Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

The Prisoner 5. The Schizoid Man We want information. Number Six is helping Number 24 with her mind-reading skills, using a pack of Zener cards. Later, Six is drugged and subjected to an aversion therapy treatment (as a result of which he becomes left-handed). His appearance is also altered. He is ushered to see Number Two who refers to him as Number 12, an old friend, and requests his aid in a plan to discover why the “real” Number Six resigned (the real 12 is now masquerading as our hero). “12” has a makeover; now he looks like Six (or rather, like himself again) and a series of confrontations ensue. At first the sparring is sporting (Six loses as he has he tries to respond with his left hand), then Six is unable to prove his physical identity (his wrist mole has gone, his fingerprints don’t match). Finally 12 beats Six at the mindreading game with 24. Six appears to be cracking but he notices a nail he bruised before the switcheroo, and he recalls the brainwa

Justified Season Four (SPOILERS) I seem to have an unfortunate knack lately for watching adaptations of great writers’ work as their deaths are announced. First there was Richard Matheson ( The Legend of Hell House ) and now the latest season of Justified as Elmore Leonard passes on. Leonard was a big fan of the series; of what showrunner Graham Yost had done to expand his short story Fire in the Hole and of Timothy Olyphant’s performance as US Marshal Waylan Givens.  Rightly so, as the only Leonard I can think of that approaches this series in terms of quality is Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight . Leonard observed of the pilot that Waylan seemed very happy shooting people, and Season Four continues to explore the parallels and differences between Waylan and his criminal father  - and whether there are lines he will not cross. Hunter Mosley (Brent Sexton), who is responsible for the premature demise of Arlo and was sent down during Season One, expresses the opi

Into the Night (1985) (SPOILERS) “ I was taken aback because I did everything I always did. I didn’t do anything different. People just did not show up. ”  Into the Night was John Landis’ first brush with movie failure, but for a time it would be merely a blip on his résumé. Until the end of the 1980s he would keep on making hit movies. You only have to glance at the book from which that Landis quote is taken ( John Landis , by Guilia D’Agnola Vallan) to see that there are a good few out there who vouch for it as one of his best movies. And they’re right. Tonally it may lurch (a lot of Landis’ films lurch; at their best there’s a disarming knockabout quality to them) from slapstick comedy to uncompromising violence (often within the same scene) but there is also an emotional content here, melancholy and warmth, absent from most of his broader comedies. Much of that can be put down to the charming performances from leads Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Pfeiffer (u