November 2007

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Great moments in movie history

The 60-to-70 minute comedies made in the '30s by W.C. Fields, Laurel and Hardy, and the Marx Brothers are some of the most wonderful, practically perfect films ever made. And near the very top of a great list is Duck Soup, arguably the Marxes' masterpiece. It's non-stop funny business with the brothers at their finest (even Zeppo), and the mirror scene is justly famous as one of its best bits. It stands by itself-- all you need to know is that Harpo is disguised as Groucho and doesn't want the latter to catch him in the act. Here it is.

Posted by Steve Monaco at November 30, 2007 2:57 AM

 

A man of the future

Posted by Steve Monaco at November 27, 2007 3:05 AM

 

The Monday Movie Quiz #151

It's probably one of the best-known comedies from the '40s-- but which one?

If you know what the above film is, send me an email by late Sunday with the title. If you're right, expect to see your name in next week's ink-stained winner's circle.

Posted by Steve Monaco at November 26, 2007 1:19 AM

 

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

Lots of winners recognized Stanley Kubrick's classic 1971 adaptation of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, with more than a few expressing the belief that three picture clues were at least one, if not two too many. "You didn't need Beethoven, the first two pix are iconic." "You could have just shown the first photo of Alex's mother in her weird, 70s version of 21st century fashion, and that would have been enough for most of your faithfuls." (Another quiz winner pointed out, "Alex's mom's hair isn't purple: It's ultraviolet!") And all this recognition occured without a single glimpse of the film's star, Malcolm McDowell in arguably his greatest role, and considering the films he made with Lindsay Anderson around the same time, that's high praise indeed.

But of course, as good as O Lucky Man and If both were, neither had a scene like this one:

Malcolm wasn't really needed to identify the film, because as other quiz winners noted, the real star of A Clockwork Orange was its director. "Even without the lead visible, anybody who cares about film should have every frame of every Stanley Kubrick movie burned permanently into their memory." "The difference in the quality of the picture in his movies versus everything else that was out was like the difference between HDTV and the old analog signal." (Kubrick was legendary for his devotion to image quality, and flew around the country every time a new film of his opened, checking on the projection and print condition in theaters across the U.S.) The first commentator also noted that widescreen versions of Kubrick's films are finally being released, albeit against the director's wishes: "The argument in favor of cropping his films on top and bottom is that now they fill up all the space in a cool widescreen plasma monitor. Uh, isn't that the same reason too many movies were released pan-and-scan when TV screens were square?"

Despite the futuristic aspects of both the book and film, the origin of the story behind A Clockwork Orange had less to do with science fiction and perhaps more in common with Brian de Palma's latest film, Redacted, because the prototypes for Alex and his murderous droogies were-- brace yourselves-- American G.I.s. During WWII, Burgess's pregnant wife was attacked one night by three AWOL yank soldiers, nearly killing her and causing her to lose the baby. Knowing this back-story makes Burgess's now-famous denouement even more startling: after the state takes away Alex's violence and leaves him a helpless victim himself, the only solution is to de-deprogram him, returning him again to his thuggish glory!

Not a single wrong answer this time, so congratulations and a Bang and Olufson stereo to the following winners: Vince Tuss, Gus Mastrapa, Wayne Palmer, John Seffl, Joe Rosenberg, Song-Un Lee, Mark Gisleson, Denny Lynch, Bryan Jackson, Eric Castro, Jack Sparks, Bill Hearne, E. Yarber, ron frigstad, Michael Mattson, Donald Greene, Bob Redwing, Nick Rupar, Nancy Louise Rutherford, mick, J.D. Henderson, and Kevin Musolino.

Posted by Steve Monaco at November 25, 2007 3:10 PM

 

More Old Hollywood looking good

John Wayne

Myrna Loy (The Thin Man) and Ramon Navarro (Ben Hur)

Ronald Reagan (with Richard Todd)

Posted by Steve Monaco at November 20, 2007 10:58 PM

 

The Monday Movie Quiz #150

A bona fide classic this time that shows up on practically every "Best of" list in the world. But do you recognize it without the star?

Remember: It's only easy if you know it! If you do, by all means send me an email by late Sunday night with the title. If you're correct, expect to riot in the proud feeling of seeing your name in next week's rhymeless winner's circle.

