OK folks, be honest- if I’d included the name of the character to whom last week’s quote was addressed, would that have made it easier for some of you? As it stands, the line proved a bit trickier than I’d originally intended. Perhaps if I’d quoted the entire line, which began with the name “Emily…” it might have done the trick. Emily, of course, being the object of the kinda-sorta affection of Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush (Groucho Marx) and played by eternal Groucho foil Margaret Dumont in the Sam Wood’s A Day at the Races.

Read More...

In a fascinating, if theory-heavy, article in the latest issue of the Bright Lights Film Journal, Kevin L. Ferguson poses a question that we're pretty sure has never occurred to anyone else: why isn't there more wallpaper in movies?  After all, he says, "Wallpaper is a cut-rate imitation of reality based on an equation of repetition and pattern, but so is Hollywood."  Ferguson speculates that audiences know that "two fakes don't make a real", and that wallpaper, being detailed, time-consuming and expensive, makes the filmic world more real, and necessitates that every part of the frame becomes important -- a sacrifice many viewers aren't willing to make.  While contrasting the importance, both descriptive and symbolic, of wallpaper in literature with its near-invisibility in film, Ferguson cites a handful of movies where wallpaper was an important element -- among them early Chaplin and Laurel & Hardy shorts, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, My Fair Lady and the Marx Brothers' A Day at the Races.  It's an interesting read, but we have to ask:  why no Barton Fink?