The Greatest Show on Earth
1952
Clowns are plotting to take over the world and probably kill everyone whilst at it. It’s a true story. Why else would they always be smiling? They have awful jobs! They have to trip, cram themselves into tiny cars, and smash pies into their friend’s faces on a regular basis. If this was your existence, would you my friend be smiling? No. You’d cry daily and be in therapy. But not clowns. No, because they are coming to take over the entire world!!!!!!!
I hate clowns. They freak me out. Guess where you find clowns? At a circus! Guess what The Greatest Show on Earth is about? A circus, right! But the main clown wasn’t too creepy. He was only a clown because he randomly killed his girlfriend out of love. No. Not creepy at all. He just proves the clown theory.
Anyway, this movie is about the inner drama of a circus. We have our three main lovers, Manager Man, Trapeze Lady, and Trapeze Man. They had real names but no one ever remembers the names of the circus people, just what they do, so it’s all good. Manager Man and Trapeze Lady had this thing going. Sorta. See Manager Man has no feelings at all and only cares about the circus. This drives Trapeze Lady crazy.
Because no one really likes the circus, they bring in this crazy daredevil, Trapeze Man, and he steals Trapeze Lady’s center ring. So they every night perform in separate rings at the same time, having a competition for the crowds love and applause. As time pass the Trapeze People fall in love.
Manager Man kind of does not like this, but mainly does not mind. Because he is a big feelingless jerk. He doesn’t notice during all of this time that Elephant Trainer Lady likes him. Poor ETL.
So more time passes and one night while not over a net Trapeze Man falls and nearly dies. The show goes on. He comes back with a dead hand. But don’t worry! All’s well because he and Trapeze Lady love each other! They are a cute couple honestly. I truly like them. Which is a big clue they aren’t going to last in the end. The couples I like never end up working out. You have no idea how upsetting this is for my life. But I digress.
Everything continues to continue and Manager Man finally notices Elephant Trainer Lady likes him! So now they love each other. Everything’s good right?
Wrong.
ETL has a crazy ex boyfriend who tried to have an elephant stomp on her head. That was actually kinda funny… Anyway! He decided to blow up the circus train in revenge. So now the train is crashed and Manager Man is hurt. Right before this the Trapeze couple became engaged! It went like this.
Trapeze Man: Someone’s gonna get married!
Trapeze Lady: Who?
Trapeze Man: You!
I kid you not. I love Trapeze Man. But unfortantely now Manager Man is hurt so Trapeze Lady loves him again. The circus people decide to hold a circus in the field as they have no tent anymore. AND! And, get this. Trapeze Man asks Elephant Trainer Lady to marry him. She says yes. The end.
WORST ENDING EVER.
I know that reason and love keep little company these days but this is ridiculous. How can you switch from loving one person to someone completely different overnight and think it’s a good idea to get married? How is that even slightly logical to anyone? It’s not at all. It’s something that would only happen in an overdramatic 50’s movie.
Which this happens to be. The acting is unrealistically dramatic. The ending is atrocious. Nothing goes at all the way it would in real life. You might be saying, “Well duh Kelsey, that’s why we watch movies to escape reality.” Sure. Fine.
Whatever. They should still not be CRAZY improbable. The only thing that happened that I can actually see playing out in real life is that Buttons the clown finally went to jail. Which is actually sad, even though he’s a creepy clown killer. That’s how messed up this movie was.
And besides all that, this movie had way too much circus in it. Like you actually watched the same trapeze acts over and over again. Or you saw the same clowns perform. And the same people sing. It was just at a different city this time. It was incredibly boring when they went into these parts. I mean you don’t watch a movie to see a circus, you want a story, and I kept getting twenty minute breaks from the story.
For these reasons, and the fact that clowns are trying to kill us all, I would say that The Greatest Show on Earth is a very misleading title for this insanely odd movie.
