On Monday, June 2nd, TCM will honor Sydney Pollack with the following films being shown (all times are EDT). Please click here to read the complete TCM appreciation of the filmmaker.
8:00 PM The Slender Thread (’65) (his directorial debut)
10:00 PM Three Days of the Condor (’75)
12:00 AM Tootsie (’82)
2:00 AM Jeremiah Johnson (’72)
I'm very glad that they could include Jeremiah Johnson, one of the very best of Pollack's career. In my local paper, we have a retired arts critic named Jack Garner who occasionally comments on film still. Thankfully, he's written a good piece on Sydney Pollack, found here. In the article, Garner writes that "Pollack was the first to say he wasn't particularly a cinematic stylist, he was a good storyteller."
Seems like a good epitaph.
Director Sydney Pollack has passed away
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moira finnie
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Three Days Of The Condor may well have been a brave movie for Sidney and Robert Redford to make. it wasn't long after Watergate that the film was made, daring to suggest The CIA weren't always the good-guys. it wasn't really until the 70s that both American and British Secret Services were seen as anything other than heroic.
Robert Redford from an acting standpoint seems to be one above all others who represented Democratic principles in the same way John Wayne did for The Republicans
i wonder if Sidney and Dustin Hoffman were influenced by Charlie Chaplin's 1915 film The Woman. in the same way i wondered if the Arthur movies were influenced by Chaplin's 1917 film The Cure
Three Days Of The Condor may well have been a brave movie for Sidney and Robert Redford to make. it wasn't long after Watergate that the film was made, daring to suggest The CIA weren't always the good-guys. it wasn't really until the 70s that both American and British Secret Services were seen as anything other than heroic.
Robert Redford from an acting standpoint seems to be one above all others who represented Democratic principles in the same way John Wayne did for The Republicans
i wonder if Sidney and Dustin Hoffman were influenced by Charlie Chaplin's 1915 film The Woman. in the same way i wondered if the Arthur movies were influenced by Chaplin's 1917 film The Cure
I didn't consider THREE DAYS a brave leap forward because, only a few years earlier, the public was reintroduced to conspiracy theories with the Warren Report. And before that, it was President Eisenhower who was making speeches about the dangers of the military-industrial complex and its relationship with the gov't, the people and the truth.
Or the Pearl Harbor blame-game before that.
ALL THE PRESIDENTS MEN was the riskier bit of 'research' but the book itself wasn't a risk at all - it was very rich icing on an already lucrative cake. I do think CONDOR's ending location - near the NY TIMES offices - was quite telling. As was the CIA guy's statement, "How do you know they'll print it? You can tell it - but how do you know they'll print it?"
Well, considering that probably every reporter, editor and paper hungered for a chance to prove another dirty trick or another conspiracy, the better question might have been, "How do you know they'll print YOUR version?"
Pollack did turn up some of the most interesting stories, though. I'm fairly certain he wasn't going to remake THE FIRM into CRUISE'S RELIGIOUS CULT, however, as tempting as that probably was.
Or the Pearl Harbor blame-game before that.
ALL THE PRESIDENTS MEN was the riskier bit of 'research' but the book itself wasn't a risk at all - it was very rich icing on an already lucrative cake. I do think CONDOR's ending location - near the NY TIMES offices - was quite telling. As was the CIA guy's statement, "How do you know they'll print it? You can tell it - but how do you know they'll print it?"
Well, considering that probably every reporter, editor and paper hungered for a chance to prove another dirty trick or another conspiracy, the better question might have been, "How do you know they'll print YOUR version?"
Pollack did turn up some of the most interesting stories, though. I'm fairly certain he wasn't going to remake THE FIRM into CRUISE'S RELIGIOUS CULT, however, as tempting as that probably was.
I'm not overly familiar with his films, but I've liked what I have seen. I watched Michael Clayton with my family some time ago, and dad pointed out to me that Sydney Pollack was one of the actors there, and that he was a good director. A few days later he passed away.
We watched The Electric Horseman in memory of him. It's a typical film, very late-70's in style, and the story is classic. It was a pleasant movie experience though.
R.I.P Sydney Pollack
We watched The Electric Horseman in memory of him. It's a typical film, very late-70's in style, and the story is classic. It was a pleasant movie experience though.
R.I.P Sydney Pollack