January 23, 2016

"... I’ve already been asked by several different people, virtually verbatim, 'Have you seen the movie where Daniel Radcliffe plays a farting corpse?'"

"Yes, I did, dear reader. I did indeed watch a movie where Daniel Radcliffe plays a farting corpse that Paul Dano rides across the ocean like a jet-ski, propelled by the power of Radcliffe’s post-mortem flatulence. This is also a movie where Dano and Radcliffe make out underwater while Dano is dressed like Mary Elizabeth Winstead, a movie where Radcliffe pukes up buckets of water that Dano eagerly swigs, and a movie where Radcliffe stares at a musty Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and then grows a stiff and mighty erection, which Dano then uses as a compass to point the way back to civilization...."

***

By the way, there was a farting corpse in the critically acclaimed 1976 Lina Wertmuller movie "Seven Beauties." ("[W]hen the anti-hero kills the gangster who has humiliated him and sent his sister into prostitution... the corpse farts incessantly as he tries to dispose of it. Wertmüller seems more comfortable to revel in the grottiness of humanity than consider anything even slightly uplifting.")

13 comments:

Michael K said...

I heard most people were walking out of it. I walked out of "Thin Red Line" and about 2/3 of the theater also left. Then, of course, it was nominated for "Best Picture." I expect this one will do well in "diversified Hollywood" if only it has a black actor.

Big Mike said...

I thought Radcliffe did a great job as Rudyard Kipling's son John in "My Son Jack." I suppose he's made enough money in the six Harry Potter movies that he can afford to be edgy and experimental. But experiments do fail sometimes.

Ann Althouse said...

"I suppose he's made enough money in the six Harry Potter movies that he can afford to be edgy and experimental.."

Yes, he talked about that on a podcast with Marc Maron recently. That's exactly what he is doing.

Quaestor said...

"I suppose he's made enough money in the six Harry Potter movies that he can afford to be edgy and experimental.."

Personally, I've had it to the back teeth with "edgy." When I read or hear that stale locution I immediately think, there goes another otiose thought jetting off into the aether Same thing goes for its tag-along twin "experimental," two decrepit dray horses pulling the same wagonload of shit.

Next time you read edgy and experimental just think of it as code for lazy and self-indulgent, and you'll be nearer the truth of the matter.

Quaestor said...

I walked out of "Thin Red Line" and about 2/3 of the theater also left.

I stayed to the end, but I doubt I have a better sense of the film than you do. Malick worked on that screenplay for the better part of ten years, which was either nine years too long or nines years too brief.

The New World was a much better film, and by far my favorite Terrence Malick opus.

The Sundance Film Festival is the brainchild of Robert Redford, which should be an enormous tell.

(repost with typo fixed)

themightypuck said...

Wertmuller was a true auteur.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

Radcliffe's Potter (or should I say "Pooter"?) co-star Rupert Grint beat him to 't years ago. www.rottentomatoes.com/m/thunderpants/. A blast from the past.

Clyde said...

Wow! Something that might actually be worse than "Dirty Grandpa."

Laslo Spatula said...

The "Farting Corpse" only works in broad French farces or Gothic psychodramas.

For the latter, picture it as a retelling of Poe's "The Tell-Tale Fart".

You try to hide the guilt, but it keeps reminding the atmosphere of its physical presence.

Something like that.

I am Laslo.

Debbie Andrews said...

My husband once told me a story about the time he saw Seven Beauties as an undergraduate at Virginia Tech. The projection booth operator got the reels mixed up, and messed up the entire contiuity of the movie, but no one (except him) noticed, thiinkg it was just a part of the avant garde nature of Lina Wertmuller's directorial style.

tim maguire said...

Well...we've been asking for movies that aren't just the same old rehashed whatever was popular last year. It may not be good, but I wanna see what happens next.

tim maguire said...

Quaestor, most art is crap. Experimental art doubly so. It's a package deal--you can't get the great without the dreck and true breakthroughs are the result of experimentation that necessarily creates a lot of junk along the way. How many failed light bulbs did Edison make before he figured out what works?

Art lovers aren't people who love bad art, they're people who don't mind wading through crap to find the beauty.

mikee said...

i, for one, do not need to see this movie, having already read about a similar performance in that American classic, Twain's Huckleberry Finn. The Duke and the King had a similar act. They played it successfully, to sold out crowds, two nights in a row, then decamped with their profits before the third night, when the town crowd planned on exacting revenge for the trick played upon them.

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