My homemade video clip for the Joseph Losey film The Servant now has half a million hits at my Youtube site. Maybe you didn’t know I have a Youtube site but now you do. Please check it out. I have over 200 uploads there but I do not really do much in the way of posting bulletins or responding to comments. Sorry.  Lot of effort to maintain it via proxies from China where Youtube is blocked. But I was happy to get a little notice from the gents at Youtube along with some weird offer to make money off of the clip with Google Adsense. I am not interested in that at all and am saddened to see some sites I love now plastered with Google ads and Amazon.com stuff. No doubt I would slap a big ad on my site if it paid off in big bucks but I don’t think that will happen so I will not litter it with Adsense or Amazon stuff. Anyway, instead of making some offer to be a ‘partner’ with Adsense I would prefer if Youtube stopped blocking videos and sending me nerve-racking warnings because a nipple pops out of a fat girl’s blouse in a 60’s  exploitation trailer or because Bettie Page gets spanked, tied up, gagged  and thrown in a car trunk. Regardless I am happy this video is so popular but I disagree with some of the comments that slam Sara Miles. I love her.  She’s hot in that real snobby way. Like I would need some sort of freaky shoe fetish to get anything going with her at all. That will never happen but let an old man dream okay. My link to the original post is here and it is a great film I have seen several times and will maybe re-watch again here shortly. I am of course including the award winning video here. The quality is pretty poor I see now and I could probably do it better these days since I am monkeying with the more advanced Sony Vegas 8. This meager experiment was done using ULead 10 and Windows Movie Maker and I remember having lots of problems as it was my first experiment in making clips from videos.  For nostalgia’s sake watch at the very end and there is a little advertisement clip promoting my website way back when the URL was different.  History in the making my dear readers.

SARA MILES AND JAMES FOX GET DOWN AS ONLY

THE REPRESSIVE 60′s BRITISH MIDDLE CLASS CAN

IN JOSEPH LOSEY’S THE SERVANT

THE SERVANT

1963/ Director:Joseph Losey/Writers: Robin Maugham (novel)Harold Pinter (screenplay)

Cast: Dirk Bogarde, Sarah Miles, Wendy Craig, James Fox, Patrick Magee, Catherine Lacey, Richard Vernon

I had never really heard about this movie, a collaboration between director Joseph Losey and playwrite/screenwriter Howard Pinter except in passing while reading reviews of other films. I had had the DVD lying around for a couple months and decided I would pop it in one night and was so stunned by the film I felt compelled to do a post on it here at the Cafe though it tends to fall outside what I would normally write about though is one I want to promote. In fact, the film is not easy to critique and really is one that must be seen and allowed to wash over you with its dark waters and sinister shadows. I made a clip from the movie and uploaded it to youtube (see the next post… I must post videos separately from posts heavy laden with text and graphics for technical reasons), as well as uploading the trailer, as there was very little there about this marvelously malevolent story of role reversal, British class struggle moral decay and sexual decadence. (more…)

PERFORMANCE

1970 / Directors: Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg / Writer: Donald Cammell

Cast: James Fox, Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, Michele Breton, Ann Sidney, John Bindon, Stanley Meadows, Allan Cuthbertson, Anthony Morton, Johnny Shannon

Amazingly this historic and influential film was not released on DVD until February of this year (2007). It stars James Fox, Mick Jagger and Anita Palenberg. Palenberg also helped with writing some of the film script. Prior to Performance James Fox had played mostly proper English gentlemen of one sort or another. Here he convincingly plays the viscous and violent Chas, an East side London gangster who is the enforcer for boss Harry Flowers. Fox’ s performance is chilling and has been cited as influential on the London gangster type that appear in the newer British crime movies by directors like Guy Ritchie. It is too bad Fox did not do more roles like this. In fact he would all but retire from acting after Performance and devote his energy to being an evangelical Christian, only appearing here and there over the years in films, most recently as Varuca Salt’ s father in Tim Burton’ s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

(more…)