ROBO is not free ROBO. The heart was produced by ROBO in much fighting.
Labels: books
Labels: music
Other than the Trop, is there a park in all of baseball as miserable as the Metrodome?My answer is, yes and no.
Labels: music
Labels: film
Do be warned that if you are new to my books and my writing and my web site and—perhaps most pertinently—to my monthly Messages, and if you were brought here by some blog- or web-link only to the "controversial" previous message, you will be disappointed by the following discussion. You’ll be especially disappointed if you are expecting polemics, apologetics, pure politics, or a simple reinforcement of whatever prejudice or passion you’re bringing to the proceedings.
This is a writer’s web site.
Labels: the world
It was a tribute to Howard Hawks that he wasn't phased by the famous revelation that the guy he had hired for The Big Sleep was actually a gal in a gingham dress. Hawks was as famous for his regard for strong women as he was for hisA little bit more about Brackett and Hughes:
exploitation of weaker ones. And Leigh's steady integrity impressed him. She stayed on the picture. There are many who believe she materially helped make it the classic it became. She worked with Hawks and Wayne on movies like Hatari! (about which she had some hilarious stories) and Rio Lobo, as well as the classic Rio Bravo and she also wrote for television.
Only once, with The Empire Strikes Back, did she ever script a science fantasy tale. In a sense she had the privilege of self-imitation, just as she had when doing Eldorado, which she knew was a rehash of Rio Bravo. At one point she had suggested to Hawks that he simply change the names of her previous script and save himself some money.Considering that Empire is easily the best of the Star Wars films, it's a shame she didn't write the screenplays for all of them. Consider this:
First - how fucking cool is it to find a line, a connection between a Bogie character and Han Solo? Is this not why the internet was invented, to delight geeks worldwide?But, of course, Leigh was also influential in Hollywood. Her contribution to Star Wars wasn't limited to the script she did for The Empire Strikes Back. When I saw the first Star Wars movie I was disappointed. I had expected something as good as Brackett. What I got was a dilute of Brackett and the Brackett style. Han Solo's origins lie, it seems to me, in those tough, semi-piratical spacers who took the interplanetary work nobody else would do. I suspect they all looked a bit like Bogart in Leigh's mind! Which says something for Bogart, I'd say, since Leigh got to know him when she was working with Faulkner on the The Big Sleep. She and Bogie enjoyed each other's company. They were the same kind of tough-talking romantics. Her spacegoing heroes were not a million miles away from the seagoing Bogart of Key Largo.
The first modern spies were indeed identified with Empire. They were those who played the “Great Game” for imperial stakes on the North West Frontier of India. But they were real people, some of them coming to ends that even Largo, Rosa Klebb and the cat-eating Oddjob might have hesitated to inflict. It was the spies of the Indian Political Service, in direct descent from Sleeman and Malcolm, the infiltrators and destroyers of the Thuggi gangs who infested the north Indian roads, who gave rise to the first great modern spy story — Kipling’s Kim, published in the last gasp of the Victorian era....which sounded to me like the kernel of a story far more fascinating than any Bond movie or novel. The kind of story that would make for a ripping historical novel, an engrossing non-fiction read, or a movie. And wouldn't you know, a little digging turned up The Deceivers, a 1988 film (based on a novel) about the infiltration of the Thuggee cult - starring Pierce Brosnan, who as everyone their dog is aware, took a turn as Bond.
The blogger formerly known as Dan. Pro-patookus.