Posted by Steve Monaco at November 19, 2007 12:54 AM

 

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

Last week's quiz movie in question was the supremely feel-bad film Requiem for a Dream (2000), starring Ellen Burstyn (my own favorite living American actress) and directed by Darren Aronofsky ("Pi"). Of course, you'd expect no less than total immersion into the sewer of the soul from a movie based on a novel (and co-written) by Hubert Selby, Jr., author of Last Exit to Brooklyn, but even so, this one went the extra mile.

It's a year in the lives of four hopeless addicts, including a son (Jared Leto) and his mother (Burstyn), and as Peter Bradshaw described in the Guardian, "Their excursion into the progressive circles of hell is recorded by Aronofsky with such precision that the whole film is unsettlingly like a gruesome yet compelling vivisectional experiment." His equally on-the-nose Guardian associate, Philip French, had the best assessment of the film's conclusion: "The final cross-cutting between the mother undergoing ECT at a New York psychiatric hospital, the son having his gangrenous arm sawn off in a Florida prison and the girlfriend submitting to painful anal sex at a Long Island orgy is hard to watch and impossible to recommend." And then some!

The performance by Ellen Burstyn, however, is not only highly recommendable but possibly the best thing she's ever done. Besides being so perfectly fine-tuned as the lonely, strung-out old lady who yearns to be somebody (in a red dress), her performance is also remarkably brave for someone who was, for many years, a genuine movie star. Not only does she display her age nakedly-- maybe even, as above, brutally-- but she also allows herself to keep looking worse. Jack Nicholson was given a lot of credit for going through a third of Chinatown with part of his face bandaged, but it's nothing to how Burstyn looks in this: a hairdo and dye job that first evoke Bozo and then the Bride of Frankenstein (complete with electrodes in the head), an embalmer's makeup job, and a face sweatier than Rodney Dangerfield's. It's a tour de force performance that doesn't look very nice-- needless to say, the Academy gave the Actress Oscar that year to Julia Roberts.

As for Aronofsky's constant, eye-zapping split-screen effect, it works well but it made me feel oddly nostalgic for the '70s. Michael Wadleigh used it in Woodstock, of course, and there was even one movie, Wicked, Wicked, that was done completely in what was called Duo-Vision. But it goes back even farther, and I wonder if this wasn't the real influence on Aronofsky's technique (since he was born after it was cancelled, he must have seen it in reruns):

A sizable group of people with right answers this week, most expressing no interest in seeing the film a second time (even the ones who thought it was great!), a sentiment I share. So congratulations and a moving refrigerator to the following winners: Vince Tuss, Wayne Palmer, Song-Un Lee, Chris Hesler, Mark Gisleson, Bill Hearne, Patricia Maples, Eric Castro, Jeffrey Rapp, Spencer Abbe, Bob Redwing, Michael Knox, Michael Mattson, Donald Greene, ron frigstad, Nick Rupar, Ross Orenstein, Drew Shaw, and Dennis Lynch.

Posted by Steve Monaco at November 18, 2007 11:21 PM

 

Great moments in movie history

I've always loved Akira Kurosawa's Dreams and have grieved that I haven't (to date) seen it on anything but a television screen. But even though I know I'm missing a lot, its beauty and strangeness still come through, and no more so than in the segment titled "Crows." An art lover (obviously modeled after K. himself) browsing a Van Gogh exhibit is transported to Vincent's time and place, and ultimately discovers the artist at work (played by none other than Martin Scorcese). The last few minutes, where the visitor walks through a Van Gogh world, should still work its magic even through youtube video. (And keep in mind, this was done before computers made this kind of thing easy.)

Posted by Steve Monaco at November 17, 2007 2:10 AM

 

Spoiler alert!

