Another bit of fun…

by Allan Fish

You know the rules by now, guys…

Played Denry Machin, Sidney Stratton and Charles I, said “I always say that my west window has all the exuberance of Chaucer, without happily any of the concomitant crudities of his period.” and ran down the steps of the Eiffel Tower

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Deadwood *****

"On the tit - I know where it goes..."

another from the TV masterworks collection

by Allan Fish

(USA 2004-2006 2,175m) DVD1/2

My counter offer to your counter offer

p  Scott Stephens, David Milch, Ted Man, Liz Sarnoff, Edward Bianchi  d  Walter Hill, Michael Almereyda, Edward Bianchi, Davis Guggenheim, Alan Taylor, Daniel Minahan, Steve Shill, Greg Fienberg, Mark Tinker, Daniel Attias  w  Ricky Jay, David Milch, Malcolm MacRury, Ted Mann, Bernadette McNamara, George Putnam, Liz Sarnoff, Jody Worth, Regina Gorrado, Sarah Hess, Victoria Morrow created by  David Milch  ph  James Glennon, David Boyd, Lloyd Ahern III, Annie McAveety, Xavier Perez Proget  ed  Stephen Mark, Elizabeth Kling, Lauren A.Schaffer  m  David Schwartz, Reinhold Heil, Johnny Klimek, Michael Brook  art  Maria Caso  cos  Katherine Jane Bryant

Ian McShane (Al Swearengen), Timothy Olyphant (Seth Bullock), Molly Parker (Alma Garret), Brad Dourif (Doc Cochran), Robin Weigert (Calamity Jane), Keith Carradine (Wild Bill Hickok), William Sanderson (E.B.Farnum), Jeffrey Jones (Merrick), Jim Beaver (Ellsworth), Powers Boothe (Cy Tolliver), Ricky Jay (Edward Sawyer), Kim Dickens (Joanie Stubbs), John Hawkes (Sol Star), Paula Malcomson (Trixie), Leon Rippy (Tom Nuttall), W.Earl Brown (Dan Dority), Dayton Callie (Charlie Utter), Sean Bridgers (Johnny Burns), Larry Cedar (Leon), Ray McKinnon (Rev Smith), Keone Young (Mr Wu), Zach Grenier (Andy Cramed), Brian Cox (John Langrish), Gerald McRaney (George Hearst), Anna Gunn (Martha Bullock), Geri Jewell (Jewel), Garret Dillahunt (Jack McCall/Francis Walcott), Josh Erickson (William Bullock), Bree Seanna Wall (Sophia Metz), Titus Welliver (Silas Adams), Stephen Tobolowsky (Hugo Jarry), Pruitt Taylor Vince (Mose Manuel), Alice Krige (Maddie), Kristen Bell (Flora Anderson),

It had been over a decade since the cancellation of My-So Called Life that such groans were heard as when HBO made the ridiculous decision to cancel David Milch’s small screen masterpiece a season early in what was to be a four season run.  Here was a series that put all the pale imitations of westerns on the box – and indeed largely on the big screen – into the shade.  It dared to show the west not only as it was, but let us hear it as it was.  The hardline moralists were shocked; their Calamity Jane sang about a ‘Secret Love’ and the dirtiness was purely face deep.  Hollywood’s idea of a rowdy western saloon was perpetuated in Destry Rides Again and Dodge City, their women dressed in pioneer gingham dresses.  Not only was Deadwood not afraid to call a spade a spade, it called a spade a fucking spade.  Some found it excessive at first, but as Ian McShane was quick to point out in his DVD commentary (with Tim Olyphant, one of the best ever done), every single cuss word was strategically placed.  Take one out or add an extra one in and it loses the rhythm, like Revelation 22:18-19 made fact.

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The Adventures of Robin Hood *****

continuing the series of best films of the 1930s, no.22…

by Allan Fish

(USA 1938 102m) DVD1/2

Bring your own deer

p  Henry Blanke, Hal B.Wallis  d  Michael Curtiz, William Keighley  w  Norman Reilly Raine, Seton I.Miller  ph  Sol Polito, Tony Gaudio, W.Howard Greene  ed  Ralph Dawson  m  Erich Wolfgang Korngold  art  Carl Jules Weyl  cos  Milo Anderson  ch  Fred Cavens

Errol Flynn (Sir Robin of Locksley), Olivia de Havilland (Lady Marian Fitzwalter), Basil Rathbone (Sir Guy of Gisbourne), Claude Rains (Prince John Lackland), Alan Hale (Little John), Eugène Pallette (Friar Tuck of Fountains Abbey), Patric Knowles (Will Scarlet), Ian Hunter (King Richard I), Herbert Mundin (Much, the Miller’s Son), Una O’Connor (Bess), Melville Cooper (High Sheriff of Nottingham), Montagu Love (Bishop of the Black Canons), Harry Cording (Dickon Malbetie), Howard Hill (Philip of Arras), Robert Warwick, Ivor Simpson, John Sutton,

Kevin Costner, Cary Elwes, Patrick Bergin, Barrie Ingham, Sean Connery and Richard Todd (and Richard Greene and Michael Praed, come to that) should hang their heads in shame.  It has to be said that the swashbuckler, as a sub-genre of the adventure genre, is a dying breed.  In recent years, one can only count The Mask of Zorro (with Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas following in the Doug Fairbanks tradition) as a decent throwback to this long forgotten cinematic art form.  But of all the great swashbucklers, none swashed that buckle with the style and impudence of Errol Flynn.  Though Flynn didn’t actually make all that many major swashbucklers (only Captain Blood, The Sea Hawk  (see later in the list) and The Adventures of Don Juan really come to mind, plus a few rather bloodless affairs in the fifties), this is not only his greatest swashbuckler, but his greatest film, one of the greatest films of its decade, the first true masterpiece in full Technicolor (though Nothing Sacred and A Star is Born were colour milestones made the year before for Selznick) and the one Hollywood film to come close to being operatic in treatment. 

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