The Shoedog And The Dead President

Another actor who became a more than competent director is Bill Paxton. Frailty was a solid cult hit (and if you haven't seen it yet, add it to your Netflix queue now) but The Greatest Game Ever Played hardly set the world on fire, despite being utterly respectable in every way. Thankfully, this lack of big box office doesn't appear to have derailed his career - he's working on a couple of new movies.

Shoedog is a crime thriller adapted by George Pelecanos from his own novel, and that's likely to be next; some time later, Paxton wants to make his own film about the asassination of JFK. It simply couldn't turn out any worse that Oliver Stone's overblown pantomime, and I'd expect, in fact, he could do a very nice job with this indeed.

Ferry Facing Marks And Sparks Boot For Liking Leni Riefenstahl

I think Triumph of the Will is a superb film, really. Much better than Birth of a Nation. In a recent-ish interview with Welt am Sonntag, Bryan Ferry admitted he liked the films of Leni Riefenstahl and the buildings of Albert Speer. Now the furore has crossed the continent and, according to the tabloids, good ol' British institution Marks and Spencer are talking about axing their current ad campaign and all in-store POS that features Ferry.

I'm quite a Riefenstahl fan, I have to admit. I don't agree with any of Hitler's nationalist paradigms one iota but I respect the skill and crafstmanship of his most famous film propogandist. She was very good at what she did - surely that's the key point here? I feel about Triumph much like the way I feel about Bill Paxton's Frailty, say - in each case, the film's underlying message and belief system is quite ridiculous, and I don't agree with a word of it, but I'm really quite in love with the film in many other ways. And the belief system in Frailty is not only more clearly defined, it's more relevant to the overall experience of watching the film and the message that most people will take away.

I don't think there's any difference there - Riefenstahl shouldn't somehow be put beyond appreciation by association with the Nazis.