MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: URANIUM BOOM (1956)

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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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Tuesday, July 20, 2021

URANIUM BOOM (1956)

With a Colorado Uranium Rush on, field expert Rock Hudson & science engineer Van Heflin are literally fighting to claim the last room in town. But when a double opens up, respective expertise makes them a formidable team. If only they weren’t being followed by gun-toting claim jumpers. No problem, wily half-blood In’jun Walter Brennan hired to direct & protect, improvises a bit of enemy sabotage and they get the claim in. That’s when Rock meets-cute with purty lady Lauren Bacall, Eastern gal pal to Heflin, though not as serious as he is about it. In fact, sparks fly and the new duo is married by the time they get back to Heflin at the mine site. Now, Heflin only wants revenge on his partner; Hudson turns into a cold-hearted uranium empire-builder; Bacall pines for attention at the beautiful new home Rock avoids; and a new face, Gloria Grahame steps into the picture to vamp Hudson so he’ll fall into the trap Heflin has set up to break him. In the end, everyone loses/everyone wins. Tag end as their jeep drives off with Rock, Lauren & Van starting over as a happy ménage à trois. Yikes! But where to find this melodramatic/capitalist indictment/gay subtextual TechniColor opus? Alas, this Douglas Sirk manqué film doesn’t exist.* The cast at hand is Dennis Morgan (in a final feature); pre-PERRY MASON William Talman; Patricia Medina (curvy & clueless); Tina Carver (pretty good as the conniving blonde); all going thru the motions for dull, dull, dull director William Castle (in his pre-exploitation days, but already shooting in flatly lit tv-anthology ready b&w). Longtime B-producer Sam Katzman made 239 pictures, all on a dime . . . this is one of them.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: *To see all the possibilities triumphantly realized, Douglas Sirk’s WRITTEN ON THE WIND/’56, released only months later with Rock, Robert Stack, Bacall & Dorothy Malone in the top spots. OR: Story Beat for Story Beat, even closer to M-G-M’s glossy BOOM TOWN/’40, with Gable, Colbert, Tracy & Lamaar hitting similar marks. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/boom-town-1940.html

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ERNST LUBITSCH

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Tuesday, July 20, 2021

URANIUM BOOM (1956)

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