DVR Alert!: Oscar-winner Lee Marvin gets the TCM 21-gun salute tonight with 4 of his films, as new book on Marvin by Dwayne Epstein gets rave reviews; Tonight features John Boorman's fast-paced '67 noir thriller 'Point Blank' with Marvin as a one-man blunt object of retribution and malice -who does not crack wise- along with Cat Ballou, Monte Walsh, and The Dirty Dozen

Turner Classic Movies video: The Dirty Dozen - (Original Promo Featurette), A look behind the scenes of the making of the World War II thriller, The Dirty Dozen (1967), starring Lee Marvin, Telly Savalas, Robert Ryan, Donald Sutherland, Clint Walker, Jim Brown, et al.

http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/30500/Dirty-Dozen-The-Original-Promo-Featurette-.html

DVR Alert: Oscar-winner Lee Marvin gets the TCM 21-gun salute tonight with 4 of his films, as new book on him by Dwayne Epstein gets rave reviews; Tonight features John Boorman's fast-paced '67 noir thriller 'Point Blank' with Marvin as a one-man blunt object of retribution and malice who does not crack wise, along with Cat Ballou, Monte Walsh, The Dirty Dozen

Los Angeles Times

CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD blog

Rediscovering Lee Marvin's gritty brilliance

By Susan King, Los Angeles Times 

January 29, 2013, 5:30 p.m.

The versatile Oscar-winner, who died at 63 in 1987, is the subject of a new biography, a film-series retrospective and a Turner Classic Movies marathon.

Lee Marvin "is the guy who started it all in terms of modern American cinema violence," according to Dwayne Epstein, the author of a new biography of the iconic actor.

Read the rest of the piece at: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-lee-marvin-20130130,0,6481171.story

Cat Ballou airs at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, Monte Walsh at 10:00 p.m., The Dirty Dozen at 12:00 a.m., and Point Blank at 2:45 a.m.


TheTrailerBlaze YouTube Channel video: Trailer for John Boorman's 1967 'Point Blank,' starring Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson. Uploaded April 10, 2010. http://youtu.be/N2sKgsKTeEM

When I first saw Mel Gibson in 1999's Payback on one of the pay cable channels after it'd been out for a while, 


it seemed to me to be more his take on Michael Caine's 1971 film Get Carter than anything else, and all I could think of was this Marvin film instead.

No matter what current actors say, even ones who are as dedicated and perfectionist as Mel Gibson, there are very few who are actually willing and able to pull-off playing full-out menace throughout a film, with no light-hearted asides or quips to themselves to lighten the mood -a la 007 or Bruce Willis. 
They care too much what the audience thinks of them and their character, and I can understand that even if I don't agree that it should be so important.

But in Point Blank, under Boorman, Marvin is all-in, and makes no attempt at all to soften his hard, malevolent edges.

Trust me, you will recognize every-other actor in this film, too, as it has a great supporting cast. 

This video features celebrity chef and TCM's Guest Programmer for the night Alton Brown joining TCM host Robert Osborne and rhapsodizing on why he selected John Boorman's 1967 Point Blank as one of his films to share and talk about.
http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/186798/Point-Blank-Movie-Intro-Outro-Alton-Brown.html

Article at: 

http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/544429%7C0/Starring-Lee-Marvin-1-31.html 

If you have never watched this John Boorman documentary on his friend Lee Marvin before, it's flat-out wonderful, so make some time soon to come back to watch it.

smilerbwfc YouTube Channel video: BFI/AMC Documentary: Lee Marvin By John Boorman, Part I, Uploaded December 25, 2007. http://youtu.be/soA0_5oZ8LY

Part 2  http://youtu.be/5PpGJh46NTI

Part 3  http://youtu.be/jKIDp4tZRNo

Part 4  http://youtu.be/H0KpPqwAnac

Part 5  http://youtu.be/P9oHT6Ue7R0

And before there were feature films...

wksufreshair YouTube Channel video: NBC-TV's "M Squad" Golden Look Part 01, starring Lee Marvin as Chicago detective Lt. Frank Ballinger, 1957.

http://youtu.be/r0sq_VJ2LQs

-----

https://twitter.com/DwayneEpstein

http://www.schaffnerpress.com/books/detail/15 

Hollywood PR gambit or simply returning a favor? Brent Lang in TheWrap: Robert Downey Jr. Urges Hollywood: 'Forgive Mel Gibson'; But some NEVER will

