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WolfmanOz at the Movies #15
Inspector Callahan Or Dirty Harry, is one of Clint Eastwood’s most iconic film characters, along with The Man With No Name. There were five films produced between 1971 and 1988 featuring the San Francisco Police Department Homicide Division Inspector Harry Callahan; in which the character became notorious for his unorthodox, violent and utterly ruthless actions…
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WolfmanOz at the Movies #14
The Woke Oscars Next Monday (Australian time) the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will “honour” the “best films” released between March 1st and December 31st, 2021. Not that long ago, say 10-15 years ago, there was a time where you could actually enjoy watching the Oscars as the films being honoured were generally…
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WolfmanOz at the Movies #12
So who was Anthony James ? Movies have a peculiar power to transfix and mesmerise us, planting their images in our sub-conscious that for a variety of reasons remain there in which time does not dim. We all have movies and/or scenes that for whatever reason frightened us when we were much younger, and have…
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WolfmanOz at the Movies #11
Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown . . . is the final line from Roman Polanski’s brilliant 1974 mystery thriller Chinatown. Polanski is obviously a polarising film-maker given that in 1977 he was arrested and charged with raping and drugging a 13-year-old girl. He pleaded guilty to a lesser offence of unlawful sex with a minor…
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WolfmanOz at the Movies #10
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Up and until yesterday I was half way through writing my weekly post when with current events rapidly escalating I decided to change the topic. What could be more appropriate now then to take a look at Dr. Strangelove or: I How Learned To Stop…
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WolfmanOz at the Movies #9
This is The End Jim Morrison’s lyrics are the first words you hear in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 seminal and epic psychological Vietnam war film Apocalypse Now as US helicopters strike in the jungle with a napalm attack whilst Captain Willard hallucinates in a drunken haze in his Saigon hotel. Willard is then dragged from…
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WolfmanOz at the Movies #8
“A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some java beans and a nice Chianti” Born on December 31st, 1937, Anthony Hopkins is now 84 years old but he is still going strong and has arguably been the finest actor of the last 50 years. He is, of course, most well-known…
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WolfmanOz at the Movies #7
Hitch Alfred Hitchcock was born on August 13, 1899 and died on April 29th, 1980. If ever there was a filmmaker who defined a genre i.e. the suspense thriller, it was Alfred Hitchcock, where he is known as the Master of Suspense, and, arguably, the most influential film director in cinema history; and, yet, incredibly,…
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WolfmanOz at the Movies #6
The Gunfight One of the stables of the Western genre is the showdown/gunfight, often between the main protagonists. The fate of those involved is settled within a split second as to who was fastest on the draw. Of course, the reality in the old West was that it was nothing really like this. Often gunfights…