Everyone in this film sparkles, from Julie Andrews’ starving singer (who gets one of the best ever exit lines, as she shatters a wine glass in front of a club owner who’s turned her down) to Robert Preston’s gay entertainer, with his fluffy hair and touch of eyeliner and genius idea that sets all of it in motion. Don’t forget James Garner’s tough-guy gangster, immensely confused by his attraction to “Count Victor”; his moll Norma (Lesley Ann Warren), who can’t conceive of a man who doesn’t want her; and Alex Karras as the muscle with a secret of his own. One of Warren’s first lines, the simple “Yay!” when Victor is revealed, is hilarious, especially in that brassy Chi-cah-gah accent.

Dialogue is clever and snappy throughout, making this a continually entertaining movie, whenever you watch it, first time or most recent. The songs are great, too, and the musical numbers contribute to the sense of farce. The writing’s funny and impressive, and the performances amazing. (How rare it is that all the lead characters in a movie are terrific?) It’s a simply fabulous film.

Since this duplicates the original retail DVD release, the special features carry over as well. The main extra is a commentary by Andrews and her husband, director/screenwriter Blake Edwards. There’s also a cast and crew filmography listing for four people — you know, the kind of thing they don’t do any more because it dates quickly and IMDB is better for it — an award listing, and the theatrical trailer.

The Awakening (1980), a new release from Warner Archive, is an example of the type, where a standard thriller is enlivened through gorgeous scenery of the country. It’s based on a novel by Bram Stoker, The Jewel of Seven Stars. As this contemporaneous review says, “like Mr. Stoker’s Dracula, [the story] involves a father’s efforts to save his daughter from a supernatural figure determined to possess her.” In this case, it’s a reincarnated, murderous Egyptian queen.

Charlton Heston is an archaeologist seeking to discover the ancient tomb of Queen Kara with his assistant, Jane (Susannah York with a bad blonde pixie cut). Their close work relationship and shared interests upset his pregnant (and grumpy) wife (Jill Townsend). She’s right, of course, that his priority is not his family. When she enters premature labor, he dumps her at the hospital and goes back to work.

As Heston and York open the tomb, the wife has the baby. Every time they progress, the wife screams. This is a horror film, but not the monster kind. Throughout, the emphasis is on psychological frights, particularly the fear of possession, of losing yourself in someone else. I found the idea of being pregnant and alone in a foreign country while your husband runs around the desert with his assistant pretty scary.

The baby is born dead but comes back to life when the mummy’s sarcophagus is opened. Foreshadowing! The wife takes her new daughter and leaves Heston, who’s obsessed with cleaning out the tomb. During a dispute with a government official over ownership of the artifacts, a freakishly accidental death begins the series of disturbing events. Then the film jumps forward 18 years, to when the nearly adult daughter (Stephanie Zimbalist) wants to reconnect with her father. Overall, it’s less The Mummy, more The Omen or The Exorcist mixed with Final Destination.

The Awakening was the first film directed by Mike Newell, who went on to such well-known movies as Four Weddings and a Funeral and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. He’s very good with suspense, cutting among simple elements to create a feeling of dread and fear. Viewed today, the movie seems to move slowly, since we have much different expectations of filmed entertainment, but it is still effective in creating an apprehensive mood in the audience. The viewer continues wondering what will happen next, knowing it will probably involve someone’s death. Unfortunately, the ending is unsatisfying, stopping (in my opinion) too early.

The movie can be ordered from Warner Archive or Amazon.com. There are no extras on the disc.

I haven’t read the books, by Suzanne Collins, or seen the movie, but I still want to root for it to do big business, because it makes it very obvious how much a lie the idea that “women can’t star in action films” is. Jennifer Lawrence grabs the viewer’s eye whenever she’s on-screen, and the supporting cast, which includes Donald Sutherland, Stanley Tucci, and Woody Harrelson, is pretty impressive, too.

