The Most Tedious Story Ever Told.

Oh God! THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD is so far up its own arse that Satan called the filmmakers and thanked them for turning so many people off Christianity.

While choirs of angels provide the soundtrack, God speaks through Jesus Christ, his only begotten son whom he sent to Earth to take away the sins of the world. Having failed that task, it now falls to Max von Sydow to play Jesus, because The Power Of Christ Compels Him.

Wolfman Baptist

Jesus wanders about the Middle East – very, very slowly – sowing the seeds that would create unending religious war for two millennia, while platitudes spring forth from his cherubim lips; love thy neighbor, fisher of men, consider the lily – all of which sound suspiciously homosexual. Which is okay – if he would just come out of the closet. Instead, he gathers twelve -ahem- “disciples” who dog his footsteps and were probably the first alcoholics to vent the aphorism, “Have you heard the news? He is Risen,” without any irony.

GREATEST STORY is director George Stevens’s rejoinder to Nicholas Ray’s KING OF KINGS (1961). It was the age of the Jesus movie, so no one found anything remotely weird about this movie that didn’t have a cogent plot. For example, Jesus visits John the Baptist (Charlton Heston) in a river to be baptized. No evidence is given as to why John wants it the other way round, why Jesus is appearing now or what his purpose is. Crash cut to Jesus climbing a mountain, meeting an unidentified bum who promises Jesus all the kingdoms of the Earth if he would but bow down before him (oh, it’s General Zod!). There’s a cheat going on here though, because we all know the backstory (from being sensually whipped into hearing it at unholy Sunday Mass), so we are meant to be impressed that Jesus has turned down kingdoms that could have actually been provided. But in this movie there is no evidence on whether Zod can actually deliver what he promises, so Jesus might just be rebuffing an old bum. And where’s the fortitude in that? The writers are taking it for granted we’ve all been whipped by the same priests.

“Let him among you who is without sin cast the first stone!” You’ve read the story, you know this is the debut of Mary Magdalene, the whore. This Jesus line always gets me, because it speaks to the hypocrisy of humanity. And I love whores.

Movie continues meandering, lifting exact passages from -snigger- gospel, while those angels keep choiring. Someone says it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a smurf to enter the kingdom of heaven, and no one pipes up and sez, “Hey, are you gonna explain that, or are we gonna have to kill people for the next 2,000 years on how to interpret it?” I’m guessing the latter.

Monty Python Award for the funniest scene must go to the three cured guys who run through the crowds after Jesus heals them, yelling his praises while the Hallelujah Chorus yells the praises of Handel. They reach the high walls of the city, with Roman soldiers manning the ramparts above, and scream to the soldiers, “A man was dead but now he lives!” “I was crippled, and now I walk!” “I was blind, and now I see!” Hilarious not just because it reminds us of THE LIFE OF BRIAN (“Lord, I am affected by a bald patch!”) but because I’m wondering what the soldiers musta been thinking – “Why’re you telling US? We’re the lowest cogs in the empire, just gate guards. We don’t care. And we’ve got no stake in reporting this unverified gossip to anyone above us in rank, let alone spreading the news like it’s going to get us comfy chairs.”

When Jesus reanimates Lazarus (seemingly to impress a coupla chicks who won’t stop yammering at him), how come no one runs screaming that Lazarus is now a zombie? Isn’t it your own mythology that denotes a body reanimated after death is termed a “zombie”? Later, Jesus himself becomes a zombie when he “rises from the dead.” I mean, these are your own rules, right? Stop me if I’m wrong. And isn’t it your own mythology that states zombies eat humans? What then does this mean, “Take, eat; this is my body. Drink, this is my blood.”

The Roman authorities fear Jesus’s promotion of civil harmony, so use modern Roman diplomacy to undermine his message: crucifixion. It was the social media of its day. Like every Jesus movie, writers James Lee Barrett, George Stevens and God try to imply the Roman authorities were more worried about their political futures than the “holy” or “spiritual” ramifications of Jesus’s presence, but – like every Jesus movie – they heartily fail to convey this, each character ultimately falling under the delusion that if someone SAYS he’s The Messiah then he probably IS.

