With the massive success of Laurel and Hardy, who producer Hal Roach had paired together after signing them separately in 1926 (they would remain with his studio until 1940), the man had the bright idea of creating a female counterpart duo, bringing together Zasu Pitts and Thelma Todd. The team would make seventeen popular shorts from 1931-33, their first two, Let’s Do Things and Catch-As Catch-Can, looked at here today. Like all good comedy teams, you have two very different character types. Zasu comes across as the slightly depressed, nervous and fretful brunette, while Thelma is a much more vibrant and colourful blonde dame. . . the former’s desperation often dragging her more put together friend into rather unorthodox situations. In Let’s Do Things, they find themselves as employees selling music for a giant department store... while looking for a way out of their dead-end jobs.
This is the second week in a row that I have had to begin with the sad news of another death of a film legend. Joan Fontaine, the actress who gained fame for playing threatened wives to possibly dangerous husbands in the early 1940s, passed away at the age of 96 last week.
My plan for this week was to write a review on the Christmas classic It’s A Wonderful Life, but after the passing of legendary Irish born actor Peter O’Toole, who is best known for his amazing portrayal of T.E. Lawrence in the epic Lawrence of Arabia, I thought it would be fitting to turn my gaze to another darker Christmas movie, the 1968 historical drama The Lion In Winter, directed by Anthony Harvey.
For the month of October, I will be highlighting films that fall within the horror and thriller genres. With this article, I will also be starting an extended series of reviews that will look at director Brian De Palma’s lesser known works that are a part of the mystery or thriller categories. Though best known for iconic movies like Scarface, The Untouchables, Mission Impossible and Carlito’s Way, for more than forty years De Palma has created lesser-known classic thrillers inspired by master director Alfred Hitchcock, as well as classic genres such as film noir, and then adds his own masterful spin and touches to these unique areas of cinema. Within this sub-section of De Palma’s work, his most famous film is probably the 1980 mystery thriller Dressed to Kill. It is this movie, that to his detractors, proved he was nothing but a Hitchcock rip-off artist, yet his fans were once again delighted by the man’s genius as a visually talented director that was on a higher plateau than anyone else at the time. You can probably guess that I fall within the second grouping of people.
Last Tuesday, I was lucky enough to play in the Pro-Am Golf Tournament that was part of the week long festivities of the PGA Canada Tour event known as the Great Waterways Classic which was held at Upper Canada Golf Course in Morrisburg. The weather was beautiful, the course was in excellent shape, and our group teed off with pro golfer Riley Wheeldon – who, as of today, is the top moneymaker on the Canadian Tour this year. It was a superb day full of memorable moments and it did not take too long before the conversation turned to movies. It may be no surprise but Wheeldon’s favourite film of all-time is the classic 1996 golf comedy Happy Gilmore.
We are now officially into the dog days of summer. Fall is in the air and it is time for my final film noir of the summer. Many movies have depicted the attempt at the perfect heist, but there are few that are as influential as the 1956 Stanley Kubrick motion picture The Killing. Kubrick, who is best known for later films such as The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and 2001: A Space Odyssey, both wrote the screenplay and directed this classic gem, with assistance from Jim Thompson – who helped write the dialogue (Thompson has become an iconic pulp crime fiction novelist [The Killer Inside Me] – gaining fame after his death in 1977).
There have been many attempts at turning the King Arthur legend into film – from bloated action tales and Cold War bewilderment (where the villains wear Soviet Union red outfits), to animated Disney classics, but the movie that best captures the true essence of the historic tale is the 1981 John Boorman (Deliverance) epic Excalibur.