Dish of the Day
Just some film musings of a more succinct, spontaneous and sometimes seditious nature:
Wednesday, January 25, 2023
A topic of divisive discussion in our cinema chatroom (all readers are encouraged to join here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/902349343110685) relates to:
The recently announced Oscar nominees for which a member’s reply of “Who cares?” received a flurry of heated responses including:
“ [a] couple million people”
“What’s wrong with bringing peoples attention to great films and acknowledging great work”
“People in a cinema group”
(and)
“whine whine whine. I'd say the immense audience the telecast gets every year would be a good place to start with who cares”
… all of which the questioner seemed respectful and accepting of in his replies.
Then came my response:
“I definitely see where you [the person who asked the rhetorical question] are coming from. The latest trend I've noticed on a few of these award shows (and last year's AA's) is to modernise them with hip-hop along with a new-found celebratory attitude of indifference and blatantly obvious p.c. pandering, all in a shameful attempt to shun creative humour and even worse, cinema's history. And I haven't even gotten around to the current films themselves, which may not be credibly challenged across the board or even by category, but are susceptible to being negatively assessed by recent filmmaking trends partly of their own making.”
Of course there were loads of other responses on this post regarding the nominees and chances of winning etc but then “who cares?”
On TCM today…
Kent Smith, Ann Sheridan
… is Nora Prentiss portrayed by Ann Sheridan. This first-class film noir, previously reviewed here, will make its striking impression at 12:45 pm PST.
Duel is director Steven Spielberg’s first commercially viable feature-length motion picture.
Before becoming famous, the now celebrated filmmaker slightly expanded (from 74 to 90 minutes) his own 1971 TV movie for subsequent theatrical release. It’s about a monster of a truck’s persistent deadly pursuit of an innocent driver along the California desert’s open highways. Viewers can revel in an unparalleled piece of action-suspense storytelling that benefits most from Spielberg and Company’s carefully choreographed and boldly executed shot compositions. The rapidly changing visuals from such extreme but always identifiable perspectives, provide a momentum that can only be regarded as one of cinema’s most extraordinary marvels: mesmerising, intense and visceral. Duel’s object of menace remains, unlike Jaws’ devil of the deep, captivatingly enigmatic. Like Jaws, the director thankfully restrains from emphasising his characters’ empathetic emotions allowing us to watch them unfold in a less encumbered fashion. Dennis Weaver channels, in part, his eccentric persona from Touch of Evil * (minus most of the craziness) for his increasingly relatable and tormented businessman/driver. Again, the technical results cannot be overpraised: this is as unrelentingly dynamic as the story’s title of vehicular combat might suggest. Credit goes to the director for his elaborate and unique approach to storyboarding, ** Richard Matheson’s inspired, lean and mean script taken from his own short story, and Jack A. Marta’s all on location virtuoso cinematography wedded to Frank Morriss’ editing of sheer perfection. Duel will take place on TCM (updated) Friday, March 22 (2024) at 9 pm PDT.
* Steven Spielberg wanted Dennis Weaver for this crucial role based on the highly strung character he played in Touch of Evil (1958). In the earlier film, Weaver nervously repeats the phrase “… another thing coming.” Spielberg recreates Weaver’s skittish nature In Duel’s cafe scene where he confronts someone whom he believes to be the truck driver. Weaver says nervously "You've got another thing coming“ as he did for Orson Welles in his 1958 film.
** Steven Spielberg and his crew made an enormous map containing an aerial perspective of the road that the vehicles would travel upon, drawing each event that happens along with the multiple camera placements used to record them.
TCM's current monthly schedule can be confirmed by clicking on any of the above images. For those who live in parts of the U.S. other than the western region, the time zone can be adjusted in the upper right-hand corner of TCM's programme.
A.G.