Word: altmans
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...Long Goodbye if you have fond and entrenched memories of the Raymond Chandler crime novel. Director Robert Altman has thrown out three-quarters of Chandler's plot, as well as detective Philip Marlowe's hard-boiled mystique--his pithy talk and polish, and his Sir Galahad morality. Altman's film is basically a wallow in the atmosphere of Los Angeles today. Altman's virtues are a good eye and some talent with actors, as well as a healthy distaste for the Hollywood culture which surrounds him. But his flaws are fatal: he doesn't know what makes a plot hold...
...When her husband packs her off to the countryside for a rest, the lady's predicament becomes even more woeful, as does Susannah York's performance, which gives way to a battery of twitches, groans and grimaces, interrupted by an occasional shriek of anguish. Like Director Robert Altman's previous film, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Images has its own distinctive ambience - chilly, remote and for bidding. This is owing, perhaps, to the valuable presence of Altman's two skillful collaborators, Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and Production Designer Leon Ericksen. Altman, however, is unable to go much beyond...
...African Queen. The classic Huston-Agee riverboat romance, with an illiterate Humphrey Bogart and missionary Katherine Hepburn chugging their way through a German-filled Congo during World War I. Also, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Robert Altman's poetic, authentic northwestern--an excruciatingly honest love story. HARVARD SQUARE CINEMA. McCabe: 2:15, 6, 9:40; Queen...
...Altman tours the present gay world with the knowledgeability of a participant. He has, it seems, been into every gay bar, along every gay beach, tried every gay bathhouse-and reports on them. In fact, he defends them as the only show in town for the practicing homosexual. He has even been into "leather," gives an understanding report of the motives (and sufferings) of drag queens, transvestites and transsexuals. He records that his own first homosexual encounter was in a bathhouse where, "clad only in white towels, men prowl the hallways, groping each other in furtive search for instant...
Three Complaints. Altman charges that homosexuals suffer from three things: persecution, discrimination and, paradoxically, tolerance. By persecution, he means police harassment in homosexual bars and meeting places. He points out that in 1970 Connecticut's Commissioner of Motor Vehicles denied a license to a man because "his homosexuality makes him an improper person to hold an operator's license." As another example of discrimination, he cites the prejudice against hiring homosexuals. "Try telling your boss you cannot move to a new job because of your lover"-the only term homosexuals have for the heterosexual equivalent of wife...