Lejink
Joined May 2007
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Ahh the memories... I can still recall my dear old granny taking me to see this on its original release back in 1968 and then some forty years going to see the stage show in Edinburgh with my wife where the advertising blurb was "You'll believe a car can fly" and it did! I even remember having my own Dinky-sized version of Chitty itself. So if you think I'm here to criticise it, you've got another thing coming.
Yes, it's blatantly clear to see producer Cubby Broccoli trying to replicate the success of "Mary Poppins" by employing Dick Van Dyke in the lead role with a Julie Andrews look and sound-a-like opposiite him, the Sherman Brothers contributing the soundtrack alongside other Disney creatives in the background, as well as setting the story back in the Edwardian era, so I that when the family pays a visit to the local funfair, you half expect them to bump into Miss Practically Perfect in Every Way flying her kite.
One of the criticisms of the time was that the film ran too long and it's true, the film does struggle to change gears after the first half, with the contrivance of the imagined story of the pirate ship and the run-ins with the bumptious but bloodthirsty Crown Prince of Vulgaria and his villainous Child Catcher.
Long before we get to that point, we've been introduced to Van Dyke's deliberately named, crackpot inventor Caractacus Potts (geddit?), his two adoring young children, a boy and a girl and his dotty father, played by the great Lionel Jeffries. The kids are desperate for dad to buy the old car-wreck they play in and when he comes by the money for a bit of spontaneous and dance at the local funfair, as you do, he miraculously fashions for them a silver dream machine, quickly christened Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which miraculously can navigate both the sea and the air, thus setting up a series of hair-raising adventures as well as a little romance with Sally Ann Howes' delightfully named Truly Scrumptious, in true Ian Fleming fashion.
I enjoyed it today I'm sure as much as my 7 year-old self did in the old La Scala cinema in the middle of Glasgow, with some excellent effects stunts and choreography, characterful playing by all and sundry, including such familiar faces Barbara Windsor, James Robertson-Justice, who gets to pronounce my favourite line in the miss "Too late, had your chance, muffed it!" when dismissing Caractacus, Gert Frobe and surprisingly Benny Hill as the toymaker and probably best of all, the excellent soundtrack, including the peripatetic title song, knockabout "The Old Bamboo" and the lilting lullaby "Hushabye Mountain".
A delightful viewing experience and one I won't wait another nearly sixty years or so to enjoy again.
Yes, it's blatantly clear to see producer Cubby Broccoli trying to replicate the success of "Mary Poppins" by employing Dick Van Dyke in the lead role with a Julie Andrews look and sound-a-like opposiite him, the Sherman Brothers contributing the soundtrack alongside other Disney creatives in the background, as well as setting the story back in the Edwardian era, so I that when the family pays a visit to the local funfair, you half expect them to bump into Miss Practically Perfect in Every Way flying her kite.
One of the criticisms of the time was that the film ran too long and it's true, the film does struggle to change gears after the first half, with the contrivance of the imagined story of the pirate ship and the run-ins with the bumptious but bloodthirsty Crown Prince of Vulgaria and his villainous Child Catcher.
Long before we get to that point, we've been introduced to Van Dyke's deliberately named, crackpot inventor Caractacus Potts (geddit?), his two adoring young children, a boy and a girl and his dotty father, played by the great Lionel Jeffries. The kids are desperate for dad to buy the old car-wreck they play in and when he comes by the money for a bit of spontaneous and dance at the local funfair, as you do, he miraculously fashions for them a silver dream machine, quickly christened Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which miraculously can navigate both the sea and the air, thus setting up a series of hair-raising adventures as well as a little romance with Sally Ann Howes' delightfully named Truly Scrumptious, in true Ian Fleming fashion.
I enjoyed it today I'm sure as much as my 7 year-old self did in the old La Scala cinema in the middle of Glasgow, with some excellent effects stunts and choreography, characterful playing by all and sundry, including such familiar faces Barbara Windsor, James Robertson-Justice, who gets to pronounce my favourite line in the miss "Too late, had your chance, muffed it!" when dismissing Caractacus, Gert Frobe and surprisingly Benny Hill as the toymaker and probably best of all, the excellent soundtrack, including the peripatetic title song, knockabout "The Old Bamboo" and the lilting lullaby "Hushabye Mountain".
