North Rhone 2001 and pork at the TGJP

Goodness! For a person whose last viewed movie was "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (which, by the way, was great), whatever it is y'all are talking about is a mystery.

Or maybe it is that you're not even talking about movies!?!

. . . . . . Pete
 
originally posted by MLipton:
originally posted by Ian Fitzsimmons:
Fwiw, personally, I find no comparison between Allen's early humor and Brooks's. Scalpel and hatchet.
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I, OTOH, would take winegrrrrl's parallel even further, though the two had opposite trajectories for me: I love Brooks's early comedies up to Young Frankenstein, after which his films become less and less humorous to me. His humor is more juvenile than Allen's (and Blazing Saddles is considerably less funny to me today than it was when I saw its theatrical release at age 16), but both got their start as writers for Sid Caesar and it shows. Where Sharon and I do differ is on the subject of Spaceballs, one of the only films I've ever walked out on before its completion (to put this into perspective, I stayed to watch all of Sleeper and Take the Money and Run).

M'k L'n
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Whereas I never much cared for either Spaceballs or Blazing Saddles (my parents loved it). Love The Producers though.

Midnight in Paris was a delightful picture postcard of a movie. But whereas Love and Death is my favorite of his comedies (I sort of agree with those who criticize his comedies when it comes to Sleeeper but not to Take the Money and Run) of his middle period I loved Zelig, Broadway Danny Rose, Mighty Aphrodite and Purple Rose of Cairo. Especially M'y A'e.
 
Re: Mel Brooks - I've had a soft spot for "The Critic" ever since a teacher showed it to us in grade school many years ago. We first saw it without sound, then saw it again with Brook's commentary.
 
originally posted by Ian Fitzsimmons:
Diversity of taste is no less a good thing in art than in wine, I suppose. To me, all of his serious films, beginning with Manhattan, seem too alike in some way, I can't lose myself in the story. They're too chatty, too self-consciously urbane, too composed and washed out with Allenism.
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I can't get past the neurotic main character in Woody Allen films, whether that character is played by him or someone younger and better looking. His latest work (Vicky Christina Barcelona, Midnight in Paris) seem like mere confections to me.

I think a lot of Mel Brook’s comedy doesn’t hold up because it relies too much on crude stereotypes. I suspect we’re going to look back at the current trend of raunchy/awkward romantic comedy a la Judd Apatow in a similar way 30 years from now. We’ll have moved on. Again.
 
We’ve moved on from the style of humor that defined his directing career, is what I meant. Not from his entire body of work. I recently heard an old radio show where he portrayed a newborn infant that had the ability to talk and was being interviewed by a newsman. That was funny! A lot funnier than anything from History of the World, Part I. My daughter, wife and I sat in the parking lot of the hardware store listening to it and cracking up.
 
originally posted by Otto Nieminen:
The Way We Live Now! Great stuff. I don't think I've ever heard anyone undervalue that novel.
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When I was in graduate school, the general wisdom was that the only Trollope novels worth reading were Barsetshire towers and the Last Chronicle of Barset. Before I had left grad school, people had come around to talking about the Palliser series. Then, little by little, people read other novels. The Way We Live Now and He Knew He was Right were early rediscoveries. But they were easy ones because they could be rediscovered for the social panorama of the first and the psychological analysis of the second. Really though, as I said, the more one reads, the more one is surprised by the high level of general quality (assuming one disallows a handful of real stinkers like his novel about the Vendée).

I like Borscht Belt humor well enough but I was never that big a fan of Mel Brooks' movies other than the Producers (I liked Young Frankenstein well enough, I guess). On the other hand, I could listen to the 2000 Year Old Man again and again.

I don't think Woody Allen's movies after Love and Death are really comparable. For better or worse, depending on what one likes about him, they cease to be merely set ups for gags either with Sleeper or with Annie Hall.
 
originally posted by Peter Creasey:

Goodness! For a person whose last viewed movie was "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (which, by the way, was great), whatever it is y'all are talking about is a mystery.
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Spoiler: they've continued to make motion pictures in the ensuing 38 years.
 
originally posted by MLipton:
originally posted by SFJoe:
You guys are just paid-up members of the Anti-Pleasure Literature Elite.
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So, what books would you describe as "printed Viagra," Dr. Hedonism?

M'k L'n
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I would need a definition of what constitutes literary pleasure. From a certain perspective, Sharon's answer of Wodehouse might be right. From another, one might choose Proust and from another Dostoevsky. But then I don't score novels either.
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
You guys are just paid-up members of the Anti-Pleasure Literature Elite.
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Amen.

I love much of Woody Allen's body of work, especially his earlier and say pre-'90s efforts as well as Mel Brooks up to History of the World, including his Get Smart series.

I bet ya'll hate Airplane!, too.
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
But then I don't score novels either.
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Since we're on the theme of hedonism, I like to think you use that term in the drug deal sense.
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I never use hedonism as a synonym for a quality of an object that gives pleasure. And while I like your interpretation of my use of the word "score," it would make the sentence manifestly false since by that definition I score novels daily.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

When I was in graduate school, the general wisdom was that the only Trollope novels worth reading were Barsetshire towers and the Last Chronicle of Barset. Before I had left grad school, people had come around to talking about the Palliser series. Then, little by little, people read other novels. The Way We Live Now and He Knew He was Right were early rediscoveries. But they were easy ones because they could be rediscovered for the social panorama of the first and the psychological analysis of the second. Really though, as I said, the more one reads, the more one is surprised by the high level of general quality (assuming one disallows a handful of real stinkers like his novel about the Vendée).
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I think what I liked most about the Palliser novels was how well they describe the current US political scene.
 
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