A Look Back At Humphrey Bogart In The Classic Crime Film 'The Desperate Hours'

 I recently watched the classic crime film The Desperate Hours. 

The 1955 film was directed by William Wyler and was based the play and novel by Joseph Hayes. 

What a terrific film. I saw it years ago and I enjoyed once again this story of three escaped convicts who hold a family hostage. 

Humphrey Bogart was truly outstanding as the leader of the criminals and Frederick March and Arthur Kennedy were also standouts in a fine cast. 

Paul Newman originally portrayed the gang leader on Broadway, which I would have loved to have seen, but the film makers wanted a bigger star for the film version and cast Bogart. 

Humphrey Bogart was menacing and mean and made for this meaty role. His scenes with Frederick March, the father of the family held hostage, were a tour de force.  

Director Michael Cimino remade the film, calling it Desperate Hours, in 1990. I thought it was awful. Cimino wasted the talents of Mickey Rourke and Anthony Hopkins. 

So I recommend you skip the remake and watch Bogart in The Desperate Hours. 

You can watch the film online via the below link:

The Desperate Hours 1955 - Bogart, Fredric March, Martha Scott (ok.ru) 

 

"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

"Heat' At 20: Michael Mann On Making A Crime Drama Classic

Jennifer Woods at Rolling Stone offers a piece on film director Michael Mann's crime film Heat.

Michael Mann has been a driving creative force behind plenty of groundbreaking cops-and-robbers tales over the past 40 years, from TV’s "MTV cops" show Miami Vice to this year's bleeding-edge cybercrime thriller Blackhat. And while the 72-year-old writer/producer/director has done his share of tense true-story recreations and tough-guy classics, it's a certain steely crime drama starring two Seventies-cinema icons for which he might be best known.

Released 20 years ago today, Heat originated from the story of an obsessive detective's quest to take down a disciplined career criminal in the early 1980s, based on a real-life encounter that Mann's friend, Chicago detective Charlie Adamson, had with an ex-Alcatraz inmate he was trailing (and eventually killed). The filmmaker started writing a script about these two men on the opposite sides of the law in the early 1980s, but claims that something was not working with the structure, and eventually put it aside. "When something's not ready, it's like not ready," he says.

... By the way, this elite major crime unit that Charlie was in — one of the sergeants in that crew was Dennis Farina. I recruited him to be in Thief (1981), and because of that he decided he wanted a career as an actor because, as he said, he'd be known as "Dennis, the Dream to Work With." That's why people would hire him, he thought. Which was probably true … .

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

http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/heat-at-20-michael-mann-on-making-a-crime-drama-classic-20151215

On This Day In History: 1990 - Classic Crime Film 'Goodfellas' Opens

As History.com notes, on this day in 1990, Martin Scorsese's classic crime film Goodfellas opened in theaters.

On this day in 1990, the Martin Scorsese-directed Mafia film Goodfellas, starring Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Lorraine Bracco and Joe Pesci, opens in theaters around the United States. The movie, which was based on the best-selling 1986 book Wiseguy, by the New York crime reporter Nicholas Pileggi, tells the true story of the mobster-turned-FBI informant Henry Hill (Liotta), from the 1950s to the 1980s. Goodfellas earned six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. Pesci won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance as the psychotic mobster Tommy DeVito.

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

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/goodfellas-opens?et_cid=80959384&et_rid=1227406676&linkid=http%3a%2f%2fwww.history.com%2fthis-day-in-history%2fgoodfellas-opens 

Funny How? I Amuse You, Like A Clown?: 'Goodfellas' At 25 - The Five Greatest Scenes

One of my favorite films, perhaps the greatest crime film ever made, is Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas.

Will Henry at the British Esquire notes the classic crime film's 25th anniversary with a piece that selects what he believes are the five greatest scenes.

It’s a rare thing for a movie to be both as loved by teenage boys as it is by learned film critics, to be celebrated for its quotability as it is for the cinematic mastery of its director. And yet Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, 25 years old this month, has managed just that.

If it’s on, you watch it. If you catch it halfway through on a movie channel late at night, you stay up until the very end, until Ray Liotta is standing in his dressing gown and Sid Vicious doing My Way plays us out.

It’s a film that gets you by the throat and never takes the pressure off, exactly as Scorcese envisioned it when he first read Nicholas Pileggi’s bestselling book Wiseguys, on which it is based.

“To begin like a gunshot and have it get faster from there, almost like a two-and-a-half-hour trailer,” Scorsese explained. “It’s the only way to capture the exhilaration of the lifestyle and get a sense of why people are attracted to it.”  

You can read the rest of the piece and watch the five video clips via the below link:

http://www.esquire.co.uk/culture/film-tv/8843/goodfellas-best-scenes-moments/