If you are a happy bachelor who wakes up married to a hot Italian woman after a drunken evening, what do you do?
1. Divorce her
2. Tell her that you aren't married (she doesn't know English, so it might work)
3. Decide you don't need a life of carefree parties, women and your faithful butler, and enjoy married life.
4. Kill her.
Well, with a title like this, you would think option #4 is the way to go. But don't jump to conclusions.
Stanley Ford (Jack Lemmon) is a successful cartoonist with his own column and a happening bachelor life. Then in a drunken moment of confusion, he offers a diamond ring to the girl popping out of his friend's bachelor party cake. Also present were a judge and notary and plenty of witnesses. Fast forward 8 hours and his hangover includes a spouse.
He immediately wants out, but his lawyer refuses to give him an annulment until he has given the marriage a chance. So he is forced into awkward social situations including spilling a tureen of soup onto himself in front of his boss.
Of course his cartoon strip changes angles and suddenly he has a new audience. Everyone that sees him on the street comments about how their wife/mother/in-law read the strip and thought it was hilarious. Meanwhile his new wife is planning to move her mother in, redecorating, and buying pets. Stanley doesn't know what to do. He misses being a bachelor. His life, his home, and his work have all changed.
Then he comes up with a solution. He can 'kill' his wife. He talks to several experts and makes a plan. Unfortunately after the comic strip is published with him murdering his wife, she disappears. Suddenly, Stanley is facing murder charges.
My Take
I liked this movie. It was comedic, but the jokes were still funny to a 2009 audience. It even has a good message about marriage...and its not that you should try to murder your spouse. This movie will leave you with lots of laughs.
So, this is a movie for people that don't like dialogue. The only spoken 'words' were proper nouns like a name or perhaps title. I can't imagine how this film made Raquel Welch famous. Maybe it was because she spent the entire film wearing a two piece fur bikini. Daniel doesn't think she is even an actress, she is just a body that got lucky. A body with an amazingly tiny waist.
Supposedly its a love story. That's what Daniel says. I admit, I did not watch it at all. It was so stinking boring to me. Anyway, its a love story between Loana of the Shell people and Tumak (an outcast from the savage Rock Tribe).
Tumak gets in a fight with his dad, the leader of the Rock Tribe, and gets kicked out. Loana and some other Shell women (who are all blonde by the way) see him, and Loana nurses him back to health. Unfortunately, Loana was sort of engaged. Anyway, Tumak's presence causes too much drama, so the Shell people send him away and Loana goes with him back to live with the Rock Tribe.
One of the silliest scenes is where Loana and Tumak are with the Rock people and they get to a body of water, so she jumps in. The cave people start enjoying themselves then a giant dinosaur bird thingy (sorry, not an expert) comes and attacks. Clearly, if you ever try to enjoy yourself, you will be attacked by a big monster bird reptile.
Anyway, I suppose the ending was happy enough. There was some sort of initiation of war between the two tribes, and an act of God, i.e. volcano eruption, stops the war and ends up combining the two tribes.
I know, I just ruined the ending for you. I am not really sorry, you don't watch this movie for the story. You watch it to be amazed at the unshaven men, and surprisingly groomed women.
Anyway, if you like watching really fun claymation special effects this is a great film for you.
This 1961 film seemed to have everything going for it. Doris Day, Rock Hudson, and Tony Randel. Its gotta be great right?
Wrong.
Its a lesser known film because its just dumb. Please note I will have a spoiler alert, cause I hated the movie, so I don't care if you see it or not, but in case you want to, be warned.
Plot Summary
Carol Templeton (Doris Day) is the worker bee of the advertising world, working with integrity and doing rather well at the same time. Still, she just keeps barely losing accounts to Jerry Webster (Rock Hudson) at the rival agency . After hearing about losing yet another account to the sly Jerry Webster, Carol puts him on trial by Advertising Agency. Mr Webster sends his go to sex kitten with an entire speech rehearsed about the amazing and upstanding Jerry Webster. Rebel (said kitten) also shows the board a was medal Jerry gave her to wear around her neck. After the 'trophies' work, Doris has to think of a new way to win.
She may seem antiquated to a modern woman of 2009, but she is no fool. She is afterall the lead advertiser in her agency. She hears that Jerry has this new account he is working on lining up called Vip. VIP is a sham, but no one knows that except Jerry. Unfortunately Pete Ramset (Tony Randal) sends Jerry on vacation, finds out about the commercial footage and starts the advertising campaign for a product that doesn't exsist. When he gets back Pete and Kerry decide to hire a chemist to make them anything that can be passed as Vip. Vip changed my life. It made my who I am. I owe everything to Vip.
