The last post of the year.

Hello and welcome to the last Eccentric Sphere of 2021.

It's been a mixed year in many ways. Covid continues to bedevil us all but there has been many good things as well, at least for me.

I had a hard time getting my brain to formulate a thought on the subject, so I decided not to. There are enough retrospectives around if you like those, I just aim to entertain you a little bit.

So without all that much more ado, let me wish you a Happy New Year and a great and safe week. I'll see you in 2022 with more Eccentric Spheres!

 

  

 

Undecided

I had a hard time deciding what to talk about today.

I watched a poliziotteschi movie called The Big Racket (1976), but I didn't really like it very much. It's all about a police inspector who tries to take down a gang that runs a protection racket and commits horrible acts of violence against those they don't like. Parts, like a car rolling down a hill was superbly shot with the camera inside the car, and there were some nice action, but the main villain was lousy and the story as such made little sense. You could roll a car through the plot holes if you were so inclined. I realized that I can't really recommend it and if possible, I prefer to not blog about movies I don't enjoy.

Clearly this wasn't the topic for this week...

I also considered talking about how most of the AAA game company executives are keen to implement NFT (non fungible tokens) and block-chain technology in their upcoming games. In a nutshell, NFT's use the same technology that is used to farm cryptocurrency to create “unique” items in game, either for sale or to be earned through playing. These “unique” items can then be sold by the owner to other players for real money. The kicker is that the items don't need to be unique at all, just the code for this particular helmet makes it unique. It can look like every other helmet in-game. Sure, the items can be genuinely unique, but they still want to waste huge amounts of energy to create this market in order to cash in. It is incredibly bad for the environment and to top it off, they don't really seem to know what need or problem these NFT's would solve.

The backlash has been huge, with developers from the companies themselves like EA, Ubisoft and Take-Two asking their bosses what the point is, since microtransactions and in-game shops are already a thing. The bosses have no answers, they just mumble about “investments”, “metaverses” and other buzzwords. Ubisoft seems to be the keenest at the moment and are apparently planning on allowing players who own these items to transfer them from one game to another. Frankly, this is idiotic. Your fancy “property” is going to evaporate the second the game servers are shut down. Recently there was talk that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 would have NFT's until they realized the PR backlash and publicly stated that the game won't have them.

The NFT technology also raises serious questions about things like money laundering, capital gains tax, game companies holding valuable properties for players meaning that they might function like banks, etc. etc. Time will tell how this plays out, but they already had enough problems with children and loot-boxes. The defense then was that the boxes don't contain anything of real value, but the point of the NFT's is that they do have real value. Can children even earn them or what? Do they need to pay tax or does that get slapped on their parents? Some in-game items have sold for thousands of dollars already, so the potential is there. These are important questions that they don't seem to have asked themselves as they fall over each other to be first in a new gold rush.

Of course, this topic is a bit dull and negative, so I need to come up with something else. But now I'm running out of space so you'll have to settle for this comedy sketch.

Now it only remains to wish you Happy Holidays where ever you are, and I hope you will come back next time. Until then, have a great and safe week!

Bullitt

In last week's post about the Friends of Eddie Coyle, I mentioned that the director Peter Yates, had also directed Bullitt (1968). For a long time, I've meant to watch Bullitt, so I did.

Bullitt is a neo-noir cop drama about protecting a witness and solving crime. Story wise the plot is really nothing special. I found Steve McQueen as Lieutenant Bullitt okay but not that remarkable. Robert Vaughn as Senator Chalmers is amazingly nasty and slimy. So slimy in fact that when Vaughn tried to get into politics, his performance got in his way since people remembered how oily he was.

Beyond these two we have Jaqueline Bisset as Cathy, Bullitt's girlfriend and Robert Duvall as a cab driver. I don't think I've ever seen him in such a minor role before. All actors do a good job, the cinematography is great and the music is... 60's jazz. Good if you like the stuff. I think...

Where Bullitt really shines is in the influence it has had on the TV and cinema that came along afterwards. This movie became absolutely iconic in its time and I don't think it is unfair to say that Bullitt is the archetype for the cop who plays by his own rules and does whatever it takes to get the job done no matter who gets mad at him.

