chikuzen

This is the film that "Wind From the East" so desperately wanted to be. Deconstructs itself before your very eyes. Hilarious and mystifying. Spike Milligan and Joe McGrath were made for each other. And Peter Sellers is on board too. I find it hard to believe this classic of the Cinema of the Absurd is so little known. But then so is McGrath -- the Edgar G. Ulmer of British comedy. While Richard Lester is more associated with "The Goon Shpw" -- thanks to "The Running Jumping and Standing Still Film," it's McGrath who conveys the true Goonish sense of intellectual lunacy. The fact that the entire film is shot inside of a theater -- used to suggest the whole world -- is especially novel and fascinating.

I saw and loved the original show. But what's done on a stage has to be rethought for the screen, and Burton and company have done so marvelously. On stage Sweeney and Mrs. Lovet have to stand front and center and sing with a force that will let the last row in the upper balcony hear every word. They don't have to do that here. Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett are in her shop and upper apartment conspiring with one another most delicately. The result is a singing horror movie. Easily puts all other recent musical films in the shade. It's the real Sondheim deal. And that means, among other things, it's a full press homage to the great Bernard Herrman. Be sure to see "Hangover Square" -- Sondheim' primary inspr iration -- after this one.

One of the key films of the 1960's, "The Knack" features the motion picture debuts of three of the most gorgeous and talented women to ever walk the earth: Jacqueline Bissett, Charlotte Rampling and Jane Birkin. Bissett is in the climactic scene, lining up to cheer "Rory McBride" at Albert Hall. Rampling is the water-skier who sensuously (no other way for Charlotte) pours a glass of water down the front of her we suit. And then there's "Birks," first seen borrowing a chair from Michael Crawford to wait her turn in the hall, and then riding off triumphantly with Ray Brooks on his motorcycle. She also ran off triumphantly with the film's composer, John Barry -- the first of her husbands. I saw "The Knack" on stage in the New York production directed by Mike Nichols. it was very entertaining. But Lester's film is truly invention. And David Watkins' black and white cinematography is far more beautifully than almost anything ever done in color.