The Age of Movies: Selected Writings by Pauline Kael

Pauline Kael was, quite simply, the finest film critic that ever lived — her prose was energetic, smart, colloquial, engaged, and downright pleasurable to read. To be fair, most movie geeks will already have her individual volumes, or at least her previous career-spanning retrospective, 1996′s For Keeps. But most of those books are long out of print, and going for a pretty penny on Ebay and Amazon Marketplace; since the new Age of Movies collection is slim(mer) and reasonable, and includes most of her essential works, it’s a fine introductory volume for the young film fan.

Bill Nye the Science Guy

In this stellar example of ’90s television, Bill Nye teaches about the science of everyday objects with wit and — let’s face it — slapstick humor. Originally running from 1993-1998, the show won 19 Emmy Awards and saw a lot of play in classrooms and in syndication, even years after Nye had stopped making new episodes. There was just something about Bill Nye that you couldn’t help but love — he was a grown-up nerd who still had a ton of fun, and kids everywhere found that pretty appealing.

While Penn’s complaints may have resonated with the refund-refused moviegoers of Connecticut, most have seen it as rather bad form—particularly for a critically-acclaimed picture that is still in general release. On the other hand, he’s certainly not the first actor to publicly diss his own work; we’ve collected some of our favorites after the jump.

Bill Cosby, Leonard Part 6

Perhaps the most famous instance (in the modern era, anyway) of an actor castigating his own project came back in 1987. Bill Cosby was at the height of his Cosby Show fame when he took an idea for a spy spoof to Columbia Pictures, then under the ownership of his longtime corporate employer, Coca-Cola. Cos received story and producer credits for the resultant picture, Leonard Part 6, a flaccid comedy that suffered (probably in equal measures) under studio interference, the uncertain hand of director Paul Weiland, and Cosby’s own shaky premise. When Cosby got a look at the final product, he knew he had a bomb on his hands — but unlike most of the other actors on our list, he decided to get out in front of it, taking the rare (and financially disastrous) step advising fans in print and television interviews to stay away. They did. Critics, unfortunately, did not, roasting the movie as one of the year’s worst, though Cosby proved a good sport by showing up in person to collect the film’s three Golden Raspberry Awards (Worst Actor, Worst Picture, Worst Screenplay) — after he was promised that the statues would be made of 24 carat gold and Italian marble. In an attempt to make amends, Cos reteamed with his frequent collaborator Sidney Poitier for his next film, 1990′s Ghost Dad, and this time, he gave interviews announcing that fans could go see this one. So much for Cosby’s critical faculties; the maudlin, sappy Ghost Dad was even worse than the so-bad-it’s-good Leonard.

From the beginning, some had wondered if Howard was the right director for the project — now, unless the filmmaker attempts to set the project up elsewhere (unlikely, as both Howard and his Imagine production company have a long history with Uni), we’ll never know. It seems that we can add The Dark Tower to the long list of proposed book-to-film adaptations by famed directors that never saw the light of day. We’ve assembled ten of them after the jump; add yours in the comments.

Heart of Darkness, directed by Orson Welles

When Orson Welles went to Hollywood in 1939 and made a heretofore-unseen dream deal with RKO Pictures (which gave him complete creative control over the films of his new Mercury film unit), he proposed, as his first film, an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which his Mercury Theater on the Air radio program had adapted the previous year (above). Welles, already tinkering with ways to shake up the film form, didn’t want to just to a straight adaptation though: his concept for Heart of Darkness was a film done entirely in the subjective point of view — primarily from that of Captain Marlow, whom Welles planned to play himself (he may have also played Kurtz, since his Marlow would mostly be voice only). The project sounds fascinating, but the innovative shooting technique also pushed the picture’s budget estimates over the cap allowed by his RKO contract; though some make-up tests and other pre-production steps were taken, the picture was ultimately shelved. Welles ended up choosing another project as his film debut: Citizen Kane. (Read more about his Darkness, and read his script, here.)

