Re: RARA-AVIS: The Marlowe Paradigm

From: Rene Ribic ( rribic@optusnet.com.au)
Date: 04 Dec 2002


m

> Thanks for the comments on Marlowe's impact on the
> hardboiled genre. I decided to bail out on Chandler
> during the Forties but to pick back up with THE LONG
> GOODBYE in the Fifties.
>
> I got The Big Sleep with Bogart and Bacall from Net-
> flix and watched it til it froze up. I'm having a
> lot of problems with DVDs getting slow spots, with
> some of them flat-out refusing to go on. It didn't
> matter much on this one. I just couldn't jack up
> any enthusiasm over The Big Sleep. The most excited
> I got was the intro when they listed Faulkner and
> Brackett for the screenplay. I think maybe I'll
> check out the later version with Robert Mitchum.
>
> Can I talk about Netflix here? I think so. A while
> back I complained about not being able to rent those
> old noirs at the video stores in town. I joined an
> online thing called Netflix. I heard they had 12,000
> DVD titles, which included almost everything that's
> on DVD. Not so. I'm only finding about 30 or 40%
> of the ones I'd like to see.
>
> Some of these movies aren't very good, either. I
> rented The Killer Inside Me and I was braced for some
> really horrible scenes. Then Lou punches Joyce once
> and she bounces off the furniture and is dead. I took
> it out of the player and started reading Willeford's
> WILD WIVES. I don't mind a movie varying from the book
> a little or a lot, but this movie wasn't doing a thing
> for me.
>
> miker
> --
I agree with you that the film version of THE KILLER INSIDE ME isn't much chop (although I've always liked THE BIG SLEEP). Do yourself a favour & avoid the Mitchum BIG YAWN (this from a big Mitchum fan) - some bright spark decided the story would be better set in contemporary - 70's - UK. Bob M. looks old, tired & thoroughly unimpressed in this debacle. If you have a hankering to see the big guy do Marlowe, I recommend FAREWELL, MY LOVELY, made a couple of years before and featuring cameos from Jim Thompson, as the father of the bad seed daughters, & film noir stalwart, John Ireland. Mitchum's still a little long in the tooth here but still carries it off nicely. Rene

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