MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: EYE OF THE CAT (1969)

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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, June 7, 2020

EYE OF THE CAT (1969)

Lame kitty-cat horror, but worth a look, less for its murder plot (eccentric invalid aunt Eleanor Parker is stalked in her cat infested mansion by feline-phobic/fortune-hunting nephew Michael Sarrazin & girlfriend Gayle Hunnicutt) or its suspense elements (runaway wheelchair; kitty shock cuts) than for its hideous interior design (an all-fuchsia Hall-of-Infamy worthy grand foyer merely a taste of the tastelessness) and for Sarrazin’s positively alarming shaggy head of hair (check out his intro shot). Yikes! Everything in here reeks of Lew Wasserman’s Universal house-style, circa ‘60s Movie-of-the-Week regardless of budget, with under-cooked plots and over-lit sets to match faceless functionary house directors like Jack Smight and (as here) David Lowell Rich. The lone surprise is the amount of flesh on display. Presumably, an attempt to seem ‘with it.’ Today’s crop of ultra-buff young actors would be well-advised to have a look at Sarrazin’s willowy frame before tackling that next ‘60s period piece. 'Scrawny defined' might sum it up.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: From Hungary, FEHÉR ISTEN (WHITE GOD)/’14 shows what can be done with dogs rather than cats in this sort of thing.

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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, June 7, 2020

EYE OF THE CAT (1969)

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A last thought before we go.

DROP ME A LINE