So this week in Questionable Taste Theatre, I present SOAPDISH. Soapdish is more or less the soundtrack to my life; not one day goes by wherein I can't quote this movie. Having a family of performers, way more theatre experience than is healthy, and a work history that includes working next to soap-opera writers convinced me that this movie, while it may seem to be a comedy, is in fact exactly like life.
Nutshell: There's a soap opera, which is hilariously bad. Everyone involved? Hilariously bad. Dialogue? Best ever.
Join us for some of my favorite quotes from this movie, partly because the plot defies description, so I won't bother, and partly because, no joke, some of the funniest lines I've ever heard.
( I like the word Peppy, and the word Cheap. Peppy and Cheap. )
Well, guess what!
Nutshell: An adaptation of Honore Balzac's short story, Passion in the Desert centers around a French officer who gets separated from his regiment and ends up forming a bond with a female leopard who helps to keep him alive. And, uh...other things.
Yeah, those things.
( I almost can't believe I saw this years ago, mostly because you'd think it would have inured me to ratsex. But nope! )
We begin Ye Olde Monthe with the 14th century mystery The Reckoning. (The link goes to the trailer, which is worth seeing.)
Nutshell: Disgraced priest Paul Bettany falls in with a group of traveling actors, led by the MOST SINEWY PERSON IN THE WORLD, Willem Dafoe. When they hit a town that's less interested in morality plays than in convicting the local deaf woman for the murder of a young boy, the troupe ends up caught up in history's first-ever episode of Law & Order: Swyved Victimmes Unit. Which I spoil, so, you know, spoilers.
( She couldn't have done it! SHE COULDN'T HAVE DONE IT! )
SO. No video clips of today's film, The Linguini Incident, and almost no pictures, because this movie is so rare that I am the only person who remembers it was ever made.
What this movie has: Roseanna Arquette as a failed escape artist, David Bowie as a bartender on the run from the law, Eszter Balint as a defensive-lingerie designer, and Marlee Matlin as a cashier with a pretzel hairdo and a silver lame uniform.
( The simple plan is, no one in this room is going to have sex with anyone else in this room. We'll be platonic... like our parents. )
Enjoy this beautifully-composed shot...right before this dude is killed-ass.
( Who the hell are you, man? )
Yes, it's Her Alibi. The movie with a 15% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. FIFTEEN PERCENT.
Sure, the majority of it is a stinkfest, but there is not a day that goes by without at least one line from this movie being directly relevant to my own life.
( I love that character of yours, that Peter...Swine? )
WITH MY GRANDMOTHER HAHAHAHAHAHAH oh god. Sorry, Grandma. I didn't know.
(She liked Ralph Fiennes, I liked the trailer, we thought it was gonna be a cool little noir whatever. I DIDN'T KNOW.)
Nutshell: On the eve of the year 2000, ex-cop Lenny navigates the underworld selling two-bit memories and pretending he's on the cutting edge instead of washed up. When one of his contacts is brutally murdered and the killer sends the experience straight to Lenny, Lenny realizes he's in over his head, and he and his limo-driving pistol-whipping friend Mace have to, you know, save the world. Whatever.
In the future, the leading cause of death is confetti-strike.
( By clicking this tag, you will be going back in time to when I was fourteen and I thought this movie was the shit. )
Nutshell: During “America Week” in Newcastle, England, a young man looking for work at a club ends up tangled in a web of love, business, crime, and a Polish jazz band.
( You know a movie's good when it stars Boromir and Sting. )
ETA: Great vid of the movie:
Then I had to run to tango, which meant no dinner. Next time!
This week's movie obsession is The Duchess of Langeais, which looks to be awesome: both understated and over-the-top, two great tastes that taste great together.
However, I really want to ask the publicity department about some stuff, because judging from the pictures, this movie could be about ANYTHING. Observe the narrative I've had to cobble together myself based on the promotional stills:
This is the Duchess of Langeais. You know what she's into?
( Neon. )
This is the image they used in the children's section of the video store to advertise the very best of the movie and make you want to rent it for your child.
My memory is not perfect, but I saw this movie on VHS about four years ago, so it's all pretty fresh. Key elements:
- Hans Christian Anderson is summoned to his friend's house; she's recently lost her husband, and her kid is pretending to be sick to get out of school. (They never even ask if she's freaked our that her dad is dead; they just think she's wicked for pretending to be ill.) She is, of course, playing with dolls on the sly, because little girls are never acting out; they're just wicked.
