The Watergate hearings in 1973 confirmed what many Americans had long suspected: at the highest levels of government existed a secret, shadowy element that operated more as a criminal enterprise than sworn defenders of the nation’s laws. Director Sydney Pollack acted swiftly on this revelation - and the attendant paranoia - with his nail biting 1975 spy vs. spy thriller Three Days of the Condor. Robert Redford stars as a low level CIA researcher who stumbles on a secret agency plot to incite an invasion of the Middle East by the U.S. military. When his bookish coworkers are brutally murdered in a gangland style execution, Redford goes on the run, and slowly realizes he has tapped into a conspiracy with tentacles that reach throughout the government. With the help of a mysterious woman from Brooklyn Heights (Faye Dunaway), Redford hatches a desperate plot to turn the tables on his pursuers, and bring his friends’ murderers to justice.
40 years later, Three Days of the Condor still offers entertainment aplenty, as long as viewers don’t examine its story holes too carefully or roll their eyes at the film’s de rigueur romantic subplot. With Redford and Dunaway, Pollack combined two popular American actors at their absolute peaks of sexual charisma, and their starpower propels Lorenzo Semple Jr.’s script with polish and style. The film also features Max von Sydow as the agency’s spookiest spook, and here Ingmar Bergman’s favorite leading man seems to enjoy the sheer simplicity of shooting people, as opposed to grappling with the complexities of the human soul.
Three Days of the Condor also has its prescient side, as the ultimate goal of the conspiracy is to start a bogus war that will benefit America’s oil industry. This idea may have seemed far fetched in 1975 but, today, not so much. And, in another bit of chilling irony, much of the film takes place in NYC’s still intact World Trade Center, where the CIA actually had their public offices at the time. It’s impossible to watch scenes of the tower’s white marble lobby and its phalanx of elevators without having one’s memory jolted back to the horrific destruction that would ravage the site 26 years later. Of course, there are those who believe there was some rogue agency at work in that tragedy as well. While Three Days of the Condor doesn’t deal with a government conspiracy that huge, it does make you believe these dastardly guys can do almost anything if they put their minds to it.
The Watergate hearings in 1973 confirmed what many Americans had long suspected: at the highest levels of government existed a secret, shadowy element that operated more as a criminal enterprise than sworn defenders of the nation’s laws. Director Sydney Pollack acted swiftly on this revelation - and the attendant paranoia - with his nail biting 1975 spy vs. spy thriller Three Days of the Condor. Robert Redford stars as a low level CIA researcher who stumbles on a secret agency plot to incite an invasion of the Middle East by the U.S. military. When his bookish coworkers are brutally murdered in a gangland style execution, Redford goes on the run, and slowly realizes he has tapped into a conspiracy with tentacles that reach throughout the government. With the help of a mysterious woman from Brooklyn Heights (Faye Dunaway), Redford hatches a desperate plot to turn the tables on his pursuers, and bring his friends’ murderers to justice.
40 years later, Three Days of the Condor still offers entertainment aplenty, as long as viewers don’t examine its story holes too carefully or roll their eyes at the film’s de rigueur romantic subplot. With Redford and Dunaway, Pollack combined two popular American actors at their absolute peaks of sexual charisma, and their starpower propels Lorenzo Semple Jr.’s script with polish and style. The film also features Max von Sydow as the agency’s spookiest spook, and here Ingmar Bergman’s favorite leading man seems to enjoy the sheer simplicity of shooting people, as opposed to grappling with the complexities of the human soul.
Three Days of the Condor also has its prescient side, as the ultimate goal of the conspiracy is to start a bogus war that will benefit America’s oil industry. This idea may have seemed far fetched in 1975 but, today, not so much. And, in another bit of chilling irony, much of the film takes place in NYC’s still intact World Trade Center, where the CIA actually had their public offices at the time. It’s impossible to watch scenes of the tower’s white marble lobby and its phalanx of elevators without having one’s memory jolted back to the horrific destruction that would ravage the site 26 years later. Of course, there are those who believe there was some rogue agency at work in that tragedy as well. While Three Days of the Condor doesn’t deal with a government conspiracy that huge, it does make you believe these dastardly guys can do almost anything if they put their minds to it.
