MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: KELLY’S HEROES (1970)

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

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Thursday, May 22, 2008

KELLY’S HEROES (1970)

It’s hard to believe that this well-oiled, if formulaic, WWII caper pic from Brian G. Hutton came out the same year as PATTON and M*A*S*H. Those films changed the rules on war pics, but this older model (something of a follow-up to Hutton’s WHERE EAGLES DARE/’69) was still working. Here, our boys go behind enemy lines to steal a fortune in gold (shades of THREE KINGS/’99), and if you can’t quite swallow the premise, you can enjoy some of the smartly laid-out action scenes and revel in the handsome lensing from Gabriel Figueroa (he’s fixated on his cast’s startling blue eyes). Clint Eastwood solidifies his screen persona (DIRTY HARRY was next year), Don Rickles shows off his surprising acting chops and, if Carroll O’Connor & Donald Sutherland over-egg the pudding, Telly Savalas hits the tone of comic fatalism just right. It does go on, though.

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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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Thursday, May 22, 2008

KELLY’S HEROES (1970)

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A last thought before we go.

DROP ME A LINE