Word: films
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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There is a sober subtext to this nonsense. The film preaches against the excesses of self-absorption that are the wages of modern celebrity. It also makes a case against the cult of youth by demonstrating the grotesque lengths to which some people will go to try to cheat mortality. Since only a few thousand of the world's most privileged people are in a position to cope with these problems, it is hard to work up much moral indignation about them...
...some perverse way Fedora is an entertaining film. It is not cynical. There is a weird charm in its enthusiastic embrace of antique cinematic conventions and, more important, a certain daring in the way the piece is written. Throughout their script Wilder and Diamond are ready to undercut their melodrama in order to make judgments ranging from the sly to the nasty about everything from the way to handle the funerals of world-class celebrities to the way the rest of us allow ourselves to be drawn into their self-created dramas. There is a splendid cheekiness...
When a director's three latest films are commercial and critical bombs like Daisy Miller, At Long Last Love and Nickelodeon, where does he go next? In Peter Bogdanovich's case, it is back to basics. Saint Jack, the director's first film since 1976, is a sharp departure from the projects of his Hollywood heyday. Adapted from a Paul Theroux novel set in Singapore, the movie has a small budget, no big stars and not a single loving reference to a classic screwball comedy. Cybill Shepherd is nowhere in sight...
There is some racial joking in Love at First Bite that one could have done without. It is intended to prove that nothing is sacred to the film makers, but it just plays uncomfortably. There is also a flatness about Stan Dragoti's direction that prevents the film from realizing all its comic potential. But the performances (including that of Arte Johnson as Renfield, the count's bug-eating assistant) are uniformly jolly, the parody of the basic Dracula formula well observed and its social commentary deliciously off the wall. The production's genially tatty air enhances...
...winner of the 1963 Nobel Prize in Chemistry; of complications following surgery for a fractured femur; in Bergamo, Italy. In 1954, Natta revolutionized plastics technology by developing a method of catalyzing propylene gas into highly ordered chains of molecules that proved useful in the manufacture of fabrics, film, auto parts, detergents and countless other products...