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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…
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WolfmanOz at the Movies #5
“Bond. James Bond” And with those 3 words spoken after 8 minutes into Dr. No, a cultural and movie icon was born, 60 years ago ! Initially created by writer Ian Fleming in 1953 in which the American singer Hoagy Carmichael was Fleming’s vision of the character. But when the first Bond film Dr. No…
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WolfmanOz at the Movies #4
Well we could probably do with a bit of cheering up now. So, to get the smile on our faces let’s look at a film that’s 100 years old this year! Buster Keaton’s comedy short Cops tells the tale of a man who inadvertently is mistaken for a terrorist at a police parade and is…
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WolfmanOz at the Movies #3
We have certainly been living in strange times at present. I’m sure that most of us would say that what we are seeing now would be in the realm of dsyoptia; something unimaginable only 5 years ago. So this weeks theme is looking at dsyoptian movies which mostly relate to an imagined state or society…
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WolfmanOz at the Movies #2
Everyone loves a line and a quote from a movie Whether it be dramatic or comedic there’s always a pithy line or two from countless movies that everyone can either relate to or enjoy. One of my favourites, is from a now often forgotten comedy from the early 1930s, Dinner At Eight. It’s still priceless…