culture bump

Mad Mad Mad Mad World is two-hours-plus-another-hour. Or another hour and fifteen minutes if you include the overture, intermission and exit music. It's easily the longest comedy that's funny. (That I know of.)

I believe the only version that was authorized by Kramer was the 154-minute version. Still, that's two and a half hours. I've seen Mad World numerous times, but not in the last couple of years. I don't know if I've seen that super long version, at least not often. It wasn't obtainable until recently, right?

Anyway, the movie is so action-packed that the actors were given two scripts, one of the dialogue and one of the physical comedy.

I'd also recommend an unfairly forgotten, but expertly made chase/race movie, Those Daring Young Men in their Jaunty Jalopies (alternate title: Monte Carlo or Bust). It, too, has numerous comic actors, a more international assortment than IAMMMMW, with Terry-Thomas at his villainous best and introducing Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Liked it a lot at the time.

Heading to the Keys next week for our honeymoon. First time out there. Any suggestions? I'm thinking I'll try to do a day of deep sea fishing while I'm out there. Never done that before.

I hope you are not flying to Key West!
my No. 1 tip is that you start in Miami/Ft Lauderdale/Boca/whatever, then wake up when you feel like it. start driving toward Key West, but have no arrival time goal. take Route 1 south, and stop at whatever looks interesting (everyone's tastes are different, but Lorelei's on Islamorada is a damn relaxing place to eat - mile marker 82. gets voted 'best sunset,' too, depending on your timing. also, I assume the Key Largo Marriott still has the hammocks and beach chairs that look like where they filmed those Corona commercials. just park and walk out back as if you're staying there.)

I did some parasailing in Key West, that was very worth it.

Schooner Wharf Bar there is dog-friendly - locals have their dogs sit at their feet of the outdoor bar. I'm not a dog person, but that was nice. The butterfly museum there is also beyond relaxing. there's a Euro-style bed-and-breakfast across the street, near the "Southernmost Point in the U.S." sign.

Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander books

And his storm scenes! I never knew I had any interest in sailing until I started reading his books. Actually, still not interested in really sailing, but reading his descriptions of the struggles to keep a ship afloat in high winds and heavy seas is just superlatively exciting.

Flying to Miami and then driving to key West. Then after a couple of days spending a night on marathon and then wrapping it all up in largo the last few days before flying out of Miami.

For largo we went with playa largo resort.

You know what movie didn't have enough car chases? DRIVE.

Also, FUNNY GAMES didn’t have nearly enough funny games.

But shoot'em up had plenty of shooting things up!

PRETTY WOMAN didn't have nearly enough of the pretty woman.

Germany: Year Zero

We watched that one just last night, apparently having a premonition that you were about to recommend it :) Definitely one to see for anyone interested in 20th-century history or Italian neorealism (although the film is in German, naturally). It is starker than the two Italian films in the trilogy (Roma and Paisan) because it has no hero at all, and no moral transcendence.

Which is also one of the many reasons why it's my favorite of the Rossellini war trilogy.

But that's not to knock the other two. Open City has several memorably heroic characters (Anna Magnani's Pina, Marcello Pagliero's Manfredi, and above all Aldo Fabrizi's Don Pietro). Paisan has the best sense of the life of the ordinary soldier and civilian during wartime. And Germany: Year Zero presents the aftermath of war with a fatalism that seems to reflect the reality of postwar Germany more than any ideological statement on the part of Rossellini.

One of the great appeals (at least to me) of wartime and postwar Italian neorealist movies is that they weren't shot in a studio, but among the ruins of war-wrecked Italy and Germany. Hollywood actually made one outstanding film (The Search) that centered on one aspect of postwar Europe---the refugee crisis and the separation of children from their parents----that was also shot on location, but only in the American movie is there a conventionally happy ending. None of that for Rossellini.

And his storm scenes! I never knew I had any interest in sailing until I started reading [O'Brien's] books.

I never new how little interest in sailing I had until I read one of them.