The Marx Brothers created timeless comedy, but fans have had to “make do” with the relative handful of movies they left behind. It’s no chore to revisit Duck Soup or A Night at the Opera on a regular basis, but now, thanks to Shout! Factory’s new three-disc DVD set The Marx Brothers TV Collection, there is more Marxian madness than ever to enjoy. And, if you say the secret woid, there is a fourth “bonus” disc available in limited quantities (along with a poster of Drew Friedman’s wonderful DVD cover art) if you order directly from Shout! Factory’s website Here. It includes a half-hour filmed segment from the anthology Silver Theater starring Chico called Papa Romani (1950), an...
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- 8/11/2014
- by Leonard Maltin
- Leonard Maltin's Movie Crazy
I miss bookstores. Being able to walk up and down the aisles, pulling out a title that sounds intriguing, perusing the dust jacket flap, sometimes sitting down on the floor and reading the first couple of pages…just killing a couple of hours lost in a bibliophile’s heaven.
Okay, bookstores aren’t entirely gone, but they are, as everyone knows, on the endangered list. My own first hint of this came about 15 years ago when the Borders in the Short Hills Mall closed up. It was astonishing—this was a bookstore that was always mobbed, no matter the time of day. Many, many people objected to the closing, and many, many people let the mall’s management know it; the customer service desk clerk told me, as I filled out the complaint form, that there were over 3,000 signatures in the first week alone protesting the shutdown, and demanding, if not the return of Borders,...
Okay, bookstores aren’t entirely gone, but they are, as everyone knows, on the endangered list. My own first hint of this came about 15 years ago when the Borders in the Short Hills Mall closed up. It was astonishing—this was a bookstore that was always mobbed, no matter the time of day. Many, many people objected to the closing, and many, many people let the mall’s management know it; the customer service desk clerk told me, as I filled out the complaint form, that there were over 3,000 signatures in the first week alone protesting the shutdown, and demanding, if not the return of Borders,...
- 3/17/2014
- by Mindy Newell
- Comicmix.com
We’ll be celebrating the life and career of famed movie director Steven Spielberg at The Way out Club on March 4th with Super-8 Steven Spielberg Movie Madness. We’ll be showing, in the Super-8 Sound format (average length: 15 minutes) projected on a big screen, the following films directed by Speilberg: Duel, Sugarland Express, Jaws, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, 1941, and Raiders Of The Lost Ark. (Sugarland and 1941 are 30-minute two-reelers).
In addition to the Steven Spielberg films, we’ll be showing Abbott And Costello Meet The Mummy, The Marx Brothers in Monkey Business, Mighty Mouse in The Witch’S Cat, Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney in Ghost Of Frankenstein, Filming The Big Crashes, Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea, and William Shatner vs killer tarantulas is Kingdom Of The Spiders.
Cover charge is a mere $3. The show begins at 8pm. We’ll have Steven Spielberg trivia with prizes and,...
In addition to the Steven Spielberg films, we’ll be showing Abbott And Costello Meet The Mummy, The Marx Brothers in Monkey Business, Mighty Mouse in The Witch’S Cat, Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney in Ghost Of Frankenstein, Filming The Big Crashes, Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea, and William Shatner vs killer tarantulas is Kingdom Of The Spiders.
Cover charge is a mere $3. The show begins at 8pm. We’ll have Steven Spielberg trivia with prizes and,...
- 2/28/2014
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Magic in the Moonlight
Comedy is one of the longest-running genres in cinema, producing numerous screen legends from The Marx Brothers to Madeline Kahn, as well as numerous classics, from The Gold Rush to Hot Fuzz. Fans of the genre thus look forward every year to the new crop of films, eager to see what they may bring, and this year is no different. Here are ten comedic features we’re looking forward to seeing in 2014, in alphabetical order.
1) Bad Words
Much of Jason Bateman’s career resurrection has centred around his ability to successfully play the comic foil. While his ability to do is deservedly lauded, as shows like Arrested Development would not work without his presence, it often leads to the actor garnering the less colourful roles in any given project, ending up as more of a reactive presence. Bad Words, however, seems poised to put Bateman on the other side,...
