10 (1979)

This isn't important at all, but I saw Blake Edwards' 10 a couple days ago, and I just don't understand. I think the reason I don't get it is that about a year and a half ago, I saw and disliked Edwards' 1986 film That's Life! and I was surprised to find that this is basically a very similar plot. 10 is about a very, very rich Hollywood songwriter, played by a hilarious Dudley Moore, who is going through male menopause – which is exactly what is happening to Jack Lemmon's character in That's Life! Indeed, both men in both films are both in romantic relationships with (Edwards' wife) Julie Andrews. Andrews is great in the 1986 film; she's totally miscast in the '79 film. 

Anyway, 10 is much funnier than its later, 1986 iteration (I think this is because Lemmon takes his role way too seriously, while Moore plays everything for laughs), but it's largely the same movie. 

The highlight for me was that Dudley Moore's best friend in this is a gay man who is about the same age as him. They talk frankly about him being gay, and it's rather delightful. He's only a gay best friend character, but he has some great moments, and I believe Dudley Moore even drops the word "faggotry"!

Sunset (1988)

Late Blake Edwards is just not good. Sunset boasts a winning, delightfully comic performance by Bruce Willis but not much else. I love James Garner and Mariel Hemingway, but they both feel wooden in this. But, honestly, the entire premise is faulty. It's title is the rather somber Sunset, and it looks on the outside like it should be a neo-noir picture – a kind of Farewell, My Lovely or L.A. Confidential – but it actually wants to be Hail, Caesar!. The Coen Brothers would do this kind of silliness tinged with real issues correctly, but Edwards' version can't make the broad comedy and the mystery–melodrama make sense together.

That's Life!

It is pretty hard to think about the frailty of the human condition, as That's Life!'s poster promises we'll be able to do, when the film's protagonist is as rich as Croesus. 

We're in a giant estate in Malibu, for fuck's sake, but we're supposed to sympathize with a man who is bored or anxious or, like, vaguely dissatisfied or irritated. 

Worse yet, the screenplay undermines the stakes of this man's crisis by letting us know before we even meet this asshole that his wife is worried about whether or not she might have throat cancer. So the whole time this movie wants us to sympathize with this rich white dude and whatever midlife crisis he's experiencing, we already know that someone else in the family is having a life and death situation that just makes his crisis feel silly. 

And this isn't to say that anxiety or nervous breakdowns or whatever aren't real, but it's hard to identify with or pity someone this rich.

Operation Petticoat (1959)

Operation Petticoat is pretty delightful. It's a silly, totally absurd comedy about a submarine that gets sunk before it leaves Pearl Harbor but whose captain insists on repairing it anyway and sailing it into battle. It's the kind of farcical take on World War II that Spielberg was aiming to make when he made his worst film, 1941.

I watched Operation Petticoat on the Criterion Channel, where they were playing a series of Cary Grant's broad comedy films. Grant is hilarious in this. Tony Curtis is funny, too, and is as femme as ever.

The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)

I try to like films like this, but they are not for me. I thought this was really stupid. And I didn't laugh at any of the jokes. This kind of humor is just not my style. I am not sure if this means I am opposed to Blake Edwards or opposed to Peter Sellars or opposed just to the pink panther movies. Also, while we're here: this film had nothing at all to do with the pink panther. It was all about some psychopath attempting to murder Inspector Clouseau. The panther didn't even appear as a plot point or oblique reference.

Mister Roberts

I had been avoiding this film for years thinking it was going to be a bunch of Jack Lemmon silliness. (He's just not my thing. I recently, for example, watched Blake Edwards' The Great Race and was completely annoyed by the Lemmon idiocy at its twinned center.) But Mister Roberts was nothing of the kind: Just an old school, sentimental, whimsical Hollywood picture, co-directed by Mervyn LeRoy and John Ford.

My favorite bit of dialogue in the film:

Henry Fonda: Ok, ok. Any minute now you'll start quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson.
William Powell: That's a lousy thing to say!

I found this thoroughly enjoyable.

The Briefest of Reviews from 1970

Blake Edwards' Darling Lili is clearly a vehicle for Julie Andrews. Because it's Blake Edwards, Darling Lili is irrepressibly silly. It also makes next to zero logical sense. I found myself very frustrated by the entire thing, mostly because Andrews was playing the role the way Doris Day might play the role – classier to be sure and with slightly less mugging toward the camera, but the resemblance is uncanny (right down to the extremely high necklines). This was occasionally funny, but even the humor in Darling Lili is placed oddly, seeing as how in most of the other scenes, someone is plotting to overthrow the British during WWII or, you know, killing people.

Reading PhDs.

Yikes. I will be directing Two Gentlemen of Verona in less than two months and I've started to do my work. I'm currently reading the (copious) notes in The Arden Edition of the play, penned by William C. Carroll. The guys who write these things are so... I'm not sure what the word I am looking for is: perhaps "specialized." This guy is going on and on about Ovid and other writers that pre-date Shakespeare. It's not boring by any means, but it sure is dense. I started reading the notes over some Panang Chicken down at the Thai restaurant next to my house. I am trying this new Thai restaurant because I decided that I don't like the food at my old Thai hangout.

I have been watching a lot of movies, too. This weekend it was Jarmusch's Down by Law which is really great (I've decided that I really like Jarmusch), James Ivory's Heat and Dust (My Merchant Ivory obsession continues unabated) and Blake Edwards' Days of Wine and Roses, which I advise you to avoid. It's supposedly a classic alcoholic movie (along with The Lost Weekend which I also found dreary), but I didn't like the characters and alcoholism is nothing if not frustrating as a condition. Read Dry instead.

These recent hot days are nice. The reason I think I love them so much is that they compel me to do absolutely nothing. On cooler days I feel I must be out and run around and go to the grocery or the dry cleaners or visit people I like. When it's hot like this. I don't feel the need to do any of those things. I feel the need to be in my house and sit on my ass... like I did all weekend.