Posted by Steve Monaco at November 17, 2007 1:38 AM

 

Old Hollywood looking good

Gloria Swanson (and Teddy)

Lucille Ball

Peter Lorre

Posted by Steve Monaco at November 15, 2007 3:14 PM

 

Monaco's No-Life Bottom Three

1) Whatever happened to Michael Richards? That question's been asked this week during the PR blitz for the mega-Seinfeld DVD box, which includes all episodes, 104 hours of bonus material and a coffee-table book (and only $180-- quite a deal for shows you've already bought after seeing them on TV for the past 10 to 20 years). Apparently, Mike's been on a spiritual pilgrimage in Cambodia on a tour sponsored by the "Life Bliss Foundation." (Episode title: "The Cosmic Cosmo.") In a recent interview with the Chicago Tribune, Jason Alexander said, "The thing we were most afraid of is not that the show would be tainted, but that people would look at Kramer and not be able to forget that incident. And it seems to me that people are very wise. I have only met a few people who have not been able to separate Michael from Kramer." (Alexander also talked about possible sequels to the last episode: "[Kramer] had come out all tattooed and become a rough rider; [Elaine] was a lesbian; I had a sex change ... and Jerry was exactly the way he was. And he would say, 'Boy, that was rough.'")

2) DIY classical music. An on-line friend who knows how much I like contemporary "serious" music (although my favorites are often funny) sent me a link to "Graph Theory," an on-line composition for solo violin by Jason Freeman. Built like a move-by-move video game, it's a five-minute piece that you create by selecting from 61 short, looped musical fragments that you choose by hopping around a graph. The page records your choices and plays back your composition as you go as well as your final masterpiece. But the best and most remarkable part is that what you create is recorded into the "Graph Theory" database, and the next time the piece is performed in public, the soloist actually plays from a print-out of the latest on-line choices! This one gets the Couch Pundit official Seal of Grooviness-- you can start your own version of the piece here. (A test to see if you're a fan of this kind of music: "Knock, knock." "Who's there?" "Knock, knock." "Who's there?" "Knock, knock." "Who's there?" "Philip Glass.")

3) William Burroughs, plastic surgeon. When I saw the story about Kanye West's mom dying from vanity surgeries, performed by someone with two lost malpractice suits and a possible license suspension (he's had two DUIs in four years), I thought of Burrough's alter ego, Dr. Benway. Benway operates in a lavatory and sterilizes his equipment in the toilet, while boasting that once, caught without surgical instruments, "I removed a uterine tumor with my teeth." He also likes to take frequent breaks between scalpel strokes, only to wail that someone's cut his cocaine with Sani-Flush. For those with sick senses of humor-- meaning all my regular readers-- here's Burroughs himself in a dramatization.

William Burroughs talking to a cop after the former mistook his wife's head for an apple.

Posted by Steve Monaco at November 14, 2007 1:54 AM

 

The Monday Movie Quiz #149

There you have it-- the star, plot, and visual style of the film, all in one clue. If you know what it is, send me an email by late Sunday night with the title. If you're correct, expect to get a huge buzz from seeing your name in next week's winner's circle.

Posted by Steve Monaco at November 12, 2007 1:30 AM

 

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

Read that poster slogan again-- it's a sure sign that a movie will smell when its own tagline doesn't even make sense. And for the most part, The Devil's Rain (1975) lived up to its poster's promise, a silly horror story best synopsized by The Onion AV Club: "Satan is real and really has it in for William Shatner." Bill fights the devil in the hellish form of Ernest Borgnine (that's him in Satanic goat makeup in last week's first picture clue). Borgnine's character, Corbis, wants the souls of Shatner's whole family (played by Tom Skerritt and the great Ida Lupino, among others), resulting in the film's climactic titular meltdown, where practically the entire cast is dissolved into technicolor goo, including Shatner:

(It also melted John Travolta, in his first film-- that was him oozing talent in last week's third clue.)

The '70s were probably Shatner's worst years as an actor, and The Devil's Rain was actually far from the worst thing he did. For one thing, it was an actual feature film, during a time when almost everything else he did was TV. Plus, Shatner the Great Thespian was on display more and more-- as one quiz winner said, 'Whoever taught him his acting style must have had a form of Tourettes. 'The river . . . it's flooding . . . the roads!' Whether he's dressed in a woolen shirt or a Star Fleet uniform, he's always the same guy." (Here's a quick soundclip from the film demonstrating . . . the . . . above! If you're at work, watch out-- it's very loud and he curses, which you'd expect from a movie about devil worship.)

