tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47331807865926816572024-02-07T04:27:32.872+00:00remission.vigourUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4733180786592681657.post-90989353308206701882007-01-19T21:55:00.000+00:002007-02-02T10:42:57.101+00:00Dean Stockwell<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI5Laz2ffWFAGecDbfWGmAZHIU_IBXNOVWWcsY3gfkNWkJjc4h4UO1uQfGQPlDgTqKwFE4J56d6W2Sw0U6xkoh0QEX-HXguM9IDr9pFdpDk6aaig8h0mQ6_ZItCDavFkSLG22qbBuvMcm6/s1600-h/stockwell.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI5Laz2ffWFAGecDbfWGmAZHIU_IBXNOVWWcsY3gfkNWkJjc4h4UO1uQfGQPlDgTqKwFE4J56d6W2Sw0U6xkoh0QEX-HXguM9IDr9pFdpDk6aaig8h0mQ6_ZItCDavFkSLG22qbBuvMcm6/s320/stockwell.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5026885350598327154" border="0" /></a><br /><em><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >‘It's not the easiest life in the world, but then no life is easy’.<br /></span></em><br /><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >As Al in Quantum Leap, Dean Stockwell gave the show heart. He made it important. Sam Beckett could be sanctimonious, dull. We were always waiting for Al. If he hadn’t turned up, it wouldn’t have been a show anymore. But Al wasn’t just comic relief, he had his own story to tell, his own past, all somehow more real than Sam’s fantastic present. Al had been taken prisoner in Korea, MIA for over a decade. The episode when Al shared a last ghostly dance with the one true love he left behind still haunts me. Al’s desperate womanising took on a different dimension after this dance of death and the man with diamonds in his eyes became a hero of lost love. Through all his scrapes and adventures, Sam never leaped into Al, never saved him from the torments of his own history. The former child actor displays the kind of familiarity with screen space and visual expression that is usually associated with someone like Robert Mitchum. He has always floated through Hollywood in unreachable territory, like Frederick Forest, Stacey Keach or Griffin Dunne, happy to stand aside and let others soak themselves up, always seeming fresher that way. Stockwell’s other roles – too few and far between - confirm his ability to ease into the viewer’s consciousness, always making himself integral with his powerful economy: the sorrowful son in Long Day’s Journey into Night, the sensitive murderer in Compulsion, the sad eyed indulgent brother to Harry Dean Stanton’s lost dreamer in Paris, Texas; the dogged vice-president in Air Force One; the sympathetic and patient colonel in Gardens of Stone, and the romantic judge in Tucker: the Man and his Dream. He is a rare treat to watch, he operates comfortably, pure termite art, slipping smoothly through emotional gears. His significant dramatic departure as the suave, dispossessed Ben in Blue Velvet, calls on him to deliver the slowest and wickedest bolo punch imaginable. The blow is almost orgasmic in its deft violence. Ben’s inhuman reflexes and sexually aggrieved swagger only serve to illuminate, in negative, Stockwell’s own reliable centre. Put simply, when I watch Stockwell on screen, I feel safe in the hands of a professional man, playing a role I believe in, sharing a secret we both already know. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4733180786592681657.post-50920101984523760742007-01-19T21:49:00.000+00:002007-02-02T10:44:36.913+00:00Crispin Glover<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeDjlGWYuk5q43elTgUjo9XoubKNFA7h-a8jKLtO_EUoIZ2N7UIzsAm_GLB9w8eY8Kb8k-45ODJLyWU4DTOME-4epxxAMzCNmA_szOixMzyFLPHhg_PBX0DcBdA5Z8TmPwym0SahVkSpGe/s1600-h/glover.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeDjlGWYuk5q43elTgUjo9XoubKNFA7h-a8jKLtO_EUoIZ2N7UIzsAm_GLB9w8eY8Kb8k-45ODJLyWU4DTOME-4epxxAMzCNmA_szOixMzyFLPHhg_PBX0DcBdA5Z8TmPwym0SahVkSpGe/s320/glover.