The Thomas Crown Affair, 9/16/12 Best Original Song, 1968
I didn’t know what award the movie won when I started watching it, but once the song started, I knew in my bones it was the song. Not because I thought it was a particularly wonderful song, but it seemed like it was a movie song that would be at least nominated. “Windmills of your mind” by Michel Legrand was the big winner for 1968; admittedly, the competition was pretty lame, although my vote would have gone to “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” from the movie of the same name. But the song aside, the movie was fun, I like the elegance of the way the bank heist was carried out. Steve McQueen is a millionaire businessman who suffers the ennui that I imagine most people with jillions of dollars in disposable income must experience and looks for activities that will give him that adrenaline rush, like polo, fast cars, making ridiculous bets and coordinating bank robberies. Faye Dunaway is the insurance investigator brought in to find the criminal mastermind. It seems within minutes, she has determined that Thomas Crown is the mastermind; not that I want to give short shrift to any female detective, but I didn’t buy it. I guess I didn’t have to, but I would have liked to believe it. It’s a fun cat and mouse game, and the movie was fun to watch. They did a remake with Pierce Brosnan and Renee Russo, but I haven’t seen that. The score was really good, very jazzy, with muted trumpets; all very much of the period. Some of the filming effects seemed to get a little overused after the first 5 or 6 times, multiple images fading in and out; kind of like someone discovering all the cool animation effects on PowerPoint. Steve McQueen is so cool, to use a term that has lost all meaning, but he really is; check out The Magnificent Seven or Bullitt among others.
I was going to review two movies, but my second movie was misbehaving, so I will try again tomorrow (I love the library, but some library users must use DVDs as platters for their pizzas; I can’t think of any other reason the movies have so much schmutz on them).
