Time Without Pity (1957). Real high concept melodrama. Michael Redgrave, first shaky with DTs, then pissed as a fart and struggling to stay conscious, has 24 hrs to save his son from hanging. As premises go that's not bad! He needs something concrete to stay the execution, and my god does he find it

NEW: One of the first eyewitness accounts of the May 18, 1980, Gwangju Uprising for Democracy in South Korea is published on my Substack for the first time. It was translated with my colleagues from the Bay Area Korea Support Committee in 1981. timshorrock.substack.com/p/white-pape...

The Bofors Gun (1968). Stagey, claustrophobic squaddie film set mainly in a guard hut where you can almost smell the sweaty socks. There’s precious little camaraderie in this vision of army life, but there is hierarchy - particularly the bully hierarchy that operates among the gunners

“Devotion” (1946) — a film that gets grief for taking liberties with the lives of the Brontë family, but otherwise is an entertaining, well-made production. Arthur Kennedy, Ida Lupino, Olivia de Havilland and Nancy Coleman play siblings, nominally based on Branwell, Emily, Charlotte and Anne Brontë.

Woman of Fire is unhinged. You have two more chances to catch it and I highly recommend it. www.filmlinc.org/films/woman-...

First watch: Dodsworth (1936). Following The Heiress, another William Wyler for me and once again an adaptation of play derived from a novel. Walter Huston and Ruth Chatterton are the titular Dodsworths, a wealthy mid-Western couple whose marriage falls apart during an extended trip to Europe. 1/4

First watch: joining the chorus of praise for this 1949 gothic-tinged melodrama, an adaptation of a play based on Henry James' Washington Square. Olivia de Havilland plays a naive young woman who stands to inherit a fortune, but is thought by her own father to lack the charm to attract suitors. 1/5

Btw, I bloody love VERA CRUZ... boxd.it/8DKWWf

Three 25 minute plays by Alun Owen about why Anna Calder-Marshall should never trust a man. The first one is with Sean Connery as her father. Connery is incredible as the master-carpenter who wants to keep women in their place. And every woman we see on screen is obsessed by him. Pure lust.

Vera Cruz (1954). The thing I always remember about this is the massive shit-eating grin that is never off Burt Lancaster's face and which has never been topped, not even by Jack Nicholson. Also the way Gary Cooper shoots his lame horse in someone's yard and just leaves it there

We got an orchestra going on outside the apartment. They just played Land of Hope and Glory!

I read 41/100 Happy to see Middlemarch at no.1 Overrated: Tristram Shandy at 19 - tedious, calculated, unfunny Underrated: Robinson Crusoe and Satyricon - not even on there www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int...

First watch: Minari (2020). Lee Isaac Chung's semi-autobiographical drama about a Korean family who migrate to the US during the Reagan era and try to set up their own farming business. 1/3

The Most Dangerous Game (1932). This little sister film to King Kong has plenty of its own appeal, and expands on the original short story, mainly by adding a woman, Fay Wray. Zaroff is now not just an unhinged murderer, but a sexual predator inflamed by the thrill of killing. Heady pre-Code stuff!

Castle of Evil (1966). Six people go to a castle for the reading of a man’s will. A man they hate. Turns out he wronged them in life, & now his melted-face corpse is wronging them some more. Cast includes Scott Brady (Lawrence Tierney’s brother) & sci-fi stalwart Hugh Marlowe.

Oh do fuck off I just want a text box

First watch: Radio On (1978). Much beloved by British pyschogeographers, Christopher Petit's arthouse road movie is a rare thing. Essentially a Wim Wenders film but transplanted to Britain, with Ballardian visions of post-war hangover and deindustrialization rubbing up againt modernity. 🧵1/6

Happy 87th birthday to DARK SHADOWS extra Harvey Keitel. That's him dancing in 1966. #TVSky #DarkShadows

Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964). Kim Stanley and Richard Attenborough are strikingly good in this. There's something Pinteresquely jarring about all their scenes, and with a minimum of fuss they each convey a sense of being catastrophically damaged: her by an unmanageable grief, him by her

British newspaper ad for Ida Lupino in her third Hollywood film, “Ready for Love” (Paramount, 1934)

From Mass Observation Day 1937 (which happened to be the day of the coronation of George VI).