Performances are exceptional; cinematography is sweeping, we feel the sand in our sandals and the sun on our backs. This is truly an epic. And the messages – whether from a Messiah or a very naughty boy – are there for all to hear. And, as Python said, the messages were great then and always will be. But no one’s listening. Not the Jews, not the Catholics, and especially not the christians.

Who is the one who is truly – BETWAYED?! Jesus? Or are you still betraying yourselves with delusion that you are doing his bidding? Or that he was the Messiah? Or that he was supernatural, which, by definition, is what he should be if he can preempt the state of death? Or that he was the -snigger- son of god?…

GREATEST STORY is loaded brim to barrel bottom with stars, every single B-role an A-List star or a That Guy. Heston opens a new cheese factory in Jerusalem with his Stentorian invocations to “Repent!” (when centurions dive on him waist deep in his river, they’re trying to capture him, and he’s busy dunking them all trying to baptize them,  yelling “Repent!”); Judas is a spy, so of course he’s THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. (David McCallum); there’s Victor Buono (who wishes he was Frank Thring), Mark Lenard (Spock’s dad), Corporal Klinger from M.A.S.H (Jamie Farr); Kojak sentences Jesus (Telly Savalas as Pilate, who invented exercising on a floormat); The Duke repents at the foot of the cross (John Wayne as a centurion – of course, the ancient version of a military guy, “Surely this pilgrim was the Son of Gahd!”); Cornelius from PLANET OF THE APES (Roddy Mcdowall) is a disciple of Ape Law; Shelley Winters is cured by The Exorcist (although he couldn’t stop the Poseidon going over); Pat Boone (lovin’ his role as Angel at the Tomb!); Sidney Poitier helps Max von Sydow carry the cross (oh, I get it! Make the black man carry the white man’s burden!); a host of other familiar faces, Van Heflin, Jose Ferrer as Herod, Richard Conte, Angela Lansbury, Sal Mineo, Martin Landau – and there’s Professor from GILLIGAN’S ISLAND – This movie has everyone!

THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD succeeds as an epic movie about a famous personality. Where it fails is where every Jesus movie fails – it thinks it is relating the story of a man who succeeded. And everyone takes it for granted – filmmakers, audiences, characters within the story – that Jesus did succeed. I guess he did. Isn’t it great how there’s no more sin in the world because Jesus took it all upon himself  and “died for our sins”?

Take that, Satan!

END

We’ll Always Have Overacting.

Leonard Maltin calls CASABLANCA “The best Hollywood movie of all time”; it won the 1943 Best Picture Oscar; voted #2 film of all time by the American Film Institute; Roger Ebert effuses, “Casablanca is THE movie”; it boasts one of the most regal Hollywood stars in Ingrid Bergman (in the movie that would catapult her to stardom), and the cynical founder of the Holmby Hills Rat Pack, Humphrey Bogart, one of the eras manly sex symbols, even though his face resembled the underside of a running shoe.

Some movies were great back then, and stay great: CITIZEN KANE, SEVEN SAMURAI, GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT. Poor CASABLANCA has dated badly – due to censorship at the time not allowing the filmmakers to solidly portray a married woman cheating, censorship on what could be shown onscreen to denote “passionate affair,” contention over the nihilistic lead character necessarily having a heart of gold, the faults go on… After decades of progress in American film, CASABLANCA, though it has insinuated itself into popular vernacular as a “great film,” is nothing more than a talky cardboard romance thriller, with overacting threatening to send us into a melodramatic swoon and enough soft-focus on Ingrid Bergman to make us cross-eyed.

