Couldn't Stand the Noise - NEVER GIVE A SUCKER AN EVEN BREAK (1941)

"last time it was pink elephants..."Why is booze funny? What makes this scourge of human civilization, Homer's "cause of, and cure for, all life's problems" so irresistibly funny even when unrepentantly horrible? Can we find out by examining the last film of W.C. Fields', the groundbreaking, surreal, meta-bizarro masterpiece, Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941)? Yes. As Fields says in Poppy, "Without purple bark sarsaparilla this mundane sphere...

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Self-Sabotage for Success - CASINO (1995)

Summer is a time for living dangerously and nowhere is life more dangerous than in the movies about gambling, which is almost meta to begin with, since moviemaking is an intensely expensive venture (CASINO cost $50 million, enough to build a casino or two all its own) and no one knows for sure when they lay down big cash like that the film won't bomb and they'll lose it all, baby. It's a roll of the dice. And the mob's been associated one way or...

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Favorite Critic Series - Molly Haskell

Molly Haskell is one of those brazenly feminist cultural critics who prefer to dazzle, excite, and thrill rather than deflate, demoralize, and despair. She's from the generation of women who came to prominence in the 70s, a time when feminism did not preclude casual heterosexual intercourse in an airport bathroom, and one felt one could do without condoms (or last names) as long as one was on the pill. Haskell's grand, seminal book, From Reverence...

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Cuspidor of Greatness: DIPLOMANIACS (1933)

The red man was the big manand then came the great big white man a white man? / that's the right man.The whites got the red and the reds got the blues, and the red white and blue was born. The above is a snatch of song sung by Wheeler and Woolsey, with dancing Native American maids all in rows, and while sardonic as fuckall it's rather callous, as if casting a bloody stain on America's conscience is the same as patriotism, and no one...

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