Comedy is one of the longest-running genres in cinema, producing numerous screen legends from The Marx Brothers to Madeline Kahn, as well as numerous classics, from The Gold Rush to Hot Fuzz. Fans of the genre thus look forward every year to the new crop of films, eager to see what they may bring, and this year is no different. Here are ten comedic features we’re looking forward to seeing in 2014, in alphabetical order.
1) Bad Words
Much of Jason Bateman’s career resurrection has centred around his ability to successfully play the comic foil. While his ability to do is deservedly lauded, as shows like Arrested Development would not work without his presence, it often leads to the actor garnering the less colourful roles in any given project, ending up as more of a reactive presence. Bad Words, however, seems poised to put Bateman on the other side,...
- 1/9/2014
- by Deepayan Sengupta
- SoundOnSight
Mel Brooks: Comedy As The Currency Of Friendship
By Eddy Friedfeld
(Photo copyright Steven R. Stack)
Mel Brooks is profiled in a superb American Masters documentary entitled Mel Brooks: Make a Noise, which premieres nationally on PBS stations on May 20th. One of 14 Egot (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony) winners, he has earned more major awards than any other living entertainer, and shows few signs of slowing down. With new interviews with Brooks, his friends and colleagues, including Matthew Broderick, Nathan Lane, Cloris Leachman, Joan Rivers, Tracey Ullman, Rob Reiner, and his close friend, with whom he created The 2000 Year Old Man, Carl Reiner. A DVD with bonus material will be available Tuesday, May 21 from Shout Factory.
"When they called me to say I had been chosen as the next 'American Master,' I thought they said I was chosen to be the next Dutch Master. So I figured what the hell,...
By Eddy Friedfeld
(Photo copyright Steven R. Stack)
Mel Brooks is profiled in a superb American Masters documentary entitled Mel Brooks: Make a Noise, which premieres nationally on PBS stations on May 20th. One of 14 Egot (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony) winners, he has earned more major awards than any other living entertainer, and shows few signs of slowing down. With new interviews with Brooks, his friends and colleagues, including Matthew Broderick, Nathan Lane, Cloris Leachman, Joan Rivers, Tracey Ullman, Rob Reiner, and his close friend, with whom he created The 2000 Year Old Man, Carl Reiner. A DVD with bonus material will be available Tuesday, May 21 from Shout Factory.
"When they called me to say I had been chosen as the next 'American Master,' I thought they said I was chosen to be the next Dutch Master. So I figured what the hell,...
- 5/17/2013
- by [email protected] (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Cloud Atlas The Wachowskis and co-director Tom Tykwer tackled some interesting things with Cloud Atlas and it had one of the best scores of last year, but I can't deny the fact I really have no interest in returning to it. The Blu-ray does have a large number of features to explore and perhaps a little more discussion could improve my impression, but after seeing it in Toronto last year, and discussing it there, I'm not sure there is much that could be revealed to change my opinion that much.
A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III Written and directed by Roman Coppola, this one arrived shortly after he and Wes Anderson were nominated for an Oscar for their Moonrise Kingdom screenplay, but the reviews and comments I've seen don't suggest this is a film worth searching out and, in all honesty, the involvement of Charlie Sheen turns...
A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III Written and directed by Roman Coppola, this one arrived shortly after he and Wes Anderson were nominated for an Oscar for their Moonrise Kingdom screenplay, but the reviews and comments I've seen don't suggest this is a film worth searching out and, in all honesty, the involvement of Charlie Sheen turns...
- 5/14/2013
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
When it comes to Hollywood, that little "Golden Rule" bit is pretty much null and void upon entry, and when people don't have anything nice to say they tend to blabber on anyway. Oh, and absolutely no one is safe from trash talk, not even a three-time Oscar winner. Heck, especially not a three-time Oscar winner.
