There is nothing more embarrassing than catching a mistake several hours after posting. Spelling and grammar are bad enough but the absolute worst is screwing up is continuity mistakes. Technically today’s strip should have been about three weeks ago. The “current day” had been going too long for Kate and Laurel to be having Breakfast together and this couldn’t be the next “day” since there were still a few plot lines to close up before the day was over.
I hate retconning, even for little fixes, since it’s a very dangerous habit to get into. Fortunately for this one time all it took was a single word change but still it’s embarrassing.
I definitely plan to have Laurel and Kate having proper breakfast together in the future.
This week I returned to caper films. Since nearly all of the previous films of this genre I had watched had been British films I decided to see what the French had to offer.
The first of my selection was Rififi by Jules Dassin. it starts out with many of the familiar tropes with Tony “le Stéphanois”, a hardened professional played by Jean Servais, fresh out of prison after five years and is offered the opportunity to do a job, in this case robbing an exclusive jewelry store with a state of the art safe and security system.
The planning and execution robbery itself is a study in meticulous precision taking a nail biting half hour in near silence with a level of precision and accuracy to the point I have heard that actual thieves have used it as a reference.
Things start going badly when a rival crook who is the current sugar daddy of Tony’s mistress (who Tony had brutally beaten because of this) finds out about this when the team’s safe cracker makes the mistake of passing a ring from the store to a barmaid at the crook’s club. The team gets hunted down one by one until the son of Jo “le Suédois”, Tony’s partner, is taken hostage, which leads to a tragic finale.
This is a dark, cynical bit well crafted It amazes me how a film that is technically less violent than most crime films I’ve watched is more gripping because of all of the terrible brutalities that are merely suggested off camera.
High end jewelers seems to be the proffered target since that’s what the two thieves in the second film on my list Le Cercle Rouge by, Jean-Pierre Melville, go after.
We start the film by following the two in two separate but parallel stories one, Corey who has been told about the job by a corrupt prison guard a day before he is going to leave prison. The other Vogel was being escorted from Marseilles to Paris. He manages to escape from the moving train. By sheer chance he manages to hide in the unlocked trunk of Corey’s car and get’s driven through the police parameter hunting for him.
Later Vogel and Corey(who saw Vogel crawl into his trunk) strike up a friendship with Vogel saving Corey from a group of thugs who had been hunting Corey.
From here the film goes back and fourth from the manhunt led by Commissioner Mattei and our two protagonists planning and finally carrying out the heist (which involves being able to shoo out the alarm system with a sniper rifle (it’s best not to think about it too much))
Regrettably while this film was very well done it really didn’t work for me. It was very slow paced with a weird existentialist streak which I had trouble following.
For the sake of diversity in this series, I try to keep different versions of Queen’s Bohemian Rhaosidues down to a minimum no matter how tempting they may be…
But I like Bluegrass.
So here’s Hayseed Dixie with there unique (and actually quite good) vwesion.
There are times I think that Pixar’s marketing department makes a point of underplaying a lot of the films they are advertising as if to say yes this is a silly idea, sometimes to the point of misdirection. The Incredibles comes to mind where the early teasers seemed to sell it as a superhero parody rather than what was one of the best examples of the superhero genre on film ever.
This was my initial reaction when I first started seeing the teasers for Inside Out. It didn’t help that it that the premise of the film, the adventures of anthropomorphic personifications of the human psyche, while certainly not a bad idea didn’t seem particularly original either. I enjoyed Fox’s Herman’s Head in college and Cranium Command was my favorite ride the one time I went to Epcot. On top of this there was Disney’s classic wartime short Reason and Emotion and there’s a Japanese comic that has just been made into a movie called Poison Berry in My Brainthat I very much want to check out.. I was more than a little worried that this was more proof that Pixar had been loosing it’s way since it had been purchased by Disney.
So When I finally got to around to seeing Inside out I was very pleasantly surprised just how good it was. As I said it involved the life of a young girl named Riley as seen through, Joy, Anger, Disgust, Fear and Sadness. For most of her life she’s been happy led by her dominant emotion, Joy, but when her family moves to San Francisco she starts to lean to Sadness and from there depression.
