The Culture Enthusiast

I don't consider myself a Bill Murray fan but he's such an indie icon these days. I don't even know if he's still considered a comedian. He developed this sad and melancholic aura which made me stay clear of his more recent movies such as Moonrise Kingdom.

But whether I like it or not, he is setting himself apart. His career path is so different from the ones of Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase or Eddie Murphy. And I'm not saying this just because of his many collaborations with Wes Anderson but because of things like these Bill Murray Paper Dolls:

 Watching the video really made me smile. And it also made me compile impromptu lists about Bill Murray.

Top 5 Bill Murray movies

Broken Flowers

The life aquatic with Steve Zissou

Lost in translation

Quick change

Hamlet

BONUS: (movies where he's not really the main character)

Darjeeeling Limited

The Rutles

Bill Murray movies I wanted to watch, but then I saw the trailer and completely gave up:

Caddyshack

What about Bob?

Bill Murray movies I need to watch again because maybe, who knows, I'll like them this time:

The Royal Tenenbaums

Rushmore

Little shop of horrors

Bill Murray classics I shamelessly haven't watched but that I'm not planning to watch now:

Groundhod day

Ghostbusters

(Bill wearing socks image and video via Niege Borges. You should really check her website out, she's a Brazilian designer who's doing very creative work.)

What are your favorite and not so favorite movies with Bill Murray?

"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot." - Stephen King

Despite being terrified of Stephen King's books*, I need to buy a copy of his On writing urgently. I can't tell you how many times I have seen authors and bloggers recommending it. i'm not a big fan of horror stories but we must admit he is an extremely successful writer.

In this post, Jon Morrow highlights some of King's tips about writing and connects them to blogging. I found all of them very helpful.

*Granted, I've never read any of his books, only seen (a lot of) the movie adaptations and they scare me straight.

Do you like Stephen King's books? What did you think of his tips?

  detail from the San Giobbe AltarPiece by Giovanni Bellini (1480)

He received his first lessons from Andrea Mantegna, his brother-in-law, which were decisive for the formation of his talent.

A self-made man, he maitained an independent studio and never received any honours. He was always imposing himself through his own merit.

Even when he was in his 80's he was still proposing new paths to aesthetic research.

In 1516, the german painter Albert Duher, wrote to a friend that he saw Bellini in Venice and that despite Bellini's old age he was still the most important painter there.

Images' sources: 1, 2, 3

What is your favorite painting from Bellini? Do you like his Madonnas?

Money, money, money, money, money, money, money, MO-NEY!

I rented It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world because I just realized I watched many parts of this movie but I had never really seen all of it. Then I remembered why. The movie is over two and half hours.

The dialogues are really funny and make it worth while though. The physical comedy and the endless car crashes, on the other hand, do get a bit tiring.

Because of this, It's a mad... won't have that much appeal to modern audiences. Compare those phony fights, with Will Ferrell punching a baby in his new movie (around 2:40). Actually, compare the whole two hours of  It's a mad... with the two excruciating minutes of that trailer - am I the only one deeply disgusted by it?

This is exactly why we've got to give it to  It's a mad... - it is incredibly ambitious. It's more than two hours. It has 10 main characters. It has a lot of special effects*. All possible comedy stars alive are in it. (According to IMDB, it became known the director was hiring every comedian he could think of. Some famous stars even contacted him to volunteer for the movie, or to ask why they had not been contacted). 

How did they pull this last one off, by the way?  There were no ego trips. Meanwhile, Eddie Murphy, Mike Meyers and Adam Sandler went on to play more than one character (if not all) in a movie.

But the most unique aspect of the movie is the plot. Several people are ready to do what it takes - really, whatever it takes - to get their hands in some easy money (and screw others in the process).

There's so much potential for drama here. Do you remember that Woody Allen movie, Melinda and Melinda, where he tells the same story as a comedy and as a drama?

It's a mad... has a lot of potentially dramatic scenes. Like the one where Melville, the dentist, is trying to convince his wife to get in a 1916 plane just to get ahead of the others. He lies and basically risks his life and that of his wife for money. In how many dramas do we see characters risking their families lives for money?

Or the scene where Cap. Culpepper is devastated because of his money and family problems and just stares at Mexico in the map. He embodies that idea that money is an escape of all your problems, which is probably shared by all the characters in this movie and the audience. After all, we never get to know what they will do with the money or why they wanted it so badly.

