The USA: Nowhere else like it…still
Posted on July 3rd, 2009 by bshears
Happy Independence Day from InfinityBound.com and…
INFINITYbound
Take the first step
Alan Furst’s Top Five Spy Books
Posted on June 17th, 2009 by bshears
Master World War II espionage novelist recommends his five favorites.
Oddly enough, it was Five Best spy novels by Charles McCurry that led us to sample one of Furst’s. We believe it was Blood of Victory. And we then proceeded to read then all .
Suggestion: read them in any order, but save Night Soldiers
Hellhole, Sportland Pier, Wildwood, NJ, 1974
Posted on June 3rd, 2009 by bshears
Hellhole
Came across this image of a postcard from the North Wildwood boardwalk on CardCow. It’s an amusement ride called Hellhole. The cylindrical room inside spun, much like the Trabant, an outdoor spinning ride where you’re standing but belted in. There were no belts or seats in the Hellhole cylinder, which was decorated with flames and devils, and had a gallery around and above the drum where you had to spend tickets just to watch. The ride would start and the cylinder would spin. In a few moments centrifugal force would paste you back against the wall. Faster and faster and then you were pinned there. Then the floor dropped away! And you were stuck on the wall for a couple dozen more revolutions fifteen feet above the floor. Some riders would get fancy and spin themselves around so they were upside down.
I rode it many times in the late 60s/early 70s. The times I remember most vividly were when I was about 12. Sister Joanne, cousin Michael and I were on Sportland Pier. The other two didn’t want to go on Hellhole, so I went on once alone. Then Mike wanted to go and I went on with him. When we got off we convinced Joanne, and the three of us went. So I rode it three times that night, and after the third time, his second, Michael came off and threw up.
“You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din”
Posted on May 23rd, 2009 by bshears
Bolstering Big Hollywood as the go-to online spot for real writing about movies, Schizoid Mann’s manly and surprisingly “otherly” (no spoilers please) piece on Gunga Din is one of the best posts in the site’s short life. Very little of value about movies has been written or presented in the mass print or electronic dinosaur media for decades, decades i tell you, and that includes the Oscar broadcasts. (and excepting Robert Osborne on Turner Classic.) So if you’re interested in film and all manner of topics surrounding the art and the business of it you’ll want to give it a look.
“Kali!”
We watched Gunga Din here at the Shears Compound just a few months ago as a matter of fact; exposed Lance, Leo and Escella to it, or tried to anyway, and Mrs. Shears enjoyed it as well. This continued a family tradition of appreciation for the work. I remember my Ma and old late Paw loved the film, and the reason I remember is I have a clear echo of them in the 1960s pointing out that Sam Jaffe, who play Gunga played Dr. Zorba, hospital boss of neurotic TV neurosurgeon Ben Casey.
So hopefully they’ll pass it on to their offspring, to watch in whatever format story-telling will take further down the century. Maybe they’ll absorb it through their skin. The Movie Patch. Whatever. Gunga Din will be there because it’s just good storytelling.
Some people can’t watch those old films. They mock the stagey speech and sneer at the image quality. They’ve been raised, and conditioned, on color and the (supposed) naturalistic speech patterns of modern film/TV. But one of the facets I like best about films from before the 70s is that they speak the lines clearly, so that you can understand what the hell they are saying. This must have lent discipline to the writing, since the writer knows in the back of his mind that the lines he transfers to the actors mouths will be heard. Write lines for modern hacktors like Sean Penn and you know he will not only change them, but you might not even be able to decipher what he changed them to, since mumbling is what passes for acting now. When screening modern film/TV, on average once per viewing, and often more often, we have to pause and go back to see what was said. Sometimes we even have to turn on the subtitles, for an American film!
Maybe improved sound is the reason. The audio technology from the infancy and adolescence of the talkies may have required more enunciation; and so the actors didn’t have to worry about modulation or their vocal instrument, they just spoke the lines, had some personality and looked great, something everyone in this film managed — even poor, brave Gunga.
Yay: The Blue Max and Barry Lyndon. Separated at Birth?
Posted on May 4th, 2009 by bshears
Two of our rewatchable faves are the WW I aerial drama, The Blue Max, and the painting that moves, Barry Lyndon. We watched the former on Netflix Watch Instantly over the last two days and noticed striking similarities between the two.
It goes beyond the severe market-directed miscasting of American pretty boys in European settings. In Max, dreamy, at-the-time, box office name George Peppard is a German WWI pilot, speaking plain-spoken American English, surrounded by actual Europeans — one of which is, James Mason. In spike od Paerppars presence and clear acting abilities, it makes you wonder, what are all those foreigners doing there?
