692 It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

[Moe Dickstein]

Guess I've been going to the wrong screenings

[PfR73]

It's worth asking, because I've sat in a couple American Cinematheque screenings with him and it's pretty hard to ignore his distinctive laugh: Was Tarantino laughing, and how much?

I feel like he was, but honestly I don't remember too well because it's been several years and I was so engrossed myself in the film & my own laughter. From what I've been told by other people about my own laugh, it's possible it's just as or even more distinctive than his.

[cdnchris]

I'm watching the Last 70 mm Film Festival feature on the release right now, and it's probably one of the sadder things I've seen recently. The poor guy who introduces Billy Crystal is a mostly dry and uninteresting speaker, he almost never looks up from his notes, and his attempts at jokes flop big time. Then Billy Crystal comes up on stage, and makes fun of the guy. It's a mini-tragedy in and of itself, watching someone completely bomb on stage and then having other, more successful people make fun of that person.

It was a bit cruel, though I don't think Crystal really meant anything by it. And though maybe it was a drag there, live, I actually found a lot of what he said interesting watching it on my television. On the other hand I have to give Crystal credit in trying to save all those awkward moments created by Rooney. He didn't always succeed, but he tried.

[colinr0380]

I like to think that interrupting a question to a different member of the panel with a request for everyone to join together for a moment of silent prayer is an nonagenarian version of the Kanye "I'm gonna let you finish..." speech.

[movielocke]

i was at that screening, doesn't Randy Habercamp always introduce the screenings and guests? Randy's wonderful, but he does get outshined by the comics in this context. He's done some really great interviews over the years, imo. from what I recall of that interview, they repeatedly tried to ask the script supervisor how he managed to keep such a colossal production in hand, and Jonathan Winters kept interrupting so no one ever got a chance to hear the scripty speak.

[cdnchris]

I like to think that interrupting a question to a different member of the panel with a request for everyone to join together for a moment of silent prayer is an nonagenarian version of the Kanye "I'm gonna let you finish..." speech.

"I'm gonna let you finish, but Borgnine had one of the best Simpsons cameos of all time! One of the best Simpsons cameos of all time!"

[CSM126]

It's a Bad Bad Bad Bad Movie.

I scooped this up sight unseen and dived into the extended cut for my first viewing and my God how I wish I had those 3.5 hours back. I laughed once in the whole movie - "May the best man win. Except for you, lady. I hope you drop dead!" The rest of the time I was just waiting for it to end. This is the kind of movie that thinks screaming is funny in and of itself and so every scene is just screaming and screaming. If Steve Carrell popped in and shouted "LOUD NOISES!", it wouldn't have been the least bit out of place. The one-liner jokes are tired and the slapstick is just low-rent Stooges material - And the goddamn stooges are in this thing and they don't do anything! Ugh. I haven't had such a long, boring sit in a long time.

Don't get me wrong. I know that comedy is a very subjective thing and I respect that a lot of people like this movie. More power to them. God knows I hold some movies near and dear to my heart that most people hate or mock - Hi, I'm Richard and I'm a Showgirls defender - so I'm not in a position to judge, nor do I want to. I'm glad that those fans have finally gotten the special edition they always wanted. The supplements have been great so far, and for that alone I find the set worth owning. I love the stuff about restoration, the sfx work and all that. The reconstruction itself is a fascinating example of how lost films/footage can be recreated ala A Star is Born, and I dig that kind of thing too. As a major hit and one of the very few single-camera Cinerama films, Mad World is a significant Hollywood artifact. I don't have any qualms with having it on my shelf as much as I dislike it. This is not in the league of Border Radio, after all. It's just not my taste, but it's ultimately harmless. It didn't make me angry, it just burned some time that could have been better spent. My bad, really.

[Moe Dickstein]

Thanks for writing up your thoughts - I love the joke after the one you like too, Winters piping in with "We all agree on that".

And I love Showgirls too, so you're not alone. I die laughing all through that movie, especially when the bowl of ice comes out.

[Stuart Galbraith IV]

My review is here:

http://www.worldcinemaparadise.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[colinr0380]

Showgirls might not have the scope, but perhaps outdid Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World when it threw in the monkey rampage scene!

My review is here

I like the comparison you made to Intolerance and find it interesting that the strange influence that film seems to have had on a diverse range of work since (Cloud Atlas most recently!)

[mteller]

Saying you like Showgirls isn't really putting yourself out there for mockery. Liking Showgirls is pretty hip.

