WELCOME TO THE COVID |
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| Posters for our time - by French photographer Victor Chevalier. |
| Lockdown. Shockdown. Blockdown. Tik-Tokdown. Yeah, it’s been good… well, interesting. Finally able to catch a few movies I’d missed. From Contagious to Contagion, by way of Carriers and Containment - and that’s just stuff from my A-C drawer. There were more… Two called Virus (one Japanese, the other a lame tele-flck), two more called The Plague (only one from the Albert Camus novel) and three from the same Richard Mathison book, I Am Legend. Plus… Blindness, Domain, The Satan Bug, 28 Days Later, Panic in the Street… They involved such folk as Dustin Hoffman, Sophia Loren, Richard Widmark, Gwyneth Paltrow (as a spreader), even OJ Simpson… Oh and Kate Winslet pronouncing: "The average person touches their face 2- or 3000 times a day. Three to five times every waking minute. In between, we're touching doorknobs, water fountains, elevator buttons and each other. Those things become fomites." On to the imports… Canada’s Rabid, Japan’s Day of Resurrection, Korea’s Flu, Yugslavia’s Variloa Vera (about their real 1972 smallpox epidemic), the Franco-Spanish Last Days… and Peter Fleischmann’s excellent Franco-German Hamburg Syndrome - about to be on VOD Vimeo (good news), under the original title: Die Hamburger Krankheit. |
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| No, not from your streets last month but The Hamburg Syndrome - made 41 years ago [Filmverlag de Autoren, 1979]. |
| There was even a company called Epidemic Films! It produced Ever Since the World Ended… with such rotten acting that the cast must have just learnt they’d tested positive. Writing in The New Yorker, Anthony Lane found some pandemicals that must be on Don Trumpolino’s Top Five Movies list. He surely adored Outbreak’s gungho general wanting "to firebomb the town of Cedar Creek, California, population 2,600, with… the most powerful non-nuclear weapon in our arsenal. It, sucks in all available oxygen to the core, vaporises everything within a mile of ground zero, men, women, children, and one airborne virus. Destruction complete. Case closed. Crisis over." Plus this Andromeda Strain scene. "By then, the disease could spread into a worldwide epidemic." "It’s because of rash statements like that the President doesn’t trust scientists." Hah! But the Don’s #1 would have to be Carriers with Chris Pine actually saying: "We’ve got loads of Clorox." |
NAME GAME |
KIRK WORK |
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| Did you happen to notice an actor-rapper called Orson Chaplin popping up in such series as American Horror Story, Lucifer and Ray Donovan. He's Charlie's grandson (and son of a Superman producer and Charlie’s daughter, Jane). So why Orson? Well, Orson Welles was Charlie’s friend. Indeed, it was Welles who gave (well sold!) Chaplin the idea for Monsieur Verdoux - "the cleverest and most brilliant film of my career." | Matt Damon was the hot tip for James T Kirk in the new Star Trek franchise in 2008. He heard the rumours, checked his mails, called his agent. Nothing! So he called producer-director-rebooter JJ Abrams, who told him the (bitter) truth. "How about playing his dad!" Er, no thank you! JJ said Damon passed on George Kirk for "the most gracious and understandable and logical of reasons." JJ left it there, explaining nothing. | |||||||||||||||||||||
YOU HAD ME AT ... |
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| Cameron Crowe’s first ideas for the Jerry Maguire couple looked downright incestuous - Tom Hanks and Winona Ryder… or Tom Cruise and Winona! Once Hanks passed, Crowe started searching for Tom's Girl: Dorothy. Patricia Arquette, Cameron Diaz, Bridget Fonda, Janeane Garofalo, Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Lopez, Courtney Love, Parker Posey, Molly Ringwald, Mira Sorvino, Marisa Tomei, Uma Thurman, even Zellweger came and went. Recommended by Edward Burns (a possible Jerry), Connie Britton made a good test with Cruise and she was Dorothy - depending on Zellweger's call back meeting with Tom. "We have video of that because I was filming," Crowe told Deadline Hollywood in 2017, "and you just see something happen when Tom sees her. He lights up… As Jerry discovers Dorothy, we discover Renée. That was a very personal thing for me and the way I feel about movies." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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DOC HOLLYWOOD |
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 Once upon a time, Hollywood decided to make a Doctor Who film. Even Spielberg tried to get involved. The 1996 idea was a pilot for a USeries to exhume Aunty's science-fiction cult, buried since 1989 after 26 seasons. And who do you think the suits at Universal contemplated for the eighth Time Lord? Oh, just about everybody… Take a deep breath…First, Jim Carrey, Harrison Ford, Tom Hanks. The BBC co-producers checked 60 others… from the oldest, Peter O'Toole, 64, to a young New Yorker, Scott Weiner, 21. OK, that leaves 58 more. But you don’t want a lengthy scroll of actors, do you? OK, just a few then… Two Bonds: Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan. Two Caligulas: John Hurt, Malcolm McDowell. Two future Game of Throners: Sean Bean, Liam Cunningham. Two brothers: Mark and Paul McGann. But enuff, enuff! I don't have the space here. You'll find all the surprises on the Doc’s page in Special Movies. (Russell Crowe, Rutger Hauer, Rob Lowe, Ian McKellen, Eddie Murphy). What? Oh, Paul McGann won the role. |
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HOW YOU DOIN? |
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| Phoebe, Ross, Rachel, Joey, Monica and Chandler - and those who almost played them - have finally made it into the Special Movies section. Among a few other TV classics: Doctor Who, Seinfeld and The Sopranos. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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RIP. Peter Jackson, obviously, said it best... I'm feeling very sad at the passing of Sir Ian Holm ... such a delightful, generous man. Quiet, but cheeky, with a lovely twinkle in his eye. Watching Ian Holm perform taught me so much – as Ian was being his usual quiet self, that just somehow happened. It was a privilege to work with him, and a blessing to know him. I've always loved Ian's performance in the final scenes of Return of the King. "I think I'm quite ready for another adventure." Farewell, dear Bilbo. Safe travels, darling Ian. |
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Photo ©redits:All The President's Men and Godfather montages: Reg Oliver, 1976; Marlon Brando: Paramount Pictures, 1960; Covid-19 posters: Victor Chevalier, 2020; Doctor Who: Universal/BBC, 1996; Friends, Warner Bros/NBC TV; The Hamburg Syndrome: Filmverlag de Autoren, 1979; Daisy Ridley: Lucasfilm/Disney, 2018; Peter Sellers: Hawk Films/Columbia Pictures, 1963; Shirley Temple: Selznick International Pictures, 1946; TC sketch: Graham Marsh, 1976; Thunderball: Eon Productions, 1965. Wizards of the Lost Kingdom, Concorde Pictures, 1985. Ian Holm: New Line Productions, 2003. Marilyn Monroe: Tim Kelley, 1949. Plus enormous thanks to The Man: Daniel Bouteiller. |
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