Home – Page 3 – alexrussellstevenson.com

Bullitt

It’s about surfaces … an affectless hot detective in the hot California sun, a hot car, a hot woman who exchanges trite relationship platitudes with the hot detective. I’d never seen Bullitt, but had heard of its important place in the pantheon of 1960s mood pieces. I was disappointed to discover that, unless you’re satisfied with mood alone, this film ultimately carries little weight; except for the ’68 Mustang, it’s pretty much all show and no go.

The plot is labyrinthine, filled with double crosses and unpredictable twists. But it comes off like an academic exercise; none of it touched me. I couldn’t help but feel that the complexity was just a way to paper over the fact that, emotionally, there’s nothing going on.

The Big Country

The Big Country is the epitome of “they don’t make ’em like they used to.” And Gregory Peck was “the Dude,” long before the Coen brothers came along.

I can’t think of a better way to lose yourself in a fictional world for close to three hours than to watch this 1958 classic western. It has a moral resonance and a textured ambiguity regarding right and wrong, alongside enough gunplay and cowboy hijinks to satisfy the most discerning connoisseur of the genre.

Peck, grave, even statesmanlike, in the role of James McKay, a former sea captain come west to woo Patty Terrill (Carroll Baker), has to remake himself to survive in the rough and tumble world of the feuding Terrills and Hannasseys. His survival and growth in this hostile environment holds our attention, occurring by fits and starts, unpredictably, yet convincingly.

There are many enjoyable supporting performances, not least of all Burl Ives as the Hannassey patriarch, and Charlton Heston as the Terrill foreman Steve Leech.

Something Wild

The blurb on the Criterion Channel says:
” A complex exploration of the physical and emotional effects of trauma, SOMETHING WILD stars Carroll Baker, in a layered performance, as a college student who attempts suicide after a brutal sexual assault but is stopped by a mechanic (Ralph Meeker)—whose kindness, however, soon takes an unsettling turn. Startlingly modern in its frankness and psychological realism, the film represents one of the purest on-screen expressions of the sensibility of the intimate community of artists around New York’s Actors Studio, which transformed American cinema in the mid-twentieth century. With astonishing location and claustrophobic interior photography by Eugene Schüfftan, an opening-title sequence by the inimitable Saul Bass, and a rhythmic score by Aaron Copland, Jack Garfein’s film is a masterwork of independent cinema. “

It’s not a bad synopsis. And it’s worth adding a line from the trailer, much of which overlays clips from the film with breathless hyperbole in a mod 60s font and plays up the sexually sensational elements. However when it says “Featuring the Fantastic City of New York,” there’s no hyperbole. NYC is a major player in the film; as a period piece, it’s almost painfully evocative of how the city used to be: beautiful and busy, yet also livable. Even the squalor of Mike’s apartment has a kind of bohemian charm.

This is one of those gems that I can’t imagine finding on any streaming service other than the Criterion Channel. I had never heard of the New York Actor’s Studio, but I will be seeking out other samples of the group’s work.

Another delicious DIPA

Especially enjoyable after a 32-mile bike ride on a sweltering July day.

The Big Knife

What a strange, baroque piece of film-making is this 1955 noir. Based on a play by Clifford Odets, The Big Knife wears its stage roots on its sleeve. Most of the action takes place in the Hollywood living room of Charlie Castle (Jack Palance), where Charlie, wife Marion (Ida Lupino), and Rod Steiger as malevolent movie studio boss Stanley Shriner Hoff, fight for survival like fish starved for air in a too-small fish bowl.

The movie revolves around Charlie’s moral dilemma. Misread by Hoff as a loutish hunk who can be blackmailed to serve the studio’s needs , Charlie is, we are supposed to believe, a subtle, tortured soul who longs to escape the bonds of his contrived Hollywood persona.

Charlie’s conflict with Hoff over his contract involves a lot of high-blown rhetoric which never really answers the question of why Charlie is so unwilling to continue being paid large sums of money for being a B movie actor, or what he would do otherwise.

