Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Butley (1974)

Ben Butley: I'm a one-woman man,

and I've had mine, thank God.

The great and gay Alan Bates would have turned 89 today if he hadn't passed in 2003 -- I only just saw Butley during the past couple of years and this movie is a hoot. A hoot, I tell you. Just Bates sneering out clever and mean-spirited gay insinuations for ninety-ish minutes -- what else does cinema need? And it was directed by Harold Pinter, of all people. The only theatrical film Pinter ever directed. It really actually doesn't feel very cinematic -- it's all staged play-like, but that's fine by me. It's great entertainment as far as I'm concerned. I could watch Alan Bates be a bitch for days, and if you couldn't we can't be friends. Click here for lots more of Alan Bates if you're so inclined. He really was the dream. 

What is your favorite Alan Bates perfomance?

5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1962

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Last week's edition of our "Siri Says" series -- where I ask my phone to give me a number between 1 and 100 and then list my five favorite movies from the year that corresponds to that number -- was a tough one, sending us tumbling into Silent Film, so I was relieved this week when, after about a dozen or so tires (the years we've got left are getting scarcer and scarcer) Siri plunked us down into a decade I've seen many more movies from, the 1960s, with the number "62." And then I started looking at The Movies of 1962 and I realized that my likes from that precise year -- which featured both the height of the Cold War and the birth of Spider-man -- tend towards outside-the-mainstream. Meaning that there are big beloved movies from that year that I feel very little towards! 

It's a terrific year of movies but an odd inconsistently-matched batch, including big swings between challenging international cinema which was booming, bargain-basement cult oddities from the likes of Roger Corman & Co, and of course the smooth pretty product line that was rolling out of Hollywood. The latter's where my interest wanes, and so as I skimmed through all the titles for the year I found myself wanting to (mostly) highlight the weirder stuff at the expense of the more popular titles.  But then the weirder stuff is my brand! As is, apparently, the black-and-white in the time of color stuff...

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1962

Knife in the Water

(dir. Roman Polanski)

-- released on March 9th 1962 -- 

What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?

(dir. Robert Aldrich)

-- released on October 31st 1962 -- 

The Manchurian Candidate

(dir. John Frankenheimer)

-- released on October 24th 1962 -- 

Carnival of Souls

(dir. Herk Hervey)

-- released on November 2nd 1962 -- 

The Exterminating Angel

(dir. Luis Bunuel)

-- released on May 16th 1962 -- 

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Runners-up: La Jetée (dir. Chris Marker), Dr. No (dir. Terence Young), Cape Fear (dir. J. Lee Thompson), Day of the Triffids (dir. Steve Sekely), L'eclisse (dir. Michaelangelo Antonioni), Jules and Jim (dir. Truffaut)...

... Panic in the Year Zero (dir. Ray Milland), Lolita (dir. Kubrick), Long Day's Journey Into Night (dir. Lumet), Vivre sa Vie (dir. Godard), Lawrence of Arabia (dir. David Lean), To Kill a Mockingbird (dir. Robert Mulligan)

Never seen: The Music Man (dir. Morton Dacosta), The Miracle Worker (dir. Arthur Penn), The Longest Day (dir. Andrew marton), All Fall Down (dir. John Frankenheimer), A Kind of Loving (dir. John Schlesinger), Billy Budd (dir. Peter Ustinov), Cleo From 5-7 (dir. Agnes Varda)...

... The Intruder (dir. Roger Corman), How the West Was Won (dir. Henry Hathaway), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (dir. John Ford), The Trial (dir. Welles), Cartouche (dir. Philippe de Broca), Days of Wine and Roses (dir. Blake Edwards)

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What are your favorite movies of 1962?

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Which Is Hotter?

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Ken Russell's film Women in Love starring Alan Bates and Oliver Reed and Alan Bates and Oliver Reed wrestling naked and oh some women too... award winning ones at that... 

... came out in the United States fifty years ago today! That was about four months after it premiered in England, and I imagine it caused quite the scandal here like it did in the UK, given all the famous peen flopping around for the very first time on a mainstream screen. That said I know, I know, basically every single time I post about this movie I post about its naked wrestling scene...

... even though there's plenty else to recommend it -- but one, I am me, (speaking of recommendations I really recommend you scroll through our Bates / Reed archives) and two, I did some checking and I actually have somehow never asked the most basic question of all?

bike tracks

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The film's been given the glorious Criterion treatment and I just went ahead and bought myself a copy today as a treat to me as I sit holed up here at home -- I recommend you, providing you've got rent and food and all of that covered, do the same. The DVD that I have now is pretty shitty, comparatively, and I can't wait to watch it all, top to bottom, in that grand 4K restoration...

