Movies

I have found that foreign-made comedy or romantic-comedy films give a much better view of normal people's lives than a serious drama or other genre of film, so I sometimes watch one just for educational purposes. That was my motive for watching Anuvahood (2011), a British Urban Comedy. I had no idea what life was like in public housing projects with a mixed, primarily non-european population and wanted to see it in another context than the brutality and violence which would be required in a serious drama, knowing that a lighter tone would make it tolerable. It was entertaining and easy to follow even though, as I expected, I was unable to comprehend 3/4 of almost every sentence because of the cross-cultural dialect, accents and slang. It showed circumstances, characters and environments I would not otherwise see. For educational purposes, 6/10.

I then watched Mutiny in Outer Space - 1965, a low-budget Infected Space Station movie, also for educational purposes. Its most notable feature to me was the unusual resemblance to the 1968 Infected Space Station movie The Green Slime, particularly shots of the space station floating around draped in fungus. It was also notable for a complete lack of understanding of the nature and purpose of a spinning toroidal structure - they had magical artificial gravity so they were essentially riding a big merry go round through space, unnecessarily. I understand that at this point all that is left for me to see of SF films is the dregs and oddities. 5/10

I have also been seeing Chester Morris movies. I think I first noticed him opposite Joan Blondell in Blondie Johnson, a gorgeous hunk of man. He was a pretty good B movie actor who may be best known for the Boston Blackie movies, but they are usually pretty poor films and I enjoy seeing him in slightly better things, like the Pine-Thomas productions - the B-movie unit of Paramount, which have good production values, lots of familiar faces, and fairly good stories. I enjoyed No Hands on the Clock, Gambler's Choice, and Double Exposure as well as the early forensic investigation TV drama Diagnosis Unknown (1960) starring Patrick O'Neal, which seemed to me to be unusually well-written and acted under the circumstances. I also managed to locate a copy of the first episode of the 1967 TV series Coronet Blue, in which he briefly appears.