God Save the Queen

No! Not the towels!

I had been thinking of seeing the new Hitchhiker film but this post by AE Brain leaves me very unsure. No towels? No Restaurant? No leopard?

April 28, 2005 in Film | Permalink

Putting the f back in freedom

Went to see that film last night. Gary's closing speech to the world leaders - the anatomically inventive speech - was what Colin Powell has needed to say for a long while but couldn't. I expressed this view to M., who used to be a lecturer at one of the world's finest International Relations university departments. He agreed, or at any rate didn't shake his head.

I laughed like a drain, anyway. On my way back to the Tube I passed the Italian tourist office, and thought how silly that was - the whole of Western civilisation is an advert for Italian tourism.

And what is Western civilisation? Not far from Bond Street tube there is a branch of McDonalds and, over the way, a fine sculpture by Barbara Hepworth. Western civilisation is where you can contemplate Hepworth's mastery of form and line while eating a Big Mac. We have always needed both, and always will.

January 22, 2005 in Film | Permalink

A pair of glasses

Paul Merton has a longish article in the Times today about the greats of silent movie comedy. It turns out at the end to be a plug for an event in Bristol but it’s worth reading anyway. He focuses on Keaton as his own favourite and praises Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy as well. But Harold Lloyd deserves more than a passing mention.

He’s one of the funniest comic actors in movie history – at any rate I can’t offhand think of anyone demonstrably better. He didn’t just depend on dangling from skyscrapers (as in ‘Safety Last’ and ‘Feet First’), which is what he’s most remembered for today. He hit the mark, for instance, as the clueless tourist in ‘Why Worry?’ who thinks that the events of a revolution in ‘Paradiso’ are just exotic local customs displayed for his benefit. ‘Girl Shy’ has perhaps the best chase sequence I’ve ever seen, one against which any other chase should be judged. He never quite reached the same heights in the talkies, but they’re still more watchable than virtually any comedy these days. And for what it’s worth, he did his bit for anti-racism in ‘The Cat’s Paw’ in which the Chinese characters are the good guys and the villains are home-grown mobsters and corrupt politicians.

He is, as you’ll have guessed, my favourite of the silent comedians. He’s a fantasy figure, a nerdish looking guy who finds extraordinary resourcefulness under pressure and gets the girl. Movies were movies in those days.

January 13, 2005 in Film | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

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