These are Nora Ephron's top 11 romantic films:
It Happened One Night
The Lady Vanishes
His Girl Friday
The Palm Beach Story
The Thin Man
Charade
The Apartment
Splash
Hannah and Her Sisters
Casablanca
Sense & Sensibility
Read the full story, including her explanation for her choices and clips of each film at
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-02-11/nora-ephrons-top-11-romantic-comedies/
Then add them all to your Netflix list.
Showing posts with label Film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Film. Show all posts
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Saturday, December 12, 2009
7 Things to Know about Udaipur
1. It is spelt "Oodeypore" in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book and is the birthplace of Bagheera the panther.
2. Indian sections of the James Bond film Octopussy were filmed in the city, the Lake Palace and the Monsoon Palace.
3. Roof terraces all over the city play reruns of Octopussy at 7pm every night. Take an auto-rickshaw down to the temples and you'll find one.
4. You might recognise the nearby desert in the dramatic scene where Bond rescues Octopussy (Maud Adams) from an aeroplane being flown by the Kamal Khan (Louis Jordan) and Gobinda (Kabir Bedi).
5. In Octopussy, Bond is sent to Delhi. The audience is never actually told that he is in Udaipur for virtually the entire movie giving the impression that Delhi is super-exotic.
6. It is a mini-Hollywood: Scenes from Darjeeling Limited, Opening Night, Heat and Dust and Gandhi were reportedly filmed there.
7. It is a mini-Bollywood too: Hindi movies have included Guide, Mera Saaya, Phool Bane Angaray, Kachche Dhagey and many more....
Photographs: Nadine Rubin
Right: The elephants that welcome you onto Jag Mandir where Octopussy ran her harem of ambidextrous babes.
Left: The Monsoon Palace which appears in Octopussy as the home of Kamal Khan
2. Indian sections of the James Bond film Octopussy were filmed in the city, the Lake Palace and the Monsoon Palace.
3. Roof terraces all over the city play reruns of Octopussy at 7pm every night. Take an auto-rickshaw down to the temples and you'll find one.
4. You might recognise the nearby desert in the dramatic scene where Bond rescues Octopussy (Maud Adams) from an aeroplane being flown by the Kamal Khan (Louis Jordan) and Gobinda (Kabir Bedi).
5. In Octopussy, Bond is sent to Delhi. The audience is never actually told that he is in Udaipur for virtually the entire movie giving the impression that Delhi is super-exotic.
6. It is a mini-Hollywood: Scenes from Darjeeling Limited, Opening Night, Heat and Dust and Gandhi were reportedly filmed there.
7. It is a mini-Bollywood too: Hindi movies have included Guide, Mera Saaya, Phool Bane Angaray, Kachche Dhagey and many more....
Photographs: Nadine Rubin
Right: The elephants that welcome you onto Jag Mandir where Octopussy ran her harem of ambidextrous babes.
Left: The Monsoon Palace which appears in Octopussy as the home of Kamal Khan
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Nothing is Impossible
The New Yorker called it "Thrilling," the New York Times "Exhilirating. I wanted to get up from my seat and get lost in Philippe Petit's poetic world in the documentary Man on Wire.
In 1974, Philippe (with a little help from a motley crew of co-conspirators) strung a cable between the Twin Towers and danced across it. It was his gift to New Yorkers on their way to work on August 7, just as it was a gift to the French when he performed his aerial ballet between the rooftops of Notre Dame, and the Australians as he skipped across the high wire off the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Of course the Americans wanted to know "Why?" And Philippe responded: "There is no why?" He thought it was a beautiful thing to do and he was right. I saw Philippe once. He came to Paul Auster's 60th Birthday party at the Rose Bar at the Gramercy Park Hotel. He wore his signature black turtleneck and trousers and for a time I didn't know who he was. But when he walked up to Paul and gave him what looked like a small rock, wrapped up in newspaper and tied up with string I had to know his name.
This documentary, written and directed by James Marsh, is a must see.
Great interview with James here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRz8x3erGPg&feature=related
In 1974, Philippe (with a little help from a motley crew of co-conspirators) strung a cable between the Twin Towers and danced across it. It was his gift to New Yorkers on their way to work on August 7, just as it was a gift to the French when he performed his aerial ballet between the rooftops of Notre Dame, and the Australians as he skipped across the high wire off the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Of course the Americans wanted to know "Why?" And Philippe responded: "There is no why?" He thought it was a beautiful thing to do and he was right. I saw Philippe once. He came to Paul Auster's 60th Birthday party at the Rose Bar at the Gramercy Park Hotel. He wore his signature black turtleneck and trousers and for a time I didn't know who he was. But when he walked up to Paul and gave him what looked like a small rock, wrapped up in newspaper and tied up with string I had to know his name.
