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billyweeds

Posted: Sun Dec 20, 2009 9:02 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City

The more I think about World's Greatest Dad, the extremely black comedy directed by Bobcat Goldthwait and starring Robin Williams, the more convinced I am that this is going to be an important cult movie in the coming years. It may be Williams's best film performance ever (this is admittedly not saying anything huge) and it certainly shows Goldthwait to be a fiercely interesting director. I seriously, strongly recommend this film.

Joe Vitus

Posted: Sun Dec 20, 2009 11:44 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston

I like Williams when he's acting and not doing his strained comedy routine or inducing the milk of human kindness to flow from his pores. Popeye, Garp, Moscow on the Hudson, The Best of Times stand for me as good Williams performances.

But he hasn't been good in a while, I am interested in this movie, and I'm glad you've brought it to my attention.

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You've got a great brain. You should keep it in your head.

-Topher

whiskeypriest

Posted: Sun Dec 20, 2009 12:45 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 6916 Location: "It's a Dry Heat."

Eh, I'll put it on the possible list. Been subjected to way, way too many Robin Williams suck fests to trust even billy's word.

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I ask you, Velvel, as a rational man, which of us is possessed?

billyweeds

Posted: Sun Dec 20, 2009 3:07 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City

whiskeypriest wrote:

Eh, I'll put it on the possible list. Been subjected to way, way too many Robin Williams suck fests to trust even billy's word.

Believe me this time. If I say Robin Williams is good, he's gotta be very good, because there isn't a (male) actor I dislike more. Well, maybe John Travolta.

billyweeds

Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2009 7:30 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City

Brittany Murphy's untimely death reminded me of a movie she made a few years ago that I consider underrated and well worth seeing. It's called Little Black Book, and it's a sometimes savage satire on television and media in general in the guise of a romantic comedy. The genre mix confused a lot of critics and obscured the very real value of the movie. Performances by Murphy, Holly Hunter, Julianne Nicholson, and Kathy Bates are spot-on, and I think it's a great rental. In fact, I'm gonna rent it again.

Syd

Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2009 11:09 pm

Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12921 Location: Norman, Oklahoma

Lakposhtha parvaz mikonand (Turtles Can Fly) is a 2004 film set in Iraqi Kurdistan near the Iranian border at the beginning of the second Gulf War. It's notable as the first film made in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein; the director is Bahman Ghobadi, who is an Iranian Kurd, noted for directing A Time for Drunken Horses. (I really want to see his new film, No One Knows About Persian Cats--see "Current Films" for details.) Turtles Can Fly is in Kurdish.

The main character is Satellite, a 13-year old boy who gets his name because he can hook up satellite dishes. He also is the leader of the local kids who he organizes to clear land mines from local fields; they then sell the mines to make money. This is a hazardous undertaking as you can imagine, and many of the kids have been injured.

One of these is Hengov, an Iranian Kurd who has lost both his arms, despite which he also picks up some mines, extracting them by mouth. Satellite doesn't appreciate this since Hengov is interfering with his method of making a living. However, Hengov has a sister, Agrin, who Satellite fancies, partly because she has such a sad face. There is also a baby, who supposedly is Hengov and Agrin's brother, but who we soon learn is Agrin's via rape in either the Iran-Iraq war or Saddam's suppression of the Kurds. Agrin is only around thirteen so she must have been around eleven when she was raped. She doesn't want to acknowledge the child, but Hengov is trying to get her to accept it. Satellite, who's trying to spark her interest, doesn't realize that her sadness is the result of a series of traumas and he isn't helping very much.

Hengov also has visions that come true, which under the circumstances is not necessarily a blessing.

This is a sad film about orphaned kids trying to cope, some better than others. Being set in Kurdistan, the American invasion is actually welcomed, but an awful lot of the mines the kids are collecting are American, so the USA is also responsible for some of the injuries we're seeing. We're sort of a necessary evil. The film comes by its sadness honestly; war is not a nice place to be if you're a kid, and Kurdistan was especially not a nice place under Saddam Hussein. Worth checking out.

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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament

Syd

Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 3:10 am

Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12921 Location: Norman, Oklahoma

I'm cataloguing my video tape collection, which means I have to stop now and then to watch something. Like three Fatty Arbuckle shorts, Fatty and Mabel's Simple Life (his first of many with Mabel Normand, rather basic), Fatty's Chance Acquaintance, which I swear he remade in a better short, and Mabel's Wilful Way, which is easily the best of the three. Mabel is at a concert with her father and mother, and detests both the music and the onions her mother is munching on, so she slips out to a carnival. She tries to steal a donut, Fatty and his buddy, who are equally broke, see her, and vie for her attentions with middling success and quite a few funny gags.

