Author Archives: paulydeathwish

Adieu au langage [2014)

It’s been several years since I’ve seen this.

And I’m afraid.

Afraid that perhaps it hasn’t aged as well as I would hope.

But one thing is certain:  this film is infinitely more enjoyable than Le Livre d’image.

Yes.

Perhaps that is the problem.

The Image Book lacked a girl and a gun.

Is it thus even a movie?

Well, have no fear:  Adieu au langage has both…and some nudity!

And a dog.

Roxy.

Godard’s dog.

Roxy Miéville.

But first, let me just say this:  the real star here is Marie Ruchat.

More exactly, her hair.

The beautiful redhead.

Sure, Héloïse Godet is the fit brunette whom we see nude quite often in this film, but Ruchat harmonizes with the autumn leaves.

The dead leaves like honey in the calm fountain.

Bird bath.

The blood lemons that tinge as red spreads.

The electric poppies like Thoreau at dog’s-eye-view.

We can relate.

It pleases the eyes.

The difficulty of the film is rewarded in painterly images.

Not so with that which followed (Le Livre d’image).

Perhaps Godard caught himself.

Realized he was relying too much on the KNOWN.

Owed it to himself to push on…forwards…into the UNKNOWN.

Switzerland was known.

Comfortable.

Easy.

Beautiful.

An excellent film.

Compared to what.

Reexamine Godard.

Timeless imagery here.

But the difficulty of a filmmaker having difficulty making a film.

Any film.

If Joyce had kept writing after Finnegans Wake.

Lived.

Godard had already coughed in this film (four years before Le Livre d’image).

 

-PD

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Heartbeeps [1981)

Continuing on an era.

And QAnon posted.

So a maximum of counterpoint might be derived.

Andy Kaufman didn’t do many films.

But here he is on full display.

As we’ve already reviewed My Breakfast with Blassie, we are getting quite close to surveying his entire big-screen oeuvre.

Down to brass tacks…

This film is mostly mediocre.

I could see some people getting a huge kick out of it.

But not me.

My main complaint is that it restrains Kaufman’s abilities far too much.

Sadly, his robot character, ValCom-17485, isn’t that convincing.

The premise of this film is GREAT!

The delivery/execution is mostly pure mediocrity.

But there is one exception.

And for that we must give a nod to Allan Arkush.

Yes, he had just come off directing The Ramones in Rock ‘n’ Roll High School.

And sadly he would go on to helm the atrocious Caddyshack II.

But at least he shows some talent in Heartbeeps…if only briefly.

When Kaufman and Bernadette Peters’ batteries hit zero.

It is truly a wistful moment.

With their “son” Phil (a robot made by robots) looking on.

Jerry Garcia apparently was the “voice” for Phil (though Phil mostly emits bleeps and swoops).

In any case, the batteries running out…that is poignant.

Because parents will go to the ends of the Earth for their kids.

Thus, one true cinematic moment.

But the rest is cutout bin.

 

-PD

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The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu [1980)

Again we come back.

Revitalized?

Perhaps.

Definitely living with chemistry.

Better living ahead?

Maybe.

But death followed for Peter Sellers.

This was his final film.

And so it is spooky (in a way).

It came out two weeks after his death.

I must admit.

I had a hard time watching this one at first.

On first view, it wasn’t that funny to me.

Indeed, it is a rather strange comedy.

But let’s get really strange.

The executive producer was Hugh Hefner.

Follow the white rabbit.

And now we shall come to QAnon in full force.

Is it real?

Is it bullshit?

Fred Manchu.

Call me Fred.

Who is QAnon?

They don’t mention much about rabbits anymore, do they?

And like me, they are fond of taking inordinately-long pauses between bursts of communication.

Transient random-noise bursts with announcements.

My brain is coming back.

Watch out, world!

Fred Manchu did laundry at Eton.

Eton blue or shelduck blue.

Sid Caesar or Cyd Charisse.