[CSM126]

Saying you like Showgirls isn't really putting yourself out there for mockery. Liking Showgirls is pretty hip.

Maybe, but I get the sense that most people "like" it in an ironic way. I've seen very few serious critical defenses of it as the masterpiece it is.

[knives]

Who needs any more defense then Rivette's?

[adavis53]

It's a Bad Bad Bad Bad Movie.

I scooped this up sight unseen and dived into the extended cut for my first viewing and my God how I wish I had those 3.5 hours back. I laughed once in the whole movie - "May the best man win. Except for you, lady. I hope you drop dead!" The rest of the time I was just waiting for it to end. This is the kind of movie that thinks screaming is funny in and of itself and so every scene is just screaming and screaming. If Steve Carrell popped in and shouted "LOUD NOISES!", it wouldn't have been the least bit out of place. The one-liner jokes are tired and the slapstick is just low-rent Stooges material - And the goddamn stooges are in this thing and they don't do anything! Ugh. I haven't had such a long, boring sit in a long time.

Don't get me wrong. I know that comedy is a very subjective thing and I respect that a lot of people like this movie. More power to them. God knows I hold some movies near and dear to my heart that most people hate or mock - Hi, I'm Richard and I'm a Showgirls defender - so I'm not in a position to judge, nor do I want to. I'm glad that those fans have finally gotten the special edition they always wanted. The supplements have been great so far, and for that alone I find the set worth owning. I love the stuff about restoration, the sfx work and all that. The reconstruction itself is a fascinating example of how lost films/footage can be recreated ala A Star is Born, and I dig that kind of thing too. As a major hit and one of the very few single-camera Cinerama films, Mad World is a significant Hollywood artifact. I don't have any qualms with having it on my shelf as much as I dislike it. This is not in the league of Border Radio, after all. It's just not my taste, but it's ultimately harmless. It didn't make me angry, it just burned some time that could have been better spent. My bad, really.

After just having finished this I have to agree a lot with your review. I think I found the film a lot tolerable than you did, I laughed definitely more than once but found a great deal of it a bit tiring (especially the whole destruction of the garage sequence, how explosively redundant can one scene be?). That being said I do personally find the film a tiny bit better than the rap its been getting here, but I do think its inclusion here is more as a historical artifact than artistic valuable. I actually had pretty similar feelings toward this as I did Tiny Furniture, both arguably (rather) unsophisticated films but which have had greater influence than I'd like to acknowledge/admit.

[Moe Dickstein]

Great in depth article on the film and Criterion disc at The Digital Bits:

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/columns/h ... rospective" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[colinr0380]

That article is absolutely fantastic. I particularly liked the quote from the interview:

Scrabo: The general release version has played since 1964 and the film’s positive reputation is based on that cut. There are a handful of scenes in the extended version that I love and would like to see included in the shorter version. I feel these two versions of Mad World are like family albums – one album, the one on your coffee table that you show to friends, contain only the best photos, without any duplicate shots and no explanation is needed for them. But you never throw out your extra photos. It’s still your family, the ones you grew up with. They go in a special album.

I might have issues with the film but I certainly agree on most of the sentiments expressed there, and it really feels like a labour of love. I would like to hope, given Karen Sharpe-Kramer's positive comments about working with Criterion at the end, that we could see some of Kramer's 'earlier, serious' films get a Criterion release, particularly the underrated The Sniper and On The Beach. I think that I feel as strongly about On The Beach as others do about It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World! (It's just as funny/manically despairing in its own way!)

If they are looking for a "Brotherhood of Mad" style moniker for fans of On The Beach, may I suggest "The Beach Bums"?

[Norbie]

Re: Roadshow Edition

I've seen the RESTORATION DEMONSTRATION which explains why some scenes are in low quality, however some people have mentioned that some scenes have better quality versions on VHS that should have been used instead. Is that true?

[Moe Dickstein]

Can you link me to where you see those comments? I can't imagine what they could be referring to.

If I strain perhaps they're talking about scenes that appeared in the old VHD and Laserdisc versions, such as Phil Silvers and Mike Mazurki - in the new restoration there are subtle japanese subtitles and not in the older versions.

The reason for this is that the materials used for that older version are deteriorated beyond use, so only the color from the old 480 line transfer was used, where the best surviving prints were scanned in HD and used for resolution.

