Nineties Nu-Soul Queens ...

For the weekend: a look back at those new '90s music divas  with their funky grooves that got us going then - line them up:
Des'Ree, Macy Gray (we wore out her first album), Erykah Badu, Angie Stone, Adeva (I met her up close at Crash club on millennium night and she really is that fierce), Ultra Nate, Rosie Gaines, Donna Allen and Joyce Sims (love that "All'N'All" megamix), and Regina Belle ("You got the love") from the late 80s ....  they still sound terrific now. 

Postcards from the edge

Another visit to La La Land with a return to 1990's POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE, Mike Nichol's satisfying comedy drama from Carrie Fisher's book, all the more poignant now after her recent passing and that of her mother Debbie Reynolds. Shirley McLaine - never a favourite of ours - does maybe her best work here, outside of THE APARTMENT, as Suzanne Vale's movie star mother, who drinks a lot and can't help upstaging her daughter.

Substance-addicted Hollywood actress Suzanne Vale is on the skids. After a spell at a detox centre her film company insists as a condition of continuing to employ her that she live with her mother Doris Mann, herself once a star and now a champion drinker. Such a set-up is bad news for Suzanne who has struggled for years to get out of her mother's shadow, and who finds her mother still treats her like a child. Despite these problems - and further ones to do with the men in in her life - Suzanne can begin to see the funny side of her situation, and it also starts to occur to her that not only do daughters have mothers, mothers do too.

Meryl Streep has one of her best early roles here as the drug-addled actress Suzanne tries to get her life back on track, and Mike Nichols fills the film with a great cast: not only Dennis Quaid, but Simon Callow, Richard Dreyfuss, Gene Hackman, Annette Bening and even the great Mary Wickes (from 40s and 50s classics like NOW VOYAGER and WHITE CHRISTMAS, she also went on to SISTER ACT). 

But the film boils down to those encounters between Meryl and Shirley, and both shine, Shirley in her hospital scene getting ready to face her public - the gays love her - and belting out a version of Sondheim's "I'm Still Here". Meryl too sings up a storm in that final country music scene. 

It all certainly works now and is a film to savour for many fine moments.
Maybe its time for another look at Carrie's THESE OLD BROADS telemovie with not only Debbie and Shirley but Dames Elizabeth Taylor and Joan Collins - which we covered before. see Debbie label.

Jeanne and the perfect guy

Another French flick we had not heard of here in the UK, as presumably it never played here. I would have heard of it or read about it and would have wanted to see it. Well, better late than never. It crossed me radar as being a previous film of the team behind the current THEO & HUGO, another highly praised gay romance. 

Directed in 1998 by the duo Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau, JEANNE AND THE PERFECT GUY fascinates on several levels. The perfect guy is Mathieu Demy, son of French directors Jacques Demy and Agnes Varda - favourites of ours here at The Projector, see labels. Jeanne is Virginie Ledoyen (of THE BEACH and Ozon's 8 WOMEN).  The blurb puts it nicely:

"Only France could have produced a charmingly eccentric bonbon like JEANNE AND THE PERFECT GUY, In its heart and soul its a direct descendant of UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG and THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT, one thing that distinguishes it is its sexual candour The sight of the young lovers cuddling in bed and singing sweet nothings gives the movie a jolt of romantic heat!" says the New York Times.

Always in a hurry, Jeanne is a beautiful young woman with a profusion of boyfriends, Then one day she meets Olivier the true love she has been searching for. When Olivier tells Jeanne that he is HIV positive, she refuses to get upset. Her devotion to Olivier is intense and unswerving. 

I can't begin to say how much I liked this, its delightful and with those resonances of Demy's father's films. (Demy senior in fact did die of HIV complications in 1990).  It covers gay issues, aids, sex, love, and compassion; pity though the score isn't by Demy regular Michel Legrand ...
We will now be looking forward to Ducastel & Mathie's THEO & HUGO, and I am going back for their COTE D'AZUR, another comedy of manners from 2006 ...

White Hunter Black Heart, 1990

A thinly fictionalized account of a legendary movie director, whose desire to hunt down an elephant turns into a grim situation with his movie crew in Africa.

The blurb states: "For a film of "excitement, wit and intelligence" (Rex Reed) the hunt ends here. As both star and director of WHITE HUNTER BLACK HEART, Clint Eastwood plays one of his most colourful roles and crafts one of the most acclaimed movies of his 45-year career.

