The Homesman

Posted on March 12, 2015 by Andrew Nette| 5 Comments

The-Homesman1

A spur of the moment decision over summer to watch Howard Hawk’s 1959 Rio Bravo, led to me view a number of Westerns I hadn’t previously seen.

A so-called classic that regularly appears on best of lists of Westerns, Rio Bravo is the story of a small town sheriff (John Wayne) who enlists the aid of a cripple, a drunk and a young gunfighter in his efforts to hold the brother of a local outlaw in his jail.

A lot of people I know love the film but I found it overlong, wooden, and there was zero chemistry between Wayne and Angie Dickinson. I watched Hawk’s earlier effort, Red River (1948), which I enjoyed more, especially Montgomery Clift’s performance, and John Ford’s The Searchers (1956), in which an embittered racist civil war veteran (Wayne again) embarks on a journey spanning several years to rescue a niece (somewhat unconvincingly played by Natalie Wood), stolen in a Comanche raid. It is a terrific piece of story telling, as much for what is not said and shown as what is.

Also on the list was Lawman (1971), a pretty average effort, in which a sheriff (an ageing Burt Lancaster) arrives in a town to arrest all the cattlemen whose celebration in his town the year before resulted in the death of an old man, and the excellent 1959 Andre de Toth film, The Day of the Outlaw.… Read more

Share

→ 5 Comments

Posted in Andre De Toth, Robert Ryan, Westerns

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Pulp Friday: The World of Suzie Wong

Posted on March 6, 2015 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

The World of Suzi Wong is perhaps best known as a 1960 movie starring William Holden and Nancy Kwan. But before – and after – it was a movie, it was a book by English writer, Richard Mason.

The story concerns an American architect and aspiring artist Robert Lomax, who relocates to Hong Kong for a year to see if he can make a living as a painter. With a limited budget he takes a cheap in an infamous section of the Hong Kong waterfront, where he meets and eventually falls in love with a local prostitute who goes by the name, Suzie Wong

This week’s Pulp Friday offering is a series of paperback covers from the various editions of The World of Suzi Wong. All the covers focus more or less on the chao song clad figure of Suzi Wong, but the illustration for the version published in Australia by Horwitz, is the most suggestive. As if the image was not enough, the cover blurb adds: “Passionate torment against a background of vice on the Hong Kong waterfront”.

Enjoy the long weekend.

Share
… Read more
Share

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Horwitz Publications, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction set in Asia, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers

Tagged , , , ,

Stick with me son and I’ll make you a star: 5 great Bryan Brown roles

Posted on March 2, 2015 by Andrew Nette| 5 Comments

still-of-bryan-brown-in-fx-(1986)-large-pictureOn a whim several weeks ago I re-watched the 1986 movie, F/X. Although largely forgotten now, F/X was a big deal at the time, at least here in Australia. This was mainly because it starred a local actor, Bryan Brown. Brown was working in Hollywood for much of the latter part of the eighties and an Australian star getting top billing in a Hollywood film was not as common as is now. It must have done well in the US, too, because there was a sequel, imaginatively titled F/X 2, released in 1991 and also starring Brown.

The plot of F/X involved an Australian special effects technician, Roland ‘Rollie’ Tyler (Brown), who for some unspecified reason can’t return to home and is making a living working on various B-grade horror and crime flicks in New York. A cop attached to the witness protection program, Lipton (Cliff de Young), approaches Rollie to help out with a senior member of the New York mob, DeFranco (played by Jerry Orbach) who has turned informant. Lipton believes the best way to ensure the mob won’t come after DeFranco is to stage his assassination and he wants to pay Rollie a lot of money to help with the technical aspects of making sure it looks realistic, including acting as the assassin.… Read more

Share

→ 5 Comments

Posted in Australian crime film, Australian popular culture, Bryan Brown, Crime film

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Pulp Friday: Number 96 paperback tie-ins

Posted on February 26, 2015 by Andrew Nette| 5 Comments

Bev & BruceLike the television show they were based on, today’s Pulp Friday offering, Number 96 paperback tie-ins, contain nudity, sex, free love, devil worship, infidelity and murder.

The Australian TV soap opera Number 96 depicted the lives of the residents of a fictitious block of inner Sydney flats. These days it comes across as a cultural curio and a sleazy late night commercial TV reminder of early, pre-feminist, seventies. It was indeed those things, but also much more.

Number 96 debuted on March 13 1972, “The night Australian television lost its virginity”. There was moral outrage about the explicit nature of the show and protestors picketed Channel 0 (now the Ten Network) with placards demanding the station “ban this filth”.

It was a huge success with audiences, however, who were keen to dive head first into the warm water of the increasingly sexually liberated early seventies. The show resulted in a feature film and even had its own passenger train that transported the cast and crew from Sydney to Melbourne for the annual Logie awards (Australia’s equivalent of the Emmys). The train made stops at country towns along the way at which thousands turned out to see it.

The end titles always featured a shot of the exterior of the apartment block.… Read more

Share

→ 5 Comments

Posted in Australian popular culture, Australian pulp fiction, Australian television history, Pulp fiction, Pulp Friday

Tagged , , , , , ,

The mysterious life of David Goodis

Posted on February 12, 2015 by Andrew Nette| 4 Comments

page17_1

Literary obscurity is a curious beast. Why do some writers get discovered and stay famous, while others, perhaps just as good, possibly even better, remain undiscovered or burn brightly for a brief period only to become completely unknown? Is it talent, perseverance, astute management, zeitgeist, or just plain luck? And the process by which forgotten writers are rediscovered can be even stranger.

The ebb and flow of literary fame is one of the undercurrents running through French-born, Los Angeles–based journalist Philippe Garnier’s biography of David Goodis, Goodis: A Life in Black and White. Published in France 30 years ago, it was only translated and published in English for the first time in 2013.

Goodis is seen as one of the preeminent noir writers of his era, the heyday of pulp publishing in the late 1940s and 1950s, and, according to Garnier, “has become a cottage industry of mind-boggling proportions in his own country.”

It wasn’t always so.

You can read the rest of my review of Philippe Garnier’s Goodis bio, Goodis: A Life in Black and White, here on the Los Angeles Review of Books site.

Share
… Read more
Share

→ 4 Comments

Posted in Book Reviews, David Goodis, Pulp fiction

Tagged , ,