Caesar’s Palace or…

Down to brass tacks.

Tax?

This film is in parallel to (believe it or not) Live and Let Die.

Jane Seymour (Bond) and Helen Mirren (Sellers).

And Sellers in Casino Royale of 1967.

Not to be confused with the best Bond film made thus far:  Casino Royale of 2006.

Seymour (OBE)

born Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg

Mirren (DBE)

born Helen Lydia Mironoff

Live and Let Die (1973) was really the breakout performance of young Seymour’s early career.

There is juxtaposition…because you might know Seymour best as Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993-1998).

Sultry “Solitaire” (Seymour) is hardly recognizable next to her twenty-year-senior “Dr. Quinn”.

But sex sells.

And it just goes to show that HARDLY ANYONE gets to start off classy.

Stay classy.

In our film, the promiscuous Alice Rage (Mirren) ironically (?) gets an undercover job as a double for the Queen of England.  She then falls for the black-fingernailed Fu Manchu and becomes the 166-year-old (?) villain’s wife.

For those who only know Mirren as The Queen (2006), it is worth revisiting her early years for a jolt of WTF.

Though Mirren had been working in film seven times as long as Seymour when she took this role of Alice Rage in The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu, it was still something of a feather in her cap (one might imagine).

And though we might suspect this was the depth of her crappy early roles, it wasn’t.

The previous year, Mirren had been in the infamous film Caligula (produced by Penthouse magazine).

[as noted earlier, our film was a Playboy Productions venture with Hugh Hefner acting as executive producer]

Further, Mirren played a prostitute in the contemporaneous Hussy of 1980.

If you only know Mirren from American Treasure:  Book of Secrets, I can imagine your shock.

BTW…don’t make the easily-forgivable mistake of confusing Mirren for Judi Dench (the “M” of the Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig-era Bond films).

Which brings us back to Q.

Is QAnon legit?

Where is Q?

Why hasn’t Steve Pieczenik commented on Q?

Is Q a “flypaper coup” (to quote Wayne Madsen re: Turkey’s failed coup)?

Hard to say.

For me.

One thing is for sure:  Mirren and Dench both appeared in 1968’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Burt Kwouk makes a brief appearance early in our film…as he drops the MacGuffin (after drenching his burning sleeve with it).

Look to Stonehenge.

Moreover, Steve Franken (the butler from The Party) plays Sid Caesar’s FBI partner here.

Franken was disgraced Minnesota Senator Al Franken’s cousin.

Let’s see if Q has posted anything.

Nope.

Weird.

 

-PD

 

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Le Livre d’image [2018)

And so I’m back.

Sort of.

Maybe.

With Godard.

Can we go from back to front?

After having gone halfway from front to back?

More importantly:  WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST WATCH?!?

I’m guessing JLG might relish such a reaction.

But really.

Le Livre d’image (The Image Book) is a thoroughly fucked-up film.

Music stops and starts.

Ok, standard Godard.

Images run and then go to black screen.

Again, standard Godard.

But something is further about this film.

Perhaps the most accessible touchstone would be the glitchy music of Radiohead circa Kid A and Hail to the Thief (to name my two favorites).

To wit:  Godard seems to be enjoying fucking with his audience.

Every possible convention of cinema is destroyed and frustrated by his anti-art approach.

It is Swiss.  It is dadaist (in a certain sense).

But it is stranger…

Which brings us to a crossroads.

Is Godard getting senile?

I mean, seriously:  is this the work of someone falling apart?

It may be.

There is an achingly-sad moment near the end when we hear that trademarked Godard narrative voice break up.

Coughing.

Too many cigars.

Almost 90 years old…

But there are other possibilities.

Indeed, The Image Book hearkens back to the Godard of his Dziga-Vertov years.

Extremely obtuse.

Painful cinema.

A cinema of cruelty (for Artaud).

We catch glimpses (literally) of Louis-Ferdinand Céline.

Yes.

There is a pessimism here.