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5026885818749762434" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >At once a boneless slapstick fool and a tragic man of wax. His snakey face and sinuous, lean body have the hideous elegance of a tormented nineteenth century ghost. There will never be a character as shamefully naked as George McFly in the grip of love, an ageless and unknowing American man. George’s feelings for Lorraine are so pure and intense, they are frightening – "You’re my density, what I mean to say is…you’re my destiny” – the words crawl out of Glover’s mouth like shipwrecked sailors onto a golden beach. Glover refused to reprise his role in Back to the Future II, eventually suing Steven Spielberg for splicing him into the film from unused footage, a landmark case that has changed the way actors negotiate their image rights. Crispin Glover’s other major onscreen triumph is his otherworldly portrayal of Andy Warhol in The Doors. He has him speak with a misty hiss, clouding his words, making them disappear from his own lips. Glover is also a novelist and film director, claiming to be inspired by the ‘aesthetic of discomfort’ – his surreal short film What is it? uses only actors with Down’s Syndrome. In 1987, appearing on Letterman, he launched a fly-kick at the host’s head. Glover later admitted that it was ‘a weird thing to do’. In 1989 he released an album of spoken word readings and cover tunes (including a rendition of These Boots Are Made for Walkin') entitled The Big Problem [does not equal] the Solution. The Solution = LET IT BE. Everything he does is personal but he is, without doubt, the ultimate stranger. Glover is a lizardous Anthony Perkins, a man charged with the wrong energy who is about to do a bad thing.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4733180786592681657.post-42944750962370760802007-01-19T13:26:00.000+00:002007-01-19T13:30:11.326+00:00Eleanor Parker<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh552Ti5RBTqaVqleLuSumRS1dNaCR39WmZ6MgOaDJFgJBBOwJWiaRU1_-hpRyhLkduno4btuNLDXivgSUtB8sWApuisCEtdwTmWVtzEWBWdAwIozGj2o7GGZKvukFgIO_pyebj_MABUXtj/s1600-h/Scaramouche5.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh552Ti5RBTqaVqleLuSumRS1dNaCR39WmZ6MgOaDJFgJBBOwJWiaRU1_-hpRyhLkduno4btuNLDXivgSUtB8sWApuisCEtdwTmWVtzEWBWdAwIozGj2o7GGZKvukFgIO_pyebj_MABUXtj/s320/Scaramouche5.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5021733200189710770" border="0" /></a><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:100%;" ><br />Voluptuousness is the form of beauty that registers quickest on the eye because in its puffiness we also identify something of the absurd. The first look is always paradoxical. No actress has brought to the screen the living simplicity of this idea better than Eleanor Parker, who is at her most ravishing in <i style="">Scaramouche </i>(George Sidney, 1952), in which she<i style=""> </i>plays the lovelorn actress, Lenore. A better name could not be imagined for a figure of misplaced passions. Working as the raucous lead player in a comedy troop in pre-revolutionary <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Paris</st1:place></st1:city>, she falls in love with her co-star, the dashing Andre-Louis Moreau (Stewart Granger), whose fine swordplay and garish mask earns him the soubriquet ‘Scaramouche’. All goes as well as one who is in love with a restless man can dare to hope for, until he inevitably falls for the more noble charms of Aline de Gavrillac de Bourbon (Janet Leigh). The choice makes you wonder if he is a fighter rather than a lover. <i style="">Scaramouche </i>is said to have the longest sword fight in film history, between Moreau and his arch enemy, the Marquis de Maynes (Mel Ferrer). It also flirts with revolutionary politics, revenge, betrayal, and incest, but it is happier for you to name those words in your thoughts as you watch rather than to develop their consequences. It’s a swashbuckler, and if the exhuberance of the way it is filmed doesn’t sweep you off your feet then the lush charm and longing gaze of Eleanor Parker surely will. With <i style="">Scaramouche</i>, Technicolour’s potential to illuminate the vibrant structural detail of the human form is beautifully realised: with pitching red lips and rouged cheeks, wavy auburn hair, and a gorgeous crimson dress that clings timidly to her full figure, it’s entirely forgivable to reason with the film that Lenore could captivate Napoleon Bonaparte. Even Josephine would have marvelled.