This documentary, written and directed by James Marsh, is a must see.
Great interview with James here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRz8x3erGPg&feature=related
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Q: Why do we go after the ones who run away?
A: Immaturity.
I saw Dangerous Liaisons on Broadway, starring Laura Linney and Ben Daniels (making his marvelous Malkovich-ian debut). Also making her Broadway debut: Mamie Gummer, who is going to have to work very hard to step out from under her mom, Meryl Streep's, shadow. I think Mamie will ultimately be a wonderful actress. She's young and she needs practice, but she certainly has some magic already.
This production was astounding. The set and the costumes were magnificent and the transitions between scenes flawless. (Some say that's the true measure of a great director). There was crackling sexual tension on the stage, and just the right amount of gratuitous sex scenes.The director, Rufus Norris, used to be an actor himself which might speak to his smooth direction. And the dialogue. Oh. The dialogue. Perfection.
In fact, I was inspired,right after the play, to go straight to Kim's DVDs on St Marks Place to hire Dangerous Liaisons starring John Malkovich, Glenn Close, Michele Pfeiffer, Uma Thurman and Keanu Reeves. It was exceptional.
I saw Dangerous Liaisons on Broadway, starring Laura Linney and Ben Daniels (making his marvelous Malkovich-ian debut). Also making her Broadway debut: Mamie Gummer, who is going to have to work very hard to step out from under her mom, Meryl Streep's, shadow. I think Mamie will ultimately be a wonderful actress. She's young and she needs practice, but she certainly has some magic already.
This production was astounding. The set and the costumes were magnificent and the transitions between scenes flawless. (Some say that's the true measure of a great director). There was crackling sexual tension on the stage, and just the right amount of gratuitous sex scenes.The director, Rufus Norris, used to be an actor himself which might speak to his smooth direction. And the dialogue. Oh. The dialogue. Perfection.
In fact, I was inspired,right after the play, to go straight to Kim's DVDs on St Marks Place to hire Dangerous Liaisons starring John Malkovich, Glenn Close, Michele Pfeiffer, Uma Thurman and Keanu Reeves. It was exceptional.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
The Inimitable Norman Mailer
Watching Norman Mailer shuffle slowly across a stage at age 84, hunched forward and clutching two canes, is as good a reminder as any to "Dance, dance, dance" while you still can as Dougy (Lawrence Tierney) says in Tough Guys Don't Dance.
I went to one of the evenings of The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer, a retrospective taking place during the next two weeks at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the Paley Center for Media and Anthology Film Archives. Sandwiched in between a screening of the adaptation of his 1984 novel Tough Guys Don’t Dance and Maidstone, a film shot in the Hamptons in the summer of 1968 and released in 1971, was Mailer himself.
Maidstone is one of Mailer's earlier films -- improvisatory semifictional cinéma vérité. They're worth seeing, writes A.O. Scott in the New York Times "for the insight they provide into the ideas and ambitions that fueled Mr. Mailer’s writing in the 1960s and ’70s, the wildest, most productive and most contentious period in a career that has never been especially calm or easy to comprehend." With all due respect to Mr Scott, what's not to comprehend? The man liked to fight and he liked to fuck. He also liked to watch others fuck. And of course there were drinks and drugs. But more than that, he liked to share what he liked to do with others. Or, as they say, he liked to live large. In Maidstone his sexual energy is palpable, almost visible emanating off his person. His chest hair, like his sexual appetite, borders on primitive.
"Fame was not only his burden, but also his subject and his method," wrote Mr. Scott.
I watched Mr. Mailer tonight as he strained to hear the questions (he's very deaf now) and worked hard to keep his feet, clad in black sheepskin Ugg boots despite the heat, from shaking. He coughed as he spoke and told the audience that he has respiratory troubles, yet his voice held such enthusiasm as he proudly announced that he'd been married six times, fathered nine children, served time in jail, gotten into fights. This is a man who took his own life by the jugular and got lock jaw as he bit down hard. I picture him, as he was in the final scene in Maidstone bloodied and crazy-eyed, almost tearing off Rip Torn's ear with his teeth [Torn had attempted to assasinate Norman T. Knigsley (Mailer) and Mailer was outraged that he'd dare. Torn's response: “When — when is an assassination ever planned? It’s done, it’s done.” ]
Here, a couple of classic comments that Mr Mailer made this evening:
On why he made Tough Guys Don't Dance: "I made the move to convince other directors and producers to let me make more movies."
