Tag Archives: Terence Young

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Sean Connery Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today would have been Sean Connery’s 95th birthday.  It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 Sean Connery Films

From Russia With Love (1963, dir by Terence Young, DP: Ted Moore)

Goldfinger (1964, dir by Guy Hamilton, DP: Ted Moore)

The Man Who Would Be King (1975, dir by John Huston, DP: Oswald Morris)

Highlander (1986, dir by Russell Mulcahy, DP: Gerry Fisher)

 

Brad’s “Scene of the Day” – Lino Ventura and Charles Bronson in THE VALACHI PAPERS (1972)!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

Even though he was born in Italy on July 14th, 1919, Lino Ventura would become one of France’s most beloved character actors from the 1950’s through the 1980’s. In 1972, Ventura played Don Vito Genevese in THE VALACHI PAPERS, starring Charles Bronson. This film was released on the heels of the runaway success of THE GODFATHER (1972), and it would go on to make quite a bit of money itself. DEATH WISH (1974) is the only Bronson film that made more money at the U.S. box office in the 1970’s. I’ve always enjoyed that these two legendary actors were able to work with each other at least one time in their careers!

Happy 106th Birthday in cinematic heaven to the great Lino Ventura! Enjoy this fun scene from THE VALACHI PAPERS that begins with a cute domestic situation before ending with a vicious “hit.”

Brad’s Song of the Day – “Toshiro and I” from CHARLES BRONSON – More Than a Vigilante – THE MUSICAL! 🎶 

Posted on by Bradley Crain

Toshiro Mifune is one of the all time great actors in the history of world cinema, and he’s also one of my personal favorites. Charles Bronson may sit alone at the top of Mt. Bradmore, but there’s a tier of actors just below him who I also obsess over. That tier includes people like Chow Yun-Fat, Clint Eastwood, Lau Ching-Wan, Roy Scheider, James Woods, Rutger Hauer, John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and Toshiro Mifune. I have read voluminous books about Mifune, and I’ve collected so many of his Japanese films. His work with Kurosawa is amazing, but he’s also done impressive work with other great Japanese directors like Kihachi Okamoto, Masaki Kobayashi, and Hiroshi Inagaki. 

It makes me so happy that Charles Bronson and Toshiro Mifune had the opportunity to make the enjoyable East meets Western, RED SUN, together. Although Mifune had more range than Bronson as an actor, they both had such a magnificent screen presence. And the one time they worked together, Bronson actually had the more showy role. Watching Bronson underplay his scalawag cowboy against the honorable samurai played by Mifune is a true delight to any person who appreciates macho cinema. Henry Brooks really hones in on their macho personas in his song “Toshiro and I” from his new musical, CHARLES BRONSON – More Than a Vigilante – THE MUSICAL. It’s my favorite song in the entire musical, and I’m glad to be able to share it on the legendary Toshiro Mifune’s 105th birthday! Enjoy!

The underrated RED SUN (1971) – Charles Bronson & Toshiro Mifune in an East meets Western! 

Posted on by Bradley Crain

Every so often I’m going to throw out a movie that I don’t think gets enough love, and that just doesn’t set right with me. Today’s movie is RED SUN. 

In RED SUN, two of the most macho actors in the history of world cinema team up in a western where train robber Link (Bronson) is forced to lead the honorable samurai Kuroda (Mifune) on a cross country trek to reclaim a stolen sword that was intended to be a gift from the Empire of Japan to the US President. If the two men can’t get the sword back in a week’s time, honor demands that the two men will lose their lives out of shame. Link isn’t really down with this plan, but he doesn’t have much of a choice in the matter due to the power and skill of Kuroda. Charles Bronson & Toshiro Mifune command the screen, with Charlie showing a likable sense of humor in his role as the bad / good cowboy. The two must find the evil Gauche (French superstar Alain Delon). Gauche is Bronson’s old train robbing partner who stole the sword and killed a samurai in the process, providing even more motivation for Kuroda. Add in Ursula Andress as a sexy woman who has a history with both Link and Gauche, and it doesn’t get much better than this!

RED SUN is not a perfect movie, but I couldn’t imagine anyone being disappointed by this enjoyable East meets Western that features true international superstars. In my book, it’s highly recommended!

