(3 of 4)
EH? is Henry Livings' running assault on logic, the glorification of a British "nit," a living non sequitur whose code of life is "Bim bom ban on the brain pan."
CINEMA
A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS. Playwright Robert Bolt and Director Fred Zinnemann have transformed this 1960 drama into one of the most intelligent religious movies ever made. Paul Scofield is even more mesmeric as Sir Thomas More than he was in the play, pulling all eyes toward the brilliant Christian who chooses to save his soul and lose his head in the greatest scandal of the 16th century.
GOAL! There are enough kicks for everybody in this film about the world series of soccer held in England last summer. With 16 of the world's top teams competing, it will command the empathy of any spectator still animal enough to admire the aspect of men in intricate, continuous, beautiful and aggressive movement.
TEXAS ACROSS THE RIVER. Cliches fly like arrows in this rambunctious spoof of that hallowed tradition, the Hollywood western. Barely defending Texas against the Comanches are Dean Martin as a bunkhouse bum, Rosemary Forsyth as pioneer womanhood, and Joey Bishop as a faithful Indian scout.
FAHRENHEIT 451. Francois Truffaut's weirdly gay little picture has Hero Oskar Werner as a pyromaniacal punk who sincerely thinks that "books are just rubbish." Werner is unshakably believable, but Julie Christie, in the dual role of his dull wife and spirited woman who arouses his interest in books, strongly supports the suspicion that this actress cannot actually act.
CULDESAC. A comedy of terrors with Donald Pleasence playing a flabby old fool of a husband to Francoise Dorleac's snippy little chippy who lusts for excitement—and finds it when a mobster-on-the-lam (Lionel Stander) staggers into their home.
THE FORTUNE COOKIE. Director Billy Wilder's latest jab at American mores involves a money-grubbing angler (Walter Matthau) who uses his brother-in-law (Jack Lemmon) as bait to hook a large insurance company and cheat it out of a tax-free $250,000.
THE PROFESSIONALS. The liveliest western dust-up since Shane stars Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Woody Strode and Robert Ryan as four nail-hard professional gunmen hired at $10,000 apiece to find an errant wife (Claudia Cardinale) and return her to her husband.
A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM. Director Richard Lester's screen version of the Broadway hit is fussy and frenetic, but Comedian Zero Mostel saves the play as Pseudolus, a conniving, overstuffed Roman slave who would sell his own soul to buy his freedom.
BOOKS
Best Reading
LA VIDA, by Oscar Lewis. A nightmarish picture of poverty among Puerto Ricans in San Juan's La Esmeralda and New York City's Spanish Harlem—painted largely by the subjects themselves with the assistance of Anthropologist Lewis' ubiquitous tape recorder.
WINSTON S. CHURCHILL, by Randolph S. Churchill. The first of a five-volume biography of the most dazzling public man of modern times, written by his only son.