EZTakes Movie Downloads Blog

The Stranger brought together a triumvirate of stellar pre-war Hollywood actors. Edward G. Robinson gained fame as Rico in the movie Little Caesar. So famous was this movie and Robinson’s performance that the authors of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act purposely made the title read RICO in reference to the character Robinson portrayed. Robinson, a man with a great career is known to most people today for his last movie, Soylent Green, which is better forgotten.

Loretta Young was lovely, but not in a “bombshell” manner. She was a competent actress with a great fashion sense that kept her forever in work and allowed a successful transition to television.

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The Double McGuffin has a solid cast of veteran actors.  Ernest Borgnine broke into stardom with his powerful role as the vicious chief of the stockade and his cruelty to Frank Sinatra’s character in From Here to Eternity.  He won a well deserved Oscar for his sympathetic portrayal of the title role in the schmaltzy, Marty.  A lot of good roles came his way and he was the star of the long running McHale’s Navy.

You can’t have missed George Kennedy, he’s been in everything, or so it seems.  He too is an Academy Award winner as best supporting actor for the role, Dragline, in Cool Hand Luke.  With his tough guy persona, he is probably most remembered for his comedic roles in Airport and Naked Gun.

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Occasionally, I come across a movie I want to love even before I see it.  Tom Naughton’s Fat Head is one of those.  As a gourmand, it is certain that a movie that says you can eat all you want of what you like will be watched with fervor by those of us seeking justification for our love of meat in quantity.

Naughton starts by pointing out that the obese are not “obese.”  Well most of them.  The hype about the obesity “crisis” is hype.  First he shows footage of morbidly obese, such as they show on the news when a new study saying whaleness is rampant is released.  Then he shows an average looking person and points out that according to the studies, that man is obese.  Now the man he is showing is himself, and though not skin and bones is hardly corpulent.

Then he goes on to the subject that got him notoriety.  He infers, that Morgan Spurlock of Super Size Me fame is a fraud.  I’m choosing my words carefully, because there is one simple thing Mr. Spurlock can do and Tom and I will have to admit his bona fides.  So Far, he has not done so.

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Before there was LA Confidential there was a whole genre of black and white tough guy detective movies.  Three Blondes in His Life, released in 1961 is at the tail end of the era.  It was too bad for Jock Mahoney.  He was true leading man material, but he never caught the big break.  It’s too bad, for that West Coast, ambiance of shady characters pervades the film.

The star, Jock Mahoney, forgotten today, was not an unknown quantity.  If you were a kid growing up in the early fifties  you knew of him.  He was The Range Rider.  He had no name other than the Range Rider.  Kind of makes you wonder if the character had to move out of Suburbia and become a gunman in the Wild West because the name Range Rider would just not have worked for, say, a proctologist.  Anyway, he had a good run at that, did some Tarzan, but never made it big.  Mahoney got his start as a stunt man and was arguably the most fearless stand in man of his day.

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You’ve probably heard the old cliché like question, “Did the people who lived in the Dark Ages know they lived in the Dark Ages?  It is not a bad interrogative.  Heck, what will they call the age we live in?  Don’t know myself, I’m still trying to answer the musical question, “Who wrote the book of love?”

But I digress.  The point is, in the movie, The Romance of Astrea and Celadon, all seems positive and hardly the dark ages.  Fifth Century Gaul appears a pastoral paradise.  Not like the historical accounts of a society breaking apart due to barbarian invasions.  So what’s going on?

Well, it’s a movie, not really history.  For example, the wise old  Druid explains the religion to Celadon.  It almost seems to verge on the Trinity.  Three was an important number to the Druids, but a near Christian conception of God seems a bit farfetched.  Adamas (Serge Renko), the Druid priest leaves out the annoying detail that they were given to human sacrifice.  Where do you think American Yuppies got that Burning Man thing?  Of course, we have mentioned before, never let historical accuracy get in the way of a good film.

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War is Hell according to Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman.  He was discussing our intramural contest between North and South.  Little did he know that around 50 years later there would come a contest that would beat our unpleasantness in the “War Sucks” Sweepstakes.

