RSS
 

Archive for the ‘Flynn-related’ Category

Not Errol’s Nottingham

21 Nov

EMPIRE

To be fair, when you’re dealing with something as culturally ingrained and cliché-ridden as Robin Hood you might as well go for something fresh, and go for broke. But for all its stylistic ambition, and its efforts to reference modern concerns (the Sheriff of Nottingham’s anti-Islamic invective), Robin Hood misfires thanks to a crucial absence of internal logic. This world just doesn’t work.”

NEW YORK TIMES

“The plot is twisty in a perfunctory way, the action predictably explosive, the sought-after exhilaration nonexistent.”

THE GUARDIAN

“This bloated, featureless, CGI-heavy movie is not so much stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, as stealing from Guy Ritchie, Batman, Two-Face and a few others – and not giving back all that much to the audience.”

LITTLE WHITE LIES

It’s a love story devoid of romance, an action flick severely lacking in spark and spectacle, a historical epic filled with flagrant inaccuracies and wrongheaded revisionism. There is nothing particularly fresh or inventive about the film, and, setting aside the wildly incongruous accents, jarringly modern, machine-stitched costumes and ugly CG render of a vaguely medieval setting, it is a simple fact that no one has ever looked cool shooting a bow and arrow while pirouetting backwards off a ledge.”

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

“The action here is too phony and mechanically cranked up to believe that anything is on the line. Mendelsohn’s villain is boringly one-note, Eve Hewson’s Marion uses an incongruous Yank accent and always looks as though she’s just stepped out of the makeup trailer, F. Murray Abraham swans around in fancy cardinal’s vestments looking sinister and Foxx seems pissed off that he’s not somewhere, perhaps anywhere, else. As for Egerton, he’s a boy doing a man’s job.”

Ouch.

However, it’s not all terrible news as there are some positive reviews out there, such as in Variety who state it “shouldn’t work, but it’s more honest fun than the Kevin Costner or Russell Crowe versions”.

So there’s that, at least.

All reviews above are quoted in the Digital Spy link below:

www.digitalspy.com…

— Tim

 

The Hurricane

15 Nov

While it’s still hurricane season here in the U.S. …

LOS ANGELES EXAMINER – NOVEMBER 16, 1936

by LOUELLA O. PARSONS

Bargaining, I hear from a reliable authority, is going on between the Warner Brothers Studio and Samuel Goldwyn. Sam wants Errol Flynn for the lead in Hurricane and offers in exchange William Wyler, the director, and any other bit of property loose on the Goldwyn lot. First time I ever heard of a star being swapped for a director or vice versa. But Wyler is an ace director and is as valuable in his way as Flynn.

Not only has Sam set his heart on Flynn, but John Ford, who will direct for Goldwyn, also has the same idea. And talking about goofy trades, Ford agreed to direct Hurricane on condition that Sam buy him a boat and equipment to film exteriors in the South Seas where he is now vacationing. Margo, who is superb in Winterset, will probably get the lead opposite Flynn, with Basil Rathbone set for an important role.

COULD THIS HAVE BEEN A GREAT ONE OF FLYNN? I believe so. With Wyler directing and the film earning three Academy Awards, but ultimately hampered by the casting of Jon Hall. Errol, IMO, could have lifted this to a Hollywood classic.


Plus, there could have been some very good amour between Flynn and Lamour!

“The Hurricane is a 1937 film set in the South Seas, directed by John Ford and produced by Samuel Goldwyn Productions, about a Polynesian who is unjustly imprisoned. The climax features a special effects hurricane. It stars Dorothy Lamour and Jon Hall, with Mary Astor, C. Aubrey Smith, Thomas Mitchell, Raymond Massey, John Carradine, and Jerome Cowan. James Norman Hall, Jon Hall’s uncle, co-wrote the novel of the same name on which The Hurricane is based.”

