Monthly Archives: January 2018

Directed by Paul Mazursky

Written by Paul Mazursky and Josh Greenfeld

Starring Art Carney, Ellen Burstyn, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Melanie Mayron, Josh Mostel, Larry Hagman and Chief Dan George

Art Carney was basically a television actor – that was his career and he made a good one out of it.  He did something like 76 episodes of The Morey Amsterdam Show in the late 1940s, 39 episodes of The Honeymooners, 180ish episodes of The Jackie Gleason Show spread across it’s two incarnations in the late-50s and the late-60s, not to mention a ton of TV movies.  He was so clearly a TV actor that when he starred in Harry and Tonto he was making just his third movie, after a cameo in A Guide For The Married Man (1967) and a small part The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964).  Imagine that – a well-traveled actor of 55 being a movie novice.

I used to think it was a big deal that a television actor won an Oscar because in the past, those two mediums just did not mix – you could be a success in one, or the other, but there was little crossover between them.  And where there was, it didn’t seem to matter in terms of the box office, or ratings, because one did not reflect the other.  After all, a big star like Jimmy Stewart could transition to TV, only to see his projects fail for low ratings, while TV stars like Jackie Gleason could hardly gain traction on the big-screen. Continue reading →

Directed by Federico Fellini

Written by Federico Fellini and Tonino Guerra

Starring Bruno Zanin, Magali Noel, Pupella Maggio and Armando Brancia

I don’t ‘get’ Fellini.  As others might struggle to ‘get’ Kubrick, or Bergman, or some other director who you’ve been told is important, I don’t ‘get’ Fellini.  I don’t relate to him at all and his films fail to connect with me on any level: emotional, visceral, or as pure filmmaking.  Others might see him as god-like, while I see him as a head-scratcher.

To be fair, I’ve only see one other Fellini film in it’s entirety – that being La Dolce Vita – so it’s not like I’ve done a deep dive on his oeuvre and decided he’s not the  filmmaker for me.  That said, I only made it to the end of La Dolce Vita because I felt like I had to.  That because it was a ‘historical’ and ‘important’ film I was required to finish what I started and, if I didn’t like it, or get it, that was on me for being a philistine. Continue reading →