An equally inexplicable conflict is the one between Charlie and wife Marion, who are nominally separated, but spend many long movie minutes talking and, in the process demonstrating that their connection is strong and true. Both stray, but with little enthusiasm for the act of adultery in general or for the partners they choose in particular.

The fact that the film is, essentially, “about” Charlie’s delicate moral sensibility makes it an interesting historical artifact, but Palance isn’t entirely convincing as the complex mix of contradictions that Odetts was apparently going for, instead relying on bursts of wild physicality and a portentuous delivery of his lines that, by making everything seem weighty, ultimately makes us incapable of taking anything very seriously.

Tuesday, After Christmas

There is a meditative beauty in the extended shots in “Tuesday, After Christmas,” a lovely Romanian film about the dissolution of a marriage. One savors certain moments that crystallize emotional complexity, as when Adriana (Mirela Oprisor) reaches behind without looking to hand a Christmas present to her husband Paul (Mimi Branescu), the two still connected, if only by love for their daughter, following his betrayal.

These are fine wine, the shots that linger on the faces of Paul, Adriana, the mistress Raluca (Maria Popistasu), as compared with the fast food of American film, which is always racing forward without reflection, always about the movement, not the moment. What a lovely, restful surprise it is to be with these characters, their troubles notwithstanding.

Watched on Criterion Channel.

Blood on the Moon

Watched another moving Western noir on Criterion … “Blood on the Moon,” based, apparently, on a novel by Luke Short. From 1948, it stars Robert Mitchum and Barbara Bel Gedes. I hadn’t realized Mitchum was considered, per Roger Ebert, “the soul of film noir.” He was persuasive in the morally complex role of Jim Garry. Overall, the film is a bit clunky, but I found ample compensation in its atmospherics and ingenuous devotion to the Western “mythology.” Bel Gedes is an earnest, attractive love interest.

Noir elements come out in the play of shadow, darkness, gloom and doom that pervade the fight scenes, and in the treacherous allegiances that Mitchum’s character must navigate.

Setting up a Kali Linux Installation on VirtualBox

As a technical writer with an interest in programming, I’m always looking for ways to challenge myself in topics related to coding. Much of what goes on in current development takes place in the open source world, where Linux is king, so I’ve begun trying to expand my knowledge of that operating system.

Anyone dispensing advice to the Linux novice will usually suggest starting out with Ubuntu, the most user-friendly Linux flavor, or distro. And I have installed Ubuntu on WSL, a Microsoft Windows-supported framework for Linux. Read more about that here.

But I had become interested in Kali Linux, a more specialized distro favored by hackers and others with an interest in dissecting networks. Because of the risks inherent in putting these tools into the hands of a novice, it is recommended that the new user install Kali on a virtual machine, essentially a sandbox type of environment. Any work done on the virtual machine remains local to the user’s computer.

The preferred virtual machine for the home user is the free application VirtualBox, and that was what I used.

The process took longer and was more complicated than I had initially imagined, so I’m documenting it here, both for my own reference, and as a guide to anyone else who might want to replicate it.

Installing VirtualBox

Download VirtualBox from http://virtualbox.org by clicking on the large blue download button.
Install VirtualBox on your computer using the default settings.

Installing Kali Linux on Virtual Box

The easiest type of file to install on VirtualBox is a .vdi file, or virtual image. If you download Kali Linux from the Kali website, you may have trouble locating a .vdi file, since Linux downloads are usually provided as .iso files, for users who want to install the operating system on their computer, rather than run them as virtual images. You can obtain a compatible .vdi file from http://osboxes.org, which provides ready-to-use image files, as follows:

Obtaining Kali Linux

Navigate to http://osboxes.org/virtualbox-images/
Scroll down to locate the “Kali Linux” section and expand it by clicking on the bracket at left, then clicking on the link that says “Virtualbox (VDI) image.” This will connect to a Kali Linux-specific page.
Scroll down again to locate the download links for the latest image file, and click on the correct “Download” button for your computer (32- or 64-bit). Your download should begin.

