observed

hey there


i have had something of a rich and rare spell of free time, look you see. so busy is it that life tends to be i seem seldom to get the chance to take a breather. well, i have, to be sure, and elected to use it watching stuff that was not simply repeats of NCIS, CSI and variants thereof. also, i have (ever so) slightly cut down on my diet of Bullseye repeats, as sacrilegious as doing so is.

what have i done with the time? as it happens, watched some films. predictably, perhaps, yes, watched some films again, as i have looked back (as opposed to forward) on some films which hold or held fond memories for me. but, no, hang on, there is at least one new film in the following.

a look, a gander or an observance of the films i have watched in an overview way? sure, although not every film watched is pictured here, and not all the ones shown have been watched (again) as of yet. which might make this all a touch pointless i suppose but i am in the groove now.......

so, yes, then. i have jolly blooming well been down HMV and got some shiny new tapes, to be sure. well, it felt prudent and best to do so, since by all accounts they are in danger of closing down. not if i can help by investing the bulk of my disposable income with them. a move endorsed by others, it seems, who also do not wish to see the store go, for the last time i went in it was quite full of fellow patrons. lovely to see.

here, then, in no particular order, and for whatever such might be worth, is a look at which ones i watched, and more or less what i thought about such.

it was not all that long ago that i wrote here of delighted i was to find that Trading Places remains just as funny now as when i saw it first, north of some 30 years ago. a very natural step, then, seemed to me to be to take the step of revisiting Beverly Hills Cop. happily i was able to pick it up in the same stylish quasi-mock-VHS box presentation as was the case with Trading Places.

plot? a maverick cop called Axel Foley from Detroit has a less than legally minded friend. he gets killed, and Axel follows the trail of who and why all the way to Beverly Hills. something, to say the least, of a culture clash commences when he arrives in the place to find the truth.......

this film was nothing short of spectacular when it came out in the 80s. not being of an age to see it at the cinema, i, or we, as in my mates and i, probably wore out at least one VHS copy of it with repeated viewings. and yes, you could wear out a VHS tape, quite easily so as point of fact. with absolutely nothing less than delight i can say that i found Beverly Hills Cop has stood up to the inevitable test of time exceptionally, exceedingly well. it is just as good now as it was then, perhaps seeming even better.

i would think that the most overt observation anyone would make watching this now is just how bloody good an actor Eddie Murphy "was", although in hope i think that should be "is". there is no certainty to this, but i would like to believe that any "modern" or "new" audience, a generation not there for the 80s, would watch Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop and Coming To America (i really must find a copy of the latter), observe that Eddie gives three solid gold 10/10 performances and ask how the hell is it he never went on to win awards and get more acclaim. film studios letting him do so-called "vanity" projects, i suppose, are at fault a bit.

splendid trivia for the film? for quite a while the part of Axel Foley was to be played by Sylvester Stallone, yes that one. this is all confirmed in the documentaries on the blu-ray. quite an interesting story, but he wanted to cut just about all the comedic moments and insert more action scenes. budget constraints meant that was not to be, so Stallone walked in an amicable way, taking from it all the ideas and inspiration to make Cobra instead.

on to a "new" film, then, or a recently made one. for the record, a film only moves from "new" to "old" when you have seen it. should there be a film that was made in the 50s, 60s or what have you and you've not seen it, well, then that is a new film to you, is it not? a dear friend, sadly no longer with us, once said that to me, and so it stands.

so, yes, then, Mandy, released in 2018, and starring Nicolas Cage. i kept catching comments here and there about the film, some sort of "word of mouth" thing via comments posted on the internet, along the lines that it was a "gem" of a film; if you will a "masterpiece". on seeing that the blu ray version was an HMV exclusive, and HMV had it on sale at half price, a not at all unreasonable £7.49, i figured i might as well take a chance on it. oh, indeed, for those looking towards the end of the second paragraph concerning the film, ostensibly, i am very glad indeed that i did take a punt.

plot? a reclusive couple (Red, played by the NC and the titular Mandy, played superbly by Andrea Riseborough), live a reclusive, private life whilst clearly carrying some alluded to but never overtly explored emotional baggage and psychological scars. when a zealous religious, quasi doomsday cult led by the peculiar Jeremiah bring torturous pain and suffering to their sheltered lives, Red seeks out on a quest to avenge the fallen Mandy.......

where to begin? this film is brilliant, but certainly not for all. it is perhaps the most audacious work i have seen since Natural Born Killers, truly testing conceptual boundaries. Cage, in a remarkable return to form after several years (decades?) of effectively working off tax bills, channels everyone from Eastwood in the Fistful films to Gibson in Mad Max 2 to Gosling in Drive to deliver a performance by acted out gestures and movement rather than relying on dialogue.

did i mention it is not for all? well, there i go again. it's a deeply visceral, esoteric and disturbing work, conjuring up images far more challenging than just the occasional extreme graphic violence presented. should you be someone who appreciates the films mentioned in the previous paragraph, plus Evil Dead, then promptly move this title to the very top of your "must watch" list as soon as possible.

