Kael on Welles

I was at a party once where conversation turned to Pauline Kael. A guest commented that he didn't know much about Kael except that she "didn't care much for Orson Welles."

The idea that Kael had it in for Welles has been a useful weapon in certain film history debates but it doesn't hold up that when you read what she actually wrote about the man. Here's a representative quote I came across recently:

I mean men like Griffith and von Stroheim and Abel Gance and Eisenstein and Fritz Lang and Orson Welles who thought big, men whose prodigious failures could make other people's successes look puny.

From the review of the Bible, collected in Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang.

Man with a Camera

It's easy to forget that before the dark days of Golan-Globus, Charles Bronson was once one of the most promising actors of his generation. In movies like the Magnificent Seven and Once Upon a Time in the West and classic episodes of shows like the Twilight Zone and Have Gun Will Travel, Bronson gave a series of powerful but subtle performances.

Bronson first made the transition to leading man in the late Fifties in Man with a Camera. Check out this episode directed by William Castle and co-starring Angie Dickinson.

If more people knew what directors actually did, more people would know who Joseph Sargent was

I was watching White Lightning last night and marvelling as always at how well it captured the look and feel of my old stomping ground (Sling Blade is the only other film that comes close). William Norton's script has good ear and a sharp sense of detail (like the references to Junior Johnson), but the bulk of the credit here goes to Sargent.

This is all the more impressive when you realize that Sargent also directed one of the definitive New York City movies, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.

They just don't make movies like they used to

This looks interesting.

One of the most impressive steadicam shots you'll ever see

12,5 minutes one shot from stadycam on Vimeo.

R.I.P. Ingrid Pitt

An extraordinary woman.

RIP to the sexiest single woman of them all