The 1948 David Lean version with Alec Guiness as Fagin (complete with prosphetic nose), Robert Newton as Bill Sikes and a very young Anthony Newly as the Artful Dodger.

Hard to beat this version which possitively bristles with atmosphere.

If anyone here needs a plot outline then you've obviously led a very sheltered life

No, but I can tell you that I like it. As in the "best" of painting, music, or any of the arts, it's an entirely personal thing. This movie just resonates with me. That's the abstract bit over. In more concrete terms, it's got a tight, multi-layered script which constantly hints at things just out of sight and sound (or at least it SEEMS to hint at these things, which is probably even more interesting when creating an enigmatic backdrop). And it's just compellingly shot. Sometimes it's something as simple as a bridging shot, but the transitions are just riveting, either hanging on a turn of phrase or a subtle facial expression, and it just draws you into the next scene effortlessly. In even more specific terms, here are two more classic scenes - 1) The regression to childhood of Lady Rowena (the tremendous Elizabeth Shepherd) during the hypnotism sequence, and her subsequent transformation into Ligeia ("Hello, Verden! - Holy **** !), and 2) The maid holding a bunch of flowers which causes her to... sneeze. Big deal, but the earlier nightmare sequence had prepared us for some kind of terrifying fit on seeing the flowers. These are two isolated examples, and whilst it's true that good moments don't in themselves add up to great cinema, TOMB OF LIGEIA (and MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH) is absolutely jam-packed with moments of (I'd say) genius, all set against a consistently interesting and complex background. So, what could have been just another enjoyable 60s horror movie is elevated to heights way above anyone's (my)expectations.

Of course, many will probably find it run-of-the-mill whilst others will think it's dumb because Vincent Price wears stupid specs in it.

Directed by Guillermo del Toro
Screenplay by Guillermo del Toro, Antonio Trashorras and David Muñoz
Photography by Guillermo Navarro
Music by Javier Navarrete

Main Cast: Federico Luppi, Marisa Paredes, Eduardo Noriega, Fernando Tielve

At an orphanage during the Spanish Civil War, there's a ghost.

Smart director Guillermo del Toro was at pains to point out that this isn't a film "about" ghosts, but rather a film "with" ghosts. So that's just one element in this rich movie which (I think) is, amongst other things, a reflection on the corruption of innocence. Interestingly, the orphanage, set in the middle of the desert and largely isolated from the direct effects of the war (except for the surreal presence of the humungous big unexploded bomb sticking up in the middle of the playground) is used as a microcosm of all the horrors going on in the rest of the country.

There's some amazing production design on display here - the look of the movie is great. The orphanage is one hell of a creepy place, and some of the imagery is striking (such as the ghost of the drowned child suspended in time and place, shuffling around the grounds surrounded by a halo of putrefaction, a stream of blood constantly flowing out the head wound and dissipating amidst the air, as if the very air the others breathe were part of his watery grave). Very interesting, semi-surreal, great-looking and pretty creepy - but it does go on a bit.

Atmospheric score, very much in the sombre chamber music style so prevalent in much of modern Spanish cinema.

Directed by Luiso Verdejo Arribas
Screenplay by Luiso Verdejo Arribas
Photography by David Tudela Talavero
Music by Marta Sánchez and Mª Isabel García

Main Cast: Junio Valverde, Miriam Giovanelli, Pepo Oliva, Juan Agustín Vigil

SPOILERS AHEAD! (but who cares? Nobody will ever see this).

Young boy living in the country collects all kinds of bugs and puts them in jars. When a pretty new girl joins his class at school, he collects her too and puts her in a big hole in the ground. The End.

Well, it was only ten minutes long. Winner of the Best Short award at San Sebastián's Horror and Fantasy Film Festival a few years back, the title alludes to that famous ditty "La cucaracha, la cucaracha, ya no puede caminar, porque some complete bastard has pulled his back legs off"), and is a kind of sick, atmospherically unhealthy variant on "The Collector." Or am I thinking of... oh, what's that short story? "The Killing Bottle"? "The Killing Jar"? I think it was even an episode of "Journey To The Unknown" two million years ago, and maybe Roddy McDowall was in it. What WAS the name of that story? And WHAT was it about? Anything similar to the shorty I just saw? I'm asking, you tell me.

Taken on its own terms, there are worse ways to pass ten minutes than watching YA NO PUEDE CAMINAR. But it's so short there's no time for much except the punchline (which is neither very funny nor very surprising), and I was left wondering what the point of it was. Excellent seedy atmosphere though, as I said, and good shots of slugs and things.

