ARABIAN NIGHTS (1942)

First (and best?) of three popular escapist entertainments made at Universal for that most exotic of screen trios: Sabu as the scamp, Jon Hall as the hunk and the mysterious Maria Montez for sex appeal.  (Hall may not look exotic, but Mom was a Tahitian Princess!)  Wartime anxiety no doubt helped put these things over, but this Thousand & One Nights tale has a lot going for it.  Mostly its storybook TechniColor look, courtesy of cinematographer Milton Krasner (later first choice for directors as different as Minnelli & Mankiewicz), especially in the first act where matte shots, miniatures & painted cycloramas give this Hollywood Bagdad the quality of a child’s cherished die-cut Pop-Up Illustrated volume, the kind that barely survive a kid’s heavy hand.  Now looking wonderful in restored prints, lighter, airier than the later ones shot by Krasner’s assistants.  (Like W. Howard Greene, Oscar’d next year for his glutinous 1943 PHANTOM OF THE OPERA.  He did one of the two follow-ups: WHITE SAVAGE 43 or COBRA WOMAN 44.)  The plot?  Well, you see everyone is vying for the throne that rightly belongs to Jon Hall.  He’s been reported dead, but is really in disguise (thanks to clever Sabu) to see if Montez’s crown-loving Sherazade could love him for himself.  Leif Erickson’s the usurper, Billy Gilbert’s comic relief (with a bouncing stomach punch), Shemp Howard (!) a loyal follower and John Qualen a blue-eyed Alladin on the hunt for his missing magic lamp.  At 86", this one not a moment too long.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Check out all our Montez pics here.  Note, whichever one you are watching lowers your I.Q to the point where you think that’s her best!   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/search?q=montez 

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Presumably, our German poster (see above) didn’t come out till after the war.

BLACK DOG / GOUZHEN (2024)

Much deserved International award winner (including Cannes’s Un Certain Regard), Guan Hu’s site specific drama, set in a near ‘ghost town,’ part of the boom-to-bust economy of 2008's Northern China, features some of the most dramatically spectacular Wide-Screen landscapes since Chuck Jones took Wile E. Coyote & Road Runner to an animated Monument Valley.*  Here, the focus is on recent parolee Lang (a very lean/very fit Eddie Peng), home after early release on a manslaughter charge where his involvement is unclear.  That makes our Road Runner figure a skinny, possibly rabid, black dog, part of the packs running wild over what’s left of the city.  But while Hu is specific in his use of location, he’s purposefully sketchy on character & narrative.  So it feels right to have Peng communicate only with gesture & whistling.  Letting us understand just enough Hu’s modus operandi here, and we pick up on Lang’s situation obliquely.  Former musician & circus acrobat; father a recluse dying of cancer; town being cleared out, especially of those roving packs of dogs, to facilitate a new industrial development program.  And 2008 has big events guiding the few still in town: an upcoming solar eclipse, the 2008 Beijing Olympics, even the circus coming to town.  This last bringing possible employment and romance to Lang.  Hu lets us put the pieces together, like one of those glueless Asian paper constructs that magically hold together on their own.  And lenser Weizhe Gao makes it happen by giving his images the participatory vibe of silent movies.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Mid-to late ‘50s Chuck Jones’ ROAD RUNNER cartoons.  *Apparently Looney Tunes were generally shot in Academy Ratio, but Jones must have designed his preferred frame projection to work best in ultra-wide ‘scope’ ratio.  (Experts in this field are welcome to tell all in the Comments.  Thanks!)   NOTE:  This is such a weird suggestion for a film match-up, I guess it also counts as a SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY.  But, in case you didn't notice, this was posted on April 1st!

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  After the completion of filming, Peng adopted his Black Dog acting partner.

