Miscellaneous: More Sinatra

GreenCine Daily has a round-up of posts related to the tenth anniversary of Frank Sinatra’s death. Which sets up this reminder: don’t forget that this Sunday as part of their Sinatra tribute, TCM will be showing Frank’s 1967 TV special with Ella Fitzgerald and Antonio Carlos Jobim.

This past Sunday I watched 1966’s Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music, Part II, along with one of the few Sinatra films TCM isn’t airing this month, the 1967 private eye drama Tony Rome. It’s the first of two movies about the character, based on novels by Gold Medal author Marvin H. Albert. In this Mystery*File piece on Albert, Bill Crider says the movies have “a ‘60s smirkiness.” As usual, Bill’s right on the money; Tony Rome not only opens but closes with the camera zooming in on a woman’s shapely backside, accompanied by a BOING! music sting. Frank also spends an inordinate amount of time sporting an oversized sailor’s cap. The cover of the VHS tape doesn’t do it justice; I honestly thought Frank had part of the Sydney Opera House perched on his head.

On the plus side, the movie has a decent plot, some good lines, and a game cast including Richard Conte and the always fetching Jill St. John. I liked it enough to warrant checking out the sequel, Lady in Cement, at some point.

Miscellaneous: Links

David Mamet writes up his own interview with the New Yorker.

The AV Club revisits the most recent films of the biggest screenwriters of the 1980s. My Year of Flops considers one of the oddest movies I’ve seen more than once, Joe Eszterhas’s An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn. And The New Cult Canon takes on one of the movies I can quote by heart, Shane Black’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Best line:

Watching KISS KISS BANG BANG prompts wishes that Hollywood still had screenwriters talented enough to use explosion-filled trash as a means for personal expression.

Amen, brother.