There's fewer better scripts than this. The delivery by Cary Grant - for my money the most charismatic actor of all time - and Rosalind Russell is just fantastic.
It'll take your brain a little moment to tune in as the delivery is so rapid. (Did they speed up the projection as it doesn't feel humanly possible to deliver at that rate for a sustained period...?)
I've never seen 'The Front Page' from which this is derived. I've not seen the clones that followed this either. But I'm willing to say that the only thing wrong with 'His Girl Friday' is the title.
The character of Hildy is (for 98% of the film) the smartest person in the room, and Walter is (for 98% of the time) the second smartest person in the room. Everyone else is a distant third.
The bouncing back and forth between the two of them is an hilarious and captivating escapade. That Cary Grant can disappear for a third of the movie and not be missed just shows the investment and aptitude of Rosalind as an actress.
The film 'The Holiday' beautifully mentions the portrayal of "gumption" in a female lead. The character of Hildy is the personification of it. Outside of Katharine Hepburn, I can think of few competitors. Just wonderful.
The 2% deductions... Well, there's a little back-peddling at the close of the film where Cary Grant has to "win". The complete control that Hildy has is revoked for a closing sequence and it's sad to see that - for all the brilliantly portrayed alpha female strengths - a man just had to come out smelling the roses...
They don't make them like this anymore and they bloody well should. What a fantastic film - I had a smile on my face for 90 minutes. I'd watch this 3 times rather than another Avengers smashathon.
9/10 (Have the balls to follow through and let the woman suceed!)
The Twilight Zone (2019) – 01×01
New Series, my musings. – Very quick reviews.
A worthy update
Whilst having a flick through Morpheus tv app, (good app). I discovered eps 1 & 2 had been released, quickly downloaded them. Twilight Zone has always equalled a quality show to my mind, this series, so far, has upheld the tradition.
Rotton Tomatoes – IMDB
The Comedian starts off with a rather unfunny comedian, down on his luck, relationship issues when he comes across legendary comedian “J.C. Wheeler” upon a stool at a small little comedy club. Thus begins his journey into the twilight zone.
Without going into the story, the style and visuals are pleasing, soft orange lights, (I do miss the smoke of a nightclub) and the story builds nicely as the journey into the twilight zone begins. I was surprised that this episode was an hour long. Not sure 1 hr episodes suit the twilight zone, but for this episode yes it did.
As the Comedian realised his power he first makes jokes on random people he finds on social media, bad people, but it always came back to being personal and the people in his life. A small portion of the show dealt with altered reality / the Comedians awareness of where he was. Nice. (Especially in this day and age of spiritual & science questioning of reality.)
And that is what the Twilight Zone has always been about.
The Comedian, (and I cannot find his character name or actor name on line?) Didn’t deserve his fate, and that is one of the beauties of Rod Serlings twilight zone. It’s a cruel place.
I did think the tale was going to go another way and was pleased to be wrong.
Opening credits, Mmm, too fast, slow it all down, we don’t need a ton of CGI graphics chucked in our face. (Think a fade shot of Rod would be worthy)
Opening Theme: Yeah fine.
DISCLAIMER! I'm a comedian. 22 years of wrestling with the double-edged creative sword of trying to say something to an audience and trying to make them laugh. It's not an either/or proposition, as it seems to be with Samir in this episode, but the metaphorical aspect of what you give to the audience no longer being yours, is certainly a truism.
I've long been a fan of The Twilight Zone, and the eighties revival was a must-watch for me in my teenage years, when I was devouring the works of Harlan Ellison and Richard Matheson, as well as Alan Moore's wonderful short comic strips in 2000AD. In our world of ongoing narrative, where even cinema releases require a knowledge of twenty preceding films, it is wonderful to wallow in an hour of television that asks many questions, and when it is over, it is over.
I thoroughly enjoyed Tracy Jordan's enigmatic appearance in a vaping cloud, and I thought all of the performances were uniformly excellent. The depiction of standup comedy was, like in The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel, necessarily unrealistic (there's only one club in these TV towns because they're expensive to build...), but effective in its simplicity. The laboured adherence to a potentially funny bit, that is delivered in a woefully unfunny way, is something I have personally seen thousands of times over the past two decades, and hearing Samir launch into it every night gave me PTSD from hosting shitty tryout nights.
I hope the rest of this series is as skilfully handled as this first installment. It's not a big showboating episode, and I am grateful for that. Along with Love, Death & Robots and Black Mirror, I'm glad the single-episode anthology is making a comeback.
I've had an amazing experience watching the movie premiere in Venice, I've been waiting for this movie for a long time and I was not disappointed in the slightest.
It's a gorgeous movie, it's disturbing but moving at the same time, violent at times, but also subtle. It's a different and fresh spin on the character and on the cinecomic genre as a whole and Phoenix delivers an amazing performance portraying a version of the Joker we've never seen before, he's not the villain of someone else's story, he is the hero and villain of HIS own story, and the audience can be orrified by him, but we can't help but feel for him at times.
Without giving anything away I would recommend to go and see the movie not expecting to go and see an action packed, but gritty cinecomic, I suggest going in and watch it pretending that it's not even about a famous comic villain, but simply a movie, I think that people will appreciate it more in that way, not comparing it to the cinecomics we've seen before, but thinking of it as a normal movie.
P.S.: People will of course compare Phoenix to Ledger, I don't think it's possible, they give a totally different percormance because they portray totally different versions of the character, and I think it's going to be hard to compare them, you either prefere Ledger's version or Phoenix's but only based on the character, the actor's performances cannot be judged by comparison, they're both great. Just enjoy the movie