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Two Japanese films:

A 35mm print of SANSHO THE BAILIFF directed by Kenji Mizoguchi. This film has some some absolutely beautiful visuals although it's not a film about beauty but about tyranny. It's almost odd that one of the most beautiful images is of a woman walking slowly into a pond to drown herself in self-sacrifice.

The film is a bit heavy-handed in spelling out its message which it repeats verbally at certain points: Without mercy, men are beasts. And it's also a very melodramatic film in many ways, one that almost wallows in its tragedies. But it speaks truth.

The governor is banned for being sympathetic and humanitarian. His family is captured by slave traders, the mom becomes a comfort woman, hamstrung so she can't run away, and the two children are forced into hard labor. The horrible 11th Century slavery is just a metaphor for our own working/slavery in our current lives. One of the two kids becomes hardened and cold as a result but remembers his humanity before its too late. However, it is too late for the family. Despite good fortune, he cannot bring the family back together intact. The cold ruthlessness of the world has left its mark on them.

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Yasujiro Ozu's EARLY SPRING is a severe criticism of corporate capitalism almost along the lines of a Fassbinder film. I was surprised by how downbeat and utterly depressing a film this was from Ozu, perhaps his bleakest statement, but here it is...

Being Ozu, there aren't any of the melodramatics of Mizoguchi (even if Mizoguchi is as calm in his presentation, the events are dramatic). Over the course of time, a group of office workers just talk with each other and reveal what a horror their lives are.

The people who own small businesses get drunk and envy the salary man who tells them that his fate is nothing to envy. The mother who runs the noodle shop is exhausted. The man who worked for the company 31 years hoped to open a small shop when he retired but hasn't the money to do so in the end. Everyone is aging for the worse. The one who is most proud of the company gets sick for 100 days and dies young at 32. His co-workers say it's for the best because eventually he would become as tired and disillusioned as they are. Everyone lies, covers their rear, complains, and gossips. All the men ignore their wives and have played around on them at some point. One wife says, "All I am is a cooking machine." The company makes sudden decisions about the lives of those who work there and the co-workers themselves are just as cold and ruthless. When the married worker has an affair with the typist, he isn't even that thrilled about her after the sex. He isn't thrilled with his wife either but feels guilty about his affair nonetheless. The other workers invite her to a party just to give her the 3rd degree about it and she tells them off good as they deserve. As soon as anyone stops dishing on each other, they seem to have a scathing philosophical retort that covers the rest of humanity. The film tries to end on a few positive notes but since it has already told you that your job, your spouse, your family, your friends, and the world is pretty much sh-it, the positives don't mean much. You come away from the film (after 144 minutes) knowing the way things are set up is simply no good for people, that the people start out ok but the system sucks and so that turns the people bad, but that there's nothing that can be done about it, that that's the current nature of life on this planet.

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I wanted to see this because of the interesting themes it promised to touch on, but I was bored stiff.

I don't know if the movie is deliberately obtuse or if it's really as plain as the nose on your face, because it turned me off so much that I was unable to care even what it was supposed to be about. LA PLAYA DE LOS GALGOS may be one for Cinema Clubs, but I found it so dull and drab that it ended up irritating me. Art doesn't HAVE to be boring, does it?

The music was patchily effective but somewhat incoherent, like the film itself I suppose.

THE CRIMSON RIVERS (France 2000)

Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz
Screenplay by Jean-Christophe Grangé and Mathieu Kassovitz
Photography by Thierry Arbogast
Music by Bruno Coulais

Ok, A DREAM OF PASSION directed by Jules Dassin is a very intense, even over-the-top, emotional film. It's an examination, an exploration, an analysis of motivations and emotions, why people can do what they do, what the range of human behavior is. The film is about the production of a play, Medea. Not only is the play in rehearsals but a documenatry crew is filming the rehearsals in an attempt to understand "The Creative Process". The directors in the film talk about other films and actors. And the film itself is an actor's film and the performances in it are amazing.

Ellen Burstyn is only in a few scenes but she is giving the most amazing portrayal. You know it's a performance but at the same time it's so dead on that you lose that it's a performance and think it's real.

Melina Mercouri may be the center of the rest of the film and puts a lot of energy into her playing an actress playing Medea but her approach is different from what Burstyn is doing.