The movie has already made almost $400 million domestically (actually $392) and $650 million worldwide. In case you somehow missed out on the premise of the film, here’s a trailer:

Lionsgate, for some reason, doesn’t do combo packs, so each edition is two discs, either Blu-ray ($39.99 suggested price) or DVD ($30.98), plus a digital copy. The highlight of the special features is an eight-part documentary, “The World is Watching: Making of The Hunger Games”, that covers the film’s creation plus fan reactions. There are also featurettes on

• “Game Maker: Suzanne Collins and The Hunger Games Phenomenom”
• “Letters from the Rose Garden” — Donald Sutherland on the development of his role as President Snow
• “Controlling the Games”, about the game control center
• “A Conversation with Gary Ross and Elvis Mitchell”

Plus an archive of marketing material and the “Propaganda Film (in its entirety)”. I assume you know what that is if you’ve seen the movie.

Thankfully, Lionsgate also doesn’t stuff the Blu-ray with exclusives; the only extra not on the DVD set is “Preparing for The Games: A Director’s Process”, which “looks at the progression of taking three key scenes from the book to the screen.”

Now comes news (scroll down) that the Warner Archive is reviving the label, with six DVDs coming out June 26. The high point for me is the release of Jewel Robbery, a 1932 film with William Powell and Kay Francis.

Jewel Robbery is a romantic comedy in which Francis, as the bored wife of a rich man, gets taken hostage by a clever gentleman thief (Powell) during his robbery of a jewelry store. The two form an instant connection, leading to complications when the police try to catch the robber.

Also included in the new Forbidden Hollywood collection are these movies:

• Ladies They Talk About (1933), a prison film with Barbara Stanwyck as a bank robber
• Hard to Handle (1933) with James Cagney
• The Mind Reader (1933)
• Lawyer Man (1932) with William Powell and Joan Blondell
• Man Wanted (1932), Kay Francis’ debut at Warners, in which she plays a hard-charging magazine editor with a male secretary

How weird the world is now, where a geek TV show is one of the most successful on television, let alone having a spin-off tie-in t-shirt line at a hip clothing store.

To promote the selection of Big Bang Theory tees they have available, Hot Topic is running a contest where HT+1 members (their frequent shopper club) who buy any Big Bang Theory t-shirt will be automatically entered for a chance to win a trip to the San Diego Comic-Con.

Contest runs through June 4, and since this is a sweepstakes, the official rules actually say you don’t have to buy anything. Instead, as long as you’re an HT+1 member, you can “visit any Hot Topic Store and request to be directed to the in-store kiosk for one (1) free entry per valid email address, per eligible person per day [or] go to the HT Website and join HT+1 as a member or if you are already a member, sign on as an HT+1 member and submit the online entry form.”

If you like the show, there are a variety of designs, including Bazinga! shirt variants, some phrases from the show, and this “soft kitty” song shirt.

The Avengers

Ready to watch Disney’s Avengers movie over and over again? (It quit being just Marvel’s when it took in over a billion dollars.) DVD dates have been announced. The Avengers will be available in Blu-ray/DVD combo pack, Blu-ray 3-D/ Blu-ray/ DVD/ digital copy deluxe edition, and (I’m assuming) single-disc DVD on September 25, just four months from now.

Supplements will include:
* Audio Commentary by Director Joss Whedon
* Disney’s Second Screen
* Assembling the Ultimate Team
* A Visual Journey
* Gag Reel
* Item 47 (Marvel One-Shot Short Film)
* 9 Deleted/Extended Scenes
* and Soundgarden’s Live to Rise Music Video.

If this package follows the pattern of the John Carter release, then the top-level 3-D edition will have a list price of $49.99 with the two-disc Blu-ray/DVD listed at $39.99.

Readers of this site may particularly be interested in the following comic-related titles:

• Batman Begins, $7.99
• The Dark Knight, $7.99
• Catwoman, $9.95
• Constantine, $9.95
• The Losers, $9.95
• Jonah Hex, $9.95
• Speed Racer, $7.99
• Superman Returns, $9.99
• 300, $9.69
• V for Vendetta, $9.95
• Watchmen, $7.99
• Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter & Under the Hood, $9.95
• Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comic, $9.95
• Whiteout, $7.99

Spider-Man	Spider-Man 2	Spider-Man 3

As the press release has it,

The Spider-Man Blu-ray includes two never-before-seen bonus features … “Spider Sense Trivia Challenge” — Rise to the ultimate web-slinging challenge as you test your Spider-Man movie knowledge in this trivia game. Do you have the spider sense to achieve the highest score? “The Spider-Man Cutting Room” — Create and share your own video using clips and music from the movie!

