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recent viewing and listening
Feb. 14th, 2013 10:14 pmThe Desert Fox: A 1951 biopic of General Erwin Rommel, the brilliant German commander who was eventually implicated in a plot against Hitler and forced to commit suicide in late 1944. Unfortunately the movie is so dull and badly written that not even James Mason could save it. I gave up after about forty-five minutes. It's not, I think, a coincidence that this was made for a big American studio; dumbing down happened.
Malta Story: This 1953 British film is much more to my taste. Excellent acting (Alec Guinness!!), non-dumbed-down writing with some nuance, and a compelling storyline about the little-known siege of Malta during the Second World War, when the British needed to hold the island to interrupt German supply lines in the Mediterranean and the Germans tried to starve and bomb them out. Flaws include an Obligatory Heterosexual Romance in which the woman never gets actual characterization, and the occasional descent into patriotic propaganda (more so than I would have expected from a postwar film). Still, I enjoyed it.
Night of the Generals: I was really looking forward to this. Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif, for heaven's sake! And a premise that sounded interesting if potboilery. Unfortunately, the DVD I got from Netflix was an apparent bootleg of such terrible quality as to be unwatchable. I've asked for a replacement DVD, but apparently I'm not the only person to have this problem with this movie from Netflix, so I'm not hopeful.
Our Brave Boys: A BBC radio satire that ran for five series from 2001-2005; I'm currently halfway through series 3. It stars Fiona Shaw (!!!) as Zelda Maclean, an ambitious Assistant Undersecretary in the Ministry of Defence, and focuses on her difficult relationship with the three career military men who have been posted to assist her. There's army Colonel George (Martin Jarvis), who has a desperate crush on Zelda even though most of her plans infuriate him; navy Commander Bill Nox (Jonathan Hyde in the first season, less successfuly recast to Christopher Godwin thereafter), an honorable if bitter skeptic who deeply resents what he sees as the politicization of the military; and RAF Wing Commander Bryan Thomas (Christopher Neame!!!!, and yes, that's why I started listening), who spends most of his time on various dodgy business ventures and who is often condescended to by the others (who see both him and the RAF as hopelessly lower-middle-class), but who sometimes displays unexpected depths. There's also Chief Petty Officer Grieves (Peter Capaldi), who despite being relegated to office boy is probably smarter than the rest of them put together.
It's a wry sort of comedy rather than a hilarious one, and it took me a while to start enjoying it. The first few episodes are awkward and so indirectly written that I sometimes had difficulty figuring out what was going on and how the plots were resolved. But it gets better as it becomes more character-focused, though I wish Fiona Shaw were given more to do. Her character, a careerist who wants to advance the party line and make the Minister look good, is primarily a foil to the others as they react to and often subvert her efforts.
Malta Story: This 1953 British film is much more to my taste. Excellent acting (Alec Guinness!!), non-dumbed-down writing with some nuance, and a compelling storyline about the little-known siege of Malta during the Second World War, when the British needed to hold the island to interrupt German supply lines in the Mediterranean and the Germans tried to starve and bomb them out. Flaws include an Obligatory Heterosexual Romance in which the woman never gets actual characterization, and the occasional descent into patriotic propaganda (more so than I would have expected from a postwar film). Still, I enjoyed it.
Night of the Generals: I was really looking forward to this. Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif, for heaven's sake! And a premise that sounded interesting if potboilery. Unfortunately, the DVD I got from Netflix was an apparent bootleg of such terrible quality as to be unwatchable. I've asked for a replacement DVD, but apparently I'm not the only person to have this problem with this movie from Netflix, so I'm not hopeful.
Our Brave Boys: A BBC radio satire that ran for five series from 2001-2005; I'm currently halfway through series 3. It stars Fiona Shaw (!!!) as Zelda Maclean, an ambitious Assistant Undersecretary in the Ministry of Defence, and focuses on her difficult relationship with the three career military men who have been posted to assist her. There's army Colonel George (Martin Jarvis), who has a desperate crush on Zelda even though most of her plans infuriate him; navy Commander Bill Nox (Jonathan Hyde in the first season, less successfuly recast to Christopher Godwin thereafter), an honorable if bitter skeptic who deeply resents what he sees as the politicization of the military; and RAF Wing Commander Bryan Thomas (Christopher Neame!!!!, and yes, that's why I started listening), who spends most of his time on various dodgy business ventures and who is often condescended to by the others (who see both him and the RAF as hopelessly lower-middle-class), but who sometimes displays unexpected depths. There's also Chief Petty Officer Grieves (Peter Capaldi), who despite being relegated to office boy is probably smarter than the rest of them put together.
It's a wry sort of comedy rather than a hilarious one, and it took me a while to start enjoying it. The first few episodes are awkward and so indirectly written that I sometimes had difficulty figuring out what was going on and how the plots were resolved. But it gets better as it becomes more character-focused, though I wish Fiona Shaw were given more to do. Her character, a careerist who wants to advance the party line and make the Minister look good, is primarily a foil to the others as they react to and often subvert her efforts.
