Quick Thoughts: Sullivan’s Travels (& the Lady Eve)

Every once in a while, Dennis Cozzalio of the Sergio Leone Infield Fly Rule makes a quiz. It’s one with no good or bad answers, but while I love reading the answers, those quizzes always make me feel a bit guilty. Or maybe ashamed is a better word for it. There are just so many gaps in my cinematic education. I could list ‘em, but that would just make me feel worse. I usually manage to turn it around, see it as having many great things left to discover, but I’d better get on with the discovering if I want to live up to the name ” cinephile”.

I wasn’t very eager to discover Preston Surges. I saw the first half-hour or so of Hail, the conquering Hero once, under admitttedly bad circumstances, and it didn’t do much for me. So while his movies were on my mental “to-watch” list, I wasn’t in a big hurry.

How wrong I was.

I discovered that, first, when I was in Oslo, and bought (and watched) The Lady Eve. I wasn’t surprised by how great Barbara Stanwyck was - I’d read enough exalted descriptions of her performance, and that she managed to live up to all the hyperbolic adjectives thrown at her is impressive enough. But what I loved was how delightfully cynical it was. And sharp: the dialogue in which Jean provides a voice-over as Charles Pike walks into the dining room on the cruise ship is perfectly written, and perfectly delivered, and that’s just one example.

Still, I wasn’t quite convinced. Not enough, in any case, to make me watch Sullivan’s Travels in a hurry. But I finally got around to it tonight, and you can consider me converted.

Watching Movies with my dad pt. 4

The movie: Vanishing Point (Richard C. Serafian, 1971) (UK version)

The pitchable element: my dad liked Death Proof quite a bit. Death Proof references this movie twice.

The length: 105 minutes (though it felt like more)

The verdict: well, they can’t all be winners, can they? Granted, it got slightly more interesting after we looked at each other one hour in and said “this is bad, huh?”, but not by that much. I knew this movie was about one guy driving a long way in a white Dodge Challenger. What I didn’t know was that there would be so little else, and that any possible subtext you might be able to find is voiced aloud, in the most corny way possible, several times.

I mean, the dialogue is just bad. Bad bad. And the acting? Charlotte Rampling shows up for about five minutes, and I know she can act, but she’s saddled with such terrible dialogue that you can hardly blame her for not sounding convinced, herself. The other actors don’t even seem to try. And the movie commits the worst sin a bad movie can commit: it’s boring. And just in case that doesn’t make an impression: know that I’m not easily bored. I was fascinated, mesmerized by Gerry, in which far less happened. But the movie’s too scattershot to be hypnotic, and rarely bad in an entertaining way.

Was there nothing at all I liked? Well… some of the chase scenes were, admittedly, pretty cool, and felt marvelously grounded and real compared to today’s CGI-riddled action. Though he’s kind of a poor man’s Elliott Gould, Barry Newman’s face is all kinds of fascinating. And while it’s incredibly dated by now, there’s no doubt that Vanishing Point influenced quite a few (better) movies: Death Proof is the obvious example, but the DJ-conceit from Reservoir Dogs seems cribbed from the diegetic use of radio here as well, and Thelma and Louise has clear echoes of it.

Luckily, my mom’s coming over tomorrow, and because I’ve been introducing her to Tarantino, Death Proof is on the menu. The chase involving that particular Dodge Challenger is one I could watch over and over again.

Watching Movies with My Dad pt. 3

The movie: Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977)

The pitchable element: no need for one. My dad saw this in the cinema when it came out, loved it, and hadn’t seen it since.

The length: 93 minutes including credits

The verdict: comedies should not be watched alone. As to any rule, there are of course exceptions, but my -purely anecdotal- evidence is this: I liked Annie Hall the first time I watched it, by myself. I liked it a lot, in fact, enough to buy it, and I thought it was very, very funny. But I don’t remember laughing out loud.

With my dad, however, I laughed out loud several times, even at the most predictable jokes (like Alvy sneezing the coke away, for instance). Somehow, by myself, I could appreciate the humor but I wasn’t really able to ENJOY it. But now, watching it again, this time in good company, I enjoyed it immensely. The one-liners are funny, the tricks that break the fourth wall work, and Diane Keaton is glorious (why is she stuck in all these crappy rom-coms nowadays?)

That, and of course the following quote is probably one of the truest things anyone has ever said about relationships:

I thought of that old joke, y’know, the, this… this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, “Doc, uh, my brother’s crazy; he thinks he’s a chicken.” And, uh, the doctor says, “Well, why don’t you turn him in?” The guy says, “I would, but I need the eggs.” Well, I guess that’s pretty much now how I feel about relationships; y’know, they’re totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and… but, uh, I guess we keep goin’ through it because, uh, most of us… need the eggs. Alvy Singer

Watching movies with my dad, pt. 2

This installment: The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946)

The pitchable element: my dad loves The Maltese Falcon. This also has Bogie as a P.I.

The length: 110 minutes (aka: almost 40 minutes shorter than Duck, You Sucker!