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4733180786592681657.post-44653224951747308752007-01-19T00:24:00.000+00:002007-01-19T00:35:38.348+00:00Rod Serling<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0lZ4edkWf20shF0J4CmZ-lpTPYqm_4M5XklCdEFsle5oSb5g3vRrjOYxtu75gkvHsVGbUym11Wj_htDgHUQlDoAR9bvqv0xn3P0__dnSVmYz8YYEqLh8XHdVbjkUwG0rcVPqpBcVeEFlT/s1600-h/rod_serling.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5021532994584175010" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0lZ4edkWf20shF0J4CmZ-lpTPYqm_4M5XklCdEFsle5oSb5g3vRrjOYxtu75gkvHsVGbUym11Wj_htDgHUQlDoAR9bvqv0xn3P0__dnSVmYz8YYEqLh8XHdVbjkUwG0rcVPqpBcVeEFlT/s320/rod_serling.gif" border="0" /></a><br /><div><span style="font-family:verdana;"><em>‘There’s nothing in the dark that isn’t there </em></span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana;"><em>when the </em></span><span style="font-family:verdana;"><em>lights are on’.</em><br /><br />One of the few genuine visionaries of television, Rod Serling lured us into the Twilight Zone with his very own form of hot, beat terror. His prologues were delivered with such unsettling and hip precision, setting each tale to a sinister syncopation. His maverick personality drove him from a career as a nifty middleweight, into the paratroopers, eventually landing him in television. Inspired by his own immediate success and suffering tormented bouts of amnesia and combat flashbacks, he began to write some truly groundbreaking television plays, including the critically celebrated Requiem for a Heavyweight, starring Jack Palance and, in Serling’s own update five years later, Muhammed Ali. Serling’s film work is tragically undervalued. Collaborating with John Frankenheimer on his paranoid White House masterpiece Seven Days in May and giving a wicked re-write to Planet of the Apes, he brought a subtle violence to both films that is ingrained in their very structure. But it is The Twilight Zone, that middle ground between light and shadow, that gave Serling the opportunity to tell his own skewed stories. There’s something about these perfectly sculpted monochrome tales that connects so cleanly with our insecurities. Like Invasion of the Body Snatchers or Frankenheimer’s Seconds, The Twilight Zone captures the fear of unknown systems and cultures, of a way of doing things that could turn America on its head. Serling pulls the walls down. He tells us over and again ‘You’re not safe’. Whether it’s a gremlin on the wing of your aeroplane, a devil offering you long odds on your soul or a cat that steals your breath away, familiar things and places can be as frightening as an alien attack. After six series Serling left these cool science fiction realms for the horror singed Night Gallery. Again, Serling would cruise onto our screens, as if moving from the real world to the imaginary, and present us with a painting. The painting would depict the theme of the tale to follow, and the camera would slowly close in, taking us deeper into unreality. Night Gallery drew heavily on a tradition of American horror, frequently Lovecraft, Hawthorne and Poe. In Fall of the House of Usher we are told that the American gothic is a miscarried genre, however with episodes of such nocturnal resonance as ‘Certain Shadows in the Wall’ or ‘Midnight Never Ends’, Serling finally delivers it. Night Gallery was also a proving ground for young directors, among them Steven Spielberg and waning icons such as Joan Crawford and Roddy McDowell. Rod Serling brought to television something new, something like the paintings in Night Gallery, suspended in time and space, the frozen moment of a nightmare.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com