Christopher Plummer, Oscar winner and 'Sound of Music' star, dies at 91

 The Washington Times reports that actor Christopher Plummer has died. 

Christopher Plummer, the dashing award-winning actor who played Captain von Trapp in the film “The Sound of Music” and at 82 became the oldest Academy Award acting winner in history, has died. He was 91.

 

Plummer died Friday morning at his home in Connecticut with his wife, Elaine Taylor, by his side, said Lou Pitt, his longtime friend and manager

 

Over more than 50 years in the industry, Plummer enjoyed varied roles ranging from the film “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” to the voice of the villain in 2009′s “Up” and as a canny lawyer in Broadway’s “Inherit the Wind.”

 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/feb/5/oscar-winner-sound-of-music-star-christopher-plumm/

Although Christopher Plummer is best known for The Sound of Music, I like the actor best in two of his many films.

 

In the WWII spy thriller Triple Cross, Plummer portrayed Eddie Chapman in the true story about a real-life crook and safecracker who offered to spy for the Nazis when the German Army defeated France and took over the French prison where Chapman was incarcerated.

 

Chapman trained to be a spy for the Nazis and parachuted back into England. He promptly turned himself in to British Intelligence and offered to be a double agent for the Brits. He used his criminal skills to commit espionage.

Triple Cross was directed by Terrence Young, the director of the James Bond films, Dr No, From Russia With Love and Thunderball. Yul Brenner, Trevor Howard, Gert Frobe (who portrayed Goldfinger) and Claudine Auger (who portrayed Domino in Thunderball) are also in the film. Plummer portrayed Chapman like a crooked James Bond. 

Good thriller, even if the film fudged the facts. (You can read Ben Macintyre’s Agent ZigZag to get the real story). 

 Another favorite Christophe Plummer film is John Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King. 

The film starred Sean Connery and Michael Caine as two former British soldiers in India who decide to travel to an isolated country and use their military skills to proclaim themselves leaders of the primitive land.

 

The film is based on a novella of the same name by Rudyard Kipling (one of my favorite writers). Kipling worked in India as a journalist before becoming a world-famous novelist and poet.

 Plummer portrayed Kipling in the film and his scenes with Connery and Caine are priceless.

Christopher Plummer was a fine actor and by all accounts a fine man. He shall be missed..  

A Look Back At John Huston's "Fat City" (1972) Starring Jeff Bridges And Stacy Keach

John LeMay at cinemaretro.com offers a look back at John Huston's film about boxing, Fat City.

Fat City, released in 1972, was something of a “rebound” film for beloved director John Huston, whose previous two films had been flops. Based upon the 1969 novel by Leonard Gardner (who also wrote the screenplay), Fat City follows Stacy Keach as Billy Tully, a small time boxer who never made it big who is living in squalor. When Billy makes a rare return visit to the gym, he meets Ernie (Jeff Bridges, hot off of a Best Supporting Actor nomination for The Last Picture Show). Billy sees some potential in the teenager’s boxing ability and suggests he go see his old manager, Ruben (Nicholas Colasanto—the future “Coach” on Cheers). Ernie does as told, and soon finds himself under Ruben’s optimistic wing, while Billy’s life further deteriorates when he begins an affair with an alcoholic wreck named Oma (Susan Tyrell, who would herself secure a Best Supporting Actress nomination for this film). At the same time that Ernie begins his fighting career, he too runs into trouble when he impregnates his virginal girlfriend and soon leaves the world of boxing behind. When Ernie and Billy reunite on a work crew in the San Joaquin Valley, both become inspired to get back into the ring and return to Ruben. However, for those assuming Bridges and Keach inevitably come to blows in some sort of bloody boxing ring climax, they don’t. This is because Fat City isn’t so much a “boxing movie” as it is a character portrait of Kecah’s sad-sack loser who just can’t seem to help himself out of the bottle and other bad choices.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.cinemaretro.com/index.php

"Maltese Falcon' Flies Again On Local Big Screens

John Timpane, my editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, reports on John Huston's classic crime film The Maltese Falcon appearing once again on the big screen.

