DVD/150: THE THREE MUSKETEERS (THE QUEEN'S DIAMONDS) (Richard Lester, 1973)

Although Lester's fondness for dubbed muttered asides gets wearing, THE THREE MUSKETEERS still delivers great Sunday afternoon adventure.

Alexandre Dumas' classic tale of young d'Artagnan's wish to join King Louis XIII's Musketeers and being taken under the wing of intense Athos, jovial Porthos and romantic Aramis.

He also finds love with Constance, Queen Anne's clumsy maid, and makes enemies of the manipulative Cardinal Richelieu, and his spies Rochefort and deadly Milady de Winter when he foils an attempt by them to discredit Queen Anne.

Lustrous cinematography by David Watkin, Yvonne Blake's costumes and Michel Legrand's stirring score make the film a delight to watch and Richard Lester mixes swordplay and slapstick memorably.

Delivering memorable performances are Oliver Reed as Athos, Michael York as d'Artagnan, Charlton Heston as Richelieu, Raquel Welch as Constance, Roy Kinnear as d'Artagnan's servant Planchet but above them all, is Faye Dunaway as a wonderfully icy Milady.

Shelf or charity shop?  The musketeers are swashing their buckles in the limbo of my plastic dvd storage box.

DVD/150: LA PIEL QUE HABITO (The Skin I Live In) (Pedro Almodóvar, 2011)

LA PIEL QUE HABITO reunited Almodóvar and Antonio Banderas for the first time since ATAME! in 1990.

Robert Ledgard is a respected plastic surgeon who alarms a conference when he says he is researching a new burn-resistant skin, his peers suspect he is still obsessed with his wife's death in a car-crash and the subsequent suicide of his deranged daughter.

Unknown to them, he is beyond research - locked in a bedroom in his secluded mansion is a young woman named Vera who resembles his dead wife and wears a flesh-toned bodysuit to protect the skin that he has grafted onto her body.

They share the house with Robert's servant Marilla who has her own secret: she is Robert's real mother and has never told him.

But who is Vera and what shocking secret is known by only Robert and her?

Revenge is a dish best served cold...

Shelf or charity shop?  Definitely shelf...  Antonio Banderas' darkly menacing performance was his best in years and there is fine work from Elena Anaya as the mysterious Vera and Almodóvar veteran Marisa Paredes as Marilla.  Two other longstanding collaborators make the film a pleasure to watch: José Luis Alcaine's lush cinematography and composer Alberto Igleisias' compelling score.  

DVD/150: CODENAME: KYRIL (Ian Sharp, 1988, tv)

It's taken 32 years but I've finally seen CODENAME: KYRIL which, as a sub-Le Carré espionage drama, isn't my usual thing but it starred Ian Charleson in one of his last filmed performances so I had to see it.

It's not TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY but it is very watchable with a plot full of twists.

The head of the KGB discovers there is a traitor who has been leaking secret material to MI6 for years.  He pursuades one of his most trusted operatives Ivan Bucharensky, - codename Kyril - to seemingly defect to the West and announces it is because Kyril knows the mole's identity.

But Kyril faces double danger: the Russian traitor sends an assassin to London to kill him - although Kyril has no idea who the traitor is - and Royston, the head MI6 officer assigned to catch him, is himself a double-agent who also wants Kyril silenced.

Shelf or charity shop?  One to keep for Ian who gives a charismatic performance and an excellent cast including Edward Woodward as his MI6 nemesis, Joss Ackland, Peter Vaughan, Denholm Elliott, Richard E Grant, John McEnery, Peter Wight and Hugh Fraser in an involving script by John Hopkins.  It also has the added bonus of being shot on location in late-1980s London so great to spot how certain locations have changed.

What an actor we lost...

 

 

DVD/150: PARIS IS BURNING (Jennie Livingston, 1990)

Before "Vogue", before RUPAUL'S DRAG RACE... Paris Was Burning.

Jennie Livingston was a photographer in edgy late-80s NY when she met a group of young black and Latino gays in Washington Square Park practicing Voguing moves and talking 'shade'.  This led her into their world of Drag Balls, with 'Houses' competing against each others to win prizes in categories such as Executive Realness, Town and Country, High Fashion Realness, Butch Queen First Time In Drags, etc.

In reality they are mostly on welfare - sometimes on the Game - but by 'walking the ballroom floor' they become what the media is promoting as success, affluence and glamour, so within that community hall and to their competitors in the other Houses, they have fame - "a small fame" as Dorian Corey, a seasoned queen, says.

It features stunning footage of Voguing legend Willi Ninja, and excellent, insightful thoughts from Pepper LaBeija and Corey.

