#Moses Gunn

[citizenscreen]

Remembering Moses Gunn on his birthday #botd

[haveyouseenthisseries-poll]

[astralbondpro]

Shaft (1971) // Dir. Gordon Parks

[filmap]

The Ninth Configuration William Peter Blatty. 1980

Castle Burg Eltz, 56294 Wierschem, Germany See in map

See in imdb

[ltwharfy]

I recently started rewatching "Homicide: Life on the Street" on Peacock. It was really the first TV drama that I ever watched. I think I started watching it in its fourth season, when I was in eighth grade.

I haven't really seen it two decades or so (it didn't stream for a long time because of music rights issues) and I was wondering how it would hold up. Three decades have passed since it premiered. Half of the first season cast is now dead.

And it's still one of the best damn things I've ever seen. The fifth episode, "Three Men and Adena", is honestly still the best dramatic acting I've seen on TV courtesy of Andre Braugher, Kyle Secor, and Moses Gunn.

So there's a good chance this might be a thing I start mentioning in my blog occasionally. If you've never seen it (and there's a good chance you haven't, since most of my mutuals were born in 2002...) and you want to get into a kickass 122 episode-long cop drama from the 1990s, well here you go...

[theersatzcowboy]

The Killing Floor (1984)

A stunning dramatization of the little-known, complex story of integrating the labor movement of Chicago's meatpacking industry, and the Chicago Race Riots of 1919.

Director: Bill Duke

Cinematographer: William Birch

Starring: Damien Leake, Alfre Woodard, Dennis Farina, Ernest Rayford, Moses Gunn, Clarence Felder, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and John Mahoney.

[cantsayidont]

Hateration holleration in the cinema:

THE BAT WHISPERS (1930): Creaky early talkie thriller, based on a Mary Roberts Rinehart/Avery Hopwood stage play, about a group of people terrorized by a mysterious masked criminal called The Bat. (Bob Kane later claimed that this was one of the inspirations for Batman.) There's a great opening shot and some cool model work in the first 10 minutes (like a sequence where The Bat descends by rope into his special car, which can generate a smokescreen to deter pursuers), but once it gets into the actual play, it becomes too static, and it's burdened with hammy acting and a truly painful level of mugging comic relief from the supporting players (with Maude Eburne the worst offender as the cowardly, superstitious maid). Star Chester Morris appears briefly out of character at the end to urge the audience not to reveal The Bat's true identity. CONTAINS LESBIANS? No. VERDICT: Promises FANTÔMAS or LES VAMPIRES, mostly delivers Scooby-Doo. Batman fans interested in the character's antecedents should check out the first 10 minutes, but you won't miss much if you stop there.

ONE WAY PASSAGE (1932): Charming pre-Code melodrama about the doomed shipboard romance between a dying rich girl (Kay Francis) and a suave escaped convict (William Powell), who's being escorted back to San Francisco to be hanged for murder. Despite its obvious contrivances, the compact script and brisk direction keep things from becoming maudlin or grim, and Powell and Francis have wonderful chemistry (the best of their many pairings at Warner Bros.), with good support from Warren Hymer as the thick-headed but not entirely unsympathetic cop, Frank McHugh as a drunken scam artist, and Aline MacMahon as a bogus countess. A surprisingly warm little story about people doing the best they can in the face of unsympathetic fate. CONTAINS LESBIANS? No. VERDICT: Touching, funnier than you'd think (though McHugh lays it on a little too thick), and even life-affirming.

THE BAD SLEEP WELL (1960): Overlong, overwrought, somewhat undercooked Akira Kurosawa corporate crime drama, a loose modern-dress variation on HAMLET, about a junior executive (Toshiro Mifune) who borrows someone else's name and identity to infiltrate a big corporation whose ruthless skulduggery is responsible for his father's suicide, even going so far as to marry the boss's disabled daughter (Kyoko Kagawa) to ingratiate himself with his foe (Masayuki Mori). It starts off well, with a punchy style Leonard Maltin aptly compares to a '40s Warner Bros movie, but Kurosawa lets the supporting cast go overboard while failing to provide Mifune with enough fireworks to sustain the film through its rather ponderous 150-minute running time, and the gloomy ending offers no real dramatic payoff. CONTAINS LESBIANS? No. VERDICT: Highly regarded by Kurosawa fans and film nerds, but casual viewers may wonder what all the fuss is about.

