Some clever ideas:
Link: http://youtu.be/fTz4Nhgm_SQ
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At the start of the second live-action Astérix and Obélix film (I reviewed the first one here), Caesar annoys Cleopatra (gorgeous Monica Bellucci) by telling her that Egyptian greatness is all in the past, so to prove him wrong she vows to build him a magnificent palace in just three months. This impossible job she assigns to a young architect named Numérobis (“Edifis” in the English translation), who’s currently months behind on just building someone a house (like every homebuilder in the world). But if he doesn’t finish the palace on schedule, Cleo warns him, he’ll be crocodile food.
The desperate Numérobis tells his friend, an engineer named Otis (who’s working on an invention to carry people to the top of a pyramid), that his only hope is to seek magical aid from a droid in Gaul who had known his father. Otis suggests the word he’s looking for is probably Druid. (The same joke works in both French and English.)
The Druid in question is of course our old friend Panoramix. When Numérobis finally meets him he says, “Je suis, mon cher ami, très heureux de te voir.” (I am, my dear friend, very happy to see you.) To which Panoramix replies, “C’est un alexandrin.” (That’s an Alexandrian.) An Alexandrian is a term in French poetry for a line of 12 syllables, which is what Numérobis, who’s from Alexandria himself, has just uttered. I wish I could tell you that I got this joke unaided, but in fact there’s no way I would have. (I read it in a review, and it’s also pointed out in a clip below.) I’m told a lot of the comedy in the original requires a pretty deep grasp of French language and culture, and I’ve read reviews from French-speakers suggesting the film may be untranslatable. (At least one joke even requires a knowledge of ancient Egyptian: IMDb quotes a hieroglyphic inscription as, “If you can read this you must be an Egyptologist.”)
I saw the film in a version dubbed into English (a Miramax release available from Amazon on a burn-on-demand basis) because I couldn’t find it in French with English subtitles, not even in a Korean edition. The dubbing is competent and even introduces some original jokes, as when Otis says that one of his life’s ambitions is to move his lips in French and have the words come out in English.
Alas, the dubbed version is also about 15 minutes shorter than the original. I may just have to break down and learn French.
Despite these frustrations, I enjoyed this film nearly as much as I did the first. Again it’s a very broad farce, which not everyone will like as much as I did. If you watch it, do make sure to read the end titles, which are full of gags. After listing the main cast in order of appearance, for example, a few additional names are given, this time in descending order of their length. Among those thanked by the producers is Imhotep.
There are more films in the series and I hope to see them eventually, but the first two have the best reviews. As for the books, Uderzo (now in his 80s) took over the writing duties after the death of his friend Goscinny, and they continue to appear, the most recent published less than a year ago.
Here’s the original French trailer (with English subtitles) followed by an excerpt from the film with English subtitles added by a fan of the film.
Update: At the moment Pathé, the film’s producer, has foolishly blocked the second fan-made clip on alleged copyright grounds. I say “foolishly” because (a) it’s a clear instance of fair use and (b) it amounts to a free advertisement for the film. I hope Pathé realizes its mistake and restores access to the video in question.
Link: http://youtu.be/XlhihCd6qtw
Link: http://youtu.be/0mWjZs5ZcyI
by One of my favorite things about high school French was reading a series of comics wittily written by René Goscinny (who tragically died in 1977 at the age of 51) and brilliantly illustrated by Albert Uderzo. The protagonists were Gauls in the time of Caesar, residents of the only village not conquered by Rome thanks to a secret magic potion, created by their druid, Panoramix, that gives those who drink it tremendous strength, even the diminutive Astérix. His friend Obélix, who delivers giant stone menhirs for a living, fell into the potion as an infant and hence doesn’t need to drink it to be ridiculously strong.
The books were hugely popular and translated into many other languages. There were feature-lengthy animated adaptations starting in the 1970s, but I only just learned that there is also a series of live-action movies that began in 2002. The first, a joint French-Italian-German production, was the biggest-budget French film of all time (at least without adjusting for inflation) until the record was broken by its sequel. It stars Gérard Depardieu (probably the best known living French actor) as Obélix and Chrisitan Clavier as Astérix, with Oscar-winner Roberto Benigni of Italy as a disreputable member of Caesar’s staff, Lucius Detritus.
Despite the big budget and major stars, the film isn’t available from Netflix. At first the only DVDs I could find were in French without English subtitles. I know some French, but nowhere near enough to follow a movie, so I kept looking. Finally I discovered that Amazon has a Korean release in French but with English as well as Korean subtitles.
