Empty Balcony: The Third Man

The Third ManHow presumptuous of me. I didn’t realize how classic this film was when I decided to watch it for a review. How does one review an acknowledged work of art? What more could I add to the conversation but my own ignorance? Academic papers have been written about this movie. In contrast, I have no credentials or expertise. I have never been employed as a film critic. This film, and its potential viewers, do not need me to affirm that it is indeed an indispensable piece of cinematic history. Were I to point out flaws or even offer gentle criticism, it could be dismissed out of hand as the scribblings of an amateur. That’s how good The Third Man is.

Directed by Carol Reed, The Third Man is an adaptation of the novella by the same name by Graham Greene, who also wrote the screenplay. In the film, Joseph Cotten plays Holly Martins, a down on his luck writer of cheap Western novels. He arrives in post-war Vienna, 1949, after receiving a message from an old friend, Harry Lime (Orson Welles), offering employment. Being only a few years since the close of the war, Vienna is still an occupied city, divided into four sectors run by the Americans, Russians, British, and French. Its streets are clear and clean, but there is nary a block to be seen that doesn’t have a pile of rubble or the shell of a building — the remains of the Allied bombing campaign. Continue reading “Empty Balcony: The Third Man”

Photo Dump: A School, Somewhere

Because yahoo locked my flickr account and threw away the key, I’ll be posting photographs on this site on occasion. The first photo dump is an abandoned school I found while driving through rural Ohio. Unlike some other urban explorers, I would have no problem with revealing the location, except for the fact that cops are trolling the internet these days looking for pics like this that are tagged with a location or GPS coordinates in the Exif data, and then issuing arrest warrants for the photographer for trespassing. That’s pretty damned underhanded, and, in my opinion, a waste of police resources. Anyway, the pics:

Potpourri à la Lupica

It’s been a week since I’ve seen anything in the news about Last Tango in Paris. I thought we were supposed to be outraged about that movie. That’s one of the things I hate about Twitter and celebrities. It amplifies nonsense because once one celebrity tweets their outrage, every other celebrity with a Twitter account had better join in or they look like assholes, but only for a couple of days or so. And then it’s on to the next outrage. I don’t even use Twitter, but I’m aware of Twitter outrage and Twitter wars and everything else because half the news articles on the web these days are recounts of what people have tweeted. Continue reading “Potpourri à la Lupica”

Shitty Movie Sundays: The New Barbarians

What an incredible piece of shit. Enzo G. Castellari is my new favorite shitty filmmaker. He elevated the art of shitty filmmaking to sublime proportions. His films are cheap, derivative to the point of intellectual theft, completely shameless yet self-aware, and entertaining as all hell to the true shitty movie connoisseur. They are also films that play to the basest appetites of an audience. For example, this is the third film I’ve seen that was helmed by Signore Castellari, and in every one a character is roasted alive by a flamethrower. That’s dedication to craft. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: The New Barbarians”

Trumpland: The Beginning of the End?

I am not a fan of apocalyptic rhetoric. We have had far too many private and public citizens welcome the idea of Revelation occurring in our lifetimes. Mostly, this nonsense was brought on by Barack Obama being in the Oval Office. His very existence was taken as a sign that America as we knew it was coming to an end. In some ways they were right. His election to the presidency was a seismic shift in the power structures of the United States, ending a centuries long monopoly on power by white men. But where one side saw his election as confirmation that the United States was a nation that embraced its future, others saw the change as a threat. The horrible words that were showered on the Obama administration for the last eight years by the ignorant, the racist, and those who sought to manipulate these groups, has been a constant shame for America. No other president since Lincoln was met with such hate by the opposition, and for what? Continue reading “Trumpland: The Beginning of the End?”

Empty Balcony: Alien Nation

There is a nasty amount of racial tension in America right now, accentuated by President-elect Trump’s impending inauguration next month. I hate that current events are affecting my perception of Alien Nation, the 1988 sci-fi film from director Graham Baker and screenwriter Rockne S. O’Bannon, but they are. Really, the filmmakers bear most of the blame, here. A huge part of the fictional universe Graham and O’Bannon crafted deals with refugees assimilating into American culture and having an effect, both positive and negative, on native demographics. Boy, I really need to find a way to flip off the politics switch in my brain when I’m watching movies. Continue reading “Empty Balcony: Alien Nation”

Half-Baked Ideas: Congressional Reapportionment

There aren’t enough members of the House of Representatives here in the United States. I know that the idea that there are not enough politicians in Washington is anathema to the current American condition, but as the House is currently apportioned, some states have disproportionate representation. Continue reading “Half-Baked Ideas: Congressional Reapportionment”

Shitty Movie Sundays: No Escape

Recently, I had a vague memory of a movie. I swore that I had seen it, way back in the dark and distant days of the 1990s. I couldn’t remember what it was called, but I was having visions of Ray Liotta running around a jungle prison and killing people. What was this film? Had I imagined it? Was it a dream? Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: No Escape”