CROSSPLOT (1969): Labored action comedy starring Roger Moore as womanizing ad executive Gary Fenn, whose new discovery is a gorgeous Hungarian model named Marla Kogash (Claudie Lange), who's tied up in a convoluted assassination plot. Moore is game, but the script and direction are too clunky to ever whip up the requisite degree of froth, and the plot's awkward equivocation about student protests doesn't sit well. Martha Hyer is fun as Marla's flirtatious English aunt Jo, and fans of THE PRISONER will immediately recognize costar Alexis Kanner from "Living in Harmony" and "Fall-Out." (Moore's future Bond movie costar Bernard Lee also pops up in a small role.) CONTAINS LESBIANS? No. VERDICT: Never as funny or as fun as it wants to be, and your attention will start to wander by the midpoint.

THE HOT ROCK (1972): Droll, lightweight caper film, adapted by William Goldman from a Donald Westlake novel, about a gang of thieves (Robert Redford, George Segal, Ron Leibman, and Paul Sand) attempting to steal a rare diamond on behalf of a UN delegate from a fictional African country (Moses Gunn), only to have one brilliant plan after another go badly awry. Director Peter Yates wisely keeps things light even as the plot gets sillier, although he sometimes lets the energy level wane too much, and the ending feels a bit anticlimactic. Gunn steals the show as the gang's increasingly exasperated financier. CONTAINS LESBIANS? It really only has two female characters, and their roles are very small. VERDICT: Never laugh-out-loud funny, but a pleasantly relaxed amusement.

DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS (1995): Near-miss film adaptation of the first of Walter Mosley's popular Easy Rawlins detective novels, about a newly unemployed Black veteran in 1948 Los Angeles (Denzel Washington) who's hired to track down a mystery woman (Jennifer Beals) some people will kill to find. Adapted and directed by Carl Franklin, it has great atmosphere, a charismatic lead, and superb support by Don Cheadle as Easy's casually murderous friend Mouse. Unfortunately, the story lacks an emotional hook, and Beals' flat performance leaves a blank space at its heart; the mise-en-scène is ultimately more compelling than the plot. CONTAINS LESBIANS? Not in any substantive way. VERDICT: A movie good enough that you'll come away frustrated that it falls so short of greatness.

[creepynostalgy]

James Caan in Rollerball (1975)

[andersalsdieandern]

[streamondemand]

'Homicide: Life on the Street' – TV's greatest network cop drama on Peacock

There is no shortage of cop dramas and police procedurals in the annals of American TV but when it comes down to it, there is no network show as rich, as complex, as engaging as Homicide: Life on the Street (1993-1999). Created by Paul Attanasio, based on the nonfiction book “Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets” by Baltimore Sun crime reporter David Simon (who was brought on as a consultant…

[badmovieihave]

Bad movie I have Heartbreak Ridge

[citizenscreen]

Moses Gunn (October 2, 1929 – December 16, 1993)

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[theoscarsproject]

Heartbreak Ridge (1986). Hard-nosed, hard-living Marine Gunnery Sergeant Tom Highway clashes with his superiors and his ex-wife as he takes command of a spoiled recon platoon with a bad attitude.

One of the reviews here described it as only for the Eastwood faithful, and I feel like that's an accurate description. It's soaked in that Reagan-era jingoistic machismo that makes it eye-wateringly hard to watch at points, and any attempt at - - y'know, any sort of meaningful emotional connection between any of its characters falls pretty flat. Still, some of the insults are genuinely pretty hilarious, so it's got that going for it at least. 3/10.

[abs0luteb4stard]

Good Times was on at 2 am, I woke up and put on the oldies channel GetTV just for ambient TV noise.

But this episode' scene, "Love Has a Spot On Its Lung Part 2" really hit me hard in the heart.

With my mom's aggressive uterus cancer, her upcoming chemo & radiation.

When Bookmaker said, "Stop planning to die and start planning to live."

You gotta keep saying to yourself every day, "I'm gonna make it. It can't happen to me. I ain't gonna die. I'm gonna live, I'm gonna live."

Small reminders of our goal toward living beyond this cancer comes from unexpected places.

[inwantofamuse]

Homicide Rewatch: Three Men & Adena

Homicide Rewatch: Three Men & Adena https://davidbmorris.medium.com/homicide-rewatch-three-men-adena-c7659f13eb53

So for me... I fall into the thinking that Risley Tucker did it, and he's a sociopath. This is why he betrays little to no reaction after the interrogation. One other giveaway, is Pembleton's remark about Risley watching Court TV,then at the end, he changes the channel and looks to be watching just that. And I think he knew that this was their last chance and if he continued to deny it, he would be free.