Oh! Lee Remick! There’s a name I haven’t seen in a minute…

This starts with a voice-over infodump about floods along the Tennessee river, and we’re apparently going to follow people working for the TVA who are buying land from recalcitrant people along the river? Or something? It doesn’t quite make the “elevator pitch” criteria (unless it’s a long and boring elevator ride), but it seems … er … It seems like a weird way to start the movie, laying out the concept like that.

Is there gonna be romance?

Hm… is the aspect ratio correct here? People seem a bit squashed? Vertically?

And that image up there is 853×364… (/ 853.0 364) => 2.34! I guess they just have some kind of squashed-looking faces?

Oh, that sounds wonderful!

Oh, Lee Remick… I was thinking of Lee Van Cleef!

Not the same kind of thing at all! But most amazing of all:

There’s somebody else in this movie with exactly the same name! Doooing!

Yeah! Take that, city slicker!

This is really entertaining. And quite unlike any of Kazan’s preceding movies. I think he’s hitting the beats he didn’t quite hit with Baby Doll? That was supposed to be funny, but instead was… confusing.

This movie has so many good lines.

*insert Beavis sounds here*

Subtle framing.

Clift’s performance is a bit confusing — he often seems diffident, but at the same time he’s being kinda heroic (here he’s talking to the local KKK boys (I think) who don’t want equal pay for the Black people)… It’s… it’s… almost like he’s trying to do a more serious version of Cary Grant? But not quite getting all the way there?

This woman does the best side eye ever, though.

Wow, this is a masterful performance. He’s managed to portray the most repugnant character in movie history.

This movie was unexpectedly really good. I guess perhaps Kazan wanted to go total melodrama, but he’s good at this.

Wild River. Elia Kazan. 1960. ⚅

Yes, that’s how to make your store cosy.

First you put the gun on the wall…

… then you distribute some pillows.

Oh, yeah, about this DVD:

But then I forgot to watch the other movie! Which I’m doing now.

Man, I’d forgotten how weird Greenlandish sounds… it’s like nothing else phonetically. Phonemically? It’s fascinating. Especially with the occasional Danish words inserted at random.

But… hm… Qaqqat alanngui had nerve from the start, and entertaining performances. This one starts off more ambiguously — it is a comedy? Is it a drama? Or are we gonna get some horror already?

(But kudos for the subtle camouflage shirt.)

It’s horror!

That’s the scary horror house!

Gotta have them shovels.

Having somebody yawn this much in a movie isn’t a good idea. That stuff is contagious!

Well, that’s scary.

But, nope, this movie just isn’t as compelling as the previous one. I mean, they’re both no budget tiny horror movies, but this one is mostly the two guys sitting around and then something mysterious happens once in a while. It’s just not that entertaining.

There’s original bits in here — like the thing with the rope? That pulled the guy into the Scary Basement? That was pretty cool (and properly nightmarish). But… on the whole, it’s not as much fun as the previous movie.

And I know, this is a no budget movie, made for fun, presumably, so it doesn’t feel fair to throw a die on this thing. But I’m going to, anyway, because I’m not fair.

There were several scenes I think worked well (by that I mean, they were scary), but overall:

Unnuap Taarnerpaaffiani. Malik Kleist. 2014. ⚁

Wut. This DVD is in 16:9? But nobody shot in 16:9 back then (and hardly any movies are shot in that aspect ratio today), so it’s been cut down, one way or another. I’m guessing they cut the top and bottom? TSK TSK this Kazan box set, dude…

Nope! They cut the left/right edges. Wrong again!

I hate 16:9 soo muuuuuch…

Hey, is that Mercator? Hm… it’s odd, whatever the projection is. And with Australia all the way up there in Asia? And all the islands in between all smushed into one land mass? Oh yeah! I didn’t notice that the Mediterranean was smushed, too! It’s a very land-centric projection.

Hey, it’s what’s-his-name!

This is very amusing. It’s old-fashioned (duh, from 1957) media criticism… but, man, it’s early for this kind of thing. The movie makes fun of the media in a way that feels staid now, but it must have been pretty radical back then.

I think! (And perhaps why it feels staid is because it’s been copied a lot?)

I mean, it’s meant to be over the top, but the problem is — why is this guy suddenly so popular? They try to establish him as popular by making him 1) not a racist, and 2) somebody who makes fun of (some) ads, but is that enough? On the other hand, people get famous on less than that, I guess… I think it would have helped if the songs he wrote were better?

And we’ve got more than half the movie to go — it the last half going to be about how the guy is discarded by the public? That’d be typical…

The power of aerials.

so critique

He’s so horny!!!

Yeah, as I expected — the last half isn’t as much fun as the first half.

I mean, the movie is, like, correct? Everything it says about TV and politics and everything? But… is it funny? No, it’s not. “It’s funny because it’s true” is the most incorrect thing ever.

He’s an influencer.

Heh heh.

My spellchecker doesn’t recognise “influencer” as a word! I’m proud of my spellchecker!

Yeah, that’s the correct reaction to the revoltin’ plot developmints.

Fighters For Fuller… Oh! KKK. Very subtle.

It ends with what has to be a reference to A Streetcar Named Desise (but “Marcia” instead of “Stella”), which is cool.

I dunno. I really liked like about half this movie? Then the rest not so much.

A Face in the Crowd. Elia Kazan. 1957. ⚃