How I Met Your Mother Comes To E4

Mark it in your diaries: September 4th. The best US sitcom since Frasier is finally coming to the UK (albeit four seasons behind). After repeating Friends until I can just about quote every line of all ten seasons, E4 have finally bought How I Met Your Mother. BBC bought the first season a few years ago and killed it stone dead by showing it at 3 in the morning, and I only in the past year or so rediscovered it.
At first it seems like little more than a Friends clone, but by the end of season one, you will - I personally guarantee this - be utterly addicted and invested in the characters. It's frequently hilarious, always has a least one perfect quotable for the rest of the week moment, and, as it goes on becomes as perfectly poignant as Frasier used to be.
There are far too many highlights to name: The Slap Bet, The Bro Code, Marshall and Lily's wedding, Robin Sparkles...
And nothing can prepare you for Barney Stinson. He's Legen- wait for it - dary.
Here's a clip from one of my favourite episodes...

Harvey

"Years ago, my mother used to say to me, she'd say: 'In this world, Elwood,' she always used to call me Elwood. 'In this world, Elwood, you must be oh, so smart or oh, so pleasant.' Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. And you can quote me."
A story about an alcoholic dreamer with a giant invisible white rabbit as a friend. Sell that these days and think about all the ways that Hollywood could (and would) spoil it.
Luckily we'll always have Harvey, possibly James Stewart's finest hour (and considering his incredible career, that's really saying something), and one of the most gentle, magical, moving and downright luminous films ever made.
I don't need to say anything more about this film. I loved it as a child and, seeing it again tonight, I loved it even more. One of the most wonderful and beguiling movies ever made.
And Stewart's speech about sitting in a bar and meeting strangers is a sublime reminder for the creatively bankrupt movie makers of Hollywood about the power of words...

"Harvey and I sit in the bars... have a drink or two... play the juke box. And soon the faces of all the other people they turn toward mine and they smile. And they're saying, "We don't know your name, mister, but you're a very nice fella." Harvey and I warm ourselves in all these golden moments. We've entered as strangers - soon we have friends. And they come over... and they sit with us... and they drink with us... and they talk to us. They tell about the big terrible things they've done and the big wonderful things they'll do. Their hopes, and their regrets, and their loves, and their hates. All very large, because nobody ever brings anything small into a bar. And then I introduce them to Harvey... and he's bigger and grander than anything they offer me. And when they leave, they leave impressed. The same people seldom come back; but that's envy, my dear. There's a little bit of envy in the best of us. "

John Hughes

I always thought John Hughes might have a classic comeback movie in him one day, but alas it's not to be. Despite some diminishing returns late in his career, he was nonetheless responsible for some classic comedy: The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Uncle Buck and National Lampoon's Vacation (both sublime comedy films in my estimation), She's Having A Baby (an often overlooked gem of a film) and Planes, Trains and Automobiles (which is one of those films that I could watch again and again.)
I can't think of a better tribute than a clip from my favourite Hughes movie.

They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To...

It's true. They really don't make them like they used to. After seeing some pretty lame fare (and to be honest, I can't even recall what it was that set me off) I decided that it was high time to go back and either rediscover some old classic movies that I'd seen as a young man (and probably didn't fully appreciate), or have my mind blown by one that I'd never managed to see.

I've devoted a shelf of late to these classics, as they've begun to monopolise my movie watching interests. Why sit down to something pedestrian and disappointing (as, lets be honest, is pretty much 90% of formulaic A to B to C modern movie making these days) when you can put on a movie starring Humphrey Bogart or Cary Grant or Audrey Hepburn, and be pretty much 100% assured of a thumping good hour and a half?

I'm not going to review them in any great detail, as movies like these have pages and pages devoted to their charms in film theory books and websites already. So a list of the delights we've savoured over the past few weeks...

North By Northwest

There's a rapidly expanding place for Hitchcock movies on my shelf. I've already got the classic Hollywood era films - Rear Window, The Birds, the utterly sublime (and my personal favourite) Vertigo, Notorious (which is in the to-watch pile for the next week) and Psycho (which I just got hold of, and I simply could watch every day). But North by Northwest is one of Hitch's films that I never could get on with for some reason.

