CineSavant Column
Hello!
CineSavant is back in the groove today, with a lineup of fun links from Michael McQuarrie and Trailers from Hell’s Joe Dante.
First up is a fun McQuarrie find, a brief but cute interview with ’60s songstress Cilla Black. With her mention of ‘the outback’, I’m assuming her talk was a press stop on a trip to Australia. She is roped into talking about clothes, and ends up making an unguarded remark about Indian fashions ‘with cowbells and rubbish’ that she can’t wear in Liverpool. The interview is definite fun for fans of Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho.
Michael also sent a link to a music video-like performance by Ms. Black. Thanks, Michael.
McQuarrie also forwards a full public service film from 1967, about civil defense preparations for an atom attack. Giving this one extra appeal is the presence of the young actor Gene Hackman as an ‘atom expert’ stuck in some pretty frustrating community meetings. Hackman’s perfect — he looks like an amateur actor but doesn’t perform like one, not even in this context.
Playing opposite Hackman is actor Arnold Moss (The 27th Day).
Joe Dante’s link is rewarding — it takes us to a video clip on a page for the Brit newspaper The Sun, showing a space probe’s POV as it purposely collides with an asteroid. Superb stuff.
The NASA mission involved is called DART, which is conducting ‘Asteroid Redirection Tests.’ The rest of the article is pretty spooky-sensational … it starts with a grim statement: “Earth cannot defend itself against the thousands of ‘city killer’ asteroids that are zooming around space near our planet.”
The DART project successfully changed an asteroid’s orbit, but no effort is being made to ready a squadron of ‘Earth Defense Force’ anti-collision space rockets!
The article’s title is an attention-getter … straight from the ‘Chicken Little’ school of public announcements:
as NASA chief admits it ‘keeps me up at night’
Second to last is a link to a controversial movie online, that has been available uncut only intermittently .. it’s Ken Russell’s 1971 The Devils. I saw an American release cut, which was rough enough for my tender sensibilities. But this post does rise to the status of Rare Opportunity. Long ago in college, Bob Epstein screened for us an earlier version of the same story, the Polish feature Joan of the Angels. It was just as fascinating, and a little less revolting. Note: 2.24.26: I probably shouldn’t have put up this link and was advised to drop it today … only to find that the site has been shut down. I’ll be more careful going forward!
And finally, in a spirit of payback for all the great reading he’s forwarded, here’s a ‘CBR’ article excited about the upcoming 4K disc release of Joe Dante’s comedy masterpiece Innerspace. Everything about this show works for me, so it’s easy to extend the plug. Martin Short is hilarious.
The disc is slated on release for April 28. The article makes the not-bad-at-all suggestion that Martin Short’s renewed popularity could motivate a sequel.
Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson