It's rarely noted how fundamentally Jewish Jerry Lewis's humor is. I don't mean the urbanely intellectual name-dropping of Woody Allen, but rather the sheer raving fear and terror, the sense the world is out to get you, that permeates the fiction of Jewish writers like Franz Kafka and Leonard Michaels. At his best, Lewis convinces you that everyone is dangerous and that the most you can do is run away, shrieking. It's impossible for me to watch Jerry Lewis films without thinking of the Holocaust.
You may balk at the previous sentence, wondering whether it's meant to be funny. I've often had the same reaction to Lewis's films. Lewis ruled the box office in the 1950s with a series of comedies co-starring Dean Martin and directed by Frank Tashlin (Artists and Models is probably the best-known). After his partnership with Martin ended, Lewis became his own writer, director, and general metteur-en-scéne. A recent Anthology Film Archives retrospective devoted to his directorial efforts showed how Lewis took the persona he'd cultivated—a sort of cross-eyed, arm-swinging man-child, given to spluttering nonsensical outbursts along the lines of "Grupdideebooboowabumwacha"—and simultaneously used it while distancing himself from it, commenting on it. He uses not humor, but "humor," raising your awareness of the gags as they're unfolding. Eric Henderson, writing in Slant, points to a sequence from 1961's The Errand Boy where Lewis's character, Morty S. Tashman (shades of Tashlin), keeps bringing a great glass candy jar down from a high shelf, then back up. Audiences have been conditioned by slapstick—everything from the blind man shattering the shop in It's a Gift to the cream pie-and-spritzer of a Three Stooges routine—to expect Jerry to drop the jar. When he doesn't, the joke goes from being on him to being on us. Continue Reading »
The quote below is from an interview with Umberto Eco at Spiegel Online International. Appropriate in light of the encroaching/already published end-of-the-year roundups.
"We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That's why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It's a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don't want to die."
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Russian Film Week, like the Eastern-European films it shows, runs at an absurdly frustrating, devil-may-care pace (at least for this New Yorker). Screenings of sweeping 160-minute epics often begin an hour late, which admittedly comes in handy if you show up at the School of Visual Arts on the east side instead of the SVA Theater on the west side, as too many of us confused movie-goers did for a sold out Anna Karenina. But if you're willing to brave the stampeding, Russian-barking crowds at the entrance, followed by a sponsor-thanking trailer, followed by a live sponsor-thanking Russian, followed, of course, by the English translation, then by a gratitude-spewing director (or five or six if you went on the sold-out opening night), then by that English translation, to finally see whichever film you've by now forgotten the title of, you might just catch some meaningful cinema. Continue Reading »
This is just too good not to share early. I think the Muppets just pwned Wayne and Garth. Happy Turkey Day, all!
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to keithuhlich@gmail.com and to converse in the comments section.
My Time Out New York compadres David Fear and Joshua Rothkopf, in addition to 11 other colleagues and friends (Stephen Garrett, Andrew Grant, Aaron Hillis, Kevin B. Lee, Karina Longworth, Maitland McDonagh, Troy Patterson, Nicolas Rapold, Lisa Rosman, Nick Schager and S. James Snyder), have just published our picks and blurbs for the top 50 films of the decade. I don't consider myself a list guy, but it's in the job description so I went really personal with my choices (different day, different rules, sure to be a different list). I'm happy with how it turned out, and that I got to blurb for Abbas Kiarostami's Five Dedicated to Ozu and John Gianvito's The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein in particular. (The latter film is the image you see above.) Click here to read the feature. I've reprinted my ballot submission below, with links to pieces I've written on the films or, in cases where I haven't put pen to paper, to related pieces/other goodies I find particularly inspiring. Hope it all sparks discussion and interest. (KU)
Unless you're an executive at NBC, it's been a great fall season for TV. Despite the many editorials earlier this year heralding Jay Leno's primetime talk show as the death of scripted television (some of them quite convincing), this season has seen a number of new shows become breakout hits: NCIS: Los Angeles, Modern Family, Cougartown, The Cleveland Show. And the debuting show that's generated the most pop-culture buzz is easily FOX's Glee. On the surface it's about the misfits in a high-school glee club as they train for a national competition, but it's really a delightfully bizarre hybrid of teenage soap opera, musical melodrama, larger-than-life comedy and meditation on the unrealistic dreams of kids and the sad compromises of adults. In style and substance it feels like nothing else on television, but unlike most oddball, one-of-a-kind shows, Glee has managed to pull off the hat trick of achieving critical praise, a passionate cult following, and most importantly, impressive ratings. Although it's aired just ten episodes thus far, it's already earned a cover story in Entertainment Weekly and its cast members recently performed the national anthem at the World Series.
I hate to admit it, but a part of me is uneasy about Glee's success. Don't get me wrong, I love the show (and I've got the songs on my iPod to prove it). But I almost wish it was struggling in the ratings and that its creators were scrambling to wrap up the plotlines before the end of the season in case renewal wasn't a sure thing. After all, how long can Glee last? Can this show sustain its strange vibe of whimsy and melancholy for five years, or even two? Continue Reading »
Our man Steven Boone unleashes another video essay/collage. This one is about wolves. It's a reminder, yes, to be thankful tomorrow, but it's also just angry and sad. I, RWK, think it's stunning. Better let him describe it, as he did at his blog, BIG MEDIA VANDALISM:
"Hippy dippy Woodstock director Michael Wadleigh made only one narrative feature film, the majestically weird horror fable Wolfen. Having not seen it since Late Late Show screenings in the 1980's, I remembered Wolfen, faintly, as that other, lesser, wolf flick of 1981.