WELLS FARGO (1937)

Hollywood history typically typecasts Paramount Pictures as Home of the Continental Sophisticates (and they were!; think Lubitsch, Wilder, Sturges).  Yet the studio first found footing with C.B. DeMille’s 1914 Western THE SQUAW MAN.  (You could also make a case for that production founding Hollywood itself.)  And Paramount had their biggest hit of the silent era inventing the epic Western: James Cruze’s THE COVERED WAGON/’23.  Later, when Westerns fell out of favor in the ‘30s, those same books give John Ford credit for reviving the genre as a first-class item in STAGE COACH/’39, conveniently ignoring DeMille’s bigger budget/larger grossing Western of the same year, UNION PACIFIC.  While two years before those films, double-Oscar’d producer/director Frank Lloyd made this large-scale Western to follow hard on DeMille’s blockbuster THE PLAINSMAN/’36.  Starring Hollywood’s happiest/handsomest married couple, Joel McCrea & Francis Dee, it’s one of those Great Man bio-pics, here about a Wells Fargo agent/advance man thru enough decades for both to turn gray as the finance company grows with the country in the 1800s and Dee sacrifices marital happiness to Manifest Destiny.  A little bit of everything in this one: stick-ups; family hardship; Gold Rush; Native Americans (helpful and ‘un’); Civil War conspiracies; whew!  All in 98 minutes with quality casting up & down the line, plus a few rising contract players.  Lloyd was a solid, but pretty stiff helmer by 1937, a quality that undercut next year’s IF I WERE KING, but works perfectly for this square-built vehicle.  Exceptionally well shot by Theodor Sparkuhl (check out some of his dark interiors) and scored by Victor Young, it remains good value Hollywood hokum.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Links to the Paramount Westerns mentioned above.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-covered-wagon-1923.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-plainsman-1936.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/union-pacific-1939.html  

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Note how young & sexy McCrea still looks.  Sparkuhl delivering ravishing close-ups that give Dee a run for her money.  Yet just two years on, in UNION PACIFIC, DeMille had McCrea hitch up his pants (now hanging above rather than below his navel) and lost half the natural sex appeal.

LES BEAUX GOSSES / FRENCH KISSERS (2009)

Best known for six autobio-graphic novels on the split Libyan/French heritage of his youth (a publishing phenomenon in France*), cartoonist Riad Sattouf also writes & directs films, beginning with this César award-winner (Best Debut Feature), a middle-school ensemble comedy, specific enough in its French working-class melieu to offset the familiarity of teen coming-of-age tropes.  Including lots of cumming of age with our two lead boys having their ‘jack-off’ socks ready at the drop of a hat, or the drop of a window shade across a high-rise courtyard.  Fourteen or fifteen, these two pals know they’re out of the loop compared to their bigger, better-looking classmates, but that hardly stops them from propositioning anyone they fancy.  And, compared to American counterparts, certainly not shy about demonstrating exactly what to do technically.  (Hopefully without Mom crashing into the room at the wrong moment.)  At one point, impulsively sticking a finger into his pal’s mouth to show whether you twirl your tongue clockwise or counterclockwise for a proper French Kiss.  The girls, equally demanding and specific in telling the boys what they need from them.  But the real surprise here is seeing how perpetually out-of-control school is among the French lower middle-class.  Nothing at all like we see in most French film depictions of their disciplined/extremely regulated education system.  (Even ruder than a typical Stateside Junior High?)  Great non-pro kids, too, with Sattouf picking a winner in lead Vincent Lacoste who’s quickly gone on to a busy, award-winning career.  But all the kids are excellent here, even the good looking Beaux Gosses.*  (NOTE: Labeled Family Friendly, but only for teens and up, preferably wiih parental units out of the room.)

READ ALL ABOUT IT:  *L'ARABE DU FUTUR/THE ARAB OF THE FUTURE; four of the six available in English, the last two on the way.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *The original title translates as The Beautiful Kids.  But for a change, the Stateside title is, if not an improvement, certainly more accurate.

