Charlie Baker

Jonathan Haze, original Seymour in Little Shop, died at 95.

Gig Young movies during the day today, and Gena Rowlands tribute tonight.

This past week's Noir Alley The Crooked Way isn't all that remarkable but it does have the striking work of one of Eddie's favorite cinematographers, John Alton. The new documentary on the Merchant/Ivory team is on Watch TCM and what I've seen of it looks very good, especially for fans of their movies. Tonight's Creepy Cinema movies are definitely creepy. Targets, Peter Bogdanovich's first feature as director (he's also in the cast), is a disturbing, somewhat Hitchcockian look at a mass shooting. It's got a lot of polish on an American International budget, and it's got a touching late performance from Boris Karloff. The second one, The Fan, is something else entirely. It's focused on a movie star's stalker turned slasher in 80s horror style I don't recommend this at all, though some have found camp value in the stage musical that the star lady is performing in, as well as some of the over-the-top mayhem. Lauren Bacall, James Garner, and Maureen Stapleton (One exclamation point for each of them--!!!) slummed it in this one. Mitzi Gaynor did what she could in movies and when the roles weren't coming turned to Las Vegas and TV for some snazzy specials. She was smart.

Two stars with new books turned up on CBS Sunday Morning: Shirley MacLaine Ben with Al Pacino with a link for the extended interview

Mario Cantone is back with Ben for Creepy Cinema, starting tonight and on October Thursdays. How could they not begin with two of Mario's favorite women, Joan Crawford (Sudden Fear) and Bette Davis (In This Our Life)?

I liked Three Days of the Condor very much. Redford at his coolest, with good chemistry with Dunaway, Von Sydow and Robertson very good, and slickly capturing the anxious feel of its era. I seem to be reporting on Noir Alley pretty regularly--have to mention this past week's selection, High Wall, a smartly done psychology-of-its-time thriller. Robert Taylor in a demanding role of a man who may have killed his wife and doesn't remember if he did, Audrey Totter dressed down as a coolly efficient psychiatrist, smooth as always Herbert Marshall as the late woman's employer. Some of the details are fudged, and the romantic angle is sort of shoved in late--but it's another good one I hadn't been exposed to. Next week--Detour, which I've seen a number of times, but I won't be able to resist Eddie's commentary. In previewing it, he called it "sixty-eight minutes of grungy glory" and termed Ann Savage a most memorable femme fatale, "a hitchhiking harpy from hell."

Sorry this one got by me. Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of Marcello Mastroianni's birth, and TCM devoted last night to him, with a break for Noir Alley. 8 1/2, A Special Day, La Notte, White Nights. Quite the coincidence that he was almost exactly ten years older than his wonderful screen partner, Sophia Loren.

Well, Eddie Muller had a busy weekend. Too bad the Noir Alley, Split Second, isn't on Watch TCM. It's a very watchable mix of atomic bomb paranoia from the 50s and noir, spinning off from the Petrified Forest trope of a mix of types, some criminal, stuck at a remote desert spot. Directed by Dick Powell. Hopefully it turns up again before too long. Earlier on Saturday, Eddie had a conversation with Carl Franklin about his two quite fine neo-noirs, Devil in a Blue Dress, which I know has some fans here, and the very tough One False Move, which is also a reminder that we lost Bill Paxton too soon. Sunday night Eddie was with Francis Ford Coppola, promoting his new opus, but programming two 30s screwball comedies (!). All of that appears to be on Watch TCM. And TCM will be repeating Two for Ones, the double features programmed by filmmakers on Saturday evenings starting next month, in case you didn't see the promos. Some interesting talk and pairings.

Given your love of Valentino and the silents, @voiceover, I think you'd regret not going. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow...😉

Sophia Loren is 90 today.

This recent Noir Alley A Lady without Passport is no great shakes. It's derivative and not terribly exciting, despite or maybe partially because of some on-location filming in pre-Castro Cuba. But it's of some interest. As Eddie points out, John Hodiak's performance is spirited and there's a David Raksin score. And a seventy-two minute running time, so it doesn't overstay its welcome.

I'm reminded of Pia Lindstrom, who reviewed movies and theater for the NBC affiliate in New York City, commenting on David Lynch's Blue Velvet. She said something like, "I think this may be a great movie, and I wish my sister weren't in it."

The American Masters documentary on Blake Edwards is well-made and worthwhile. It's laudatory, but does not neglect the career ups and downs and his struggles with anxiety and depression, nor the present-day problems with some of the movies' humor. Good interviews with filmmakers who love his work, and Julie Andrews is as gracious as ever. On the PBS website, I'm sure for a limited time, and maybe on TV providers' On Demand, though not on mine as yet. And given the differences in scheduling among PBS channels, it could turn up again on broadcast. I'm sorry Ossie Davis Day didn't include Gone Are the Days, aka Purlie Victorious,, based on the play he wrote and starred in. I'd see it out of curiosity, given the recent Broadway stage revival. Lo and behold, it seems to be available on You Tube. Fourteen Hours is indeed compelling and Richard Basehart and Paul Douglas are very good.

Another Hollywood Reporter article on a new TCM series starting soon: Significant Political Films

An item I copied from a Hollywood Reporter news round-up: Carol Burnett, 90, Proves You’re Never Too Old to Pitch At the Paley Center premiere of the Bob Mackie bio-doc Naked Illusion in May, TCM host Dave Karger was minding his own business when Carol Burnett decided to hold an impromptu pitch meeting. “She came up to me to tell me how much she loved TCM,” Karger tells THR. “She was so sweet. But then, the next words out of her mouth were, ‘I have an idea for something I would like to do on TCM.’ She said that between movies, we should show skits from her show that were spoofs of old films.” Burnett, of course, frequently satirized Hollywood classics on her 1967-78 CBS sketch comedy series The Carol Burnett Show — her sendups of Gone With the Wind and Mildred Pierce are classics in their own right — so Karger took the idea to his TCM bosses. Not surprisingly, they loved the concept, and plans are being ironed out not only to show some of Burnett’s vintage movie takeoffs between feature presentations but for the legend to appear on the channel to introduce them. TCM says the spoofs could start appearing as soon as December.