The verdict: I love this film. More so, even, than the first time. It’s not that surprising: like the Coen classic loosely based on it, it’s better appreciated once you stop trying to follow the plot. I still think The Maltese Falcon is a better, more focused film, and ultimately, it has more quotable one-liners, but the banter between Bogie and Bacall is simply staggering. The speed, how they play off each other, the palpable sexual tension… One scene, where Bacall calls the cops and Bogie stops her, wouldn’t be out of place in a screwball comedy, and a good one at that (I’ve embedded the scene after the jump, unfortunately, it’s colored in and with Dutch subtitles, so you’re better off just buying the DVD for 10 euri).

My crush on Bogie is no secret by now, of course. But this one’s truly among his best, and while his pulling on his earlobe incessantly gets a bit old after a while, you never doubt for a second that all these pretty girls would, in fact, come onto him.

I’m still not quite sure about the intricate details of the plot (reportedly, Chandler wasn’t either), but I do know this: it’s fun every step of the way.

Watching movies with my dad

As you might know, I’m currently on something of a break in the south of France with my father. And well, the thing with my dad is: he likes movies, but he never feels like watching them. He’s rarely sorry when he does, but he often just doesn’t have the motivation. Especially not if their over an hour and a half. So for this trip, I assembled some movies that a) had a clear, pitchable element and b) weren’t too long. So far? 2 down. 5 to go.

First up: The Hunger (Tony Scott, 1983)

The pitchable element: a lesbian sex scene featuring one of his favorite actresses, Catherine Deneuve.

The length: 93 minutes

The verdict: What a strange film this is!

The Lady Eve

It’s crazy how quickly you adapt to insane prize levels. The film museum in Oslo (which I actually haven’t visited yet, but I will on Tuesday) has an amazing DVD selection, but after seeing so many great DVDs (Gun Crazy, The Killers, Touch of Evil) that cost between 170 and 300 kroner, the 100 kroner they asked for The Lady Eve sounded like a bargain. Of course, that’s still more than 13 euro, or about 20 dollars.

Anyway, The Lady Eve was worth it.

Two music movies

Not everyone might know it, but Once wasn’t, in fact, Glen Hansard’s acting debut. He was also one of the band members in the titular band that the charming little movie The Commitments is about. The one with the abundance of red curls, to be precise. And when I say abundance, it’s rather an understatement. In all fairness, his role is a fairly small one.

The movie’s lone slightly original touch is that the main character isn’t a musician, but the band manager Jimmy, who interviews himself at length from the (imagined) vantage point of later success. The relative lack of drama about all the partner swaps, or rather, about who sleeps with which background singer, is remarkably cliché-free, and all in all, for a movie about all-out soul, this is a remarkably low-fi movie. I liked it quite a bit… but it was the other music movie (also, incidentally, with a clear link to a 2007 film) that I really, completely, unapologetically loved.

That movie was… *drumroll*

His Girl Friday - first thoughts

The first of the three DVD’s I ordered at Christmas finally arrived. “His Girl Friday”.

I think I caught about half the words.

I also think I love it.

How can you not, after all? It’s smart. It’s a romantic comedy, but it’s bitter and cynical, and most of all, it’s funny, maybe not in a rolling on the floor kind of way, but so funny and consistently funny that you can’t help but watch with a grin. It has Cary Grant, suave as ever but really quite a cad, a crook even. And then there’s Rosalind Russell as one of the feistiest, smartest female characters ever put on screen. Sure, she falls for Grant’s tricks in the end. But she does so knowingly.

Blood Simple/Raising Arizona

In anticipation of the official release of No Country For Old Men, I decided to have my own, semi-chronological, Coen bros. retrospective. To my great surprise, no less than 5 people came to join me on the first night, featuring the Coens’ debut, Blood Simple, and their follow-up comedy Raising Arizona. I’d seen the former once, about, I’d say, six or seven years ago. I’d seen various fragment of the second one, but I don’t think I ever had from start to finish. To entice people to come, I wrote the following blurbs:

Blood Simple

It takes most directors a few films to find their footing. Not the Coens: Blood Simple emerged fully formed from their combined brains. It’s a neat little neo-noir about a woman (Frances McDormand, who later married one of the brothers and frequently collaborates with them), her lover, her husband, and the PI the husband hires. The story is full of noire tropes: not just adultery but blackmail, murder, and lots of things that just don’t go as planned. The title is even derived from a Dashiel Hamett novel. I will be watching the Director’s Cut, which is one of the few director’s cuts that’s shorter than the theatrically released film. Ever since this great debut, the Coens have had final cut.

Raizing Arizona

Blood Simple has some funny moments, sure, but it’s essentially a pretty grim undertaking. Raizing Arizona, on the other hand, is a raucous comedy (albeit with some grim undertones). It’s about Hi, a former criminal, and his loving wife Ed, a former policewoman. They desperately want to have a baby, but can’t. Then they hear a rich man in the state just had quintuplets, and figure that with this bounty, he won’t miss one. They kidnap one of the babies, and since they’re not exactly the brightest bulbs in the tanning bed, hijinks ensue. Add scary biker & bounty hunter Leonard Smalls to the mix, and you have a very crazy, but also very funny film on your hands, full of typical Coen touches.