Zhang Yimou, 2004, China (8*)
Following his tremendous success with Hero, top-grossing film in Chinese history, Zhang Yimou continued his enchantment with martial arts action-adventure epics with this story of a group of women who oppose the Tang Dynasty's male leaders continually involving the kingdom in wars. Believing if they overthrow the men and allow the women to take over, they can stop the wars and bring peace to the kingdom.

Ziyi Zhang (Crouching Tiger, The Road Home) is a member of the subversive revolutionary group known as House of Flying Daggers for their penchant of committing assassinations with daggers, made so that they can be thrown in curves, like a boomerang - so hiding behind a tree is useless. This is more exciting filmmaking from Yimou (director of the opening ceremony at the Summer Olympics in Beijing), who seems to have hit his stride in this genre: the historical, costume, epic action adventure, and the more intrigue the better. In fact, this is almost an espionage movie as well - I just don't want to lump it in with the Bourne and Bond films.

Along with Zhang, this stars Takeshi Kaneshiro and Andy Lau. Time Magazine and others called this the "best picture of the year". I'm not sure I would go that far, but fans of martial arts and Chinese epic films won't be disappointed.

I'm not watching all these Chinese films back-to-back, but for some reason I seem urged to get all them reviewed before I move on to more boring European films. Is it just me, or are French and Italian films generally overrated?

Wong Kar-Wai, 1995, China/Hong Kong (9*)
When I heard this had been remastered for dvd, I had to watch this Wong Kar-Wai film again, as I couldn't remember it very well from over a decade earlier (and likely saw the terrible full-frame video tape version). I was surprised and riveted by the stunning visuals. Kar-Wai is a visual master, and this is one of the most visual of his films.

This is the sequel to his excellent Chungking Express, the two films being intended to be one long film by Kar-Wai but due to length he put them out as two separate films. Taken together, the films are either a trilogy or tetralogy, it's kind of hard to tell, but suffice to say that they are films of more than one story. These films were the inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, hence the trilogy of stories in that film.

The story is not the important part of these films, which are basically urban crime films, with a kind of 'neo-noirish' slant, as filmed by Hong Kong. This story is about a hit man, pondering one last hit before 'retiring'. The visuals take precedence here, with the cinematography of Christopher Doyle (who also works with Chinese master director Zhang Yimou) dazzling and inventive, as usual. The two films together provide an exciting introduction to the Hong Kong crime style, and have proven very influential around the world.

Brad Bird, 2004 (8*)
One of the more sarcastic and humorous of the recent animated classics, the Incredibles actually referes to a family of ex-superheroes of that name, led by the voices of dad Craig T. Nelson and mom Holly Hunter. They are now in the witness protection program, and bored to death. Of course, unless they jumped back into action, we wouldn’t have a film, so you can expect the inevitable animated superhero action here to spice up the comedy. Samuel L. Jackson voices another superhero, Frozone, who works with ice, a reference to Ice Nine from Kurt Vonnegut’s A Cat’s Cradle, perhaps?

This story has a script so good that it was nominated for an Oscar®. Two Oscars®, Sound and Animated Feature. It also won 16 awards for animated feature that year, and numerous other awards. Here is the awards page for it at Internet Movie Database:
Incredibles Award Page

'Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment'
Karel Reisz, 1966, bw (8*)
This small and unique film made actor David Warner a star. He’s more lovable here than as Evil Incarnate in Time Bandits, or the evil computer program in Tron, as he plays Morgan, a zany but lovable psychotic who’s obsessed with giant apes, Communism, and ex-wife Vanessa Redgrave. However she’s moving on and about to get re-married, sending Morgan on a chest-thumping binge of jealous insanity.

Yes, there's some silliness, but also some deceptively subtle psyshosis portrayed on film, some from Morgan's point of view. It's very easy to empathize with him here as we've all been driven a little nuts by love. Vanessa has such a beautiful laugh in this that you can easily imagine what deprivation Morgan must feel being separated from her.