Hollywood PR gambit or simply returning a favor? Brent Lang in TheWrap: Robert Downey Jr. Urges Hollywood: 'Forgive Mel Gibson'; But some NEVER will

Given the Hollywood-based news media's fascination for constantly recreating the same old narratives over and over again with different faces -it's not just Hollywood studios that like remakes- esp. their version of re-birth or redemption -regardless of whether it's factually either- it'll be interesting to see next week how talent-friendly, lowest common denominator TV shows like Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood and the like treat this story from Friday night, since there are a LOT of hard feelings in the Los Angeles entertainment industry about Mel Gibson, and an awful lot of people who have no intention of letting Gibson feel he's socially acceptable again in either polite society or the film industry.

Even people who usually try their best to stay "above it all" and not take sides if it's bad for business or ratings.

But the Mel Gibson issue is different.

Not that you'd know it from what your read in most U.S. newspapers or magazines -much less ones in South Florida- but there are a lot of smart and savvy TV program/network producers in LA who usually try their best to act agnostic editorially about some entertainment/celebrity stories they run that are clearly banal or self-serving but let them fly anyway, because they are, at heart, well, harmless.

But on this subject, they might just put their feet down and say, essentially, "Nope, I won't accommodate you, Mel Gibson. I won't allow you and your reps to finesse us in to giving you a one-sided forum to plead your case for public redemption.

Nope, first you must actually say that you're sorry publicly, specifically say what you're sorry about and then show some genuine remorse over an extended period of time.

Don't call us, we'll call you."

The conundrum of course, is how do you really ever know if a once hugely-popular actor like Gibson who has said and done what many people believe are some truly reprehensible things -consistently- is showing true remorse?

Or, frankly, is even worth trying to salvage?

Sometimes, despite your past history with talented-but-troublesome people, you have to let people with a documented history of 'burning bridges behind them' stay on the outside looking in, if for no other reason than self-preservation, so that you yourself aren't burned in the future. (Completion bonds exist for a reason, no?)

There are a lot of successful industry people who no longer are interested in being in the "Mel Gibson business,' no matter how artistically creative or financially reasonable the project he pitches sounds.

He's dead to them.

Period.

Someone else in LA will have to give him a rope or ladder to crawl out from the entertainment 'Phantom Zone' he's exiled in, but it won't be them.

They're throwing him an anchor, not an olive branch.

Over the weeks and months to come, we are all going to come to know just who those people are in Hollywood who put principles over profit.

TheWrap

Robert Downey Jr. Urges Hollywood: 'Forgive Mel Gibson'

Published: October 14, 2011 @ 11:50 pm

By Brent Lang

It was supposed to be Robert Downey Jr.’s night, but somehow Friday’s American Cinematheque Award ceremony became all about Mel Gibson.

When the evening’s honoree took to the stage at the Beverly Hills Hilton to accept his doorstop, he had a clear message for Hollywood.

Read the rest of the article at:

http://thewrap.com/movies/article/robert-downey-jr-tells-hollywood-forgive-mel-gibson-31881

Also writing with some insight on this story was reporter Julie Makinen of the L.A. Times at their 24 Frames film blog.

24 Frames blog

Los Angeles Times

Mel Gibson gets a boost from Robert Downey Jr.

October 15, 2011 | 12:34 am

The slow but methodical rehabilitation of Mel Gibson in Hollywood took another step forward Friday night, courtesy of Robert Downey Jr.

Dozens of famous faces who've performed onscreen with Downey or directed him -- among them Gibson, Jodie Foster, Gary Shandling, Michael Douglas and Jon Favreau -- gathered to pay tribute to (and roast) the "Iron Man" star at the Beverly Hilton as he received the 2011 American Cinematheque Award.

Read the rest of her take at:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/2011/10/the-slow-but-methodical-rehabilitation-of-mel-gibson-in-hollywood-took-another-step-forward-friday-night-courtesy-of-rober-2.html

And in case you forgot, as you watch the videos below, of his Good Morning America interviews with ABC News Diane Sawyer from October 12th and 13th 2006, recall that this was BEFORE the most recent scandal involving former Gibson love interest Oksana Grigorieva, whom he took up with even before officially divorcing his wife, Robyn.

