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Wanted (2008)
An action flick for the Xbox generation.
Which means this is really bad movie. For those who want a break from the Xbox, here's a movie to veg-out in front of . . . a movie with just as much insight, character development, maturity, plausibility and intelligence as a video game, and with similar graphics.
The movie tries to stand somewhere between fantasy and reality, with characters jumping through plate glass windows onto the roofs of skyscrapers across the street, and the like. Our hero's girlfriend is screwing his best friend, as the ATM machine reminds him. All this without having to fuss with a joystick. None of it works for a minute.
This is an action film from the age of the 15-second sound byte, the epoch of no discernible attention span. I recommend watching Bullitt, The French Connection, 48 Hrs., or virtually anything else instead.
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
Candid Camera meets Animal House
Folks, there's nothing new here. For those of you too young to have seen it, a TV show called Candid Camera set up outrageous situations and recorded the reactions of unwitting dupes. In this movie, the dupes knew of the camera, but had been lied to about what it was there for; most were apparently told by the film makers that they were filming a documentary for a foreign audience.
The (attempted) humor is the usual post-Animal House bathroom humor/gross-out humor/sophomoric humor. We are treated to the public's reaction as our heroes urinate/defecate/masturbate in plain view, skewer America's national anthem at a rodeo, disrupt a local TV news broadcast, ad nauseam.
The punctuation of dignity is a comic staple dating back to before the Keystone Kops, or the 3 Stooges turning a white-tie gala into a pie fight. Herein, our hero Borat disrupts a formal dinner party, excusing himself to go to the restroom and returning to the table with his (alleged) feces in a sack.
As with Candid Camera, what few laughs that may be got from this movie are, indeed, from the reactions to Borat by John Q. Public. When the comics are left to themselves and perform a slapstick fight in the nude, the movie literally isn't even watchable.
They Saved Hitler's Brain (1968)
When the thing was filmed (for anyone who cares)
The movie is indeed a pastiche of two separate films with separate casts, shot years apart. However, I take issue with Leonard Maltin and the others who refer to the Stanley Cortez footage (the latter part of the film) as being from the 1950s. The actors are dancing The Twist in the Dos Palabras club in one Cortez scene. The Twist became a craze in the Fall of 1960, and remained all the rage for the next couple of years. The original Madmen of Mandoras was released in 1963 (I have a 22X28 poster, complete set of lobby cards, and some stills from this flick). All this is consistent with an early '60s (probably '62 or '63) filming of the Cortez footage.
The el cheapo additional footage (the first part of the film) was probably shot sometime between 1972-1976. The "liner notes" to the Drive-In Cult Classics 2 DVD says the modification of the old Crown International Pictures for TV release began in 1972, and the first mention of "They Saved Hitler's Brain" in a TV listing was in December, 1976.
BTW, StanleyCortez was a distinguished cinematographer who was nominated for an academy award - Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons; he also photographed Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter. The professionally photographed latter part of the film compared with the totally amateurish photography in the first part of the film makes the hodgepodge all the more evident.
A Tough Winter (1930)
Long unseen
This was shown on TV until the mid-1970s as my sister and I used to watch it on a local independent station. My sister used to think Stepin was mentally retarded because of the way he talked and acted. I can see how his characterization would be considered offensive. It was unseen after that until 1997 or so when Cabin Fever put it out on VHS. I bought a 16mm print of it from the company that owned the film rights back in 1992 and had it duped to VHS just so I could see it again. The funniest part is when Stepin has Farina read him a letter, explaining that he went to night school and couldn't read until it was dark. There's also a hilarious bit where Stepin uses the taffy that's all over everything to assist him in pulling off the four gloves he wears on each hand.