The film itself is about a very theatrical woman star who is playing Medea on stage. At first she's emotive but false. There are a lot of relationships in her life that have gone sour as well. The conflicts are not resolving either but remaining stagnant. After she meets a woman in prison who has actually killed her children and learns that woman's story and motivations, she learns to play Medea with more honesty and true force, but between playing Medea and encountering the woman, she comes more honest in her private life too and all three women, Medea as written, the actress, and the prisoner all seem to reach levels of emotion, passion if you will, involving the controlling men in their lives.

Medea is superficially seen as this horrible figure who kills her children but by the time you finish with the film, her killing isn't justified perhaps but it is understandable as an emotion that reason and rationality could not but a brake on to. You can no longer write her off as just a nutcase or else the men can't share in the responsibility of what happens. They can't just discard the women and expect them not to be vindictive and not seek to punish them. And Medea doesn't just want to punish the man who jilted her but the entire order he belongs to that allows it to be ok that he can do as he pleases to her. Medea was the A Doll's House of Ancient Greece and it still packs a charge today as betrayal and infanticide haven't gone away either.

Dassin's approach is pretty fantastic. By making all these comparisons, comparisons between theater and life, between ancient and modern, between actress and killer, between Medea's husband Jason and the various male directors and the killer's husband, you get a much more complete picture of how the struggle between the sexes plays out and has played out over the long course of humanity. The approach allows the themes of Medea to be looked at and thought about and discussed as current and eternal rather than as ephemeral.

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The 1948 WINTER OLYMPICS hasn't got a title just an image of a coin medal to indicate what its about. The footage is in color, shot silent, with music & narration. The first thing that strikes you is that St. Moritz in Switzerland was just this small little village. I can't see the same place ever being able to host a more recent winter games. Subsequently, these olympics come off as really quaint, more like a backwoods version of a sports meet rather than some big international event. Even the footage has a homey feel to it as you get to see these lovely un-self-conscious women figure skaters at the practice rink giving these absolutely great spins and turns and then finishing with a smile to go off and do it again.

OLYMPIC VICTORY, John Jay's documentary of the 1952 Olso Winter Olympics shows what a difference a few years and a bigger place had on the games. Most of the country is out there to watch and there is some amazing footage of the ski jumping. Jay's narration is mostly straight with a few jokey side comments that would be a different story in 1960 when he made....

OLYMPIC HOLIDAY, his documentary of the 1960 Squaw Valley Winter Olympics. Again, it's amazing how small Squaw Valley seems in comparison to what is needed to host a winter games today. In Oslo, the events were spread out and you had to even drive to some locations. In Squaw Valley, everything is a few steps away from each other in a bowl between mountains. I liked the ice skating rink building--neat design. But again this was a quaint location as opposed to the big stadiums we see today. The opening ceremonies were very simple and outdoors with the trees as a backdrop on one side in front of bleachers. There was a high school band to perform and even for 1960 it seems rather antique. This time Jay is making so many quips in his narration that he makes Warren Miller sound like Walter Cronkite. There is footage of then V-P Nixon, Danny Kaye, and Janet Leigh. The real highlight of this film is watching the women's downhill skiers take on the 90 degree "airplane" turn--it's thrilling to watch if they make it and it's thrilling to watch if they wipe out.

I watched 3 shorts and 1 feature. The shorts were: BUMPING INTO BROADWAY, AN EASTERN WESTERNER, and ARE CROOKS DISHONEST?, the feature was GRANDMA'S BOY.

A large part of BIB was just Harold Lloyd trying not to get beaten up for not paying his rent and then trying not to be arrested when the casino he's entered is raided. The joy in watching is to see how inventive the escapes are, the pretending to be a coat on the rack the best.

In AEW, Lloyd is partying so much his dad sends him out west to make a man of him. The town bully has locked up the cute girl's dad to blackmail her into putting out. Lloyd finds this out, rescues the old man (by first getting the key in an ingeniously funny way), is pursued by the bully's gang, and....well, I'd better leave something as a surprise.

ACD? starts with Lloyd pulling a pretty good scam in the park involving people thinking they're buying a valuable ring that's a fake. But the real pro is a woman who scams Lloyd's earnings. Lloyd tries to scam the earnings back later but is again outclassed by the lady. This one wasn't as funny as the other two and Lloyd isn't the hero.