Who Wore It Best?

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I have posted about the 1975 film Royal Flash before -- directed by Superman director Richard Lester it stars Malcolm McDowell as well as nude-wrestling-friends Alan Bates and Oliver Reed, seen above -- but I still haven't watched it, even though that earlier post makes note of the movie being available to watch for free here on ye olde internet. It's uploaded onto YouTube now, even:

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But since I just stumbled upon these photos of Bates & Reed being their typical scamp selves and I to be quite frank am having a real case of the braindead Mondays this afternoon, let's just give ourselves a luxurious stache poll to soak in and call it a day:

survey tool

Good Morning, World

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I don't know if you caught my Twitter Thread on it a few weeks back -- it was more like an extended Twitter Swoon, really -- but Arrow Video has done us a real big solid this week by putting out Carol Reed's 1963 vacation thriller The Running Man starring Laurence Harvey, Lee Remick, and my boy Alan Bates, onto blu-ray at last. Think a slightly less gay Talented Mr. Ripley, although if you ask me Harvey and Bates are as thick with sexual tension as Jude Law and Matt Damon were...

The film's been pretty much unavailable to watch for as long as I've been aware of it, save a shitty quality copy on YouTube anyway -- believe me, I've been on the look out for it ever since I first saw the photos of Bates in his swimsuit...

It's a terrific lot of fun though, I recommend it, and Arrow did great work restoring the movie -- it looks far better than these gifs I'm showing you, which i made off of the aforementioned shitty YouTube video. The blu-ray is pristine and gorgeous stuff. If you've never seen this flick throw your entire body down on this shit immediately.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Women in Love (1969)

Gudrun: You don't think one needs
the experience of having been married?
Ursula: Gudrun, do you really think
it need be an experience?
Gudrun: It's bound to be possibly undesirable,
but still an experience of some sort.
Ursula: Not really.
More likely to be the end of experience.
Gudrun: Yes, of course, there is that to consider.

Even though it fights against everything in my nature I'm going to try to post about this movie without posting anything from the naked wrestling scene between Alan Bates and Ollie Reed, because it's the legend Glenda Jackson's 83rd birthday today and she deserves the goddamned attention for once. She is Glenda fucking Jackson, after all! Respect is synonymous. And in serendipitous news I'm actually going to see her on Broadway in King Lear this very weekend thanks to the generosity of a good friend of MNPP. (Thank you, beloved friend.) I'll try not to stop the show in the middle of her performance to ask her about the naked wrestling scene. I'll try. I can't make any promises. It won't be her birthday then.

5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1964

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We haven't had time to talk to the little lady that lives inside of our phones for months now! The poor lady got so angry she up and left, who can blame her, and I had to buy a brand new phone to have somebody to talk to. (Don't judge me.) So today, with an extra hour to spare and a guilty weight upon my heart I figure why not, let's communicate with this new sucker.

That's right, it's time for our "Siri Says" series, in which I ask my telephone to tell me a number between 1 and 100 and then choose my favorite movies from the year that corresponds with that number. We've done well over half of all the numbers by now and so it always takes a few tries to get a fresh number out of Siri but today it only took, well, like seven tries. That's not so bad! And Siri gave me "64" (eventually) and so today we're celebrating The Movies of 1964. Let's take a look!

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1964

Marnie 

(dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

-- released on November 9th, 1964 --

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

(dir. Jacques Demy)

-- released on December 16, 1964 --

Dr. Strangelove

(dir. Stanley Kubrick)

-- released on January 29th, 1964 --

Blood and Black Lace

(dir. Mario Bava)

-- released on April 10th, 1964 --

Masque of the Red Death

(dir. Roger Corman)

-- released on September 16th, 1964 --

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Runners-up: Goldfinger (dir. Guy Hamilton), Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte (dir. Robert Aldrich), Strait Jacket (dir. William Castle), That Man From Rio (dir. Phillippe de Broca)...

... What a Way To Go! (dir. Thompson), The Last Man on Earth (dir. Sidney Salko), The Gorgon (dir. Terence Fisher), The Comedy of Terrors (dir. Tourneur), The Naked Kiss (dir. Samuel Fuller)... 

