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A wealth of elements are teased on this chaotic poster for Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part I
The history of the world, from Neanderthal man to the ardor of the Roman Empire: from the time of Christ to the French Revolution, covering the Spanish Inquisition and more!
History of the World, Part I is written, produced, starring and directed by New-Yorker master filmmaker Mel Brooks (The Producers (1967)), whose 7th film it is.
Everything goes through Brooks' lewd, irreverent, often risible and continuously entertaining wringer in History of the World, Part I. The film is truly 'the Mel Brooks show', as it is wholly his making, while he also portrays Moses, King Louis XVI - and three other characters in it! Surrounding him are a gang of his 'usual suspects': Dom DeLuise (Always Greener (2001)) as Emperor Nero; Gregory Hines (Will & Grace (1999-00)) as the African slave in trouble; Madeline Kahn (Mixed Nuts (1994)) as Empress Nympho (the royal comedienne delivers a line as few others can) and many more.
With a considerable budget many of Brooks' outrageous ideas are possible here. History of the World, Part I is salutary, insanely silly - and very funny!
Box office: 31.6 mil. $ (North America only); projected world gross 51.6 mil. $
= Big hit (projected return of 4.91 times its cost)
[History of the World, Part I was released 12 June (North America) and runs 92 minutes. The film was conceived as a reaction to a short studio backlot exchange between Brooks and a grip person. Orson Welles was paid 25k $ to record his narration for the film, which he did in a few hours instead of the 5 days that Brooks had thought it might take him. Richard Pryor was to play the slave part but had to bow out due to setting himself on fire while free-basing cocaine. Shooting took place from May 1980 - ? in France, England, California, including in Los Angeles, and in Las Vegas, Nevada. The film opened #4, behind Raiders of the Lost Ark, Clash of the Titans and Cheech and Chong's Nice Dreams, to a 4.7 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it grossed 31.6 mil. $. Its foreign numbers are regrettably not public, as per studio policy at the time, but the film must have made a good deal of money internationally as well: In France it was the year's 13th highest-grossing film with more than 2.2 mil. admissions, totaling around 6.6 mil. $, and in Denmark 218k paid admission, totaling around 1.75 mil. $. With a conservative projected world gross of 25 mil. $, the world gross would be 51.6 mil. $, making the film a big hit. Roger Ebert gave it a 2/4 star review, translating to two notches under this one. A sequel series was made for Hulu as VoD, History of the World, Part II (2023), with Brooks co-writing and co-producing. Brooks returned with Spaceballs (1987); and as an actor in To Be Or Not To Be (1983). History of the World, Part I is fresh at 63 % with a 5.70/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of History of the World, Part I?
The musician rests inside his guitar on this neat poster for Malik Bendjelloul's Searching for Sugar Man
Rodriguez is the artist name of an American singer-songwriter who released two records around 1970, which were not hits in his own country but in South Africa, where a myth developed around the man, who very few knew anything of.
The story of Sugar Man builds up slowly and is pretty anecdotic. At one point, around 50 minutes in, however, the story takes a sharp turn and seems to grow significantly: SPOILER Rodriguez is alive! And he turns out to be a fascinating, extremely humble man. The reception he enjoys on arrival in South Africa is touching.
Searching for Sugar Man doesn't clear up SixtoRodriguez for us, which I suppose is alright, but it purports to present him with his fame in South Africa, - which he actually learned about in 1997/98. Another reservation of mine is about the title, which doesn't seem to have any relation to Rodriguez. The only Sugar Man of the story seems to be Stephen 'Sugar' Segerman, a South-African record store owner and fan of Rodriguez, who wrote one of the articles the film is based on. So it seems his name has been lifted to the film's title simply because it rings well. The film is also based on an article by Craig Bartholomew Strydom. It is the only film by Swedish Malik Bendjelloul, who committed suicide in May 2014 by jumping in front of a train, reportedly suffering from depression.
Watch a trailer for the film here
Cost: Reportedly 1 mil. $
Box office: 9.1 mil. $
= Huge hit
[Searching for Sugar Man premiered January 19 (Sundance) and runs 86 minutes. Bendjelloul quit his job in Swedish TV in 2006 and traveled to South Africa, where he found the story and began work on the documentary, which was funded through the Swedish Film Institute for the first two years. Filming took place in Detroit, Michigan, Los Angeles, California, London, England and in Cape Town, South Africa. As Bendjelloul ran out of money, he couldn't afford any more 8mm film and resorted to film parts of the film on his iPhone with the app 8mm Vintage Camera. The film opened #47 in 3 theaters to a 27k $ first weekend in North America, where it played an astounding 55 weeks, peaking in 157 theaters (at #22) and grossing 3.6 mil. $ (39.6 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Bendjelloul's native Sweden with 1.7 mil. $ (18.7 %) and Spain with 1 mil. $ (11 %). The film won the Best Documentary Oscar, - the first film partially shot on a smartphone to ever win an Oscar, - in front of Five Broken Cameras, The Gatekeepers, How to Survive a Plague and The Invisible War. It also won the corresponding BAFTA and scores of other awards and got a 4/4 rating from Roger Ebert. Searching for Sugar Man is certified fresh at 94 % with an 8 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
The transfixing poster for Joshua Oppenheimer's The Look of Silence
The Look of Silence is the second chapter in the immense documentary endeavor of covering the repercussions of the 1965-66 genocide in Indonesia today, which started in The Act of Killing (2012). While The Act of Killing followed some of the executioners of the mayhem and mass-killing, in which the country's supposed approximately 1 mil. Communists were rooted out by militia death squads with the Indonesian military's support, (as well as, it is indicated, the then Communism-warring US government), as they reenacted their torture and killings for a surrealistic film rendering, which they themselves were in charge of, The Look of Silence puts a reversed focus on the story:
Adi is a middle-aged man, father and husband, who has carried the burden of the genocide with him for all of his life, as his big brother Ramli was killed then as one of the approximately 1 mil. people that were murdered in the 'purge'. Now, Adi seeks answers from some of the responsible executioners who are old men today.