sure, there is a great deal more i could say about Mandy. the director, however - a talented fellow called Panos Cosmatos whose career i can assure you i shall now follow with great interest - has left absolutely everything in this film to be decidedly subjective and open to audience interpretation. i shall respect that by trying to put as little of my spin in on it as possible. that said, how wonderful to see the legend that is Bill Duke, he of Commando, Predator and American Gigolo fame, be present in this most wonderful of cinematic endeavours.

my motivation for revisiting The Untouchables, in this instance for the first time on the wonders of the blu-ray disc? firstly, it was cheap at £3.99. secondly, and most importantly, it had the unedited artwork, which i am fairly sure you can see here clearly in Commodore 64 mode.

for those of you unaware, the UK authorities, ostensibly via the conduit of the BBFC, do not like, under any circumstances, firearms or guns being visible on movie posters or video covers. to this end, usually such are airbrushed out, or ludicrously doctored. most copies of The Untouchables in the UK feature Costner as Ness stood alone, with the worst photoshop / ms paint job in history done to cover up his gone with a nowhere near close to scale or physically possible to hold it in the manner presented US Treasury badge. in truth, i could care not whether a film has a gun on the poster or not, but to distract by removing it or covering it up in a woefully and blatantly obvious way just makes it quite annoying.

plot? it takes as inspiration the history (as in based on truth not presented as such) of prohibition in the United States (of America) during the 1920s and 1930s. but of course the complete ban on alcohol created an illicit market for it, with one Al Capone (played superbly here by Robert De Niro) sat at the top of the tree for sales and distribution. a US Treasury Agent, Elliot Ness (played superbly here by Kevin Costner), is tasked with bringing him down. he sets about it, finding help from the few non-corrupt police officers available to assist in Chicago.

so yeah, refer to my comments about Beverly Hills Cop - a film which was brilliant at the time would seem to have aged into an even better than remembered one, what close on if not exactly 30 years later. this is quite rough justice on two of my all time favourite films, Scarface and in particular Body Double, but there can be little doubt that The Untouchables was, or is, the true masterpiece made by director Brian De Palma.

what makes it so good? an exceptional script, stunning camerawork and a staggering level of superb, rarely have any of the actors (except perhaps De Niro) been better. Costner, Oscar winning Sean Connery, Charles Martin Smith, Andy Garcia and Billy Drago all, to borrow a term from our friends in America, "knock it out the park". sure, the events depicted in the film might not be all that historically accurate, but then again no such claim of them being so is made.

the only eyebrow i raised was at the start, when Ennio Morricone's famous and rightly celebrated opening march kicked in. it is only now that i have noticed it has "more than a passing" similarity to the instrumentation to 1984 off of Bowie's Diamond Dogs album. but, still, if you are going to "borrow", then borrow from the best.

best bit of trivia related to The Untouchables? that would of course be Bob Hoskins. he was going to play Al Capone, but then De Niro became available. it is true that Bob got a nice pay off - unsolicited and unexpected - for being dropped. depending on which variation of the story you believe, the amount was between (all USA currency) $20,000 and a staggering $250,000. whatever the amount, most agree - or hope - that the part which is true is that Bob responded by phoning the studio (or director) and asking if there were "any other films they didn't want him to be in".

moving on, then, and a somewhat tough one, this, in the form of a film i always considered to be a classic comedy - one of the best ever, indeed. but i am not so sure that Airplane!, or Flying High! as it was called in some countries, has stood the test of time too well.

plot? well, it's a loose parody of a 1950s film called Sero Hour, and a quite direct parody of several "disaster" movies made in the 70s, most overtly and directly a series of ones called Airport, no less, hence the original release title of the film. in short, a commercial airliner is in danger of crashing and it's down to an unlikely hero to steer (fly?) the plane to safety. but there's much more to it than that.......

i suspect it might be true that i was, as i watched again, laughing more at the fond memories of laughing at the film the first, oh, thirty or so times i watched it, rather than finding it funny all over again. quite a few of the jokes - the visual gags, Lloyd Bridges and most decidedly the Jive Dudes - hold up just fine. some aspects, however, do not. like, for instance, Leslie Nielsen. in a post-Naked Gun and similar world, there is no "shock value" or surprise to seeing him in comedy, but at the time it was a huge deal. on that note, some of the other casting, such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, might well be jokes or cultural references which simply have no relevance to a modern audience whatsoever, or if you like at all.

overall i would suggest that the film has not aged as badly as it could have, but i would be surprised to learn of a whole new, born well after the 70s and 80s audience took to it. so much of it is locked into specific cultural references, and "the way things were" then, that i could only assume born in the 90s or onwards might be inclined - reasonably - to look at it and ask for an explanation as to why this was considered funny, like, totes ever.

righty-ho, or allrighty then, i suspect that's quite enough wording for one post. undoubtedly more to follow, not limited to but in particular as and when i get around to having a gander, or observation, of the other three films pictured in that first, erm, picture.




be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!