During World War II, Rick (Bogart) and Ilsa (Bergman) had a steamy love affair in Paris, which involved lots of kissing with their mouths closed and lots of hugging with their clothes on. Years later, Rick runs a gin joint in Casablanca, The Café Americain, a stopover in Morocco for refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe on their way to America. It’s kinda like the Cantina in STAR WARS, except all the aliens are illegal. Peter Lorre cameos as Chewbacca, and Sam the piano player (Dooley Wilson) plays As Time Goes By by flapping his hands up and down on the keys like a seal. “You badly synched it for her, you can badly synch it for me.”

Play it for Poffy, schweetheart!

When Ilsa and her activist husband Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) seek egress through Casablanca to The States, they seek out Rick at his Café (“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks her pointy bra into mine”), knowing he has Letters of Transit that would confuse the Nazi stormtroopers hunting them due to Laszlo causing a great disturbance in the Resistance on Tattooine. “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for. Move along.”

And Rick and Ilsa reignite their love affair by meeting in dark rooms and talking a lot with their clothes on. Rick’s refrain, “We’ll always have Paris” makes us wonder why he doesn’t tear off her pointy bra and make Casablanca the new Paris. Everyone constantly drinking and smoking, yet no one ever gets drunk enough to have a Sexy Party. Censorship, thou frigid mistress.

Claude Rains is an unscrupulous, stylish weasel of a frog, a French officer who is nonchalantly AC/DC when it comes to helping either Rick or the Germans – whoever can benefit him the most. Conrad Veidt is Nazi Strasser, bedecked incorrectly in a Luftwaffe uniform.

Evidence abounds that CASABLANCA would not make it through today’s muster onto the silver screen. Based on the play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, “Everybody Comes to Rick’s,” imdb trivia tells us “in 1980 this script was sent to readers at a number of major studios and production companies under its original title. Some readers recognized the script but most did not. Many complained that the script was “not good enough” to make a decent movie. Others gave such complaints as “too dated,” “too much dialogue” and “not enough sex.””

According to actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, Bogart and Bergman themselves “thought the dialogue was ridiculous and the situations were unbelievable…” Yet the movie remains a classic for most film aficionados. Back when they were starstruck kids it was “the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Ah, to me, “the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill o’ beans in this crazy world.” I couldn’t have melodramatically said it better, Humphrey.

END

Stay Lost.

Dinosaurs! Uh, no, just komodos and iguanas with horns and spikes duct-taped to them….

Didn’t matter when you were ten. And THE LOST WORLD (the second film adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle‘s 1912 novel) is definitely FOR ten-year-olds, seemingly made BY ten-year-olds.

Been decades since I read the book, but screenwriter-director Irwin Allen takes Conan Doyle’s exciting meat and potatoes story, changes it unnecessarily to accommodate his interminable padding (the gripping “volunteers” segment, the compelling “arguing-over-taking-a-woman” vignette, the tension-wracked “tentacles-that-don’t-kill-anyone” obstacle, the thrilling “walking-slowly-through-the-dead-dinosaur-ribcage” scene – there’s more padding here than in Kiera Knightley’s bra) – then Allen adds cheese and plastic.

THE CHEESE:

• As Professor Challenger, Claude Rains overacts into leading an expedition to a prehistoric Amazonian plateau, accompanied by:
• Michael Rennie (smug overactor, because he made the Earth stand still for one day)
• David Hedison (actionboy overactor, who would soon VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA)
• Fernando Lamas (Spanish overactor, who does a mean Ricardo Montalban; father of Lorenzo; some kind of gay subplot with him and another guy in a locket together – ?)
• Richard Haydn (British overactor – best known for helping Chris Plummer and Julie Andrews escape nazis in THE SOUND OF MUSIC)
• Jill St. John (stereotypical woman overactor, whom Challenger doesn’t want on the expedition because she’ll bring her girl germs and pink luggage)
• a puling Jay Novello (who’s Italian, but playing Mexican – I think? Who knows?)
• a teen model (heartthrob overactor, taking time off from a Frankie Avalon beach shoot)
• the hot cavegirl (Vitina Marcus, with her animal-skin miniskirt designed by Tommy Hilfiger – d’ya think she’s wearing undies? In 1967, she would become The Girl From The Green Dimension, who found Dr. Smith “handsome pretty handsome.”)