For whatever reason, "I'm So Excited" director Pedro Almodovar decided to promote his own movie by mean girling "Lincoln" star Daniel Day-Lewis, saying that there's one field of acting that he's just not capable of excelling at: comedy.
According to him, Ddl might very well be the bee's knees at drama as everyone says, but he "can’t manage to give the slightest sensation of lightness" necessary to give audiences the giggles.
Almodovar also laid some similar smacktalk on the late great Marlon Brando, saying he was "stiff as a board" and "too self-aware.
For whatever reason, "I'm So Excited" director Pedro Almodovar decided to promote his own movie by mean girling "Lincoln" star Daniel Day-Lewis, saying that there's one field of acting that he's just not capable of excelling at: comedy.
According to him, Ddl might very well be the bee's knees at drama as everyone says, but he "can’t manage to give the slightest sensation of lightness" necessary to give audiences the giggles.
Almodovar also laid some similar smacktalk on the late great Marlon Brando, saying he was "stiff as a board" and "too self-aware.
- 5/3/2013
- by Amanda Bell
- NextMovie
Steve Davis is the artist behind Memories of Elvis., a show he’s been performing in the St. Louis area for decades. Steve has dedicated over 20 years to perfecting the Elvis experience by paying incredible attention to detail and now he’ll be bringing that experience to Super-8 Elvis Movie Madness Tomorrow Night! This is a last-minute addition to the program which consists of condensed (average length: 15 minutes) versions of several of Elvis.s greatest films on Super-8 sound film projected on a big screen. Here.s the Elvis line-up: Blue Hawaii, Tickle Me, Roustabout, Girls Girls Girls, an Elvis Blooper Reel, and episode of The Steve Allen Show featuring guests Elvis Presley and Andy Griffith (who perform together!), and the 1978 biopic Elvis The Movie directed by John Carpenter and starring Kurt Russell as Elvis. . Steve Davis will take the stage during the break and perform some acoustic Elvis tunes.
- 9/4/2012
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
There have been many TV bios of Elvis Presley but Elvis, The Movie, the once-elusive 1979 feature starring Kurt Russell, was the first and is still the best. When Elvis died August 16 1978 at age 42, it sent shock waves around the world, comparable to the deaths of Princess Diana or Michael Jackson in later decades. A carnival atmosphere developed in Memphis as thousands of mourners gathered around the gates of Graceland and sales of Elvis. music skyrocketed. The 3-hour epic Elvis The Movie, produced by Dick Clark for the ABC network premiered 18 months later on February 11 1979 and, despite CBS airing Gone With The Wind the same night, was one of the highest rated made-for-television movies ever shown (it played theatrically on other parts of the world . in Japan it was called The Singer!). The script by Antony Lawrence, who had penned two Elvis movies earlier in his career (Paradise Hawaiin Style and...
- 8/23/2012
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
![Woody Allen at an event for Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTI1MjU3MTI2MF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMDgxNTE4MQ@@._V1_QL75_UY207_CR1,0,140,207_.jpg)
![Woody Allen at an event for Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTI1MjU3MTI2MF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMDgxNTE4MQ@@._V1_QL75_UY207_CR1,0,140,207_.jpg)
"I knew he wasn't a man who embraced technology, but he’s literally had the same typewriter since he was 16. Every professional word he’s written in his life was on this one typewriter.
"And he doesn’t have an office. He has this little desk in the corner of his bedroom, with a little World War II surplus lamp he turns on. And that's where he creates."
This is as technical as it gets for Woody Allen - why change it when it's not broken?
Robert Weide couldn't believe his eyes when he encountered the working environment of one of the world's most productive film-makers, still going strong at 76.
The Emmy award-winning documentary maker is a lifelong fan of The Marx Brothers, Wc Fields and Woody Allen, a group of which only one is still around. So Weide seized on the chance to document a man's work, of which...
"And he doesn’t have an office. He has this little desk in the corner of his bedroom, with a little World War II surplus lamp he turns on. And that's where he creates."
This is as technical as it gets for Woody Allen - why change it when it's not broken?