Similarly In Lyndon almost ten years later, Ryan O’Neal is almost laughable trying to pull off that accent as he makes his way across 18th century Europe, completely outclassed by everyone on screen, even the beautiful lightweight Marisa Berenson. But the movie wouldn’t have been made without him, and he is a bit on the photogenic side.
No. That’s not all. The macro-story thrusts in both are also exactly the same. Both feature upstart social climbing, not-so-loveable rogues who value the trappings of wealth and fame but never get the hang of what having class is all about. The Blue Max is tragedy because does redeem, slightly, then gets his anyway. B. Lyndon never does redeem and gets rewarded with a fate worst than death, for him. Obscurity.
Still. Some movies rise above poor casting. Besides all the well-done flying and dogfights, the final dramatic airfield sequence in The Blue Max makes the picture. Thank director John Guillermin and James Mason for that. And the final image stuck with me a long time after I first saw it in the theater. I was ten and believe you me the Ursula Andress topless-with-towel-yoke scene had some staying power as well.
Barry Lyndon is Kubrick making art, and it has some enjoyable and authentic battle scenes as well. Visually impeccable, the long sequence of Redmond Barry’s dissolution set to the Schubert Trio Op. 100 will never be matched. They just don’t make ‘em like that anymore.
Yay: Internet Medieval Sourcebook
Posted on May 3rd, 2009 by bshears
A site from Fordham University with original sources: The Internet Medieval Sorucebook.
Found in our casting around for information on Tatar horsemen. here’s a firsthand account. Ibn al-Athir admits to the willful suppression of his memories of horrors of the Tatar horsemen on Islam, and “all men generally.”
Yay: “Big hitter, the Lama.”
Posted on April 28th, 2009 by bshears
Posted the text of this previously as a Money Quote. Here’s the clip. From Caddyshack, Carl Spackler’s famous speech about caddying for the Dalai Lama.
Nay: Synedoche, New York
Posted on April 26th, 2009 by bshears
Hate to start this out on the negative note but we had high hopes for an interesting cinematic experience when we self-programmed this via Netflix. So whose fault is it? With Synedoche, New York we got an incomprehensible, self-reflexive scatological mess, and so ended up with a quite negative evening of self-programming ourselves, Mrs. Shears and I. Charles Kaufman is not a genius. Let’s go out on a limb. He’s the Hollywood Approved genius, an American who makes self-focused films. They are not self-indulgent, like Woody Allen or Oliver Stone because the self-reflexivity is what he does. He’s the apex of that trend, started by, who else, the Beatles, when they began to mention their own songs in their songs. He’s is the acknowledged “art” writer in Hollywood today so that there is at least one Amarican whose name the film snobs can point to and then have everyone nod at each other is mutual self-gratification. Yes. He’s a genius.
But he’s also not a genius.
Because geniuses would have a large body of work besides what would be considered their masterwork. Kaufman may not ever come up to the level of Adaptation again, but he wouldn’t have to. He’d just have to make something that doesn’t concentrate so much on his or someone else’s digestive tracts. And since he also directed the mess, he’s running neck and neck with M. Knight (”Shamalama Ding Dong”) Shyamalan — who has never, and likely will never, match the competent storytelling he exhibited in The Sixth Sense – for the title of One-Hit Hollywood wonder.
See, too long already for a short post.
By the way. Speaking of the film snobs, They’re the ones who have destroyed the presentation of foreign films on DVD. Was I the only one in who preferred the dubbing of voices to subtitles? I’d gladly give up the authenic voice and lips synching in exchange for the ability to watch the movie. Instead we are forced to read the screenplay on-screen. I haven’tseen one foreign film on DVD where dubbing in English is a choice. Most of these film will already have an Englihs tracks. Just slap it on the disc.
Yay or Nay
Posted on April 26th, 2009 by bshears
We’ve been lax and we won’t make excuses (we hate that) but it’s only because we tend to long posts and time has been short; we have another big project going on, which you’ll near about when it happens. Not before. Remember what Hemingway said:
You lose it if you talk about it.
That may already be too much. We never thought of this site as an outlet for every lttle thing that comes to our mind, but on-topic stuff for a while we’ll concentrate, as a self-training exercise, on doing short posts of approve/disapprove, yea (yay) or nay on movies, games, etc.
We have tons of draft posts too so maybe we can clear them out by making them into Yay or Nay briefs. In a few weeks our project will be a first draft and should allow us to free up some and our collaborator take over. We have reviews of Close Combat IV: Wacht am Rhein, and of the horror game, Penumbra in the works.