Voyage To The Bottom Of The C-List

THE PLASTIC:

Spikes, horns, sails, spinal plates, head frills – all lackadaisically taped to plodding komodo dragons, soporific iguanas and an unfortunate caiman, which made them look like dinosaurs to people with the intelligence of cavemen.

We can expect bad effects from pre-CGI movies, but THE LOST WORLD fails for many other reasons: foremost being its blatant disinformation, voiced via its ignorant characters, and by association, the ignorant filmmakers.

After being “chased” by a forced-perspective komodo with a taped-on frill (roaring like an explosion coming through a tunnel), Challenger says, “We’ve just been visited by a Jurassic Brontosaurus!” If I can stop my head from exploding in outrage, I’ll outline why this statement proves Irwin Allen’s braincase is as small as outmoded thinking perceived dinosaur braincases to be: Brontosaurus (correctly termed Apatosaurus) was known since the late 1870s. Even schoolkids in 1960 knew Brontosaurus. (Exactly how retarded does Allen think his audience?) And if you knew Brontosaurus, firstly, you knew this sleek, splay-footed lizard looked NOTHING like the bulky, tree-limbed Brontosaurus. You also knew it was a herbivore, and herbivores don’t chase people to eat them – unless they are taunted by magnificent overacting.

At least other stop-motion dinosaur movies of the time displayed a level of art and ingenuity, in trying to portray dinosaurs at the state that science knew them. The great Willis O’Brien is listed as an effects technician, but I think he just lent his imprimatur to this farce, and let the buffoons in the effects department go nuts with animals and glue, while he sat in the corner and read a good book. Truly, these people just don’t care! It’s like that maverick mediocrity Bert I. Gordon in KING DINOSAUR (1955), calling a forced-perspective iguana a Tyrannosaurus rex and expecting everyone in his audiences to squint real hard.

In this movie’s defense, it came during an unenlightened age, when biological science took a step backwards and started regarding dinosaurs as big dopey versions of modern lizards. Very soon, it would be realized that dinosaurs were not reptiles, but in the Archosaurs clade. They resembled reptiles as much as this movie resembled JURASSIC PARK. Their physiology, movement, bone structure, habits, appearance – were nothing like reptiles.

After the eight mismatched explorers stand around yammering for a good part of the film’s running time, all standing facing the fourth wall to get their screentime on like an episode of FRIENDS, they are kidnapped by white-skinned natives who look suspiciously like extras who can’t act.

The hot cavegirl helps them find a path out of their cave prison by helpfully showing it to them right in front of their faces. (We wonder what axe she’s grinding against her own people to aid the intruders’ escape. Someone that hot would be spoiled bitchless in cave-culture – unless the gene to perceive hotness wasn’t invented yet and she was considered mutated.)

Naff subplots about diamonds, past expeditions, Lamas sacrificing his life to save the others by letting a doll that looks like him fall into some lava…enough cheese and plastic to make a modern corporate theater hotdog proud.

END

Pure as the driven ho.

Politicians are whores. This we know to be fact.

So what makes anyone think the idealistic Mr. Smith in MR SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON would not buckle at the knees and subscribe to the corruption inherent in the system, were his career drawn out long enough?

Alan Grayson, the real life Democratic Florida senator in the 2009 Health Care Reform battle, is being called Mr. Smith. He swoops into a fray where his own party has exhibited such gutlessness, that for simply telling the truth, he is being called an “idealist.”

Director Frank Capra‘s MR SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON is a paean to idealists. If it weren’t for Mr. Grayson illustrating that idealists still skulk the dread halls of Congress, MR SMITH would look like pure fantasy…

No sex, no violence, no swearing, we wonder whether this is a tale involving congress at all. Then we see how a spineless governor is forced into appointing a junior senator to be a puppet of the Senate and we see that politics back in 1939 (before they invented sex, violence and swearing) worked a lot like it does these days.