Showing posts with label awards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label awards. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
Annie Hall
Annie Hall
1977
“There’s this old joke about these two old ladies eating at a Catskill mountain resort. One says to the other, ‘The food here is so terrible!’ The other one responds, ‘I know, and such small portions!’ That’s essentially how I feel about life. It’s full of misery and loneliness and unhappiness and it’s all over too quickly.” This is Alvie Singer’s, the balding forty year old protagonist of Annie Hall, mantra for life. He swears he’s not depressed. And he never has been. It’s not like when he was eight he quit functioning because he found out the universe was expanding and was convinced that meant it was soon going to break apart. It’s not like he gives his new girlfriend Annie of only a week or so two books on dying. It’s not like he’s been seeing an analyst for fifteen years. Noooooooo. He’s not depressed. Poor Alvie.
Side note. Is there a difference between analyst and therapy? If so can someone explain it to me? I think you would get like mega bonus points.
Anyway, as Alvie is assuring us he is not depressed he also tells us he broke up with Annie and hasn’t gotten used to it yet. I don’t feel bad about telling you this as this happens within the first minute of the movie. Sadly. He decides to look back and pinpoint that one moment when things went totally wrong, and from that journey, we receive the beautifully crafted gift of Annie Hall.
As I try to explain what I loved about this movie, I am finding it increasingly harder to not be a cliché ridden twelve year old who has never taken a writing course in her life. I could say “Oh I liked it.” But that doesn’t really say much and that just makes me sound like a yoyo. Heehee. That’s a phrase from Annie Hall. Annie says it, along with la de da. Annie, of the title, is a grown up loveable dork. I have lost count of how many times in the movie she went, “Yeah… Yeah? Yeah!” She constantly has her hands on her hips in a Superman pose as is she is ready to go off flying and is the worst driver you will ever see in reel or real life (Oh just look how clever I am!) I drive better than her, and that my friends is saying something. And yet, all that dorkyness, played perfectly quirkily by Diane Keaton, who won Best Actress for this role, is charming. We along with Alvie fall in love with Annie. “George had that thing, where you fall asleep in the middle of a sentence, Narcolepsy! So anyway, George went to the union to get his free turkey because the union always gave him a free turkey at Christmastime because he was shell-shocked during the first world war. So he was standing in line getting his free turkey but then he falls asleep and never wakes up! So he’s dead. He’s dead. Yeah.” These are some of the first words she says to Alvie and because she’s the wonderful Annie, she gets away with it.
Creativity oozed out of this movie like pus out of an infected wound. That may be a gross simile but hey it’s late at night and I spend too much time with my little brothers. Alvie laments his various woes and complaints to either random strangers he stops on the street or the invisible cameras that apparently follow him. Just imagine that. Imagine if you could stop for a minute and ask a random question to any person on the road and they would have the answer to what you should do!
“Should I buy this yellow car here or this blue truck here oh wise stranger?”
“Neither Kelsey. Go buy the monkey you’ve always dreamed about.”
If only real life were like that.
The genius Woody Allen, who not only directed this movie, but also wrote it, winning an Oscar, and starred in it as Alvy (casting yourself as a lead seems a bit narcissistic to me), used a literal split screen many times during the movie. Two things would be happening to show the two very different sides of view leading to often hysterical events. He wrote this to perfection. It was witty and clever, and often laugh out loud funny. Like the cocaine sneezing (yes, sneezing) scene. I could go on, but I would ruin the movie, and that would be a terrible thing to do and I would be very sad indeed to do that.
I sorta fell in love with this movie. As I wrote this, I debated just laying down what happens and adding my opinion here and there. And believe me there will be times as I blog movies that that’s going to happen. But A) this movie was filmed non linear so that would be SO irritating to do and B) it would completely ruin it for people. As I sorta love this movie I would never want to ruin it for others. It would get mad at me and I just can’t have that. So did this movie deserve to win Best Picture in my humble always right opinion? I think so. And I am glad for once a movie that was funny and was just looking at relationships, not trying to fix humanity or make a bold statement with its message won. I highly enjoyed this movie. And for the record, Woody Allen is terribly terrific.