My favorite of Shatner's '70s loser work is a 1974 movie called either Impulse or Want a Ride, Little Girl?. It sucks whatever it's called, but in the best way a bad movie can, with lots of outrageous action, crazed dialogue and acting that's so bad it's brilliant. Give Shatner his due, he never shied away from looking ridiculous on a grand scale, and he plays his serial lady-killer character as only "The Transformed Man" could. Someone's put together a nice video collage of Bill's best moments in it, set to the Everly Brothers recording of "Buona Fortuna, Amore Mio"-- enjoy, especially his wardrobe!

A tougher quiz than usual, according to most of this week's winners, so congratulations and a free facelift from Shatner's surgeon to the following good folks: Wayne Palmer, John Seffl, Joe Rosenberg, Bill Kelly, Bob Redwing, E. Yarber, Dennis Lynch, Bill Hearne, Jeffrey Rapp, Gene Miller, Donald Greene, Thomas Miller, Sharon Nordskog, ron frigstad, Kevin Musolino, Song-Un Lee, and Vince Tuss. Soon, every one of them will look like this:

Posted by Steve Monaco at November 11, 2007 11:41 PM

 

Great moments in movie history

Four years ago when I wrote about Johnny Cash's movie debut, Door to Door Maniac (aka Five Minutes to Live), embedded video didn't exist, so all I could offer was a sound clip. Now, thanks to Youtube and a user named gatorrock786, I can actually show you the trailer of what has to be one of the most bizarre career choices any star ever made. While it wasn't uncommon in the late '50s-early '60s for American rock and pop singers to carry guns and even shoot them in their first movie, it was uncommon to see them play serial-killing rapists. What effect Johnny and his manager thought this role would have on his popularity at the Grand Old Opry is anybody's guess. (And don't miss the identity of the child actor at the end of the trailer-- this still may be the best movie he's ever made.)

Posted by Steve Monaco at November 9, 2007 11:08 PM

 

My movie year (so far)

Some more weird stuff I've managed to watch all the way through-- whether I should have, you decide.

Sheitan, aka Satan (2006 - France), directed by Kim Chapiron. That's not Borat's brother, it's an unrecognizable Vincent Cassel (Ocean's Twelve and Thirteen) in his first closeup as the demonic goat-herder Joseph-- and that's the best he looks for the entire film! What starts out looking like a French version of a typical teen gore movie (Cabin Fever, Wolf Creek) is blown literally to Hell as soon as Cassel walks into the picture, and from then on it's a completely original, insane horror-comedy. Joseph isn't Sheitan, he just made a deal with Him so he could commit incest one night. (But Joseph isn't selfish-- he asks one of the young male visitors to his farm if he'd like to have sex with Joseph's own favorite farmgirl, then adds, "She's my niece.") As the craziness escalates-- Joseph's backwoods family includes a wife he hides in the closet as she swells with their Satanic miracle-- you realize that it's actually a Christmas movie. Recommended, especially as an antidote for overdoses of It's a Wonderful Life.

Zoo (2007), directed by Robinson Devor, and The Real Animal Farm (2006 - UK). You may have heard of Zoo, since it's not every day a documentary about beastiality plays Sundance and is reviewed in the New York Times. And you've probably heard about the news story at its center-- a middle-aged man was basically screwed to death by an Arabian stallion. What you may not know is that the film manages to be repellent and boring at the same time. (Eric Henderson at Slant said it "looks like a feature-length commercial for Ambien.") Since almost no one involved with the actual case wanted to even be recorded on the phone, let alone filmed, it's mostly dull and hokey reenactments (although not of the actual "murder," thank goodness!). The fact that, for the most part, the participants are only identified by their online handles is perhaps the only interesting revelation of the film: if not for the Internet, these guys would never have met and the whole thing would never have happened.

That isn't true about the films at the center of a much more disturbing BBC documentary (sent to me by a "friend"-- who needs enemies indeed?) called "The Real Animal Farm," an episode of a series called The Dark Side of Porn. It's the story of a Danish woman, Bodil Joensen, who was not only known in Europe during the '70s for her "Animal Farm" films, but may have actually invented the whole beastly genre-- in 1969, she approached one of the brand new Danish porn companies (all censorship ended there in the '60s) and suggested various "plots" for films with her and her menagerie. It's hard to believe the BBC would even bother with a subject like this (PBS might, but only to flog the video during fundraisers), but it's undeniably fascinating, mostly because of the strange person who made the original films. While it doesn't need to be said that she had a bad life (homecoming queens don't usually do beast porn), the documentary shows there was more to "the boar girl" than tragedy, and it's the alien-- animal-- quality of hers that makes the show so haunting.