When we see how the spineless governor appoints the junior senator – through a coin toss – we realize it’s exactly how politics works these days.

James Stewart is Jefferson Smith, the young, naive senator (hard to imagine James Stewart as “young” but he was also human once – like all of us). When he gives his acceptance speech, he shocks his senior senator, Joseph Paine (Claude Rains), by proclaiming, “He probably doesn’t remember me but he worked with my father.” But wouldn’t Smith’s lineage be one of the first things vetted before they swear him into office? Wouldn’t Paine think to ask, “Is Jefferson Smith related to that OTHER Smith that worked with me?” Politics then, as politics now: Before they bought her $150,000 wardrobe and threw her in the national arena to be one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the American Presidency, did anyone check the half-governor of Alaska for ethics and underage sex scandals?

When Smith arrives in Washington D.C., it’s Idealism City, as he goes tramping through a montage, visiting the landmarks: the Liberty Bell, the Capitol Building, the Constitution, the White House, the Lincoln Memorial with its inspiring words carved into a wall, that mean absolutely nothing to modern politicians. Patriotic themes, American flags superimposed flying proudly over the montage…

Smith’s reaction is that of a mildly retarded yokel, and when he is skewered in the newspapers for his naiveté, he goes around punching out all the offending reporters. Frank Capra may be a renowned director, but how childish is this cringe-tastic scene? Not one of the reporters who smeared Smith thinks to further smear him for his lunatic reaction of spending all day hunting them out in pubs and punching them.

Idealistic Smith meets his secretary, the smug Saunders (Jean Arthur), who educates him in the cynical ways of Washington. This is probably the only film where discussing how a bill goes through congress is foreplay. After Saunders describes the near impossibility of shepherding a bill through congress (like then, as now), Smith is idealistic/stupid enough to reply, “Shall we start writing it now or after dinner?” His cause becomes lobbying for funding for a Boy’s Camp – unlike today, the politicians who lobbied for underage boys back then were never caught with their hands down those boys’ pants.

Saunders does dissuade Smith for a moment – until he gives her Obama Speech Number 21 (that inspiring one) and she goes into soft focus so much the filmstock nearly deteriorated, until they started working on that sexy bill, bodies writhing in sensual penmanship.

Of course, bills do get passed in Congress – but never for idealistic reasons. Yet Smith annoyingly insists on being so Luke Skywalker about it, which becomes understandable once we realize his character is as much a fantasy as Skywalker. (But there’s that Alan Grayson thing…)

Smith discovers his hero and mentor, Senator Paine, is part of the corrupt system that he rails against, and is so crushed he goes into idealism overdrive for his Boys Camp funding. Until Paine double-crosses him and Swiftboats him before Swiftboating was invented.

When Smith sees 50,000 letters protesting him, his overacting goes into orbit to combat the corruption. To combat Smith’s overacting, Paine steps up his own overacting, storming into Congress and shouting a confession at the top of his voice on the “rotten political corruption of the state.” You’d have more chance of destroying a Death Star by firing into a vent no bigger than a womp rat than hearing an American congressman calling himself and the system corrupt.

MR SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON is lauded as one of the great American films. But it is embarrassing idealistic idiocy. Without any solutions. It relies on the age-old tactic of being a drama queen to get through the armor of corrupt politicians. But real world politicians do not ignore laypeople because they are too busy or too corrupt or even because they hold laypeople beneath their contempt. Laypeople appeal to ideals and morals and ethics that politicians had to shunt aside to get to their positions in the first place. You appeal to qualities and virtues that are not in the politician’s vocabulary any more. They are bereft of those ideals laypeople appeal to. THAT is why they do not listen to you – you are speaking antelope, and they are speaking lion.

Let me tell you one more thing about Alan Grayson: They’re calling him “Mr. Smith” – as an insult. That should tell you everything you need to know about Washington.

END