Shelf or charity shop?  One to keep for the memory of the Legendary Children - all gone before their time - and one, Venus Xtravaganza, gone before the end of the film, as she is found murdered.  Heartbreaking and life-affirming at the same time.  Dorian Corey sums it all up in her sad farewell, "I always had hopes of being a big star. But as you get older, you aim a little lower. Everybody wants to make an impression, some mark upon the world. Then you think, you've made a mark on the world if you just get through it, and a few people remember your name. Then you've left a mark. You don't have to bend the whole world. I think it's better to just enjoy it. Pay your dues, and just enjoy it. If you shoot an arrow and it goes real high, hooray for you".

DVD/150: GYPSY (Jonathan Kent / Lonny Price, 2016, tv)

Over Easter I voted GYPSY one of my four joint-favourite stage musicals so that was a good reason to watch this television film of the most recent London revival, directed originally by Jonathan Kent and filmed for television by Lonny Price.

Of course, a musical filmed onstage will always suffer when a camera is pulling into a performance who is pushing out to the balcony but it makes up for that in capturing a production that would otherwise just live in memory and immortalising performances that need to be treasured.

One such was Imelda Staunton's explosive Rose, the unrelenting stage mother of future stars June Havoc and Gypsy Rose Lee.  Rose is called a "pioneer woman without a frontier" and as she travels around America's theatres - one step ahead of the decline of vaudeville - her manic drive is seen in Imelda's performance as driven by a deep psychological hurt.

Shelf or charity shop?  One for the shelf, Imelda's galvanising Rose is perfectly balanced by Lara Pulver as the insecure Louise who blossoms into the self-assured Gypsy Rose Lee and Peter Davison as Herbie, the man who could save Rose if she only realised it.  A great tribute to Arthur Laurents' excellent book and the glorious score by Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim.

DVD/150: TOSCA (Jonathan Kent / Jonathan Haswell, 2011)

A wonderful opportunity to see again Jonathan Kent's thrilling production of TOSCA at The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

I first saw Puccini's opera at the English National Opera but it's Jonathan Kent's ROH production that I have now seen twice.

TOSCA made it's London debut in 1900 at Covent Garden and Puccini's tragic, headstrong heroine has appeared practically every year since then, apart from during the World Wars.

We follow one day in the lives of diva Floria Tosca, her Republican lover Caravadossi and their nemesis Chief of Police Scarpia in the dangerous atmosphere of Rome, 1800 as Napoleon's army advances.

Kent's production plays like a runaway train with the late Paul Brown's sumptious sets and costumes, and Mark Henderson's atmospheric lighting adding wonders.

In Jonathan Haswell's film, Tosca is vibrantly sung by Angela Gheorghiu, Jonas Kaufmann is an impassioned Caravadossi and Bryn Terfel is a deliously evil Scarpia.

Shelf or charity shop?  A definite keeper to relive the passion and the pure emotion of Puccini's score in Jonathan Kent's thrilling production.  A special mention must go to the glorious playing of the Royal Opera House orchestra under the baton of Antonio Pappino.

DVD/150: SEARCHING FOR DEBRA WINGER (Rosanna Arquette, 2002)

Rosanna Arquette's documentary about actresses is a curious time capsule when seen 18 years on.

Arquette interviews 34 actresses about their lives as actresses and women; her starting point being THE RED SHOES which she saw when young and it's dancer heroine torn between her career or becoming a wife.

It culminates in her interviewing Debra Winger who in the mid-1990s stopped making films to raise her children.

The participants are Patricia Arquette, Emmanuelle Béart, Katrin Cartlidge (who died soon after), Laura Dern, Jane Fonda, Teri Garr, Whoopi Goldberg, Melanie Griffith, Daryl Hannah, Salma Hayek, Holly Hunter, Diane Lane, Kelly Lynch, Julianna Marguiles, Chiara Mastroianni, Samantha Mathis, Frances McDormand, Catherine O'Hara, Julia Ormond, Gwyneth Paltrow, Martha Plimpton, Charlotte Rampling, Vanessa Redgrave, Theresa Russell, Meg Ryan, Ally Sheedy, Adrienne Shelly, Hilary Shepard, Sharon Stone, Tracey Ullman, JoBeth Williams, Alfre Woodard and Robin Wright.

Laudable but it's flat tone is regrettable.

Shelf or charity shop?  The film certainly has it's highpoints - Jane Fonda's rapturous monologue on the magic of getting it right on a film set - are worth maybe keeping this in the DVD limbo of the plastic storage box but these are few amid the usual - and timeless - talk of no roles for older women and the pressures put on young actresses,  Bearing in mind Rosanna Arquette has said that Harvey Weinstein had her career ruined when she refused to have sex with him in the early 1990s - one wonders that if she made this film today would the result be more hard-hitting?