SPOILER The method of introduction which Adi uses to get to sit down with these aging individuals and talk about their dark past that most of them are against shedding fresh light on, is truly ingenious; through the man's profession (I suppose) as a traveling salesman of glasses, he measures their eyesight while bringing some measure of the clarity they all struggle against to the table, through his unflinching questions, his story, and, as the brilliant title captures, his look of silence. While some of the executioners still feel guiltless and even (outwards) proud of their 'accomplishments', Adi's incriminating, just stare is impossible to escape, once they sit down with him, and it seems to point ahead to some of the coming, unavoidable divine justice that Adi's old mother also looks forward to. The bitter trauma of losing one's child to an act of unusually bestial and cruel violence has an undiminished range as a wound in her soul, and the footage that lays this and her still simmering anger bare is truly remarkable. The Look of Silence is, like The Act of Killing, made by American documentary filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer (The Entire History of the Louisiana Purchase (1998)), who resides in Denmark. Unlike on the preceding film, Oppenheimer has sole director's credit on The Look of Silence.
Adi's mother and father add a human aspect and an aspect of love to Joshua Oppenheimer's The Look of Silence that raises the film to hallowed ground
The film consists of electric scenes of quiet confrontation with the murderers as well as intimate footage of Adi's own family; his ancient father and old but fresh-minded mother, his wife and his two wonderful kids. We witness the political horror stories that his kids have to listen to as the country's depraved official account of the killings in their school, which have become part of the country's polished, false historical narrative. While the great, Oscar-nominated The Act of Killing lingered in the basest darkness in the souls of the executioners and bled out in surreality, The Look of Silence balances its gruesome annecdotal material with some lightness and humor from Adi's family, and remains in a totally sober and starkly realistic fix on its story throughout. The film has confrontation scenes that are magnetic and explosive like nothing I've ever seen before, as well as humorous and deeply touching scenes of the love, spirit and compassion that characterize Adi's family. Each confrontation ends differently, and one is especially a standout, as SPOILER the daughter of an executioner asks for forgiveness for her father's sins, while he is sitting next to her. Apart from this scene, the poor memories that characterize just about all the people in the film is staggering: Though many years have passed, and much is probably forgotten naturally, it seems certain also that a huge amount of detrimental denial and lying is present in the Indonesians we get to know in The Look of Silence. The film is even visually stunning, with a great eye for nature and life in all of its forms, as well as for the sometimes menacing stillness of eternity. Oppenheimer and Adi are men of incredible courage and spirit, and The Look of Silence deserves to be seen widely and win all the acclaim it can. It is a work of the highest possible integrity and profoundest value. - Don't miss it!
Joshua Oppenheimer with Adi Rukun at a screening of The Look of Silence
Watch the trailer for the film with English subtitles here, and then do your best to get to see this film in a cinema, please!
Cost: Unknown Box office: Unknown = Unknown What do you think of The Look of Silence and The Act of Killing? If you are Indonesian or know Indonesians, please tell of your/their experience of the film/s
The infernal poster for Rob Minkoff's Mr. Peabody & Sherman
Mr. Peabody is the dog who's the adoptive father of the boy genius Sherman, and they have a time machine, which is used to give the boy history-lessons. But now a woman wants to remove the boy from Mr. Peabody, - and there's also a mess in time! Mr. Peabody is a disappointing adaptation of the 1960's animated TV-series The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, which doesn't catch the otherwise inviting, original idea to make a fantastic film. It would have been more of a bother making, surely, had this been the live-action feature that the man behind it, Rob Minkoff (The Lion King (1994)) had originally wanted, (and worked against at least since 2003), but it would also had been a lot more fun to watch, I speculate. Instead we are here served an animated children's adventure comedy that feels uninspired, calculated and like a bowl of nonsense. The film seems to regard itself as smart because it includes historic figures and locations, with added laugh-less, idiotic comedy. To make it all worse, the two title characters are both irritating know-it-alls and the film is overloaded with dialog. The kids might like this, but do yourself a favor and steer way clear of this 3D dud that has otherwise received mostly (mysteriously) positive notices. It did, however, bomb commercially, (a movie with this kind of budget has to make a lot back to avoid losses), which resulted in a 57 mil. write-down for DreamWorks Animation. Minkoff has announced his next film, an action movie entitled Chinese Odyssey.
