This enjoyable French animated comedy is set in the early 20th century, its shy hero is, rather fashionably, a movie projectionist in a Parisian cinema showing Méliès movies, and there are jokes about The Phantom of the Opera and The Italian Straw Hat, and a chase up and down the Eiffel Tower. It's in 3D and would probably have been better with the original French soundtrack.
AnimationComedyPhilip French
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AnimationComedyPhilip French
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- 1/29/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
How can a film that’s more than eighty years old seem fresh and modern? That’s the marvel of Rene Clair’s silent gem The Italian Straw Hat (1927), which has been lovingly restored by producer David Shepard for DVD release through Jeffery Masino’s Flicker Alley. If you’ve never seen the picture, you owe it to yourself to experience its wit and charm, which is comparable to the finest work of Ernst Lubitsch…yet it is distinctly, unmistakably French. While its source material (an emblematic stage farce written in 1851) was already well-worn by the late 1920s, Clair put his own stamp on…...
- 5/18/2010
- Leonard Maltin's Movie Crazy
There was a day when to love movies meant a thirst for the full century's worth of the form and loving all of its timeline's eruptions equally. That a film was old and in black and white were never reasons to exclude it from the discourse. This was when silent films were still shown on public television, when film criticism freely compared Renoir and Ford to new directors, when grubby urban retro theaters could trot out a double bill of "Sherlock Jr." and "The Cameraman" on badly beaten TV prints and there were still enough interested college students to half-pack the house.
Has this day finally passed, in spirit as well as lifestyle? I can't decide -- on one hand, the typhoon of new, fast, loud, sparkly distractions has never been more overwhelming, and often the very idea of paying attention to anything more than a few decades old seems openly scorned.
Has this day finally passed, in spirit as well as lifestyle? I can't decide -- on one hand, the typhoon of new, fast, loud, sparkly distractions has never been more overwhelming, and often the very idea of paying attention to anything more than a few decades old seems openly scorned.
- 4/5/2010
- by Michael Atkinson
- ifc.com
Mira Mexico! London
The darkly surreal edge that saturates both comedy and tragedy in Mexican cinema is a constant source of delight, and there's plenty of it on show in this season of contemporary Mexican talent. Rollicking circus black comedy Meet The Head Of Juan Pérez, for example, revolves around a magician's unfortunate decapitation, while in Rodrigo Pla's art-and animation-suffused The Desert Within, a peasant attempts to thwart a government ban on religion. There's also Daniel And Ana, a shocking tale of kidnapped siblings, and Five Days Without Nora, a heart-warming take on a well-organised suicide.
Barbican Screen, EC2, Thu to 27 Jan
Slapstick 2010, Bristol
Whether it's a twirl of Chaplin's cane, fisticuffs between Laurel and Hardy or a cartoon anvil falling on an unsuspecting cartoon head, chances are you're a secret, or not-so-secret, lover of slapstick comedy. And why not? As this sixth slapstick silent comedy festival proves, it's as popular today as ever.
The darkly surreal edge that saturates both comedy and tragedy in Mexican cinema is a constant source of delight, and there's plenty of it on show in this season of contemporary Mexican talent. Rollicking circus black comedy Meet The Head Of Juan Pérez, for example, revolves around a magician's unfortunate decapitation, while in Rodrigo Pla's art-and animation-suffused The Desert Within, a peasant attempts to thwart a government ban on religion. There's also Daniel And Ana, a shocking tale of kidnapped siblings, and Five Days Without Nora, a heart-warming take on a well-organised suicide.
Barbican Screen, EC2, Thu to 27 Jan
Slapstick 2010, Bristol
Whether it's a twirl of Chaplin's cane, fisticuffs between Laurel and Hardy or a cartoon anvil falling on an unsuspecting cartoon head, chances are you're a secret, or not-so-secret, lover of slapstick comedy. And why not? As this sixth slapstick silent comedy festival proves, it's as popular today as ever.
- 1/16/2010
- by Andrea Hubert
- The Guardian - Film News
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