Change Your Image
johnfadrian
Reviews
Connie and Carla (2004)
Some Like It Hot. For others things get too hot.
Some Like It Hot. For others things get too hot. The latter skip town, whether on a train in an "all girl" orchestra (Sweet Sue and her Society Syncopators) or by car ending-up in West Hollywood starring in a drag show. Either way it's a lot of fun for the audience. However, in only one case can it be said, "Nobody's perfect." Somehow I never through of David Duchovney as a replacement for Joe E. Brown. This film could be titled "My Big Fat Gay Escape". Either way Nia Vardalos is a very clever comedianne/writer. I hope to see a lot more of her in the years to come.
Hotel Paradiso (1966)
A delightful farce with a perfect cast, and a fine script, ably directed
While viewing an amply proportioned la Belle Epoc French "strip tease" artieste who performs over her audience's heads while on a trapeze, Mme. Cote notes that, according to the programme: "I says here 'she is the mother of three children and her husband is a professor at the Sorbonne.'"
Such delightfully histerical lines are just the beginning of the fun.
I first saw this during my college days when I was a projectionist at the local movie house in Rexburg, Idaho. I dispaired of ever seeing it again. When I finally found it on VHS I was in (not on) ecstasy.
Morning Departure (1950)
I saw this in first run when I was about 7 years old. Scenes are still vivid in my memory.
I saw this in first run when I was about 7 years old. It was on a double bill with a Francis the Talking Mule film. My older sister made a deal with me: She'd sit through Francis if I'd sit through OPERATION DISASTER.
I remember nothing of the Francis film, but scenes from this film are still vivid in my memory. In the late 1950s John Mills was a guest on the JACK PAAR SHOW and spoke of how life imitated art in that a British submarine was lost in the North Sea under very similar circumstances to those portrayed in the film between the completion of shooting and release in the UK. He said there was criticism in the British press at the time for it's release.
I wish it was available on VHS or DVD in the Unites States, but I haven't been able to find it. I would love to see it again.
Song of the Loon (1970)
An excellent film, for its time, about a man coming to terms with his sexual orientation.
Filmed in 1970 from Richard AMORY's 1966 pulp novel of the same title, it is the story of a young man searching for love and happiness in the American West of the 1870's, coming to accept his homosexuality and through that self-acceptance becoming the man he was born to be.
Thirty years on it is painfully obvious that the Native Americans are played by European-Americans with bad make-up and for the more mature actors, gym-buffed bodies. The scenery is real, however, and the acting, if not up to "A" standards is no worse than the acting in most "B" pictures. However, whatever its faults, this film tells it's story with an honesty not found in American films until the late 1980's. I strongly recommend it for students of Gay Studies.
There is full-frontal male nudity and the film is erotic. It is not, however, pornographic. (It does not have an all-male cast.) While not rated by the MPAA, I would give it an "R".
Released in VHS in 1994 by Something Weird Video, it is available in both colour and black and white. If you are buying, insist on the colour version.
Early in the summer of 2000 this film was not in the IMDb to-day it is listed with only a director's credit. A "people" search for the actors credited on the box comes-up with only one name match, Jon EVANS. If he is the same man, I do not yet know.