Installing a VDI on Virtual Box

Once the image download is complete, copy the image from the Downloads folder to C:\Users\[username]\VirtualBox VMs, the default location for VirtualBox virtual machines.
Start VirtualBox, and create a new virtual machine by clicking on the “New”button in the upper right of the main screen.

Fill in the pop-up using the screen below as a model, then click “Next.”

Accept the defaults for “Memory Size,” then click “Next.”
For “Hard Disk,” select “Use an existing virtual hard disk file,” click on the folder icon at right, navigate to the “VirtualBox VMs” folder, and select the virtual image that you downloaded. Then click “Create.”

Before starting the virtual machine, select the newly created Kali Linux virtual machine in the VirtualBox main window, then click the “Settings” button in the top row.

$C:\Users\steve\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache\Content.Word\VBoxSettings.png$

Click the “Advanced” tab under “General” settings. Then select “Bidirectional” from both the “Shared Clipboards” and “Drag’n’Drop” dropdowns. Finally click “OK.”

NOTE: Selecting the “Bidirectional” option allows you to drag files, and copy and paste between the virtual machine window and your host computer.

Installing Guest Additions on Kali Linux

When you start your Kali Linux virtual machine, you will notice that the guest window, even when set to full screen, does not fill your monitor window. This is because the VirtualBox installation requires some additional files. These are contained on the Guest Additions virtual CD. Proceed to install them as follows.

Start up your Kali Linux virtual machine.
Open a terminal window by clicking on the terminal window icon in the upper left.

$C:\Users\steve\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache\Content.Word\aptupdate.png$

At the prompt, type:

sudo apt update

You will be prompted for the user password, which, until we create a new user, is “osboxes.org”

The installation will perform a preliminary update.

Then, at the prompt, type:

sudo apt install linux-headers-$(uname -r)

This will install linux headers, another prerequisite.

From the “Devices” menu, select “Insert Guest Additions CD image.” The virtual CD image will appear on your desktop.

Double-click on the CD image, to view its contents, then select all the files.

Press CTRL-C on your keyboard to copy all of the files, then paste them to your Downloads folder.
Open a terminal window, and change directory (type “cd Downloads” at the prompt) to the Downloads folder. Then type “ls” at the prompt to list files, verifying that the contents of the Guest Additions CD have been copied to the Downloads folder.

Change permissions on the “VBoxLinuxAdditions.run” file, allowing it to be executed, by typing at the prompt:

chmod 755 VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

At the prompt type:

sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

After you enter your password, the system will be updated with the necessary Guest Additions files, and you will be prompted to restart your Kali Linux installation.

Saving a Snapshot on Virtual Box

Before restarting your Kali Linux virtual machine, it is best to save a snapshot of the machine’s current condition. This ensures that changes made, such as the installation of the Guest Additions CD, will be saved for the next startup.

To save a snapshot:

Before restarting, click on the “Take” button on the top menu bar in VirtualBox.

In the screen that appears, give the snapshot a name, or leave it at the default. Then click “OK.”

Restart the Kali Linux virtual machine by selecting the “Current State” of the latest snapshot, then clicking the “Show” button with the green arrow in the VirtualBox menu bar.

Creating a New Administrative User

After installing Kali Linux, you will probably want to create a new sudo user with your own personalized credentials. Do so as follows:

NOTE: You may have to preface the following terminal commands with “sudo” if you are not already logged in as administrator.

Open a terminal window and type the following at the prompt:

useradd -m [username]

NOTE: The –m flag creates a home directory for the new user.

Type:

passwd [username]

This will prompt you to enter a password for the user. Enter a password, then retype the password as prompted.

To add the new user to the administrative group, type:

usermod -a -G sudo [username]

To specify the ‘bash’ shell for the new user, type:

chsh -s /bin/bash [username]