| Vintage Pulp | Dec 14 2022 |
Avelli treats moviegoers to a double helping of his art.
We recently shared a poster painted by Italian artist Tino Avelli and wanted to revisit his work. He was prolific, painting great promos for such well known films as The Man with the Golden Gun and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. We also recently saw a tarot deck he painted going for $3,000 at an auction site. We predict... we won't be buying that.
Above you see two Avelli efforts for the 1975 film La bolognese. Usually we have an English title for you, but this one was never shown in the U.S. The Italian title refers to any person from the city of Bologna. We've seen the movie, and it's a comedy, so we won't get into it. Plus, it's not funny anyway. It's the type of thing where star Franca Gonella rides her bike with the wind blowing her skirt up and everyone she passes ends up in a ditch from staring too hard at her white panties. Big laughs.
Not that we're above anything gratuitous, whether nudity, violence, or whatever. Vintage genre fiction is all about adding heaping helpings of fan service to most every narrative, therefore we are too. To prove it we've uploaded a nice shot of Gonella below—without her white panties. And you'd been thinking, "Hmm... not a lot of nudity on Pulp intl. lately." Solved. We should add that Gonella made some crime and horror movies, so maybe she'll return in the future.
ItalyBolognaLa bologneseThe Man with the Golden GunThunderbolt and LightfootFranca GonellaTino Avelliposter artcinemanudity
| Vintage Pulp | Jan 26 2017 |
Eastwood tries to teach a new dog old tricks.
Squirrelly young criminal Lightfoot, played by Jeff Bridges, is just the kind of guy you want to smack. Always running his mouth, never paying attention, totally wrapped up in himself. He picks up John Doherty, played by the older Clint Eastwood, and the two form a bromance. During their travels, Lightfoot learns that Doherty is a famed bank robber known as the Thunderbolt, for his usage of an anti-aircraft cannon to penetrate a bank vault. Thunderbolt has two ex-partners on his trail who are seeking a cache of hidden money from a previous job. The money is hidden behind a blackboard in an old, one-room schoolhouse, but when Thunderbolt and Lightfoot travel to the site of the school it's been replaced a modern new building.
The angry ex-partners eventually corral Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, but when they learn the money is gone, rather than exact revenge, they decide to pull off the same job, the same way, and maybe the loss of the other cash will be forgiven. The only snag is they have no way to finance the robbery—particularly the acquisition of another cannon. So they do what any career criminals would do—get jobs. They drive an ice cream truck, groom dogs, anything to earn cash. The question is never really whether they'll finance the heist, but whether their fragile coalition—which is strained by mistrust from the loss of the previous bank loot, as well as by Lightfoot's grating antics—can hang together.
Jeff Bridges' Oscar nominated performance is a reminder that Millennial, Generation X, Beat Generation, et al, are just marketing terms used for social engineering. Every young generation is infuriating to the older ones. It's genetic, not social. Lightfoot is impatient, oblivious, and
rude—like someone raised on mobile devices, only decades before those existed for people to focus their ire upon. A constant underlying concern is whether he will finally go too far and get his ass seriously beaten, or maybe even get killed. He's likeable, of course, but he's also a protagonist. If you met him on the street you'd wonder if he was ever dropped on his head as an infant—and then proceed to drop him on his head. And no—he doesn't turn out to be secretly a criminal genius. He's exactly the constant annoyance he seems.
rude—like someone raised on mobile devices, only decades before those existed for people to focus their ire upon. A constant underlying concern is whether he will finally go too far and get his ass seriously beaten, or maybe even get killed. He's likeable, of course, but he's also a protagonist. If you met him on the street you'd wonder if he was ever dropped on his head as an infant—and then proceed to drop him on his head. And no—he doesn't turn out to be secretly a criminal genius. He's exactly the constant annoyance he seems.Though Thunderbolt and Lightfoot isn't film noir, it's full spectrum entertainment, with laughs, thrills, and a touch of sex, as well as just enough menace to keep viewers on edge. But we don't think Noir City patrons will walk away from the screening 100% pleased. We get that they're being asked to think outside the box, but there's a pretty wide gap between noir, with its beautiful visual palette and nostalgia invoking cultural stature, and a ’70s road thriller, with its dusty look and twangy country music soundtrack. Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is a great movie in the wrong festival, in our view. As a side note, the promo poster, which we're sure you've noticed is high quality, was painted by Ken Barr, who was a respected comic book and promo artist for many years. You can read a bit more about him here.
Thunderbolt and LightfootAcademy AwardClint EastwoodJeff BridgesKen Barrposter artcinemamovie review
