Movie #1172: Weddings And Babies (1958, Morris Engel) Here's #3 in the Morris Engel trilogy and the first without Ruth Orkin. This one plays out like the first two except that the happy ending is gone. A man is engaged to be married but he wants to continue to run his life alone. The fiancee finally gives up on him and leaves before it's too late. Another well made film that I didn't really like as much as I think I should have for a reason that I'm at a loss to explain.
winter scene in three parts south east of Steinbach Manitoba
Movie #1171: Lovers And Lollipops(1956, Ruth Orkin & Morris Engel) This is a tough one. Well done all around. Well directed, looks great, believable story, this one has everything going for it. And yet.....I was bored. Not sure why.
Movie #1170: Paper Bullets(1941, Phil Rosen) A skid row cheapee from PRC with one distinguishing mark: the mobsters are portrayed as relatively benign. They are all quite civilized and only resort to violence if provoked.
Walk km 3505-3507: shopping Walk km 3507-3514: Robson/Denman/seawalk/Drake/Homer/Smithe "Nail Professionals" aprox km 3509 Robson Street
Movie #1168: Invasion Of The Bee Girls (1973, Denis Sanders) Have you every noticed: crap in black & white looks better than crap in colour? It must be that b&w crap can hide behind the unreality of things not appearing as they really are. In colour, everything is seen as it actually is. There is no way to hide the fact that this is just a lot a shots of terrible actors thrown together in any old haphazard way. Another negative is the anti-feminist and anti-gay feel to this movie. The bee girls show way too much attration to one another as they go about attracting and then killing the male cast members. And in the final scene, the non-beegirl scientist is forced to stop talking theory by the male lead picking her up and throwing her onto a bed. That keeps her quiet! Another male fantasy movie.
Movie #1169: Enigma Rosso(1978, Alberto Negrin) A long string of gruesome murders and gratuitous nude scenes. This Italian movie has been dubbed into English. It looks like it was shot in widescreen but both ends have been chopped off. It has plenty of excuses but I believe that undernearth it's still just a piece of crap. Maybe a bit more stylish than the usual MillCreek reissues but crap nevertheless.
Walk km 3498-3501: running errands Walk km 3501-3505: Burrard/Smithe/Mainland/Drake/seawalk/Richards/Nelson/Hornby/Smithe fountain and Christmas decorations aprox km 3503 George Wainborn Park
Movie #1167: The Beatniks(1960, Paul Frees) Here I am back in the garbage again. I was looking forward to some bongo beatin' beatniks. Maybe they'd lay some groovy stream-of-conscienceness poetry on me. Hip lingo. Black beret wearin' chicks and daddy-os. Oooops! What we have here is a beatnik move without any beatniks. Instead we have small time hood Eddy who really wants to be a crooner of bland lounge music. Yuk! Peter Breck gets the prime role as the gang's resident psycho. But it's way too little and way too late. A stinker.
Walk km 3487-3498: around Stanley Park on the seawall woman sculpted on park bench aprox km 3489 Georgia Street near Stanley Patk
Movie #1165: The Red House(1947, Delmer Daves) Another one from the Internet Archive. However, this one is actually an "A" movie directed by Delmer "Dark Passage" Daves and starring Edward G Robinson. Also, instead of big city crime, we've got rural gothic about that scary red house way back in those haunted woods. The story is useless but that doesn't matter because it's played way over the top. Lots of fun. You may however want to wait for a better print of this one as there are quite a few night scenes and the poor quality print does leave a lot to the imagination.
Movie #1166: Woman Is The Future Of Man (2004, Sang-soo Hong) Well, that was quite a contrast. From a steady diet of ancient Grade "B" Hollywood junk to a modern arthouse film from Korea. So well done that it kept my interest despite nothing happening. The two male characters were about as hang-dog as you can get. They just mope around and the women can't resist them! Some sort of male fantasy I presume.