He plays John Wilson, a brilliant driven film director (loosely based on legendary John Huston) determined to turn his new project in Africa into personal adventure hunting a wild elephant. Jeff Fahey, Marisa Berenson and George Dzundza co-star in this rugged, robust movie from the novel by co-screenwriter Peter Viertel, who accompanied Huston to Africa in 1950 to work on THE AFRICAN QUEEN. Filmed on location in Zimbabwe and London, WHITE HUNTER BLACK HEART is a bold trek into the heart of adventure". 

Well they would say that I suppose, but there is no "loosely based" about it. Clint's character is meant to be Huston, and the film they are making is THE AFRICAN QUEEN, with Marisa Berenson a convincing Hepburn character (Bogie and Bacall - also on the location - are not as developed here). 

We were discussing THE AFRICAN QUEEN over at IMDB, which got me interested in this, which I had missed at the time, as indeed I had most of Eastwood's films, I just do not find him or his films interesting (apart from the early stuff like PLAY MISTY FOR ME or DIRTY HARRY). Viertel was a fascinating guy too, writer and Hollywood marverick, who married Deborah Kerr, and knew Huston, Hemingway etc. well, as per his fascinating memoir. (His mother Salka was an intimate of Garbo's). There is a strong British contingent here, with Timothy Spall, Alun Armstrong and Richard Warwick, and Fahey is a pleasing presence. Eastwood gets Huston's speech patterns and mannerisms off pat, so its a fascinating look at movie-making, but really anyone not familar with THE AFRICAN QUEEN or who these people were, would be totally at sea. The climax with the elephants is well handled too. Having seen Berenson recently on the stage, see label, it was interesting to see her again here and she too (like Blanchett) sketches a passable Kate. Hepburn's slim  memoir of making the film is a fascinating read too with great photographs. 
Huston returned to Africa in 1957 for another elephant saga, THE ROOTS OF HEAVEN, about saving elephants, not shooting them. 

The Gay Metropolis 1940-1996

Weaving oral history with precise cultural analysis, THE GAY METROPOLIS is the definitive social, cultural and political history of gay life in the major cities of the world over the last fifty years. Focusing on New York, London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Berlin, Kaiser chronicles how urban centres have been crucial in the genesis and evolution of gay culture. THE GAY METROPOLIS combines intimate stories of people as famous as Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents and Gore Vidal, and as little known as Sandy Kern, a young Brooklyn woman who first heard the word 'lesbian' when a neighbour spied her with her arm around her girlfriend at the end of a wartime blackout.

This was a fascinating read when I first read it a decade or more ago, but I had lent it to a friend and never got it back ..... so I was pleased another friend mentioned it again recently, so I got another copy and enjoyed reading it all over again. As social history it can't be beat. Charles Kaiser has concentrated on New York, but it does not detract from an overall understanding of the 20th Century gay tapestry. 

We go from the closeted 1940s where though, as in wartime London, gay life flourished in secret * (see that extract from Gore Vidal's THE CITY AND THE PILLAR below), to the even more closeted 1950s when being gay was as bad as being a communist and they were hounded from government posts, and there was no mention of gay life anywhere, to the start of the gay, black and women's liberation movements of the 1960s, culminating in that Stonewall uprising in 1969 and the success of plays like THE BOYS IN THE BAND. It was routine in the early sixties for gays to kill themselves in films like ADVISE AND CONSENT, THE CHILDREN'S HOUR and THE SERGEANT, at least the British film VICTIM made an impact, as did SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY at the start of the 1970s when gay activism took to the streets and became more visible as the decade wore on, climaxing with the gay decadence of disco, Studio 54, "After Dark" magazine and the availability of gay material on those new video-cassettes .....

The 1980s though is a whole different story as that strange new illness began making inroads into the gay community and how it responded in the face of political indifference from the Reagan goverment...  there are lots of life stories here, and its all uplifting stuff by the mid Nineties - now 20 years later, the changes to gay life would be unimaginable then.  I think its an essential item for any gay bookshelf, maybe next to Vito Russo's THE CELLULOID CLOSET. Not only that, a very engaging read!  

Kaiser shows how before the sexual freedoms of the Seventies, World War II was a great liberator: "the war had caused a great change. Inhibitions had broken down. All sorts of young men - away from home and their towns and farms for the first time - were trying out all sorts of new things". 

Gore Vidal's 1948 novel THE CITY AND THE PILLAR set in Forties New York:

"Jim went straight to a Times Square bar frequented by soldiers and sailors. He studied the room carefully like a general surveying the terrain of battle. Then he selected his objective: a tall Army Lieutenant with broad shoulders, dark hair, blue eyes. Jim squeezed in beside him and ordered a drink. Jim's leg touched the Lieutenant's leg, a hard muscular leg which returned the pressure. 

"You in the service?" asked the Lieutenant. His voice was slow, deep, far Western.

"Yeah, I was in the army too"

"What outfit?"

They exchanged information. The Lieutenant had served with the infantry during the invasion of North Africa. He was now stationed in the South as an instructor. 

"You live around here?"

Jim nodded. "I got a room downtown".

"I sure wish I had a place. I got to stay on a sofa wih this married cousin".

"That sounds pretty uncomfortable".

"It sure is".

"You could", said Jim, as though he were thinking it over, "stay at my place. There's plenty of room".

The Lieutenant said no, he couldn't do that; they had another drink and then went downtown to bed.

Next, we are going off to that 1970s gay sauna THE RITZ ! 

Persuasion, Persuasion, Persuasion ...

I have just enjoyed the 1995 BBC production of Jane Austen's PERSUASION (left) once again, its a real film (by Roger Michell, of the BBC film of MY NIGHT WITH REG, plus NOTTING HILL, FOUR WEDDINGS & A FUNERAL, THE MOTHER, LE WEEKEND) as opposed to a TV series, and is maybe the best version of this, my favourite Austen novel. It has a perfectly romantic ending. It looks great and super cast too: there's young Simon Russell Beale, Victoria Hamilton, Samuel West, Sophie Thompson and more. This is what I wrote about it, and those 2 other PERSUASIONs back in 2011: I want to see them all again now! :

Away from the Arthouse Classics and Bad Movies We Love and sometimes Utter Trash, we occasionally need a good Costume Drama - and no-one does it better than the BBC or ITV with their Jane Austen adaptations. The recent PERSUASION was an ideal treat after the Royal Wedding, so it was fun to see it again.
I absolutely love Jane Austen's book "Persuasion" and have re-read it several times and no doubt will again. This latest version is quite nice - though Sally Hawkins is a very put-upon dowdy Anne Elliot while Rupert Penry-Jones positively smoulders as Captain Wentworth, and Alice Krige is the meddling Lady Russell. Anne is only 28 after all but is practically an old maid as she missed her chance with the dashing Captain 8 years previously when she was persuaded to give him up as he had no fortune. Now he is back, wealthy and looking for a wife .... we travel from her estate to Bath and Lyme Regis with its famous cobb where that silly Louisa Musgrove famously falls from, as our star-crossed lovers slowly rediscover each other. For me it is a perfect romance. Anne, as Lady Russell knows, is so much better than her frivolous father and bitchy sisters.

.The 1971 version is in 4 parts so can take its time and Ann Firbank and Bryan Marshall are quite ideal but looking at it now it has that bright over-lit look of 70s television. The best version for me is the 1995 BBC production where Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds (below) are quietly excellent, it is nicely condensed and is a real film, as directed by Roger Michell, with able support from Corin Redgrave, Fiona Shaw, Phoebe Nicholls and Susan Fleetwood etc. The most recent version also alters the ending with our heroine running all over Bath to catch up with Wentworth - but then Austen wrote two endings both perfect but not very filmable for a romantic climax!
.The recent SENSE & SENSIBILITY is also a treat, nice to look at - I love their idea of the cottage the poor Dashwoods have to make do with! Dan Stevens and David Morrissey are ideal romantic leads and it all looks a treat
.
Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman and a top-notch cast even in the small parts (Gemma Jones, Elizabth Spriggs, Harriet Walter, Imelda Staunton, Hugh Laurie) all make Ang Lee's 1995 film the definitive version, as scriped by Emma (whose playing of the final scene is a delight).
...
And of course the only definitive version of PRIDE & PREJUDICE is the BBC's 1995 version, ideally cast too with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, plus of course Alison Steadman and Benjamin Whitrow as the Bennetts and the fearsome Lady Catherine De Burgh of Barbara Leigh-Hunt and the oily Mr Collins of David Bamber, with Susannah Harker and Anna Chancellor. The 2005 film by Joe Wright with Keira Knightley enraged me with it's filleted version of the book, major characters reduced to the sidelines and its period all over the place. THAT version ended up in the trash can! - despite sterling work by Tom Hollander as Mr Collins and Brenda Blethyn, Donald Sutherland and Judi Dench. I just did not see the Bennetts as having pigs in their house! The 1940 film has it's pleasures too though one can hardly take it seriously, Olivier and Garson sparkle though. (A shame though to see Ehle in just the small part of Mrs Logue in Firth's success THE KING'S SPEECH).