Posted by Steve Monaco at November 8, 2007 1:00 PM

 

Superboy sez: Don't give fire a place to start!

A CP public service message. And remember, kids-- don't smoke in bed!

Posted by Steve Monaco at November 7, 2007 2:10 AM

 

The Monday Movie Quiz #148

Stars, stars, stars! In those three picture clues, we have an Oscar winner, a groundbreaking director-- nay, auteur!-- and American icon (even though he isn't). And even the unknowns went on to be known-- what a movie! So if you know what it is, send me an email by late Sunday night, and if you're right, expect to see your name in next week's loser's, er, winner's circle (sorry, I was still thinking of the cast).

Posted by Steve Monaco at November 5, 2007 3:02 AM

 

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

You'd hardly know from the above poster that Joel McCrea was the real star of last week's quiz movie, Sullivan's Travels, or that it was written and directed by the great Preston Sturges. The poster is exactly what film director John L. Sullivan (McCrea) is talking about at the beginning of the film: "I want this picture to be a document. I want to hold a mirror up to life. I want this to be a picture of dignity! A true canvas of the suffering of humanity! With a little sex in it." That movie, O Brother Where Art Thou? (sound familiar?) would have been lousy, but the picture that Sturges made not only has everything in that description, it's in a class by itself: slapstick tragedy.

(A picture that's an old movie trivia test all by itself, one that includes stalwart character actors William Demarest, Franklin Pangborn, and Byron Foulger. Your task: find them.)

Decades before the auteur theory, Sturges made a pretentious director his protagonist, and that's only the first of many surprisingly modern touches in this morality play with pratfalls about the value of comedy. McCrea, at the height of his good-guy stardom, is perfect as the big-hearted but shallow director John L. Sullivan, who wants to learn how to literally suffer to better his art, only to learn his lesson from Mickey Mouse. Besides a plot that revolved around a question of artistic integrity, Sturges' comparisons of Sullivan's opulent celebrity life and his time in the flophouse and on the chaingang must have pushed '40s Hollywood's limits for showing poverty (in a major film) about as far as they'd let it go.

Even though it's a movie about the movies-- new Hollywood's favorite subject-- there's no worry of Sullivan's Travels ever being remade: besides being far too pointed a look at pampered, psuedo-liberal Hollywood, the dialogue is so fast and nuanced I doubt there are enough A-list stars who could deliver it. And of course, if a remake didn't have those things-- as well as a hilarious go-cart chase scene, a seamless transition from comedy to drama, and a reach-for-the-moon final moment that actually works-- it wouldn't be Sullivan's Travels.

Again, an unexpected (and heartwarming) bounty of winners who recognize a great movie when they see some stills from it, so congratulations and a ride in a cockeyed caravan to the following: Wayne Palmer, Song-Un Lee, Bob Aulert, E. Yarber, Donald Greene, Michael Kelly, Mark Gisleson, Dennis Lynch, Bob Redwing, mick, Jeffrey Rapp, Peter Schilling, Michael Mattson, Bill Hearne, Thomas Miller, Nancy Louise Rutherford, and Kevin Musolino.

Posted by Steve Monaco at November 5, 2007 12:46 AM

 

Great moments in movie history

I know I'm always posting so-called historic moments of this and that, most of them with ironic intent, but the drum solo scene from Phantom Lady (1944), besides being perhaps the first modern music video, truly lives up to this entry's title. The movie's good (and stylish throughout, thanks to director Robert Siodmak), but this little two minute scene is truly great and lives up to every word of praise that's been written about it. Elisha Cook Jr. is hopped-up horniness itself, and that's '40s dish Ella Raines enjoying the music and egging him on. (Video quality is only so-so, unfortunately, but it still gets across-- in fact, it makes it look even more subterranean, man.)

Posted by Steve Monaco at November 2, 2007 1:19 AM

 

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