The King and we
Dec. 13th, 2005 08:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
randy_byersI played hooky yesterday. Watched movies all day -- two documentaries off the DVD of the original King Kong, then Son of Kong, which was a slapdash effort to cash in on the success of the daddy movie. I found the Kong documentaries (one making-of and one about Merian C. Cooper) too fawning, which is a problem with a lot of DVD extras. An excess of superlatives and goshwow ends only in diminishment.
Much more interesting was The Dark Corner -- a minor 1946 noir starring Lucille Ball and Clifton Webb. A private eye, played by Mark Stevens, is caught in an elaborate frame involving someone who had framed him in the past. The main problem with the movie is the lack of chemistry between Stevens (who's a bit of a stiff) and Ball, who plays his solicitous, good-hearted Girl Friday secretary. But the way that the frame is set up, and the way that the setting up of it illuminates the dynamics of both an adulterous affair and the PI's troubled history, are quite clever and engaging. There's also the usual noir pleasures of jazzy, neon, shadows-and-glitz atmosphere, with photography by Joseph MacDonald, who also shot John Ford's beautiful My Darling Clementine. Some of the shots of Clifton Webb's young trophy wife (played by the same actress who played Clementine in Ford's movie) reminded me of the look of Rachel in Blade Runner.
Meanwhile,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
daveon was suffering the torments of a completely absurd flight schedule (Heathrow to Frankfurt to Heathrow to the US), but arrived in time for us to go to dinner at Mama's Mexican Kitchen with akirlu and libertango. Either Mama's has recently developed an inexplicable Elvis theme, or I've been playing Mr. Oblivious the other times I've been there (not at all improbable). "Elvis was a hero to most," I said, quoting Public Enemy, and Hal finished: "but he's always been a burrito to me." And so he ordered one. It was big and it wasn't wrapped in leather, so we decided it was a bloated Las Vegas Elvis burrito.
Weird old world we live in.
Much more interesting was The Dark Corner -- a minor 1946 noir starring Lucille Ball and Clifton Webb. A private eye, played by Mark Stevens, is caught in an elaborate frame involving someone who had framed him in the past. The main problem with the movie is the lack of chemistry between Stevens (who's a bit of a stiff) and Ball, who plays his solicitous, good-hearted Girl Friday secretary. But the way that the frame is set up, and the way that the setting up of it illuminates the dynamics of both an adulterous affair and the PI's troubled history, are quite clever and engaging. There's also the usual noir pleasures of jazzy, neon, shadows-and-glitz atmosphere, with photography by Joseph MacDonald, who also shot John Ford's beautiful My Darling Clementine. Some of the shots of Clifton Webb's young trophy wife (played by the same actress who played Clementine in Ford's movie) reminded me of the look of Rachel in Blade Runner.
Meanwhile,
daveon was suffering the torments of a completely absurd flight schedule (Heathrow to Frankfurt to Heathrow to the US), but arrived in time for us to go to dinner at Mama's Mexican Kitchen with akirlu and libertango. Either Mama's has recently developed an inexplicable Elvis theme, or I've been playing Mr. Oblivious the other times I've been there (not at all improbable). "Elvis was a hero to most," I said, quoting Public Enemy, and Hal finished: "but he's always been a burrito to me." And so he ordered one. It was big and it wasn't wrapped in leather, so we decided it was a bloated Las Vegas Elvis burrito.Weird old world we live in.