It's the best movie ever made about a paperweight that just sits there and does nothing.

The Maltese Falcon turns 75 this year. This 1941 Warner Bros. film was (amazingly) John Huston's first directing turn; he wrote the script, too, largely from the hard-boiled dialogue in Dashiell Hammett's 1929 smash-hit novel.

Now you can see it on the big screen - and you really should. The Maltese Falcon will fly Sunday and Wednesday on more than 650 big-screen theaters across the land.

Local venues include the UA Riverside Plaza, the University 6, the Ritz 16 in Voorhees, Movies 16 in Somerdale, the King of Prussia 16, the Neshaminy 24. For theaters, times, and ticket prices, visit here.

It's part of the year-long Fathom Events and Turner Classic Movies Big Screen Classics series. They've already done Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and next month, from on high, The Ten Commandments.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://mobile.philly.com/beta?wss=/philly/entertainment&id=369266861

Happy 81st Birthday To Michael Caine

As Biography.com notes, today is the birthday of one of my favorite actors, Michael Caine. He was born on March 14, 1933, in London, England.

Michael Caine went on to pursue a varied acting career. He starred as agent Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File before going on to be featured in projects like Alfie, The Italian Job, Sleuth, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight series and many, many more. He’s won two Oscars, one for Hannah and Her Sisters and the other for The Cider House Rules.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.biography.com/people/michael-caine-9234754

Note: Michael Caine was great in the films based on Len Deighton's spy thrillers. He was also great in John Houston's The Man Who Would Be King with Sean Connery. And he was outstanding in his supporting role in the Batman series of films.

I wrote about Michael Caine's performance as a hardcore criminal in Get Carter and as a crime writer in Pulp in my Crime Beat column on crime in the cinema. You can read the column via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2012/11/cinema-crime-wave.html

John Huston: Courage And Art

Todd McCarthy at the Hollywood Reporter wrote an interesting review of Jeffrey Meyer's biography of the late great film director John Huston.

Jeffrey Meyers has very little new to say about the 40 films John Huston made, but he does have quite a bit to add to the record about the many women who swam through the late director's life. Huston was a rake of an elevated order; so wide a swath did the charismatic, charming, difficult, passionate, intellectual and sadistic swashbuckler cut that a more fitting title for this particular biography might have been The Sultan of St. Clerans, a reference to the Irish manor house that was the defining Hustonian domain. Much has been written about him over the years but, for those still intrigued about who did what to whom in Hollywood's heyday, Meyers has not been shy about doing some detailed record-keeping.  

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/john-huston-courage-art-258544

John Huston directed some of my favorite films, such as The Man Who Would Be King and The Maltese Falcon.

U.S. Postal Service Celebrates John Huston - And Baltmore's Dashiell Hammett - With A Classic-Filmmaker Stamp

 

The late, great film director John Huston was honored by the U.S. Postal Service with a stamp.

The Classic-Filmmaker stamp also honors the late, great crime writer Dashiell Hammett, as Hammett's character Sam Spade, holding the Maltese Falcon, is behind Huston.

Huston, of course, directed the classic film version of Dashiell Hammett's classic crime novel The Maltese Falcon.

You can read the Baltimore Sun's report on the Huston stamp via the below link:

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/movies/blog/2011/08/huston.html

Get Caine: An Interview With Michael Caine

Michael Caine discusses Sean Connery, John Huston, his great films, such as The Man Who Would Be King, why he made so many stinkers, and how he met with real gangsters for his great crime film, Get Carter.

Get Carter and The Man Who Would Be King are two of many Michael Caine films that I love. I also love an odd, little film that Caine made called Pulp (Not to be confused with Pulp Fiction).

"The writer's life would be ideal, if it were not for the writing," Caine's character, a pulp crime writer, says in the film.

You can read the interview via the below link:

http://www.sabotagetimes.com/tv-film/michael-caine-people-forget-that-i-know-a-few-gangsters/