Courtroom Drama 101

Witness for the Prosecution (1957 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Many commitments have taken me away from this blog, but a recent Facebook thread has inspired me to re-post this short review I put up on a few sites back in 2010.

Plot:

Sir Wilfred Robarts (Charles Laughton) is a brilliant barrister who has fallen on ill health. Having just returned from hospital he is under the strict supervision of his personal nurse, Miss Plimsoll (Elsa Lancaster), whose mandate is to follow his doctor's orders and to keep him away from his great loves of brandy, cigars and criminal cases. Unfortunately for Miss Plimsoll, Robarts is as determined at breaking these rules as she is at enforcing them, especially when Leonard Vole arrives as his client just ahead of being arrested by the police.

Vole is accused of wooing and murdering a wealthy older woman. An ex-solider who has married a peculiar German woman, Christine, Vole appears to be a very naïve man that will have little chance against his prosecution. Against his nurse's express orders, Robarts decides to take the case on. However, Robarts hasn't taken into account the extra player in this game, Vole's wife who first provides him with an alibi, but later will appear as a witness for the prosecution...

Smoke and Ice - Iago's Advantage

"A lie is the beginning of a new story. That's why we love Art." - Oscar Wilde

I have come to loathe the expression "Where there is smoke, there is fire" or, at least, its hasty usage. The assumption is that you are actually looking at smoke. It disregards the human capacity for lying. Given the right motivation - such as jealousy, old scores, prejudice, financial gains or political expedience - the human mind can pretty much come up with lies that don't have a single grain of truth. However, which cliché does seem to sadly prove true more often than not is that "mud sticks". This reminds me of an Ray Galton and Alan Simpson radio script called "Scandal Magazine". Gutter press editor Sid James explains to a vexed Tony Hancock, who he has scandalized in his magazine, why he cannot win. Even if Hancock wins the case and is exonerated the general public will think he has inside influence. The sheer publicity of the case - win or lose - will drive James's sales up. If Hancock chooses not to sue the persecution in the magazine will continue and the readers will assume the story is true. 

"Personalities Frozen in Amber" - A Review of the Jayne Mansfield Story

Cover of The Jayne Mansfield Story

Icons fascinate me. There is little getting away from this fact. I grew up in showbusiness and I have experienced it in most of its forms. However, I think it is probably my very early interest in Greek and Norse mythology coupled with comic books that led me to my interest in the cult of personality. In both instances we have fictional figures that have become representative of what we love and fear, blown up to magical proportions. The way the Romans would also seek to deify their recently deceased emperors presents a very literal way of how humans have always needed immortal heroes. I have little time for current celebrity gossip and I do not elevate those society chooses to celebrate above anyone else. What interests me is the way a certain image is formed and how they go beyond what they ever were as a mortal figure. The icon is its own entity, merely being played by a flesh and blood human being for a relatively short time.

"An interesting read disguised as a simple guide" - James Marriott's "Horror Films": A Review

 What's It About?

"Horror Films" is an unimaginatively titled, self-styled "step-by-step companion to horror films" produced and commissioned by Virgin Books Ltd's "Virgin Film" subgenre written by James Marriott. Marriot has also written three other Virgin travel books under the pseudonym Patrick Blackden. The book's cover features a full page single black and white still of a fang-baring, blood drooling Christopher Lee in his iconic role of Dracula. Each of the book's 20 chapters focuses on an era defining and highly influential horror film and following a list of full cast and key crew members divides its discussion up under the following titles:

Magical Realism at its Best! - A Review of Angela Carter's "Bloody Chamber"

Cover of Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

Angela Carter was one of the boldest writers of the 20th century. Championed by feminists, Carter is not the usual PC promoting puritan that became a cliché in her time. Instead she strengthened female role models through her own imaginative ideas and often sourced through real evidence. She did this without diminishing other male characters in fiction; male and female villain roles can be equally treacherous, brutal and nasty. Her research into Gothic fiction and, in particular, folk stories reveals this best. This short collection of stories served as the source for the screenplay she wrote, "The Company of Wolves", one of the most startlingly original films of the 1980s. In Carter's works, characters familiar like Red Riding Hood do not overwhelm the male characters rather they compliment them with a different and yet equal strength.

The Curse of Wizzard

“It does seem really hard to get consumers to do the right thing. It is stupid that we use two tons of steel, glass, and plastic to haul our sorry selves to the shopping mall. It's stupid that we put water in plastic bottles in Fiji and ship it here.”

- John Doer

Me vs Street Shopping - The Battle Begins

I like to think that I am in touch with my so-called feminine side, but even I struggle to meet the metrosexual fashion of loving the shopping experience. The street shopping experience for me, which hasn't happened properly in a long time, is typically faced with "weekend eyes". I am tired and unenthusiastic. Arguments with partners nearly always inevitably arose from shopping excursions. It is a constant theme with me, so the blame probably rests squarely on my shoulders and I acknowledge it. I clearly do not want to be there and my every action is a move to get to the checkout and away from the place. When it comes to most types of street shopping I want to go in and get what I came for.

Icon Series: Bram Stoker and Dracula

English: Bram Stoker (1847-1912), novelist born in Ireland, author of "Dracula" (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Seeing as Google has reminded me that it is Bram Stoker's 165th birthday, I almost felt obliged to put something up here on the bloke. He is not what I would consider to be an icon, but he certainly created one. The Dublin-born Stoker seems to be cast as a most unlikely candidate to pen one literature's most successful figures of the Gothic and the macabre. He was no Edgar Alan Poe in his lifestyle and psychology and, despite working in showbusiness, couldn't have been further from a Lord Byron. Being the business manager of the Lyceum theatre, accounts have him trying to impress and being totally dominated by the overbearing actor, Sir Henry Irving. However, Stoker was a close acquaintance of Oscar Wilde's - going back to their student days where Stoker had proposed him for membership to The Philosophical Society - and I heard once on a "South Bank Show" special documentary that Wilde had an affair with Stoker's wife. I am not sure what the evidence is for this claim, but Wilde was certainly a suitor for Florence Balcombe, a celebrated beauty of Victorian society. Wilde was apparently upset about Stoker marrying Florence, but later they reconciled and they remained friends even after Wilde's fall.