But mostly a hard reality.

And yet, is it reality?

The Image Book is surreal…while being mostly in a stark cinematography.

A bit like Picasso’s Guernica.

But more boring.

Can I say that?

Boring.

When you’re 88 years old (like Godard), perhaps things move slower.

Perhaps you could call it “slow cinema”.

But it is FAST and boring.

Many cuts.

Many, many cuts.

Painstakingly (painstakingly?) spliced.

It seems.

Also seems random.

Aleatory.

I Ching.

John Cage.

But onto another aspect.

That of revision.

Revisiting.

The Image Book is to Godard’s oeuvre as Histoire(s) du cinéma is to film history as a whole.

Le Livre d’image could be said to be a sort of CliffsNotes to the work of Jean-Luc Godard.

But there’s just one catch.

You would need to know the oeuvre in its totality to really make much of this pithy summation.

So it is, in a sense, useless.

But it still speaks.

Galileo.

And yet it moves.

Godard is not dead.

Not yet.

And he should know that he will never die.

Not with the timeless body of work he has contributed to humanity.

And yet, that tobacco cough says otherwise.

To live in those lungs.

To feel the weight of mortality pressing down.

Le Livre d’image is a frustrating piece of work.

It has very little (almost none) of the lyrical poeticism that its predecessor Adieu au langage had.

Indeed, perhaps this is a purposeful “let down”.

Like Neil Young’s On The Beach or Lou Reed’s Berlin.

To extend the metaphor there, it is mostly like Metal Machine Music.

It is jarring.

Annoying.

It gets under your skin.

But it makes you think.

And perhaps that is the whole point.

Perhaps Godard is reaching for a new filmic language.

He may not be there yet, but he is reaching.

This is essential, cranky cinema.

The bleeding edge…

 

-PD

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The Music Box [1932)

This is truly a masterpiece.

It transcends short film.

The piano…

¡Ay, carambas!

This film is all about work.

About having shitty jobs.

The things we do for money!

Stan and Ollie work their asses off.

For nothing, basically.

But it provides us with some much-needed levity.

And one need not be overly-erudite to see Sisyphus in all of this.

Very clearly.

Up the hill.

Over and over again.

Just as things seem ok.

The same disaster strikes again.

And you are back at square one.

Groundhog Day.

Hell.

…but funny!

[only funny if you’re not living it]

But this is comedy.

And so we thank God for Jerry Lewis…and Laurel and Hardy…and Charlie Chaplin.

And all the great comedians who have brought the working man (and woman) the laughter they so dearly needed.

There’s some great mise-en-scène and economy of means here from director James Parrott.

Everything revolves around the interminable stairs.

The steps.

Like Potemkin.

Steppes.

Central Asia.

Oh, Stan and Ollie…

They are at their idiotic best here.

Two gen-u-ine dumbasses 🙂

If I could only remember the name of that rock band that destroyed the piano…

 

-PD

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Busy Bodies [1933)

Here’s where you can see a link to Jerry Lewis.

Julius Kelp knocking from beneath a horizontal door after a disaster.

Some great gags.

The record player in the car.

Good idea!

The window bit is great.

So awkward 🙂

But the paintbrush glued to the chin might be the highlight here!

Such hilarity!!!

These films really are good for the soul ❤

 

-PD

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The Geisha Boy [1958)

I couldn’t get through this one the first time I tried.

Too corny.

The whole rabbit thing.

And the carrots.

But I made it through this time.

And it’s a pretty good flick.

Great Technicolor footage of Japan.

There are some truly hilarious scenes.

But this film only holds together due to the lovely Suzanne Pleshette.

Jerry Lewis wasn’t ready yet.

He wasn’t yet in full-on “genius mode”.

And so Pleshette’s lovely visage makes this thing go (to a certain extent).

However, this footage along the Korean border is riotous! 🙂

In short, this is a cute film.

Worth a watch if you’re a big Jerry Lewis fan like me.

 

-PD

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