The Palm Beach Story

This is hilarious!

OK, I watched a few Preston Sturges movies randomly the other year, and they were (almost) all fabulous, so I bought all the rest of his movies. (Well, the ones I could find.)

And this is amazeballs! It’s a cynical (but sentimental) screwball comedy, I think.

Claudette Colbert is spot on.

Unfortunately, despite his impressive torso, Joel McCrea is basically just… there…

Did I mention that this is hilarious?

I wonder whether the group of very drunk white men shooting off their shotguns (often in the direction of the staff) is meant to be as unnerving as it is, or whether this is all good fun. I think it’s the former.

But then there’s these pure slapstick scenes that are totally uncomplicated.

OK, incisive thought of the day:

To this day, they’re using obviously fake glasses on actors (no real glasses are flat like this). Is that an aesthetic choice? Because directors like the way they reflect light? I mean, it’s striking… but every time I see this I’m thinking “fake glasses”.

I know! So deep and incisive.

It’s true!

This is so funny. OK, McCrea isn’t the best actor in the world, but it works here because Sturges is a genius.

I laughed, I didn’t cry, and then I laughed some more.

The Palm Beach Story. Preston Sturges. 1942. ⚅

The Company of Wolves

Last year, I bought a while bunch of old werewolf movies… basically because (I think) I wanted to re-watch this one: The Angela Carter movie that I remember being really taken with when I saw it on VHS as a teenager.

Ah, right — this is the movie that made me think Neil Jordan was a good director, and made me watch a whole bunch of his films. All of which are horrible. *gulp*

I did not remember that!!!

“and introducing”? Was this a made-for-TV movie?

This is so weird! I don’t remember anything about this movie except it being all weird and stuff, and it’s certainly not disappointing in that area.

Ah, yeah… it’s Angela Carter, so…

… it’s story within story within story. I remember this being, like, an anthology movie? And it kinda is, but it isn’t — it’s a series of short stories told within the context of the girl dreaming about the grandmother telling stories to her sister.

Or something!

I know! It looks really cheesy, but watching it was totes thrilling.

Word to the wise.

I remember being in London in 1993 (for the Thirteen Year Itch festival) and going to… Blue Moon Books? and buying a stack of Angela Carter books. No! Silver Moon!

That was an awesome bookshop.

Nobody talks about Carter these days, do they? I have to admit that it’s been a while since I’ve re-read any of her books, too… I’ve read them all, except the collected screenplays book…

I love this movie… but the good doggies they’ve got playing the wolves in some of the scenes don’t really look like big bad wolves now do they?

Eek! Where’s the RSPCA!

Whoa.

You know, sometimes when you watch movies you were really impressed by as a teenager? And I remember watching this with a friend (we used to watch a lot of horror VHSs) and we were both “whoa. dude”.

I’m still “whoa. dude.”

This feels so… uncompromised? It’s so Angela Carter. It’s such a mish-mash of things that shouldn’t make sense but then it does and it totally reverberates through everything: Everything makes sense on a level that’s hard to articulate.

The Company of Wolves. Neil Jordan. 1984. ⚅

6 Underground

I watched this movie a couple years ago and I told everybody I knew that THIS IS THE FUCKING BEST MORONIC MOVIE EVER.

But then a friend said “meh” so now I’m rewatching it to check whether I was right.

THIS IS THE BEST FUCKING MORONIC MOVIE EVER!!!1!

I don’t care what anybody says — that’s the best first twenty minutes of any action movie ever.

It exhilarating in its crassness. Michael Bay has obviously had to defer to people who thought he was too much before, but now he’s just giving it all: Balls to the wall, with no filter whatsoever.

It is perfect.