Walk km 3484-3487: shopping street scene aprox km 3486 Granville Street
Movie #1163: Lady Gangster(1942, Robert Florey) Faye Emerson (dressed more interestingly than she was in Lady Gangster)
Not nearly as interesting as yesterday's "Hoodlum". The difference could be that this was a Warner Brothers release while the "The Hoodlum" was made by little Eagle Lion studios. In order to get noticed, the pictures from the poverty row studios needed to promise a little bit more than a standard "B" programmer. A WB "B" like "Lady Gangster" probably already had a slot as an added attraction to a James Cagney or Humphrey Bogart "A" picture. About the only positive thing I can say about "Lady Gangster" is that Faye Emerson is much better looking than Lawrence Tierney.
Movie #1164: Behind Green Lights(1946, Otto Brower) I'm really digging down into the cinema slagheap now. I found this on a website called freemoviestheatre. And it's a winner! Kudos to Charles Booth and Scott Darling (who?) for writing a fastpaced screenplay that throws a little of everything into the whodunit genre. A fun hour. Update: I just noticed that this movie is also available through the Internet Archive.
Walk km 3483-3494: With Walking Meetup group from Yaletown Station to Second Beach to Lost Lagoon to Canada Place walking meetup members walking aprox km 3486 near False Creek
Movie #1161: The Hoodlum(1951, Max Nosseck) It's right back to the scrapheap of movie history (Internet Archive) for another forgotten bit of cinematic history. Lawrence "Reservoir Dogs" Tierney is the scum of the earth as he robs, murders, makes his mother die of a broken heart and causes his brother's girlfriend to commit suicide. Not a nice fellow. In the end, the police shoot him down in the city dump (where he belonged). Spiffy.
Movie #1162: American Raspberry AKA Prime Time(1977, Bradley R Swirnoff) Sometimes watching these movies becomes a chore. One of the worst kinds of movies to watch is the unfunny comedy. This would be one of those.
Walk km 3477-3483: Christmas shopping the seawalk along False Creek aprox km 3479 from Cambie St bridge
Today's Music: Murder He Says Here's another of my favourites of 2009 (from 1943). Like many of the songs from this time it suffers from a standard "swing band" arrangement so that the singer really has to put it over to make it memorable. I believe Betty Hutton does that.
Movie #1159: The Beast Of Yucca Flats (1961, Coleman Francis) I had the urge to watch some trash so I had a look in the Internet Archive and what should I find: one of the movies shortlisted for worst ever made! The plot is total nonsense. It was shot as a silent with voice-over added later. There are two scenes of scantilly clad young ladies that appear to have been added later (you can actually see these scenes whereas the rest of the movie looks like it was shot at night (without lights)). But the scene that makes it worth the purchase price (it was free) is the final scene between Tor Johnson and a rabbit. You too can see this cinematic masterpiece by going to the above link.
Movie #1160: Fear In The Night(1947, Maxwell Shane) Well, that Beast Of Yucca Flats was so much fun I figured I try another from the Internet Archive. This one was based on a story by the king of the odd-ball plots, Cornell Woolrich. And he doesn't disappoint: a man wakes up from a dream in which he murders someone. Turns out he really did kill someone and it takes someone like Mr Woolrich to make the murder-in-a-dream plot plausible. I'd never heard of the director Maxwell Shane but despite the low quality of the print, I'd say he did a pretty good job.
Walk km 3472-3477: Smithe/seawalk/National/Terminal/Begg/Evans/Glen/Cottrell/1st/Clark
Movie #1156: It All Came True(1940, Lewis Seiler) What a mish-mash. It's a crime drama. It's a musical. It's a comedy. Hard to like anything that keeps changing every couple of minutes. One big plus: Ann Sheridan.
Movie #1157: Touche Pas A La Femme Blanche(1974, Marco Ferreri) In order to explain that the rich & powerful will always exploit the poor, Ferrari has Custer and Buffalo Bill appear in modern day Paris to fight the Algerians... oops, I mean the Indians.
Walk km 3459-3472: all the way around Stanley Park on the seawall
Today's Music: Recommendations Robbie Fulks recommends from his web site.
Peter Margasak recommends from the Chicago Reader. He has not posted his best of 2009 yet so this is from his Best of 2008 list.
My recommendations are from my most played songs of 2009 as tabulated by last.fm.
