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| A Walk on the Moon |
Enjoy your franchise, or the conscientious abstention from it if you choose...but don't think Not Voting doesn't encourage Them, too...
Bill Crider: Get the Gringo
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| The Web |
Brian Arnold: Hallowe'en Wrap-up; The Monkees on The Hy Lit Show (1968)
Dan Stumpf: The Web
Ed Gorman: Born to Be Bad
Elizabeth Foxwell: "The Debt" (Suspense [1952; television]; based on Lawrence Treat's "Twenty-Dollar Debt")
Evan Lewis: The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse
George Kelley: The Rachel Maddow Show
Iba Dawson: A Walk on the Moon
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| The Seventh Victim |
Jack Seabrook: Ray Bradbury on TV: "The Life Work of Juan Diaz" (The Alfred Hitchcock Hour)
James Reasoner: Islands in the Sky
Jeff Flugel: Phenomena
Jerry House: Vampire Over London (1952, aka a panoply of titles)
John Charles: Arachnid (2001)
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| The Voice of the Turtle |
Kate Laity: Berne
Laura: The Voice of the Turtle and others
Marty McKee: Deep Rising
Michael Shonk: more Harry O
Patti Abbott: Checkmate
Prashant Trikannad: Do Aankhen Barah Haath (1957; aka Two Eyes, Twelve Hands)
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| The Thing (from Another World) |
Rick: Hammer Horrors: An A to Z Appreciation
Ron Scheer: Homicide: Life in the Streets
Scott Cupp: Rubber
Sergio Angelini: Blake Edwards's crime drama
Stacia Jones: November Movies to watch for
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| Homicide: Life on the Street |
Stefan Blitz: The Heathcliff and Dingbat Show
Stephen Gallagher: The Killing
Todd Mason: The Candidate (1972) and Slattery's People: please see below; Pat Paulsen for President
Yvette Banek: Favorite Political Films for Those of You Who Haven't Overdosed on Politics Yet; Dancing at the Harvest Moon
The Candidate (1972) is my favorite of US political films, a sly satire of the political process and all its temptations and corruptions, particularly when one is dealing with the Big-Time races such as for a US Senate seat from a state such as California. Bill McKay (Robert Redford) is the son of an old-style wheeler-dealer former governor (Melvin Douglas), but who has more progressive and populist ideas than those of his father, an exemplar of political-machine pragmatism. When no more conventional Democrat is willing to challenge popular blowhard GOP incumbent Crocker Jarman (the one bit of rather overbroad nomenclature in the film), younger McKay, with the proviso that he can actually put forward the message he wants to in his campaign, takes up the challenge...and how the process, and Bill McKay's ego, both propel and thwart his passage through the campaign are the heart of the film. The segment below is not the most subtle nor telling segment, but is the most substantial bit online, and is relatively demonstrative of the skill of the filmmaking and critique in this project, from writer Jeremy Larner and director Michael Ritchie, probably the height of both men's film careers:
The Candidate:
Meanwhile, I've never seen a complete episode of Slattery's People, the fondly-remembered season and a half series that ran on CBS in the mid-'60s, with little exposure since; but the key fragments of an episode below do leave me wishing I could see more of the series, particularly outside the gray market...it seems like the kind of balance between naive and knowing that marked such contemporary series as The Defenders and NYPD, and even with the fact of Fred Freiberger in on the production (he was the producer responsible for the atrocious third season of Star Trek), I'd certainly give it a look...interesting parallel in the episode excerpted below and the film above, between the attempts of younger reformers to push back against politics-as-usual vested interests, though The Candidate is unsurprisingly much more ambiguous and less hammy than the teleplay...which could also be the working model for A Few Good Men...
Slattery's People:
with subsequent segments (alas, not the complete episode) here and here.
This week's short but sweet post is now up and running!
ReplyDeletehttp://meandyouandablognamedboo.blogspot.com/2012/11/tuesdays-forgotten-tv-monkees-on-hy-lit.html
THE CANDIDATE is a terrific movie - that scene in the car when he seemingly cracks up is one of my favourites. Great choice Todd - can't believe it is 40 years ago ... Wasn't there talk of Redford making a kind of semi-sequel or follow-up? Would make very good sense.
ReplyDeleteTodd, I share your opinion of THE CANDIDATE, but it comes a close second to my favorite political film, THE SENATOR WAS INDISCREET (with William Powell). If I ever run out of forgotten TV series to review I will turn to my long list of forgotten movie treasures.
ReplyDeleteThanks, guys...I dunno, Sergio...I'm not sure that a very late sequel to THE CANDIDATE has too much chance to be better than ENEMY OF THE STATE was to THE CONVERSATION. But, then again, maybe it would be along the lines of THE QUICK AND THE DEAD and UNFORGIVEN in homage to the Leone films.
ReplyDeleteMichael, I've been aware of that film, but I don't think I've seen it...shall delve.
Ha, Brian! Well, they sure were earnest.