I waited 30 years to see this. What a disappointment. Like most of Godard's films from the 1980s it's dull, long and says nothing. Juliette Binoche is in it all of 5 minutes.
Silent Souls (2011) ✬✬✬½ Netflix DVD
A poetically bleak sojourn in the Russian heart. Beautiful and hypnotic, it's marred by an ending that feels kind of lazy. The director clearly loves him some Tarkovsky.
You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet (2013) ✬✬✬½ Netflix DVD
The late Alain Resnais' penultimate film. A group of well known French actors gather to watch a tape of a new production of a play they had all starred in ages ago. Their memories bring the play to life, which Resnais executes in an inventive way. The film has an extra act that really isn't needed and a typically Resnais WTF ending, but it's worth the watch.
I waited 30 years to see this. What a disappointment. Like most of Godard's films from the 1980s it's dull, long and says nothing. Juliette Binoche is in it all of 5 minutes.
Silent Souls (2011) ✬✬✬½ Netflix DVD
A poetically bleak sojourn in the Russian heart. Beautiful and hypnotic, it's marred by an ending that feels kind of lazy. The director clearly loves him some Tarkovsky.
You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet (2013) ✬✬✬½ Netflix DVD
The late Alain Resnais' penultimate film. A group of well known French actors gather to watch a tape of a new production of a play they had all starred in ages ago. Their memories bring the play to life, which Resnais executes in an inventive way. The film has an extra act that really isn't needed and a typically Resnais WTF ending, but it's worth the watch.
Cooking shows are a dime-a-dozen these days. Entire networks are devoted to them. But in 1969 they were something of an oddity. And none were odder than The Galloping Gourmet. It was a syndicated program, and how the hell it got on Channel 10 out of Roanoke I’ll never know. Its programming consisted mainly of professional wrestling, country music shows and Baptist church services.
But at noon, every Monday thru Friday, this smiling British chap named Graham Kerr came dashing out of the wings of his darkened studio and, after a few seconds of shaking hands and slapping the backs of his audience, he would dart behind a dining table, jump over a chair (sometimes two chairs, Evel Knevel-style) and wind up at his elegant padded bar where a glass of wine awaited him…all to tremendous applause.
Kerr would then segue to some rather blurry film footage of a restaurant he and his wife Treena had recently visited – usually in Paris or Rome or some other exotic place – where they had sampled the dish he would prepare on today’s show. Kerr would then go into one of those lengthy shaggy dog barroom stories that usually ended in some sort of groan-inducing pun. For instance, I remember a story about the French revolution in which an aristocrat was offered freedom from the guillotine if he revealed the identity of The Scarlet Pimpernel. After much denial, the count finally had a change of heart, But just as he started to utter this vital information, the blade of the guillotine began its rapid, deadly slide, silencing the count forever. In Kerr's words: “and the moral is: Don’t hatchet your counts before they chicken.”
Kerr would then bolt behind his kitchen counter set and begin the preparation of the featured dish and, this being 1969, it was usually some kind of fatty meat slathered with butter and bacon and cooked in heavy cream. But the food was secondary to Kerr’s antics, as he cooked with a nonstop stream of witty banter, silly voices and, when the show was running long, a sense of urgency that bordered on the manic.
When the finished dish was finally removed from the oven, Kerr would retreat to his darkened dining room area where he would sample a bite from his creation with the smug, satisfied look of a true sensualist, prompting orgasmic “oooohs” and “ahhhhs” from the audience.
I was a schoolboy when the show first aired so, truth be told, I probably never saw more than 4 or 5 episodes. And that was enough, for the vast majority of Kerr’s jokes and naughty references sailed way over my head. But 10 years later, as a college student tired of Big Macs and Whoppers, I bought an old, grease-stained Betty Crocker recipe book at a yard sale and decided I would teach myself to cook. 30 years later, I have shelves of cookbooks and cooking is still a favorite hobby. And, like Graham Kerr, I’m not opposed to taking a few sips from my favorite beverages in the process.