- She's supposed to be about 10, I think, but the actress was older, and so when he calls her "Little Karen" it gets a little...statutorylicious.
- He asks her to help him tell a story, which turns into playing a game with him, and the game consists entirely of trying to catch her being willful or indepedent/demonstrating any kind of self-love or self-interest/changing her story, Law and Order style/not being penitent enough. The game takes the form of a puppet show that we see as a ballet. I cannot tell you how creepy it is to watch this guy delight in manipulating a girl into saying something, and then immediately punishing the puppet that represents her.
This was in the children's section. - He finally stops the game when the puppet representing her is footless, destitute, and begging an archangel asking him to forgive her or kill her because it's all she deserves. Little Karen bursts into hysterical sobbing and runs into her mother's arms, screaming she'll never be wicked again.
Please remember, this is a 10-year-old whose crime was claiming to be too sick to go to school.
Also remember that none of this even touches on the actual fairy tale, in which an orphaned girl is forced by The Devil Himself to dance forever in a pair of red shoes that she liked because they reminded her of her DEAD MOM.
Who can't wait?! Oh, that would be me.
The answer to all of those is probably The Warriors.
With most of my favorite movies you can say, "That movie sort of sucks," and I will be happy to agree with you - I am really devoted to a lot of sucky movies. I know this about myself, and I'm fine with it. But if someone says "The Warriors sort of sucks," I say, "You'll have to prove that to me." And why?
Because it is AWESOME. How awesome? Picspam below. Uh, spoilers, obviously.
I took a film class in college and we all compiled a list of our top ten films, and depending on how they wanted to be perceived the lists were headed by films like Citizan Kane, Fargo, Akira, Blade Runner, Pulp Fiction. One kid wrote his favorite movie was The Exorcist, and in parentheses "(political commentary)".
My list was about 27 films long, and in my top five was Kvitebjorn Kong Valemon, which I knew as The Polar Bear King. It's a version of "East of the Sun, West of the Moon", and when it came out I was [indeterminate age at which a girl is young enough to be pleasantly surprised that the woman in a fairy tale movie was allowed to DO something]. It's a total awesome low-budget Dutch/Swedish/Norwegian production. With three countries helping out, you think they'd have gotten some money together, but apparently it's catch as catch can.
It's mostly because they were saving the money for this AWESOME LIFE-SIZE POLAR BEAR PUPPET.
OMGWTFPOLARBEAR HOLLA.
This is not to be taken as a ringing endorsement of this movie as an addition to the art form. I'm not kidding about the budget, and the acting is, depending on the actor, stilted or superbly over-the-top. But seriously, this movie is AWESOME. One of the biggest triumphs of my life so far is walking into a Rite Aid near my apartment, looking down the entire length of the store, and seeing the DVD of this movie jammed in with a bunch of second-rate horror. I may have made noises. You can't prove a thing.
Anyway, the princess of the Winterland marries the polar bear king, spell of an evil witch, invisible mother-in-law, you know the drill. I wish I could parse it academically or even coherently, but all I can really think about is being a kid and watching Maria Bonnevie setting out to rain some bitchface on the evil witch. She uses her brain, she silently bullies people into helping her with her thousand-yard stare, she climbs up a moutain and when one shoe falls off she doesn't even pause and climbs the rest of the mountain with one damn shoe.
Maria Bonnevie once kicked Chuck Norris. His grandchildren are still bruised.
The music is also really appealing to me, though I'm sort of embarrassed to say so since I'm pretty sure it was some lovely Norse bear-calls and then a single harmonium accompanied by a kazoo. So, don't quote me on this, since my mileage for awesome is clearly far different from a normal person's.
Though it's sort of hard to hate a movie whose climax rests on the "too much evil destroys evil" precept, and lts someone mix evil with a huge light-up Casio board. No fooling. Plus, then they dress up in furs and run back to the Winterland with all their chilluns and the wolves herald their arrival! I love wolf heralds! [inserts Norse bear-call]
A lot of childhood movies lose their magic, but every once in a while I come across a movie that was awesome when I was a chillun and REMAINS AWESOME. The Polar Bear King is one of them. Others are just disturbing (I'll get to them eventually).
In fact, if I hit my word count on the novel tomorrow night, I'm totally whipping this out and rewarding myself with some badly-subbed fairy tale action! Oh man. *WRITES*
SPOILER WARNING: I will not be cutting for spoilers. This was written in the 17th century. You've had plenty of time.
( He who seeks revenge should dig two graves. )
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glvalentine- Genevieve Valentine
- genevievevalentine.com
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