Additionally, Spider-Man 2 “includes both previously released theatrical and extended versions of the film, with additional footage and fight sequences not seen in theaters.” This Marvel website post has the full list of special features.

It will be interesting to see if, as many are predicting, the over-two-hour movie finds more of its audience on home video. It’s possible that this could become a perennial favorite, especially since science fiction fans who’ve seen it generally liked it. Here’s a release trailer:

The movie is pitched as “a sweeping action-adventure set on the mysterious and exotic planet of Barsoom (Mars)” in which Carter (Taylor Kitsch) joins in “an epic conflict” to help the civilization survive. The special effects, if nothing else, seem worth seeing, although I’m also curious about the performance of Lynn Collins (previously in X-Men Origins: Wolverine) as the princess Dejah Thoris.

There are a number of options, starting with the high-end four-disc 3-D version (list price $49.99) that includes Blu-ray 3-D, Blu-ray, DVD, and digital copy. (The only way to get a digital copy included, by the way.) The Blu-ray special features include:

• Disney Second Screen. I talked about this feature when I reviewed Tron: Legacy; it’s an app that runs along with the movie on your tablet or laptop that provides additional background information. They’re promising in this version to “explore John Carter’s journal” and “extend the mythology of the movie.”
• Deleted scenes with optional commentary by director Andrew Stanton.
• “360 Degrees of John Carter” — “Experience every aspect of the filmmaking process on one of the movie’s biggest production days.”
• Barsoom bloopers

Plus all the special features included on DVD:

• “100 Years in the Making” — “Follow the journey of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ story, from its origins as a pulp novel to its arrival onscreen.”
• Audio commentary

There’s also a two-disc Blu-ray/DVD combo pack ($39.99 suggested price) and a single-disc DVD ($29.99).

New Year’s Eve

There are lots of likable actors involved, but I would have enjoyed this more if I was more of a Jon Bon Jovi fan, since he plays a rock star everyone’s crazy about, except for his ex (Katherine Heigl — and she really is the brand marker for this kind of movie, isn’t she?).

The plots are sitcom-ish: An overprotective single mother (Sarah Jessica Parker) can’t cope with her daughter (Abigail Breslin) growing up. A pair of opposites (Ashton Kutcher, as a comic book artist, and Lea Michele, as a singer) get trapped in an elevator. The woman running the ball drop (Hilary Swank) is afraid of heights. An expectant couple (Seth Meyers, Jessica Biel) wants to be the first to have the New Year’s baby. A woman (Michelle Pfeiffer) who just quit her job is trying to complete her bucket list with the help of a courier (Zac Efron). They all play out as you’d expect, with few surprises.

Now, a few days after seeing it, I don’t remember much of it at all — yet I know a couple of people who want to borrow my DVD, just to check it out. It’s comfort viewing, where we all know exactly what we’re going to get.

The special features include a commentary with director Garry Marshall, which I didn’t listen to, and a gag reel, half of which has already been included in the bloopers shown during the credits. The Blu-ray edition has all the extras, with three short promotional featurettes with cast and crew plus deleted and extended scenes with Marshall’s commentary. I bought the DVD because I didn’t really want more of this film.

But there’s more to life than money. Tom Spurgeon reminds us that the film wouldn’t exist without the contributions of many creators. His recognition of the men behind the movie provides short profiles of the comic artists and writers who came up with these characters and their team combinations.

The Bryan Hitch-drawn Ultimates served as inspiration for the movie version of the Avengers.

Tom Spurgeon also checked in with two charities benefiting from fan giving in connection with the film. The Hero Initiative has taken in almost $3000, while the Jack Kirby Museum received $1300 last week.

