Ido Lupino plays a housekeeper trying to keep her two mentally problematic sisters from the madhouse. Since they are about to be kicked out of their current home she asks her boss if they can stay with them. At the amenities time her "nephew" rips off her boss, an old actress with a wild past and decides he can do the same to his aunt when she returns.
Spoilers:
This was presented to me as a dark comedy in the vein of "Arsenic and Old Lace" but I don't think so. It does have light moments but it's more drama with some levity than anything else. Everyone in it is good in their roles, though except for the old actress, they are play terrible people. The actress tires of the two sisters who are quite a handful and wants them and Ida gone... so Ida kills her. The nephew shows ups, eventually finds out and tries to blackmail his auntie the killer. He is wanted by the police already.
Since this is not a well know film, I won't spoil too many more details but I am not sure what the moral, if any there is. It's pretty good overall, though. The sets and matt paintings give it a great old horror film vibe and it looks amazing. The opening titles are fantastic!
Hundreds of Beavers is a low budget independent slapstick comedy that heavily draws on cartoon action and settings with liberal nods to Buster Keaton among others. Only costing 150 000 $, it's brought in over a million. Pretty good for a film made by two friends with only the experience of making another black and white film called "Lake Michigan Monster" with similar techniques at this one for the much lesser sum of 7 000$!
The entire movie is mostly special effects done with After Effects and it's very affective. The production reads as a cartoon and the characters are over the top. All the animals are either animated or actors in mascot costumes. To promote the film the director and main actors went on the road with a live show added to the cinema experience.
The plot is appropriately more like a Warner Brothers short than a live action film. This mostly works but 108 minutes is a little long to sustain such craziness. I can't say it doesn't succeed, because it does for the most part mainly from the energy the cast and crew bring to it. Ryland Tews as the Applejacks salesman whose business is destroyed by the actions of nearby beavers. This leads into an escalating conflict between him and the beavers and the stakes are made higher when he falls in love with a merchant's daughter but can't marry her unless he brings the merchant hundreds of beaver pelts. I don't think I'll try and lay out many beats of the plot as that will spoil it for new viewers and the comedy relies on how surpassing and outlandish it all is.
I can 100% see where this will get old really fast for some people so it's not for everyone. I thought it was charming and fun to watch. Tews is a handsome, muscular guy that runs around shirtless in the winter snow a good part of the film so there's that element if the nonstop cartoon aspect gets old for you. I didn't laugh out loud but I did appreciate effort made and found it amusing all the way through. The act of getting this made on so little money with over 1 500 effects shots alone makes it worth a look!
Sylvie is obsessed with the portrait of her grandmother's lover in the family estate and is distressed when her father sells it to pay some bills. There are stories that Alain, the man in the portrait haunts the estate and he does in fact do just that. Before the painting is hauled off he leaves it and begins walking around the house and sort of stalking Sylvie in a way not cool by today's standards.
To make her feel better, her dad has a 16th birthday ball for her and hires a ghost visit her so she can feel better about losing the painting. Robbers and the son of the man who bought the painting are caught creeping around the estate one night but are mistaken for actors hired to play the ghost. The real actor arrives and they decide that 3 is better than one since he can instantly appear in different locations. The real ghost is till walking about as well.
This is sort of needlessly complicated and I can see that it's light enough to watch and find some charm in it but I found it a bit banal. The best thing in for me were the effects. They used the same reflection effects Disney's Haunted mansion uses to make it appear translucent ghosts are integrated into the sets and its very well done. Not a must see but maybe light enough to watch before bed.
Made as a love letter to print journalism, this film is, like all Wes Anderson films, odd, hard to categorize and filled with a multitude of known actors here in The Slammer - including Told Swinton and Griffin Dunne!
Separated into parts like the sections of a newspaper the film does not follow one story but manages to connect several stories presented as articles to be published in the last issue of The French Dispatch after the death of the editor played by Bill Murray. Like an actual newspaper or magazine, you have different stories but told in the same oddball style that brings them all together. It's funny in an odd way and touching, also in an odd way and you might moved to tears at the end and disregard the text over the editor's doorway in the file which simply states... "No Crying".
As a french speaker I may have found this funnier than a non speaker would as it does have a fair amount of French dialogue (with graphically integrated subtitles) and knowing a little of the language makes names and some other details jump out of the background more. Like all Andersen's film, it's VERY stylized in performances and cinematography and may not be everyone tastes. If you do like his work I think you will find this charming.
