John Austen

Violent Saturday

Bandits rob a bank in a small city. Starring Victor Mature, Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine, directed by Richard Fleischer.

A great, little film - kind of noir, but in colour and cinemascope. The story is told with carefully composed images, building tension from the opening shot until the moment of the bank robbery. It's somewhere between Suddenly and Witness in the small city setting and the final shootout at the farm. That Mature turns out to be a hero is maybe not a big surprise, since it's built up to that from the earlier scene with his son. It makes me want to find more films by Richard Fleischer, who had a pretty long career. Checking imdb, I see I've only seen a few, like Narrow Margin and Armed Car Robbery, both very good as far as I can remember.

Airport sketch

Cat in chair

Ah, Berlin...

So you went to Berlin and only did a couple of lousy sketches? Yes, but as soon as I sat down to draw it started to rain. It was like a rule or something. And former Eastern European architecture is hard to draw, okay?

Jackson C. Frank

Ah, Trondheim...

Walked around in Trondheim and visited the Nidaros Chatedral, going up into one of the towers, with a view of the whole city. As an atheist, there are some mixed feelings about being inside a chatedral, but it`s hard not to be impressed by the handcraft. There was also an organ concert that filled my head with images from silent films: Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and that guy with the eyebrows and the pointy beard from the Chaplin films.

Ah, Oslo...

It was interesting walking around in Oslo again, "that strange city which no one leaves before It has set its mark upon him..." Yeah, you tell'em, Hamsun! I lived there for fourteen years, but had convinced myself I didn't like it too much when I moved abroad. Walking down to the harbour area, with  Aker brygge and Akershus festning, it can actually be very idylic, making you feel like the poor immigrant just off the boat in America, ca 1893, ooh-ing and ahh-ing at the rich and beautiful people wearing clothes and everything.

Still too expensive, though...

Stuff bought in Paris

Used dvds:
Violent Saturday by Richard Fleischer
One From The Heart by Francis Ford Coppola
Beauty and the Beast by Jean Cocteau
Barbarella by Roger Vadim
The Year of Living Dangerously by Peter Weir
Legend: Ultimate Edition by Ridley Scott

Used cds:
What We Did On Our Holiday by Fairport Convention
Sir John Alot of Merrie Englandes by John Renbourn

Going up to Oslo

Robert Aldrich

Top five Robert Aldrich films:

1. Kiss Me Deadly

2. The Dirty Dozen

3. Ulzana's Raid

4. Vera Cruz

5. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane

Laurel and Hardy

Mathilde Santing

Marty

Shy, lonely butcher Ernest Borgnine meets shy, lonely school teacher Betsy Blair. Directed by Delbert Mann.

This must have been a strange film when it came out in 1955. No movie stars, but rather regular people talking like regular people. It actually feels pretty modern. The dialogues by Paddy Chayevsky almost feel a bit David Mamet-y in the use of repetition. I dunno, what do you wanna do tonight? There's even the Tarantino pop culture moment of characters talking about Mickey Spillane. Not all the threads are tied up. Did he buy the butcher shop at the end? We're not told. Ernest Borgnine, stepping up from lots of bad guy roles, is very appealing, and so is Betsy Blair. She's too pretty to be the "dog" she is referred to in the film, but that's fine, that's Hollywood, and they look good together on the screen. I got really invested in the film, and started looking worriedly at the timer towards the end - five minutes left, are they gonna end up together or not?

Inked panel

Alien

Top 5 Alien films:
1. Aliens
2. Alien
3. Alien 3
4. Alien: Resurrection
5. Prometheus

Slowly...

...starting to draw again.

Ajo