R.I.P. Patrick Stewart (Non-Star Trek/Non-X-Men Version)

It’s one thing to say goodbye to a creative who is simply wonderful at their chosen craft. It’s another altogether when we lose someone who’s also a beautiful human being. Pretty much everyone is in agreement: Sir Patrick Stewart was one of those rarities. In a month where we lost so many incredible artists, Stewart stood out. It was one of those deaths that, when you read the news, your day dimmed.

I thought it would be nice to glance at a handful of his roles in non-Star Trek/non-Marvel films.

I, Claudius

Excalibur

Dune (with royal pug)

Jeffrey

Lifeforce

Gunmen

Green Room

The Wilde Wedding

I Have Heard You.

R.I.P. Gerrit Graham, who got some of the best laughs in Used Cars, a film where everyone was fully committed to the bit.

Perman Waters in Cannonball. Beef in Phantom of the Paradise. Sam (the fisherman) in Old Boyfriends. Any time he showed up, you knew you were in for a treat.

Thirst Joke

Paint me like one of your French dipsades.

O'Toole, the King

Today I learned that Peter Medak ended up going on an after-hours bar crawl with Peter O’Toole to discuss The Ruling Class (the actor held the rights to Peter Barnes’ play at the time), and when they were done, O’Toole drunkenly called his manager and gave him 24 hours to set up a deal for the film (which United Artists offered Medak the next day).

Burt Lancaster & A Clockwork Orange

Over on the Stanley Kubrick Appreciation Society YouTube page, there is a new interview clip from 1972 where Burt Lancaster is diplomatically discussing Oscar nominations & winners, closing out with the opinion that for the previous year, Malcolm McDowell should have won Best Actor and A Clockwork Orange should have won Best Picture. I found this both refreshing and surprising, but also that if anyone of the Old School would have that opinion it would be someone like Lancaster. I imagine Mitchum might have, too.

In all my adult years I can’t recall any actors (or contributors to any stage of the filmmaking process, really) give such huzzahs to McDowell and Clockwork.

(Seems like as good as any place to reiterate my love for The Train, easily my favorite Lancaster performance and an all-time favorite film.)

Words with Gods: Come on, Boutique Outlets...Grab This Film!

The 2014 anthology film Word with Gods has a single paragraph page on Wikipedia. If you look it up on Just Watch, there is no available platform on which to see the film. YouTube has trailers and some Peter Gabriel videos Gabriel provided the title song and soundtrack to the film), but no film. If you search the film under “shopping” you will find only other films with the words “word(s)” or “god(s)” in the titles.

It just isn’t there, anywhere.

And yet in 2015 I watched the film at a local festival, after which it seemed to vanish from the face of the earth. I assume there was a distribution issue and none of the 9 teams involved could agree on some aspect of the business of committing the film to a disc. Or, perhaps there was something else? Gen Sekiguchi’s Survive Style 5+ has never had a formal distribution due to music rights, so maybe it was Gabriel that gummed up the works? Though he’s never struck me as someone who would impede a project that way, especially one with such a spiritual angle.

And I may have talked about this before but I forget sometimes…I just know I would slap down cash for a copy of the film if it ever became available. With so many boutique film distributors trucking in obscurities, I wish someone would make that happen.

Carry...No.

SMERSH POD has a soft spot for Carry On films. So I decided to give them a try.

I watched the first 30 minutes of Carry On Cleo and the first 20 minutes of Carry On Columbus, and I have now decided I do not need to watch any more Carry On films.

Shattering Your Sense of Well-Being, Such That It Was

Dolly Parton and Tim Curry dying within roughly a day of each other has had an adverse effect on my peace of mind. Starts you asking questions like “why do good people die when evil ****s seem to be thriving?”

For both Parton and Curry, you could simply say “I love (their) voice,” as her sweet country croon and his slippery posh velvet-tones were undeniably gripping. Then, their smiles. Dolly always looked like she was about to hand you kindness; Curry had the broad, insinuating grin that made his being born in Cheshire seem a tad on-the-nose.

Both were beloved, and built to last. Both are deeply missed. If these things do come in threes, I don’t know if our collective hearts can take whatever is next.

Babadook in a Canoe

No, that was the extent of it.

Mr. Hoskins

Stumbled across a clip from The Gaby Roslin Show where Ian Dury and Bob Hoskins are sharing stories from their youth, and my gosh, it’s a great segment. They’re both absolute naturals. I miss Mr. Hoskins.

Lucrecia Martel / Lynne Ramsay

There is always a chance I will misspell one or both of their names.

Both directors have made five features in roughly the same 25-year period.

Personally, I think they exemplify the reason for Criterion box sets.

Kudos.

Mr. Answer-Man 080926

Here to provide answers to questions you didn’t ask:

A BlueSky user has stated “Nicholas Winding Refn is actually doing important, beautiful work in an era of imperial collapse.”

Mr. Answer-Man responds: “I liked his Viking film, but he is insufferable and his work, largely, grotesque and despondent.”