The 1999 version of MANSFIELD PARK is also very entertaining with the likes of Sheila Gish, Lindsay Duncan, James Purefoy and Harold Pinter - though Fanny Price is the most priggish, least likeable of Austen's heroines. EMMA and NORTHANGER ABBEY though do not interest me at all! Then of course there are those Merchant-Ivory productions like A ROOM WITH A VIEW, MAURICE, QUARTET, HEAT AND DUST, HOWARD'S END, THE EUROPEANS, THE BOSTONIANS and the great tradition of costume drama continued with CRANFORD and Julian Fellowes' DOWNTON ABBEY, we will be waiting for that second series, let's hope Maggie Smith gets some more great moments. Hmm, maybe it's time to re-visit those '70s hits: Lee Remick as JENNIE Churchill and Francesca Annis as LILLIE Langtry (which also has a sterling Oscar Wilde by Peter Egan)...

To Indo-china and Japan via the sea wall ....

I liked the French epic INDOCHINE a couple of years back, nice to see it again now, plus also that 1950s favourite of mine, Rene Clement's THE SEA WALL, also set in colonial Indo-China (exteriors filmed in Thailand in 1957); and also Mikio Naruse's 1954 LOST CHRYSANTHEMUMS was also screened here again, I was captured all over again ...... here are my reviews of these ....

INDOCHINE. This was a free dvd in one of our newspapers a few years ago, but I never bothered watching it till now. I like it a lot, it plays like a French GONE WITH THE WIND or a David Lean film with those crowd scenes and sampans sailing on marvellous landscapes .... as directed in 1992 by Regis Wargnier.

Indochina during the 1930s: One of the largest rubber-tree plantations is owned by French colonist Eliane who lives with her father and her native adopted daughter Camille (Linh Dan Pham). Elaine gets to know young French officer Jean-Baptiste (Vincent Perez); after a short affair she refuses to see him again, as Camille falls deeply in love with him. Elaine gets him transferred to a far island where Camille goes in search of him, despite an arranged marriage. Her saga is rivetting and engrossing, as the fates of the three leads play out, rather like a parable of France's place in Indochina and Vietnam. It looks marvellous - Deneuve is perfect in those 30s clothes, and striding around her plantation in jodhpurs. Colonial life is nicely depicted showing also the brutality meted out to the peasants (like that family Camille travels with to that island).

It is a vast, panoramic love story set in the twilight years of French Indo-China. Comparisons with David Lean are inevitable, considering director Régis Wargnier's use of the setting as a backdrop to the love-triangle between the three main characters. Catherine Deneuve gives a strong, emotionally restrained performance as Eliane, the plantation owner whose colonial paradise is slowly falling apart. Linh Dan Pham is affecting as Camille, Eliane's adopted daughter whose journey from aristocratic ancestry to Marxist induction personifies the changing face of South-East Asia in the period around World War Two. It won the Oscar for best Foreign Film of 1992, and Deneuve was nominated as Leading Actress.
As I said to pal Martin to encourage him to see it, it is a saga featuring glamorous ladie wearing fabulous 1930s frocks in exotic locations making grand gestures and suffering, suffering, suffering while an epic tale unfolds about France and Indo-China; there's gorgeous men in white uniforms a well and some marvellously composed images. 

Another Fifties favourite I have featured here quite a bit, but not lately, is Rene Clement's 1957 THE SEA WALL or THIS ANGRY AGE, which I liked as a kid back in 1958.

Above is a nice clip of Tony Perkins and Silvana Mangano doing their jive number.