My first experience with this film was at the Harvard Square theatre in Cambridge, MA somewhere around 1979-1980 and was, maybe appropriately so, an odd one. As I approached the ticket booth I was pulled aside by the cinema management and I immediately thought they somehow knew I had a bottle of vodka hidden in my coat pocket but it was much stranger a reason. I was told I was getting in free for my excellent costume… apparently I looked exactly like Harold and for a free ticket I played along. I have never seethe movie, not did I know much about it but I have to say - they weren’t wrong - I truly did look like I was dressed as the main character. I left the cinema with a new favourite film that night and I had barely touched the vodka I bought.
Spoilers
The story is quirky and certainly not for everyone. The humour is pretty dark but the emotional responses it brings are equally bright. Harold is a rich teenager, emo and goth long before they were a thing who tries to get his mother’s attention by faking suicide on a regular basis. He goes to funerals for people he doesn’t know and that’s where ehe meets Maude, a woman close to 80 and they fall in love. Maude is a firecracker, interest in death like Harold but a lot closer to it, in so many ways we discover as the film goes on, that she is hell bent on living as full and crazy a life as she can. She steals cars and trees. She poses nude. She teaches Harold how to live free and to enjoy what he has.
There is a dark side to the humour and a dark side to Maude. Harold’s suicides attempts go beyond bad taste as his mother tries to set him up with various young girls to marry. He sets himself on fire in front of one and in a very funny scene stabs himself in front of another who decides he (rightly), like her, is acting and then she stabs herself. His mother checks in on them to see him standing over her in a pool of fake blood. Maude gets him out of military service by faking her own death at his hands and his military uncle does not call the police but instead decides to cover it up. The most poignant part of the film passes so quickly many don’t see it on first viewing. As Maude and Harold talk, he see a number tattooed on her wrist. She was a victim of the holocaust, she never says anything about it but it becomes obvious that a lot of her outlook and behaviour is coloured by that terrible experience.
Then ending of the movie is either unbearably sad or life affirming depending on what you bring into it yourself. Maude had decided long ago to kill herself at 80 and despite Harold proposing to her she goes through with it, leaving him screaming and crying in pain and grief. He brings his sports car turned into a here to cliff and drives it off the edge. But he hasn’t killed himself, he has killed that old morse part of himself and plays the flute Maude gave him as a gift and walks away from the cliff’s edge.
Critics and audiences did NOT like this film on release, it was too strange and morbid many thought. I suspect the idea of a teenager having sex with an elderly woman was also a huge factor and for that reason I think the film missed out on the second life many others get on TV after the theatrical run is over.
Colin Higgins who wrote the original story, had a prequel and sequel planned, but they never materialized. Maybe that is for the best, it’s hard to imagine adding more to this story in any way that would work. There have been many stage productions in both English and French that I have somehow managed to not see over the years.
Ruth Gordon is so amazing as Maude you’ll never forget her performance. She is inspiring. She lived in nearby Quincy when I lived in Boston and gave a talk a the Boston Public Library that is was privileged to attend. She did not disappoint. Bud Cort as Harold was also inspired casting.
Does the film hold up? It’s still one of the oddest and funniest films made so if you have not seen it, give yourself a real treat and do it NOW.
A lost classic of early cable, this almost impossible to see Cinemax Special is AMAZING. I am a fan of Ann Magnuson, so my enthusiasm is expected and this is the project that endeared me to her early on. I recorded it on VHS and it now resides in a digitized crappy looking file on my computer.
The story is that of a biker chick (Magnusson) on her way to the red-neck-orama (or something) with her boyfriend (Meatloaf) when she has a terrible accident and flies off the bike and into the world of van art. Trying to find her way home before the show start (Vulcan Death Grip - Also Magnuson) she meets version of Stevie Nicks, Gala Dali, Shirley Maclaine and a televangelist (also all played by Ann). The comedy special also has appearances by Eric Bogosian and Joey Arias as Salvador Dali(!). In the end the good fairy (also Magnuson) appears and tells her she had the power to get home all along. Oh and she has a talking bong throughout.
So, yes, this 30 minute of WTF, art references and pop culture parody as only Ann can pull off. I, of course, made everyone I ever met watch this so they would understand why I would occasionally scream « ES SURREAL! » and demand to see the « pizza sex machina ». This may not be for everyone, but it’s wildly funny and out there. So why is is impossible to see now?
