Author: Seb Palmer

Described by American film critic Roger Ebert as ‘the longest B-grade war movie ever made’, this film is clearly intended to be on a par with another Cornelius Ryan adaptation, The Longest Day.

And in some respects it is. It’s certainly an epic production. But when Ebert’s critic buddy Siskel describes it as not much more than ‘a parade of famous faces’, we can be fairly sure that some who saw this weren’t too impressed.

Directed by Dickie Attenborough, I can see why some folk find it less than 100% satisfying. It’s length – and it is very, very, very long – could be a strength. But for those who don’t like it, it might feel like an interminable drag. Although I very much do like it, and have watched it many times, I have nonetheless often found myself drifting off at points.

Having started with quite a critical over view, let’s get into what’s good about it. For starters there’s the sheer scale of the production. In a pre CGI works, such epic productions really are a special thing, to be treasured.

Yes, ‘rivet counter’ type buffs will carp at the wrong or badly faked materiel. But, frankly, this isn’t the worst offender in terms of WWII movies. Nowadays it’s become easier to either fake real vehicles, or use CGI. But ‘back in the day’ it wasn’t necessarily so easy, or – in truth – always deemed important enough.

It’s clear that efforts were made. But not enough satisfy those who know their SdKfz’s from their PzKpfw’s! I’m a WWII military history nut/buff, but I’m prepared to hold the pedantry beast in abeyance and give older movies more leeway.

Whilst The Longest Day was shot in black and white, A Bridge Too Far is in colour. But they share not just epic proportions and Cornelius Ryan books as their basis, but also great stirring scores, terrific star-studded casts, and a desire for accuracy that includes having the right languages spoken, with subtitles.

Feldmarschal Model is portrayed as a self-important buffoon, with some of his subordinates chafing under his pompous complacency. How accurate this is I have no idea. Amongst the English brass there’s a preponderance of whiskers and clipped toff accents. The Yanks are, predictably, sceptical of Monty’s plans, and, for the most part, gruff no-nonsense ‘balls out’ tough guys!

This can reach almost comically cartoonish dimensions, as with Elliot Gould’s fun but faintly irritating cigar-chomping Col. Stout, based on Col. Sink, of Band of Brothers fame!

Most of the actors acquit themselves admirably. The only real clangers, for me, are the aforementioned Gould, and Gene Hackman’s Polish Maj. Gen. Sosabowksi, whose accent is bizarre, coming off more Brooklyn than Bialystok!

Making a war film of this type is, I suspect, much much harder than most would imagine. Trying to balance a grand overview with the nitty gritty details, weighing historical accuracy against dramatic and entertainment considerations, and so on.

War is – according to many testimonies – largely boredom punctuated by brief but intense moments of terror. And the need for exposition can make ‘leadership scenarios’ seem rather leaden.

And then there’s the logistical stuff, both that required to make the movie, and the stuff depicted, such as the Bailey bridge building scene, and the build up to Maj. Cook’s crossing of the Waal, to take the Nijmegen bridge.

Personally the more I see this film, the better I think it is. Sure, it’s not perfect. Very little is. But it is epic, exciting, sometimes funny, sometimes moving. Definitely a film worth watching.

* Interestingly this rather colourful episode is allegedly based on real events. Although the exact details aren’t altogether the same in real life as they are in the film, it makes cracking good film entertainment! For the real story, try this link.

Here’s another interesting link, with some nice production photos. And this one is very detailed, with plenty of pics and lots of info’, inc. a link to a comparison of actors with the characters they portray.

Teresa chose this from her Hammer box tonight. What fun it was! Completely ludicrous, as you’d expect from Hammer. But a rather wonderful and nostalgic form of batsh*t crazy!

Peter Cushing is solid and reliable as the gaunt bony-cheeked Baron, and Dietlinde Ortrun Zechner, better known to history as Susan Denberg is bodacious as Christina Kleve.

This would be the former Playboy centrefold’s most challenging acting role; starting out as a physically disfigured barmaid, before the Baron ultimately reanimates her, post-mortem, as a psychotic sex kitten with a split personality!

