Tag Archives: magazines

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People [2008)

This film is squeaky clean.

Antiseptic.

And that is not a compliment.

It is waste of great actors (and a decent story).

Jeff Bridges is good.

Great talent.

Excellent contribution here.

He plays what must certainly be a backhanded homage to Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair.

A magazine I used to read.

Dreaming of entering that glitzy world where my idol Nick Tosches wrote.

All is, in fact, vacuous in such a world (as this movie plainly shows).

Which brings us to me.

And this.

Dossier du cinema.

Pauly Deathwish.

I am almost done.

Being an addict.

Being a basket case.

Almost done.

Almost.

Maybe tomorrow?

Kirsten Dunst has great breasts.

Linchpin.

Melancholia.

Poor men love breasts (as it turns out).

Danny Huston falls like the last laugh of Murnau.

Wiping the shitter.

Riches to rags.

Saudi Arabia.

Gillian Anderson plays the villain here (of sorts).

Megan Fox is boring.

Skinny woman are, in general, unattractive.

Real.

Be real.

Keep it real.

Restecp.

White Russian as bridging mechanism.

Ms. Lebowski.

R. D. Laing.

Lord Byron.

The only cinematography is when Dracula is depressed.

I’ve been blessed (?) with a complete lack of suckcess in my lifetime.

Good bit with La Dolce Vita.

Reminiscent of the open-air movie in Cinema Paradiso.

This film could have been a lot better.

Simon Pegg is an all-world talent.

This kind of tripe is beneath his abilities.

 

-PD

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El Crítico [2013)

Fucking masterpiece.

A fucking masterpiece.

God damn…

It’s not often that a movie strikes me this way.

I had every reason not to even WATCH this film.

The premise was too perfect.

Too good to be true.

In English (and on Netflix in the U.S.), it is listed as The Film Critic.

But we pay our respects to international films even if the template of our website goes haywire in so doing.

El Crítico is an Argentine-Chilean coproduction.

Sounds like a wine, right?

Well, this beats any Malbec I’ve ever tasted.

I cannot say enough good things about this picture!

First things first-Hernán Guerschuny is a goddamned genius.

From the very start of this film we get the Godard whisper…that voiceover which started (si je me souviens bien) circa 1967 with 2 ou 3 Choses que je sais d’elle.

The majority (80%?) of El Crítico is in Spanish, but the remaining 20% (in French) makes all the difference.

We have an Argentine film critic, played masterfully by Rafael Spregelburd, who thinks in French.

We are thus privy to his internal monologue throughout the film.

For anyone who writes about motion pictures, El Crítico is indispensable.

Priceless.

Just right.

[not even a pinch of salt too much]

Dolores Fonzi is really good, but Señor Spregelburd is outstanding.

Spregelburd plays a Godard-obsessed film critic (are you seeing why I like this?) whose fumbling attempts at romance stem from his total immersion in cinema.

Guerschuny deftly interpolates scenes which are “meta-” in the same sense that Cinema Paradiso was essentially a film ABOUT film.

And I am a fan of this approach.

It worked perfectly for the greatest artistic creation in the history of mankind (Histoire(s) du cinéma) and it works exceptionally well for Guerschuny’s film [of which James Monaco and la Nouvelle vague I think would be proud].

Guerschuny, like his main character Tellez [Spregelburd], wants to explode the genre of romcom.

Yes, you heard me right:  romcom.

And it thus places El Crítico in the same tradition as Truffaut’s Tirez sur le pianiste and Godard’s Une Femme est une femme.

But something happens to our protagonist Tellez.

And something, I suspect, is in the heart (!) of director Guerschuny.

This is, in fact, a film about appreciating naïveté.

It is a postmodern idea.

And an idea dear to my heart.

It’s quite simple, really…

I can appreciate Arnold Schoenberg as much as AC/DC.

Abel Gance as much as Napoleon Dynamite.

The idea is that pretentious films (and film reviews) can become just as tiresome as trite, Entertainment Weekly boilerplate.

Does that magazine even still exist?

I don’t know.

It’s an honest question.

In fact, I wasn’t even sure I had the title correct.

It’s supermarket-checkout-lane film criticism.

But it’s not worthless.

Sometimes the most esteemed, erudite film critics become blind to the beauty around them.

They don’t give simple movies a chance.

On the other hand, there are a ton of crappy movies out there today.

But El Crítico is not one of them.

But let me tell you about the secret weapon of the film under consideration:

Telma Crisanti.

Without her, this movie fails.

Not miserably, but the façade falls apart.  And then the superstructure…

Ms. Crisanti plays Ágatha, the 16-year-old niece of our film critic Tellez.

It is she who plants the seed within Tellez’ mind that romantic comedies can be sublime.

But the salient point is this:  the masses are not dumb.

I will stand by Thomas Jefferson on this point till the bitter end.

And so The Film Critic speaks to young and old.  And middle-aged.

It is about miracles.

But it is real.

Simply put, this is the Sistine Chapel of romcoms.

Or, what Michelangelo would have done with the genre.

Simply stunning!

-PD

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#5 The Trouble with Mr. Bean [1992)

This is more like it.

Perhaps the most classic bit of all.

Getting dressed in the Mini Cooper.

Brushing his teeth.

Rinsing with the windshield wiper fluid.

It’s bloody clever!

The dentist appointment is rather good, though it’s hard to follow the adventurous trip which precedes it.

The final picnic bit is rather lame.

But the very opening…yes, let’s go back to the top.

Bean, apparently, has an immensely difficult time waking up.

I can wholeheartedly sympathize with that.

He has his grandfather clock.

And then a small alarm on his right nightstand.

And finally a tea kettle alarm on the other nightstand to which he has affixed a hose which runs to the foot of the bed…to spray scalding hot water on his foot.

But there are no snooze buttons.

The little alarm is dropped into a glass of water.

The hose is stopped up by the muscle memory of his big toe.

And back to sleep he goes.

Which all explains why he must rush to the dentist in the fist place.

But let’s examine something else.

In this episode, Bean’s childlike nature is on full display.

He sleeps beneath an A-Team blanket (upon which Mr. T’s flannel, pastel head is displayed clearly).

But just as importantly, Bean sleeps with his teddy bear by his side.

For Bean, his teddy bear is a living entity…a toy doll with feelings.

So Bean tucks in the bear for some extra Zzzz…allowing his faithful friend to sleep in.

And thus begins the frantic race to the dentist.

Furthermore, Bean is solely interested in reading a Batman comic book at his dentist’s office.

None of the vast magazine collection in the waiting room will suffice.

And about that picnic scene…

At least it reminded me that Rowan Atkinson is essentially a mime on this show.

Indeed, he says only one word in his basso profundo voice during this episode.

“Bean”, he intones, as he arrives at the opaque receptionist’s window.

For those in search of art, look no further.

The man says one word.  In the entire episode.

Not zero.  And not 571.

But merely one.

Directors Paul Weiland and John Birkin were starting to get the hang of things with this one.

Highly recommended!

But don’t let your nose hair get caught in your Norelco (as Mr. Bean painfully finds out).  Always reminds me of El Sayyid Nosair.  And Meir Kahane.  And the Jewish Defense League.  MIPT (and by extension, Homeland Security) classifies the JDL as merely a “former terrorist organization”.  (Jewish terrorists…imagine that!)  Even the ADL gets it right regarding the similar sounding JDL:  “thugs and hooligans”.

Kahane (founder of this former Jewish terrorist organization) has a nice little monument in Kahane Park in the West Bank.  Which is to say, Israel seems proud of their terrorist martyrs.  What hypocrisy!

-PD

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