Smart Words About Cinema
[Originally published in Movietone News 55, September 1977] We’d probably have to go back to the Fifties, when Hollywood first joined battle with television by offering lavish spectacles the small screen couldn’t match, to find out why commercial movies have recently become fixated on special effects and technology. The disaster films. along with Jaws and [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] The title song to Moonraker, sung by Shirley Bassey, sets the tone for the latest James Bond film: gentle, inoffensive, almost sweet. This is not the audience-affronting, brassy Bassey of Goldfinger or Diamonds Are Forever; and of John Barry’s score, even the recycled, tried-and-true music from previous [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] Time was when people talked (pretty foolishly) about Andrew V. McLaglen as heir to the mantle of John Ford, and the name of Howard Hawks has been known to surface as a reference point, too. The Sea Wolves, however, demonstrates an affinity with the world of British [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] Eccentric heroes, and movies featuring eccentric heroes, must have the courage of that eccentricity in order to persuade audiences to accept and honor it. Roger Excalibur ffolkes is nothing if not an eccentric — so why do the wetsuits on his underwater demolition team read FFOLKES FFUSILIERS [...]