My Festival of "Movies I Haven't Seen for a While" continued last night with High and Low (1963).

This is my second favorite Akira Kurosawa movie after Yojimbo.

When I was browsing through the IMDB comments, I saw a post from someone saying it was his or her favorite move. It's not a bad choice. Not a bad choice at all.

It's based on "King's Ransom," one of Ed McBain's "87th Precinct" novels.

Toshiro Mifune plays a big executive at a shoe company who has borrowed heavily and taken out a mortgage on his house in order to take control of the company because the other executive are a bunch of buttholes. (It's pretty funny later in the movie when one of the cops had to talk to the executive board and he later tells the other cops "What a bunch of a**holes!" You don't expect that in a Kurosawa film.)

Mifune gets a call from a guy who says his son has been kidnapped, and he better pay up or the boy will be killed. But the son shows up a few minutes later; the kidnapper got the chauffeur's son instead. The kidnapper wants the money anyway, and Mifune has to wrestle with this moral and financial dilemma.

Most of the rest of the film is a police procedural, but it's a great police procedural! It's almost two and a half hours, but it doesn't feel nearly that long.

Seeing it for the second time last night, I was kind of struck by how much of it really just a very detailed police procedural, conducting interviews, making marks on map, following clues, following suspects, etc.

But Kurosawa works his magic and it becomes so much more!

Highly recommended. For everybody!

(Tonight, I'm trying to get my nephew to watch The Wrath of Khan.)

The Robe (1953) Richard Burton, Victor Mature, Jean Simmons, Michael Rennie, Dean Jagger, Richard Boone

Burton pisses off Emperor Caligula by outbidding him for Demetrius (Mature) the slave, So Caligula punishes him by sending him to Israel to oversee the Crucifixion of Jesus.Burton wins Christ's terry clothe robe during a game of dice. The robe makes Burton have fits of madness shortly after Jesus dies. Demetrius runs off with the robe to hang out with the Christians. Burton needs to find and destroy the robe to regain his sanity.

Every time I see someone fondling the robe I think of Linus and his security blanket.
A landmark film due to the fact it was the first wide screen cinema-scope movie ever made, I can imagine the audience's reaction to seeing this in its opulent, technicolor, stereophonic splendor in the theaters. It was also a big deal when it made it's prime time TV debut during Easter 1968 when it only had one short commercial break

Burton was critically panned for his performance and accused of being wooden. Burton was an atheist and in all of his interviews later in life he chose this as his least favorite. I thought he did alright. I also thought William Shatner would have been perfect for this too. 

The following year Demetrius got a sequel movie, Demetrius and the Gladiators, also by Victor Mature

Also worthy of a chuckle from me was that no matter how wide the screen was, Jesus Christ was always slightly off camera

And Hayden Roarke (Dr. Bellows from I Dream Of Jeannie) pops up again bidding on some slaves. That's two films in a row with bit parts. I wonder if that mean something.

A pretty decent film and certainly eye candy as well. I'm gonna be extra nice to my robe tonight

So far my Pirates DVD boxset is not exactly shivering my timbers. So lets try the entry that looks like the best

A Pirates Of The Golden Age Movie Collection Film

Against All Flags (1952) Errol Flynn, Maureen O'Hara, Anthony Quinn

It's 1700 and a pirate island off the coast of Madagascar is the headquarters of those scurvy cut-throats who are raiding ships along the Indian Ocean. The British Navy sends Errol Flynn to act as a spy and saboteur. Captain Kidd is on the island but the meanest ones are Anthony Quinn and a lady pirate (O'Hara)

I'm watching these pirate films, all from Universal Pictures and made within a few years of each other and saying to myself that they are probably using the same pirate ship in each of them. And sure enough I find out Errol Flynn suffered a broken ankle during filming which halted production. So Universal quickly cobbled together another pirate script and quickly filmed it while waiting for Flynn to recover. That film was Yankee Buccaneer which was the 1st film from the boxset I saw. It also dealt with the good guys posing as pirates. 

The movie opens up with Flynn getting flogged. That's what the other films were missing, a good flogging
Then we see Anthony Quinn and another pirate talking about booty. Where's the booty? How much booty? That's what the other films were missing. BOOTY

It's another technicolor film and looks real good. It's driven by the great cast and is as enjoyable as a Saturday Afternoon matinee type of film.
The Pirate ship captures an Indian Sultan's vessel with it's one dozen harem girls. Now we are talking serious booty

Lady Pirate Maureen O'Sullivan is dressed like Peter Pan for the film. 

That is true. 
Against All Flags came out 5 months before Disney's Peter Pan

A Pirates Of The Golden Age Movie Collection Film

Buccaneer's Girl (1950) Yvonne De Carlo, Philip Friend, Robert Douglas, Elsa Lancaster

Yvonne is a stowaway on a ship that is taken over by pirates. She , of course, winds up in love with him but learns he has a 2nd identity as a respected citizen who swears to catch that same pirate. Huh?

Yes this is quite the headscratcher for such light-hearted fare. What makes the film watchable is De Carlo-kicking and clawing, biting and scratching. There is even a nice little cat fight. Elsa Lancaster also helps out as a mistress of a finishing girl/ madam. Yvonne is given time to sing 3 songs as well

The plot is too convoluted to make it a pleasure however.Thankfully it only goes on for 77 minutes

I must be too much of a landlubber because besides Against All Flags I couldn't recommend the other movies. They are all lushly colored from Universal Studios, all with a comedy quotient and respectable actors and actresses. And I now realize that not one of them had a parrot on someone's shoulder. Parrots and Booty-A Pirates Life For Me

The boxset has now been watched and will gather dust

Giant (1956) Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean, Carol Baker, Dennis Hopper, Chill Wills, Sal Mineo, Rod Taylor, Earl Holliman

Sprawling epic tale of cattle ranch owner Rock Hudson marrying strong willed easterner Elizabeth Taylor during the 1920s. James Dean is a poor
ranch hand who gets a very small plot from Hudson's 600, 000 acres of land. But there's oil on that plot, Texas Tea, and instead of movin' away from there, Dean becomes a rich tycoon who begins to woo Rock's daughter. 

200 minutes to cover the 30 some odd years of this story. Dynamic cast and interesting just to see how they age, which Dean never got the chance to do. It's his 3rd and final movie. In fact he died in the car crash 8 days after filming his final scene. I could just  imagine the extra box office that resulted from his premature death. As it was, this was Warner Bros highest grossing movie in it's history until Superman in 1978

Dean mumbles through half his lines. Hudson and Taylor are an impossibly beautiful married couple. Dennis Hopper as a son of Hudson plays what is probably his most innocent, clean-cut role in his life

The film is considered iconic by its fans. I don't think its quite that good. Its way too long and much of the plot is not that compelling. But there's no denying the star quality that appears on the screen