Carol meanwhile hires a private detective and finds out about the chemist, and goes to try and get an advertising contract. Naturally, she had never met Jerry Webster (he didn't show up to the trial) so when she finds a man at the chemist's lab she assumes its Dr. Tyler and not her nemesis.
The courtship of company and product begins. Errr, well its sort of just a series of strange dating things where Jerry gets her to buy him a new wardrobe, teach him gulf and swimming as well as how to kiss. Yeah thats right, this woman suddenly becomes typical and sucked into this infatuation based on LIES.
Eventually she finds out Linus is actually Jerry Webster, and VIP doesn't exsist. Trial #2 with the ad council and some rather odd turn of events. As well as the end(spoiled ending in The Bad)
The Good
Doris Day plays a professional. Not a secretary or a nurse, but an advertising agent.
Rock Hudson is good looking.
Doris' character won't sleep around. (I admit it was strange to see this pride in virginity, its very different than today's movies)
The Bad
Doris Day's character is a total blockhead.
The ending sucks. SPOILER ALERT! Doris and Rock in a case of drunken lust get married. She gets the marriage annulled, but surprise, that one night of drunken passion = honeymoon baby. So Rock finds out and she just married him so the baby has a father? Ummm, ok. Also, she was like totally only 5 months pregnant going into the hospital. So not true to life. END SPOILER
The Random
There are totally some good random quotes from the movie. Also, Doris Day sings the opening song as well as an internal monologue song. Random!
Overall?
It was fine. Definately not exactly a strong sexy woman. In fact Daniel's reaction to Doris Day was that she seemed really old. It was that horrible early 60s hair. Poor gal. She looked like a wrinkless 50 year old.
There are some laughs, but the ending is horrid, makes no sense to me, and enough to make me dislike the film.
Three starsm because the 3 main people are famous. (It was a mediocre film.)
The nice thing about this break in blogging, is that I at least started posts for several movies making it easy to complete them with perhaps a bit of help from imdb or wikipedia to get names of actors/directors or award info.
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg) is a 1964 happy happy musical. At least initially. Its very Sesame Street in its bright colors, young love, sing-along way.
Boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, boy gets shipped overseas in the name of his country.
Basically, Genevive i.e. girl in the previous scenario is the daughter of a broke umbrella shop owner Madame Emery. Mom's only hope at not being broke or almost broke is to marry Genevive off to a wealthy man. Genevive meanwhile falls for Guy a young man working as a mechanic in someone else's shop. Guy's parents are dead and he lives with his aunt who is cripple or sick or something.
Young love ensues while Madame Emery sets up dinner and meetings with a wealthy jeweler (who actually keeps the umbrella shop from going under by buying Madame Emery's jewels).
Then Guy is drafted. The two love birds are of course sad, and want to spend their last moments together. They go to Guy's room after his Aunt is in bed.
In a rather foolish moment Genevive and Guy sleep together his last night in France. Genevive soon discovers that tryst led to a little guy on the way. She wrote to Guy with the idea that when he returns they will be wed, but after many months and no replies to her letters she unhappily agrees to marry the jeweler that her mother picked out at the beginning of the story.
Of course, Guy didn't die or forget her during the war. he returns home with an injury and finds the Umbrella Shop gone, Genevive gone, and his heart broken. Guy gets depressed. His girl went off and got married, he hates his job, he drinks. He drinks a LOT. He also quits his job and starts picking up women.
He hits rock bottom when he sleeps with a prostitute and learns her name is Genevive. Oh tragedy! He goes back home and finds out his aunt died, and the only person left is Madeline (the aunt's nurse/helper).
Fast forward, and Guy owns a gas station and mechanic shop and him and Madeline have a son. Genevive is driving through town and stops for gas.
I will let the end be a surprise.
Ok, usually French bothers me (ironic that I don't care for many foreign films just because of their language, yet I watch lots of them) but French singing? Génial! Its probably the fact that this is literally an opera. Every line is sung. So its got the gaiety of a 60's musical, and still dramatic and obviously not American.
I give this film 4 stars because its got star crossed lovers, and reality mixed in. It would have 5 stars, but all the singing voices are dubbed (yes in a movie where all the lines are sung).
This film was about as good as late 60's suspense goes. You have two old broads out to get each other, and a pesky dog that knows the truth. Oh man, good times.
Lets see if I can sum this up...Mrs. Marrable finds herself widowed and left with a pile of bills, and the contents of her husband's briefcase. The briefcase sounds like it belongs to Mr. Boddy (i.e. Clue the board game) as it contains 1 Rusty Dagger, a Stamp collection, and some framed bugs of some sort (that reminded me of Grissom on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation). Anywho, cut scene to someplace notable different with a sort of Southwestern Old lady feel.
