so horsemouth found the one film made by barbara loden, actor's studio alumni, sometime wife of elia kazan (and curiously actress in the swimmer). what it's most like is bonnie and clyde. but it's not like it at all. yes it is a 70ies set story of ne'er-do-wells meeting up and robbing banks but it has none of the joy and self-assertion of arthur penn's movie (before they go down to their bloody deaths). it is as if it had been made by an italian neo-realist or an uncharacteristically dour nouvelle vague director. what it is perhaps nearest to are the films of john cassavetes.
loden directs and stars in it. other than her it's a largely amateur cast, with largely improvised dialogue and everybody is great. we start in the pennsylvania coalfields (poverty and environmental degradation enough to drive anyone to drink) and end up in a bar with drunken hillbilly music (it's kind of like southern comfort in that regard with the cajuns). in between she gets involved in a bank robbery (but largely out of passivity), the male bank-robber is just some anxious OCD bread-head, anxious to make money as proof of his worth, already too old for this line of work and is well-played by established actor michael higgins.
and it's a good film. well made. it comes out. gets a botched release and dies a the box office. she dies aged 48 of cancer so there's never a chance for her to make another.
michael gove has been filmed dancing to techno and chatting to random locals in an aberdeen night club. will he do a brian harvey and tell us about better living through chemistry? will priti patel be able to get the drug sniffing dog round to him before he's used up all the evidence?
other than that yesterday was a bit of a wash out.
sten's just out of the door to work. horsemouth is still waiting on his 'not-enough-money-to-actually-retire' cheque. today shopping (cheap pizzas, museli, pasta, whatever they actually have left on the shelves after brexit).
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