If there were warfare Olympic events, World War I was superseded by World War II in the Total Devastation category.  In the Stupid Conflict event, WWI is still hands down ahead.  It will probably never be topped.  It’s one thing for a country or even two to enter a disastrous conflict.  For a whole civilization to fight a war that almost could not end (until the ringer came in, i.e. us, the United States) is beyond comprehension.

That beyond comprehension thingy has spawned books, poetry and movies.  Many movies.  All Quiet on the Western Front is probably the most famous.  The fairly recent Silent Night is a good effort.  Those were movies about the hell of war during the conflict,  so life returns to perfect after the shooting stops.

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NOTE: This is a re-post of an article I wrote in October of 2005. I believe that the main points are as true now as ever.

The media is abuzz with reports of illegal music and movie downloading, peer-to-peer file sharing and the related legal and legislative battles being played out in courts and in Congress. Many of these discussions perpetuate a myth that existing, or soon-to-be developed, digital rights management (DRM) technologies are the key to solving the entertainment industry's piracy woes. As support for this notion, many people cite Apple's successful iTunes music download service. The conventional wisdom is that since iTunes uses DRM and iTunes is successful, then DRM must have been instrumental in that success. The truth is that Apple's DRM technology, called FairPlay, was indeed instrumental in Apple's success, but not because FairPlay prevents piracy.

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The Black Book

Let’s get this out of the way immediately. When movies make history, they observe a rule. That rule, never let history get in the way of a good story. Ah, you will bring up, Saving Private Ryan and how Spielberg got the horror of Normandy right. Okay, but the rest of the story, some good acting, but it was the fairy tale that wanted telling.

Such is it with The Black Book. After all, you don’t think everyone in Revolutionary France only saw life in black and white? Still, the stark monochrome fits the Reign of Terror better than technicolor.

This is not to say, the tale in and of itself is not well told. The cast may not be huge stars but they were all solid. Robert Cummings, the lead as Charles D’Aubigny, the man trying to save France from the abyss, is interesting. Throughout the second half of the 1950s Cummings had a light hearted comedy show called Love That Bob. It is a revelation to see him so serious. Arlene Dahl as the seductress works. She had a long career and later would play on the soaps. No matter, in this 1949 vehicle she helped save France.

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Dahmer (2002) is, at first glance, a fairly run-of-the-mill bad guy biopic, tracing the exploits of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer from late teenagerhood to just before his arrest, for a smorgasbord of crimes, at age 31. Jumping back and forth between the past and the present, the film fills in Dahmer’s personal history through frequent flashbacks, and paints a picture of him that turns out to be surprisingly—almost uncomfortably—compassionate. However, the flashbacks give the film a disjointed quality that makes it less effective as a thriller (or a horror film) than many of the more infamous serial-killer epics, such as those comprising the Silence of the Lambs oeuvre. Instead of charting a conventional course—killer becomes obsessed, murders, mutilates, and is eventually hunted down in a heart-pounding finale—Dahmer prefers to allow the audience to sit back and ponder its main character in all his multi-faceted weirdness. The problem is, despite Jeremy Renner’s commendable performance in the titular role, there’s really not that much to ponder.

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Ah, poor Juliette Binoche. Ten years after her triumph as the nurse in the English Patient. Six years after her signature role in Chocolat. Still lovely in her forties. What could be wrong? Well, I suspect that she must be horribly upset that she was cast as Sarah Palin in a movie that came out two years before anyone knew, probably least of all Juliette, who the heck Sarah Palin is. The physical resemblance would be uncanny, but Mademoiselle Binoche tops it off with glasses and makes it even more eerie. Her voice doesn’t carry the Western twang of La Palin, but other than that, sounds like her, Of course, it is surreal in that Juliette gets to play with guns, just like the pistol packin mama from Alaska.

What do I know? Maybe Juliette revels in the resemblance to the Gov. Still the movie has that big bad American tone to it. "A Few Days in September" (French, Quelques Jours en Septembre) takes place in the days leading up to 9-11. Juliette was not really cast in the role of Sarah Palin. Rather, she is a French spy by the name of Irène Montano. She is bringing two young people to meet their father, Elliott (Nick Nolte), her former colleague. Only one of them is Elliot’s biological child and we can see where that’s headed a mile away. Still, it develops pleasantly.

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