. . . muttered the ogre

The Misfits (dir. John Huston). I dropped it after about forty minutes; it might be more enjoyable if I hadn’t read of its history. The script spends too much of the time exclaiming how wonderful the writer’s wife is. Clark Gable looks like the celeb of the week on a kid show: hold the famous smile for awhile, now frown avuncularly, now cock an eyebrow as fan service for any mothers or grandmothers who might be watching.

The Guns of Navarone (dir. J Lee Thompson). More nuanced than typical war movies of the time. — Gregory Peck has one embarrassing moment: contained fury is not something he sells well.

The Hustler (dir. Robert Rossen). The sequel The Color of Money (1986, dir. Scorsese) led me to expect a caper, not a damn sports-underdog story. I like caper movies.

West Side Story (dir. Robbins/Wise). Did the dances look less absurd when it was new? — I’d never have spotted Rita Moreno, so much younger here than I’ve seen her before.

The Comancheros (dir. Michael Curtiz, John Wayne). Amiably standard Western fare.

One, Two, Three (dir. Billy Wilder). Funny script, but most of the characters are one-note; I get tired of the constant shouting of Cagney (as Coca-Cola’s man in Berlin) and Buchholz (as a fervent young Communist swept up in circumstance).

Here in the ogre’s cave we watch quite a lot of English detective shows; my housemate orders them from Netflix. The title of this post comes from an observation of hers that – since the biggest role in a detective show, after the regulars, is the criminal – if you see a prominent actor in the guest cast you can bet who dunnit.

When Anton Rodgers (whom you may remember from The Prisoner) showed up as ragged hypochondriac Lord Chetwood in “Market for Murder”, I eagerly hoped the rule would hold, because the dotty old lord rarely gets to have much fun. Alas, it was not to be.

A curious thing about that series Midsomer Murders, by the way: most episodes appear to be intended for widescreen format, but are not letterboxed, so the faces are distorted. My eye adapts to it before the show is half over.

And while I’m up, another curious thing: at the beginning of this episode the detective’s sidekick gets out of a car whose front plate is mirror-reversed. First I thought the shot was reversed; but the driver got out of the correct door. Then I thought perhaps that’s standard in Britain, so that you can easily read the plate of the car that rear-ended you; but no, all the other plates in the episode are normal. Could it be that the only car available for that shot was foreign, with the steering wheel on the wrong side?