MILLER’S CROSSING (1990)

The years have not been kind to this, the Brothers Coen move into big time moviemaking after two striking low-budget hits (BLOOD SIMPLE/’84; RAISING ARIZONA/’87).  With costs more than double the last two combined, this ‘30s gangster piece looks like a world class museum exhibit with not a dust mote in sight.  And while critically praised, it was about as well attended as a period display room on a Tuesday afternoon at that museum.  Same for the boys’ next two (BARTON FINK/’91; HUDSUCKER PROXY/’94), completing the Ethan/Joel Coen high Snark Trio before they rescued their commercial rep with FARGO/’96.  The problem not so much that the boys were always the smartest guys in the room and worked over people’s heads, but that they went out of their way to let us know they were the smartest guys in the room and condescended to their on-screen characters and their audience.  Gabriel Byrne stars (sucking almost as much energy out of scenes and mise en scène as John Shea, that era’s champ soporific), he’s the wiseguy assistant to local crime boss/political ‘fixer’ Albert Finney (exceptional, but gone for most of the second half).  Pals and competitors, both men currently getting it on with mystery lady Marcia Gay Harden.*  Complicating the situation, Jon Polito (laying it on thick as impasto) hopes to replace Finney after he uses Byrne to rub-out usurping Jew John Turturro.  (Byrne has left himself open for blackmail & temptation by gambling debts spinning out of control.)  Studded with big violent set pieces (enough ordinance for a WWI film), weirdly amateurish stunt-doubling, and poorly staged fights not even Barry Sonnenfeld’s handsome lensing can hide; no more than the narrative cracks in logic & continuity or the regrettable Coen contempt for paying customers.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Never thought of it before, but what a provocative name: Marcia Gay Harden.  Yikes!

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Alongside the Coens, screenplay credit is shared with Dashiell Hammett.  And why not?  O BROTHER, WHERE ARE THOU?/’00 gives the same honor to Homer.

SLOW HORSES (2022 - )

Hype, good initial reviews, rising viewership numbers; we’ve all fallen for hot new streamer buzz.  Just beware of sophomore slump; not Season Two sophomore slump; Episode Two sophomore slump.  Not here, instead a simple but sturdy set-up as rival MI-5 spies, playing in the same league for the same team (think Major Leaguers against their own Double-A farm team) tackle the same case.  And who’s not going to root for the underpaid, underfunded, misunderstood underdogs of ‘Slough House’ (i.e. ‘Slow Horses’) to beat the toffs with their bespoke suits and perfect hair back at Main Headquarters?  That’s the drift of things in this tasty show.  With Gary Oldman perfect as gruff Papa Bear to his grumpy ill-served, poorly-dressed employees; fallen agents with major goofs in their file (whether their fault or no), transferred to the tenement office spaces of Slough House in hope of some day returning to Main Headquarters.  Only Oldman preferring the low profile/low-wattage assignments at Slough House.  (Literally low-wattage per the hall lighting.)  It's also a way to keep some distance from boss-lady Kristin Scott Thomas and her A-Team of deplorables who fumble the ball in spite of sparkling environs and every techno-advantage.  So even when Slow Horses beat them, Thomas and her team of sharks (in looks & demeanor) know how to PhotoShop any photo-finish to take credit & victory laps.  From a series of novels by Mick Herron, director James Hawes & writer Will Smith (the latter of THE THICK OF IT/VEEP) got the ball rolling and, so far, it's only going from strength to strength.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Oldman played this ‘straight’ in TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY/’11 which by rights should be called TINKER TAILOR as the film had only enough running time to suss out two of four possible traitors from the John le Carré classic.  For all four suspects, there’s the original seven-parter with Alec Guinness (1979) that in hindsight likely gave rise to the modern streamer.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/06/tinker-tailor-soldier-spy-1979.html

GIANTS AND TOYS / KYOJIN TO GANGU (1958)

Yasuzô Masumura’s rat-a-tat-tat satire of Japanese Capitalism & consumerism isn’t all that different from the exaggerated vibe of Hollywood iconoclasts on the subject like Frank Tashlin in THE GIRL CAN’T HELP IT/’56 or Billy Wilder in ONE, TWO, THREE/’61.  The details of Japanese corporate hierarchy and the insecurities of the company man familiar enough to land.  Here, the rivalry driving the action is candy, or rather, the specifics of declining sales on one company’s signature product: Caramels.  (And check out that labor force; a staff of hundreds still hand-wrapping the stuff.)  What to do?  Publicity stunts?  A prize in every 90th wrapper?  Contests?  New celebrity endorsements?  Better come up with something if you want to climb the corporate ladder.  Our answer lies in a goofy looking regular girl; no beauty, but a Plain Jane with bad teeth and too much enthusiasm.  (She’s a Jerry Lewis against relatively normal players . . . and just as annoying, though I hear the French adore her.)  All coming at us a mile a minute.  (Good luck keeping up with the subtitles.)  And product quality?  Unmentioned.  For Stateside viewers, more interesting for East/West comparisons than for social commentary; right down to the cool lacquered look of '50s Japanese color film stock.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, THE GIRL CAN’T HELP IT and ONE, TWO, THREE.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/girl-cant-help-it-1956.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/04/one-two-three-1961.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Check out home plate when we go to a baseball game to note that dangerous looking pole by the batter's box.  Yikes!  When did Japan get rid of this safety hazard?