Bullitt's other huge claim to fame is the car chase that is still amazing to this day. Bullitt drives a 1968 Ford Mustang as he chases two killers in a 1968 Dodge Charger. Seeing these powerful muscle cars race around San Francisco is a treat. Keep in mind that there was no CGI at the time so the hairpin turns and jumps were performed for real. This movie is also probably the inspiration for multiple movies featuring car chases in San Francisco, with its twisting streets and many steep hills.

McQueen is credited as being the driver of the Ford but in fact some shots were filmed with a stuntman, the same stuntman who did the motorcycle jump in the Great Escape – Bud Ekins. When McQueen found out, he was furious as he had gotten quite a bit of flak for not doing the jump himself.

The driver of the Dodge was Bill Hickman, an experienced stunt-driver and racer. Hickman was a good friend of James Dean and was in fact the one who pulled Dean's body out of the crashed Porsche Spyder that killed him.

I could go on listing interesting facts about this movie like how there were no sets built. All scenes were shot on location. The Mayor of San Francisco was keen to promote his city as a film location and the crew got to shut down streets for hours at a time. They even got a hospital wing to film in. The only request that got turned down was to film on Golden Gate bridge.

I said I could go on, but why bother? Check the humongous trivia page on IMDB if you want to know even more. Okay, one more. Bullitt is often credited as being the first movie where the word “Bullshit” was uttered, but it is in fact the second. The first is In Cold Blood (1967).

Do I recommend this movie? Yes, I suppose so. It is a classic and there is nothing wrong with it. If all you care about is the car chase, you can see it on Youtube. Beyond that, movie buffs need to see it but I don't think it's any great loss if you skip it. Again, there is not anything really wrong with it, but I don't think it quite lives up to the enormous reputation it has.

 

 

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great and safe week!

The Friends of Eddie Coyle

I had heard the title before, but when a friend talked about this movie, I sat down and watched it the following day. The subject of this week is The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973). Based on the debut novel of the same name by George V. Higgins, this movie stars Robert Mitchum, Peter Boyle, Richard Jordan and Steven Keats. It's directed by Peter Yeats who also directed the Steve McQueen classic Bullit.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a study in tense atmosphere. We follow the titular Eddie (Mitchum), a small time crook who is getting both old and nowhere fast. He is connected but unimportant. He knows how the game is played but isn't successful. He is known to be solid and is mostly used to supply guns to those who need them, but now he's looking at prison time and he's not sure he can do it. The question is what he can do to stay free.

His main clients are a trio of disciplined and clever bank robbers, one of whom is played by Alex Rocco, best know as Moe Greene in The Godfather. The other important character is the young hotshot gunrunner Jackie Brown. If the name is familiar it is because The Friends of Eddie Coyle had a big influence on Quentin Tarantino, who named one of his movies Jackie Brown.

This movie is pretty slow in many ways, but never boring. Don't go into this expecting a lot of fast paced action. It's a slow intense burn, and it burns all the hotter for it. The tension is thick enough to carve with a knife in several scenes and even when the movie relaxes a bit, it is still strained. You can never really relax and everyone is constantly guarded and ready for the worst.

Set and shot in Boston during the fall, everything feels cold, tired and miserable. Add to this Mitchum's wonderful portrayal as Eddie, who goes from tough and intimidating to cajoling and almost but not quite pleading. The end result is a movie that should be absolutely depressing but somehow isn't.

Even without the Hays Code I have a feeling that The Friends of Eddie Coyle would be just the same. This is one of those movies that really makes crime seem unattractive. It has no glamour or cool, only pragmatic business in a business where you can't trust anyone. To quote Jackie :”This life's HARD man, but it's HARDER if you're stupid!”

If I have managed to paint a picture of unrelenting depression and miserable suffering, don't worry, The Friends of Eddie Coyle isn't that gloomy, but it is extremely well made.

Do I recommend this movie? Absolutely! I would have hated it as a teenager, but being (hopefully) more mature, I found it fascinating. It wasn't well received when it released, but Roger Ebert gave it four stars, it has a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 7.5/10 on IMDB. I suggest you give it a shot, I'm glad I did.

 

 

That's that and all that. Join me again next time, and until then, have great and safe week!