Also two Harold Lloyd shorts, the one reeler I Do with him and his wife babysitting the four-year-old from Hell, and A Sailor-Made Man in which he plays an idle (and not all that likable) rich idiot who wants to marry the daughter of a steel magnate. When the magnate insists the idiot get a job in the real world, the idiot joins the Navy. Then immediately tries to get out when he learns the father, the girl, and her many suitors are going around the world and he can go too. And he does get to go around the world, just not in the way he wants. And of course, they meet again in their travels and he has to rescue her. Both shorts are pretty funny.

Then there's The Goddess, a 1934 Chinese silent about a woman who is working the night shift to put her son through school, but runs afoul of a gambler who wants to pimp her. This is fairly sentimental, nicely photographed and has an excellent performance by a beautiful Ruan Ling-Yu (one of her last; she committed suicide the next year at the age of 24). It reminds me a little of pre-Codes of the same period such as Frisco Jenny and Street Angel; I half-expected the son would end up getting to defend or prosecute her for murder.

Finally there's Sweet Smell of Success, with Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster playing two characters competing with each other in a loathsomeness contest. If you're waiting for redeeming characteristics, you have quite a wait. Nice supporting performances, too. I liked Jeff Donnell (that's a woman) as Curtis's secretary and I strongly suspect bedmate. I'm not surprised one of the writers also worked on Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff, although this one also has the hand of Odets, while Wolff is based on Albee's play. Both are pretty nasty pieces of work which are well worth watching. Fortunately we do have supporting characters to partially redeem the human race.

_________________
I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament

billyweeds

Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 7:35 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City

Can't believe I've never seen The Shop Around the Corner befpre. but that's been remedied now. What a charmer!

I've seen the two musical versions (She Loves Me--great--and In the Good Old Summertime--high-level-mediocre) and the Nora Ephron remake/update You've Got Mail (almost unwatchable), but none of them has quite the special quality of this amazing Lubitsch concoction with Margaret Sullavan and my main man Jimmy Stewart displaying the kind of chemistry they usually only talk about. Frank Morgan is also wonderful as their flawed employer, in a performance that far outstrips his more-famous turn as the wizard of Oz.

It's a great film.

marantzo

Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 7:41 am

Guest

I've probably seen it five times. Never on the big screen though. It is great. The first time I saw it would have been around '54 '55. You avoided this movie a long time Billy.

Joe Vitus

Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 2:39 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston

billyweeds wrote:

I like it okay to me, but no more than that. I like Lubitsch movies (have the DVD collection of his early musicals) but I never really love them. Don't know why. Totally agree with you about She Loves Me and In the Good Old Summertime. Will never watch You've Got Mail, but I trust your judgement.

_________________
You've got a great brain. You should keep it in your head.

-Topher

Syd

Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 5:02 pm

Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12921 Location: Norman, Oklahoma

I recorded The Battle of Algiers?! This is getting to be a busy break, even if I am snowbound. (Actually, I could get out. It's just that I don't have to, and I'm chicken.)

Besides, I have an urge to go through the Iron Chef millennial marathon, with the climactic Octopus battle, which combines fine cuisine with Lovecraftian horror.

_________________
I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament

Syd

Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2009 8:22 pm

Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12921 Location: Norman, Oklahoma

The Battle of Algiers is hellishly absorbing. It tells the story of the Algerian insurrection of the 1950s, centering on the French suppression of the rebellion in Algiers in 1956-57. Neither side comes off well, the insurgents being terrorists starting off by shooting cops, and progressing to bombing civilians. The French are no better, resorting to torture, assassination, and bombing. The French won this battle, but lost the war, although it took a few years for the FLN to regroup. The story is told in a pseudo-documentary style that is very effective; the audience is warned that the fim doesn't contain actual news footage. Definitely a classic of its kind.

_________________
I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament

yambu

Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2009 11:19 pm

Joined: 23 May 2004 Posts: 6441 Location: SF Bay Area

A terrific movie. As I recall, in the end it was a three-sided contest, with the Foreign Legion defying DeGaulle, whom they thought was giving them away. I think that's right.

I was a teenager at the time the conflict came to a head. I remember being absorbed though always confused by the reportage.

_________________
That was great for you. How was it for me?

marantzo

Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 7:09 am

Guest

One of my first memories of Paris was the morning that I got their and was walking down the stairs of the Metro and there was a bunch of large graffiti on the walls, mostly NON! with a few OUI! I found out later that they were from an earlier referendum on De Gaulle and the Algerian situation. At the time I got to Paris the French had already left Algeria a long time before, but they obviously hadn't got around to washing the graffiti off. There were more NONs because De Gaulle was never liked in Paris.

billyweeds

Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 9:05 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City

After all that Farmiga talk, I saw Running Scared again. Damn, it's even better than I remembered. What a trip. Not only Farmiga but the usually pallid Paul Walker are dynamite.

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