Robert Weide couldn't believe his eyes when he encountered the working environment of one of the world's most productive film-makers, still going strong at 76.
The Emmy award-winning documentary maker is a lifelong fan of The Marx Brothers, Wc Fields and Woody Allen, a group of which only one is still around. So Weide seized on the chance to document a man's work, of which...
- 6/11/2012
- by Caroline Frost
- Huffington Post
If you missed Robert B. Weide’s two-part American Masters profile of Woody Allen that aired last November on PBS, it’s just been released on DVD—by Docurama—with bonus material that wasn’t seen on TV. Weide, whose earlier documentaries have dealt with W.C. Fields, The Marx Brothers, Mort Sahl, and Lenny Bruce, sufficiently impressed Allen that the notoriously private writer-director-author-comedian gave him virtual carte blanche to film him at work and interview him at length about his life and career. I doubt that anyone will ever have such access again, or be able to win Woody’s confidence to this degree. Weide also spoke to many colleagues,...
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- 2/15/2012
- by Leonard Maltin
- Leonard Maltin's Movie Crazy
Allen in his first film as star and director, Take the Money and Run (1969)
By Eddy Friedfeld
Among my many favorite Woody Allen quotes, the most often quoted is: “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve it through not dying,” Woody Allen once said. While he may not achieve the latter, the former is inevitable.
American Masters premieres “Woody Allen: A Documentary,” Robert Weide’s masterful documentary which spans the amazingly and innovatively creative and prolific career of an American original.
“Not everybody has so much to say about life as Woody Allen,” Martin Scorsese comments. Scorsese also talks about the “two different New York’s” that come from each of their cinematic points of view: The former’s vision embodied in the rough and tumble “Mean Streets” with a young Robert DeNiro and Harvey Keitel, versus the latters’ embodied in “Annie Hall” and “Manhattan,...
By Eddy Friedfeld
Among my many favorite Woody Allen quotes, the most often quoted is: “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve it through not dying,” Woody Allen once said. While he may not achieve the latter, the former is inevitable.
American Masters premieres “Woody Allen: A Documentary,” Robert Weide’s masterful documentary which spans the amazingly and innovatively creative and prolific career of an American original.
“Not everybody has so much to say about life as Woody Allen,” Martin Scorsese comments. Scorsese also talks about the “two different New York’s” that come from each of their cinematic points of view: The former’s vision embodied in the rough and tumble “Mean Streets” with a young Robert DeNiro and Harvey Keitel, versus the latters’ embodied in “Annie Hall” and “Manhattan,...
- 11/20/2011
- by [email protected] (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
I’ve been collecting the condensed Super-8 Sound editions of movies for about 15 years now and am always thrilled when some odd title pops up for sale that I had no idea was ever released in the format. The Beast Must Die, The Klansman, and To The Devil A Daughter are a few of the titles that never appeared in the Castle Films (or any other) catalog, but I’ve managed to unearth, released on some obscure film labels (often in Europe – Grizzly, Star Crash, Hard Times, and Mandigo are other oddball titles I’ve found dubbed into German). I host the monthly Super-8 Movie Madness show at The Way Out Club here in St. Louis the first Tuesday of every month where I show about 14 of these films from my vast collection. The hard-drinking crowd of movie buffs always appreciates films with the cheesiest aesthetics and there are few movies cheesier than Astro Zombies.
- 10/18/2011
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
![Kristen Stewart](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYTJlOGE3ZjEtZDg4OS00MGJlLTgzY2QtYzg3OWE2NmZmYmE1XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTI2Nzk2ODk3._V1_QL75_UY207_CR26,0,140,207_.jpg)
![Kristen Stewart](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYTJlOGE3ZjEtZDg4OS00MGJlLTgzY2QtYzg3OWE2NmZmYmE1XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTI2Nzk2ODk3._V1_QL75_UY207_CR26,0,140,207_.jpg)
Every day, thousands of visitors brave the costumed impersonators of Hollywood Blvd. to ogle the foot and handprints of filmdom's greatest celebrities, immortalized in cement in front of the historic Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Come November 3, expect that tourist foot traffic to multiply; that's when Twilight stars Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner will add their pawprints alongside those of folks like Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, The Marx Brothers, and Judy Garland. [Hollywood Life, @ChineseTheatres]...