GB is wonderful. Lloyd is a pure coward from a line of cowards. He wants the girl but the town bully looks yards out in front. A mean killer is on the loose and Lloyd gets made part of the posse. He runs away to hide in bed but his Granny gives him this fake story about how with a luck charm his grandad took on these generals in the Civil War. With the charm in hand, Lloyd takes on the killer and the bully. There are some great funny bits in this film: chasing the killer in the car, the photo of the grandad, eating mothballs thinking they are candy, everyone so afraid of the killer including a duck, etc. etc.

Like EPIDO RE and other versions of ancient tales that Pasolini made films from, this takes place in the most realistic looking dust bowl of a set possible with people wearing rags and looking pretty much as they would have in life as opposed to myth. The pace is slow, you have to know the story somewhat in advance because it is told in an eliptical fashion that omits many details, and there are graphic beheadings and human sacrifice as well.

Pasolini always looks at the myths he films through a modern eye. The film features two centaurs, one a silent half man-half horse that Jason knows as a child, the other a talkative man that Jason knows as an adult. One represents the unconscious that Jason is more in touch with before adulthood, the other represents the rational mind of adulthood. The appearance of the centaurs represents a modern, psychological interpretation of how myth itself operates in the unconscious as a structure to guide people but which is non-verbal, emotional, and needs to be expressed through langauge and story by the conscious.

Pasolini also returns the story to its context of the pagan society and rituals that existed before Christianity: Medea with her magic and the human sacrifice that is used to feed the crops. It's as if, in addition to reading Freud, Pasolini also read The Golden Bough, and uses it as another focal point in order to re-view the original myth.

The pagan context also makes the murders of her brother and sons more bearable to Medea in that, from her pagan viewpoint, the bodies return to be reborn.

This is as interesting a version of the myth as Dassin's individualized take on it was. Since Dassin returns to the play by Euripides, there is more text in his re-examination to use for emotion and drama. There is with Pasolini a kind of distanced, let's watch things unfold approach, much of the scenes actually devoid of any dialogue, with Pasolini's concern being the events rather than the text.

But both versions, if not straight renditions of the myth or the play based on the myth, bring the tale into the modern world, Dassin's version quite literally, and Pasolini's through modern symbols.

Like EDIPO RE, Pasolini's version, as a movie entertainment, is something you have to develop a taste for, that you either enjoy or find too rough and gritty as you watch. I found both these films more watchable and compelling than some Pasolini films (like THE DECAMERON) and less than others (like THE ARABIAN NIGHTS).

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Directed by Robert Aldrich
Screenplay by Leon Griffiths, from the novel by James Hadley Chase
Photography by Joseph Biroc
Music by Gerald Fried

Main Cast: Kim Darby, Scott Wilson, Tony Musante, Robert Lansing, Connie Stevens, Irene Dailey, Wesley Addy, Joey Faye, Ralph Waite, Matt Clark

New York, 1931. An heiress is kidnapped by gangsters.

I didn't like this very much. At 128 minutes it's vastly overstretched. Overcrammed with characters too, though I did get a limited amount of fun watching all those grotesque hick faces grimacing wildly amongst the gangsterly grand guignol.

I was going to say that it's not one of the director's best films, nor one of his most complex, and that it seems content to be just another contribution to the nostalgic rural gangster cycle initiated by BONNIE AND CLYDE, but I've just read Geoff Andrew in Time Out and he says -

"One of Aldrich's finest and most complex films... far more than just another contribution to the nostalgic rural gangster cycle initiated by BONNIE AND CLYDE."

I'd really like to see the 1948 British version of this (NO ORCHIDS FOR MISS BLANDISH). Everybody seems to agree that it's one of the worst films ever made, so I'd probably think it's great.

Directed by Anthony Mann
Screenplay by Reginald Rose, from the novel by Will C Brown
Photography by Ernest Haller
Music by Leigh Harline

Main Cast: Gary Cooper, Julie London, Lee J Cobb, Arthur O'Connell, Jack Lord, John Dehner

Old gunman gone straight is roped in for one last bank job.

I'll leave it to others (or nobody) to situate this film historically within Anthony Mann's contribution to the genre. I don't know anything about that. All I know is I pretty much liked this. The fights are poorly staged, Coop is awkward-looking, Lee J Cobb rather overdoes the bluster and swagger, and the ingredients are over-familiar, but that very over-familiarity is fascinating in itself just because all the old classic/classical/mythical allusions are so perfectly present and correct.

Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld
Screenplay by Scott Frank, from the novel by Elmore Leonard
Photography by Mark Plummer and Don Peterman
Music by John Lurie

Main Cast: John Travolta, Gene Hackman, Rene Russo, Danny DeVito, Dennis Farina, Delroy Lindo, James Gandolfini

Mafia debt-collector chases clients around and gets into films.

