batman

Well you know where to come for some TLC.

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

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

EHV_Emmetts

I tried to watch a Peter Sellers film which I have never seen before, Hoffman, but I found it that boring I dozed off half-way through.

Hoffman (1970)

batman

Little Red Monkey with Richard Conte. An entertaining B-movie thriller with a really fun storyline.

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

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

Greyandwhite

The Wrong Arm Of The Law 1963. Really enjoyable crime caper. Peter Sellers and Bernard Cribbins as criminals join with the Police (Lionel Jeffries and John Le MEsurier) to tackle an Aussie gang (Nannette Newman, Bill Kerr) who are stitching them up by acting as the law. Great fun all round.

Yeah, that's me. Billy Balthorpe, the man with no name.

David Brent

Deep End (1971) a rather strange, surreal and highly sexual story.

Young Mike (John Moulder-Brown) finds work in an old rundown public baths in a suburb of London. He falls for his older workmate Susan played by Jane Asher.
He also gets to check out the many females who use the baths.

A coming of age film with quite a shock ending.
Oh yes, and Jane Asher gets her kit off.

Dave.

dpgmel

For me the star of this is Diana Dors as the sex starved matron !

Steve Crook

Dirty Pretty Things (2002)

Somehow I missed out seeing this when it came out, despite hearing good things about it. So I was glad it was shown on BBC1 last night.

Great performances from a cast of relatively (to me) unknowns. A very good story involving illegal immigrants working in the London that most people don't notice, cleaners, sweat shops, mini-cab drivers and the like. They all had problems but they were working through them and surviving.

Drug dealing and prostitution are en expected part of that world but we also discover that some people are involved in illegal organ donation. Voluntary because they are told they'll get a passport but dangerous because of the conditions under which it's done. A story with a lovely twist in the tale.

In all, a great film. Gritty, but believably so.

A special mention for Sergi López as the chief villain of the piece, Senor Sneaky, giving a performance that Joe Pesci would have been proud of. But it was the leads, Chiwetel Ejiofor as Okwe the Nigerian and Audrey Tautou as Senay the Turk. The first major English feature for both of them. They were vunerable, but essentially decent and trying to do the right thing in the face of adversity.

And it was all pulled together beautifully by director Stephen Frears & cinematographer Chris Menges

Steve

dpgmel

Watched "The Man Who Wouldn't Talk" a Wilcox-Neagle production of an Edgar Lustgarten screenplay, Anthony Quayle as the accused and Anna Neagle as his barrister. Look like things are going badly for AQ until Dame Anna saves the day !

Lightweight but enjoyable.

Joe Fraguela

Last night I watched the excellent Fame is the Spur from 1947 directed by Roy Boulting and starring Michael Redgrave, Rosamund John, Bernard Miles, Carla Lehmann, Marjorie Fielding, Sir Seymour Hicks, Hugh Burden, David Tomlinson, Wylie Watson, Anthony Wager, Brian Weske, Ronald Adam, Maurice Denham, Guy Verney and Kenneth Griffith. A young Honor Blackman is also briefly seen in the film.

The film tells the story of Hamer Radshaw who grows up in the slums of North England in the 19th Century. Hamer played by Michael Redgrave becomes a successful Politician but finds that his intense liberal views become more conservative with his rise to power. A brillant well made film with some powerful and excellent performances from Michael Redgrave as Hamer, Rosamund John as his wife Ann and Hugh Burden as his colleague and long time friend Arnold Ryerson who in later years feels that Hamer has sold out from his original political beliefs that he held when he was younger.

dpgmel

Agree totally Joe, "Fame is the Spur " is an excellent film.

CaptainWaggett

Three Men in a Boat - directed by Stephen Frears, written by Tom Stoppard, starring Tim Curry, Michael Palin and Stephen Moore. An absolutely perfect way of passing 65 minutes (and a good reminder that I need to pick up walking the Thames Path again since floods forced me to abandon it at Oxford last year).

batman

Public Eye, which was superb as usual, followed an absolutely terrific US TV movie called The House on Greenapple Road. The late Christopher George (an under-rated actor who was replaced in the subsequent series by Burt Reynolds) played Dan August in a superior murder-mystery story. The cast included Janet Leigh, Water Pidgeon, Ed Asner and Julie Harris. The director was Robert Day. Highly recommended and well worth tracking down.

ps - HOGR may even have joined JLMs Night Stalker as my equal #1 favourite US TV film - it was that good.

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

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

Rob Compton

and as for Rosamund John...sigh!

dremble wedge

Last couple of nights - The Pirates of Blood River a colourful Hammer romp that has Christopher Lee's band of, frankly useless French pirates, attacking a Caribbean Huguenot settlement. Oliver Reed and Michael Ripper are amongst the jolly rogers so we know we're on safe territory here.

Quartet - which I'd never seen before. Four Maugham tales with absolutely splendid casts (Radford & Wayne, James Robertson Justice and Cecil Parker having an affair with Linden Travers again just like he did in The Lady Vanishes!) The only story that was a little lacking was 'The Kite' with George Cole although even that had the splendid Hermione Baddeley and Susan Shaw.

The first three episodes of series 6 of Spooks. Exciting nonsense as good-looking secretive types protect the country.

CaptainWaggett

I like The Kite more than The Alien Corn though it softens the ending. In the original story, IIRC, the George Cole character keeps refusing to pay the mainentance and goes back to prison. The other two Maugham films have good sequences too.

Cecil and Linden made a good team though she doesn't seem very happy in The Stars Look Down when she actually manages to get a wedding ring on his paw.