Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 04/04/25

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Friday, April 4, 2025

You're a Big Boy Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1966)

Peter Kastner and Tony Bill in You're a Big Boy Now

Cast: Peter Kastner, Elizabeth Hartman, Geraldine Page, Rip Torn, Tony Bill, Julie Harris, Karen Black, Dolph Sweet, Michael Dunn. Screenplay: Francis Ford Coppola, based on a novel by David Ignatius. Cinematography: Andrew Laszlo. Art direction: Vasilis Fotopoulos. Film editing: Aram Avakian. Music: Robert Prince.

Francis Ford Coppola's You're a Big Boy Now, his master's thesis project at UCLA, is a coming-of-age comedy in the larky mid-1960s manner of Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night (1964) and The Knack ... and How to Get It (1965). It's a manner that's now a little dated, a sometimes too-frantic piling on of editing tricks and goofball antics, but Coppola handled it well with the help of a willing cast. Geraldine Page even earned an Oscar nomination as the smothering mother of Bernard Chanticleer (Peter Kastner), trying to make it on his own in the big city.

Three Seasons (Tony Bui, 1999)

Cast: Nguyen Ngoc Hiep, Don Duong, Zoe Bui, Nguyen Huu Doc, Harvey Keitel, Huong Phat Trieu, Tran Manh Cuong. Screenplay: Tony Bui, Timothy Linh Bui. Cinematography: Lisa Rinzler. Production design: Wing Lee. Film editing: Keith Reamer. Music: Richard Horowitz.

Although somewhat soft around the edges, Tony Bui's Three Seasons is an affecting and often quite beautiful look at the lives of people on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City: a flower vendor, a pedicab driver, a prostitute, a small boy who peddles chewing gum and cigarettes, and a visiting ex-GI.