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31 Oct, 6 tweets, 1 min read
Today’s background movie is ELECTRA GLIDE IN BLUE (1973) with Robert Blake as a tough but sensitive motorcycle cop who wants to move up to homicide. Really good so far!

Nothing much happens in the first half hour but establishing Blake as a gentle weirdo — but that’s adorable.
ELECTRA GUIDE IN BLUE has one of those scenes where a cop’s instincts about a case are ignored — except instead of the usual tough cop being ignored by wussy superiors, he’s a sensitive cop whose instincts are ignored by the tough guys!
It’s a dynamic you’ve see a million times, but swapping the personalities on either side makes it fresh and compelling.
But Blake butts up against the sensitive-guy-in-a-tough-guy’s-profession dynamic again: he gets a new gig as a driver for a homicide cop... who is also throughly macho.

He’s traded tough guys for tougher guys!
Oh my God I fucking love this movie. A great reminder of why you want both tough and sensitive heroes in the toolbox.
Serious props to whoever put ELECTRA GLIDE IN BLUE on Amazon Prime. This movie is wonderful, and feels relevant as hell for today.

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More from @hradzka

David Hines Profile picture
3 Nov
Watching Dario Argento’s PHENOMENA (1985) with Jennifer Connelly (!!) as a movie star’s daughter who sleepwalks and has a psychic link with insects

and Donald Pleasence (!!!) as the entomologist who enlists her talents to catch a psycho killer

and, for some reason, a chimpanzee
PHENOMENA is clunky, but the gimmick is interesting, and the Swiss locations are gorgeous and unusual.

The scene chemistry between Pleasence and Connelly is interesting. It’s not avuncular, and it’s not creepy; it’s a little distant but respectful.
Jennifer Connelly is bullied by her boarding school classmates and amasses a goddamn enormous horde of flies to unnerve them and this movie was a formative inspiration for the webnovel WORM, wasn’t it?
Read 22 tweets
David Hines Profile picture
8 Oct
The plot to kidnap (and potentially kill) the governor of Michigan isn’t just the feds rolling up a dumbass to pad their statistics. It’s one to note.

Remember: never never never trust the journos; always always always read the actual affidavit.
bit.ly/3jIMuhY
The FBI’s go-to play is:

1) find a dumbass who is potentially dangerous but at this point just runs his mouth
2) indulge him and rev him up
3) introduce him to a friendly undercover FBI agent offering to sell him explosives
4) THE ARISTOCRATS!

This is not one of those.
This one is unusual in that they had a group of guys, several of whom were already ideologically into the idea of violence and hadn’t managed to talk themselves into actually acting yet.

They were, however, fervent. Plausibly dangerous dudes, shit-talking themselves up.
Read 10 tweets
David Hines Profile picture
7 Oct
Reread BATMAN: YEAR ONE and was amazed anew by just how insanely tight the writing on that is. It’s four issues! The *entire trade paperback* is under a hundred pages!!!
Get in and out of scenes early? You have *nothing* on 1986-vintage Frank Miller. Check out Jim Gordon’s relationship with his crooked partner deteriorating in *two panels.*

Note: not only did we not see Gordon come down hard on Morgan, the character Morgan is never introduced.
Issue one: Jim Gordon meets his partner on the second scripted page, has had *three distinct scenes with him* by page FIVE, gets jumped by the partner and other crooked cops at the bottom of page seven, gets beaten up on page eight, gets revenge on pages fifteen through eighteen.
Read 8 tweets
David Hines Profile picture
13 Sep
Watched STATE'S ATTORNEY (1932) based on the recommendation of @NitrateDiva and LORD ALMIGHTY JOHN BARRYMORE IS WILDING

Bachelor mob lawyer Barrymore defends hooker Helen Twelvetrees, shacks up with her, then switches to prosecutor and goes straight but keeps Twelvetrees

UNTIL
Barrymore's political ambitions put him in circles with society gal Lilian Ulrich, who tells him she had a serious relationship at nineteen, and when he asks how serious her response is to *whisper*

to which he replies, "That makes things much easier!"

cut to: a parked car
headlights pass as they sit up and she talks a drunk Barrymore into going to find a judge or the mayor and get married

which they do

Barrymore then goes to tell Twelvetrees and then elects to sleep it off at a bachelor hotel
Read 8 tweets
David Hines Profile picture
9 Sep
This will in no way be controversial
What’s interesting, if you read it, is that the first is the most radical because it affects casting and subject matter of films...

...so that’ll take all the heat...

...but the later provisions are hilariously undercutting, because they give wiggle room in hilarious ways!
So: to be eligible for Best Picture (this doesn't affect any other Oscar nominations; wait a few years for that), a movie must meet TWO out of FOUR standards for inclusion.
Read 18 tweets
David Hines Profile picture
27 Aug
It’s been one of those days and folks could use a break from it all

So how about a story of absolute badassery that has something for everyone

It is from one of my favorite books to keep in a place one occasionally sits with time to spare

Paul Kirchner’s THE DEADLIEST MEN
Kirchner, an associate of the late Col. Jeff Cooper (he provided illustrations for some of Cooper’s books), tells many stories of deadly people — not all of them men — from a variety of backgrounds, from Jim Bowie to Mgobozi to La Maupin.

I will share the story of Jean-Louis.
Jean-Louis was a mixed-race Haitian, and in 1795 (with Haiti and indeed the whole island of Hispaniola in just *a wee bit of turmoil*) the eleven-year-old orphan took advantage of an opportunity to get the hell out & head to France, which he did by enlisting in the 32d Regiment.
Read 30 tweets

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