This is a film written and directed by the great Larry David. Seinfeld taught me everything I know about life from the years I was 12 to 17. I think it permanently warped my view of the world and perception of reality. But it's so damn funny who cares if it made me neurotic? Curb Your Enthusiasm is a little more hit or miss but still one of the best TV shows out there.
I had heard this movie wasn't very good (even in interviews with Larry David) but I figured that it had to have some redeeming qualities because of the pedigree of writer/director. I was wrong. The two main leads are very bad actors. One is the other guy from Wings (not Thomas Hayden-Church) and he's the better of the two. That should show you the level of acting. In another post about this movie someone was talking about the lines and how they are "Davidesque" and looking at the lines on paper they are quite close to Curb Your Enthusiasm but David hadn't developed a way to deliver them yet. The actors just kind of recite the lines and don't know how to emphasize them correctly and they end up just sounding odd, not funny. If you put Larry David in one of these roles it might have been halfway funny.
But as it is the movie is fairly poor. But I think that maybe in the end this movie did a great service to mankind. It let Larry David see that he needed to develop a way to deliver his lines the way he probably said them in his head. Because in this case it didn't translate from paper to actor at all. I know Curb is improvised and that makes it even more clear that Larry David himself is what makes that show funny. If you took David out of Curb and replaced him with an actor who said the exact same lines David said, the show wouldn't be half as funny. And I think he might have learned that from Sour Grapes.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Film: Gun Crazy
This movie was helpfully recommended by the great book, "1001 Movies You Must See." It's a wonderful read with many, many movies that I had no idea ever existed. Some are so obscure even the powerful Netflix doesn't have them, go get yourself this book and a Netflix subscription and enjoy some of these films. It's a treat.
"Gun Crazy" is a film noir from 1949 and begins with a twelve year old boy staring at a revolver in a store window. He's staring lovingly and longingly at it. He immediately takes a brick and smashes the display window to get at it. And that's just the first five minutes.
It gets darker and more intense from that point on. One of my favorite lines (it's corny but it's got flair) is when the main character is talking to his wife (they stick up stores together) and says "We go together like guns and ammunition." Another really dark but great line is when the main character has doubts about his life of crime but his wife drives him to it and he says something like, "This is all so unreal." He turns to his wife, "You're the only thing that's real. The rest is a nightmare." Good quality noir. Check it out.
"Gun Crazy" is a film noir from 1949 and begins with a twelve year old boy staring at a revolver in a store window. He's staring lovingly and longingly at it. He immediately takes a brick and smashes the display window to get at it. And that's just the first five minutes.
It gets darker and more intense from that point on. One of my favorite lines (it's corny but it's got flair) is when the main character is talking to his wife (they stick up stores together) and says "We go together like guns and ammunition." Another really dark but great line is when the main character has doubts about his life of crime but his wife drives him to it and he says something like, "This is all so unreal." He turns to his wife, "You're the only thing that's real. The rest is a nightmare." Good quality noir. Check it out.
Monday, March 8, 2010
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
I was initially going to read "Huck Finn," but I opened the first pages and "Huck" makes references to this book and I decided to go ahead and read Tom Sawyer first.
Like most people, I read Huck Finn in High School and remember very little of it. I remember a raft and floating around the Mississippi that's about it. But I thought I remembered the scene where Huck and Tom attend their own funeral as being from Huck Finn, but the scene is actually in Tom Sawyer. There might have been a movie they showed us in school that was a composite of both books, I'm not sure.
"Tom Sawyer" was actually a very good book, and though written for children it's better written than most contemporary books. The language is just as complex (if not more so) than today's literature because of the time it was written, 1876 when writing was a craft unlike today. I'm not going to write that everything was better back in "the good old days" of 1876 but just read this book and tell me that it's not much richer than the last 10 books written after 1980 you've read. Go on, try it.
"Tom Sawyer" brings one back to how boys got along quite well amongst themselves and makes one wonder how the impact our present "upbringing" of boys is hurting them in the long run. We're bringing boys up very differently than what's depicted in this book and I don't think that's a good thing. They had that book "The Dangerous Guide for Boys" or something a few years ago (followed quickly by The Dangerous Guide for Girls) about how to maybe put some of the "danger" back into being a boy that's missing from our feminized America. But read this book to see some real danger: smoking, murder (witnessed not committed), hidden treasure and raft stealing are all here.
Like most people, I read Huck Finn in High School and remember very little of it. I remember a raft and floating around the Mississippi that's about it. But I thought I remembered the scene where Huck and Tom attend their own funeral as being from Huck Finn, but the scene is actually in Tom Sawyer. There might have been a movie they showed us in school that was a composite of both books, I'm not sure.
"Tom Sawyer" was actually a very good book, and though written for children it's better written than most contemporary books. The language is just as complex (if not more so) than today's literature because of the time it was written, 1876 when writing was a craft unlike today. I'm not going to write that everything was better back in "the good old days" of 1876 but just read this book and tell me that it's not much richer than the last 10 books written after 1980 you've read. Go on, try it.
"Tom Sawyer" brings one back to how boys got along quite well amongst themselves and makes one wonder how the impact our present "upbringing" of boys is hurting them in the long run. We're bringing boys up very differently than what's depicted in this book and I don't think that's a good thing. They had that book "The Dangerous Guide for Boys" or something a few years ago (followed quickly by The Dangerous Guide for Girls) about how to maybe put some of the "danger" back into being a boy that's missing from our feminized America. But read this book to see some real danger: smoking, murder (witnessed not committed), hidden treasure and raft stealing are all here.
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