A delightful viewing experience and one I won't wait another nearly sixty years or so to enjoy again.
I came to this 10-part Netflix gangland drama with some genre-fatigue after watching recent similarly themed fictional series like "Kin" and "This Town is Ours" as well as the true-crime documentary "The Kinehans". I even tried to get into the BBC series "Gangs of London" but gave up after one episode of such unbelievable, ludicrously plotted, cartoon violence.
I was lured to this series mainly by the A-list cast featuring such notables as Pierce Brosnan, Helen Mirren and Tom Hardy with a host of younger, talented actors in support. It goes without saying that the action revolves around a feud between two competing factions, as indeed all the other aforementioned series do, and equally unsurprisingly that the disputes are amongst Irish families, as of course are "The Kinehans" and the series it inspired, the clue's in the name, "Kin".
So far, so stereotypically good, although I did wonder at times if I was watching the second semi-final of the Irish gang of the year competition with the winners of the Harrigan - Richardson contest to square off against the Kinsellas / Kinehans in the final.
That said, "Mobland" (terrible title!) did work its way to its expected bloody endjng with many a twist and turn along the way, some less believable and clichéd than others, but when it was good (I'm especially thinking of episode eight and the explosive introduction of Toby Jones as a bought-and-sold poljce chief), it was very good, although I was a little disappointed by the conclusion, even as I see its everyone-still-standing climax as a precursor to a second series.
For me, Tom Hardy, was the glue holding everything together, able to convey menace as much with a whisper as with a knife or a gun. Brosnan and Mirren, however, set about their lines like ham-busters with the latter's Oirish accent crashing down somewhere in the Irish sea.
A little too starry for its own good, this series nevertheless grew on me as it wore on with enough teasers in the final episode to ensure that I'll be back for the second series when it lands.
I was lured to this series mainly by the A-list cast featuring such notables as Pierce Brosnan, Helen Mirren and Tom Hardy with a host of younger, talented actors in support. It goes without saying that the action revolves around a feud between two competing factions, as indeed all the other aforementioned series do, and equally unsurprisingly that the disputes are amongst Irish families, as of course are "The Kinehans" and the series it inspired, the clue's in the name, "Kin".
So far, so stereotypically good, although I did wonder at times if I was watching the second semi-final of the Irish gang of the year competition with the winners of the Harrigan - Richardson contest to square off against the Kinsellas / Kinehans in the final.
That said, "Mobland" (terrible title!) did work its way to its expected bloody endjng with many a twist and turn along the way, some less believable and clichéd than others, but when it was good (I'm especially thinking of episode eight and the explosive introduction of Toby Jones as a bought-and-sold poljce chief), it was very good, although I was a little disappointed by the conclusion, even as I see its everyone-still-standing climax as a precursor to a second series.
For me, Tom Hardy, was the glue holding everything together, able to convey menace as much with a whisper as with a knife or a gun. Brosnan and Mirren, however, set about their lines like ham-busters with the latter's Oirish accent crashing down somewhere in the Irish sea.
A little too starry for its own good, this series nevertheless grew on me as it wore on with enough teasers in the final episode to ensure that I'll be back for the second series when it lands.
I must admit I didn't know who Colonel Billy Mitchell was nor was I aware of this landmark legal case in American armed forces history. In the mid-50's, director Otto Preminger was on his way to becoming something of an agent provocateur in the Hollywood community, tackling taboo subjects and generally pushing back the outdated strictures of the then prevailing but ailing Production Code.
Here he dramatises a contentious affair from the 1920's when Mitchell, a heavily decorated WWI pilot and commander in the nascent US airforce fought for greater recognition for the service and better protection of its pilots who were usually expected to go up in dangerous, poorly maintained planes, often resulting in calamitous accidents causing a disproportionate loss of life. Of course, the airforce was then the new kid on the block of the collective armed forces using relatively new technology so that it was, from the start, struggling for recognition and Mitchell it was who took up the cudgels against the powers that be, all the way up to the president himself, ultimately to safeguard the lives of the brave young men in his care as well as pointing out the future importance of the aeroplane in the protection of the country.
