In the Pacific Northwest, about 1900, John McCabe (Warren Beatty, good) enters Presbyterian Church, a mining town whose mud seasonally changes to the snow in which he dies, shot by an enforcer over his failure to sell to a big, respected company the business he (along with madam Constance Miller) built, a successful whorehouse/tavern. As […]
Daily Archives: April 3, 2010
Charles Chaplin’s A Dog’s Life has three settings: the urban vacant lot where the homeless Tramp sleeps with Scraps, his cherished canine companion; the dance hall, where the Tramp meets the girl of his dreams, who is fired for not “putting out” for the male clientele (the place is named the Green Lantern—a wink away […]
John Huston and color cinematographer Oswald Morris had given their film of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1956) the look of old whaling prints; perhaps inspired by this example, Czechoslovakia’s Karel Zeman and his black-and-white cinematographer, Jiří Tarantik, gave Vynález zkázy, their film version of Jules Verne’s 1896 Face au drapeau (Facing the Flag), the appearance of […]