Enjoy the trailer below:

COLD SWEAT (1970) – starring Charles Bronson’s biceps!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

Charles Bronson plays a boat captain named Joe Martin who seems be living the good life in the south of France.  He has a great job renting out boats to tourists!  He has great luck beating his friends out of big stacks of cash in poker.  He has a beautiful wife (Liv Ullman), and most importantly, he has about the biggest biceps I’ve seen in a movie not starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.  This idyllic existence falls apart when some men from his past show up and force him to use his boat to help them smuggle drugs.  It seems these guys feel like Martin owes them something since they had to go to prison for killing a cop, while ace driver Martin, escaped.  As you might expect, nobody’s plans go as expected and much action ensues!

The first thing that stands out in this film is the cast, that includes James Mason, Liv Ullman, Michael Constantin, and Jill Ireland.  Bronson’s European films uniformly had tremendous casts and this one is no different.  Even with these well known actors, Jean Topart as the villainous Katanga, is a real standout.  Second, this is the first of three films that Bronson completed with director Terence Young, who is most famous for kicking off the James Bond franchise with DR. NO, THUNDERBALL, and FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE.  Young knows how to stage action scenes, and with the help of famous French stuntman Remy Julienne, the two men cook up some impressive car stunts and chase sequences.  Finally, Bronson himself exudes charisma and is in maximum physical condition in this film.  In a career defined largely by his supreme conditioning, this may be Bronson’s most impressive physical performance.

Charles Bronson became an international superstar when he went to Europe in 1968, where he made a series of good films with great international casts. COLD SWEAT doesn’t come together quite as well as some of his other European films like RIDER ON THE RAIN, VIOLENT CITY & RED SUN, but it’s still a fun film with good action sequences and an impressively pumped up Charles Bronson. And the film has never looked better. After decades of shabby VHS and DVD copies, Kino Lorber put out a very nice blu ray in 2019. It’s nice seeing the movie in such a high quality presentation.

Check out the trailer for COLD SWEAT below:

Film Review: Inchon (dir by Terence Young)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Inchon is an infamous film.

First released in 1982, this epic recreation of one key battles of the Korean War was an expensive film with a cast of well-known actors.  Jacqueline Bisset plays a wealthy army wife who tries to protect five South Korean children who have found themselves in the middle of the battle.  Ben Gazzara plays her husband, a major who is having an affair with the daughter of Toshiro Mifune.  David Janssen and real-life film critic Rex Reed wander through the film as journalist.  (Janssen growls like a man dealing with a serious hangover while Reed struggles to not look straight at the camera.)  Richard Roundtree plays a tough sergeant.  The great Italian actor Gabriele Ferzetti plays a Turkish officer.  And, finally, the role of legendary American general Douglas MacArthur — of “I will return” fame — is played by the very British Sir Laurence Olivier.  Olivier was apparently told that, in real life, MacArthur often sounded like the comedic actor W.C. Fields and Olivier often seems to be imitating Fields’s pinched style of speaking.  Olivier also wears almost as much makeup here as he did in his production of Othello.  MacArthur is portrayed as being almost a mystic warrior, a man who relies as much on his faith as his strategic genius to repel the communists.  (In victory, he recites The Lord’s Prayer.)  The film was directed by Terence Young, who previously brought James Bond to cinematic life.

Inchon is notorious for being a flop with both critics and audiences.  The film had a budget of $46,000,000 and reportedly made $5,000,000 at the box office before it was withdrawn.  The entirety of the budget was put up by the Unification Church, which is an organization that many people consider to be a cult.  (I like neither communists nor cultists so this film left me with no one to root for.)  The film proved to be such a flop at the box office that it has never been released on home video.  It did, however, air on television a few times and, in recent years, the television cut has been posted to YouTube.  That’s how I saw Inchon.

I watched Inchon because I’ve frequently seen it referred to as being one of the worst films ever made.  Watching the film, I have to say that I think the “worst film” label is a bit extreme.  For the most part, it’s just an extremely uneven and often rather boring film, one that mixed scenes of surprisingly brutal combat with dialogue-heavy scenes that just seem to drag on forever.  It’s a film that belongs as much in the disaster genre as the war genre as the film is full of rather shallowly-written characters who all have their own individual dramas to deal with.  Will Jacqueline Bisset save the children?  Who will sacrifice their lives to defeat the communists? Will Ben Gazzara, who often seems to be the sole member of the cast who is at least tying to give a credible performance, choose his wife or his mistress?  The film ultimately feels like a compressed miniseries.  Everyone has a story but hardly anyone makes an impression.

