Comedy

  • Frank Tashlin – Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957)

    1951-1960ComedyDramaFrank TashlinUSA

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    Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? was a run-away success. The film is known as Mansfield’s “signature film.”

    Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? is a 1957 American satiric comedy film starring Jayne Mansfield and Tony Randall, with Betsy Drake, Joan Blondell, John Williams, Henry Jones, Lili Gentle, Mickey Hargitay, and a cameo by Groucho Marx. The film is a satire on popular fan culture, Hollywood hype and the ad industry, which was making millions of dollars off the growing revenue from television ads. The film also takes aim at television and the damage it was doing to movie attendance in the 1950s.

    It was produced and directed by Frank Tashlin, who also wrote the largely original screenplay, utilizing little more than the title and the character of Rita Marlowe from the successful Broadway play Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? by George Axelrod. The play had run from 1955 to 1956 and also starred Mansfield as Rita.Read More »

  • Giuseppe Amato & Vittorio De Sica – Rose scarlatte AKA Scarlet roses (1940)

    1931-1940ComedyGiuseppe AmatoItalian Cinema under FascismItalyRomanceVittorio De Sica

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    SYNOPSIS
    Respectable bourgeois wife (Renee Saint-Cyr) turns out a mysterious bunch of scarlet roses and yields to temptation of adultery. Vittorio de Sica’s director debut (with supervision by Giuseppe Amato); light but already a little bitter comedy based on skillful Aldo de Benedetti’s stage hit. Naturally, superstar De Sica playing the main role himself – and is on the top of his charm here.
    Sadly, there is only Spanish theatrical release (from that time), with Spanish dubbing and titles.Read More »

  • Naoto Yamakawa – Birî za kiddo no atarashii yoake AKA The New Morning of Billy the Kid (1986)

    1981-1990ComedyCultJapanNaoto Yamakawa

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    Plot
    Billy the Kid waits tables in the Schlächtenhaus Saloon, last refuge of humanity from marauding, nihilistic gangs; co-workers include a samurai, Marx-Engels, an artist and the Tokyo telephone enquiries number made flesh. This bastion of global history and culture is duly invaded, clearing the decks for our spiritual and cultural rebirth…
    Read More »

  • Alex van Warmerdam – Schneider vs. Bax (2015)

    2011-2020Alex van WarmerdamComedyNetherlandsThriller

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    Quote:
    A relatively straightforward genre exercise compared with last year’s Cannes-competing “Borgman,” “Schneider vs. Bax” (which has already opened in its native Netherlands, where it did arthouse business rather than action-movie numbers) likely wouldn’t have interested festivals or foreign distribs if not for the career-rekindling acclaim his previous feature attracted. Van Warmerdam would be the first to admit this follow-up was designed to be as different from “Borgman” as possible. Still, there’s so escaping the macabre and borderline-surreal sensibility that underlies them both, which should earn this pic playdates around the world in venues that would have ignored him a year earlier.Read More »

  • César Charlone & Enrique Fernández – El Baño del Papa AKA The Pope’s Toilet (2007)

    Drama2001-2010César CharloneComedyEnrique FernándezUruguay

    In 1998, a small South American village is in a flurry over the Pope’s upcoming visit for the business opportunities that it will provide. While most of the residents plan to sell food at the parade, a smuggler family man decides to build a pay toilet.Read More »

  • Kiyoshi Kurosawa – Kanda-gawa inran senso aka Kandagawa wars (1983)

    1981-1990AsianComedyJapanKiyoshi Kurosawa

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    Quote:
    Two sexually energized young women who live in a high-rise apartment building happen one day to spy from their window a mother and son making love in the apartment across from theirs. They decide to stage a rescue attempt to free him and in the process one of the young women ends up falling in love with the son despite having a boyfriend and enjoying sex with her female companion. Of course, the mother they are warring against has her own plans when she feels her privacy invaded. [imdb]Read More »

  • Savi Gavison – Ha-Asonot Shel Nina aka Nina’s Tragedies (2003)

    2001-2010ComedyDramaIsraelSavi Gavison

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    On the day of his father’s funeral, the curious and meddlesome adolescent Nadav (Aviv Elkabeth) peeps in through the window of the funeral home where the rabbi is making last minute preparations for the burial, a task that involves calling an unreliable, impatient repairman during a torrential rain in order to fix a chronically squeaky gurney wheel. Ordering the technician to remain throughout the services in an attempt to ensure the soundness of his repair work, the somber proceeds from the idiosyncratic point of view of the erratic wheel as it precariously wobbles out of stability and back into its familiar, irritating din. The seemingly surreal, deceptively lyrical opening sequence provides an elegantly conceived framework for filmmaker Savi Gabizon’s elegantly modulated tragicomedy.Read More »

  • Mario Camerini – I grandi magazzini aka Department Store (1939)

    Italy1931-1940ComedyItalian Cinema under FascismMario CameriniRomance

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    Romance between a saleswoman and a driver of the Department Store. Charged with a petty theft, she is blackmailed by the chief of staff to enjoy her favors, but the driver, after doubting her, discovers the real culprits.Read More »

  • Mario Camerini – Il Cappello a tre punte aka Three Cornered Hat (1934)

    1931-1940ClassicsComedyItalian Cinema under FascismItalyMario Camerini

    http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/9953/8032134038170.jpg

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    Synopsis:
    Also known as Three-Cornered Hat, this Italian comedy is based on a Spanish folk tale, which had previously been adapted as a ballet by Manuel de Filla. Director Mario Camerini and his team of screenwriters have refashioned the material as a vehicle for the popular De Filipo brothers, Peppino and Eduardo. The story is a mistaken-identity affair, predicated on the fact that a pompous governor is the exact look-alike of a poor miller. Much of the fun is derived from the efforts to pass off the miller’s homely wife as the governor’s gorgeous spouse. Described by one Mario Camerini devotee as “pretty, noisy and accomplished,” ‘Il Cappell a Tre Punte’ was filmed in 1934, and released in the U.S. two years later.Read More »

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