MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: BIG HOUSE, U.S.A.

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POSTER - Hmm, I bet you can figure this one out.

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

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT - sort of like those EAT THIS, NOT THAT diet books only with film instead of food as the topic. Sometimes, the substitute pick isn't the obvious 'better' choice, but one of those 'flawed-but-interesting' films that often get left behind.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID - some easy to miss element worth noting.

SILENT FILM - hey, figure it out (LOL)

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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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Monday, September 8, 2014

BIG HOUSE, U.S.A.

There’s a veritable convention of classic tough guys in this prison break pic: fast-talking, diesel-powered Broderick Crawford; lumbering Lon Chaney, Jr.; creepy/crafty William Talman (the lawyer who kept losing to Raymond Burr’s Perry Mason), and the hovering, musclebound, shirtless menace of Charles Bronson. But patience, please; we don’t meet these threatening boys till the second act, when Ralph Meeker’s icy, compassion-free kidnapper gets sent up on a lesser charge. Howard Koch, before he become a respectable producer @ Paramount, directed this low-budget sludge-fest with an eye toward violent sensationalism that helps make up for his many deficiencies in staging, pacing and . . . well, in just about everything! And while the era didn’t allow for today’s on-screen depiction of mayhem & gore, the level of sadistic brutality, casual violence & cold-blooded murder might impress Quentin Tarantino. Heck, if everybody wasn’t dead at the end of this one, you might pull out an alternate cast for RESERVOIR DOGS/’92.

DOUBLE-BILL: The granddaddy of prison break pics, THE BIG HOUSE/’30, shows it’s early Talkie age, but in a good way, with smash perfs from Wallace Berry, Chester Morris & a callow Robert Montgomery under George W. Hill’s remarkably fluid helming. (Or, as mentioned above, RESERVOIR DOGS.)

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Monday, September 8, 2014

BIG HOUSE, U.S.A.

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