Did you know that beloved French filmmaker Jacques Tati has his own website? It’s in both French and English. I found this out when I finally got around to seeing Tati’s first film which was recently made available on DVD from the British Film Institute.
Jour de Fete (Day of the Celebration) was shot in 1947 and released in 1949. Tati shot the film twice, once using an experimental color process called Thomsoncolor, and as back-up shot the film in black and white. The color process was so experimental that there was actually no way to strike color prints from that film! The black and white version was what the viewing public saw. The film was acclaimed first in England before gaining critical attention in France.
It was not until 1995 that a process was discovered which allowed for prints to be made from the original color negative. The DVD was created using Tati’s notes to present the film in as close a version as was intended almost sixty years ago.
By today’s standards, Jour de Fete is a very gentle comedy, with much of the humor coming from observing people. The action takes place in a small French village that is having an annual celebration. An old woman, often seen with her pet goat, comments on some of the activity. Tati appears as the village postman and has some of the biggest laughs with several slapstick moments, usually involving his bicycle. Gags include Tati’s riding his bike into the river, falling through some boards into a pit, and accidentally finding himself in a bicycle race.
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Going to a DVD/VCD rental store is something of an adventure. As I can’t read Thai, I need to pick up every cover to see if there is an available title in English or a title transliterated into Western characters, plus see if the film has English subtitles. Even when I get a film that is of generally unknown quality, it is not that big a gamble when you consider that my rental cost is about half a U.S. dollar.
My sense of adventure led me to renting the DVD for a film titled Headless Hero 2. My research has not uncovered a first Headless Hero film making me wonder if somebody had the idea of selling a sequel that lacked the prequel. In any event, this is one strange, and sometimes hilarious film that merges the Thai tradition of ghost stories, with the film tradition of lesser Abbott and Costello vehicles that combined horror with slapstick.
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Over at the Moviefone website, Chis Rock explains why he thinks Eddie Murphy should receive an Academy Award:
“There would be no Chris Tucker, me, Martin Lawrence or any new young black comic today if Eddie hadn’t paved the way for us, especially in films. Without Eddie, then Chris, Martin and myself would have only have made as many movies in our career as Jude Law made the last three months. Peter Sellers got tons of credit for doing multiple characters, but that was just him doing him. Eddie is all those wacky family characters he portrays in ‘Coming to America’ and ‘The Nutty Professor’ pictures. Eddie should have got multiple Oscars for the multiple characters that he played in those movies alone.â€
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The Simpsons Movie is getting closer every single day.
When FOX first aired the trailer during a Sunday night episode I was in a pool hall, paying no attention to the show. But as the trailer started, an awed hush descended as everyone stopped, stood and stared – pool cue in hand – at the not very big TV screen hanging in the corner. This movie is a big deal.
The teaser, trailer and unfinished scene are all inside…
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“Hot Fuzz”, the much anticipated (in my house anyway) follow up to the zombietastic “Shaun Of The Dead” will be released in the US on March 9th, and in the UK on February 16th, 2007. Edgar Wright’s directing, and best buds Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are co-starring so it’s the “Spaced”, “SOTD” team together again.
Pegg will play a London cop so good at his job that his colleagues get sick of him and ship him off to nowhereville, where he’s partnered with Nick Frost’s bumpkin policeman.
The full trailer is now available via Working Title Films website, click here to have a look.
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Something has gone very wrong here, because Christopher Guest mockumentaries are supposed to be funny. It’s more or less guaranteed. “Best In Show”, “Waiting For Guffman”, “A Mighty Wind”, these are funny movies. “Spinal Tap” (which Rob Reiner directed, but Guest masterminded) was genius, so Guest and his troupe poking fun at Hollywood in “For Your Consideration” should be like shooting fish in a barrel.
And maybe that’s the problem. Maybe it was just too easy, because “FYC” doesn’t take sly digs at Hollywood, it takes violent stabs. Maybe they all just really hate their jobs (and why not? everybody else does) but this movie feels like one big long complaint about movies.
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