Nope, didn't like it very much. Amongst the convoluted plot mechanics there are some funny dialogues and wisecracks, and it does move sleekly, but underneath the veneer of gloss I detected a nasty aftertaste of mean-spiritedness or something. So, smart entertainment, but smart-assed too, and there's an awful lot of swearing for what, on the other hand, would be a jolly family comedy about Mob murderers.

Directed by Sidney Lumet
Screenplay by Paddy Chayevsky
Photography by Owen Roizman
Music by Elliot Lawrence

Main Cast: William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall, Wesley Addy, Ned Beatty, Beatrice Straight, William Prince

Newsman starts to tell things as they are and is used by his sponsors.

TV is almost used as a pod from INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS here - the box in the corner will dehumanize you if you don't watch out. Maybe the satire is even more chilling and pertinent today than it was back then.

Anyway, I thought NETWORK was very good indeed. I recognize that it might even be a great film, an important film. But I didn't like it. That smug, pompously didactic tone really finished it for me. Just as well Jane Fonda wasn't in it.

I watched Pasolini's MEDEA. Maria Callas looks amazing in close up after close up. Pasolini gets the look of the ancient landscape down again as he did in EDIPO RE but he presents the story with too many ellipses. As a result, you don't completely understand why Medea is so hurt and demands such a revenge in this version of the tale. Pasolini looks in at the tale from a self-conscious post-modern perspective which comes through strongest in the scene with the two centaurs. Pasolini knows the silent centaur represents the unconscious that has hidden knowledge that guides the other verbal centaur which represents the conscious and portrays it that way. Pasolini also returns to the tale the idea of Pagan belief and ritual. Medea can kill her brother and children because she comes from a background of human sacrifice where the dead are reborn in the fertility of the earth.

Also caught another episode of LAST EXILE and 2 documentaries about the Olympics, one about the ancient games, and another a history of the modern games. Trust me, the ancient games were much tougher. Despite basketball brawls, we've become much more civilized as a culture and we take it a lot more easier on ourselves than they did in the ancient past.

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What did you make of the Julie London character? On the one hand she was kind of fascinating as the object of Cobb's lust, who, after a lifetime of "unsatisfactory relationships" finds what love is through Coop (who can't return it). And yet, on the other hand, it almost sounds more interesting on paper, because the actual filmic presentation of her is, despite everything, conventional in the extreme.

Having said all that, I suppose that my reading (not even a reading) is just a reflection of how I perceived the film at the moment I saw it. Same goes for all comments on other things I see. Sometimes I'll find myself responding to a film on a purely technical level, or on a scene-to-scene basis. Occasionally I'll be so uninterested in the story that I'll shift my viewpoint and just concentrate on the score. Other times, usually when I'm most alert, I'll be so immersed in the underlying themes and their implications that the actual visuals seem almost an afterthought - although I don't think that's the best way to watch a film either.

As for Julie London, I feel nothing but pity for her character. First, Jack Lord & his men force her to striptease. Then Lee J. Cobb finally rapes her. He gets killed afterwards but so what--she's been worried she'll get raped the whole film long and that's just what happens to her. And ultimately because Gary Cooper is married elsewhere and is such an upright soul the two of them can't get together. The ending with the two of them riding away in the wagon is one of the saddest endings I've ever seen in any film. Not tragic because they're still alive, but sad.

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This was Japan's first film in 70mm and it was patterned after American biblical epics of the 50s with Buddha acting more like Jesus than the historic Siddhartha Gautama.

The film has two plus points going for it and then unfortunately the rest is just ridiculous bosh.

First, it looks amazing. It has some really great sets with strong visual appeal.

Second, it sounds amazing. Akira Ifukube's score is one of his very best. I'm going to exaggerate here, but it may be one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th Century in terms of art that they lost the studio tapes for this score. Ifukube developed a concert suite from the music but now that I've heard the complete score in the film, the suite just doesn't compare to the amount and quality of the music in its original version.

As for the film itself, it can't be taken seriously. It's just too didactic, too heavy-handed and preachy. The film wastes its cast in one-dimensional characterizations. The specific events that fill in the film's 160 minute length are just impossible to believe and downright laughable.

However, it's possible that another sensibility besides my own might enjoy this. Despite its problems, I liked it more than the people I showed it to and I'm sure there are others would be less harsh on it than I.