There is a lot more on THE SEA WALL (or THIS ANGRY AGE) at the labels below. I loved it as a kid, and it still works for me now, Silvana Mangano is as fascinating as ever, and Jo Van Fleet of course is extraordinary as always, and Alida Valli picks up Tony at the cinema! It was an early international co-production, French/Italian and shot in Thailand, from the Marguerite Duras novel. Tony of course went from Silvana to Sophia Loren in his next, DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS, while Clement stunned and fascinated me with his next - PLEIN SOLEIL .... but thats a whole different story. 

Update: I now have my third copy - the first was Italian only / then a friend sourced a black and white copy in English / last year I got a copy in colour and in English with French Sub-titles, copied from French television - and introduced by Alain Delon ! - he must have been commenting on a Rene Clement season ... perfect viewing then.

LATE CHRYSANTHEMUMS from 1954 is rather slow-moving and not much actually happens but Naruse creates this mood where we identify with each of his characters and the Japanese life of the time - all those sliding doors! - is nicely depicted. I have not seen any other films by Naruse or much Japanese cinema apart from the Kurosawa and Ozu classics. I love TOKYO STORY of course and Ozu's fellow classics like LATE SPRING and EARLY SUMMER (featuring the great Setsuko Hara as Noriko) and his earlier THERE WAS A FATHER and THE ONLY SON and his final, AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON. Naruse was equally prolific with 91 titles, the best known seem to be FLOATING CLOUDS and WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS - so, more Naruse to explore, then there is Mizoguchi ...

Mikio Naruse's examination of the lives of three idling, constantly complaining, single ex-geishas in post-war Japan is a marvellous character piece. What is the life of a Geisha like once her beauty has faded and she has retired? Okin has saved her money, and has become a wealthy money-lender, spending her days cold-heartedly collecting debts. Even her best friends, Tomi  and Tamae, who were her fellow Geisha, are now indebted to her. For all of them, the glamor of their young lives has passed; Tomi and Tamae have children, but their children have disappointed them. Okin has two former lovers who still pursue her; one she wants to see, and the other she doesn't. But even the one she remembers fondly, when he shows up, proves to be a disappointment. 

 As in Ozu's TOKYO STORY, sadness and nostalgia permeate LATE CHRYSANTHEMUMS particularly when Tomi and Tamae are getting drunk and reflecting on their children busy with their own lives, 
while Okin comforts herself with her home and deaf-mute maid. Everyone it seems wants to borrow money from her ... Haruko Sugimura (also in TOKYO STORY as the thankless daughter) is marvellous as Okin. All the characters accept the stoic acceptance of life and their circumstances. Okin has her money and the others have their memories and companionship to keep them going. The men meanwhile, particularly, Okin's two previous lovers are desperate for money ... 

The Monroe Walk ! 
One fascinating moment has the two ex-geishas walking along when a modern Japanese girl strolls by swaying her hips.Tamae asks "Is that the Monroe walk?" as Tomi imitates it. It made me realise that here in 1954 Monroe was already a worldwide sensation since 1953 and her tour to Korea. 

For the weekend ...

Some widescreen early 1950s glamour - it doesn't get better than this:

and a dance - which also defines its era.

and a couple more club classics ....

Design: 1970s 'sunshine pop' (& '90's Innocence)

Colin sent me a link to this intriguing and very tuneful cover of Carole King's "I Feel The Earth Move" by a group, Design - it is so very 1973, this is exactly how we looked then (like me and my first colour television, right). But how come I never heard of Design before? 

There is another video clip too, showcasing their great vocal harmonies:  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WtN5aW60Vc

Their website looks intriguing , with all the details .... http://www.designvocalgroup.com/

Its like going back to those heady days of TAKE THREE GIRLS on the BBC.

A CD of two of their albums has just arrived - I suspect Colin had something to do with it. The notes include "Tripping the light fantastic of breezy west coast harmony pop mixed with atmospheric melodic folk pop - here are the third and fourth albums by the UK six piece vocal group whose sound was described as "the perfect musical accompaniment to a garden party in the blazing sunshine". Get ready for summer then ..... 
The group were together almost 8 years, they recorded more than 150 radio shows and appeared on more than 50 television shows. They also released five albums and thirteen singles. Sadly, a foundling member, Geoff Ramseyer, died aged 25 after leaving the group in 1976 - he is in the clip above, in the floral shirt. The rest of the group later disbanded and did different things - moving to Australia etc, but got together for their reissued recordings in 2011. Thanks again, Colin. 

