batman

Backfire - an Edgar Wallace entry with Sir Alfred Burke as a nasty businessman mixed up in arson and death. Excellent script (actually from a Wallace novel for a change) and some good performances keep this one rattling along nicely. Recommended.

Jingle bells Batman smells ... I heard that at school Daddy.

BAT QUIZ 16 HAS JUST BEEN POSTED IN THE COMPETITION THREAD - 06/01/09

Gazza

I watched The Knowledge again, Jack Rosenthal's brilliant play about trainee London cab drivers. Has a resonance for me as I was a caller for my uncle when he was doing it so know some of the runs.

bertie

The Clouded Yellow (1951) with Trevor Howard and Jean Simmons. Excellent - probably underrated - thriller. Worth a commercial publication I would have thought.

batman

Absloutely ..... a good performance from Max as Hick (the handyman) as well.

Jingle bells Batman smells ... I heard that at school Daddy.

BAT QUIZ 16 HAS JUST BEEN POSTED IN THE COMPETITION THREAD - 06/01/09

Steve Crook

Britain's Lost World: St Kilda
BBC1 21:00

They did try to make it out to be more of a mystery than it is, to make it all more dramatic. Referring to the "mysterious race of people" that lived there and the "mystery" of why they all left when quite a lot of that is already known. There's quite a long and detailed Wikipedia entry about the place. At least they waited 10 minutes before they referred to it as "The Edge of the World"

The three presenters (historian Dan Snow, naturalist Steve Backshall and general science presenter Kate Humble) stayed in tents "because there are no hotels on Hirta (the main island of the archipelago)". But they didn't mention where the reasonably large crew stayed.

Kate went slithering on all fours over some of the steeper areas where the Puffins have their burrows. The bird warden who stays there for most of the summer was more used to it and she walked upright.

Steve abseiled down a cliff to see how the St Kildans would have got around to catch the birds and their eggs that they mainly lived off.

The two "boys" went on a trip to the island of Boreray, about 4 miles away. The St. Kildans would go there once a year to harvest gannets. They set off in an old clinker built rowing boat. Dan was rowing, Steve was baling. He should have had Torquil MacNeil showing him how to bail because he wasn't baling much. And when a larger leak appeared they didn't try to stop it up, or even bale much more, they just called in the safety boat

Steve stayed the night on Boreray but in the morning a storm blew up and the coastguard helicopter flew in to take him out. Tales of the St Kildans who were marooned there for 9 months through the winter. When they finally got back to Hirta they discovered that the colony had suffered a smallpox outbreak that had wiped out over 3/4 of the population. The ones that were marooned were probably the lucky ones.

A few really interesting explorations like the soil analysis that showed that even after all this time it still has a lot of lead & zinc in it, probably because of the way the St Kildans fertilised it with ash and with human waste. That led to a gradually diminishing barley crop which was one of the reasons why they had to evacuate.

Dan Snow pointed out the Viking connections in the names and that the Vikings colonised the place and they were then joined by and merged with the Gaelic folk heading out from the Western Isles.

Watch out for parts 2 & 3 in the next couple of weeks

Steve

dpgmel

Roy Baker's excellent 1956 thriller "Tiger in the Smoke" starring Donald Siden and Muriel Pavlov plus an excellent supporting cast including : Laurence Naismith, Bernard Miles, Kenneth Griffith, Sam Kydd etc etc.

IMHO deserves to be more widely known.

Windthrop

Separate Tables - Good adaptation of Rattigan's play and a great performance by David Niven. Burt Lancaster and Rita Hayworth are acting in a different film sadly.

Thats the joke that killed the Music Hall !

Gazza

I love Separate Tables; I've got the telly version with Alan Bates and Julie Christie

Windthrop

I suspect that version will be closer to the play

Thats the joke that killed the Music Hall !

Gazza

Yes it is - filmed very much as a stage play. I saw it on stage in the West End, must have been late 70s, with John Mills and Jill Bennett.

Windthrop

Yes it came round my way as well - had Ambrosine Phillpotts in it.

Thats the joke that killed the Music Hall !

dremble wedge

Courtesy of the fantastic Bat Quiz I watched The Man Who Wouldn't Talk.

An absolutely barking mad film that starts out as a spy drama (Zsz Zsa Gabor plays a CIA agent who always packs a cocktail dress!) and then evolves into a courtroom thriller (with Anna Neagle looking very fetching in a QC's wig).

Anthony Quayle seems very uncomfortable playing an American and the screenplay by Edgar Lustgarten (unsurprisingly his only one) is so turgid to be frankly hilarious. Great fun!

batman

It is definitely a bit odd ... glad you enjoyed it.

penfold

Matthew Sweet's documentary on Quota Quickies and 'B' pictures....rather good I thought, with a good array of clips, some interesting speakers....Patricia Laffan !! 89 !!?? looked about 59....has she been interviewed before??

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

smudge

We quite enjoyed that one as well Pen. Even stayed up for PSYCHOMANIA subsequently, as we'd been in Walton yesterday afternoon...

Smudge

Welcome to my house. Enter freely, and of your own will...