Charlton Heston has passed away.When I was a kid, my folks often went on a vacation around Easter, leaving my sister and myself with my grandmother. This meant that we would be watching The Ten Commandments on ABC. The first time I saw it, I was enraptured, and swept up by the cinematic spectacle... and Heston's charismatic, commanding performance as Moses.
Personally, I loved the scenery-chewing vigor with which he attacked his roles; let's face it, it took that sort of forcefulness to hold his own surrounded by guys in ape masks and still dominate the original Planet of the Apes film. And while The Omega Man may not necessarily hold up that well, the third of his sci-fi troika, Soylent Green, still packs a punch today, even though we all know the punchline.
The world is definitely a smaller place with his passing.
Watched Cloverfield on DVD last night, and found that, for the most part, I still liked it as much as I did in the theater. Better, in fact, 'cause the only idiot talking during the movie this time was me. Watching it on the TV screen does somewhat diminish the effectiveness of some of the more apocalyptic sequences, but it was still a fun ride.
Another advance Femme Noir review has popped up online. Britt Schramm, who used to have a comics column over on the old Movie Poop Shoot site (before it became Quick Stop), wrote up his thoughts on the first issue in his blog. I'll be repaying him for his kind words by killing him off in Issue #4. What can I say? I'm like that.
Well, I had a long day today, shopping with the wife. We needed groceries, pet supplies and other essentials, and Brandi wanted to do some shopping for gardening stuff. This entailed driving around about a third of the state and walking for several hours through numerous stores, and I'm just not in good enough shape to handle that as easily as I used to. I'm beat.
Of course, I guess it was good exercise, right? And lord know I need more of that.
Speaking of my which, I had a doctor's appointment and some tests done last week to see how my remaining kidney was handling things since losing it's brother last year. Well, it's holding in there. Years of hypertension and sleep apnea have done a lot of damage to the poor thing, and it's not working quite as well as we'd all like, but it seems to be handling the load okay, and function has actually improved a bit since my last tests. Hopefully, it will continue to do so.
Well, as I said above, I'm beat from the day's consumerism, so I'm going to watch a movie and hit the hay so I can get up bright and early tomorrow and finish a couple of scripts.
I guess we've talked about it before, but I definitely think SOYLENT GREEN is an underrated film(As I guess you do too.) Heston does a nice job making the character complex, but still likable. And I like some the physical bits he has. When he uses some stair railings to hop over some homeless people sleeping on the stairs, you really get the sense he's been doing this for years, if not longer.
ReplyDeleteSoylent Green is people!!
ReplyDeleteI liked Charleton and I think it's kind of sad the last time I saw him on film was Michael Moore berating him at the end of Bowling for Colombine - which reduced this vibrant, powerful man to a seemingly feeble minded old coot.
I prefer to think of him from his glory days - and it didn't get much better than Moses.
Glad to hear your other kidney is doing well. What did you do with the first one? You didn't eat it did you?
ReplyDeleteKidney is people!
Boss,
ReplyDeleteWhen you said/wrote: "the only idiot talking during the movie this time was me." It made me laugh. So I thank you, sir.
PS - Glad to hear your kidney is doing better!
Good news reading about your medical update. I like Heston as well, but not his politics. That aside though and while I was on vacation I watched part of the Planet of the Apes picture--one of my all time faves for SF that was directed pretty flawlessly, and had a great sort of abstract shoundtrack that puncuated the whole movie. I also watched a western Heston was in that was directed by Peckinpah called Major Dundee and though probably not an essential western, at least not as good as his Will Penny role, worth a rental if you haven't seen it. Also I am a big fan of his Soylent Green, but if you haven't seen Touch of Evil you need to rent that as well. TCM was showing Khartoum the other night, but came on too late to watch, hopefully they'll reshow it at a later date.
ReplyDelete