1977
“There’s this old joke about these two old ladies eating at a Catskill mountain resort. One says to the other, ‘The food here is so terrible!’ The other one responds, ‘I know, and such small portions!’ That’s essentially how I feel about life. It’s full of misery and loneliness and unhappiness and it’s all over too quickly.” This is Alvie Singer’s, the balding forty year old protagonist of Annie Hall, mantra for life. He swears he’s not depressed. And he never has been. It’s not like when he was eight he quit functioning because he found out the universe was expanding and was convinced that meant it was soon going to break apart. It’s not like he gives his new girlfriend Annie of only a week or so two books on dying. It’s not like he’s been seeing an analyst for fifteen years. Noooooooo. He’s not depressed. Poor Alvie.
Side note. Is there a difference between analyst and therapy? If so can someone explain it to me? I think you would get like mega bonus points.
Anyway, as Alvie is assuring us he is not depressed he also tells us he broke up with Annie and hasn’t gotten used to it yet. I don’t feel bad about telling you this as this happens within the first minute of the movie. Sadly. He decides to look back and pinpoint that one moment when things went totally wrong, and from that journey, we receive the beautifully crafted gift of Annie Hall.
As I try to explain what I loved about this movie, I am finding it increasingly harder to not be a cliché ridden twelve year old who has never taken a writing course in her life. I could say “Oh I liked it.” But that doesn’t really say much and that just makes me sound like a yoyo. Heehee. That’s a phrase from Annie Hall. Annie says it, along with la de da. Annie, of the title, is a grown up loveable dork. I have lost count of how many times in the movie she went, “Yeah… Yeah? Yeah!” She constantly has her hands on her hips in a Superman pose as is she is ready to go off flying and is the worst driver you will ever see in reel or real life (Oh just look how clever I am!) I drive better than her, and that my friends is saying something. And yet, all that dorkyness, played perfectly quirkily by Diane Keaton, who won Best Actress for this role, is charming. We along with Alvie fall in love with Annie. “George had that thing, where you fall asleep in the middle of a sentence, Narcolepsy! So anyway, George went to the union to get his free turkey because the union always gave him a free turkey at Christmastime because he was shell-shocked during the first world war. So he was standing in line getting his free turkey but then he falls asleep and never wakes up! So he’s dead. He’s dead. Yeah.” These are some of the first words she says to Alvie and because she’s the wonderful Annie, she gets away with it.
Creativity oozed out of this movie like pus out of an infected wound. That may be a gross simile but hey it’s late at night and I spend too much time with my little brothers. Alvie laments his various woes and complaints to either random strangers he stops on the street or the invisible cameras that apparently follow him. Just imagine that. Imagine if you could stop for a minute and ask a random question to any person on the road and they would have the answer to what you should do!
“Should I buy this yellow car here or this blue truck here oh wise stranger?”
“Neither Kelsey. Go buy the monkey you’ve always dreamed about.”
If only real life were like that.
The genius Woody Allen, who not only directed this movie, but also wrote it, winning an Oscar, and starred in it as Alvy (casting yourself as a lead seems a bit narcissistic to me), used a literal split screen many times during the movie. Two things would be happening to show the two very different sides of view leading to often hysterical events. He wrote this to perfection. It was witty and clever, and often laugh out loud funny. Like the cocaine sneezing (yes, sneezing) scene. I could go on, but I would ruin the movie, and that would be a terrible thing to do and I would be very sad indeed to do that.
I sorta fell in love with this movie. As I wrote this, I debated just laying down what happens and adding my opinion here and there. And believe me there will be times as I blog movies that that’s going to happen. But A) this movie was filmed non linear so that would be SO irritating to do and B) it would completely ruin it for people. As I sorta love this movie I would never want to ruin it for others. It would get mad at me and I just can’t have that. So did this movie deserve to win Best Picture in my humble always right opinion? I think so. And I am glad for once a movie that was funny and was just looking at relationships, not trying to fix humanity or make a bold statement with its message won. I highly enjoyed this movie. And for the record, Woody Allen is terribly terrific.
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