Blogcritics

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Movie Review: Rooster Cogburn - Katharine Hepburn Centenary

Ian Woolstencroft — Wed, 16 May 2007 12:16:27 EDT

This follow-up to True Grit sees Wayne reprising his Oscar-winning role as Marshal Reuben J. "Rooster" Cogburn six years after that western classic. The pairing of John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn should have been a recipe for cinema gold, but thanks to a less than original story and some overacting, particularly by Wayne, the film is far less than the sum of its parts. After Judge Parker (John McIntire) takes away Rooster’s badge for using excessive force, he gives the one-eyed, drunken lawman one last chance to show he can bring a wanted felon back alive. Cogburn is put on the trail of Hawk (Richard Jordan) and his gang who’ve stolen a consignment of nitro-glycerine from the US Cavalry. He’s barely set out after them when he encounters Eula Goodnight whose father, a Reverend bringing the word of God to the local Indians, has been murdered by the gang, along with many of the Indians. He sets off after Hawk with Eula and an Indian boy, Wolf, orphaned in the tragedy. His intention is to leave the pair at the nearest trading post. Needless to say things don’t go according to plan. Blending elements of True Grit and The African Queen must have seemed like a good idea at the time but it inevitably draws comparisons with those superior films. Wayne was almost always at his best with a strong director behind the camera - John Ford and Howard Hawks are, between them, responsible for more Wayne classics than every other director combined – and that element is sadly missing here. True Grit’s director Henry Hathaway had a working relationship with Wayne that dated back to the early 40s when they made Shepherd of the Hills together, and while none of the movies they made rank alongside those of Ford and Hawks, they did produce such gems as The Sons of Katie Elder and North to Alaska. Hathaway was clearly a man Wayne respected and his track record (Kiss of Death, Call Northside 777) no doubt gave him some added weight. Stuart Millar, the director of Rooster Cogburn, had only one other film under his belt and no previous working relationship with Duke and he clearly didn’t want to be the one to tell the superstar to tone down his performance a couple of notches. In True Grit, Rooster had just the right amount of humour. In the sequel he’s become almost a figure of fun, a caricature of Wayne’s award-winning performance. His early scenes with John McIntire are the worst, with Cogburn's mannerisms accentuated to a ridiculous level. Once he meets up with Hepburn things settle down a little and the two do spark off each other quite well, although there are still a few missteps along the way. For Eula Goodnight, Hepburn dusts off her spinster character from The African Queen (and brings much of that film's plot along with it). It’s the sort of role that came easy to the actress, strong-willed and feisty with a touch of arrogance. One can only imagine what the stars might have accomplished had they had a vehicle more worthy of their talents; just look at her work in On Golden Pond, with that other cinematic titan Henry Fonda, to see what she could accomplish when challenged. The only actor, other than Wayne, to return from True Grit is Strother Martin, but here he’s playing a completely different character. He only gets one brief scene, but the inveterate scene stealer is always a welcome sight. It’s this moment, as the lawman commandeers a raft, that Duke comes closest to capturing his original performance. It’s from the underrated Richard Jordan, as the villain of the piece, that the film gets its best performance, but he’s given far too little to do. His confrontation with good bad guy (or bad good guy?) Breed, an old acquaintance of Rooster’s whose loyalties are divided, is over in a flash. Not only does the film waste time building up the animosity between the two with no payoff, but it also wastes the talents of Anthony Zerbe as Breed. The film is not without enjoyment for the die-hard Wayne or Hepburn fan (and I definitely qualify as the former) but the uninitiated would be far better served watching True Grit or The African Queen than this ill-conceived attempt to merge the two. And for all its faults it's still far better than the True Grit TV movie starring Warren Oates that followed a few years later.

Ian Woolstencroft was brought up on a diet of John Wayne movies and Marvel Comics and still has a passion for both. Now as a blogcritic he finally understands what Spider-Man's Uncle Ben meant when he said 'With great power comes great responsibility.'