One reason this has fallen into obscurity might be it’s timing. It wasn’t broadcast at a time where Cinemax could have created a cultural phenomenon out of a 30 minute special from a New York performance artist. Another reason was it might have only been shown once because of some odd controversy from one of the jokes. This is all from my not very strong memory, but there were a lot of AIDS activists upset because the bong tells Ann who has just shook herself out of the televangelist character that they better get out of the TV van quickly « before they find out who we are and sentence us to an AIDS camp ». This was an especially sensitive time for people with AIDS… putting them (and all gay people) into camps was an actual plan the religious right was promoting. However, in another case of humourless and misguided outrage, the fact this was a joke bringing that to light and mocking it - not encouraging it was completely missed. Most of the special still dates well enough but I think this one problem will forever sink the chance of this brilliant special ever getting restored and up for sale again.
Heil Honey, I'm Home. Canceled off BSB (the square dish people if I remember right...) in 1990 after one episode.
As Jeffrey Ross stated today, "if it's not offending someone it's probably not a joke."
Archive.org has started to list Arthur Askey and Will Hay films. Both are great and the kind of films that beg the question of "Why no US distribution?" It's not like there's a wealth of exclusively understood-only-by-the-British references. I will say that for once when I went to archive-org to look them up, (ex: Askey and ex: Hay)I was not presented with endless garbage occluding my search as is so often the case. So, yay.
I'd prattle on about their history and careers, but resources for that will hopefully be evident through the links provided. Instead just enjoy the comedy, IMHO underappreciated in their own country. We tend to rhapsodize about the Marx Brothers and W.C Fields, but Hay and Askey (along with Formby and others)were providing top notch comedy for the era that just never made it over here. Well, now, over here is the world.
Paul Reubens is back as Pee Wee Herman - the nerd man-child who skyrocketed to 80s fame from a late-night cult "kiddie" stage show on The Sunset Strip to feature films. Paul created Pee Wee with the improv group The Groundlings (along with pals Lynn Stewart, John Paragon and Edie McClurg).
After Paul got cut in the audition process for SNL's 1980-81 cast (they chose Gilbert Gottfried instead), Paul scraped together some money from his parents and created his own showcase - a 1981 stage show homage to kiddie shows of the 50s called "The Pee Wee Herman Show". The stage show was a smash and Pee Wee started making talk show rounds with frequent appearances on "Late Night with David Letterman" (the non-curmudgeonly young Dave actually enjoyed Pee Wee - go check YOUTUBE).
Hollywood came calling with Paul directed by a newcomer named Tim Burton in Pee Wee's Big Adventure. The film had a modest budget and made a nice profit. CBS-TV then gave him a Saturday morning show (and an amazing Christmas Special) that harkened back to the original stage show "Puppetland" premise. Pee Wee's Playhouse was a smash with kids 8 to 80. Pee Wee starred in a second film (the bland Big Top Pee Wee) and appeared in a great cameo with Frankie & Annette in 1987's film Back to the Beach. He sang "Surfin' Bird".
In 1991, during a visit with his elderly parents in Florida, Paul was letting off some steam at a porno theater (ok, like who hasn't gone running from a visit with parents to a bar, brothel or bathhouse?). It wasn't his lucky day -- because he was part of a routine bust of patrons. A private yank in a darkened movie house got his TV show and toys yanked by corporate execs. Pee Wee was promptly given a "time-out".
Paul Reubens has continued to work in films and TV (BLOW, Murphy Brown, 30 Rock) and last summer decided he would bring back Pee Wee Herman into the post- celeb sex tape/intern oral sex in White House/infomercial/internet world. Within days, Ticketmaster was overloaded from the public eager to welcome him back without question.
30 years have passed since The Pee Wee Herman Show played at LA's Roxy (later taped for HBO special) and the stage show has been updated with TV show elements incorporated for a month long run of sold out shows at LA's Club Nokia. Paul Reubens who has been doing Q&A sessions with 'super fans' after the show tells them that, this time around, he and his cast of Pee Wee Show vets: Lynn 'Miss Yvonne' Stewart and John 'Jambi' Paragon are really feeling the LOVE from audiences.
It's a comeback that isn't without its ulterior motives...Paul Reubens hopes to get funding for two Pee Wee feature films that he's written (one a CGI fantasy spectacle about Puppetland and the kidnapping of The King of Cartoons; and the other as a Valley of The Dolls-type dark comedy about the lessons of fame). Paul (at age 57) has seen all sides of celebrity & fame and is even open to a younger actor of the Johnny Depp-ilk taking over the iconic Pee Wee role. The character, who refused to conform and grow up, just might be enjoying his childhood a little while longer.
Here is the MISTER BUNGLE educational film that Pee Wee showed in both the 1981/2010 stage shows - and is still getting laughs.
Only in the 80s could a movie about two guys defiling a corpse over a long holiday weekend be considered a great comedy. Oh, who am I kidding. It is a great comedy.
I can't believe this is the best version of the trailer I can find on YouTube.