- 10/17/2011
- Movieline
Randy has a laugh and a glass.
The hard thing about pairing a wine to go with a Marx Brothers movie: you have to consider not only how well it goes down, but how well it comes up. You’re going to laugh while drinking it, there’s no doubt. Groucho might say, “The wine has a great nose. How it got into my nose I’ll never know.”
The Marx Brothers are one of America’s great gifts to comedy. They’re funny even if you don’t believe in the sanity clause. To this day, in hotels I’m tempted to pick up the house phone and say “Room service, send up a larger room.” I usually make do with a dozen hard-boiled eggs and “some coffee to sober up the stewed prunes.”
“A Night at the Opera” has laughs and music, too. High class music, even though...
The hard thing about pairing a wine to go with a Marx Brothers movie: you have to consider not only how well it goes down, but how well it comes up. You’re going to laugh while drinking it, there’s no doubt. Groucho might say, “The wine has a great nose. How it got into my nose I’ll never know.”
The Marx Brothers are one of America’s great gifts to comedy. They’re funny even if you don’t believe in the sanity clause. To this day, in hotels I’m tempted to pick up the house phone and say “Room service, send up a larger room.” I usually make do with a dozen hard-boiled eggs and “some coffee to sober up the stewed prunes.”
“A Night at the Opera” has laughs and music, too. High class music, even though...
- 10/6/2011
- by Danny
- Trailers from Hell
Ian Sansom on the comic clan who grew up in a happy, hectic house
The Schönbergs lived at 179 East 93rd Street, in the Yorkville neighbourhood of Manhattan, an area then inhabited mostly by immigrants from Germany and Eastern Europe. Fanny and Levy were from Dornum, in East Frisia. Their daughter Minnie married a man she met at a dance, Samuel Marx, a tailor, from Mertzwiller, in Alsace; the family called him Frenchie. Minnie and Samuel had five sons: Leonard, born 1887; Adolph, born 1888; Julius, born 1890; Milton, born 1892; and Herbert, born 1901. Their firstborn son, Manfred, had died aged just seven months in 1886.
Years later, Adolph recalled their early years. "There were 10 mouths to feed every day ... five boys ... cousin Polly, who'd been adopted as one of us; my mother and father, and my mother's mother and father. A lot of the time my mother's sister, Aunt Hannah, was around too. And on...
The Schönbergs lived at 179 East 93rd Street, in the Yorkville neighbourhood of Manhattan, an area then inhabited mostly by immigrants from Germany and Eastern Europe. Fanny and Levy were from Dornum, in East Frisia. Their daughter Minnie married a man she met at a dance, Samuel Marx, a tailor, from Mertzwiller, in Alsace; the family called him Frenchie. Minnie and Samuel had five sons: Leonard, born 1887; Adolph, born 1888; Julius, born 1890; Milton, born 1892; and Herbert, born 1901. Their firstborn son, Manfred, had died aged just seven months in 1886.
Years later, Adolph recalled their early years. "There were 10 mouths to feed every day ... five boys ... cousin Polly, who'd been adopted as one of us; my mother and father, and my mother's mother and father. A lot of the time my mother's sister, Aunt Hannah, was around too. And on...
- 6/3/2011
- by Ian Sansom
- The Guardian - Film News
Broadway Star Kitty Carlisle Hart Dead at 96
Broadway theatres dimmed their lights last night to honor revered stage and screen star Kitty Carlisle Hart, who died on Tuesday after a long battle with pneumonia. The 96-year-old actress, who was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and attended a private school in Switzerland, began her career as an opera star before becoming a Hollywood singer. She made her mark in the movies when she appeared with The Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera. Other films followed, including Here Is My Heart, Murder At The Vanities, Larceny With Music and Woody Allen's Radio Days. But Hart was perhaps best known for her Broadway successes in the mid-1930s. She appeared in operettas like White Horse Inn and Three Waltzes and the American premiere of Benjamin Britton's The Rape of Lucretia. She met writer and director Moss Hart in 1946 and later married him. The couple was married until the songwriter's death in 1961. On TV, Hart became a beloved regular panelist on US game shows To Tell the Truth and What's My Line.
