiest (or looniest) thing in the movie. Plus, Heston has been credited with getting Welles the director's gig on that, so one more in the plus column for him.
I liked Redbelt quite a bit and then I thought it got too schmaltzy at the end.
Yeah, the ending of Redbelt kind of ruined it for me, too.
Charlton Heston as a Mexican!?
Yeah, but.... that opening tracking shot!
ToE is one of my favorites.
I love the movie as well. Once you get past the casting, the baroque and paranoid atmosphere the film creates is amazing.
Kinda' late, but PZ Myers reviews Avatar: Naked blue giants must be the new SF trope
Touch of Evil is one of my top ten movies. I've seen it in theaters at least six times, and, of course, own a copy. It puts a baroque, somewhat grotesque capstone on the noir era and was a huge influence on Psycho too. It's also a pretty direct result of Welles copping stuff from the French New Wave. Plus Mancini's first big movie score - a masterpiece of crime jazz.
"You ought to lay off those chocolate bars, honey."
"He was...some kind of man. What does it matter what you say about people any way?"
There's a big part of me that wants to live in the world of ToE, full of darkness and danger and snark and mysterious voices hissing warnings to you through the wall of a cheap motel. The weird desk clerk! Marlene Dietrich's crowded rickety cheap-tart boho house! Orson Welles, the most broken and sorrowful villain in the history of melodrama! Heston and Leigh wandering through the late night bordertown sleaze, fingers entwined, eating ice cream! Open roads! Dusty shops! The river by night, black like an oil slick!
And no, Heston is in no possible way Mexican, but he had giant love and respect for Welles at a time when the Powers That Be of Hollywood had little use for him, and he was dogged and insistent in his love and respect and he bullied everyone into making it happen. I've read snippets of his autobiography, and even years later being part of that project, helping to get it made and having the great privilege of being directed by Welles were the part of his career he was most proud of and delighted and humbled by. I still think he was a scary-ass gun nut, but I've kind of loved him ever since I read that.
The weird desk clerk!
Dennis Weaver!