What I found myself loving about this film is while what I just described would serve as the basis for some dull but inspiring afternoon drama, in the mind of Reilly all metaphors are literal with Joy and Sadness literally getting separated from the control tower where only a frantic Anger, Fear and Disgust are left in charge while Joy and Sadness are lost within Riley’s long term memory and subconscious trying desperately to get back and fix things… Meanwhile back in reality the result is a young girl on the verge of nervous breakdown.
This is sad on it’s own, but in the Pi that is our principle location it is epic. The metaphorical architecture of Reilly’s hope’s, dreams, sense of morality and greatest loves begin to literally collapse and slip into oblivion making the sense of urgency almost visceral.
There is so much I liked about this film as a lover of animation I loved it’s craft. Everything about it is beautiful. The script is so smart I know I have to go see this again just to catch all of the things in it that I know I missed simply because there was so much of it. The cast was great. This is the first Pixar film I would consider an ensemble piece with Amy Poehler, (Joy) Phyllis Smith (Sadness), Bill Hader (Fear), Lewis Black (Anger) and Mindy Kailing (Disgust) acting as a well-oiled machine. I would definitely watch the situation comedy starring them in a similar working environment.
I also liked the psychiatry of the film. I confess I haven’t kept up with much theory about the mechanics of personality since the 101 course I took in college but the complexities of the various emotions. The story makes it clear that the “bad” emotions are just important as the one “good” emotion Joy who ironically in making sure Reilly is always happy has actually stunted a lot of the Reilly’s development. At the same time Sadness who has been mostly repressed throughout Reilly’s child starts the plot as her influence begins to increase much to everybody’s surprise including her own. As the film moves to it’s climax it becomes clear that Sadness is a necessary ingredient of maturity as it includes not just pain but empathy.
I hope everybody has a pleasant Fourth of July… I for one plan to get some work done this mourning, catch a showing of something around twoish, do some people watching at the various celebrations drop my bike off at the house and the catch the fireworks at Gasworks.
Just to get us all into the mood of the season. A little scene from one of my favorite historical musicals 1776; Now while I’m a huge fan of this play and I think it’s a great introduction to everything that was going on in the Continental Congress to the point if I taught American History in junior high school I’d make my class watch it.
Having said that I’m not the biggest fan of the soundtrack… with about one or two exceptions most of them are kind of goofy with this one, “The Egg” being the goofiest of them all… but in a fun way.
I have to say with Wild Turkeys making such a huge comeback back east (I saw three during my trip to Maine) I just might start agreeing with Franklin.
Since the latest Marvel Cinematic universe film, Ant Man starring Paul Rudd is coming out in a couple of weeks I thought I’d make my selection as topical as possible and base it around all on Paul Rudd films to watch before seeing Ant Man
Now while Rudd’s career has been all over the place both of the films I chose were romantic comedies. The first has become a modern classic, at least in the high school comedy subgenre,Clueless.
I’m embarrassed to say that Clueless is one of those films I didn’t bother with when it was out in the theaters and then never got around to. A modern telling of the Jane Austen novel, Emma It tells the story of pampered princess Cher Horowitz played by Alicia Silverstone who takes a liking to doing good deeds for other people while being oblivious to how people value her.
Rudd plays Cher’s ex stepbrother, Josh, who starts out as a background nuisance throwing snarky commentary about Cher’s but gradually evolves into a confidant and love interest.
I can’t say I’m really a target audience for films like this but it was competently done and I certainly enjoyed it.
In my second film,Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Rudd only plays the bit part of a burned out white surfer in Hawaii who seems to have adapted the surfer/stoner lifestyle after some sort of midlife crisis. Most of his “friends” consider him an annoying poser.
The rest of the story tells about a Hollywood composer played by Jason Segel who takes a Hawaiian vacation to forget about the breakup with his girlfriend, Sarah Marshell, only to find out she’s staying at the same hotel with her rock star boyfriend played by Russel Brand.
The rest of the story is funny and touching as he gradually recovers and learns to find more out of life.
I mostly enjoyed this film as an interesting romantic comedy with an excellent ensemble cast. I was especially impressed by Brand who played his character as a self absorbed jerk who despite all of these faults was still a genuinely nice guy.
ow while Rudd’s career has been all over the place both of the films I chose were romantic comedies. The first has become a modern classic, at least in the high school comedy subgenre, 