Director Reisz (who also directed The French Lieutenant's Woman) has made an original comedy that reminds me of perhaps a forerunner to the Charles Kaufman comedies Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Being John Malkovich. Uneven, but so original they remain in your memory. One of the last black-and-white classics as well, I think as a throwback to the classic Ealing Studio comedies of the 40's and 50's.

Anthony Minghella, 1999 (8*)
This was the second film version of Patricia Highsmith’s novel Mr. Ripley, the first being Rene Clement’s 1961 French film Purple Noon. In this more sinister version from director Anthony Minghella (The English Patient), ‘frat boy’ Tom Ripley is played by Matt Damon, going out of character. Tom is in Europe with his childhood friend Jude Law, trying to earn money from Law’s father back in the states if he can convince Law to give up his playboy ways and come back home and do something productive. Ripley has no money and is dependent on this bonus, until then he’s living off of his friend, hence his dilemna. He's also falling for Law's girlfriend Gwyneth Paltrow.

There are some unforeseen plot twists I can’t mention – but this version changes the story a little, and is a more menacing and disarming version. Philip Seymour Hoffman adds a lot to this version as Law’s friend Freddie, who was barely an afterthought in the French film. Fans of the book or crime and suspense films should watch both filmed versions, perhaps this version first.

John Pirozzi, 2009 (8*)
Mostly in English, with some subtitles. Available this April

There’s a very unique L.A. band called Dengue (‘din-gay’) Fever, whom you might have heard on NPR. They play a unique sixties-based 'L.A. filtered' Cambodian rock, which they say was derived from surf music, but you couldn’t tell from what Dengue Fever puts out, it sounds closer to psychedelic rock to me, with some almost Garcia-like guitar. The Holtzman brothers who formed the band hired a strong-voiced Cambodian singer, Chhom Nimol, who was famous there before immigrating to the U.S. Their music is actually covers of famous Cambodian rock singers, who, due to the massacres committed by the Kymer Rouge regime, sadly did not survive that turbulent era. Along with Nimol, they are keeping this music alive in the world, and in this film, they take the music back to its people.

Director Pirozzi has filmed an engrossing documentary of Dengue Fever as they travel to Cambodia for the first time to perform what is essentially that culture’s modern music, and for singer Nimol, it’s a homecoming after five years absence. Pirozzi often shows the band’s performances from a close and wide-angle view (see photo), making the viewer feel that they are seeing the music live themselves, sometimes from onstage, sometimes as part of the crowd.

Rather than concentrate on just the band, Pirozzi also shows many wonderful images of Cambodia and its people, successfully using a montage effect at times, like traveling is shown in old b&w classic films. Since the entire country seems to travel on motor scooters, a hand-held camera is often used from a scooter in the middle of the traffic so we get a feeling of how chaotic the streets are there, yet everyone seems safe enough that no one wears helmets, not even entire families of 4-5 people on one scooter. The band was lucky enough to be there during the Water Festival, celebrating the end of monsoon season when the Mekong River actually changes direction, so we get to see what looks like their Mardi Gras, as thousands pour into Phnom Penh from the countryside for a festival of fireworks, music, water sports, and food.

Pirozzi includes encounters with local Cambodian music masters, and we see some of the effort being made with young people to keep this culture alive, which barely survived the war years and in some cases has a lone surviving instrumentalist. The Cambodian people appear very outgoing and friendly, a friend of mine who lived in Thailand said as much. Director Pirozzi has created a wonderful film of cross-cultural meetings that created lasting impressions and immediate friendships.

My only complaint with this film is that at 65 minutes, it’s about half an hour too short, so it feels 'tv length'. Thankfully, Pirozzi added about another 45 minutes of short films to the dvd so viewers won’t be disappointed. In fact, one song, “1000 Tears of a Tarantula”, is a wonderful jazz excursion that blends the best of both American and Cambodian music into one ethereal musical journey – this is the best music on the dvd, and should have been included in the film. If you like the music, there’s an excellent soundtrack to the film on CD released as part of the dvd package. We need more music films this rare, stories that show good music, a joyous cultural exchange, and a window into a society that’s been overlooked far too long by the rest of the world.

