Imperfect entertaining film.
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My favourite movie
…from a few nights ago
‘The Biggest Little Farm’ is a very enjoyable story and a fun movie. If you have kids it is one to sit down and watch with them.
I just about made it through 1, 2 was silly/absurd and 3, from most accounts I’ve read, is like a play out of a computer game - a very violent one at that. Not something I’ll spend funds to see at a cinema or on DVD.
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@Drikus thanks watched this last night and most enjoyable.
Strange as Peter O’Toole arrives back in England at the outset of the film he leaves the docks and bold as brass in the background is a 1960’s tower block. Half expected a Ford Capri to roar past him.
Also noted a nice pair of legs on Maureen Lipman in her cycling shorts.
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Get three coffins ready…
It seems extraordinary that a director as revolutionary and as influential as Sergio Leone directed just eight features - two sword and sandal epics (The Last Days Of Pompeii and The Coloussus of Rhodes), plus the “Dollars” trilogy and the “Once Upon a Time” trilogy. However he worked behind the scenes on a number of acclaimed movies (Ben Hur, Bicycle Thieves, Quo Vadis) and absorbed the influences of masters such as Akira Kurosawa, Vittorio de Sica, Howard Hawks, Sam Fuller, Nicholas Ray and Raoul Walsh.
Interestingly, for such a visually astute and inventive director, Leone never used storyboards (unlike, say, Hitchcock, who meticulously planned every scene): everything was either in his head or improvised on the spot.
Now 55 years old, this extraordinary picture, made on a tiny budget in Spain with a largely unknown American lead and a cast of European character actors, established Leone’s and Eastwood’s international reputations. It may be a fairly close remake of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, but Fistful also saw Leone setting out his much- imitated cinematic style – extreme close-ups and vast, lengthy wide shots; fast cutting; enigmatic, morally ambiguous lead characters; attention to detail (particularly in matters like dirt - nobody’s well-groomed in Sergio’s movies); extreme but often beautifully choregraphed violence; brilliant use of sound and/or music – and silence – to create tension and add puncutation to the narrative. the end result is an immersive, utterly gripping horse opera that rewards repeated viewing; despite being a bit ragged around the edges, it’s damn near perfect as a movie.
And let’s not forget Ennio Morricone’s contributions…
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Sellers in an unusual interesting role.
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Supremely daft low-budget Steve Martin/Carl Reiner comedy, from 1983, when Martin was still funny. As brain surgeon Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr – pioneer of radical cranial screw-top brain surgery – Martin is at his nimble best, and Kathleen Turner shines as the giold-digging femme fatale he marries. And there are wonderful parts for David Warner as mad brain scientist Dr Necessiter; and Merv Griffin as a serial killer terrorising the city of Vienna by injecting citizens with window cleaner.
All these years later, it’s still hilarious, and is the high water mark of the Reiner/Martin collaborations.
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Oh pointy birds, pointy, pointy…
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I love the conversation with the little girl near the beginning:
Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr: Little girl.
Little Girl: Yes sir.
Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr: I want you to do something very important, alright?
Little Girl: OK.
Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr: I want you to run home and I want you to call the E.R. of North Bank General Hospital, 932-1000. Tell them to set up OR6 immediately and contact anesthesiologist Isadore Turek 472-2112 beep 12. Have him send an ambulance with a paramedic crew, light IV, D5NW-KVO. You got it?
Little Girl: E.R. North Bank General Hospital 932-1000. Setup OR6. Contact anesthesiologist Isadore Turek 472-2112 beep 12. Ambulance with paramedics and light IV, D5NW and KVO.
Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr: That’s good.
Little Girl: Sounds like a subdural hematoma to me.
Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr: Oh it does, does it? Well, it’s not your job to diagnose!
Little Girl: But I thought…
Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr: You thought, you thought… just go! Three years of nursery school and you think you know it all. Well you’re still wet behind the ears. It’s not subdural hematoma, it’s epidural! Ha! God damn that makes me mad!
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“First the doctor told me the good news, I was going to have a disease named after me…”
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I cried at the end …so so sad
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