Monday, December 26, 2011

Check out the big list on Brad: Essential American film comedies, 1895-1963

A friend asked me to compile a list of my favorite film comedies. What started off as an offhand exercise turned, as it usually does, into an obsessive quest. Here's Part One of a survey of those movies I think it's essential for you to see if you are a student of comedy, or just need to laugh your ass off.

What do you think? Help me out and let me know what I missed -- you will earn a shiny star and smiley face!


BEST AMERICAN FILM COMEDIES – TO 1963


CHAPLIN

Dough and Dynamite
The Tramp
One A.M.
The Rink
The Immigrant
The Kid
The Gold Rush
City Lights
Modern Times


KEATON

One Week
The Playhouse
Cops
Our Hospitality
Sherlock, Jr.
The Navigator
Seven Chances
Go West
The General
Steamboat Bill Jr.
The Cameraman


LLOYD

Never Weaken
Grandma’s Boy
Safety Last!
The Freshman
The Kid Brother
Speedy


LAUREL & HARDY

The Battle of the Century
You’re Darn Tootin’
Two Tars
Big Business
Bacon Grabbers
Angora Love
Wrong Again
The Finishing Touch
The Music Box
The Flying Deuces


CHARLEY CHASE

Mighty Like a Moose
Crazy Like a Fox
All Wet
Movie Night


MISC SILENTS

Tillie’s Punctured Romance (Mack Sennett)
Hands Up! (Raymond Griffith)
Mabel’s Blunder (Mabel Normand)
Show People (Marion Davies)
There It Is (Charley Bowers)

ERNST LUBITSCH

The Marriage Circle
Trouble in Paradise
The Love Parade
Monte Carlo
Ninotchka
The Shop around the Corner
To Be or Not to Be
Heaven Can Wait


MARX BROTHERS

Animal Crackers
Monkey Business
Horse Feathers
Duck Soup


W.C. FIELDS

The Dentist
The Fatal Glass of Beer
The Barber Shop
It’s a Gift
Man on the Flying Trapeze
The Bank Dick
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break


THREE STOOGES

Men in Black
Punch Drunks
Violent is the Word for Curly
Micro-Phonies
Brideless Groom
You Natzy Spy!
Disorder in the Court
Hold That Lion!


ROBERT BENCHLEY

The Treasurer's Report
The Sex Life of the Polyp
How to Sleep
A Night at the Movies
That Inferior Feeling


WARNER BROTHERS CARTOONS

Porky in Wackyland
Rhapsody in Rivets
Rabbit Fire
Rabbit Seasoning
Duck! Rabbit! Duck!
The Big Snooze
Duck Amuck
High Diving Hare
What’s Up, Doc?
Baseball Bugs
Rhapsody Rabbit
Rabbit of Seville
What’s Opera, Doc?
Duck Dodgers in the 24 ½ Century
One Froggy Evening
Show Biz Bugs
Baby Bottleneck
The Scarlet Pumpernickel
Robin Hood Daffy
The Dover Boys at Pimento University
For Scent-imental Reasons
The Foghorn Leghorn
Pigs in a Polka
Wackiki Rabbit
Porky’s Duck Hunt
Too Hop to Handle
Scaredy Cat
Ali Baba Bunny
Fallin’ Hare
Ain’t She Tweet
Long-Haired Hare
The Great Piggy Bank Robbery


SCREWBALL COMEDIES

The Front Page
It Happened One Night
Twentieth Century
My Man Godfrey
The Awful Truth
Bringing Up Baby
My Favorite Wife
Ball of Fire
Midnight
Theodora Goes Wild
Nothing Sacred
The Philadelphia Story
Here Comes Mr. Jordan
I Was a Male War Bride
His Girl Friday
Holiday


PRESTON STURGES

The Great McGinty
Christmas in July
The Lady Eve
Sullivan’s Travels
The Palm Beach Story
Hail, the Conquering Hero
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek


MISC

Road to Morocco
Woman of the Year
Adam’s Rib
The Inspector General
The Seven-Year Itch


BILLY WILDER

Some Like It Hot
The Apartment
The Fortune Cookie

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

HORROR HARVEST: Part Thirteen: New masters for a new millennium

"Let the Right One In" -- a terrifying romance.
Horror films continue to come from unexpected places and fresh perspectives. Mexico brought us Guillermo del Toro; Sweden gave birth to “Let the Right One In.” Japan and South Korea continue a flood of horror offerings that are either released or remade in America. Low-budget innovators such as Lucky McKee and Bill Paxton and auteurs like Terry Gilliam still turn out disturbing narratives that push the boundaries.

Whether horror will continue to boom and blossom, or whether it will wither into a curio like the Western genre, will depend on the mood of the movie-going public and the inventiveness of writers and directors. It will remain fascinating because of the vicarious transgressions it lets us experience; because it posits a world beyond the mundane; because it dares us to look into our darkest depths.