Here’s the website for the film: Sleepwalking Through the Mekong
For artwork: Dengue Fever Promo Art

aka, The Crazy Stranger
Tony Gatliff, 1997, Romania (8*)
Now, when have you ever seen a film that shows the passionate lifestyle of gypsies, and not just the gypsy catfight in From Russia With Love? We finally have one, and it full of music, drinking, dancing, and passion. A young Parisian is seen walking in the beginning, and it turns out that he’s a gypsy descendent, and is in Romania searching for the singer of a song that his father loved to listen to while dying. He finds a great drunken musician named Izidor, who takes him under his wing, and begins to teach him the language, so he won’t be a “gadjo”, or outsider. He also meets the seductive beauty played by Rona Hartner, whose dancing, singing, and eroticism steal the film. Hartner, who also records music cds and does paintings, won two film festival awards for Best Actress for this film. Down a star for some unnecessary violence. Winner of 9 international awards.

Awards: Gadjo Dilo Awards

Thomas Riedelsheimer, 2003 (9*)
This is an amazing documentary that is not like any other because the artist Andy Goldsworthy is so unique. It's slow to get started but once you see how and why he does what he does it all makes intuitive sense. Its all about time and the ephemeral nature of living things. He uses natural media he finds in nature, rarely planning anything in advance. Only his rock sculptures last longer than the day he makes them. Most are temporary: ice sculptures that glow then melt in the sunlight, leaf 'snakes' held with thorns that he sends down a stream, or autumn leaves arranged from dark to light creating an artificial hole. He sometimes build 'rock piles like people use to mark trails worldwide', but they're big egg-shaped and carefully done with no mortar, yet they hold together as if made to stand in this shape like silent sentinels. He has designed a permanent wall in a sculpture garden, but let professional “wallers” build that. You don't have to be an artist to appreciate this movie. It also has several short films as a bonus. Goldsworthy has done so much of this that a film of all his outdoor artwork could actually last weeks! Inspiring...

Sam Wood, 1935 (7*)
This Marx Brothers gem features probably their most famous scene: the stateroom on the ocean liner that is a phone booth to begin with (Groucho’s line) and they cram about 15 people in, from stowaways to maids to waiters, who fall out when Margaret Dumont (yes, she's on hand, thankfully) opens the door. However, like kissing scenes in your Saturday westerns growing up (when kids would actually boo in the theater!), this has some lengthy and pointless musical numbers to wait out before the comedic pace returns. Admitted that Chico had a humorous style on the piano and did his numbers in one take, but Harpo on harp is always tedious, and this also has some operetta-like songs and dances that do nothing for the Marx style except slow it down. In the better Duck Soup, the musical numbers were zany and made sense to the plot, “Hooray for Captain Spalding” was actually nominated for an Oscar. Still, one of their best in the comedy parts.
Quote: “That’s the sanity clause” – “You can’t a-foola me, there ain’t no sanity clause!”

Roland Suso Richter, 2001, Germany (8*)
Based on a true story from the 50’s of East German swimmer Harry Melchior who defected to West Germany then enlisted the aid of an odd assortment of diggers to see if they could dig a 145-meter tunnel to the east to help their relatives also escape to the west. This is a riveting film, if lengthy (nearly 3 hrs), that manages to maintain its tension throughout, and is a better escape film than the obviously Hollywooden Great Escape, and without any big stars as well. Mixing dark color with some grainy black & white sections, director Ricther manages to maintain a near documentary feel in a story that should have been told decades ago. Reminiscent of the Leon Uris novel Mila 18, about trapped Jews tunneling out of the Warsaw ghetto.

Alexsandr Rogozhkin, 2002, Russia (9*)
One incredibly beautiful location, an alpine Finnish lake without a settlement in sight, makes this small, sparse anti-war film a rare treat. The story begins with a condemned Finnish soldier being chained to a rock as a sniper, and we follow his story in this locale, which appears to be a very rural area of Finland. The tale eventually involves another soldier, a Russian, and a local laplander woman, none of whom speak the same language.

Anni-Christina Juuoso is a delight as the widow they run into, self-sufficient pioneer who lives alone in the wilderness since her husband died. This simple plot device works very well to illustrate the futility of international hostilities, and that compassion and sharing are the true human virtues. One of the more austere, yet thought provoking films you will see, and the cinematography is breathtaking.

Danny Boyle, 1997 (8*)
I always liked this wacky romantic comedy best of all of Boyle's films. The story is just farfetched enough to be unique: two angels, now on probation, hilariously played by Delroy Lindo and Holly Hunter are being forced by the Big Guy to make two loveless people on earth fall in love with each other. Cameron Diaz is a spoiled rich girl, who likes to shoot apples off butler Stanley Tucci's head; her dad, Ian Holm, is a corporate CEO jerk, who fires janitor Ewan MacGregor, who then kidnaps Diaz with a little help.

The crime starts a chase, which maybe starts a romance, which becomes a musical fantasy (Ewan sings Beyond the Sea!), with the angels surveilling the entire story, for if they fail they have to be reincarnated into bodies again, and neither one wants that - especially Holly's angel, which gets banged up somewhat! Some won't like this farce, some will - fluff for sure, but I thought pretty danged hilarious fluff, especially the fantasies thrown in.

Peter Jackson, 1994 (8*)
This is one of the more compelling docudramas of a true crime you will see. The film is an early one for director Peter Jackson, and is the first film for Kate Winslet - I believe she was 17 at the time. You could already see that she was going to have major impact as an actress; at one point she even sings an aria to the sunrise. This story involves two teenage girls who gradually withdraw into a fantasy world of their own creation, involving princes and knights and they, of course, are damsels in distress. One girl’s parents think they are spending an inordinate amount of time together, especially for conservative New Zealand. What follows became a “crime of the century”, and the subsequent trial had reporters from all over the world attending, as big in its day as the O.J. trial for our generation. Gripping and emotionally brutal, not for the squeamish.

Victor Fleming, 1939 (6*)
Best Picture (AA)
Much ballyhooed epic long considered the “most popular” movie is really just a too lengthy soap opera – it needs an hour-long trim as each scene runs on and on - with an overblown budget (and music score) and one good war scene: the train platform at Atlanta littered with hundreds of wounded and dying soldiers. Unfortunately, author of the Pulitzer-prize winning book Margaret Mitchell couldn’t convince Hollywood that it “couldn’t be filmed”; it is better as literature. Even at four hours, the film is just a synopsis of what seemed like decades in Scarlett’s life (maybe it was decades to read!). The film would have been better as a 10-12 hr miniseries, and with perhaps less-stereotypical characters all-around, not just the slaves either.

It’s ironic that the two leads, Scarlett O’Hara, played by Vivien Leigh in her Oscar-winning performance, and Rhett Butler, Clark Gable at his most wooden, are really two of the least likeable characters in the story. Each is arrogant, shallow, and self-centered, while their friends Melanie (Olivia de Haviland) and Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard) have the real humanity and heart, along with Oscar®-winning nanny Hattie McDaniel, who steals the film and received the only Academy Award for an African-American actor until Sidney Poitier roughly 25 years later, and the only woman until Whoopi Goldberg half a century later! Ironically, she’s really better as a comic actress yet her tearful scenes here likely tipped the voters.

Directed by Oscar®-winner Victor Fleming (The Wizard of Oz), the film’s plus is a great epic look, which ironically makes some of the faked studio scenes stand out more, like a carriage ride with Rhett and Scarlett in Atlanta before the war with an obviousy filmed backdrop moving at a different speed than they are, or the overused silouettes of actors against giant painted or filmed backdrops. This film also screams for widescreen, but alas, “Cinemascope” had not been invented yet so we’re forever stuck with the square 35mm image – but at least they used color, which the remastering has faithfully maintained. Winner of a then-record 8 Oscars, with 13 nominations.

Quote: As God is my witness, if I have to lie, cheat, steal, or kill, I shall never be hungry again. - Scarlett (apparently losing all ethics in a dog eat dog world!)

Woody Allen, 2008 (7*)
Best Comedy Picture (GG)
Lightweight romance, heavier on that than comedy, from the Woodman about two friends, Scarlett Johansson, the more Bohemian (‘slutty’) one, with engaged friend, Rebecca Hall, the uptight one, who travel to Barcelona for a break because ‘soon-married’ Hall wrote her thesis on artist-architect Antonio Gaudi, whose work defines Barcelona. While there they meet Bohemian artist Javier Bardem, who announces he’d like a threesome with both on the upcoming weekend. Hall balks at his forthright demeanor, but not Scarlett, and they soon get together - but not until Hall spends a day with Bardem and changes her mind about him.

The fun times are thrown askew with the arrival of psychotic ex-wife Penelope Cruz (Oscar® winner for supporting actress!), hilarious in two languages as a homicidal rage-aholic, who once stabbed Bardem while they were married. ..so now there are three women in Barcelona all interested in Bardem at the same time! Unlike the New York trilogy of Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah & Her Sisters, there’s not a lot here to touch the heart and really make you care for these quirky characters, but it’s pleasant enough entertainment for a light romantic comedy. For once we didn’t get Woody’s ragtime music, we got a terrific Spanish/Brazilian music score that was both light and upbeat enough to fit the subject and its time.

Winner of 2 Indy Spirit Awards for Best Screenplay (Allen) and Cruz for Supporting Actress (loved her in this! remember: she acted in two languages) BAFTA award for Cruz also (British AA). Golden Globe winner for Best Comedy/Musical Picture.

George Cukor, 1950, bw (8*)
You’d have to look hard to find a comedic performance as funny as Judy Holliday in this film, which won her a well-deserved Oscar®. She has a perfect delivery, just the right lilt in her voice to show bored disdain. Wealthy junkman Broderick Crawford is in DC to “get the government he paid for”, renting in an expensive suite with girlfriend Holliday, his lawyer and a bodyguard-gofer. He thinks his slightly daffy escort could use an upgrade in manners and education for the DC elite, and hires William Holden, a local freelance writer hanging around for an interview, to tutor Holliday in proper conversational English, with hilarious results. Of course, with time together the pair develop a chemistry and develop some plot twists you won’t see coming. Holliday’s is one of the great performances in comedy history, one of the few to win an Oscar®.

Kim Ki-Duk, Korea, 2003 (8*)
The title refers to the stages in a person’s life, as well as those in nature, and the cycles of both. The mandala or “wheel of life” is a common motif in Asian theosophy. Filmed in a national park, this Buddhist-Taoist allegory or parable is a stunningly beautiful and simple tale of an ascetic life as a monk aboard a floating monastery in a lake in the mountains. One couldn’t imagine a more beautiful yet hauntingly lonely setting for a parable on the nature of life, material attachment, and redemption.

The story is about a young boy being raised by the Old Master, lessons he learns in life, particularly when they are visited by a woman’s who brings her sick daughter for healing. There are some very simple truths and what’s often called “perrenial wisdom” here, told in a quiet almost non-action manner that mirrors the spiritual discipline of the monk. The movie was directed, written and edited by Kim Ki-Duk, who also plays the young boy as an adult monk! This is the type of film that could never get made in the west, but one which shows a simple, spiritual life lived without materialism, and without attachment to the sensory world.

[NC-17 for sexual content; as the old Master said “just nature taking its course, do you feel better?”]

Tony Kaye, 1998 (8*)
This is a tour-de-force performance by Edward Norton, as a white supremacist who wants to keep younger brother Edward Furlong out of the same trouble he's had. As a boy, his fireman father was killed answering a fire alarm at a drug house, so Norton harbors deep racist convictions from this one incident.

The film is a searing indictment of a racist lifestyle, but unfortunately seems accurate at capturing a dangerous sub-culture operating within the United States. Norton's acting ratcheted up a level in this one, he looks and feels this part so well you forget who it is early on. How he didn't win the Oscar (he was nominated) is still beyond me; this is certainly one of the best performances of our lifetime.
Not a pleasant film, but like Boyz in the Hood, one that needs to be seen by everyone.

