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LXXI: Arsenic and Old Lace (Frank Capra, 1944)
Film of a Broadway play, apparently filmed in 1941 but sat on until the run finished. Two elderly aunts, Abby and Martha Brewster (Josephine Hull and Jean Adair) have murder a string of lonely men as nephew and no longer eligible batcher Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) returns home with his bride Elaine Harper (Priscilla Lane). Unfortunately this coincides with the final breakdown of Teddy (John Alexander) and the arrival home of two sinister figures (Raymond Massey and Peter Lorre). Mortimer has to try and protect his aunts and have Teddy committed, unaware of the danger around him. Thius has the sort of chaos of the second half of Bringing Up Baby and more physical comedy than Grant had been doing. Many of the cast (but not Grant nor Massey) had been in the play - Massey had been played by Boris Karloff, and his character is repeatedly referred to as looking like Boris Karloff.
LXXII: Wanted (Timur Bekmambetov, 2008)
James McAvoy is rapidly becoming an actor to watch out for...
Here is a snivelling little accounts manager in some lousyt firm where his manager is an admittedly large woman Janice (Lorna Scott), and is the subject of some of the most unpleasant abuse I've seen in a while because of her weight. She is always shown eating or talking or talking with her mouth full, or playing with a stapler (castrating bitch symbolism) and we're clearly meant to cheer when he tells her to fuck herself.
Meanwhile his girlfriend (Kristen Hager) is yap yap yap (and she's got a point to complain about an apartment so close to the El) and screwing his so called best friend, which I can't blame her for given her loser boyfriend.
McAvoy is taken in (in both senses) by a fraternity of assassins posing as weavers (or vice versa) and the only woman not coded as yapping or fat because she has metaphorical balls, the Fox (Angelina Jolie), with whom he gets to lock lips if only to shut up his whining. Her sole character development is a nasty assassin killed her daddy. Quite why there is a woman in a fraternity is not clear, and she has been shoe horned in rather than coming from the comic book source.
McAvoy was abandoned by his dad when he was hardly a week old (which might explain why he grew up to be such a prick) only now his dad is dead - and the only reason he should care is he's next on the list of the assassin and is the Only Man Who Can Stop Him even though he needs to start from scratch. The training involving him having to be punched a lot by Marc Warren, something the audience wants to do to his scrawny hypochondriac ass by now. He also has to learn to bend bullets around corners. Woo.
Off he goes to kills bad guys and run along the tops of trains before his dad's nemesis comes up as the next on the list on themagic eight ball Loom of Fate which stitches names in a binary code if you happen to examine it with a magnifying glass unlikely to be available when the fraternity was set up (and at best hand operated looms). Off his goes, and there seems to be no caring who is hurt in the cross fire (such as all the passengers on a train) but at least Terence Stamp is givena cameo.
At this point there is a twist. And McAvoy is whiney. And the writers get to have it both ways as the weavers are nasty pieces of work after all.
Splat.
I've been told that I shouldn't be surprised at misogyny in a comic strip and it doesn't matter really. But the source material is only from a few years back - we surely don't need to tell these stories still. The only thing to be said is that McAvoy's character is such a pain in the butt (comic relief guy as hero) that no matter how kewl some of the cgi'd stunts are, no one would want to be him. Just what we want teenaged boys to be reading. Triffic.
Meanwhile, this film is loud to deafening (especially from the front row) and as seems to be de rigger since Superman Lives much of it is shot with shakeycam to avoid any sense of focus or cohesion. If it's loud enoguh it might drown out the sexual politics.
Totals: 72 (Cinema: 26; DVD: 44; TV: 2)
Film of a Broadway play, apparently filmed in 1941 but sat on until the run finished. Two elderly aunts, Abby and Martha Brewster (Josephine Hull and Jean Adair) have murder a string of lonely men as nephew and no longer eligible batcher Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) returns home with his bride Elaine Harper (Priscilla Lane). Unfortunately this coincides with the final breakdown of Teddy (John Alexander) and the arrival home of two sinister figures (Raymond Massey and Peter Lorre). Mortimer has to try and protect his aunts and have Teddy committed, unaware of the danger around him. Thius has the sort of chaos of the second half of Bringing Up Baby and more physical comedy than Grant had been doing. Many of the cast (but not Grant nor Massey) had been in the play - Massey had been played by Boris Karloff, and his character is repeatedly referred to as looking like Boris Karloff.
LXXII: Wanted (Timur Bekmambetov, 2008)
James McAvoy is rapidly becoming an actor to watch out for...
Here is a snivelling little accounts manager in some lousyt firm where his manager is an admittedly large woman Janice (Lorna Scott), and is the subject of some of the most unpleasant abuse I've seen in a while because of her weight. She is always shown eating or talking or talking with her mouth full, or playing with a stapler (castrating bitch symbolism) and we're clearly meant to cheer when he tells her to fuck herself.
Meanwhile his girlfriend (Kristen Hager) is yap yap yap (and she's got a point to complain about an apartment so close to the El) and screwing his so called best friend, which I can't blame her for given her loser boyfriend.
McAvoy is taken in (in both senses) by a fraternity of assassins posing as weavers (or vice versa) and the only woman not coded as yapping or fat because she has metaphorical balls, the Fox (Angelina Jolie), with whom he gets to lock lips if only to shut up his whining. Her sole character development is a nasty assassin killed her daddy. Quite why there is a woman in a fraternity is not clear, and she has been shoe horned in rather than coming from the comic book source.
McAvoy was abandoned by his dad when he was hardly a week old (which might explain why he grew up to be such a prick) only now his dad is dead - and the only reason he should care is he's next on the list of the assassin and is the Only Man Who Can Stop Him even though he needs to start from scratch. The training involving him having to be punched a lot by Marc Warren, something the audience wants to do to his scrawny hypochondriac ass by now. He also has to learn to bend bullets around corners. Woo.
Off he goes to kills bad guys and run along the tops of trains before his dad's nemesis comes up as the next on the list on the
At this point there is a twist. And McAvoy is whiney. And the writers get to have it both ways as the weavers are nasty pieces of work after all.
Splat.
I've been told that I shouldn't be surprised at misogyny in a comic strip and it doesn't matter really. But the source material is only from a few years back - we surely don't need to tell these stories still. The only thing to be said is that McAvoy's character is such a pain in the butt (comic relief guy as hero) that no matter how kewl some of the cgi'd stunts are, no one would want to be him. Just what we want teenaged boys to be reading. Triffic.
Meanwhile, this film is loud to deafening (especially from the front row) and as seems to be de rigger since Superman Lives much of it is shot with shakeycam to avoid any sense of focus or cohesion. If it's loud enoguh it might drown out the sexual politics.
Totals: 72 (Cinema: 26; DVD: 44; TV: 2)
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