The main plot involves Benigni’s attempt to overcome the Gaul’s magical advantage by kidnapping the druid Panoramix, who then of course has to be rescued by our heroes. A subplot involves Obélix’s infatuation with a strikingly beautiful young woman named Falbala, which I’m told is a fashion term meaning a flounce on a dress. (In the English subtitles she’s called Parafanalia.) Alas for Obélix, Falbala is smitten with the handsome young actor Tragicomix.
Like the original comics, this is a very broad farce, and if you’re not already a fan of Astérix and Obélix I’m not sure how you’d like it. Personally, I had a grand time. If I were French enough to get all the jokes, I’m sure it would have been even better.
Link: http://youtu.be/VpfEWtqxn6M
by Alas, another sequel that doesn’t live up to the original, which wasn’t all that great to start with. (And he never once gets to say “Hammer time!” unless I missed it.)
Natalie Portman apparently saw The Avengers (a much better movie, incidentally) and doesn’t know why her old boyfriend Thor didn’t at least phone her while he was fighting aliens and his wicked stepbrother in New York, even though since the first Thor movie she’s Moved On to the extent of having a new boyfriend. (He’s played by Chris O’Dowd, who shows up all over the place but if probably best known in the U.S. as Kristen Wiig’s love interest in the film Bridesmaids and in the UK for his role in The IT Crowd.) At least this time Natalie Portman gets to visit Asgard (which should remind her a lot of the planet she used to run as Queen Armadilla), and she even gets comped a really nice suite for most of her stay in the Magic Kingdom.
Unfortunately, her vacation is spoiled by evil ancient elder gods who want everything to be really, really dark, and since Ms Portman turns out to be holding the McGuffin they need, they launch an all-out war on Asgard in which the infantries of both sides seem to be armed with medieval swords and bows and arrows while their respective air forces are equipped with World War II-era hardware. That’s not how I might have pictured a war between two groups of gods, but then again I never studied theology.
Once again the most appealing character is Portman’s intern, played by Kat Dennings, who has decided to hire an unpaid intern of her own, a tall young guy she constantly orders around. The best thing in the whole movie is their kiss late in the film. (The fact that the two interns kiss not a spoiler. If you didn’t see it coming you need help.) It’s almost worth renting the film and fast-forwarding through the rest just to see it. Or maybe it’s on YouTube by itself.
If the other parts of the climax get too boring you can still enjoy the London scenery. It’s a little disturbing to think the East End had to suffer a war between alien gods so soon after the events of Cockneys versus Zombies (also a much better film), not to mention the Olympics, but as they say in the other film, London’s been through worse than this.
Link: http://youtu.be/npvJ9FTgZbM
by Reformed super-villain Gru is recruited to help a shadowy agency track down a super-villain of the unreformed sort, and in the course of this Gru acquires a girlfriend, an agent of the Anti-Villain League voiced by Kristen Wiig.
I forget what director said he wanted a female lead who would make every man in the audience think he was the only one who realized how attractive she was. That’s more or less how Wiig’s character comes across. She’s not beautiful, but she’s charming and likable, so she seems more and more appealing as the film goes on.
The sequel isn’t as good as the original, but it’s still pretty entertaining, which is often the best one can hope for from a sequel.
Link: http://youtu.be/l9Fi3E-8PmA
by Until earlier this year I’d somehow never heard of this Coen brothers movie about a physics professor in the upper Midwest of the 1960s who suddenly has to deal with a set of personal and professional crises. From my goyishe perspective, this may be the most Jewish (or anyway, Jewish-American) film I’ve ever seen. (One of the extras on the disk is a brief glossary of Yiddish and Hebrew terms, though it’s not strictly needed to follow the film.)
The protagonist is a nice guy whose strange brother is obsessed with working on a bizarre notebook full of weird, mystical diagrams, tables, and what looks like alien mathematics, something he thinks will among other things help in his gambling. The brother lives with the hero’s family and drives his daughter in particular crazy because he’s always in the bathroom when she wants to use it. His young son is smoking grass and studying for his bar mitzvah except when watching F-Troop.
One of the hero’s students is demanding a better grade, insisting he deserves it because he understands quantum physics and all the stuff about the cat, just not the math part. (If you know any physics, this is reasonably hilarious.) His wife is threatening to leave him, a shiksa suns herself topless next door as he tries to repair the rooftop TV antenna so his son can see F-Troop, and the rabbis he goes to for wise counsel aren’t just unhelpful but strange. One recounts a lengthy, detailed story about a Jewish dentist who discovers raised Hebrew writing on the back of the lower teeth of a non-Jewish patient, but the only point of the story seems to be that we just have to accept that some mysteries are never explained. When the hero asks what happened to the goy with the mysterious teeth, the rabbi looks surprised and asks, “Who cares?”