Darren Anorofsky, 2000 (10*)

This film is without doubt the most intense movie I've ever seen – in fact, I had to take a break halfway and finish it later, one advantage of dvd over the theater. It’s a total work of art, but one that will leave you emotionally drained. It’s a story of addiction of all kinds: drugs, tv, food, hope. Ellen Burstyn, who is mind-blowing in this (and spent 4 hrs a day in makeup), her greatest performance (Oscar-nominated, it should have been her 2nd after Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore), plays Sarah Goldfarb in Brooklyn, whose only son, played by Jared Leto, routinely pawns her tv to buy drugs, and Sarah buys it back each time. She dreams of being on tv, and may get her chance on a motivational program where huckster Tappy Tibbons sells optimism and a juicer for ‘one easy payment’ (a thinly disguised variation of Tony Robbins?), well-played by Chrisopher MacDonald. Before that she wants to lose weight, so she finds a doctor to give her diet pills.

Her story begins to parallel her son’s, who spends time with girlfriend Jennifer Connelly, in her most demanding and best performance (I now believe her Oscar for A Beautiful Mind was due to her snub for this), and friend Marlon Wayans, who is surprisingly effective in a rare dramatic part. Aronofsky uses machine-gun fire editing, odd camera angles, blurred fast-motion sequences, and a special actor-mounted camera to create a nightmare world of dreams blurring reality for all involved. For some this was distracting, for me it totally involved the audience in a world where reality is a vaporous vision, constantly shifting until you don’t know what’s real and what is imaginary.

This film may be too shocking to watch; it likely deserves an X-rating for emotional trauma. I’m sure it scared the heck out of Hollywood; it was made with the assistance of Sundance. Traditional movigoers and filmmakers wouldn’t go near this subject, based on major American author Hubert Selby’s novel from 1978. Selby is best known for this 1964 classic Last Exit to Brooklyn, which shocked the nation, but wowed book critics, and caused an obscenity trial in England. (see below for some Selby quotes from an interview on the dvd). Director Aronofsky’s only previous film was the engrossing intellectual drama b&w Pi (review upcoming), about obsessed numerologists hunting for the “key to the universe” hidden in the Bible in the numeric values of Hebrew letters (!) This is major art for a second film effort, for anyone’s film effort actually. This is more intense than Tarantino, Scorsese, or Cuckoo’s Nest, and likely too intense for the average movigoer - if you enjoy Adam Sandler, or Lethal Weapon movies, you probably won’t like this. But a film this visually stunning will be studied by cinema students for decades, and is a treat for the serious film connoisseur.

Here's Roger Ebert's longer and more descriptive review in the Chicago Sun Times, he agrees that it's "adults only", unless you know a kid doing drugs:
Roger Ebert's Requiem Review

[Note: I’m giving it a 10 for its mind-blowing visuals, overcoming any story faults. The scene they’ll discuss for years is Burstyn cleaning her apt from end to end in 25 seconds of film, in super-high speed, while the camera slowly tracks past each room. This took 40 minutes and was one take; when done, Ellen was disappointed with herself and wanted to do another take. The dvd will show you how it was done. I’ll have to admit that when the film was over, I needed a drink and a walk outside, I was shaking for half an hour.]

Hubert Selby Quotes (Selby has a brief part in this as a prison guard)
“About age 8, I discovered that the world was full of pain and suffering, and I decided I had to try to end that suffering.”

“I had tb after world war two; a doctor looked me and said, ‘there’s nothing we can do for you’, walked away and sent me a bill. Man, do I love the AMA.”
(This almost killed Selby, he had a lung and 10 ribs removed, but survived. He also had brain damage during childbirth, yet has become one of the most important American authors, compared to Dostoevsky)

“The Sanskrit and Hebrew word for eye is ‘fountain’, they say we project our souls onto the world through the eye, not perceive the world outside projected inward.”

“Suffering comes from the fact that life is pain, and we refuse to accept the pain that all must experience; the worst pain will be losing one’s mother, hence ‘I feel like a motherless child.’”

“I had a spiritual experience once; during that I knew that as I’m dying I’ll think two things: first that I wasted my life, then that I’d like to live it all over – and then I’ll die.”