I Am an Uglier Bird - Nowhere To Be Found

In December of last year I caught a song on Shazam while listening to KXT, the coolest local station I know. The artist’s name is Pierre Braun, and the song’s title, as reflected in Shazam, was “I Am an Uglier Bird”…and when I got home that first day, I went to my then Apply Music account, looked up the song, and found nothing. A month or so later I had given up Apple and moved on to YouTube music, and there was no listing there, either. There was no result when I did a basic web search. There was nothing to be found in music stores. In the following months I continued all of these searches, over and over, with no luck. Had it been a brand new/unreleased song in December 2025, I thought, surely by August 2026 someone would have referenced it somewhere in the vastness of the internet.

No. No, they have not.

It’s been so long now, I don’t even recall what the song sounded like. No idea what the genre was, the tempo, the general vibe. But I’ll be damned, I cannot erase my Shazam listing until I find the thing.

R.I.P. Robert Carradine

The sad news hit today of Robert Carradine’s death, which immediately made me think of the actor alongside Belinda Balaski in Cannonball (1976), playing a couple of sweet surfer kids taking part in a road race. Their gee-whiz approach, kindness to other drivers, and giddy shock when they end up winning through a bizarre string of circumstances, all make for an incredibly winning part of a film that seems to get lost between Death Race and The Cannonball Run. It’s a favorite of the genre.

Carradine was best known for Revenge of the Nerds, but I loved his work in films like The Long Riders and The Big Red One. He will be missed.

Peter Hujar's Day

The second film of 2026, and it was a sublime 77 minutes of character and textures. I loved this thing so much.

Poor Limey

Just thinking about how The Limey, a Great Film and easily my favorite of Soderbergh’s entire roster, has that exquisite ending utilizing a scene from Ken Loach’s Poor Cow. Its some of the best cinematic punctuation I can recall.

NorwoodEye: 2025 Hat Tips & Other Gestures

HAT TIPS

SISTER MIDNIGHT

SORRY, BABY

EEPHUS

ON BECOMING A GUINEA FOWL

SINNERS

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER

TRAIN DREAMS

UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE

GRAND TOUR

BLACK BAG

ORWELL 2 + 2 = 5

NOUVELLE VAGUE

EX-HUSBANDS

SPLITSVILLE

 

BREAKOUT STAR OF 2025

Chase Infiniti, One Battle After Another

 

NOTABLES

CAUGHT BY THE TIDES

FREAKY TALES

WAKE UP DEAD MAN

KILL THE JOCKEY

HARVEST

28 YEARS LATER

HOT MILK

STEPPENWOLF

 

STUFF

CLOUD - A brief, pristine shot of darkness enveloping a home. It is beautiful and fleeting, but it may be my favorite single visual moment of the whole year.

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER - Every second of banter between DiCaprio and del Toro was a tonic for the urgent threats facing their characters.

EEPHUS, KILL THE JOCKEY, and SORRY, BABY - For me, the best surprises of the year. Films that I went into cold, no knowledge or expectations, and they absolutely walloped me.

FRANKENSTEIN - When the creature touches Elizabeth’s gloved hand; delicate, intimate, chaste. A lovely moment.

WEAPONS - That finale: a rip-roaring chase that is as delirious as its result is horrific.

SINNERS - Sammie playing Charlie Patton’s guitar in the car, and Stack’s reaction when he starts to sing. Priceless.

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER - The moment that made me jump more than any horror film or thriller gotcha was the death of Mae West (Alana Haim). Even on re-watch, BAM. Yikes.

WALTZING WITH BRANDO - Billy Zane accomplishes the year’s best imitation, a visually on-point Marlon Brando.

GOOD BOY - The year’s best animal performance? I was worried sick about that dog.

QUEER - The best film I watched a year too late.

FIGHT OR FLIGHT - The year’s best trash? Say what you want about this derivative, messy, noisy film…but I had a blast from start to finish.

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER - “Bob?” When the clerk can’t get “Jim Parker” to pay attention. It’s such a flawless moment, no pause, just a line of questioning and then freedom.

THE MASTERMIND - The film with the briefly-met tertiary characters I would have gladly watched an entire film about: John Magaro and Gaby Hoffman’s old acquaintances of Josh O’Connor’s drifting loser were instantly intriguing, and I cared far more about finding out what their deal was than the aimless protagonist.

 

MY FAVORITE TV SHOW

DYING FOR SEX

 

THE EXCEPTION CLUB

(Films I wanted to love, had every reason to love, but one or more elements gave me pause.)

CLOUD

MISERICORDIA

THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME

WEAPONS

THE SPARROW IN THE CHIMNEY

THE DAMNED

FRANKENSTEIN

KOLN 75

THE OLD WOMAN WITH THE KNIFE

 

THE REP

My favorite never-before-seen films from the past 12 months:

Ikarie XB1, Louie Blouie, Planet of the Vampires, Porco Rosso, and The Red Light Bandit

 

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES…

The films I didn’t get a chance to see which will have to be part of the 2026 catch-up:

PETER HUJAR’S DAY

THE SECRET AGENT

PREDATOR: BADLANDS

HALLOW ROAD

Radu Jude’s DRACULA

Luc Besson’s DRACULA

NO OTHER CHOICE

DON’T LET’S GO TO THE DOGS TONIGHT

BLUE MOON

IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT