Young bro of a pro-Nazi nutter,
As king, feared he never could utter
Such words as "Dec-lare"
Aloud 'On the Air'
Yet bwoadcast without any stutter.

Brian - Brilliant on La Regle du Jeu which, like the following, is one of my favourites too.

A niece lost a leg in Toledo
While flouting her uncle's strict credo
"He claims to be free -
Let's try it for me!"
She chose - and let in a tornado.

Oh, no - not Hollywood, Jerome...

Six Samurai, swordplay and pain,
But the seventh had far more to gain
And far more to give;
And as long as I live
I'll remember his howl in the rain.

Jerome -

“The Magnificent Seven” - well, damn your eye!
This remake’s a film that can wham your eye,
But I find Kurosawa
Has far greater power,
And so I prefer “Seven Samurai”.


(Our postings seem to have crossed, Ann!)

(Nigel - "Tristana", by Bunuel)

Had they met in that palace before?
To this day I confess I'm not sure
But the ceilings, the sun,
The mysterious gun
Lead me on through each blind corridor.

Since we have turned this into a guessing game -

L'Année dernière à Marienbad

This black and white movie incites
to hush like a God in the heights
and watch a knight strive
as Death comes alive
in a chessboard of long days and nights.

I rebut Ann's implicit aspersion.
The remake's a Tex-Mex excursion
Which has lots of pistols,
Hints of cleavage and bristols,
And less art than the Japanese version.

Pedro, I'd been thinking of doing "The Seventh Seal", but you beat me to it.

A man in an unredeemed state
Whose clock never changes its date
Lays on charm with a trowel
And wins Andie McDowell
Which suggests that it's never too late.

Jerome, that's a very enjoyable little film ... but I'd better not hog the entire guessing game.

Of course Brian was right about Marienbad - inasmuch as anyone can ever be...

Three steel men, close friends since they met:
Each sought to become a cadet;
It seemed like good fun
To carry a gun
Until they played Russian Roulette.

O Marion what have you done?
You've embezzled and gone on the run,
Where your nemesis waits
Thanks to young Master Bates,
Who is such an affectionate son.

The author, one Alain Robbe-Grillet,
Said “What’s it about? Ca fait chier!
I’ve thought since a lad
About Marienbad,
But what it all means still beats me, eh?”

That Obscure Object of Desire

While extremists ignite sturm und drang
and Mathieu tells his tale to a gang,
two actresses flirt
with a spoiler alert,
and then everything ends with a bang.

Her body was found on the floor; a
Detective becomes her adorer.
When the door is unlocked
And she enters, he’s shocked,
For she’s dead, so how can it be Laura?

Chapeau, Brian!

Nigel, that's a scweam.
(The King's Speech)

Pedro, since you scooped me on The Seventh Seal, you force me to do this:

In a style that's exclusively Jack's
He comes to the door with an axe,
Then sticks his head in
And says with a grin:
"Here's Johnny!" How Jack overacts!

Life at Tara is all glitz and glam.
Humble slaves say yassuh and yes ma’am
Then secessionist masters
Make war, and disasters
Befall the South. Who gives a damn?

Three goatherds killed one maiden fair.
When her father found out, he went spare.
I need this, he said,
Like a toad in the bread,
And despatched them all three, then and there.

Chris, that's hard to beat. But there's always tomorrow...

A troubled youth headed for jail
meets up with a sad killer whale.
How the boy helps his friend
to go home in the end
makes for one splashy whale tale.

So the film goes its mawkish old way
Till it ends with a lousy cliche:
Should we laugh or feel sorrow
To learn that “Tomorrow
Is” (yuckity-yuck) “another day”?

Ah, Ann ... "The Virgin Spring" - brilliant, but one of the most unbearably harrowing films I've ever seen.

Brian, "The Virgin Spring" is a screwball comedy, compared to "The Passion of Anna"! :eek:


When Lillian Gish took the rap
while protecting her minister chap
by wearing the letter,
the film was far better
than that Demi Moore piece of crap.

A nurse meets an actress in trouble
who's lived for so long in a bubble
she never recovers––
the nurse soon discovers
her fate is becoming her double.

A girl and her brother, though hot,
Walk about in the outback a lot,
Meet a genuine Ozzie,
Have a swim minus cozzy
And that's about that for the plot.

Marion, I haven't seen "The Passion of Anna" (which I think in England is just called "A Passion"). Being by Bergman, I'm prepared to believe it's harrowing - but is it visually harrowing like "The Virgin Spring"?

A great director, even if I find some of his middle-to-late films tedious. But I love "Smiles of a Summer Night", "Wild Strawberries", and "Fanny and Alexander", to name but three.

And I believe Pedro's (above) is "Persona".

Wild Strawberries is gorgeous!

Pedro.

A man from the bush, lean and brown,
Doesn't let outback crocs get him down.
He knows every trick
And impresses the chick
So her name becomes that of a town

I'm curious about that plotless film Jerome is talking about. I have no idea!

Pedro.

Oh, yeah. Visually harrowing, not to mention sickening. Stay away from it.

When Joy must travel afar,
she won't leave her friend behind bars.
So she shows Elsa that
she's no pussycat,
and now she can follow her star.

I think Jerome's plotless one is Walkabout.

I haven't seen it but I think it's "Walkabout"?

Whoops! Crossed with Ann.

It's in French, so there isn't much clarity,
As Garance juggles men with dexterity
And shows all a good time,
Though her true love's a mime -
I think it’s called Infants of Parody.

Frank

Two friends deal with many a hassle,
not to mention encountering a passel
of losers and zhlubs
and the Princeton math club,
but they finally get to White Castle.

Indeed, Ann and Marion, Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout with Jenny Agutter.

Five MIT geeks––four Caucasian––
get transformed––sleight of hand or equation?––
into five millionaires
somehow cast in reverse,
for they were, all but one of them, Asian.

I'll have to watch Walkabout! Thanks.