Meanwhile, in KC’s latest Westfield column, he praises the film for getting the blend of humor and action right. KC also looks back at some other superhero movies that weren’t quite so successful, descending instead into silly.

Dark Shadows is certainly a Tim Burton movie. It’s very deliberately paced, with more emphasis placed on the setting and props than on keeping incidents happening at a rapid clip.

It’s as though a joke became a movie. “A ghost, a witch, and a vampire walk into a soap opera…” I also felt as though I’d seen all the funny bits in the trailer, which led me to be believe it was more of a comedy than it was. My attention dragged, and I wanted to see more events that I didn’t already expect. Although I’d never seen the source show before, things seemed to play out as I could have predicted. I was looking for something that was as entertaining on its own, but this is more of a nostalgic period piece.

I most enjoyed watching the set and the costumes, since much of the film was about evoking the time period. If you enjoy “remember when people dressed that way?” and “listened to that” and had lava lamps, you seem to be in the same frame of mind as Burton and Johnny Depp.

I’ve already seen a brittle Michelle Pfeiffer in Hairspray and doomed lovers and tragic curses in everything supernatural. I would have enjoyed the movie more without the witch (Eva Green), but I suspect she’s too important to the original. At least everyone commits to their roles. Depp, in particular, is elegant and frightening and remote.

Random note: The little boy, David, played by Gulliver McGrath, looks like a baby Benedict Cumberbatch.

“Comfortable” comes from the premise. A group of British retirees can no longer afford to live in their homeland, so they all wind up in India at the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel for the Elderly and Beautiful. It’s not quite as well-appointed as the brochure makes it look, and we know going in that the group will come together through shared struggle and adjustment to the ways of this new land.

Young manager Sonny (played by the dynamic Dev Patel) is struggling to make it the residence of his dreams, so he can please his overbearing mother (Lillete Dubey) and marry the girl he loves (Tena Desae) instead of the one picked for him. This is the same storyline I have seen in every Indian-related movie I’ve ever watched, but Sonny’s optimism is wonderful and inspiring.

“Well-done” comes from the cast. Judi Dench plays a recent widow who didn’t realize how in debt they were until after her husband had passed. Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton (who also played married in Shaun of the Dead) are a couple whose retirement fund went to their daughter’s internet business, which didn’t take off as planned. Tom Wilkinson is a former judge who doesn’t have money worries; instead, he has a secret past in India and his own reasons to return. The two others, Ronald Pickup and Celia Imrie, have similar roles as randy old people not willing to give up on love or sex.

Maggie Smith plays the most intriguing character. She needs a new hip, which she can get more quickly and cheaply overseas. She also happens to be virulently racist. Many people have grandparents like this, people who want to return to a time where everyone around them looked like them, instead of the more diverse world we have now. Her bigotry is a mask for her discomfort at feeling left out of today’s world. She spent her life in service, giving up her own chance at a family in favor of helping another that then cast her aside when she was no longer useful. Smith does a good job handling a difficult role, and her character is the most three-dimensional as a result.

Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, and Bill Nighy in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

“Thought-provoking” are the points the film raises about the place of the elderly in Western society. It’s clear that there’s no role left for these people just because they hit a certain number of years. They’re discards, but even though society doesn’t want them, they still have desires, even if it’s simply not being ready to be done yet. It’s rare to see so much age on screen, with characters that are more than simple comic relief.

There’s a certain amount of “I did everything I was supposed to, why am I struggling in my golden years?” It’s a tough question, and one we’re going to see more and more of, as pensions disappear and individuals are made responsible for their own retirements. The safety net is gone. Yet the movie is quietly humorous about the situations, keeping a positive thought. I particularly liked Dench’s clever solution and her willingness to try new things, plus that she becomes a blogger. She even goes relatively native in dress, as shown in the picture above. I was reminded how new experiences and new worlds keep us young.

The country is described by one character as an “assault on the senses… a riot of noise and color”, and seeing the life there is another enjoyable part of the film, particularly with the unique historical relationship between England and India.