- 4/19/2007
- WENN
Fay Grim
This review was written for the festival screening of "Fay Grim".PARK CITY -- A story of literature, international intrigue and family loyalty, Hal Hartley's "Fay Grim" exists somewhere between The Marx Brothers and an espionage thriller. A sequel -- something rare in the indie world -- to his 1998 hit "Henry Fool", the film stars Parker Posey in the kind of strong and quirky role that has made her the darling of Sundance. This is definitely not a mainstream item, but it could attract an audience ready for something completely different.
A Hartley film is like an inside joke -- if you get it, it's funny; if not, you will probably come away scratching your head. His films are more about atmosphere, characters (usually eccentrics), snappy dialogue and outlandish plots. "Fay Grim" is no exception.
Since the first film eight years ago, Fay's idiot savant husband Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan) has been on the lam from the law; her brother, Simon (James Urbaniak), a Nobel Prize-winning garbage man/poet from Woodside, Queens, N.Y., is incarcerated for helping Henry escape; and her 14-year-old son Ned (Liam Aiken) has been expelled from school for bringing in pornography.
It turns out that Henry's handwritten confessional filling seven or eight notebooks, the subject of the first film, is really encoded revelations he wrote for the CIA. Threatening to unhinge the balance of power in the world, the notebooks become the subject of an international hunt ranging from New York to Paris to Istanbul and thrust Fay into the midst of terrorist activity.
Hartley obviously loves the Grim family and uses them as a prism to look at some of the mayhem in the world today. When CIA agent Fulbright (Jeff Goldblum) tricks Fay into going to Paris to retrieve Henry's papers, she learns quickly how to handle herself in dangerous situations. She is smart but unsophisticated -- a representative American -- and becomes the target for all sorts of feelings about the U.S. But much of the time, the characters seem more comical than threatening.
Among the people Fay encounters are a Russian flight attendant (Elina Lowensohn), who was Henry's lover, a beautiful British spy with a bum leg (Saffron Burrows) and a bumbling French operative (Harold Schrott). All roads lead to a real live Afghani terrorist (Anatole Taubman), Henry's best friend, who is keeping him in captivity, perhaps for his own good.
It doesn't all quite add up, and even Hartley admits there are some holes in the plot. He seems more interested in testing Fay in situations, watching her grow and teaching some life lessons along the way. Fortunately, Posey, who has worked with Hartley three times before, is an actress who can pull off this kind of material that borders on the absurd but has a deep reservoir of human emotion. In fact, the whole cast, headed by Goldblum, Urbaniak and Lowensohn, seems to be in on the joke.
Working in HD for the first time, Hartley brings some interesting off-kilter camera angles and stylistic touches to the film, like flashing words on the screen to spell out how Fay is putting ideas together in her head. On a small budget, cinematographer Sarah Cawley Cabiya makes international locations like the Bosphorous and Turkish streets look big.
"Fay Grim" is the kind of film you might not get at first (or ever), but the next morning you might find that something about it has embedded itself in your consciousness. That's Hartley's subversive sense of humor at work.
FAY GRIM
Magnolia Pictures
HDNet Films presents a Possible Films production in association with This Is That and Zero Fiction, with the support of Mediaboard Berlin Brandenburg
Credits:
Screenwriter-director-editor: Hal Hartley
Producers: Hal Hartley, Michael S. Ryan, Martin Hagemann, Jason Kliot, Joana Vicente
Executive producers: Ted Hope, Todd Wagner, Mark Cuban
Director of photography: Sarah Cawley Cabiya
Production designer: Richard Sylvarnes
Costume designers: Anette Guther, Daniela Selig
Cast:
Fay Grim: Parker Posey
Fulbright: Jeff Goldblum
Simon Grim: James Urbaniak
Juliet: Saffron Burrows
Ned Grim: Liam Aiken
Bebe: Elina Lowensohn
Carl Fogg: Leo Fitzpatrick
Angus James: Chuck Montgomery
Henry Fool: Thomas Jay Ryan
Running time -- 118 minutes
No MPAA rating...
