Word: belgians
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
DIED. Jacques Brel, 49, Belgian-born composer and singer whose 500 or so plaintive, compassionate songs became best known in the U.S. through the cabaret-style musical Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris; of a pulmonary embolism; in Bobigny, France. With a dramatic intensity often likened to that of Edith Piaf, Brel sang about loneliness, lost love, war, old age and death. At 37, not wanting to become "an old singer," he stopped giving concerts and began a new career as an actor and director. After being treated for lung cancer...
...which murder victims are made--is killed in her stateroom while everyone else's attention is on the groom, who has been shot in the leg by the drunk, half-crazed woman he jilted to marry the heiress. Also on board this floating Orient Express is the legendary Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov), who hears all, sees all, and eats all, at least to judge by his bulk. Add one American lawyer trying to cover up the fact that he has been embezzling the heiress's money, and balance with one English lawyer keeping his eye on the American...
...actors play their parts well, some more than others. Ustinov is fine as the supersleuth, but you wish he'd stop taking offense so often for being called French, not Belgian. Still, that's the screenwriter's fault more than Ustinov's. Niven is the quintessential unflappable Englishman, Bette Davis is right at home as a rich old bitch, and Chiles is a fine wealthy corpse. Mia Farrow is convincingly half-crazy, as usual. Some of the characters are drawn a little woodenly, and the script is nothing much to speak of. But then, neither is the Christie original...
...Robin Hood. Erroll Flynn's greatest romantic performance is Captain Blood--but Robin Hood is preferred by many transexual classicists because of the cute breeches. None of the Disney gruel here. Second greatest soundtrack to Days of Heaven. Some filmic dryasdusts dredge up the 1914 seven hour version with Belgian director Lionel Von Rennselaeaer's lighthearted experiments in figure/ground confusion done on highly explosive nitrate stock, but the lead was played by a stolid burgher whose sword work looked something like Boog Powell trying to bunt. Flynn, the great rakehell, leaves no doubt that he knew how to rustle Maid...
...bring peace to Rhodesia. The call came against a backdrop of increasingly violent warfare in that embattled country, where Cuban-trained black nationalist guerrillas are now using Soviet-supplied mortars, armor-piercing machine guns and heat-seeking antiaircraft missiles to battle Rhodesian forces equipped with helicopters, heavy artillery and Belgian automatic weapons. More than 1,000 soldiers and civilians died in September's fighting, about the same number as during the first eight months of the year. Two weeks ago, Rhodesian troops staged a four-day raid into Mozambique, killing hundreds of guerrillas in training and staging camps...