An early statement made by Patel’s character sums up the underlying optimism. He says, “Everything will be all right in the end, so if it is not all right, it is not yet the end.” There’s always more to life. There’s also a built-in audience for this film, if they find it. If you’re lucky enough to still have your parents, take them. I bet they’ll enjoy it.

• Highest-grossing domestic debut of all time (beating out the previous winner, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2)
• Fastest movie to reach $200 million domestically
• Friday’s $80.5 million is the second highest single day take of all time
• Saturday’s box office of $69.7 million is the highest Saturday take of all time; it also set a record for biggest Sunday
• Biggest opening weekend of all time in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Peru, Central America, Bolivia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Philippines

Audience members really liked the movie, giving it an A+ CinemaScore. ICv2 points out that 40% of the audience was women, which “means that the movie was seen by a very large number of females.” The film cost $220 million, the most expensive Marvel Studios movie so far. I found this final line of the press release particularly telling:

Marvel’s The Avengers is the first Marvel Studios film to be marketed and distributed by The Walt Disney Studios.

Are they saying “we know how to do it best”? Or is this a way to make marketing feel better after they took some of the blame for the failure of John Carter?

In the latest episode, “Ripple of Hope“, her assistant Leo (Baron Vaughn) has a friend Ashley (Laci J. Mailey) who created “XX Chromo”, a “girl superhero” whose first issue “sold 36,000 copies in a week”. Unfortunately, Ashley did it work for hire and got paid $700. Leo brings his friend to the law firm to help her get the rights he thinks she deserves.

Her character name is Ashley Woods, which I guess means the show writers didn’t know of the existing comic artist Ashley Wood. The prop was mocked up as a comic book, but we think it was meant to be a graphic novel, since Leo refers to it that way later, and the sales numbers would be more impressive that way. The publisher is Wonderbomb Media, hee hee.

I was impressed to see that creator rights are now a mainstream enough issue to feature on a TV show like this one. (It’s only the B story, though — the main plot involves a hunger strike at a women’s prison.) They cite how the Superman creators signed away all their rights but later “got some of them back”, using that as a foundation for their legal research.

The case turns on the idea that if you sign away your termination rights, which is not legal to do, that can void the contract. Leo also brings up the definition of work for hire as “a contribution to a collective work” “specially ordered or commissioned”. Since, in this case, the woman created the comic and brought it to the publisher, it fails those first two tests. They offer to settle by giving her 10% of any comic featuring her character in future.

The tagline of the comic is “What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?” There’s also comment about how comics get movie deals. Strangely, there’s no mention of an artist in all this. They note several times that Ashley wrote the comic, but they don’t say whether she drew it or someone else did. Since she’s shown with colorfully streaked hair and punky clothes, they may be implying she’s the artist through the visuals.

Movies

The Kiss (1929) — The last silent film made by both MGM and Greta Garbo. There’s not much more to say about it, other than thankfully, it’s short. Standard plot about a woman fought over by men, until one shoots another. She’s unhappily married, in love with a lawyer, but it’s a friend’s son who finally acts on his crush. Rather confusing to today’s viewers, since characters’ motivations aren’t very plausible at times.

The Single Standard (1929) — This was the one Garbo made right before The Kiss. Another typical story, aimed at showing us how marriage is the right thing and fooling around is bad. Garbo’s Arden sails off with a boxer/painter (Nils Asther) she met the night before, living with him alone on his boat. When he ditches her — she’s too much of a distraction from his “work” — she returns home, marries the nice guy waiting for her (John Mack Brown) even though she still loves the tough guy artist, and has a child. When her ex-lover returns, the nice guy won’t let her run off with him and ruin her reputation. Instead, he offers to have a “hunting accident” the next day to make her “honorably free” to rejoin the bad boy. But seeing her kid makes her decide to do the right thing and maintain the bonds of matrimony. The only surprising elements of the movie to me were an early scene with the chauffeur, who is discouraged from being involved with Arden, and the suicide offer.

DVDs

The Incredible Hulk

The Incredible Hulk (2008) — Well, I saw it. I thought it was pretty boring and depressing, but I was treating it like homework before The Avengers anyway. I was disappointed they didn’t have more comic-related extras, but those are apparently on the 2003 Hulk movie DVD.

