MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: MICHAEL SHAYNE MYSTERIES (1940-42)

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(Hint: most of the posters will enlarge if you click on them.)

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Like just about everyone with an interest in the movies, I'm watching more films on DVD and going out to movie houses a lot less. Convenience trumps the better experience.
Of course, you lose audience interaction and the poor film now has to compete with all the comforts of home.
It's a bit like seeing Rembrandts & Titians in a book reproduction, or from posters with iffy color values, no texture or weight to the surface and the wrong dimensions . . . all while snacking on chips & soda. (Oops! You get that at your local cinema,too.)
The ease of instant movie gratification risks turning an art form (well, sometimes) into little more than low-grade eye-candy & mindfodder. So, maybe it's worthwhile to write a bit down on what we're all viewing, just to keep fully engaged.

DVDs: the latest opiate of the people meets the internet, where everyone's a critic.
God help us.

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Sunday, May 25, 2008

MICHAEL SHAYNE MYSTERIES (1940-42)

With the Charlie Chan unit winding down & the delightful MR. MOTO series over, Fox needed a fresh face to front their B-list crime detective vehicles and Brett Halliday’s Irish cop turned private eye filled the bill. Only the first of the series (MICHAEL SHAYNE, PRIVATE DETECTIVE/’41) used a real Halliday plot, but Lloyd Nolan ’s raffish tough guy stance in the lead and some noirish elements in the series give the films some historic status as precursor to the darker post-WWII manner.

On this DVD set, disc No.2 has SLEEPERS WEST/’41 co-starring a warm-voiced Lynn Bari which features a clever mystery-witness-on-a-train story which anticipates the classic ‘B’ THE NARROW MARGIN/’52; and BLUE, WHITE AND PERFECT/’41 with a cruise ship setting, an effective surprise ending and unusually fine support including a winning turn from George (Superman) Reeves. This easily surpasses disc No.1, where MICHAEL SHAYNE, PRIVATE DETECTIVE and THE MAN WHO WOULDN’T DIE/’42, have a forced comic tone that grates.

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A last thought before we go.

Well, enough from me. But before we sign off, here's a great quote from Emile Zola's L'OEUVRE (THE MASTERPIECE), which is about painting rather than the yet to be invented medium of film, but which points a fine critical eye toward the whole idea of art criticism. It's a good, if chilly, thought to keep in mind, especially when you surf the net.

"Has it ever struck you that posterity may not be the fair, impartial judge we like to think it is?

"Suppose the artist's paradise turned out to be as nonexistent as the Catholics, and future generations prove just as misguided as the present one and persisted in liking pretty pretty dabbling better than honest to goodness painting. There are some accepted masterpieces for which I myself wouldn't give a twopenny damn.

"Classical training has given us a wrong view of everything and forces us to acclaim as geniuses a lot of fellows who are no more than well-balanced, facile painters, while what we might really prefer is the work of more emancipated but less even artists known only to an initiated few. Immortality at present depends entirely on the average, middle-class mind and is reserved only for the names that have been most forcibly impressed upon us while we were still unable to defend ourselves...

"Perhaps that's the sort of thing that's best left unsaid. It's certainly the sort of thing that gives me the shudders!"- Emile Zola

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Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

Sunday, May 25, 2008

MICHAEL SHAYNE MYSTERIES (1940-42)

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A last thought before we go.

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