A report on some good films coming your way from Telluride and Toronto this year.
Hypocritical progressiveness of Emmys; Genius of Ryan Heffington; Anthony Lane on "Mother!"; Coppola's "Cotton Club Encore"; History of Cobb Salad.
Ray Harryhausen's creature drawings; How hollywood killed death; Live-coverage of Hateful Eight reading; Masterful noir films; A short movie.
Quentin Tarantino has found his actor in Christoph Waltz -- someone who can speak Tarantinian fluently and still make it his own. When Waltz uses a self-consciously ostentatious word like "ascertain" (as in, "I was simply trying to ascertain..." -- the kind of verbiage QT is as likely to put in the mouth of a lowlife crook as a German dentist, or a Francophile plantation slavemaster, for that matter), it sounds right. As someone to whom Tarantino's dialog often sounds cliche-ridden and cutesy, it's a pleasure to hear Waltz saying the words in character rather than simply as a mouthpiece for the writer-director.
Oh, stop. This isn't sounding the way I want it to.
Marie writes: Intrepid club member Sandy Kahn has found another Hollywood auction and it's packed with stuff! From early publicity stills (some nudes) to famous movie props, costumes, signed scripts, storyboards, posters and memorabilia...
If one is to make a balanced judgment of Walter Hill's 1979 "The Warriors" it is crucial to view this film exactly for what it is, one of the most exhilarating and peculiar action films of the 1970s, famous for the riots it provoked but much closer to Greek mythology than to reality.
Clearly a cult classic, "The Warriors" can also be seen as simply a great "chase movie", sort of a concrete jungle's "Apocalypto." An unusual film even in today's terms, during times when we feel we've seen it all.
"The Warriors" follows the adventures of the group in what turns out to be a very bad night for them.