Comedy

Quote:
“No water, no sex.” Whereas the women in Aristophanes’ classic Greek comedy Lysistrata withheld sex from their men to end a war, the women in the village of Absurdistan concoct a similar plan out of necessity in order to get their community’s water pipe fixed. However, unlike the women of Lysistrata, the results of their decision don’t end a war but rather begin one of epic proportions between the sexes complete with the usual devices of espionage, sabotage and tested loyalties.Read More »

Synopsis
Jacques Tati’s award-winning feature début – a dazzling blend of satire and slapstick is early evidence of his unique talent. Acclaimed by international critics as an innovative comic masterpiece, Jour de fête is an hilarious exposé of the modern obsession with speed and efficiency, set amidst the rural surroundings of a tiny French village. Tati plays an appealingly self-deluded buffoon a postman who, impressed by the bristling efficiency of the American postal system, makes a wholly misguided attempt to introduce modern methods in the depths of rural France.Read More »

Rick Todd uses the dreams of his roommate Eugene as the basis for a successful comic book.

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky wrote:
There’s a meaty essay to be written about the lengths to which modern-day Americans will go to distance themselves from Jerry Lewis. Lewis represents the unrefined tastes of some earlier era of moviegoing, explained away through pejorative references to “slapstick” and “the French.” (Never mind that Lewis was never as popular abroad as he was in the U.S.) The truth, of course, is that though Lewis produced his share of dross, the gold remains pretty damn funny, and the stuff that isn’t funny tends to be strange and formally audacious in a way Hollywood comedies rarely are. It’s possible to be turned off by Lewis’ mugging (which is fairly relentless) and still appreciate the command of style displayed by his best films, whether it’s the ones he directed himself, or his collaborations with cartoonist-turned-director Frank Tashlin.Read More »

Synopsis:
‘Gormleigh-by-the-Sea is a holiday community besotted with dullness. But things liven up when Jim, a young deck-chair attendant, convinces the local entertainment director and mayor into starting a film festival. The town convinces an ambitious French actress to be the star of the festival. What happens after that is a series of near disasters — including the failure of a Nudist Beach and a riot at a film premiere. It is left to Jim’s American journalist girlfriend to save the situation and the reputation of the town.’
– Paul BrennerRead More »

Review by mark.waltz at IMDb:

Quote:
A campy shipboard musical

A family of bluebloods made destitute by the depression are scammed into leasing out their yacht and posing as crew to tacky “new money”, one of whom is their former cook. The scam turns out to be a plot by the gruff captain (Ned Sparks, the Walter Matthau of his day) to shipwreck them on a desert island run by a madcap queen (Mary Boland) and escape with their money. Of course, things go afoul as the queen has plans of her own.Read More »

Storyline: When Eyal finishes the week of mourning for his late son, his wife urges him to return to their routine but instead he gets high with a young neighbor and sets out to discover that there are still things in his life worth living for.Read More »

Synopsis:
Victoria is a thirty-something divorced lawyer who’s struggling to raise her two daughters. She is canny and cynical but on the verge of an emotional breakdown. At a friend’s wedding she reconnects with Vincent, an old friend, and Sam, an old client. Her life is about to take a new turn.Read More »

Quote:
Along the northern edge of Hollywood on Franklin Avenue, there is a hotel where movie stars used to stay, but whose glory days are long gone. Celebrities no longer go there, and the new guests are dreamers from all over the place who’ve come to LA to pursue a career in acting. “I loved to see myself in Technicolor,” one of them says, recalling his first screen appearance in a street scene. For most of them, the dream of a Hollywood career will forever remain an illusion. They hardly manage to make ends meet by working as extras – during the shoot of this documentary, a number of them were extras in Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull. Bang Carlsen’s camera obviously gives them an opportunity to show their talent for make-believe – an art that they, for lack of an audience, mainly seem to deploy to keep up their own spirits. In this often-comical, sometimes tragic portrait of some of the hotel’s residents, Hotel of the Stars reveals the wide gap between dream and reality, poverty and success in American society.Read More »

Quote:
Wes Anderson, like so many now-New Yorkers (myself included), grew up far away from the city, and so came to an idealized vision of the metropolis and its sophisticated, complicated residents through literature and movies. His new movie, The Royal Tenenbaums offers up clan of overeducated, old-money, East Coast eccentrics who occupy a house far too grand to have survived the ’80s and ’90s real estate booms without having been turned into multiple condominiums. These magnificent Tenenbaums, however, barely survive the ’00s.Read More »