Starmer says he’s suddenly getting real and ready to win back voters – is it all too little, too late? Plus, were the Reform and Green surges really so unstoppable? @robfordmancs.bsky.social joins @nndroid.bsky.social @rostaylor.bsky.social & @rafaelbehr.bsky.social ➡️ linktr.ee/ohgodwhatnowpod

The Lost Moment (1947) is Henry James’s The Aspern papers as tasty Venetian gothic. Robert Cummings in a cobwebby old palazzo with a hostile Susan Hayward, an immortal 105-year-old woman, ghostly music drifting down a spiral staircase & cryptic warnings from the local padre not to “unbalance” things

Interesting watching the film again recently, in which McGoohan's 'Red' is 'Number 1', but wrestles with Baker's Tom for the number. Until a number mix-up leads to...well, watch it yourself. But I wonder if the merest seed was planted..? (2/2)

And the Rodneys are queuing up God forbid

Reading an old collection of essays written by Hollywood directors from 1941-1976, and there’s one by Ida Lupino with this great title:

THE HEIRESS (William Wyler, 1949). A gripping psychological drama adapted from a stage play based on the Henry James novel WASHINGTON SQUARE. Olivia de Havilland is tremendous as the naive & romantic heiress, Catherine, who falls for Montgomery Clift, the handsome, gold-digging suitor. #FilmSky 1/2

First watch: Rancho Notorious (1952). Cheap and nasty RKO western and a rare foray into the genre for Fritz Lang, who gives it a noirish sensibility perhaps better suited to B&W than Technicolor (which the ropey transfer on BBC iPlayer doesn't really do justice). 1/3

Rupert Everett in The Madness of King George. The way he stretches that beat then knocks the line right out the park. A comic masterclass

For #BOTD Val Lewton, my take on I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE, and... boxd.it/bXsd8n

The Molly Maguires (1970). There’s something thrilling, a bit scary even, about Sean Connery and Richard Harris going opposite each other. Talk about two big dogs, grrr. Plus the fact they’re down a coal mine in Pennsylvania in 1876. I wasn’t sure I was tough enough to watch this. But...

I've had many favourite tipples over the years, but what I'm really enjoying now is a mug of strong black sugarless tea, gone a bit cold, with a big dose of cheap scotch in it. Absolute nectar

For #BOTD Orson Welles, my Letterboxd take on his noir masterpiece - TOUCH OF EVIL... #FilmSky #FilmNoir boxd.it/bduSWj

Mason wrote these lines about Ophüls: “A shot that does not call for tracks Is agony for poor dear Max Who, separated from his dolly, Is wrapped in deepest melancholy. Once, when they took away his crane, I thought he’d never smile again.”

Worse than that, we won’t be able to watch the Criterion Channel.

1/4. Was watching A DOUBLE LIFE (1947) 📷 and reminded of the number of films in which Shelley Winters dies in violent ways. But from good-time-girls to mousey factory worker to former Olympic swimming champion to crime matriarch, I can think of few actors who were as versatile or memorable.

Happy Isis Day to those who celebrate.

First watch: THE HANGING TREE (1959) Gary Cooper, as doctor/gambler Joseph Frail, arrives in a gold mining town, saves a man from lynching and nurses back to health a woman nearly fatally injured in a stagecoach robbery. Cooper’s nuanced role has superb support from … 1/2 #FilmSky #MovieSky

First Watch: Whisky Galore! (1949). Alexander Mackendrick's debut and one of the most fondly remembered Ealing Comedies, and it's easy to see why. Based on a real-life incident in which Scottish islanders "rescued" the booze from a sinking cargo ship, it is untaxing fun and clearly very influential

Rickie Lee Jones really understood a groove but would *not* be bound by it. Tough gig for a drummer. Recording Pirates, she kept yelling instructions down Jeff Porcaro's headphones *while he was laying down the track*... www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGMm...

I was really taken with Catholics. A piece of speculative fiction, which takes a discursive look at the nature of the Catholic Church, under Vatican IV. Where the Pope called Father-General, Lourdes has shuttered; transubstantiation now merely symbolic, and private confession abolished.

boxd.it/edru83 A 30s classic this morning… #FilmSky

WTF is this now

L’avventura (1960). Been meaning to watch this for ages but was a bit put off by its reputation (I’ll explain!). But I really enjoyed this. The yacht trip is brilliantly scathing and funny. It could be a comic satire but for the presence of Anna, who alone seems to understand that they're in hell

Powell and Pressburger explore borders, spiritual values, sublime nature, customs regulations and the dark heart of Nazism in 49th Parallel (1941) #Filmsky boxd.it/edmF97

Having reread The Dead the other day, I find I'm having to reread all the rest of Dubliners, which I don't remember well at all. The Sisters and An Encounter are both naturalistic moments-in-a-life and seem to mean a lot, without spelling out what. They feel like diary entries more than anything...

"Peter was the most inventive actor I've ever known. He was a great scholar, an accomplished dramatic actor and a masterful comedian. [...] Peter liked to make pictures which entertained people, not critics." Vincent Price remembering Peter Lorre on after his passing in March 1964.

The Last Chance Texaco is the most achingly sad song, and the most unlikely extended metaphor you've ever seen. The words look clumsy written down, and it takes the singer to show you how perfect they actually are. Rickie Lee Jones www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zll1...

Diana Dors, holding a Siamese kitten, exits a car outside West London Magistrates Court in December 1957. Look at the kitten's tiny little claws gently hooking into Diana's jacket. #Caturday

Haven't seen Coronation Street in anyone's top 15 telly shows