The plots of films like these are hardly worth the effort of synopsising, as they are so formulaic and silly. It’s all good clean sex’n’horror-sploitation fun!

But I suppose aorta at least have a stab (groans). The film starts with young Hans seeing his papa guillotined. Later in life Hans is working for Doc Hertz and Baron Frankincense.

At a local tavern, Kleve, the patron, his daughter Christina, and Hans, become embroiled in troubles with three toff oiks, the upshot being Kleve’s demise, for which Hans is blamed.

Hans is guillotined, like his ol’ dad, this time with Christina as witness. She tops herself, alowing Baron Frankenfurter and doc Hertz to put Hans’ soul in Christina’s body.

And to add some spice to the sauce, the diabolical duo perfect the formerly flawed Christina. Physically, at any rate. Alas, the dual residency of Hans’ and Christina’s tortured souls doesn’t pan out so well.

There are many familiar faces (I recognised Denberg from Star Trek!), such as Peter Thorley as Doc Hertz (who looks like the perfect Geppetto to me!), and the trio of toff villains, Anton, Johann and Karl (Peter Bythe, Derek Fowlds and Barry Warren).

In a bizarre ‘crisp of fate’, given the plot of this movie, in real life, apparently, actor Barry Warren would later change and live out last five years of his life as a woman!

I’m not sure why these silly old movies are such nostalgic fun. But they really are. They’re kind of awful in many ways. But I love them. The technicolour, the hammy acting, the formulaic clichés – from characters to scenarios – and yet they’re just so much fun!

… but this ‘scene’ was never actually part of the film. ‘Twas always just a saucy means of getting the film noticed. Methinks it works!

With rather hilarious irony, Wikipedia describes this movie thus:

‘Where Hammer’s previous Frankenstein films were concerned with the physical aspects of the Baron’s work, the interest here is in the metaphysical dimensions of life, such as the question of the soul and its relationship to the body.’

Technically speaking this is of course true. But of course the very alluring physicality of Denberg as Christina also has a compelling part to play in this movie’s charms.

Today’s two tasks were to put up four trellis panels along a certain portion of our garden fence. I also had to replace a fence post, as one of them was rotten and the whole fence was sagging in that section.

Removing and replacing a fence post from ‘twixt two fence panels, with the additional complication of a well established honeysuckle growing in that area, and weatherboards as well as the panels themselves, was tricky. But we managed it pretty well in the end!

The other job I did was finishing, sort of, a hanging rack for the kitchen. Our kitchen is so pathetically tiny we have no space for even half of what ought to be in there (fridge and freezer currently reside in the lounge!).

This rack means we can have stuff hanging from the ceiling instead of cluttering up drawers or taking up real estate on the already crowded surfaces.

I’ll most likely paint the rack and then re-hang/re-stock it. It’s not ideal. It ought to have been wider. But I had to work with the materials I had to hand. And this was the outcome.

At some point I want to totally gut and rebuild the kitchen. But that’s a ways off. Hopefully this’ll sort us out a bit for the time being?

More hot ‘rate my plate’ action!

In a second instalment of what I like to call my ‘oat cuisine’ series – humble, like porridge – here’s the lunch I cooked today. In preference to dining out. Through force of circumcision, if I’m honest!

As Tom Waits quips in a piece during his sublime Nighthawks at the Diner performance, ‘the coffee just wasn’t strong enough to defend itself’! Actually the coffee was fine. Hunger trumped in the face of heat, so to speak.

And in case these exciting posts aren’t enough, coming soon… adventures in the littlest room. Nah, I’ll spare y’all that!

As so often, I didn’t think to take any photos when I started this job. And consequently I have no record of the hardest and most time consuming parts of my labours. This whole sorry scenario has come about because I’m determined to add a utensil hanging rack to our kitchen ceiling, over the sink/window area.

