Cecil Parker

The Court Jester

temporalparadoxLeave a comment
The Court Jester. Paramount Pictures 1956.

Before watching the movie:

I may have encountered this in some dusty streaming back catalogs or cheap collection of classic movies, but it didn’t appeal much to me on the face of it. Much more recently, I learned that it’s the source of the tongue-twister scene I think I saw in an AFI special about “the pellet with the poison is in the vessel with the pestle”, which I always wanted to find. The climactic swordfight is also highly praised by fight choreographers, I believe coming behind few other than the famous Princess Bride duel.

I’ve seen a few other Danny Kaye movies, but I only just now realized I might have been confusing him with Dennis Day occasionally. Kaye seems to be someone who used to be much more appreciated, but has been forgotten since the New Hollywood revolution.

Continue reading →

Heavens Above!

temporalparadoxLeave a comment

Heavens Above! Charter Film Productions 1963.

Before watching the movie:

I used to think it would be nice to go into a movie knowing nothing but the title, genre, and who’s in it. Sometimes I still do, but the whole point is to not have any expectations, and that makes writing about my expectations difficult.

Peter Sellers is funny, but rarely as funny as in The Pink Panther series. I find the concept of a priest getting in trouble for ministering to all alike regardless of class/money interesting, and I want to see why such treatment would get the poor upset.

Continue reading →

The Man in the White Suit

temporalparadox3 Comments

The Man in the White Suit. Ealing Studios 1951.

Before watching the movie:

I’d heard about the premise of this movie before, but I never considered the idea that it might be a comedy. Alec Guinness leading a comedy sounds like the sort of idea Leslie Nielsen leading Airplane! was: a serious actor playing the straight man. However, the blurb describes him as “impish”, so I’m highly intrigued.

I also hadn’t realized until I started filing this post into categories that I’ve never done a movie from the 1950s. Now I just need to review Birth of a Nation and a Charlie Chaplin film, and I’ll have the entire span of feature-length movies represented (at least I assume the medium was too new to tell stories that long before 1910).

Continue reading →