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Reviews
Pepe (1960)
Musical-comedy full of top names of the day
I saw this movie on the big screen when it was new in Australia & years later my Mum & I sat up in the wee hours after hours delivering catalogs & newspapers around our area to watch a rare TV screening. There are VHS available but these are outrageous in price. Wikipedia says there was a limited DVD release(undated) which i was unaware of & the VHS dates to 1998. I would also be in line if Columbia MOD series makes this available in the 195mins original version. The original release also had RCA 4-track stereo audio. I like the actor who appeared in films as Catinflas(Mario Moreno), a Mexican comedy actor.
The film has the audio voice of Judy Garland thru speakers in a poolside scene. There are brief appearances of Dean Martin, Bing Crosby, Sammy Davis Jr & the final screen roles for Billie Burke & Charles Coborn. If it comes available to buy, it would be an entertaining buy, even at 195mins.
Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002)
A must see film
I saw Rabbit-Proof Fence directed by Phillip Noyce in 2001. I concur with a previous, lengthy, review on this site. I had something to say but he did this for me. But at the start of the end credits I was a little choked and realized that this film had power over my thoughts. There was no foul language and no sex or nudity displayed although there was a hint of intended sex in the scene where the girls were to sleep the night in the bed of an indigenous maid at a farm house and a whiteman takes his trousers off(shirt covers the genitals) and it was obvious that he spends his nights(or some of them) with the maid but not tonight!!! The "usual suspects" have parts in this Australian produced film, even if small parts and would be recognizable to many viewers. The outback scenes and use of color shading was very good. There were some vintage cars used by the police and others trying to track the girls and one wonders who would let these vehicles out to be used over such a rough, rocky terrain for a film. Peter Gabriel's score was impressive and typical of a film score and apt.
The use of current footage of the surviving women, Molly and Daisy, at the
end of the film was good and gives the film a documentary feel. A shame that the middle and third girl, Gracie Fields, did not survive and never did make it back to her roots. The story had been adapted by a biography of a daughter of Molly but her first born daughter was taken away and never heard from again.
The credits are lengthy like a Walt Disney animated classic of recent years but the audience, small as it was at this preview screening, stayed until they were over. It will be noted in the production credits that there are a number of people in pairs who have the same surname. A real family affair which might indicate the casualness, but nonetheless hard working and professional, Australian film crews.
Like the other review, I am not in the film production side of the industry but know several on both sides of the Australian film and TV cameras none of whom apeared to work on this film.
I do recommend this film to everyone and it does have a message to tell about a situation that should have never had happened here or anywhere else. Perhaps it is time for someone to make a film about the Australian and US habit of shipping back to China brides brought to those countries by Chinesemen who had settled in the West to earn a living, often at vegetable growing or in the goldmining areas for little reward and often beaten and blamed for every crime the whiteman committed in those areas. They had little option but to go home to get a wife and return with them and then have them shipped back by the then governments. Another horrible piece of history from the "New World". It should be remembered that the Whiteman killed off many indigenous inhabitants in Australia by bringing his diseases into this country. The same is happening in the jungles of Brazil where the freeways have been pushed thru those jungles disrupting and killing off the "lost" tribes. Michael H. Australia
Sabotage (1936)
One of favourite films
I thoroughly enjoy this film and always have like the lovely Sylvia Sydney who recently deceased. She was the star of the 1931 Goldwyn classic Street Scene with Beulah Bondi set in the NYC tenements of the time. Sabotage has a lot going for it even though I know a lot was done on sets at Gaumont-British, probably at Lime Grove/Shepeherd's Bush, the London street scenes are well done and I am always interested in films with theatres and film projectors. Desmond Tester who played the c11 year-old boy who is blown up at the Mayor"s street parade came to Australia in the early days of TV here, after 1956 and was well known here. This film like Street Scene is on DVD. Sabotage DVD I have is from Delta Entertainment(Laserlight)in USA and is under US$10 and the print is excellent as is the soundtrack(Tony Curtis introduces) but the bonus film of Hitichcock's 1926 The Lodger is extremely poor. It is worth it for Sabotage alone. Street Scene is equally good quality to view on DVD.