Tag Archive: Alan Parker


ANGEL GOES TO HELL

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May 6, 2011

Rourke & De Niro – angel and the devil

Review of ‘Angel Heart’,  a film by Alan Parker (1987)

“I don’t like messy accounts” Louis Cyphre tells private detective Harry Angel, a man who knows all about messy.

Louis ( an extended cameo by Robert De Niro) is pristine and precise, Harry Angel is a walking health hazard. His suit is permanently crumpled, his shirts sweaty, he is constantly unshaven and his hair  is unkempt.

Angel is also played by Mickey Rourke back in his pre-boxing days so he manages to make all this look stylish and sexy.

Alan Parker is a filmmaker who likes a challenge and always says he wants to try something new with each movie. The book on which this movie is based – Falling Angel by Willian Hjortsberg – appealed to him through its combination of hard-boiled Chandleresque noir and  horror.

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STARING AT THE WALL

Filed under: Movies, Music — Leave a comment
May 1, 2011

Today I spent two hours staring at  The Wall.

I watched Alan Parker’s 1985 film of Pink Floyd’s concept album.

Probably it  would be more accurate to call it Roger Waters’ concept album since by this time Pink Floyd had ceased to be a band and had become a vehicle for his bloated ego.

It is fitting that another bloated ego, Bob Geldof,  was chosen to play the part of Pink in the movie.

He plays a burnt out rock star going slowly nuts in a hotel. Even the carpets outside the room have rectangular brick-like patterns to emphasise his feelings of mental enslavement.

Pink shaves his eyebrows, drives his wife away, mopes about his lonely childhood, trashes his room, becomes a fascist dictator and winds up heavily sedated in a loony bin. Continue reading →

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