That said, Laurence Olivier’s performance as Douglas MacArthur …. agck!  Seriously, it’s hard to know where to even begin when it comes to talking about just how miscast Olivier is as the quintessential all-American general.  It’s been said that it takes a truly great actor to give a truly bad performance and Olivier certainly proves that to be true in this film.  Obviously frail and trying to sound like W.C. Fields, Olivier’s MacArthur is a general who would inspire zero confidence.  The film doesn’t help by portraying MacArthur as being an almost holy figure, one who is often framed to look like almost an angel descending from Heaven to lead the battle against America’s enemies.  The film is full of scenes of people discussing MacArthur’s genius just to be followed by a scene of Olivier looking old, tired, and rather grumpy.  There were a few times when I thought I could see Olivier’s hair dye running down the side of his face.  It may have been my imagination or just the graininess of the upload on YouTube but, given the quality of the film, I can’t really dismiss the possibility that it happened and no one felt like doing a second take.

As I said, Inchon can be found on YouTube.  It’s not the worst film ever made but that doesn’t mean it’s a good one.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special 1963 Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films is all about letting the visuals do the talking.

Since I reviewed a film that takes place in 1963 this morning, I’m going to use today’s edition of 4 Shots From 4 Films to pay further homage to that pivotal year.  It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 1963 Films

From Russia With Love (1963, dir by Terence Young, DP: Ted Moore)

Black Sabbath (1963, dir by Mario Bava, DP: Ubaldo Terzano)

Hud (1963, dir by Martin Ritt, DP: James Wong Howe)

Cleopatra (1963, dir by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, DP: Leon Shamroy)

10 Oscar Snubs From The 1960s

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Ah, the 60s. Both the studio system and the production code collapsed as Hollywood struggled to remain relevant during a time of great social upheaval. The Academy alternated between nominating films that took chances and nominating films that cost a lot of money. It led to some odd best picture lineups and some notable snubs!

1960: Psycho Is Not Nominated For Best Picture and Anthony Perkins Is Not Nominated For Best Actor

To be honest, considering that the Academy has never really embraced horror as a genre and spent most of the 60s nominating big budget prestige pictures, it’s a bit surprising that Psycho was actually nominated for four Oscars.  Along with being nominated for its production design and its cinematography, Psycho also won nominations for Alfred Hitchcock and Janet Leigh.  However, Anthony Perkins was not nominated for Best Actor, despite giving one of the most memorable performances of all time.  The film literally would not work without Perkins’s performance and, considering that Perkins pretty much spent the rest of his career in the shadow of Norman Bates, it’s a shame that he didn’t at least get a nomination for his trouble.  Psycho was also not nominated for Best Picture, despite being better remembered and certainly more influential than most of the films that were.

1962: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance Is Almost Totally Snubbed

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance was not totally snubbed by the Academy.  It received a nomination for Best Costume Design.  But still, it deserved so much more!  John Ford, James Stewart, John Wayne, Lee Marvin, Vera Miles, and the picture itself were all worthy of nominations.  Admittedly, 1962 was a year full of great American films and there was a lot of competition when it came to the Oscars.  Still, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance definitely deserved a best picture nomination over the bloated remake of Mutiny on the Bounty.  Today, if the first Mutiny on the Bounty remake is known for anything, it’s for Marlon Brando being difficult on the set.  But The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is still remembered for telling us to always print the legend.

1964: From Russia With Love Is Totally Snubbed

The same year that the Academy honored George Cukor’s creaky adaptation of My Fair Lady, it totally ignored my favorite James Bond film.  From Russia With Love is a Bond film that works wonderfully as both a love story and a thriller.  Sean Connery, Lotte Lenya, Robert Shaw, and Terence Young all deserved some award consideration.  From Russia With Love was released in the UK in 1963.  In a perfect world, it would have also been released concurrently in the U.S., allowing From Russia With Love to be the film that gave the the Academy the chance to recognize the British invasion.  Instead, Tom Jones was named the Best Picture of 1963 and From Russia With Love had to wait until 1964 to premiere in the U.S.  It was snubbed in favor of one of old Hollywood’s last grasps at relevance.

1964: Slim Pickens Is Not Nominated For Best Supporting Actor

Playing three separate roles, Peter Sellers dominates Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb.  But, as good as Sellers is, the film’s most memorable image is definitely Slim Pickens whooping it up as he rides the bomb down to Earth.  George C. Scott and Sterling Hyaden also undoubtedly deserved some award consideration but, in the end, Pickens is the one who brings the film to life even as he helps to bring society to an end.

