Robert Mulligan, director of "To Kill a Mockingbird," dies

Zach Campbell on the warts and strengths of TKaM, and on what Clara's Heart does better:

http://www.thefilmjournal.com/issue11/conscience.html

Excellent description of the space between adults and children in Mulligan's films: true to life, and advantageous for director, actors and audience. Warts and strenghts of both movies for sure; I'll have to check out Clara's Heart (for a good balance of well-intended white Southern employers and their servants, check the screwed-with but worthy The Long Walk Home, about Montgomery Bus Boycott--forget who directed it, but he'd done his homework)

I rewatched Mockingbird last night and endorse ZC's view in that essay on the parent-child subtleties, and the built-in letdown of the material and its holding of the racial themes at arm's length. Getting those 3 kids to act that naturally is no small feat.

Also saw Up the Down Staircase, which can't disguise w/ Spanish Harlem location shooting and multiracial cast that it's another Teacher Succeeds by Reaching One Lost Student movie. Pauline Kael mercilessly OTM:

"Sandy Dennis, blinking as if she'd taken pills and been awakened in the middle of the night...reacts confusedly before the situations even develop, but the audience is ahead of her, anyway: this is BLACKBOARD JUNGLE with a woman sweating it out."

i watched the nickel ride dvr'd off fox movie channel & thought it was pretty good. does remind me a lot of the friends of eddie coyle, v organic, natural, but murky crime/mob-world power-dealings.

the recent post on this blog seems to say it'll be put out on dvd sometime this year

http://knifeinthehead.blogspot.com/2009/04/nickel-ride-1974-robert-mulligan.html

watched 'inside daisy clover' -- redford kinda steals it even w/ v little screen time, hes super handsome here; the surface plot almost takes natalie wood's character's naive outlook but the underlying relationships btwn all the main characters is v compelling, darkside of hollywood stuff

I believe Redford's character was originally supposed to be explicitly gay.

i think that's right.

mulligan is hella underrated i think. i don't know that he made any perfect movies but he has a way with actors and with a camera that is distinctive and impresses you right away with its maturity. hell i even like summer of '42.

summer of 42 was surprisingly solid, altho im prob more dumbfounded to learn from the wiki how the main plotpoint was true, and verified in such an odd way as the writer having gone on the mike douglas show and thereafter receiving a letter from the woman who was the basis for the jennifer o'neill part !!

i watched love w the proper stranger, not sure if its wise or ridiculous that Natalie wood is "Angie Rossini" w the stereotypical emotive, loud family but doesn't attempt to be italian @ all...was Oscar nom'd btw

didn't think it held up great tbh & didn't really see or believe any chemistry btwn her & mcqueen