Vautrin

Since it's unlikely that the paths of Albrecht Durer and Noir Alley will cross very often I thought I'd post one of Durer's wonderful self-portraits.

The most surreal thing about this flick is Pat O'Brien playing an art critic, even one on the conservative side. I saw Crack Up on YT about a year ago. Except for the art angle and the method in how Pat's temporary madness came to be, it is rather pedestrian, though with a few nice touches. At the beginning of the movie I figured that Ray Collins might turn out to be a shady character as he often was. Then I sort of forgot about him as the movie progressed and then he did indeed turn out to be up to no good. Not surprised. When O'Brien unveiled what he considered that surrealist horror it reminded of this Dali painting:

Forget about Gainsborough, someone's making Maltese falcon knockoffs.

It's Moor fun to compute.

So many that Tiny Tim is now running track at Oxford.

The whipped cream allows the macho man to blow it off and stomp on it on the floor. Topics like this one always remind me of that hilarious Rolling Stones' lyric He can't be a man cause he doesn't smoke the same cigarette as me.

O One vote for Irish coffee. Coffee with booze in it. What could be more masculine?

Cool. I had never seen E.T. before, believe it or not. While it certainly is entertaining and Spielberg knows how to push all the buttons it was a little on the thin side for me.

That is the example that comes to mind first, and besides the jokes there is the scene where Spade grabs Cook when he has his hands in his pockets and delivers him to Greenstreet that way. Ouch. I'm sure there are other examples, as Cook so often played a loser who practically had demean me written on his forehead.

And for the most part she does so effortlessly. Of course Cook got the last laugh... by a few seconds.

That was a nice gift from DirecTV. The only problem was trying to figure out which movie to watch when you have about twenty or so different channels to choose from. I saw Meet the Fockers, The Invasion, Charlie Wilson's War, E.T., Alien:Covenant and a few more. Alien: Covenant was pretty good, even if a lot of it was just a rehash of the original Alien movie.

Plus the guy who shoots Carey is on the edge of the scene. One of the funniest scenes is when Cook first comes home to Marie and she zings him enough to have a comedy act.

You could very well be right about that. It just seemed like that was a lot of cash to have on hand in 1956 dollars. In the end it didn't matter anyway, it all went up in the air.

Could be. Another hint was that he would yell Hi-Yo Silver in his sleep.

The scene of Carey being shot only lasts a few seconds so it's hard to tell, but one thing I noticed is that the man who shot Carey is wearing a tie while the black guy's tie is tucked into the collar of his shirt and also the shooter looks white. Carey probably should have found a more secluded area if one was available.

I don't see a gay subtext, just a bestiality one. Flippen is into man horse love. That's why he shows up at the track drunk. He had just been rejected by Red Lightning and that had to hurt. Another minor point that I pondered over. Would a racetrack really have 2 million on a single day in 1956? Sounds a little far-fetched, but I don't know anything about the economics of horse racing. YT has The Killing, though in a mediocre print. The guy who shoots Carey looks like another guy and not the black dude, though the black guy did throw the horseshoe on the ground that might have impeded Carey's getaway.

Granted that he made all those promises, but Marie's character seems too smart to believe that a loser like Cook could ever get close to making them come true. Maybe she was just satisfied for Elisha to be out of the house working so she could sit on her behind or go out on a date with Vince. Yeah, I don't think Vince had much of an interest in Marie. Too old. She was just a time filler until something better came along and if the money had come through, he would have cut her out PDQ. Elisha started out with a hole in his stomach and Marie ended up with one in her's.

Things would be more confusing without the narration and the narration is kind of funny in itself. At 2:15 pm Johnny bought a ham sandwich and a coke at Morty's and then secured his gun in a flower pot. Yeah, Hayden plans everything down to the last minute and then goes and buys a a cheap suitcase from a pawn shop. Duh. What a freakin' genius. Something always seems to go wrong in these heist flicks anyhow. And why not take the car instead of an airplane? Duh. The Cook Windsor marriage should be categorized as sci-fi not noir. What the hell did a good looking dame like Windsor see in a runt like Cook? I just don't get it. When seen in profile, Cook reminds me a bit of Michael Redgrave's dummy in Dead of Night. Of course the dummy is about ten times as smart as Cook is. I've seen The Killing four or five times before but it's always worth another look. I much prefer the ending of this to that of The Asphalt Jungle where Hayden goes to the horse farm so can can give a horse one last kiss before he dies. Cornball as all get out.

Holy ****. I'm going to have to turn in my Brucie torn leather jacket. I had forgotten there is no In in that song title, it's just Candy Darling's Room. Actually it's just Candy's Room. I am so sorry Boss. But I still like your Clash tribute song I'm So Born in the USA.

Well, don't forget the song Candy Darling's Room.

It's going to take time just to get all the schedules in gear for all those channels, but I did see some new movies that will be available.

I think the one color episode was a test for going to color for the tenth season, but of course PM was cancelled before that could happen.

Fetv on DirecTV runs four episodes of PM, two in the afternoon and two in the evening. Of course they are edited for commercials. I often watch the two in the evening. I don't think they would be much more easy to follow even without the ads, especially when they add in crimes what were committed years ago, illegitimate children, twins, folks who changed their names, folks who were thought to be dead but aren't, etc. Perry and Paul seemed to be a little shadier in the late 1950s episodes than in the later ones. Still an entertaining program.

One more reason, though a minor one, not to live in Turkey.