But having obtained it for a couple of quid this week off Amazon, and re-watching it, I realised two things: One: It's bloody awesome. Two: Cary Grant - they just don't make movie stars as luminous as him these days do they? and Three: I realised that whenver I'd seen it previously, I'd missed the first part of the movie and was always subsequently confused as to what the hell was going on. With this realisation out of the way, I sat back, enjoyed it and discovered it was easily up there with Hitch's greatest movies. It just glows with genius and Hollywood magic.

Doctor Zhivago

A confession: until last week I'd never seen a David Lean movie all the way through. I'd seen bits and pieces of Bridge On The River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia and Zhivago as a child, but never really had the patience for them. I was young and to be fair, they are all at least three days long. The Director's Cut of Lawrence of Arabia that I picked up last week will take you a fortnight to get through, and I'm only just joking. They're long.

But I set three hours aside last week and sat back with Doctor Zhivago, which of course, is sumptuous, sprawling and self indulgent. But those three hours simply fly by. Lean was a master craftsman. Even with a rather diluted view of Russian history in service to an epic love story, it's a quite staggering piece of cinema for its detail and period set-pieces. Julie Christie, Omar Shariff, Rod Steiger, Alec Guiness and Tom Courtney: five perfect reasons to watch this movie alone. Amazing. I felt richer for having seen it. And I bet you don't get that with Transformers: Rise of the Fallen...

Funny Face

Put an Audrey Hepburn film on and I'll be entertained for 90 minutes. I've had this one knocking around for a while, but hadn't quite had the enthusiasm for it as I'd had for Breakfast at Tiffany's or Roman Holiday (probably my favourite film of all time at this present moment) or Sabrina.

It's a musical for one thing. I'm not a huge fan of musicals but I'm warming to them slowly. And I'd never seen Fred Astaire in the proper sense. I'd seen bit and pieces of him with Ginger Rogers as a child, but never really seen his work.

But after seeing Funny Face, I'm getting closer to liking musicals. This is filled with exquisite Gershwin songs and quite simly stunning choreography. I knew Astaire could dance, but my god, I didn't realise just how good he was. Literally jaw-droppingly good. He makes Strictly Come Dancing pro's look like me dancing. Although he knocking on for 60, while Hepburn was in her 20's, they still manage to make this majestic musical comedy romance work, and work beautifully. An absolute feast for the senses.

The Third Man

Another movie that I knew all about but had never seen. I watched this last night, and the imagery is still swarming around my head. The greatest British movie ever made? Quite possibly. There are few films quite so noir as this one. Orson Welles has less than half of the movie in screentime, but his prescence fills the movie. His entrance is sublime movie magic. He's charm and reptile all rolled into one. The cinematography casts post-war Vienna in a nightmarishly angled light (or darkness) and the soundtrack of Anton Karas's zither is one of the absolute great soundtracks. Filled with tension and some sublime set pieces, this is absolutely the classic everyone says it is. Shame about the 90 minute documentary on the second disc though. It drags with a pretentious and ponderous weight. Everything that was said could have been said in 30 minutes.

Sunset Boulevard

Any student of cinema, amateur or otherwise, should point to Billy Wilder as one of the greatest (and subtly subversive) movie directors of all time.

Sunset Boulevard is generally regarded as the best film ever made about Hollywood. This story of a faded movie star and a struggling screenwriter is, like most of Wilder's work, absolutely timeless. He was a writer and director who was years ahead of his time. Consider a career that covers Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Sabrina, Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard (to name but a few). This man was a genius. Everything I've seen of his stuns me, and he's beginning to woo me away from Hitchcock as the auteur to collect. Gloria Swanson ("I'm ready for my close-up") is a washed up actress, playing a washed up actress. Her servant is a washed up director playing a washed up director. And William Holden is a washed up actor, playing a washed up screenwriter (after being spurned by Audrey Hepburn, he turned to drink and barely recovered, save for this career defining performance). This Special Edition has some excellent docs and features on it too. Well worth a couple of quid off Amazon.

I haven't been keeping up with the blog of late as I'm still ploughing through the short novel I'm writing (150 pages and counting so far!), but I'll try to cover the next batch of movies I have waiting in the wings: Paris When It Sizzles, Notorious, Lawrence of Arabia, Eyes Without A Face, Brief Encounter, Charade and The Barefoot Contessa.