by ·Comments Off on Ricky Jay vs. FDR

Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants (1996)

These shows have been nicely restored by a pirate wizard with a hacked VCR, but 30fps isn’t nearly enough to see what Ricky’s hands are doing. And even if you account for the speed and attention and memory this would take, I don’t think human fingers can pull single cards so accurately from the middle of card decks, which accounts for the demons on his shoulders on the movie poster. Peak television.

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FDR: A One Man Show (1987)

Chris Elliott acts out lesser-known episodes from the US president’s life, like how he lost his legs to a shark attack, how Eleanor lost her head when the Japanese bombed the White House, and the two years of his presidency he spent lost on a desert island. This is a filmed stage show with an audience, like the Ricky Jay, but this one gets interrupted by the stagehands, the makeup artist, an understudy who speaks only German, and the local basketball team that was playing next door.

by ·Comments Off on Rumours (2024, Maddin/Johnson/Johnson)

A different sort of thing for Maddin, his most restrained feature. More Bunuelian perhaps, tricking viewers with a political arthouse drama with Cate Blanchett then gradually accumulating unnatural quirks until the giant brain in the woods is only a distraction from whether sentient pedo-hunting AI has Lawnmower-Manned all communications in an apparently depopulated Germany. Seven world leaders were in a gazebo hard at work crafting the most bland and vague statement they could, when they found themselves cut off from outside contact. Each one gets their standout moment, but Canada (the most emotional and least respected) steps up during the crisis, triumphantly editing and reading their final statement aloud to the masturbating bog people.

Germany is the Australian Blanchett, Canada is Roy Dupuis (I think he’s the woodsman who yells “strong men!” in Forbidden Room, which also features a giant brain). UK is late Shyamalan fave Nikki Amuka-Bird, USA is the inexplicably British gent Charles Dance (who I just saw in The First Omen). Then there’s Italy (I got nothing on Rolando Ravello), France (Denis Ménochet, the violent PTSD guy in Beau Is Afraid), and Japan (Takehiro Hira of the new Shogun). They come across two suicidal European Union workers: Zlatko Buric of Triangle of Sadness, and Alicia Vikander, subject of the best joke in the movie (they think the brain’s influence has got her speaking in ancient lost languages, but it turns out to just be Swedish).