1967: In Cold Blood Is Not Nominated For Best Picture

In Cold Blood, though not a perfect film, certainly deserved a nomination over Dr. Doolittle.  In Cold Blood is a film that still has the power to disturb and haunt viewers today.  Dr. Doolittle was a box office debacle that was nominated in an attempt to help 20th Century Fox make back some of their money.

1967: Sidney Poitier Is Not Nominated For Best Actor For In The Heat Of The Night

In 1967, Sidney Poitier starred in two of the films that were nominated for Best Picture but somehow, he did not pick up a nomination himself.  His restrained but fiercely intelligent performance in In The Heat Of The Night provided a powerful contrast to Rod Steiger’s more blustery turn.  That Poitier was not nominated for his performance as Virgil Tibbs truly is one of the stranger snubs in Academy history.  (If I had to guess, I’d say that the Actors Branch was split on whether to honor him for In The Heat of the Night or Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner or even for To Sir With Love and, as a result, he ended up getting nominated for none of them.)

1968: 2001: A Space Odyssey and Planet of the Apes Are Not Nominated For Best Picture

Neither one of these classic science fiction films were nominated for Best Picture, despite the fact that both of them are far superior and far more influential than Oliver!, the film that won that year.

1968: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly Is Totally Ignored

Not even Ennio Morricone’s score received a nomination!

1968: Petulia Is Totally Snubbed

Seriously, I don’t know what was going on with the Academy in 1968 but it seems they went out of their way to ignore the best films of the year.  Richard Lester’s Petulia is usually cited as one of the definitive films of the 60s but it received not a single Oscar nomination.  Not only did the film fail to receive a nomination for Best Picture but Richard Lester, George C. Scott, Julie Christie, Shirley Knight, Richard Chamberlain, and the film’s screenwriters were snubbed as well.

1969: Easy Rider Is Not Nominated For Best Picture

Yes, I know.  Easy Rider is a flawed film and there are certain moments that are just incredibly pretentious.  That said, Easy Rider defined an era and it also presented a portrait of everything that was and is good, bad, and timeless about America.  The film may have been produced, directed, and acted in a drug-razed haze but it’s also an important historical document and it was also a film whose success permanently changed Hollywood.  Certainly, Easy Rider’s legacy is superior to that of Hello, Dolly!

Agree? Disagree? Do you have an Oscar snub that you think is even worse than the 10 listed here? Let us know in the comments!

Up next: It’s the 70s!

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Toshiro Mifune Edition

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

100 years ago today, the great Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune was born in Qingdao, Shandong, China, which was under Japanese occupation at the time.  After working as a photographer and as an assistant cameraman, Mifune made his acting debut in 1947, playing a bank robber in Snow Trail.

Mifune would go on to become an international superstar, appearing in hundreds of films before his death in 1997.  Sixteen of those films would be directed by Akira Kurosawa and Mifune’s performances in Kurosawa’s yakuza and samurai films would go on to inspire actors the world over.  When Sergio Leone adapted Yojimbo into A Fistful of Dollars, Clint Eastwood based his performance on Mifune’s performance in the original.  George Lucas would later create the character of Obi-Wan Kenobi with Mifune in mind.

In honor of the man and his career, here are

4 Shots From 4 Films

Drunken Angel (1948, directed by Akira Kurosawa)

Throne of Blood (1957, directed by Akira Kurosawa)

Yojimbo (1961, directed by Akira Kurosawa)

Red Sun (1971, directed by Terence Young)

4 Shots From 4 Films: Dr. No, Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Wild Things, Spring Breakers

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today is National Bikini Day!

According to the good people at Checkiday, the proper way to celebrate National Bikini Day is to put on a bikini and head to the beach!  Unfortunately, I don’t live anywhere near the beach so instead, I’ve just been cleaning the house and taking out a wasp nest while wearing a bikini, which is an experience that’s both frightening and empowering at the same time.

(Seriously, we had a huge wasp nest that showed up overnight over the front door.  I went outside and sprayed the nest, which resulted in the porch getting covered with dying and angry wasps.  Of course, that’s when I realized that, because of the whole bikini thing, I had put on a t-shirt but I’d forgotten to put on shoes so I was barefoot, the backdoor was locked, and I didn’t have my keys on me, again because of the whole bikini thing.  Rather than walking in bare feet across a porch covered by angry wasps, I literally crawled through a window to get back in the house, at which point I put on my shoes, went outside, and swept up all the wasps and the nest.  It’s been quite a day!)

Anyway, as we often do here at the Shattered Lens, we’re going to recognize both this holiday and four of our favorite movies!  Here, in honor of National Bikini Day, are….

4 Shots From 4 Films