George Stevens, 1943, bw (9*)
Classic B&W comedies don't get any better than this one. Talented and terminally cute actress Jean Arthur actually thought of this story to get work, director George Stevens liked it enough to have the screenplay written and filmed. Washington DC has a severe housing shortage during WW2, and people are sharing their apartments, people are sleeping in foyers, and anywhere else you look. Charles Coburn, perfect in an Oscar-winning supporting role, shows up early for his hotel reservation and has no place to stay. At the same time, Jean Arthur is about to rent half her apt to 'help ease the shortage', and Coburn uses chicanery to worm his way into the rental, which Jean wanted to give to another woman. Coburn immediately decides to play matchmaker, and sub-lets his half to a aircraft worker, the handsome and available Joel McRea, but Coburn doesn't know Jean has a fiance.

The single women to men ratio is 8-1 in wartime DC, and Stevens uses this fact for one of the funniest scenes in film. Jean and her fiance go to a restaurant, and Coburn brings McRae to the same restaurant, where Joel is immediately surrounded by 7 single women at the bar. Coburn spots Jean and her beau and manages to not only share their table, but whisks her beau away on business, leaving McRea with the seven single women and Jean - so the 8-1 ratio is now a reality! This lengthy sitcom scene will leave you in stitches, and Arthur will steal your heart. Nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture, but Coburn was the only winner.

This has always been one of my favorite comedies, and it never gets old, and is just as funny today. It was refilmed in 1964 with Cary Grant in Tokyo as Walk, Don't Run, with the Olympics causing the housing shortage, but that remake fell far short of the original.

George Sidney, 1963 (7*)
I recently saw this again in widescreen, first time since it bored me as a child. This time I understood it, and the ws format allow you to see the dancers rather than imagine them offscreen! It’s basically a campy satire of bad Elvis musicals, the story is even about every girl’s favorite heartthrob rock star being drafted! (when I was a kid, only girls liked Elvis, at least after his Sun Records rockabilly days). The music is really all over the map, a little rock, even more ‘boogie woogie’, a little jazz, some of that a little bluesy, and some typical Broadway-style songs. In that regard, it loses a star for not having a very cohesive score; after all, it’s a musical comedy.

The ‘not quite rock’ star is Conrad Birdie (Jessie Pearson, in the film’s weakest performance, too bad they didn’t get George Chakiris from W.S. Story) but before going into the army, he’s making a farewell appearance on Ed Sullivan, and giving a good-bye kiss to high schooler Ann-Margret, head of his fan club. Dick Van Dyke, who does some of his typical silly/stiff dancing (a la Mary Poppins), has written a song for Conrad to sing on tv that he hopes will save his sagging composing career, while his lady, Janet Leigh, in a rare musical dance performance, can’t pry Dick away from his mother, Maureen Stapleton, in a hilarious role that also includes singing. Meanwhile, AM’s boyfriend Bobby Rydell, added as the only pop music star of the group, is freaking with jealousy over Conrad getting to kiss his girl on national tv. Some of the songs are worth the fast forward, but the musical play introduced the pop hits “Kids (what’s the matter with kids today?)” and “Put On a Happy Face”, which is done on film with animation overlays. There also ground-breaking special effects in the opening number, “Telephone Song”, in which gossip gets around the whole town in a musical minute.

The real dazzler, however, is the eight-minute “I’ve Got a Lot of Livin to Do” (photo right), which begins with Conrad singing, then slows to a jazz-blues rhythm for Ann-Margret’s section, then goes uptempo into a jazzy boogie-woogie for Rydell’s comeback to her. It all ends with the whole chorus doing an exhuberant yet goofy modern jazz ‘cat dance’ - it looks like Jerome Robbins (West Side Story) meets early Bob Fosse, and was so good that I played it three times in a row. It's also a clever parody of the gym dance from West Side Story, even the lighting!

Her dancing and singing garnered Ann-Margret a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress; she kinda steals the movie, but there’s not much musical competition. This works if you don’t expect much, and get into the ‘campiness’ of the take-off on Elvis’ bad musical movies. Ironically, after this, Ann-Margret starred with Elvis in Viva Las Vegas!, and of course, stole that film as well. See my post on her here, at: Film Goddess