...... Kitten With a Whip (dir. Douglas Hayes), First Men in the Moon (dir. Nathan Juran), Onibaba (dir. Kaneto Shindô), Tomb of Ligeia (dir. Corman), Ghidora, The Three-Headed Monster (dir. Honda), Kwaidan (dir. Masaki Kobayashi), Dead Ringer (dir. Paul Henreid), Zorba the Greek (dir. Michael Cacoyannis)

Never seen: A Hard Day's Night (dir. Richard Lester), Becket (dir. Peter Glenville), A Married Woman (dir. Jean-luc Godard), Band of Outsiders (dir. Godard), Nothing But the Best (dir. Clive Donner), Joy House (dir. Rene Clement), I Am Cuba (dir. Mikhail Kalatozov), Marriage Italian Style (dir. Vittorio De Sica), Diary of a Chambermaid (dir. Bunuel)

What are your favorite movies of 1964?

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Gosford Park (2001)

Lady Sylvia: Mr Weissman.
Morris Weissman: Yes?
Lady Sylvia: Tell us about the film you're going to make.
Morris Weissman: Oh, sure. It's called Charlie Chan
In London. It's a detective story.
Mabel Nesbitt: Set in London?
Morris Weissman: Well, not really. Most of it takes place
at a shooting party in a country house. Sort of like this one,
actually. Murder in the middle of the night, a lot of guests for
the weekend, everyone's a suspect. You know, that sort of thing.
Constance: How horrid. And who turns out to have done it?
Morris Weissman: Oh, I couldn't tell you that.
It would spoil it for you.
Constance: Oh, but none of us will see it.

I was thinking about Ivor Novello a few days ago and as always that thought process leads me to Jeremy Northam playing the homosexual movie star in Robert Altman's Gosford Park -- it has been far far too long since I've sat down and watched Altman's down-up masterpiece and so I was pleased as liquor punch to see that our beloved Arrow Video was putting out a beautiful brand new blu-ray this week stuffed to the stiff collar with brand new extras, from a new restoration of the film on down. Have you seen Gosford Park lately? I do wonder how it plays in a post-Downton world. Anyway if you'd like to see the full list of Special Features on the blu-ray hit the jump...

Good Morning, Ollie

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While I prepare myself both mentally and physically - lots of laps, lots of breathing exercises - for the Alan Bates retrospective about to hit The Quad here in New York, let's take a minute to wish a happy birthday to Bates' wrestling partner du jour the great Oliver Reed, who was born 80 years ago today. These gifs are from a scene in the 1967 film The Shuttered Room (watch the entire clip here), which I have never seen but sounds like something I should - it's based on a story by HP Lovecraft and is about a couple (played by Gig Young and Carol Lynley) who move back to her ancestral home when her parents die, and find it cursed. (Never heard that one before.) Oliver plays the "lecherous cousin." Annnnd of course he does. Anybody seen it?

I ♥ Mister Bates

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Since remodeling last year the Quad Cinema here in NYC has just been killing it with their retrospectives and series -- they've been so consistently amazing that I get overwhelmed, like somehow I forgot to mention their upcoming series called "Crimes of Passion" focusing on the so called "Erotic Thrillers" mainly of the 80s and 90s like Basic Instinct and Body Double and Bound and Black Widow and even ones that don't begin with the letter "B." That series is ongoing from February 4th through 17th but now they've gone and given me yet another reason to clot their hallways that month with my presence - they're just announced that they're devoting a couple of weeks to the films of my beloved Alan Bates too!

The series hinges on a brand new 4K restoration of Philippe de Broca's 1966 goofy anti-war allegory King of Hearts (which I've never seen) - they're screening that for three whole weeks starting on February 16th, but alongside it they'll be showing a cornucopia of work from both the director, including the delightfully wacky That Man From Rio starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, which we've posted about before...

... and they'll be showing about a dozen of Alan Bates' most important films - Georgy Girl? Check! Far From the Madding Crowd? Check! Women in Love? Check! Zorba the Greek?

Check check! You can see the entire schedule right here. And you can probably also plot out right where I will be for the month of February too, in case you want to stalk or murder me or whatever.

Great Moments In Movie Shelves #114

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Sometimes I actually have something to say about the movie

and the movie's bookshelves I'm calling our attention to.

And sometimes these posts are just an excuse to stare at somebody like Alan Bates in his prime standing or sitting or just staring in front of some shelves in a movie like Zorba the Greek. 

This is one of the latter instances.