Editor’s Note: Sydney’s
inveterate supercinephile posts online in all sorts of places. You can read him
on his own website Sprocketed
Sources as well as his many posts on Film Alert 101. He has also posted
many comments on imdb. I’ve done a bit of
editing. Now read on…..
Of the hundreds of comments I've placed
on IMDB, the following have been deleted. I'm still trying to figure which
nerves I frayed.
Forbidden
Lie$ (2007)
Yet another Unnecessary Australian film,
21 September 2007
(This review was deleted by IMDb based
on an abuse report filed by another user)
The story of Norma Khouri's apparently
bogus autobiographical best seller and the unsavory allegations that
investigation brought to life about the woman, were splashed about print media
extensively.
Khouri is not an engaging personality
and spending hours in her company is not appealing. She may be a more
intriguing subject than a man who went round scribbling the word
"Eternity" on footpaths or a movie director's deceased auntie but a
passing attempt to incorporate her in a CIA plot or an investigation of the
fraudster mentality fail to produce the kind of revelation that would justify
the time and money to watch this film, let alone make it.
The film's ambitious production values
(computer graphics, re-enactments, a trip to the location) are not merited by
the piddling subject matter or any insight the film maker brings to it.
Company
Limited (1971)
Accomplished Ray drama.,
21 May 2007
(This review was deleted by IMDb based
on an abuse report filed by another user)
It's amazing to find no comments on this
widely shown work of the most respected of the Indian film makers. So much for
the glory of this world.
They are visited by his sister-in-law,
Shamila Tagore, star of Ray's first major film PATHER PANCHALI and daughter of
the celebrity writer Rabindranath Tagore about whom Ray made an impressive
documentary. She comments that Chanda's salary is as much as Tagore's Nobel Prize.
Next up an export order for which our hero is responsible gets into trouble -
wrinkling of the underside.
The outcome is predictable with the high
fliers emerging as leading empty lives by comparison with the family back in
Patna and the montages, opticals and fake commercial are not as slick as the
film makers think but the director's humanist outlook gives the characters a
validity which it is hard not to register.
Early Christian narrative,
15 April 2007
(This review was deleted by IMDb based
on an abuse report filed by another user)
If this is the Pathé film issued
re-coloured in the late twentieth century, it can be considered state of the art
for the time of its production.
The smallness of scale (about a dozen
extras) is obvious now. However, the makers show a good command of their task.
There are only a few giggle worthy moments - the Holy Family picnicking in
front of a painted Sphinx, Jesus turning over a pair of card tables
representing money lenders in the Temple. Also it has its Mel Gibson touches
with a protracted and enthusiastic scourging.
It's an example of a model the serious
film makers soon abandoned and it is hard to imagine this one impressing
current audiences.
El
kommissariate el fatenate (1957)
Vintage Arab comedy from Gogol,
4 January 2007
(This review was deleted by IMDb based
on an abuse report filed by another user)
The 1952 military revolution in Egypt
seems to have been a key event for their cinema, the most vigorous in the Arab
world - as far as we can tell from the thin stream of material that makes it's
way to us. It was the point at which Youseff Chahine, their best known
director, and Omar Sharif/Omar El-Cherif, their best known star, both appeared.
This update on Gogol's "Inspector
General" which they tell us is both timeless and an exact fit with
pre-revolutionary Egypt, is passably amusing. A fertiliser inspector is
mistaken for a touring investigator and feted by the corrupt village head Odma.
The film seems to have been contaminated by the Danny Kaye version,
complete with romance with the daughter and songs. What happened to the real
Inspector?
The comic duo leads are practiced,
though their material is thin. The production values are adequate. Technique is
largely a matter of playing scenes with the characters facing the camera and
the odd, jarring close-up cut in. Studio shooting is broken up by a few
intriguing location sequences. We get the impression that the whole thing was
post synchronised roughly.
As entertainment the piece gets by but
as a novelty it is fascinating, a glimpse of a movie culture pretty much
unknown to us a half century later. It's home audience appear to regard this
one highly. It has just been subject of a nice sharp (though slightly
contrasty) remastering with impeccable English (and French) sub-titles.
The
Hindoo's Charm (1912)
One-reel melodrama set in the (then)
exotic east, 21 August
2005
(This review was deleted by IMDb based
on an abuse report filed by another user)
Functional would be the best way to
describe this one-reel melodrama. the vengeful Hindoo/u (the James Young,
director of "Hearts in Exile"?) got up in boot polish and a turban,
plans on avenging himself on Maurice Costello's family, somewhere West of Suez.
Chief interest is in seeing the
distinguished cast early in their careers. Hard to reconcile the two children
(Helen keeps on standing in front of the taller Dolores, blocking our view)
with the glamorous stars of the 1920s Michael Curtiz movies.
Compositions are often awkward and the
playing is unremarkable, outside of Young's unrelenting hamming. Hard enough to
see any of these one reelers - let's not be greedy!
Beyond
the Time Barrier (1960)
Trashy sixties science fiction shows up
the Ulmer hype, 3 March
2002
Finding himself in the future, airman
Robert is paraded before Vlad, as "the Supreme" whose significance is
marked by two black bowling balls on his desk. Mute Darlene simpers a lot and
reads our hero's mind but the action is with other arrivals through the
cardboard time warp including Ulmer's daughter as Ex-Captain Markova and a
couple of Prize winning scientists. They all plan on making off with our hero's
jet, to get back to their own time zone, without his high minded attempt to
avert the plague which has peopled the twenty first century with stock shots from
Tiger Von Eschnapur in non-matching
B&W from which half a dozen extras in awful, wrinkled bald caps emerge to
ravage Sokoloff's military.
Most of the time is spent with the awful
support standing in the middle of the set delivering equally awful dialogue.
Over familiar scenes like the scientist taking a break from jamming triangle TV
and walking Clarke to the convenient blackboard - "Let me Show you."
The world of the future actually appears to be full of visual aids with Darlene
producing hanging file photos of her family for Clarke.
They didn't do too well on prophesying
either "When man set foot on the moon, all men started working
together."
Tacky but a whole lot better than its
running mate at the Texas State Showground-come studios, The Amazing Transparent Man or most of the awful Ulmer films. What
is amazing is that so many people were bluffed by the director's High Art
background into believing he had talent.
Awesome,
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