The Observer's new Film Quarterly magazine is chock full of all kinds of candy that's bad for you, but that seeks to sell, deliciously, mainstream industrial cinema (I mean, that Hollywood stuff we love and love to knock, us Art Housed). Okay. And it has a very fun and quite considered Top 10 of Film Villains, selected by their best critic, Philip French. I was very pleased to see Joseph Wiseman's Dr. No (many might have thought Goldfinger the best Bond baddie), Lorre's M, Palance's killer from Shane, Welles in non-cuckoo-clock mode, and Hopkins as pure sociopathic evil. - etc. Some of the great villains were not included, including: Mr. Bates from Psycho; Darth Vader; Malkovich's weird assassin in In The Line of Fire; and Brando's Kurtz (Mister Kurtz, He Bad). Who else? Well, The Jackal in the film of the same name (original version). One pleasant, refined choice: James Mason in North by Northwest (a subtle choice, that).
THAT HANDSOME MAN A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought. Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that
Comments