"Not until screening it recently with a horror afficionado pal did I come to understand it as a reeling peyote vision of New York City's Third World future, the one I'm staggering through presently. Damn. This video is my parting shot as I prepare to join a sad, strange exodus from the city that used to feel like home."
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to keithuhlich@gmail.com and to converse in the comments section.
A celebration of cooking and eating on film. The first version (top) is a straight-up montage with movie titles listed chronologically at the end. The second version is annotated, using text to identify film clips, music cues and offscreen lines as they appear. To watch the videos at the Moving Image Source web site, or to read my written introduction, click here. Happy Thanksgiving!—MZS
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Matt Zoller Seitz is the founder of The House Next Door.
Andrew Sarris wrote of Elia Kazan in The American Cinema that "his career as a whole reflects an unending struggle between a stable camera and a jittery one." Historically that's more or less been the rap on Kazan—a highly-acclaimed filmmaker with many strong titles, but one whose work was too simultaneously bland and conflicted for the critical establishment to elevate him to auteur. The son of Greek immigrants and eventually a famed Broadway director, Kazan began filmmaking with a group-directed short called People of the Cumberland, broke into feature directing with 1945's adaptation of Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and left it 18 films later with a version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon. He came close to greatness on film, though rarely reached it: At his peak period he was at the high end of the middle bracket of several frankly liberal directors, many of whom had crossed over into movies from film and TV. He's lighter and earthier than the leaden, sententious cinema of Stanley Kramer and Richard Brooks, though he never achieves the pure ecstasy and reverie of the best Nicholas Ray. Continue Reading »
I'm sure most of you noticed that friend and fellow blogger Dennis Cozzalio's site, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, recently celebrated its fifth anniversary. Now Dennis turns the thanks back at us in a lengthy post timed to Turkey Week. Yours truly is mentioned within. To answer your question Dennis, I have seen Orphan. Love Vera Farmiga. Think it's stellar in certain regards (especially visual) while still missing something for me. And I wish they had gone with that creepy Sunset Boulevard alternate ending instead of the "I'm not your fucking mommy!" climax. I'm always down with CCH Pounder going out like a champ, though. You a Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight fan, perchance? (See below.)
"When I was a young boy a very wise school teacher once told me to never keep all my thanksgiving bottled up for the official holiday but to spread it throughout the whole year. I certainly remembered that instruction (I was a second or a third-grader, I believe), but I sometimes wonder if I do very well at honoring it and living it out. If so, then good grades all around. But if not, then I can only ask for the indulgence and forgiveness of everyone around me who deserves better. Let this week be the reckoning and the restitution."
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to keithuhlich@gmail.com and to converse in the comments section.
[Editor's Note: The following is the ninth in a series of on-set reports by producer Jeremiah Kipp on God's Land, a feature film written and directed by Preston Miller, whose previous feature, Jones, was covered by The House Next Door here (review), here (interview), and here (podcast).]
Part I: Days Eighteen & Nineteen (Jeremiah Kipp)
The final days of principal photography are upon us. God's Land has been a long haul, exhausting but ultimately rewarding—it reminds me of when I used to run marathons. At a certain point in the middle of the run, the mind concentrates only on moving forward; as the finish line nears, there's a surge of renewed energy.
Preston and I enjoy our location scouting in New Jersey, where we stumble across the perfect location for our hotel scenes. The King's Inn has an outside décor that resembles a pyramid converted into a NASA space shuttle by way of 1950s Americana kitsch. In other words, we took one look at it and knew it was Preston's cup of tea. The hotel owners were reasonable and supportive of low budget independent cinema, though they did enjoy telling long anecdotes about how MTV shot there, and the abundance of trucks and lights and personnel. Preston smiles, acknowledges the grandeur, and tries to make it clear that our mom and pop operation is nothing like that. We're small potatoes! Continue Reading »
A video essay (my first), exploring the similarities between the ending of François Truffaut's The 400 Blows and the beginning and ending of Jonathan Glazer's 2004 film, Birth. Based on an old essay of mine, The 400 Births.
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Jonathan Pacheco is a current web developer and future freelance writer. He blogs and reviews films at Bohemian Cinema.
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to keithuhlich@gmail.com and to converse in the comments section.
If we're to believe the military general in Red Cliff 2 who muses, "The times makes the hero," then somebody ought to tell Magnet Releasing, the American distributors of Red Cliff (John Woo's records-shattering period war epic set in 208 AD), that they're the villain. Just like British distributors before them, Magnet is releasing Woo's five hour, two-part epic as a single film in America, callously lopping off 140 minutes of footage because they simultaneously want to cater to a broad audience as well as to Woo's established fanbase. The times, it seems, when "Asian cinema" is sold as either exotic genre fodder for geeks or high-end Art for the culturally advanced, are against Magnet.
With its sweeping pageantry and spectacularly choreographed battle scenes, Red Cliff falls neatly into both categories, making the temptation to sell it both as a cultural event and tempting junk food understandable though hardly commendable. In doing so, Magnet is only cutting out the legs from underneath either of their respective target niche markets. (South Korean, Singaporean and Japanese distributors released the film in two parts, suggesting that the "international cut" is only tempting to Whitey.) And while the ghettoization of foreign film in America is hardly new news, it particularly reeks here. Continue Reading »
So there's apparently some vampire movie opening today. Seems as good a time as any to resurrect this. (Hattip: Simon Abrams.)
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to keithuhlich@gmail.com and to converse in the comments section.
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