On writing scripts: "Movies are more spooky [than novels] because you're taking reality and distorting it. It's very intense."
On directing: "Sometimes when an actor improvises a line [like Lawrence Tierney did with the line "I coulda told him never to call an Italian small potatoes" in Tough Guys] you almost want to say 'no' even though you know it's good. Your authority when directing a film is so tenuous. To those of you out there who want to be directors I say Godspeed. It was certainly one of the most interesting activities I ever undertook."
On terrorism: "America is essentially a Christian country. Americans find it hard to work six days a week and knock over the next guy to get ahead and then go to church on Sunday....We needed to create a villian large enough for the essential spiritual crime of capitalism. For a long time that was communism. Now it's terrorism and none of our politicians have the wit, the grace, or the courage to attack it for what it is. It's bullshit mountain."
On space travel: "Now that I'm 84-years-old I couldn't give a God damn if we ever get to Mars."
On criticism: "If you didn't like the movie, you can find friends."
I went to one of the evenings of The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer, a retrospective taking place during the next two weeks at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the Paley Center for Media and Anthology Film Archives. Sandwiched in between a screening of the adaptation of his 1984 novel Tough Guys Don’t Dance and Maidstone, a film shot in the Hamptons in the summer of 1968 and released in 1971, was Mailer himself.
Maidstone is one of Mailer's earlier films -- improvisatory semifictional cinéma vérité. They're worth seeing, writes A.O. Scott in the New York Times "for the insight they provide into the ideas and ambitions that fueled Mr. Mailer’s writing in the 1960s and ’70s, the wildest, most productive and most contentious period in a career that has never been especially calm or easy to comprehend." With all due respect to Mr Scott, what's not to comprehend? The man liked to fight and he liked to fuck. He also liked to watch others fuck. And of course there were drinks and drugs. But more than that, he liked to share what he liked to do with others. Or, as they say, he liked to live large. In Maidstone his sexual energy is palpable, almost visible emanating off his person. His chest hair, like his sexual appetite, borders on primitive.
"Fame was not only his burden, but also his subject and his method," wrote Mr. Scott.
I watched Mr. Mailer tonight as he strained to hear the questions (he's very deaf now) and worked hard to keep his feet, clad in black sheepskin Ugg boots despite the heat, from shaking. He coughed as he spoke and told the audience that he has respiratory troubles, yet his voice held such enthusiasm as he proudly announced that he'd been married six times, fathered nine children, served time in jail, gotten into fights. This is a man who took his own life by the jugular and got lock jaw as he bit down hard. I picture him, as he was in the final scene in Maidstone bloodied and crazy-eyed, almost tearing off Rip Torn's ear with his teeth [Torn had attempted to assasinate Norman T. Knigsley (Mailer) and Mailer was outraged that he'd dare. Torn's response: “When — when is an assassination ever planned? It’s done, it’s done.” ]
Here, a couple of classic comments that Mr Mailer made this evening:
On why he made Tough Guys Don't Dance: "I made the move to convince other directors and producers to let me make more movies."
On writing scripts: "Movies are more spooky [than novels] because you're taking reality and distorting it. It's very intense."
On directing: "Sometimes when an actor improvises a line [like Lawrence Tierney did with the line "I coulda told him never to call an Italian small potatoes" in Tough Guys] you almost want to say 'no' even though you know it's good. Your authority when directing a film is so tenuous. To those of you out there who want to be directors I say Godspeed. It was certainly one of the most interesting activities I ever undertook."
On terrorism: "America is essentially a Christian country. Americans find it hard to work six days a week and knock over the next guy to get ahead and then go to church on Sunday....We needed to create a villian large enough for the essential spiritual crime of capitalism. For a long time that was communism. Now it's terrorism and none of our politicians have the wit, the grace, or the courage to attack it for what it is. It's bullshit mountain."
On space travel: "Now that I'm 84-years-old I couldn't give a God damn if we ever get to Mars."
On criticism: "If you didn't like the movie, you can find friends."
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