All Posts – Page 73 – Prattling Before the Pratfall

Cranky Peevishness

“Happy Birthday in Heaven” notices on Facebook for deceased public figures really annoy me. I see this quite often, even for non-Christians. “Remembering [insert name] on their birthday” is standard for many organizations, and it’s the practice that should be followed by everybody.

Please, Sir

Watching Hitchcock’s 1934 film The Man Who Knew Too Much, that I shared a couple of days ago, brought to mind the climatic rooftop scene in David Lean’s superb screen adaptation of Dickens’ Oliver Twist. Robert Newton, who has my vote as the greatest character actor of all time, is terrifying as the villain Bill Sykes.

https://youtu.be/qelzn2njS9c

Director Cuts

George Lucas didn’t leave well enough alone when he began using digital technology to “improve” the special effects in Star Wars. To the dismay of just about everybody but himself, Lucas kept tweaking until eventually he had Greedo rather than Han shooting first in the Cantina.

Alfred Hitchcock remade The Man Who Knew Too Much to get out of his contract with Paramount and/or because he thought he could do better in 1956 than he did in 1934. Either way, I’ve watched the earlier film many times, and the later one only once.

https://youtu.be/MOAlp-oIQBE

Lynch Mob Rule

Fritz Lang displayed a few touches of German Expressionism in Fury, his first American movie, but otherwise it’s directed in a straight-forward way. In the middle of the movie Spencer Tracy can’t use his left arm, and it’s almost a foreshadowing of his performance twenty years later in another powerful morality tale, Bad Day at Black Rock. The only complete online copy of Fury I found has Spanish subtitles, but it’s very watchable.