In a way it reminds me of this great vocal track from the 1990s, by another harmony group Innocence, and it also mixes in a hint of Pink Floyd ! Chill out then.

Comng soon: TEN SONGS OF  MY LIFE - as based on Martin's Facebook item. I think it will be more than ten though, at least twenty ... 

Tracey in the air, and Catherine too ...

Seeing Tracey Ullman back on television here in the UK, in a hilarious chatshow interview with Paul O'Grady (Lily Savage that was) and with Imelda Staunton no less (who enthralled us in GYPSY the other week) reminded me of how much we enjoyed Tracey's shows back in the 1990s when she was probably the funniest woman on television.  Here (again, thanks to Colin) is her gem as that camp air steward, its compulsively watchable and just as funny as I remembered in 1992. Lets hope we see more of Tracey over here now, she is also in INTO THE WOODS of course. 

Tracey playing gay is the equal of Catherine Tate's more recent Derek Faye, another confirmed bachelor, in all those sketches .... roll them ...

It was great seeing Catherine as herself in the recent Sondheim show ASSASSINS, of course we also love her foul-mouthed Nan and Lauren and Bernie the sex mad Irish nurse, and all of her brilliant characters. Come, Leonard ....

Party like its 1999 ...

It looks like we won't be seeing the current eclipse, its too cloudy here in the London area, but it looks great on television from other locations ..... It is currently getting darker though as the moon passes the sun.

At least we got to see the 1999 eclipse perfectly - was that almost 16 years ago?, from the roof of my office in Regent Street, with special glasses of course. It was astonishing looking at these planets and moons aligning, almost like something out of 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY. One felt at one with the universe and how we are all part of it, even our dear departed. 

Here I am at a music festival shortly after in my special edition eclipse tee-shirt, wonder what happened to that? What a day that was ... what I can remember of it!

Back to Philadelphia ...

I suppose one had to go back there eventually. PHILADELPHIA was a key movie in 1993, a skillfully crafted drama bringing Aids into the mainstream, maybe the first popular multiplex movie on the subject - LONGTIME COMPANION, PARTING GLANCES etc were more specialised fare. The early '90s was that time when people were losing friends and companions to the disease and still trying to protect themselves. Lots of people did not want to come into contact with Aids sufferers, it was still seen as a terminal disease then. (Putting it in context of my own life, I lost not only my then partner, but also most of that South London crowd I used to know, including my best friend since we were teenagers), 

Remember when Tom Hanks played daft comedy role such as those in SPLASH and BIG, and had big success with SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE, as well as a lot of other movies of varied quality (we won't mention BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES or those DA VINCI CODE films!). His role here won him his first Best Actor Oscar, marking his crossover into serious drama, and he is quite extraordindary here as Andrew Beckett - not just losing weight but portraying each stage of his decline. In this worthy, if manipulative, tale from director Jonathan Demme, Hanks is just right as the lawyer with Aids who takes the law firm he works for to court after they fire him when they learn of his condition. Jason Robards is splendidly loathsome as the head of the firm, while Mary Steenburgen is surprising in an uncharacteristic villain role as the company's defence barrister. Joanne Woodward is of course terrific as Beckett's loving mother - one can hardly watch her later scenes without tears. 

Hanks' co-star Denzel Washington strikes the right notes as the initially homophobic lawyer reluctant to take on the case, but his story too ticks all the boxes. One bugbear at the time was that they gave Hanks Antonio Banderas as his supportive partner, but we do not see much intimacy between them (while we see Denzel at home with his wife and child), though the boys look great dancing in their white navy uniforms, and Hanks has that marvellous scene with the Maria Callas opera track.
It is obviously a movie of good intentions, the first hollywood one to educate the public about Aids and discrimination, casting a popular actor being ravaged by the disease - they did in fact shoot a scene with Hanks and Banderas in bed (which is on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKMS91y7Udg ), 
but this was removed from the final version presumably to make it more accessible to the straight audience. Some have said PHILADELPHIA's refusal to present an accurate picture of gay men onscreen, combined with its banal script, puts it on a par with a typical, if superior,  "disease of the week" television movie. 

Marvellous soundtrack too, I had it on cassette - those Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young tracks are just right here. Hanks of course also won the Best Actor Oscar next year but I simply did not want to see FORREST GUMP. After a varied career of hits and misses he scored twice last year with CAPTAIN PHILLIPS and as Walt Disney in SAVING MR BANKS. PHILADELPHIA though is a career highlight, and a worthy drama of its time. 