A Hartley film is like an inside joke -- if you get it, it's funny; if not, you will probably come away scratching your head. His films are more about atmosphere, characters (usually eccentrics), snappy dialogue and outlandish plots. "Fay Grim" is no exception.
Since the first film eight years ago, Fay's idiot savant husband Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan) has been on the lam from the law; her brother, Simon (James Urbaniak), a Nobel Prize-winning garbage man/poet from Woodside, Queens, N.Y., is incarcerated for helping Henry escape; and her 14-year-old son Ned (Liam Aiken) has been expelled from school for bringing in pornography.
It turns out that Henry's handwritten confessional filling seven or eight notebooks, the subject of the first film, is really encoded revelations he wrote for the CIA. Threatening to unhinge the balance of power in the world, the notebooks become the subject of an international hunt ranging from New York to Paris to Istanbul and thrust Fay into the midst of terrorist activity.
Hartley obviously loves the Grim family and uses them as a prism to look at some of the mayhem in the world today. When CIA agent Fulbright (Jeff Goldblum) tricks Fay into going to Paris to retrieve Henry's papers, she learns quickly how to handle herself in dangerous situations. She is smart but unsophisticated -- a representative American -- and becomes the target for all sorts of feelings about the U.S. But much of the time, the characters seem more comical than threatening.
Among the people Fay encounters are a Russian flight attendant (Elina Lowensohn), who was Henry's lover, a beautiful British spy with a bum leg (Saffron Burrows) and a bumbling French operative (Harold Schrott). All roads lead to a real live Afghani terrorist (Anatole Taubman), Henry's best friend, who is keeping him in captivity, perhaps for his own good.
It doesn't all quite add up, and even Hartley admits there are some holes in the plot. He seems more interested in testing Fay in situations, watching her grow and teaching some life lessons along the way. Fortunately, Posey, who has worked with Hartley three times before, is an actress who can pull off this kind of material that borders on the absurd but has a deep reservoir of human emotion. In fact, the whole cast, headed by Goldblum, Urbaniak and Lowensohn, seems to be in on the joke.
Working in HD for the first time, Hartley brings some interesting off-kilter camera angles and stylistic touches to the film, like flashing words on the screen to spell out how Fay is putting ideas together in her head. On a small budget, cinematographer Sarah Cawley Cabiya makes international locations like the Bosphorous and Turkish streets look big.
"Fay Grim" is the kind of film you might not get at first (or ever), but the next morning you might find that something about it has embedded itself in your consciousness. That's Hartley's subversive sense of humor at work.
FAY GRIM
Magnolia Pictures
HDNet Films presents a Possible Films production in association with This Is That and Zero Fiction, with the support of Mediaboard Berlin Brandenburg
Credits:
Screenwriter-director-editor: Hal Hartley
Producers: Hal Hartley, Michael S. Ryan, Martin Hagemann, Jason Kliot, Joana Vicente
Executive producers: Ted Hope, Todd Wagner, Mark Cuban
Director of photography: Sarah Cawley Cabiya
Production designer: Richard Sylvarnes
Costume designers: Anette Guther, Daniela Selig
Cast:
Fay Grim: Parker Posey
Fulbright: Jeff Goldblum
Simon Grim: James Urbaniak
Juliet: Saffron Burrows
Ned Grim: Liam Aiken
Bebe: Elina Lowensohn
Carl Fogg: Leo Fitzpatrick
Angus James: Chuck Montgomery
Henry Fool: Thomas Jay Ryan
Running time -- 118 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 1/25/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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