[Minkin]

This might be what he is referring to (as much as I like James Rolfe, this review is rather awful: "The Criterion release comes with.. a ton of extras" - but I guess he was more concerned with the extended version rather than all of the extras/package). A lot of his review plays into memory - which was probably wrong by the sound of it - or that the elements are no longer as good as they were over 20 years ago.

Here is a great rundown on all of the different shots between the old laserdisc and the Criterion (though it seems that someone used google translate to translate it from the original German article).

I've never really cared for this film and didn't find it particularly amusing on my first watch a few years ago... but I'm willing to give it another try. After seeing the location video Criterion posted, I'm actually rather excited to see it again - since I live near many of the locations (after seeing the video, I visited a few of the locations myself - mostly in Agoura. One of my favorite restaurants in town used to be the gas station where Don Knotts stops).

[Mr Sausage]

I think I prefer the German title: A Totally, Totally Crazy World (Eine total, total verrückte Welt).

[Stefan Andersson]

Can you link me to where you see those comments? I can't imagine what they could be referring to.

If I strain perhaps they're talking about scenes that appeared in the old VHD and Laserdisc versions, such as Phil Silvers and Mike Mazurki - in the new restoration there are subtle japanese subtitles and not in the older versions.

The reason for this is that the materials used for that older version are deteriorated beyond use, so only the color from the old 480 line transfer was used, where the best surviving prints were scanned in HD and used for resolution.

I may misremember, but I think the Japanese subtitles (in the Silvers/Mazurki scene) were present in the materials used for the LD, but the image was zoomed in to eliminate the Japanese subs. I think this has been commented upon by Paul Scrabo in the Mad World thread on HTF.

[Moe Dickstein]

It was the other section with subtitles, with Sylvester's talking about his mother maybe being raped. That had the Japanese subtitles and was zoomed in on the laserdisc. The Silvers scene was taken from another element and hence has full color coverage in the new version, the Sylvester shot shows the extent of the zoom done earlier.

I'll look at those links at work today when I have a moment

[Moe Dickstein]

Great comparison, I'm going through the translated from German version right now. I'll make some notes on things they weren't sure or right about:

In general the reason lines were lost at the tail end of scenes in the LD was to avoid the loss of the sound due to the sound running ahead of the picture on 70mm prints. For this reconstruction, several complete reels of sound were found which patched many of these holes for the first time, and for the reels that weren't located, thats where you see the last line subtitled of a shot.

Opening Titles
The "In Cinerama" version of the credits was meant just for those prints used for those venues. It's never been part of a home video release before, and is presented here for the first time. The disc one version has the regular "Stanley Kramer Presents" credit. There are also alternate versions of the main titles in terms of color changes through the sequence, or later versions that are red and remain so the whole way. The LD and new Blu are correct while the DVD and old Blu are not.

40:47
This is a scene where rediscovered sound allowed its inclusion for the first time. The reason we have the color is that it was scanned back in 91, but it wasn't used for the LD due to the lack of sound. Now that we have the HD trims, sound reel, and color - it could be reconstructed and added in for the first time.

48:46
The alternate shot of the plane taking off only exists in the 480 color scans from 1991, so that is what is used here, no 70mm element was available to be scanned, and this is the only such shot in the picture.

69:28
The alternate shot was to hide a jumpcut on the LD

73:22
As I suspected this was the shot that causes confusion. The elements used sans subtitle no longer exist so the subtitle print was scanned and the earlier color laid over it.

74:59
In the LD this isn't a different shot, but just zoomed in to avoid a jumpcut. They did this many places in the LD.

144:39
Another scene scanned in 91 but no sound, now restored with sound.

[Norbie]

Can you link me to where you see those comments? I can't imagine what they could be referring to.

If I strain perhaps they're talking about scenes that appeared in the old VHD and Laserdisc versions, such as Phil Silvers and Mike Mazurki - in the new restoration there are subtle japanese subtitles and not in the older versions.

The reason for this is that the materials used for that older version are deteriorated beyond use, so only the color from the old 480 line transfer was used, where the best surviving prints were scanned in HD and used for resolution.

I'm a bit embarrassed to admit this, but I'm referring to some of the 1 star reviews on amazon.com

[Moe Dickstein]

Oh well those people are barely able to function enough to use a keyboard to type, so that explains that. Do appreciate you saying it though because I couldn't imagine what I'd missed.

I have to assume that when whoever it was went from watching extended scenes on their VHS copy (where they seemed to blend very well with the main film due to the decrease in resolution for both) to watching the new Blu, the sudden difference in quality was a problem for them. Makes total sense now.