Kung Fu Panda [2008]
1. The dumpling/chopstick fight sequence. Very clever, also hilarious.
2. The turtle slowly dissolves into peach blossoms and floats off into the sky.
3. The slo-mo/freeze frame effects. Also very funny. Conclusion? Animal voices in so-mo are hilarious.
Wow. Just: wow.
It feels surreal. Just: surreal. And absolutely right.
I’m reading an advance copy of the new Slavok Zizek book, Violence. He relates a hilarious anecdote about Gore Vidal. A pushy journalist once asked Vidal if his first sexual partner was a man or woman. Vidal replied, “I was too polite to ask.”
The Letter [1940]
1. In the beginning of the movie, to calm her nerves, they give Bette Davis a drink. It’s black as molasses, almost looks like grape juice. What drink is it supposed to be? It’s too dark for whiskey. They wouldn’t give her a glass of wine. So what drink is it supposed to be? It’s a mystery.
2. Gale Sondergaard as Mrs. Hammond, the best thing in the movie. She’s the ultimate dragon lady. In fact she really made me think of the evil henchwoman Kala in Flash Gordon. The scene where she confronts Bette is very unsettling, with its suggestions of opium smoke, moonlight, a wind chime, Mrs. Hammond’s slinky straitjacket of a dress. Sondergaard says very little. She doesn’t need to.
3. Herbert Marshall is drinking, laying out his doomed plans for a new plantation on Sumatra. After Bette takes her leave, he suddenly grabs hold of the bar and slumps over. The men around him do not know how to react.
The Little Foxes [1941]
1. “Go ahead, say it. Say it and see what happens.”
2. The ornate, cut-glass pitcher of elderberry wine. Birdie drinks steadily. During the single scene she has four glasses.
3. Bette Davis stares off in into the distance, or perhaps down at the floor. Boring a hole into it with her eyes. Motionless. In the background, soft focus, we see her husband stagger to the stairs, collapsing. She’s killing him by doing nothing, and she knows it, and that’s why she stares so fixedly. The only way to keep the thing that she’s doing in the corner of her mind. In the rest of the movie William Wyler and Gregg Toland use deep focus to brilliant effect; here they use soft focus with equal power.
Sans Soleil [1983]
1. A giraffe is shot in the neck. Two pulsing jets of blood. The animal runs for several seconds, almost as if it’s unharmed. Another shot. The giraffe stumbles, falls to the ground. Cut to a closer shot. A hunter approaches and shoots the animal in the head at point-blank range. A final twitch of the legs.
2. Amazingly creepy audio-animatronic figure of JFK at a Toyko department store.
3. A village in Iceland which has been covered by ash and lava during a volcanic eruption. Housetops visible, attic windows. A cat gingerly walks along the hardened crust.
La Jetée [1962]
1. His teeth biting the hammock.
2. They wander through a museum of strange but familiar animals.
3. The head scientist/jailer wears a gray turtleneck sweater.
The top of the bed was level with the bottom of the window sill. Lying in bed on his back, head turned to the left, he could see out the window. He often did this until he drifted off to sleep. The blinds were always lowered, but not all the way, leaving a clear view at the bottom. The window itself was often cracked open a few inches. He liked staring through the crack at a treetop just outside the window. In the summer the treetop was a leafy mass of green, swaying back and forth in the wind, coppery from the streetlights. Yet still brilliantly green. There were outside noises: cars going past, muted footfalls on the sidewalk, a rush of wind through the trees. It was very peaceful. Calming. As he became sleepy he imagined himself floating through the cracked-open window and hovering parallel to the treetop. The cool sheets bundled on top of him slowly dissolving, warmth pooling in his limbs. Leaving his body behind, safely tucked in bed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlfRtpM9lU0
R.I.P. Harvey Korman. Watch this hilarious sketch with Carol Burnett and Lily Tomlin.