We only know the motivations of two characters, Cap. Culpepper and Emeline, but it seems that everybody's motivation is the same. They think money will solve their problems. Don't we see that constantly in dramas too?



The theme of what people would do for money is very universal and one that has been explored constantly in dramas. It's a mad... could have easily turned into a tragedy, but it didn't. Why?

Take a look at the ending. Spoiler alert, baby. (Sylvester rules).


I read in IMDB that the end disappointed many, but it's still an excellent one. They get caught and no one gets the money. This is perfect because it's realistic (plus, enough with the movies where the bad guys get away with things).

In a similar and more recent movie, Rat Race, the people who spend the whole movie running around after money end up giving the money away to charity - just like that.

Can we possibly believe that people who were ready to do anything to get that prize would give it up so quickly, without resisting or rationalizing it? In It's a mad..., one of the characters in the end says they deserve the money because they "suffered a lot" for it.

Rat Race's end is politically correct and unreal. It's just the writers wishfully thinking: "maybe they will magically copy the characters' generous behavior just like we magically turned petty characters into generous ones".

It's a mad...  doesn't spare the characters but it spares us. The characters will probably go to prison but we don't have to. During the movie we (more or less) sympathized with the characters or at least cheered for some of them. I particularly liked (and pitied) Cap. Culpepper.

In the end they don't get the money and end up seriously hurting themselves. None of their previous problems is solved. The only break they get is laughter. Their ultimate consolation is comedy.

This is why It's a mad... didn't turn into a drama. The director and all those comedy starts share the idea that ultimately it's better to laugh it off. I imagine that's the reason why all those stars wanted to be a part of this movie in the first place, because they all think the same way, they agree with what the movie is saying.

A lot of people have the wrong impression that comedians are easy going people that see the world through rose colored glasses. Quite the opposite. Many times, comedians are very pessimistic, troubled people. (There are many examples to this, but you can see a fictional one in the character of the comedy producer in Melinda and Melinda, or a real one in Woody Allen and his nihilistic outlook on life).

A person doesn't become happy go lucky once he becomes a comedian. It's just that he chooses to see life differently. Melinda and Melinda's tagline is: "life can be a comedy or a tragedy, it all depends how you look at it."

It's a Mad... recognizes that we do live in a mad world full of greedy people, but it reminds us that ultimately there are things we can laugh at.

Did you like It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world? What are your favorite lines and characters? 

* Some extra info via IMDB:

The scene where Melville accidentally knocks the blowtorch into the stairs with the sledge hammer took 86 takes to get it just right.

For the intermission of the premiere engagement at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, the filmmakers recorded messages supposedly sent over police radios describing what was happening to various characters. These messages were played not only in the auditorium during the intermission, but out at the concession stand and even in the bathrooms. 

I'd like to share my latest book purchases and maybe rationalize how on Earth I am supposed to finish all of them. I bought them on the same day and almost couldn't carry them home.

In my defense, they were bargains. (Isn't that always the defense?)

Paul Johnson's preface got me really excited: "It is therefore essential that society defend itself against cultural breakdown. The best way it can do this is by grasping the importance of art to the well-being of mankind: as many people as possible making it their business to examine art constantly, inform themselves about it and develop their faculties of understanding and loving it." 

Don't worry, Paul, I'm on it.

***
I usually begin checking the summary and flipping through the chapters. It always gets me down to see the first chapter is always about cave paintings. I want to skip it but can't bring myself to do so. It looks too much like cheating.

Usually Egyptian and Greek art come after, then I get a little motivated. But most times I want to cheat big time and start backwards, beginning with modernism (usually the chapter that mentions Turner).

I'm extremely suspicious about modern art but I love reading about it. It's like a sick curiosity: I want to see it where it all fell apart. Just kidding. Sort of.

This is probably why I like reading art books, it's like a roller coaster ride. You start very slow and with  great anticipation, then there's a lot of excitement and that Renaissance high, and in the end you get slightly Andy Warhol nauseous.  

Negro attacked by a Jaguar by Henri Rosseau - 1910

I was very surprised to discover his work is categorized as primitive or naive art. I really like his paintings, but I could never really go for primitive art, it always looked a bit artificial to me (I'm looking at you, Gauguin).