It took the disaster of the crash of the US airship Shenandoah, commanded by a close friend of Mitchell's, to compel him to speak truth to power, lambasting his superiors for their disregard of the flying community which he termed treasonable. For the military authorities, who'd already demoted him and consigned him to a demeaning desk job, this was a protest too far, resulting in his highly publicised court martial, a case he was unlikely to win but which would give him the chance to further his grievances and in the process pass on an unheeded warning of a future Japanese air strike on Pearl Harbour.
This is an informative, solidly-made feature which ultimately settles on the actual trial itself, when Mitchell, played by a now middle-aged Gary Cooper rises from his sick bed to defend himself against prosecuting counsel Rod Steiger's withering jibes about his lack of patriotism. This in itself presents an interesting confrontation of the old Hollywood represented by golden age star Cooper, with the new Brando-led school of method acting of which Steiger was a prominent member. Me, I'm giving the laurels to old Coop, with Steiger, for me, overplaying his part with his too mannered playing.
Otherwise, it's an acceptable, if hardly enlivening movie, bringing to life, albeit with a little fustiness around the ages, a lesser-known, but still important slice of American history, which I was grateful if not ultimately ecstatic to learn about.
Preminger of course would have another crack at a courtroom trial in "Anatomy of a Murder". Here, perhaps constrained by an adherence to real life events, things never quite come to the boil.
On a minor note, it was interesting to see future TV stars of the 60's, Jack Lord and Elizabeth Montgomery in prominent roles as indeed, a husband and wife pairing. Whilst she turned out not to be bewitched by Steiger's bullying atracks on the witness stand, we were left wondering if Lord's future self might have had Danno book someone for "Murder One" over his own demise.
Here he dramatises a contentious affair from the 1920's when Mitchell, a heavily decorated WWI pilot and commander in the nascent US airforce fought for greater recognition for the service and better protection of its pilots who were usually expected to go up in dangerous, poorly maintained planes, often resulting in calamitous accidents causing a disproportionate loss of life. Of course, the airforce was then the new kid on the block of the collective armed forces using relatively new technology so that it was, from the start, struggling for recognition and Mitchell it was who took up the cudgels against the powers that be, all the way up to the president himself, ultimately to safeguard the lives of the brave young men in his care as well as pointing out the future importance of the aeroplane in the protection of the country.
It took the disaster of the crash of the US airship Shenandoah, commanded by a close friend of Mitchell's, to compel him to speak truth to power, lambasting his superiors for their disregard of the flying community which he termed treasonable. For the military authorities, who'd already demoted him and consigned him to a demeaning desk job, this was a protest too far, resulting in his highly publicised court martial, a case he was unlikely to win but which would give him the chance to further his grievances and in the process pass on an unheeded warning of a future Japanese air strike on Pearl Harbour.
This is an informative, solidly-made feature which ultimately settles on the actual trial itself, when Mitchell, played by a now middle-aged Gary Cooper rises from his sick bed to defend himself against prosecuting counsel Rod Steiger's withering jibes about his lack of patriotism. This in itself presents an interesting confrontation of the old Hollywood represented by golden age star Cooper, with the new Brando-led school of method acting of which Steiger was a prominent member. Me, I'm giving the laurels to old Coop, with Steiger, for me, overplaying his part with his too mannered playing.
Otherwise, it's an acceptable, if hardly enlivening movie, bringing to life, albeit with a little fustiness around the ages, a lesser-known, but still important slice of American history, which I was grateful if not ultimately ecstatic to learn about.
Preminger of course would have another crack at a courtroom trial in "Anatomy of a Murder". Here, perhaps constrained by an adherence to real life events, things never quite come to the boil.
On a minor note, it was interesting to see future TV stars of the 60's, Jack Lord and Elizabeth Montgomery in prominent roles as indeed, a husband and wife pairing. Whilst she turned out not to be bewitched by Steiger's bullying atracks on the witness stand, we were left wondering if Lord's future self might have had Danno book someone for "Murder One" over his own demise.