The Writer's Poke

For the curious, this one is available for free on YouTube (fair quality). I watched it because I wanted to see how badly it copied Double Indemnity (1944), and because I've been watching Ann Savage films. Savage plays Toni, the Barbara Stanwyck role. Hugh Beaumont plays Kenny in the Fred MacMurray role. Technically, there's an Edward G. Robinson role, but the actor doesn't stand out in his part whatsoever. Honestly, that's one of the major problems. No chemistry between characters, and no fun banter between the young male and his older boss. If Beaumont was in Double Indemnity, I think he pulls off MacMurray's part just fine. He's just as good an actor, but he just happens to be in a worse film. Although I'm watching Savage films, it's only because of her role in My Winnipeg (2007). That's what interests me about her. She's definitely a B-movie actor -- no Barbara Stanwyck. The murder in this film takes place before the halfway point. The entir...

Cool cover art. Reminds me of Sin City. I just watched Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg (2007), and in it is 86-year-old Ann Savage, an actor who had been retired from the movies for over 50 years. That made really curious to see what the 24-year-old Savage was like. In My Winnipeg, I couldn't tell if she could act, or if the weirdness of the film just called for Savage to be weird. To be honest, after watching Detour, I still don't know for sure if she can act, because her performance is weird in a film noir sort of way. The basic premise is that Al (Tom Neal) needs to hitch across country. His girlfriend is in L.A. She wanted to see if she could make it there, but she quickly discovers she can't. Al wants to get out there and marry her quick. Unfortunately, "fate" isn't kind to Al. He ends up getting a ride from a guy who either died while Al was driving or who died falling out of the passenger's side door, hitting his head on a rock. Al's bad luck ...

As the ending credits begin, we're told that A Simple Twist of Fate was "suggested by the George Eliot's Silas Marner," a Victorian novel written in 1861. The movie was written by Steve Martin, and he also served as the Executive Producer. As far as I can tell, it was a box-office flop. It grossed just $3 million during its limited engagement run, and production cost certainly ran somewhere around $10 million.  No one, in other words, was clamoring for modernized retelling of Silas Marner.  Well, it's been 30 years, but I have actually read that novel, and when I decided to watch this film, it was just because I'm watching Steve Martin movies this year, and I had no idea that the movie had a Silas Marner connection.  Martin studied philosophy in college, and he does seem to have a passion for the classics, including Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac and William Shakespeare's Hamlet, etc.  All that's well and good, but how does this one work as a ...

Amir (Khalid Abdalla) learns a secret about his father after his father (Baba) is dead. Basically, even the best people are hypocrites. They believe one thing and do another. Baba wasn't a fanatic, but the film also shows how even the "most religious" people will base their beliefs on "God's Word," and then follow or enforce those beliefs selectively.  I thought about this during the "halftime show" that Amir watches as an adult. The Taliban bring out a couple found guilty of adultery. The penalty, the leader says, is death by stoning. It's the punishment God requires. And so, they carry out the punishment on the woman, stoning her to death. The man is right there next to her, but we never see them carry out the punishment on him. I'm guessing they let him live. Maybe they thought it was punishment enough being brought out in front of the crowd and shamed (not to mention having his lover killed without being able to do anything about it). I...

Roman Polanski speaks five languages -- Polish, French, English, Spanish, and Russian -- and this is the first film he directed in English. In an interview included on the Criterion DVD, he said that for him, characters matter more than the story, because you will remember the characters long after you forget what the story and the plot elements were. And at least in the case of this movie, that's probably absolutely true. We are definitely going to remember Catherine Deneuve's performance, even if we never definitely learn why the character, Carol, is as she is.  The film opens with the close-up on a human eye -- Carol's (Catherine Deneuve) eye. The names of the movie's cast and crew come and go, but the eye continues to take up the background of the screen. Who is Carol? She's a young blonde French hairdresser living in London. She lives with her older sister, who is having an affair with a married man. Carol doesn't seem to like him much. He puts his toothbru...

The theatrical version, A Short Film about Killing (1989) is about 24 minutes longer than this version. Interestingly, all additional 24 minutes take place before Jacek murders the Taxi Driver. This made me wonder: Why did Kieslowski add all the additional content to the front end of the film? The last 25 minutes of each version is basically the same. What could have been added to that section? And that got me thinking about all of the stuff that was left out or not fully explained in this version (as well as, for the most part, the other version). For example, only Piotr (Krzysztof Globisz) visits Jacek in prison. None of Jacek's family -- his brothers and mother -- visit him as he waits for his death sentence to be carried out.  We also learn about a few things by dialogue only. For example, Piotr mentions than he was in the same coffeehouse right before Jacek committed the murder. In the extended version, we actually get to see them in the coffeeshop at the same time.  Piot...

Dorota (Krystyna Janda) is mean and nobody likes her. Actually, her husband likes her. He thinks they're having a baby. Her lover also likes her. He tells her so on the phone, but she's already put the phone down and doesn't hear him. When I asked my Humanities students if they felt empathy or judgement for Dorota and the Doctor, it was unanimous. They all felt empathy for the Doctor, but they also felt judgement for Dorota. Maybe I shouldn't have presented the question as either/or. Maybe we can feel both at the same time, just as Dorota tells the Doctor that it's possible to love two men at the same time.  Actually, the class didn't have much time to discuss and think about the question. If they had had more time, I bet more students would start to feel empathetic. Dorota really wants to be a mother, for example. Anyone would be empathetic for that. She's even willing to sacrifice that want if her husband lives. The judgement comes in, of course, because s...