It's a Gift

Not my fave WC Fields movie but still more laugh-out-loud moments than I get from most other comedians' films.

same here and yes-- damsels even made me cringe but somehow i liked it anyway. how can he do that?



i've never seen wc fields-- i've seen his name under different quotations though. looks like i'll probably have to check this out.

--

anyway recently i watched among other things



the good, the bad, the weird - a korean remake of-- well you know. stylish, ultraviolent, absurd, slightly demented, and superfunny. a blast.



sin city: a dame to kill for. is jessica alba superhot? of course she is, so there's that. but the movie felt more like a tv episode to me. i can't explain what the sequel lost from the first one, which i liked lots better. this one had its great moments but overall it all felt... small. was it that it was made for 3D, maybe?

I think you'd love him. Kind of literary slapstick. But he made tons of films. It's a Gift is a good one but I'd start with The Bank Dick. Although there's moments of brilliance in every one of them.

^^ thanks!

i'll line them up

?? Do you mean the kumquat scene?

That, but lots of other stuff. He was visual (slapstick) but injected these insane, seemingly improvised bits of speech. Like in the kumquat scene when he tells the blind man to "sit down honey".

I see. I've never come across the phrase "literary slapstick" before and I couldn't quite figure out what you meant. Seemed to me like a zen koan or something.

BTW, have you seen Harold Lloyd's Speedy? It features some footage of the streets of New York caught with hidden cameras. Thought you might find it interesting for that reason alone.

Literary slapstick isn't an official term, I made it up. Fields was steeped in literary influences. Loads of his lines elude to it, but he'd undercut them with inappropriate absurdisms, like calling a blind man "honey". I honestly think he was a bit of a genius when it came to language.

But a scene like this probably reflects what I mean more than the Kumquats one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE_2uqCc_K4

I love Harold LLoyd but haven't seen Speedy. I'll definitely check it out. Thanks.

Gotcha. That explains it perfectly.

Wow. I've always liked Fields but I haven't appreciated him nearly enough. An alcoholic who hates kids and beats women, yet manages to be sympathetic, or at least not totally hateful? That's genius.

Thanks. Couldn't find a copy of that at the library, where I got the other two. Strange they'd have these two and not Barcelona, but we take what we can get out here on the tundra.

Still haven't watched them yet, but looking forward to them.

i bet your tundra has great libraries and ILL. anyway, barcelona is not the best one, it's just that it was made 2nd, and LDD was the last of that trilogy. plus i think you'll relate to the "americans in europe" theme.

in a way for me metropolitan remains the most endearing of the guy's whole work-- i have watched it many times and will probably rewatch some more. LDD is the most accomplished one.

since you're mainly a book person i think you'll like his work-- stillman wanted to be a novelist, after all, but he just didn't enjoy the solitude of that line of work (he said something along those lines in an interview).

anyway, cheers, i hope you find time in the weekend.

I am tending bar one time down the Lower East Side of New York.
A tough paloma comes in there by the name of Chicago Molly.
I cautioned her, "None of your peccadilloes in here."
There was some hot lunch on the bar comprising of succotash...
Philadelphia cream cheese...
and asparagus with mayonnaise.
She dips her mitt down in to this melange...
I'm yawning at the time, and she hits me right in the mug with it.
I jumps over the bar and knocks her down.
You were there the night I knocked Chicago Molly down, weren't you?
You knocked her down? I was the one that knocked her down.
Yeah, that's right. He knocked her down. But I was the one to start kicking her.

We really do, actually. Since I live outside the limits, I don't have privileges at the great ones in Iowa City, the U of Iowa and the town's, but I can browse there. The UI library has a huge, fascinating Special Collections section. See story beginning p. 29, the one called Arcanaworld, here: http://www.uiowa.edu/~illumine/issue...e-Fall2003.pdf

I conceived and developed the story idea for the author when I was overseeing that magazine. I'd been spending time over there on breaks and such just relaxing and going through materials and then realized that it was all great background for developing a feature story for the magazine. Anyway, fun stuff.

ILL = interlibrary loan (just to clarify for all)

i get lots of stuff that way-- since youre outside limits it's probably a quick thing via consortium

Yep. I've taken advantage of that.

I love the ILL where I work.

we just hired a librarian from the Univ of Iowa. she worked in the writing workshop where Vonnegut once taught,

Awesome. I might know her from my work at Iowa. I worked with library staff on a few stories, and the main library was a favorite hangout of mine.

Do you mean that she worked at the Writers Workshop when Vonnegut was there?

Nope. she is a young Instruction librarian, a recent hire here where I work

I see. So she worked at the Iowa Writers Workshop. I mean, THE Iowa Writers Workshop. That is a huge deal. Very cool.

We watched Metropolitan last night. Very good!