It’s Complicated (2009) — KC didn’t understand what I meant when I said this was a Nancy Myers movie. It’s lady porn, full of gorgeous kitchens and a story firmly centered on a woman’s wants and fears, where everything is about her, so unlike most of the rest of popular culture. (That’s best exemplified by the venom that Myers’ work receives from “serious” male critics.) This is a movie aimed firmly at an audience often under-served by Hollywood, one who cares about having loving children and the fantasy of an ex-husband who left for a younger woman seeing the error of his ways and wanting to come back. The scenes where Meryl Streep and her three friends sit around a meal and chat stunned me, because it has been a long time since I’ve seen that many women of a certain age (and who showed it, not Botoxed or plasticized) talking to each other on film.

Jonah Hex (2010) — The only part I liked was the Civil War-era scenery. Giving Jonah the ability to raise and talk to the dead was stupid, but if I started listing everything the movie got wrong, I’d be here forever. I felt sorry for Josh Brolin having to talk through that prosthetic the whole time, and I wish the thing hadn’t been shot so dark, so I could have seen Jeffrey Dean Morgan better. We got it just to keep the collection of DC comic movies complete. (I’ve given up on the Marvel one, since I don’t want to see the Punisher movies for any reason.)

Less Than Zero (1987) — What a time capsule. The movie is a walking anti-drug ad, but I still miss the fashions and design of that era. I’d watch the Imperial Bedrooms followup, if they ever make that movie.

The Pick-Up Artist (1987) — Another reminder of why it doesn’t make sense to be a completist. I like Robert Downey (no Jr. in these credits) a lot, but this is a bad movie. Not even good bad, just mediocre, lying there, begging you to ignore it. The most interesting thing about it was who showed up in little roles, from Harvey Keitel to Christine Baranski. Co-stars a tired-looking Molly Ringwald.

More and more, I don’t buy DVDs unless they provide substantial bonuses. (Especially when it comes to classic films, which I can otherwise record from TCM.) I want studios to create and include that material to make it worthwhile for me to own that movie, and I want them to fairly compensate the talent who contributes to that bonus material. If not, everyone loses out. The customer doesn’t get the benefit of added information from sources with substantial knowledge. The studio doesn’t sell as many discs as they could have. What we often end up with are lame examples of company executives telling us things we already know.

Unfortunately, given the way corporations think, I predict that, if valuable sources refuse to participate, the studios will simply quit doing bonus material and then continue complaining that home media sales are declining. Few companies these days are willing to give away a penny to make an extra dollar, although that’s the sensible strategy. As Evanier sums up,

You don’t have to make a buck off everything you do. But there are some things in this world that are done for a profit and by not insisting on a share, all you’re doing is charity work for Disney. Or Time-Warner. Or some other financial force of nature.

Scott is right. Those of us who were privileged to work with guys like Bill and Joe and Bob and Tex and men like Jack Kirby… we have an obligation to share what we heard and observed. That’s one reason I have this blog and do other things like articles and convention panels, gratis. But I have to remember not to be so quick to do it for free for people who are going to turn around and sell it… because that’s not a commitment to history. That’s a commitment to being a chump.

I had the pleasure of viewing a screener of this hour-and-fifteen-minute movie. Watching the trailer, shown below, demonstrates a who’s who of comic creators, including Art Spiegelman, Francoise Mouly, Scott McCloud, Chris Ware, Lynda Barry, Douglas Wolk, school faculty members Jason Lutes and Stephen Bissette, and James Sturm, who’s also the school’s Director. While the big names will certainly be an attraction, I found it more fascinating to watch the faculty and hear the students talk about their work and bits of their lives before they came to the school. Especially since I’ve read the comics one of them, Jen Vaughn, talks about producing. That passion, showing how the students struggle and how their intentions may not be realized the way they hope, is the real strength of the film.

