BEFORE: Well, I booked a room in San Diego - my usual (dumpy) hotel seems to be going out of business, so good riddance to bad rubbish. But how was I going to find a hotel similar in price, which helps keep the costs of my trip down, and therefore more profitable for my employer? I searched Orbitz and Travelocity for a few weeks, but if deals are to be had there for July, they haven't showed up yet.
Enter AirBNB - questions of legality aside, I know it's there, and I decided to give it a try. Found a room in a private house for just $100 per night, which is more than I usually pay, but cheaper than most hotels. And even if I have to ship my Comic-Con merchandise to the UPS Store instead of a hotel, I can still make this work. A comfortable bed in a private home is going to feel like grand luxury compared to what I usually endure, which is a hostel (and hostile) situation rife with slamming doors at all hours, people having arguments in the hall, very few amenities (not that I need many, but still...) and shared (but lockable) bathrooms. I'll be staying a bit further from the convention center, but between taxis, buses and trolleys, I should be OK.
The only lingering question, and this is quite appropriate for tonight's film, how does someone know
that they're renting a room in a safe house? How do I know that the owner of the house is trustworthy, and not a serial killer? Then again, how does she know that I'm not? There just doesn't seem to be many checks in the system, that's all I'm saying. It's not like the web-site had any way to run a background check on me, so I'm wondering if this system of matching up homeowners and vacationers has led to any criminal actions to date.
(M)Archie Madness continues, Day 10, and Cary Grant is looking quite a bit younger by now.
THE PLOT: A drama critic learns on his wedding day that his beloved maiden aunts are homicidal maniacs, and that insanity runs in his family.
AFTER: The opening of the film depicts a fight breaking out at a baseball game between Brooklyn Dodgers and the NY Yankees. This feels disconnected from the rest of the film, however, and also demonstrates clear outer-borough bias. Is this meant as foreshadowing, to demonstrate that people in Brooklyn are more violent than Manhattanites? I'd like to see some stats on this - are there more murderers per capita in Brooklyn than Manhattan?
The IMDB tells me, however, that showing the Dodgers winning a game on Halloween is meant to demonstrate that they could only win under strange circumstances - however, back then baseball's regular season only lasted until September, so unless this was a World Series game, they shouldn't have even been playing a game in late October. It's a strange scene even with an explanation.
I'ts very difficult to get the tone of black comedy correct - and I don't mean films like "Friday" or "Soul Plane", I mean dark tragi-comedies. The benchmark for me are two films by the Coen Brothers, namely "Fargo" and "Raising Arizona", and the 2nd of those may even tend more toward slapstick comedy, so maybe it shouldn't even be regarded as a black comedy. The two elements of tragedy and comedy have to be combined very delicately - it's not like mixing oil and vinegar together to make salad dressing. But even if that analogy worked, the two things need to be put together in the correct proportion, or else one will overtake the other, or they'll just separate out.
In the case of "Arsenic and Old Lace", I think it skews too much toward screwball/slapstick, but of course, that's what Frank Capra was famous for, in films like "It Happened One Night" and "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town". It's hard to take murders seriously when people are knocking each other out with shoes, or dropping glasses when they get startled, or worst of all, excessively mugging for the camera. Cary Grant reportedly agreed that the acting here was over-the-top, and called it his least favorite of all of his films.
There's also the feeling that maybe too much happens in one day in this scenario - Cary Grant's character gets married, learns that his aunts are killers, tries to have his uncle committed to a mental hospital, then his long-lost brother shows up, and that's just the first half-hour. By the end of the thing he's bouncing around the set while tied to a chair, and it all gets quite ridiculous.
Being set mainly in the living room of one Brooklyn house gives this the feeling of a stage play, and indeed it was a successful play before it was a movie. However, in those days they didn't release the film version while a play was still selling tickets, so this film sat on the shelf for three years while the play enjoyed a nice long run. The lodger who is described as looking like Boris Karloff was even played by Karloff on stage, creating an inside joke - however, he wasn't available for the film because he was still doing the play live each night.
NITPICK POINT: any NYC cab driver worth his salt would not have hung around that house as long as he did, even with the promise of a big fare. Or else he would have been more demanding in being paid for his time - either way, I don't see any cab driver being so passive and hanging around for hours, losing money when he could be out getting other passengers.
I wished the film could have given more insight into the WHY of the killings, but I probably say that about a lot of films with serial killers in them. What drove these two sweet old ladies to poison people? Sure, they encountered many boarders who were lonely old men, but I'll wager that most people, given the choice, would rather be alive and lonely instead of dead.
I wondered why the soundtrack featured what seemed to be an instrumental version of the band Slade's hit song "Run Runaway" - which wasn't released until 1983. This didn't make much sense, until I realized that what I was hearing was a hymn titled "There Is a Happy Land", which inspired the heavy metal band's hit decades later. I love stuff like this, which is quite relevant since Robin Thicke and Pharell just got sued for writing a song with the same melody as a Marvin Gaye song, and Donald Trump fired someone from "Celebrity Apprentice" for using the tune from "La Cucaracha" in a jingle, which he said wouldn't clear copyright. Oh, I disagree, Mr. Trump, I don't think anyone holds the copyright on an old Mexican folk song, so it's probably fine to use in an ad. But you know, don't research that point before you hold someone accountable or anything like that.
Also starring Priscilla Lane, Raymond Massey (last seen in "Abe Lincoln in Illinois"), Jack Carson (last seen in "Mildred Pierce"), Peter Lorre (last seen in "Secret Agent"), Edward Everett Horton, Jean Adair, Josephine Hull, John Alexander, James Gleason.
RATING: 4 out of 10 suspicious dirt piles
No comments:
Post a Comment