The film was nominated for three Academy Awards, winning in the category for Best Sound.
Best Sound Recording – Thomas T. Moulton
Best Supporting Actor (nomination) – Thomas Mitchell
Best Music, Score (nomination) – Alfred Newman

New York Times critic Frank S. Nugent praised the climactic special effect created by James Basevi, stating, “It is a hurricane to blast you from the orchestra pit to the first mezzanine. It is a hurricane to film your eyes with spin-drift, to beat at your ears with its thunder, to clutch at your heart and send your diaphragm vaulting over your floating rib into the region just south of your tonsils.”

He complimented the performances of all of the principal actors with the exception of Hall, whose Terangi was described as “a competent Tarzan”. He also faulted the uneven pacing, but in the end, characterized the film as “one of the most thrilling spectacles the screen has provided this year.”

youtu.be/CatmKnFtn-c…

— Tim

 

Jan van der Vliet Rocks his IN LIKE FLYNN t-shirt from Rory Flynn!

13 Nov

Jan lives in Spain where Errol was indeed In Like Flynn …

— David DeWitt

 

Mail Bag! Charge of the Light Brigade and Wiggling Toes!

12 Nov

This from Joe Maletta who points out a blooper in Errol’s Charge of the Light Brigade:

Joe Maletta One of Flynn’s best! The young boy is Scottie Beckett who played Perma the son of J. Carrol Nash’s character. Puran Singh. There is a film blooper when Puran finds and holds his dead son after the massacre at Chukoti. Flynn is trying to console him and as he is doing so, the “dead” son is Wiggling his toes! A little levity aside during a sad moment.

Thanks, Joe!

Scottie Beckett with Errol

— David DeWitt

 

WU MING from 2006! Flynn & Erben, The Chicago Review

03 Nov

Mail Bag! Thanks to Jan van der Vliet …

 

The Chicago Review, 2006

www.wumingfoundation.com…

— David DeWitt

 

Robin Hood 2018!

02 Nov

— David DeWitt

 
 

Time to Put Away the Costumes — 80 Years Ago

02 Nov

Halloween was yesterday. Time to put away the costumes.
And time for a “Time to Put Away the Costumes” story from the days of Robin Hood.

November 1, 1938

“Behind the Makeup”

“Attendants in the Warner Brothers Studio wardrobe department are storing away
the armor worn by soldiers in the movie Robin Hood. Between each suit
of mail goes a generous number of moth balls. The moth balls are necessary
because movietown armor is made of wool, painted to look like armor.”

– Erskine Johnson, Los Angeles Examiner

This film will never go in moth balls, but its woolen armor did, as reported eighty years ago today.

— Tim

 

Snappy Errolween

31 Oct

Young Errol Hood

“It’s the Errol Flynn Robin Hood version complete with mustache. We used brown fleece, a long sleeved green shirt and green pants, fleece tunic, leather belt cut to fit, complete with bow and arrow, leather boots with brown fleece sewn at the tops, and to top that off, a feather in his cap!”

www.costume-works.com…

Lovely Lady Robin

 

The Enchanting Maid Marian

— Tim

 

(Not So) Confidential

28 Oct

www-wsj-com.cdn.ampproject.org…

 

“We all read it,” Marlene Dietrich said, “not because it was any good . . . but to find out if we were in it.”

Errol Flynn came to Los Angeles in hopes of testifying against the magazine. Many stars fled the town and country.

 

— Tim

 

A Star is Born – Again

08 Oct

And Hollywood’s Gone Ga Ga.

tinyurl.com…

How good could Flynn have been as Norman Maine? Great. Better than all the rest, I believe.
(As long as they didn’t make him sing!)

Flynn’s Film? Errol’s Oscar?

ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR (AND FIVE?)

tinyurl.com…

Ga Ga Land (2018)

Not So Funny Girl (1976)

Judy Judy Judy (1954)

Hooray for Hollywood? (1937)

The First Star is Born? (1932)

Who do you think is best in the leading roles?

Constance Bennett, Janet Gaynor, Judy Garland, Barbara Streisand, or Lady Ga Ga?

Lowell Sherman, Fredric March, Janes Mason, Kris Kristofferson, Bradley Cooper?

Do you agree with this ranking?

tinyurl.com…

— Tim