I was very happy to learn more about the school, its courses, the Schulz Library, and how learning is structured there. (I think there’s a followup to be done examining how the town population views the school and its creators in its midst.) It was also interesting to see the comments about different kinds of comics available these days and how to approach them as art. But it’s the students themselves, especially the brief moments where they acknowledge what they gave up and the choices they made to pursue cartooning, that will stick with me. Plus, there are cartooning couples and a visit to MoCCA Fest. If you’re at all curious about where the next generation of comic creators is coming from and what their influences are, you need to see this movie.

Speaking of which, the film will be shown on the West Coast this Sunday, April 29, at the Newport Beach Film Festival in Southern California. I hope the filmmakers make copies available to purchase, because it’s good watching.

This one, I admit, I knew nothing about, other than that it starred John Ritter and a lot of random women. Ritter (in his bearded phase) is an alcoholic writer and womanizer who, in the opening scene, is caught in bed with another woman by his mistress (Denise Crosby), who tries to shoot him, and then his wife (Alyson Reed) walks in. He doesn’t have a place to live, since she tosses him out, and he can’t write, since he’s blocked. He spends the rest of the movie trying to sleep with various anonymous girls (one is the Boss’ ex, Julianne Phillips, another the bodybuilder/American Gladiator Raye Hollitt; since it’s the 80s, all have various forms of bad hair) and complaining about how difficult his (rich, accomplished) life is.

I didn’t have much patience for this — like the later Californication, it asks us to sympathize with a guy whose life would be pretty good if he didn’t keep screwing it up by not being able to keep his dick in his pants or liquor out of his glass. The concept of self-control doesn’t seem to occur to him, or to the kind of men who make these movies to indulge their arguments for pity. Then again, they live in California, where addictions are accommodated until someone winds up dead.

Ritter’s character goes to a bartender, he goes to a shrink, but actually making the difficult choices to improve or work hard at solving his problems seems beyond him. The whole movie is an argument for why everyone should love this asshole anyway, trying to cast his struggles as charming under it all. At least, Ritter makes this unlikable character sympathetic, reminding me just how much of a talent he was. He balances the dramatic and comedy moments well, even if I’m clearly not the audience for this middle-aged-man’s movie.

For special features, there’s the theatrical trailer, some dated cast & crew listings, and some other DVD ads.

Edwards’ wife Julie Andrews plays a character loosely reminiscent of her real-life self, an actress best known for her family-friendly saccharine musicals. Richard Mulligan is her husband, Felix Farmer, a producer who’s just made his first flop. (Reportedly, the story was inspired in part by the experiences of Edwards and Andrews making Darling Lili.) Farmer has a nervous breakdown and tries to commit suicide, but after failing multiple times, he hatches an outrageous plan: he will remake his failure of a movie as a porn film, and his wife will appear topless (which, yes, Andrews does).

This is a classic of Hollywood satire, a significant film in the genre of “movie makers make movies about how messed up the industry is”. At the time, it was intended to be black comedy, wicked in its spilling of secrets, but modern watchers of the business won’t find it quite as shocking. Many of its revelations — movie people are crazy, greedy, motivated by sex, on drugs, or all of the above — are now common knowledge, making the movie even darker. (Today’s viewer might snicker, though, at how upset everyone is getting over losing a few million dollars, given the scale of current film disasters.) Instead, what surprises is the casual acceptance of varying sexual partners and business alcoholism; that, the deliberate pacing, and the fashions, especially the one-piece pantsuits on the men, all mark this film as from another era. (So does, more disturbingly, the plot twist that Andrews’ character says no to the nudity until she is drugged.)

None of the characters in this film are likable, but all are entertaining, due to the many strong performances. Mulligan doesn’t even talk until 45 minutes into the two-hour movie, but his expressions are something to behold. S.O.B. also stars Robert Vaughn (as the studio president), Larry Hagman (studio executive), Robert Preston (Farmer’s smoking/drinking/injecting doctor, stealing every scene he’s in), Loretta Swit (gossip columnist), and in his last movie, William Holden (a director). Rosanna Arquette has a small role as a teenage hitchhiker; she also gets topless. It’s an old white man’s world in this movie.

Special Features are minimal, just the theatrical trailer and a list of Blake Edwards’ credits.