Soon: Revisiting other 'gay classics': MIDNIGHT COWBOY and TEA AND SYMPATHY ! 

Lost in clubland - an occasional series

Nightclub flier from the 1990s .... this was Heaven, in London. I've been wrecked there a few times myself! 

Bad things

Before moving on to some classy repeats on television this week (Antonioni's THE PASSENGER and Haneke's AMOUR - I have covered them both previously, but more in due course), here's a round-up of some trashy items we enjoyed or endured recently ...

Its always a pain to see performers one likes doing something rubbishy later in their careers, say hello to HOW AWFUL ABOUT ALLAN a so-called shocker from that year of Trash Classics 1970 - its by Curtis Harrington who gave us the campy delights of WHATS THE MATTER WITH HELEN?, WHOEVER SLEW AUNT ROO? and GAMES (reviews at Horror label) but this one is dull fare indeed and wastes the talents of Anthony Perkins (perfecting his twitchy neurotics a decade after PSYCHO) and one of my great favourites Julie Harris (see label) in a thankless role.

After an eight-month stay in a mental hospital, a tormented man comes home to live with his sister; but a mysterious boarder may be trying to kill him.

Its a drab affair, that also features Joan Hacklett, and is thankfully only about 70 minutes.

More campy and glamorous is 1973's NIGHT WATCH, which re-unites Elizabeth Taylor with Laurence Harvey, and adds in Billie Whitelaw. 

Ellen Wheeler, a rich widow, is recovering from a nervous breakdown. One day, while staring out the window, she witnesses a murder. But does anybody believe her?

This is one of those campy thrillers with a twist ending - think Doris Day in MIDNIGHT LACE or Lana in PORTRAIT IN BLACK. They also ramp up the glam here with Liz in different gowns and furs and diamonds for every scene .... she and Larry were much more fun in BUTTERFIELD 8, both their careers were on the slide by this time, he was terminally ill and died later that year. NIGHT WATCH is an efficient potboiler which passes the time agreeably as one laughs at it, as dully directed by Brian G Hutton, who also helmed Liz's other 70s Trash Classic ZEE & CO. One cannot reveal the twist .... but its a howler. 

On to 1998 and VERY BAD THINGS - a thriller starring Christian Slater and Cameron Diaz.

A group of friends head to Las Vegas for a bachelor party.. only things go wrong and a woman is killed. Soon, the bodies are piling up and the friends find themselves turning against one another as the cover-up builds.

The main interest in this now is that one of the guys (the one who accidentally kills the prostitute) is an almost unrecognisable Jeremy Piven (right), well it was 17 years ago - a long way from his sleek MR SELFRIDGE which entertains us on Sunday nights here now.

Its a dark black comedy which keeps one watching, as director Peter Berg mixes laughs with chills as bodies get cut up to be buried out in the desert. Daniel Stern is good too and Cameron is ace as the bride-to-be from hell. Chunky hairy Piven is deliciously sleazy and its certainly ramps up some scuzzy Tarantino-esque fun as we watch some good guys do evil things as events get progressively out of hand. VERY BAD THINGS remains a polarising movie, with some either loving or hating it.

Back to 1944 for FRENCHMAN'S CREEK, a costume drama about pirates from a novel by Daphne De Maurier, with her REBECCA star Joan Fontaine. This is now a Spanish dvd: EL PIRATA Y LA DAMA (The Pirate and the Lady), by that interesting gay director Mitchell Leisen. Mexican Arturo de Cordova is the pirate, with hissable Basil Rathbone, dependable Cecil Kellway and blustering Nigel Bruce. 

Joan is the noblewoman who tires of her husband and his decadent friends in bawdy Restoration London and who decamps with her children to her country estate, run by kindly Cecil, in remote Cornwall. She soon finds out that a French pirate moors his ship in a nearby cove and has been using her house and bedroom. They get to meet and have a chaste affair.  She soon enjoys herself dressing up a his cabin boy and getting involved in his pirate activities. 
Then her husband and suspicious Basil turn up as the plot works out to a satisfactory, for its time, conclusion as she has to give up her pirate lover and settle for dull marriage and looking after her children. Joan gives it her all and gets to wear some nice gowns. Arturo and his pirate gang seem a gay lot .... a subtext picked up by my IMDB pal melvelvit, who commented:  "I see what cinema scribes mean when they speak of Leisen's "gay sensibility"; the camera practically caressed Arturo's hairy (unusual for the time) chest and there were lots of lovingly photographed bare-chested pirates" ... A sometimes campy, sometimes dull swashbuckler then. Joan's and Basil's fight to the death on the stairs is certainly well done and packs a punch! 