There Mrs. Marrable gets up the courage to do her first killing. In goes the housekeeper, and in goes a pine tree. Time passes and the pine trees grow more numerous and in stair step formation. It reminds me of the birth a kid every 2 years sort of thing some people do. Don't know how they would do that, but who am I to judge. Back to the story...or at least the overview.
Anyway, the housekeeper that gets the most screen time is of course, the one that has a fabulous red wig, and a fiery conniving temper. Lets just say, a bit of faking a possible poison in pheasant is hilarious, and probably gutsy.
I thought this movie was great, from the somewhat random side characters to the conniving and truly insane main characters. Aunt Alice is the fiery red wigged housekeeper that comes to discover the truth about her friend that just disappeared. They do a great job keeping you guessing if Mrs. Marrable will do Alice in or not. And then when you think you figured it out, you expect to be wrong.
I give it 4 stars, for being suspenseful but not gory.
Crazy like a Fox? Pfft More like crazy like "The Cow".
The Cow is brought to us by the home-made black and white syling movie-makers of Iran. Smuggled out in the 70s it's considered to likely be the best Iranian film made to date. That isn't saying much. The entire movie spanning 100 minutes has so little plot that it's amazing how much time it takes to tell the tale. Don't worry though the movie still has bandits (that sometimes look like ninjas), random great characters (like the man who always talks through his window and never leaves his house), and a love story, well actually two.
Hassan is the one man in town that is lucky enough to have a cow. He loves his cow; he plays with the cow. He walks around with the cow and picks food for it. He shoos away local children who want to touch or feed the cow. He seems in all accounts to regard the cow more than he regards his wife. Yet, for some unknown reason he goes on a day trip and doesn't bring the cow. The cow almost immediately dies, presumably from separation anxiety. The townsfolk are so concerned about what will happen to Hassan when he finds out, they decide to hide the cow and tell Hassan it ran away, so he won't get upset.
Madness ensues as Hassan is unwilling to accept the idea that HIS cow would leave. In fact, he's certain his cow never left because it's still there. He quickly degrades from believing he knows the cow is there to taking the cow's place. To even calling for himself to protect him when he feels threatened. The movie progresses a little more simply to show us what happens to a man who both thinks and insists he's a cow.
Overall the movie is odd. The best parts of it are the mad cow moments. Anytime you see a man-cow throw himself into a support beam, then break it off and attack his/his master's friends you know its a good film. This alone must be the one support for all the awards that were given the film. Hassan (Ezatolah Entezami) received the Golden Hugo in Chicago International Film Festival in 1971. He also went on to make many more random movies, that might or might not be great. Who knows??
Three Stars for Absurdity
So in our, we have library cards and live close enough to walk, and we need something to do together, we rented library movies. Our library has a HUGE foreign film section (especially compared to some of the other sections) so we ended up with two 1960s Italian foreign films and James Bond Die Another Day. Good mix right? Well after watching the films Daniel said we should consider reviewing these in a blog. So the creation started.
This little gem is about a man that has been married for a dozen or so years, has no kids, is wealthy, and a bit of an incestuous pedophile. Yes thats right, a pervy old man. Well, thats not how he is portrayed, but in America, thats how he would have been.
Ferdinando (played by Marcello Mastroianni) is married to a smothering woman who tends to his every need. Lets just say, this woman needs a kid, a pet, or a hobby to distract her attention, but since they have none of those, she dotes constantly over her husband. Also note that the wife (Daniela Rocca) was actually a beauty queen and her big break was putting on the ugly in this little diddy. Thats right, the woman had a matronly hairstyle, unibrow, and mustasche. Nothing says home like a hairy wife.
Nothing, but a first cousin who lives in the other wing of the mansion. She also sleeps in a -scandalous for its time - negligee with her windows open. That means Ferdinando AND his father can both get their peeping Tom on. Needless to say, Ferdinando is blinded by the childlike beauty of his cousin and wishes he were married to her. Alas, divorce is illegal. What to do?
The newspaper solves that with a story of a woman that killed her husband when she caught him in bed with a lover. The law books say if the courts deem it a "honor" killing, you only get 4-7 years. Lets see 7 years plus 15...eek the cousin would be 23 and far too old to still be desirable, but 4 is doable. And Ferdianand sets out on a mission. A mission to find a man that will attract his wife so she can cheat and he can kill her and get the girl.
This movie is so messed up, and hilarious. You may think foreign comedies aren't all that funny, but this one has some great situational comedy, as well as random absurdity. We recommend it to everyone that doesn't mind subtitles, and wants a look at what a man will do in order to get that hot young 15 year old that lives down the hall. Yeah its like that. We like it so much, we have considered planning a little movie night, just to make others watch it. Good clean Italian fun.