THE SNORKEL (1958)

From Hammer Films, but no Monsters, no Horror, no lurid TechniColor, instead a monochrome Suspense-Thriller, adapted from a novel by character actor Anthony Dawson, best known for playing Ray Milland’s hapless accomplice in Alfred Hitchcock’s DIAL M FOR MURDER/’54.  Can you guess what story it closely resembles?  Right on the first try!  Just not the ending.  That’s straight out of tv’s ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS.  One of the ones where Hitch comes on after the action to explain that no one got away with murder after all.  No great shakes, but pretty good fun under Guy Green’s direction.  (His sole Hammer film?)  Grey fox smoothy Peter van Eyck’s the creepy husband/step-father who makes murdering his wife look like suicide, but then has to circle back when step-daughter Mandy Mlller (dreadful) gets too close to the truth.  Betta St, John is the older friend of the troubled daughter with a thing for Eyck.  Ick!*  More promised than delivered here, but okay for a second feature.  Too bad this was meant to play first on the program.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *A year or two on, French director Claude Chabrol, Hitchcock acolyte & biographer, might have improved this by getting the sub-textural sex angle up on screen.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Trimmed to 72" for Stateside release, be sure you've got the original 90" cut.

WOLF HALL (2015)

Hillary Mantel’s dense, intensely involving novels on the rise of Thomas Cromwell, the commoner son of a blacksmith who became Henry VIII’s Lord Chamberlain (WOLF HALL; BRING UP THE BODIES) were manna from heaven for long suffering FoTC’ers (Fans of Thomas Cromwell) who’ve always seen him get a raw deal in hagiograpics focused on Thomas More or Anne Boleyn.  (Though even as villain, Leo McKern, of RUMPOLE OF THE BAILEY fame, managed to gain rooting interest against Thomas More’s principled MAN FOR ALL SEASONS/’66.)  But Mantel alone gave her spirited Tudor tutorial a Cromwellian POV.  And it’s spirit that went missing from this superior, well-received 6-parter, in spite of its obvious qualities in period detail, historical sweep, acting & art direction.*  But so somber, so sober, so measured in pace (you keep wishing someone would break out in a sprint).  Since it’s initial broadcast, the final book in Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy has come out, THE MIRROR AND THE LIGHT, charting his fall.  So, with its own 6-part dramatization appearing after a decade’s wait, time’s ripe for a revisit.  And surprise, a decade on, WOLF HALL 1 - 6 plays better than when it came out.  (Better to these eyes, anyway.)  With its sense of detail, character, devious court politics and quiet bravura acting trumping the pervasive hush and sorrowful tone that had seemed to smother what worked.  It may also have been helped by unmet expectations on Mantel’s opaque plotting, non-linear jumps and lack of rooting interest in THE MIRROR AND THE LIGHT.  (A surprisingly tough read.*)  With the same creative team on board, we’ll soon see how they do with less triumphant source material.

READ ALL ABOUT IT:  *Before WOLF HALL, in A PLACE OF GREATER SAFETY, Hilary Mantel did a similar revelatory rethink for the French Revolution, reversing character traits on everyone from Danton to Robespierre.  Though with scores of unfamiliar characters and historical twists, it’s an even more daunting read than THE MIRROR AND THE LIGHT.  But worth the effort.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Those qualities include all the principals: Mark Rylance, Damien Lewis, Anton Lesser, Claire Foy (Cromwell, Henry, More, Boleyn);  Peter Straughan script; Peter Kosminsky direction.