Aretha's "Nessun Dorma"

Many thanks to Mike in San Francisco for mentioning Aretha Franklin's version of Puccini's area "Nessun Dorma" (from TURANDOT of course).  Despite being a great Aretha fanatic (see my posts on her, at label) I had not heard of it. It was never released here in the UK and was not on any of her albums I knew, included that recent DIVA CLASSICS. Seems it was on a three-track CD single released in the USA, the live recording plus two tracks from her "A Rose Is Still A Rose" album: "Here We Go Again" and "In The Morning".

I duly ordered the cd single but it never turned up, as occasionally happens, but the seller sent a replacement by first class post and it arrived yesterday. I was a bit unsure how Aretha would cope with this, but I needn't have worried - she lets rip and nails it. 'Vincero' indeed! This was in 1998 and she replaced an ailing Pavarotti at very short notice, as detailed in that recent biography on her "Respect" by David Ritz - which I reviewed here, Aretha label.

Now I discover it is also on YouTube! Wish I had known that while I was waiting for the disk to arrive! Enjoy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmXkEhs00lo&list=RDGmXkEhs00lo

The Age of Innocence, 1993

I saw THE AGE OF INNOCENCE back in 1993 but had rather forgotten it and had certainly forgot how opulent and lush and sumptuous it looks - it certainly looks like Scorsese's hommage to Visconti - that early scene of Daniel Day Lewis arriving at the grand soiree as the camera pans and glides around certainly suggests Burt Lancaster at the ball in THE LEOPARD, while other scenes suggest SENSO or Visconti's last film L'INNOCENTE in 1976 - this Scorsese film is certainly its equal in showing us the grand surroundings and soirees of the period, and those costumes ...

Society scion Newland Archer is engaged to May Welland, but his well-ordered life is upset when he meets May's unconventional cousin, the Countess Olenska. At first, Newland becomes a defender of the Countess, whose separation from her abusive husband makes her a social outcast in the restrictive high society of late-19th Century New York, but he finds in her a companion spirit and they fall in love.

It is of course Edith Wharton's classic novel (published in 1920) which has become a labour of love for Martin Scorsese in his first period picture, and this one certainly delivers in spades, as one of the most marvellous costume dramas ever - up there with Kubrick's BARRY LYNDON and those Visconti films (and it also suggests Ivory's THE EUROPEANS with that other visiting Countess from Europe, and then theres Jeremy Irons in SWANN IN LOVE) with a superb cast, and brilliant production work, edited by Scorsese regular Thelma Schoonmaker, with an Elmer Bernstein score and the voice-over narration is by Joanne Woodward! 

Daniel Day-Lewis commands the screen as usual as Newland Archer, that prisoner of the conventions and social rules of his social class; with Michelle Pfeiffer as the Countess Olenska, and Winona Ryder as May Welland, Newland's wife, seemingly innocent and naive but really manipulative and cunning, as she thwarts Newland's plans. The supporting cast includes Sian Phillips as his mother, Alexis Smith, Richard E Grant, Geraldine Chaplin, Jonathan Pryce, Alec McEwan, scene-stealing Miriam Margolyes and an uncredited Claire Bloom, whom I unaccountably missed - I shall have to watch it again next time it is on. 

It may seem too long and too slow with nothing much happening for some, but its a film to savour and relish and lose oneself in, and then that perfect final scene, with the older Newland and his adult son, will make it all worthwhile, with lots of marvellous moments along the way. 
Of course New York in the late 19th Century must have been a building site with all those buildings going up, and also a melting pot with all those new arrivals, but we don't see any of that in this rarified world. Scorsese's film is also a worthy companion to all those Henry James and E.M. Forster adaptations. I shall probably now have to read the book and treat myself to the film on Blu-Ray ... Working my way through Scorsese's films it is a super re-discovery, like THE AVIATOR. I will have to see Day Lewis's amazing turn in GANGS OF NEW YORK again too.