Mel Gibson Accounts for his Drunken Anti-Semitic Tirade (Part 1 of 2)

http://youtu.be/SeQMMp4tXfk

Mel Gibson Accounts for his Drunken Anti-Semitic Tirade (Part 2 of 2)

http://youtu.be/jGRS_TQhEhU

My first thought on seeing the video of Helen Thomas: "I'm Jean-Paul Sartre's The Jewish Question. Delighted to meet you."

This is one of those things where you either have to take my word for it -or you don't.

When I first saw the truly despicable interview with Helen Thomas -pictured below, and her now vacant chair in the front row of the White House Press Room- the very first thing that I thought of was one of the great scenes in François Truffaut's masterful 1966 adaption of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, which airs on Turner Classic Movie on Sunday June 13th at 3:45 a.m.

Julie Christie = heavenly! :-) 


See the Original Trailer at: http://www.tcm.com/video/videoPlayer/?cid=72250&titleId=74448Film info at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060390/

I first saw that film roughly about eight years after it came out, when I was at J.F.K. Junior High in North Miami Beach, and it made quite an indelible mark on me and my smart and impressionable friends, none of whom had read the novel yet, despite being avid readers.

Oh, those miserable pre-videotape, pre-DVD primitive cinema days when you could only see films in theaters or on TV, with local TV stations being nothing like ones in other cities that showed classic films late at night. :-

(And yours truly stuck at the end of the No Man's Land film universe of South Florida.
Well, at least I was close to the two WOMETCO theaters at the 163rd Street Shopping Center, one of my handful of home-away-from-home homes.
Well, at least it was less than six blocks away.)



When I was still living in the D.C. area, I'd heard the story that Mel Gibson was positively eager to do a re-make of 451 in order to get that anti-censorship, anti-conformity message out again for a new generation of movie-goers.
Usually, I'm dead-set against remakes, but knowing what his motivation was, I was cool with it, and hoped for the best. 

In the scene that ran in my head about the tenth time I saw the Helen Thomas self-immolation -get it, fire?- our hero, Guy Montag, played by Oskar Werner, the former fireman who is now a converted book-lover, and hiding from the authorities hot on his trail, encounters the various people who inhabit the forest who have memorized entire books so that their words and stories will be forever protected from the Fire Dept. that burns books.
Yes, the "Book People," the so-called "wandering intellectuals" who burn their own books after memorizing them. 

After being told by Granger, the head of this literary enterprise, who the various people walking around talking to themselves are, that is to say, what books they "are," a blond teenage girl (Yvonne Blake, also the film's Assistant Costume Designer) ambles over to meet Montag and says forthrightly, "I'm Jean-Paul Sartre's The Jewish Question. Delighted to meet you." 
#kaboom!
Granger: Oh, you see the little blonde coming towards us? Watch her blush.
"I'm Jean-Paul Sartre's The Jewish Question. Delighted to meet you." Screenshots above by South Beach Hoosier, i.e. me, of Yvonne Blake and Oskar Werner are from my videotape of this great film, just one of many from Truffaut that I have enjoyed thru the years, esp. at the National Gallery of Art's film series.

And yes, in case you were wondering, I actually used to read Cahiers du Cinéma as well as BFI's Sight & Sound, while in school at IU, down in the amazing basement that held the IU Library's Periodicals Room.

That was one of my favorite haunts, especially when I had time to kill before meeting friends elsewhere in the building noted then and now for its high sociability factor, where I also first read The National Journal and the Washington Post, and where I first saw huge ads on the front page of a newspaper, Helsingfors Sanomat, the Helsinki newspaper, just like the commercials ads we take for granted now on European soccer team uniforms/kits. 

I later read them regularly while I was in Washington, either over at the Library of Congress for free, or, from a copy I bought at the Trover Books on Connecticut Avenue in Dupont Circle.

In the latter case, in those pre-Internet days, often on weekends before walking over to Georgetown to meet friends and see a foreign film, and later sip some great coffee over at Au Pied du Cochon on Wisconsin Avenue, along with some delicious deserts.
TRÈS, TRÈS FUN!

Boy do I ever miss doing that! 
Especially on miserably hot summer nights like this week!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Sartre

http://www.cahiersducinema.com/

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/http://www.hs.fi/

http://www.nga.gov/programs/film/