My favorite moment is near the end of the son’s bar mitzvah, when the member of the congregation honored with the hagbah, the act of raising the Torah to show all present some of the text, struggles under the weight of the scroll and mutters to himself, “Jesus Christ!”
It’s a sometimes dark but understated comedy, full of surprises and subtle wit. I suspect it’s even more enjoyable to someone better informed on Judaism than I am, but I think the average goy would still like it.
The feature is preceded by an interesting short in Yiddish (subtitled in English) that the filmmakers say is entirely independent (though people of course attempt to find hidden connections): A man in a 19th-century eastern European shtetl has invited someone to visit for soup, and his wife insists the guest is a dybbuk (though in this case an evil spirit animating a corpse rather than a lost soul inhabiting a living person as dybbukim are more usually depicted).
Link: http://youtu.be/dZ02JMhmomE
Here, incidentally, is the video glossary:
Link: http://youtu.be/-IyjZnqiKCI
(For what it’s worth, I believe “Mazel tov” specifically means “Good luck” in the sense of “What good fortune!” — an observation, not a wish. “Hashem” literally means “the name,” i.e., of God.)
by In journalism there is supposed to be a “Chinese wall” separating “church and state” — the news and business sides of a news outlet (though which is church and which is state probably depends on your point of view), but in reality, this wall has always been a bit porous. Odds are your local newspaper has real estate and automotive sections actually created by the business side, for example. Your local television newscast is also likely to feature video news releases (produced by drug companies, for example) have been appearing in the middle of local television newscasts and introduced explicitly as news stories by a local news anchor reading from a script supplied with the release. Look through back issues of Columbia Journalism Review for the Darts & Laurels column you’ll see plenty of examples of disturbing influence of advertisers over supposedly independent news content.
John Oliver’s piece on this is as usual funny and informative, and he makes an important point: If we ignore most ads (which we’ve largely learned to do even if we don’t employ ad-blocking software in our web browsers), this becomes a huge incentive for advertisers and ad-sponsored media to move toward stealth (or “native”) advertising. After all, somebody has to pay for the content, and if we don’t subscribe or donate, ads are pretty much it.
Link: http://youtu.be/E_F5GxCwizc
by No, I don’t mean The Conjuring (reviewed in the previous post); I mean yet another political ad featuring somebody complaining about the Affordable Care Act who actually turns out to have benefited from it.
An article by Eli Stokols at KDVR Fox-31 in Denver has the details, but in outline, the ad in question features a woman named Richelle McKim who says her family was unable to afford their healthcare plan (a subtitle says she had to go back to work) and that Senator “Mark Udall’s vote for Obamacare has hurt families in Colorado.”
But she told the station that her going back to work (which she did back in 2010) had nothing to do with the Affordable Care Act as such.
Some time back her husband did go without health insurance for a while because his high blood pressure meant insuring him would have cost the family an additional $800 a month. Of course, the Affordable Care Act now prevents insurance companies from denying coverage or jacking up rates because of a pre-existing condition. (It also caps out-of-pocket spending on medical care, which most people seem not to realize.)
Another thing: According to Gallup, the percentage of people in Colorado without health insurance plummeted from 17 percent in 2013 to just 11 percent now, which sounds like Colorado families being helped rather than hurt.
It’s remarkable how consistently these supposed horror stories have turned out to be at best misleading when they aren’t just plain false (even featuring actors pretending to be Obamacare victims). Earlier this year Stephen Colbert did a hilarious segment on that, part of it featuring alleged non-actor Sir Patrick Stewart.
by Once again a family takes up residence in an isolated country house, and the family dog in particular is against the idea from the start. There are minor oddities, then bigger weirdnesses, then graver and graver threats, as if the spooks used to work in a billing department.
Haunted house movies almost have to follow a formula along these lines, and as with higher forms of art (the sonnet, say), whether the constraints act as limits or as a supporting structure depends on the level of creativity.
The Conjuring, especially the first hour or so, is actually pretty good, managing some original scares and eeriness. If you’re a fan of genre you’ll probably enjoy at least that part, though later on it turns more violent than spooky as the focus increasingly shifts to a pair of married ghost hunters who are trying to help the family.
The film claims to be based on real people and real events as recorded by said ghost-hunting couple and by members of the haunted family. The latter allegedly suffered the hauntings for more than 10 years, far longer than in the film, before finally landing a book contract.
Link: http://youtu.be/Gb-jRz7HWqs
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