Movie Review: The African Queen - Katharine Hepburn Centenary Celebration

Ian Woolstencroft — Tue, 15 May 2007 09:38:54 EDT

The African Queen tells the sort of adventure story you don’t see anymore, more interested in characters than big explosions. It’s the simplest of stories but it’s told so perfectly that it elevates the material to the level of classic. A missionary and his sister are spreading the word of God in German East Africa at the start of the First World War. When German troops decimate the village and take the locals to join their army they leave the Reverend Samuel Sayer (a brief but excellent turn by Robert Morley) injured and so traumatised he loses the will to live. His sister, finding herself alone in the jungle, takes sanctuary with riverboat Captain Charlie Allnut. She persuades him to set out downriver on a mission to destroy a German warship. As Rose and Charlie, Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart are the ultimate mismatched couple – a straight-laced spinster and a gin-swilling riverboat captain who’s almost as dilapidated as his vessel. Hepburn would play similar prim-and-proper parts in years to come but they never matched her role here with its perfect blend of drama and comedy. Throughout the film she switches nimbly between light-hearted moments like the afternoon tea scene and emotional drama as she watches her brother wither away and die. Bogart is no less impressive as Charlie Allnut, going through a journey that transforms him from a crusty old river rat intent on self preservation to a love-struck convert on what appears a suicide mission. Bogart had nothing in common with Charlie, with the exception that both liked the odd tipple, but he completely convinces as the working class engineer and the film won the actor his only Oscar. Both actors weren’t typical Hollywood stars. Bogart didn’t have the looks of your usual leading man and Hepburn, particularly by this point in her career, was no oil painting despite the studio's attempt to portray her as such (just take a look at the film’s poster). Yet they showed that talent was far more important than looks and by this stage were two of the world’s biggest movie stars. In his commentary on the UK DVD of the film, cinematographer Jack Cardiff mentions some other actors who were considered for the parts (Bette Davis and David Niven!) but this is one of those films where it’s impossible to envisage anyone else in the roles. Director John Huston loved to shoot on location, no matter how far flung that location was, not only making The African Queen in Uganda but also The Barbarian and the Geisha with John Wayne in Japan. It gives them a sense of authenticity absent from many of the films of the era. How much of Huston’s desire to go to Africa was down to The African Queen and how much to his wanting to hunt big game is open to speculation (check out Clint Eastwood’s White Hunter, Black Heart for a fictionalised take on the production) but whatever the reason, it resulted in an amazing visual experience brilliantly captured by ace cinematographer Jack Cardiff. With the exception of Huston and Bogart everyone in the cast and crew fell ill during the production and Hepburn didn’t fully recover until some months after her return to America. The experience made such an impact on the actress that years later she wrote a book about it -- The Making of The African Queen: Or, How I Went to Africa With Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind. Incidentally the director and leading man avoided ill health in true Hollywood hellraiser fashion by never drinking the water, Bogart later commenting, "All I ate was baked beans, canned asparagus and Scotch whiskey. Whenever a fly bit Huston or me, it dropped dead." The film was worth such hardships however and it remains a firm favourite of movie lovers. On 12 May, the centenary of Hepburn’s birth, IMDb ran a poll asking users to pick their favourite from 15 of the actress’s best films and The African Queen came out on top with over 20% of the 11442 votes.

Katharine Hepburn Centenary: The First Lady of Cinema

Ian Woolstencroft — Sat, 12 May 2007 10:11:04 EDT

May marks the centenary of the birth of three of cinema’s biggest stars – Katharine Hepburn (May 12), Laurence Olivier (May 22), and John Wayne (May 26). Over the course of the month I’ll be revisiting some of my favourite films featuring these iconic stars. First up is Katharine Hepburn, an actress who could turn her hand to high drama or screwball comedy with equal dexterity. Hepburn wasn’t your typical Hollywood star, something that she made clear from the start by demanding $1500 a week to appear in films (she wasn’t even making $100 for her stage appearances at the time). It set the tone for one of the most successful careers the movie capital has ever known. With just three films under her belt, she won her first Oscar for Morning Glory in 1933 and the same year stared in the smash hit Little Women, widely regarded as the best version of the oft-filmed Louisa May Alcott novel. It wasn’t all wine and roses though; after early hits she suffered a string of flops and in 1938 was one of the stars voted “box office poison” in a poll taken by motion picture exhibitors (she was in good company though – Fred Astaire also made the list). A return to the stage would lead to her next cinematic smash. The reviews for her stage performance in The Philadelphia Story were excellent and a hugely successful film version followed. It is a measure of the influence she wielded that she had director and co-star approval in her contract. It’s often the case that two stars will be indelibly linked in the public's mind, both on and off screen; Burton and Taylor, Bogart and Bacall, Newman and Woodward. Possibly the greatest of these pairings was Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. All in all they made nine films together between 1942 and 1967, including such classics as Woman of the Year, Adam’s Rib, and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, which earned Hepburn another best actress Oscar. While the pair were romantically involved off screen, they never married, and in typically un-Hollywood Hepburn fashion tried to keep their relationship as much out of the limelight as possible. In her 40s she appeared in possibly her most famous role as Rose Sayer opposite Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen. The film was shot on location in Africa, causing discomfort for most of the cast and crew, Hepburn included. She would later write about the experience in her book, The Making of The African Queen or How I went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind. In 1975 she starred in the critically mauled Rooster Cogburn with John Wayne, effectively a western version of The African Queen. All told she received twelve Oscar nominations, a feat only bettered by Meryl Streep, and holds the record for the most wins by an actress, taking the trophy on four occasions. On top of those already mentioned she won for The Lion in Winter (sharing the award with Barbara Streisand for Funny Girl, the only time the result has been tied) and On Golden Pond for which Henry Fonda won the best actor award. She continued acting well into her 80s, making her final acting appearance in the TV movie One Christmas in 1994. She died of natural causes on June 29, 2003, at the age of 96, leaving behind a body of work that has rarely been equaled. She refused to play the Hollywood game, doing things her own way and not afraid to speak her mind. Here are a few choice Hepburn quotes: "I often wonder whether men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then." “Acting is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four.” “If you’re given a choice between money and sex appeal, take the money. As you get older, the money will become your sex appeal.” "If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married." “Life is hard. After all, it kills you.” Over the next few days I’ll be reviewing both The African Queen and Rooster Cogburn.