Then it lets us go, at least nominally. Remember – it’s only a movie, it’s only a movie . . .


The Devil’s Backbone
Guillermo del Toro
2001





The Others
Alejandro Amenabar
2001





Bubba Ho-Tep
Don Coscarelli
2002





Frailty
Bill Paxton
2002





May
Lucky McKee
2002





Tideland
Terry Gilliam
2005





Pan’s Labyrinth
Guillermo del Toro
2006





The Host
Bong Joon-ho
2006





Grindhouse
Quentin Tarentino, Robert Rodriguez
2007





The Orphange
Juan Antonio Bayona
2007





Teeth
Mitchell Lichtenstein
2007





Let the Right One In
Tomas Alfredson
2008


Monday, November 14, 2011

HORROR HARVEST: Part Twelve: Art-house horrors, 1973-2000

"Don't Look Now" -- horror film as Cubist puzzle.
While mainstream horror blockbusters and a seemingly endless stream of highly graphic, cheaply made horror series were flooding the market in the last quarter of the 20th century, a handful of filmmakers were producing a third line of product. Iconoclasts (Roeg), past masters (Russell, Zemeckis) and future horror superstars (del Toro, Jackson) were all crafting well-thought-out, innovative works that deserve a closer look.



The Wicker Man
Robin Hardy
1973




Don’t Look Now
Nicholas Roeg
1973




The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane
Nicolas Gessner
1976





Burnt Offerings
Dan Curtis
1976





The Changeling
Peter Medak
1980




Near Dark
Kathyrn Bigelow
1987


The Lair of the White Worm
Ken Russell
1988





Lady in White
Frank LaLoggia
1988





Jacob’s Ladder
Adrian Lyne
1990





Man Bites Dog
Remy Belvaux, Andre Bonzel, Benoit Poelvoorde
1992





Cronos
Guillermo del Toro
1993





Cemetery Man
Michele Soavi
1994





Heavenly Creatures
Peter Jackson
1994




What Lies Beneath
Robert Zemeckis
2000


Friday, November 11, 2011

HORROR HARVEST: Part Eleven: Horror goes mainstream; or, bring the kids!

Robert Shaw meets his comeuppance in "Jaws."
When horror moved from the drive-in to the multiplex, the trends that had dominated the early 1970s were ripe for harvest. The first major step towards Steven Spielberg’s present status as America’s most influential director was the phenomenal success of “Jaws.”

Although it is a thriller and an adventure film (with a touch of a tribute to Ibsen’s “Enemy of the People” as well as "Moby Dick") as well, it is in structure and tone a horror film. Its massive financial return created the “summer blockbuster” and made major studios decide to haul horror out of the ghetto, provide substantial funding, promotional and booking support, and seek out up-and-coming talents in the genre. The “Halloween,” “Friday the 13th,” “Nightmare” and many other lesser film series (“Chucky,” “Leprechaun,” et al) all sprung from this impulse.
The seemingly unstoppable Jason from the "Friday the 13th" film series.

It didn't hurt that the most significant American horror writer since Edgar Allan Poe came along. Stephen King was not only in touch with the zeitgeist, he was prolific. His work was seemingly written with an eye to film adaptation -- dozens of books have been converted into film and/or television projects, some more than once. Whether it was the gimmicky menace of "The Mangler" or the epic post-apocalyptic vision of "The Stand," people found profit in putting it on screen.

It seemed that every established and aspiring director wanted a horror film on his or her resume.Kubrick, Nichols, Donner were among the honored directors who picked up the blood y mantle. More significantly, A-list actors such as Gregory Peck, Jack Nicholson, Brad Pitt and James Caan signed on to horror projects. Most significantly of all, in 1991 "The Silence of the Lambs" became the first horror and to date only horror film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.

The examples listed below are a representative selection of films that occupied the public consciousness as much or more than the more “legitimate” dramas, adventures, and comedies that used to hold sway.

All these mainstream efforts legitimized the grammar and content of film horror. Just as much of Spielberg's early work was a synthesis of classic-era movie tropes, so did the big-budget horror films subsume and build on the film work of the past. To some extent, they would overshadow and displace their ancestors in the filmgoing mind. It would take a self-conscious, post-modern era to bring back the memories of those progenitors.


Jaws
Steven Spielberg
1975





Carrie
Brian DePalma
1976





The Omen
Richard Donner
1976





Alien
Ridley Scott
1979





The Shining
Stanley Kubrick
1980





The Howling
Joe Dante
1981





Fright Night
Tom Holland
1985





Aliens
James Cameron
1986





The Lost Boys
Joel Schumacher
1987





Misery
Rob Reiner
1990





The Silence of the Lambs
Jonathan Demme
1991





Wolf
Mike Nichols
1995





The Frighteners
Peter Jackson
1996





Se7en
David Fincher
1996





Sleepy Hollow
Tim Burton
1999