Anticipating the worst from Diane English’s new remake of The Women is not just typical low expectations regarding remakes in general. My dread is specifically based on dissatisfaction with remakes and updates of films from the 1930s, arguably the best decade in cinema (it is certainly my favorite). While I may recognize and appreciate some favorable redos, such as DePalma’s Scarface (of which I’ve never really been a fan), Mazursky’s Down and Out in Beverly Hills and the multiple repeats from Hitchcock, I am more often disappointed with attempts to recreate ‘30s classics, even when I approach them with already low standards.
Worst, for me, doesn’t necessarily have to do with the quality of the film alone, especially when related to remakes and updates. The titles and versions I’ve selected are hardly the worst in terms of craft or production value — you’ll note there are no Dracula movies on this list — and a few would almost be acceptable if they were more unique or solitary works.
I’ve just discovered that a slap in the face is the funniest thing in the world. Well, maybe not to me. But apparently to a lot of people much younger than me, a slap is a sure guarantee for a big laugh, particularly if the act is man to man or man to woman.
Yesterday I’m at the class I’m taking on Billy Wilder, and I’m really enjoying The Apartment, which is already one of my favorite films of all time. The rest of the students, aged mostly 18-25, are also really enjoying it. After all, it is a timelessly hilarious film. But then, of course, comes the scene where Baxter (Jack Lemmon) finds Miss Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) unconscious in his bed, barely alive after a suicide attempt. It’s a moment that certainly interrupts the comedy, and although some of the stuff that follows, between Baxter, his take-home barfly (Hope Holiday) and his next-door-neighbor doctor (Jack Kruschen), is occasionally funny, the situation overall is pretty serious. Especially the part where the doctor is attempting to revive Miss Kubelik with coffee, questions, smelling salts and some slaps across the face. The students I’m watching the film with, however, think those slaps are the most side-splitting thing they’ve ever seen.
Esquire has published a piece of “reported fiction” called “The Last Days of Heath Ledger,” in which GOLF Magazine editor (!) Lisa Taddeo, writing in the voice of Ledger from beyond the grave, imagines how the actor spent his final days before overdosing on prescription medication in January. Inspired journalistic risk taking or tasteless garbage? Well, Glenn Kenny won’t honor this “loathsome stunt” with the compliment of a link. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Wells, repeatedly justifying the story as an ancestor to Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, essentially accuses his commenters who find it distasteful of hating: “All bold ideas are tut-tutted by the tut-tutters.” Tut. Tut.
I tried to read the story in order to make up my own mind, but I couldn’t get past the third sentence––something about the idea of a writer imagining a dead celebrity talking about how often he masturbated before his accidental death got blocked by my puke filter, I guess. If you are of stronger constitution, you’ll find it here.
Oh, look: it’s my favorite New Year’s Eve scene of all time. Consider this a spoiler alert: if you haven’t seen Billy Wilder’s The Apartment…um, you’re missing out on a fundamental life experience, and you need to watch it immediately. To the rest of you: many happy returns of the new year. We’ll be posting lightly on Monday, and will be back in full-force on Wednesday, January 2nd.
Based on Paul’s recommendation, on our last day in Telluride I went to the encore presentation of People on Sunday. Though I wholeheartedly agree with Paul’s endorsement of Sunday’s fully-modern depiction of courtship, I was equally taken with its utopian treatment of working class leisure. People on Sunday is as much a love letter to the proletariat as the films of the Bolshevik giants, but politics are ultimately pushed aside for a celebration of a pursuit of happiness that’s in some way about transcending social class. As a snapshot of the last wave of youthful abandonment before the Hitler era, it’s a heartbreaker.
If Telluride does anything, it changes the experience of movie watching. The real gold of the program is not sneak peaks at the big Oscar contenders starting the fall festival run, but films pulled from the vault of history. On a sunny Sunday morning in the mountains, I walked into a theater of movie-lovers where a live orchestra tuned their instruments. We clapped as the orchestra was introduced, the lights went down, the screen lit up and they began to play.
People on Sunday, for Germany in 1929, was like Coppola, Spielberg, Scorsese, and Lucas in their early 20’s getting together and saying, “Let’s have some fun making a movie.” (People is a silent film created by Billy Wilder, Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer and Fred Zinneman, among others.) A meandering film about twenty-somethings–an actor, a dancer, a model, a mechanic–breaking from their mundane day jobs for some fun on a Sunday. It’s a celebration of leisure and the little moments that make life worth living (like an 88 year old version of Aaron Katz’ Quiet City Kevin reviewed in FilmCouch #35). I also have to share People contains the most seductive first kiss I’ve ever seen on film. No joke. …Read more
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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Esquire has 