I have Graham Kerr to thank for that. Sometimes we don’t realize our role models until years later. Today’s legions of TV chefs are great at creating healthy and practical fare; some are even entertaining. But none capture the sheer hedonistic fun of cooking - its soaring successes and abysmal flops - like The Galloping Gourmet.
Cooking shows are a dime-a-dozen these days. Entire networks are devoted to them. But in 1969 they were something of an oddity. And none were odder than The Galloping Gourmet. It was a syndicated program, and how the hell it got on Channel 10 out of Roanoke I’ll never know. Its programming consisted mainly of professional wrestling, country music shows and Baptist church services.
But at noon, every Monday thru Friday, this smiling British chap named Graham Kerr came dashing out of the wings of his darkened studio and, after a few seconds of shaking hands and slapping the backs of his audience, he would dart behind a dining table, jump over a chair (sometimes two chairs, Evel Knevel-style) and wind up at his elegant padded bar where a glass of wine awaited him…all to tremendous applause.
Kerr would then segue to some rather blurry film footage of a restaurant he and his wife Treena had recently visited – usually in Paris or Rome or some other exotic place – where they had sampled the dish he would prepare on today’s show. Kerr would then go into one of those lengthy shaggy dog barroom stories that usually ended in some sort of groan-inducing pun. For instance, I remember a story about the French revolution in which an aristocrat was offered freedom from the guillotine if he revealed the identity of The Scarlet Pimpernel. After much denial, the count finally had a change of heart, But just as he started to utter this vital information, the blade of the guillotine began its rapid, deadly slide, silencing the count forever. In Kerr's words: “and the moral is: Don’t hatchet your counts before they chicken.”
Kerr would then bolt behind his kitchen counter set and begin the preparation of the featured dish and, this being 1969, it was usually some kind of fatty meat slathered with butter and bacon and cooked in heavy cream. But the food was secondary to Kerr’s antics, as he cooked with a nonstop stream of witty banter, silly voices and, when the show was running long, a sense of urgency that bordered on the manic.
When the finished dish was finally removed from the oven, Kerr would retreat to his darkened dining room area where he would sample a bite from his creation with the smug, satisfied look of a true sensualist, prompting orgasmic “oooohs” and “ahhhhs” from the audience.
I was a schoolboy when the show first aired so, truth be told, I probably never saw more than 4 or 5 episodes. And that was enough, for the vast majority of Kerr’s jokes and naughty references sailed way over my head. But 10 years later, as a college student tired of Big Macs and Whoppers, I bought an old, grease-stained Betty Crocker recipe book at a yard sale and decided I would teach myself to cook. 30 years later, I have shelves of cookbooks and cooking is still a favorite hobby. And, like Graham Kerr, I’m not opposed to taking a few sips from my favorite beverages in the process.
I have Graham Kerr to thank for that. Sometimes we don’t realize our role models until years later. Today’s legions of TV chefs are great at creating healthy and practical fare; some are even entertaining. But none capture the sheer hedonistic fun of cooking - its soaring successes and abysmal flops - like The Galloping Gourmet.
This odd duck of a comedy is back for a second season. Emily Mortimer and Dolly Wells play two actresses - one successful, the other not so much - whose friendship has endured since childhood despite many slights, recriminations and rough patches along the way. The show has a strangely dark and plodding quality that often overwhelms its attempts at humor. Think Seinfeld directed by Bergman and you get the idea. I wouldn't describe it as a good show but there is something fascinating about it.
Blunt Talk (2015) ✭✭✭½ Starz
Dolly Wells also appears as a supporting character in this Starz original comedy. Patrick Stewart stars as an egotistical news anchor with addiction issues, personal demons aplenty and an abiding fondness for his long ago days as a British army officer. The outsize role gives Stewart lots of room to delightfully ham it up, and his iconic baritone gets a good work out. His character is a sort of amalgam of Harold Beale and Lord Downton. The first couple of episodes are a bit uneven, but I suspect this series will eventually find its sea legs.