Movie#1155: The Big Shot(1942, Lewis Seiler) I'd never heard of this Bogart movie before today so I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw. Bogart as usual was great, the direction was good and leading lady Irene Manning (who?) was quite easy on the eyes.
Walk km 3450-3457: Robson/Nicola/Alberni/Stanley Park/Barclay/Burrard Walk km 3457-3459: to the library ducks on the pond aprox km 3452 Stanley Park
Book #264: Panicking Ralph(1997,Bill James) I admire Bill James ability to create the world of the British career criminal complete with their own lexicon. However, I don't see the point: every character in this book is slime (in varying degrees) thus not giving the reader any reason to care what happens plotwise.
Movie #1154: Dangerous Crossing(1953,Joseph M Newman) Newlyweds board an ocean liner. The husband disappears. Everyone on board says "there was no husband, you're not married"! Jeanne Crain spends 75 minutes roaming around the ship in a state of panic. My kind of movie.
Walk km 3439-3450: Robson/Stanley Park/Alberni/Denman/Robson seawalk in winter aprox km 3445 Stanley Park
Diet -3 (47 to go) was expecting worse after vacationing in Nevada (land of the buffet)
Movie #1153: The Bitter Tea Of General Yen(1933, Frank Capra) This is a lesser Capra. I'm sure that the general public were thrilled to see the wonders of the Orient (even through the eyes of Hollywood) in 1933. However, today that thrill is gone and we'll need a good story to hold our interest. Alas, that isn't here so this film is of historical interest only.
Walk km 3433-3437: Smithe/Cambie/Nelson/Pacific/Homer/Smithe/Granville/Georgia/Burrard Walk km 3437-3439: out to lunch Olympic ads aprox km 3436 Granville & Georgia
Walk km 3415-3422: Glendale/Galletti/Truckee River walkway/Lake/State/Willow/Kinman/Ryland/Mill
Movie #1151: Orange County (Jake Kasdan,2002) I didn't notice the MTV logo on this one: it's a movie for teens. I guess it's OK as a teen movie but I'm afraid anyone over 16 will be wasting their time watching this one.
Walk km 3408-3415: Telegraph/(bus)/Truckee River walkway/Galletti/Glendale river walking path aprox km 3412 Truckee River
Movie #1150: La Fleur Du Mal(2002, Claude Chabrol) Another Hitchcock movie by Chabrol. This one is not very suspenseful. Theme song by the great Damia.
Walk km 3404-3408: Mill/Louise/Market/Roberts/Holcomb/Moran/Virginia It's interesting: when I'm walking in any city, nobody says hello when they walk past you. However, today when I was walking through the snow, people were saying hello to me. It's because we now have something in common: we are the few who will venture out walking during a snow storm. Actually, this wasn't much of a snow storm but maybe for Reno it is.
Walk: not today, they say there's a snow storm outside
Movie #1150: Morvern Callar(2002, Lynne Ramsay) This is a very well made movie about a girl who goes nutso when her boyfriend commits suicide. The problem is.......so what? A character study (of a person who doesn't exist) and nothing else is meaningless. They could have at least shown her pre-suicide so we could tell what happened to her. I liked the music.
Walk km 3395-3401: Mill/Lake/1st/Sierra/5th/Virginia/(bus)/Mill Walk km 3401-3404: 2nd/Kietzkie/Mill "biggest little city" sign aprox km 3400 Lake Street, Reno
Movie #1149: T-Bird Gang(1959, Richard Harbinger) Useless except for the music. Shelly Manne supplied the soundtrack plus there's a great classical piece which is not credited and I cannot place.
Walk km 3387-3395: Mill/Maltey/Vassar/Kietzkie/Grove/Harvard/Market/Louise/Mill (Reno) horse statues Grand Sierra Resort, Reno
Movie #1147: The Wild Ride (1960, Harvey Berman) Early Jack Nicholson in which he tries to get his best friend to break up with his girlfriend. Also, at the "big blast" Jack is the only one there without a female partner. Was this intended to be a gay movie?
Movie #1148: Flakes(2007, Michael Lehmann) A total waste of time.
