NeilSimon Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Scenes We Love: Murder By Death
Filed under: Trailers and Clips », Scenes We Love »
Lionel Twain (Truman Capote) has invited the five greatest detectives to a "dinner and murder." How can they resist? Included are a blind butler, a deaf-mute maid, screams, spinning rooms, secret passages, false identities, and more plot turns and twists than are decently allowed. When you see a plot summary like that, how can you resist? It's pure ridiculousness. Nine years before Clue, there was Neil Simon's Murder By Death -- a most excellent spoof on the classic literary detectives: Peter Falk as Sam Diamond (Spade), Elsa Lanchester as Jessica Marbles (Marple), David Niven and Maggie Smith as Dick and Dora Charleston (Charles), James Coco as Milo Perrier (Poirot), and Peter Sellers as Sidney Wang (Chan). Rounding out the cast, there's James Cromwell as a ridiculous French chauffeur, Eileen Brennan (of later Clue fame) as Spade's dame, Alec Guinness as the butler Bensonmum, Nancy Walker as the deaf-mute maid plus Estelle Winwood as the nurse and Richard Narita as Willie Wang.
Invited for the ultimate murder mystery party by Capote's Lionel Twain, each detective arrives with their recognizable quirks in tact, from Dick Charleston's martini and manners to Poirot's love of food. They arrive, they dodge death, and they try to solve the carefully planned and utterly confusing murder. It's completely ridiculous, but not in that way we're used to these days, with the proliferation of terrible spoofs. In 1976, it was talented actors whose charisma made the absurd irresistible and fun rather than trite and forgettable.
Review: Diminished Capacity
Filed under: Comedy », Drama », Independent », IFC », Theatrical Reviews », Cinematical Indie »
Some of cinema's most iconic shots of Chicago appear in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and the film is certainly Matthew Broderick's most iconic role. So, it's hard to watch the actor in the Chicago-set Diminished Capacity and not ask yourself, "is this what's happened to Ferris?" He is now relatively passive, paunchy and pitiful in the role of Cooper, a newspaper editor who has recently suffered a mildly debilitating concussion. And the character could be classified as yet another sad sack, one of three such parts he can be seen playing at present (Then She Found Me opened in April and is still in theaters; Finding Amanda debuted last week).
But is it fair that we most associate Broderick with Ferris, thereby continuing our disappointment in seeing him play one nebbish nobody after another? Couldn't we redirect our memories and accept that Broderick's modern roles are more like grown-up versions of Eugene Jerome, of Neil Simon's plays Brighton Beach Memoirs and Biloxi Blues, who he portrayed on Broadway as well as in the film adaptation of Biloxi? Were Eugene not the fictional incarnation of Simon and had he not therefore become a famous writer (and were he not from an earlier time period), the character surely could have gone on to be the pathetic teacher of Election or Then She Found Me or the absentminded editor of Diminished Capacity.
Honors Galore -- Jeunet, De Havilland, Simon, Deneuve
Filed under: Foreign Language », Awards », Newsstand », Cinematical Indie »
Of the five features that Jean-Pierre Jeunet has directed, three place high on my list of favorite films. Therefore I am very happy to hear that he has just been knighted by France's Legion of Honor. The ceremony took place on Wednesday, where Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres called Jeunet, "an atypical, unusual filmmaker, who created more than just a style -- an entire universe."
- Two-time Oscar-winner Olivia de Havilland is being honored this evening with a tribute by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The actress, who will be 90 on July 1, is the last surviving star of Gone with the Wind and was named Best Actress by the Academy for To Each His Own and The Heiress. She will be only the fourth person to be given such a tribute.
- Neil Simon will be awarded the Mark Twain Award for humor by the Kennedy Center in a ceremony on October 15. The Center's officials cited Simon as America's foremost playwright, but the honor will also be in recognition of his contributions to film and television. Proving himself still funny at age 78, Simon joked about the award by saying, "It makes up for my losing the Samuel Clemens Prize." Simon was one of my idols in high school, when I was writing my own semi-autobiographical plays and performing in scenes from his works, such as The Prisoner of Second Avenue. We could use more writers like him on Broadway and in Hollywood.
- It may not be an award, but I would call it an honor to be named head of the jury for The Venice Film Festival (Aug. 30 - Sept. 9), and Catherine Deneuve is the person given that honor this year. The actress is familiar to the fest, as she starred in the 1967 Golden Lion winner Belle de Jour and won the Volpi Cup Award for Best Actress in 1998 for Place Vendrôme. American filmmakers in competition might hope for the best from Deneuve, as she was on the Cannes jury in 1994 that awarded Pulp Fiction the Palme d'Or.
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