My Movie Journal is Better Than Yours

Notes History

Date Viewed	Venue	Note
01.22.07	Borrowed	Thanks to Micah for lending me his DVD of this. I'd never seen it before but it was on my list for several reasons. Some great location photography of Singapore here, as well as really great work from Ben Gazzara and Denholm Elliot. I especially loved Gazzara's easy dialogue, always being friendly with everyone but with an edge of fast-talking confidence. I guess everyone's favorite line is when he tells the group of thugs to get on with it before he drop-kicks a midget down the hill, but all throughout the movie he speaks with a casual yet perfect manner. It's kind of interesting. due to the exotic locales and large number of non-pro actors, this feels dangerously close to something I'd see at Weird Wednesday... and yet it's a Bogdanovich picture. Before I saw Targets a few months back, I wouldn't have thought any of his movies dipped that far below the line of serious oscar-worthy hollywood-style pretension, but both of those bore the strong mark of Roger Corman if you ask me. It makes me like Bogdanovich all the more to learn that he did these kinds of pictures as well as homage-fests like What's Up, Doc? and uber-award-type movies like The Last Picture Show. now I REALLY want to see his John Ford doc. I heard it's floating around now because someone finally paid for the film clip rights... I really hope I can track it down at some point. Been wanting to see that for years and years.