In a bigger kitchen that might not be the place for it. But our kitchen is appallingly tiny, and, frankly, totally unworkable. And consequently that’s the only area it can go. By way of illustration of our situation, due to the lack of space we have our fridge and freezer in the lounge… fer chrissakes!

Anyway, I made a wooden hanging rack a few days back. And then I started in on attaching anchor points in the ceiling. The first two appeared to take fast. Although whether they’ll hold in the long term I don’t know. I’m not confident!

The second two were patently not holding at all. Just applying slight downward stress on the wall-plugs via the eye-hooks pulled them straight both out. So I had to investigate the sub-strata. Most of our home has hideously textured artex ceiling (and even walls… aaargh! ). In some such areas I’ve struggled to remove this execrable stuff with Ex-Tex. Never again!

The artex is on plasterboards. And in the kitchen, in turns out that beneath that – or rather above, in the reverse stratification of ceilings – is old fashioned (Victorian, perhaps, like the building itself?) lath and plaster.

To get sufficient purchase or anchorage in the intended spots, I needed to create a hole in the artex/plaster/lath large enough for me to reach two rafters, and to work in. And then I’d need to attach wooden boards or beams between said very old and very solid – at last something substantial – rafters. Once this was done – oh so much easier said than done (working in a confined space, and worse yet up a ladder in the ceiling space, wasn’t easy!) – I’d have to build back and re-plaster.

We’d love to get someone in to professionally skim all the artex surfaces. But I very much suspect that that’s well beyond our current fiscal reach. I’m trying to get a plasterer over to quote on the job. But it seems they’re so busy they don’t even feel the need to respond to our enquiries!

I initially tried scavenging some plasterboard at the so called local ‘recycling centre’, aka, the dump. But they wouldn’t let me have any. I only needed a tiny bit. But nope, no can do. Pathetic! So next I drove around town looking for skips, with bits of plasterboard in them. But no dice. So I just wound up screwing a piece of chipboard to the two lateral beams or batons that I’d screwed between the rafters.

And only at this point did I start taking a few photos. Aren’t they something. The excitement! The drama! The sheer aesthetic delights! Well, anyway, I added a bit of chicken wire to the chipboard, attaching that with a staple-gun. This would give the filler something to grab hold of in addition to the surface of the chipboard itself.

After a first thick slathering coat of said filler, I took a break. Intended to be a short lunch break, I wound up dozing off to the doings of Andrew Camarata, as he destroyed and removed a load of crap from a client’s property.

This longer than expected break was actually good, as it meant that I returned to the plaster several hours later, to add a second and hopefully final layer. Obviously, thanks to the thickness of the first coat, I needed to wait longer than normal before applying a second.

Also, thanks to the hideous artex, there’s no chance of a clean matching finish. And that’s where I find myself now, beer in hand, writing this.

I had a little bit more filler than I really needed, so I slathered it on, slightly exceeding the area required. I did this to see whether or not I could flatten out the artex surfaces myself. Maybe then we’d not need to hire a plasterer? Truth be told, there is such an enormous acreage of the evil material in our property that a professional is definitely indicated!

I’m now left waiting for the second coat of plaster to dry, before I can sand it flat. Then the anchors for the hanging rack will need to be fitted, and the filler probably ought to be painted.

Rather annoyingly I strongly suspect that I’ll have to repeat this entire rigmarole for the first two anchor points.

‘Mary shut the garden door’ Donald Fagen

Yesterday I built this little wooden garden gate. I didn’t really document the making. Other than this lone pic of the Z-frame elements.

But I’ve taken a few pics of it in situ’. I put it up today before heading out to teach. I actually took it apart and re-built it as well! I’d put the screws in from the wrong side, such that they didn’t reach far enough through and into the wood of the verticals.

I wound up re-assembling it and gluing it all, as well as screwing it all together. I’m glad I did. The result is much better and stronger. Getting it hung is very satisfying!

Next I need to add the latch. I also have a spring, designed to auto-close the gate. It’ll be interesting to see if I can install that and make it work satisfactorily. And then I’ll be painting it all to match the other gate pillars.