Bronson Pinchot, 1987 nominee for Outstanding Actor in a Comedy, Perfect Strangers

In 1987, a strange wardrobe, stranger accent, and assortment of catchphrases were apparently enough to snag an Emmy nomination. Balki Bartokomous was certainly one of the more, uh, memorable characters of the ’80s, but it is sort of incredible to see that Pinchot was considered at the top of the comedy field when viewing the talent pool that was his competition: Bob Newhart, Ted Danson, Harry Anderson and winner Michael J. Fox. We only wish Pinchot had won so that he could have performed the dance of joy at the podium.

In assembling this list of our favorites, we concentrated only on those who starred in their own series, rather than in a supporting role in someone else’s (so no Andy Kaufman, Patton Oswalt, David Cross, Billy Crystal, or Kathy Griffin); only those whose sitcoms were hits (sorry, Margaret Cho); and only those who were successful stand-ups first (hence, no Larry David — by his own admission). The rest is opinion, and sorry, there’s no convincing us that either Tim Allen’s stand-up act or Home Improvement were funny. With those parameters in mind, our list of the best stand-ups-turned-sitcom stars is after the jump.

Jack Benny

We don’t tend to think of Benny as a “stand-up comic,” because he was mostly doing it before the term existed. But on the vaudeville stages of 1910s and 1920s, Benny was a comic monologist, doing a “patter-and-fiddle” act and slowly developing the comic character that he would take to radio in the 1930s and 1940s on his durable and popular Jack Benny Program. That show made the transition to television in 1950; both radio show and the early seasons of the television version would begin with Benny doing a monologue for the audience, before continuing into the show proper, and these monologues helped further establish the Benny character (perpetually 39-year-old skinflint, egotist, and untalented violinist). In the second half of is run, The Jack Benny Program developed into a more traditional sitcom (with a crew of broad but relatable characters), and became the one of the format’s template shows for years to come.

Groucho Marx for Frosted Flakes [via]

Sammy Davis, Jr. for Alka Seltzer [via]

Lucille Ball for Philip Morris [via]

Vincent Price for Sun Giant Raisins [via]

Alfred Hitchcock for Western Union [via]

Woody Allen for Smirnoff [via]

Bill Cosby for Texas Instruments [via]

Jerry Lewis for Consolidated Paper [via]

Rodney Dangerfield for Pilot Pens [via]

Humphrey Bogart for Whitman’s Chocolate [via]

The Best

All In The Family

This groundbreaking and brave family sitcom found its roots in equally bold — but ultimately less successful — British sitcom Till Death Do Us Part. In its nine-season run, All In The Family tackled some of the era’s most controversial social issues: racism, the Vietnam War, abortion, and women’s lib were just a few of many previously-taboo topics the show covered. Families related to the very real generational divide it portrayed between a bigoted WWII veteran and his daughter’s radical counterculture boyfriend. Rarely since All In The Family left the air has mainstream television made such serious cultural commentary, and we owe it to the Brits.

Life on Mars

Since great reviews can never compensate for lack of viewership, this remake went the way of so many quirky US TV shows and was canceled after just 17 episodes. The American and UK versions start out exactly the same: a cop in the 21st century gets hit by a car and wakes up living almost exactly the same life, but in 1973. The plots diverged somewhat quickly, with the ending of the American series being an obvious twist (of which the British version’s creator didn’t approve). Critics praised the acting and atmosphere of the show, noting that pulling off such a gimmicky premise so effectively made for great television. They were right, too, and we wish this show had lasted longer.

The Office

Debate continues to rampage about which version of this mockumentary workplace sitcom is superior, but with the seventh season of the American version currently airing on NBC, there’s no doubt the remake has been a huge success. The first episodes were copies of the British version with jokes Americanized for the new audience, but since then the program has distanced itself from the original character patterning and become its own show. The writers did an excellent job of changing some aspects to appeal to American audiences while leaving the essence of the humor intact. If nothing else, we’re quite pleased we can claim Michael Scott as our own.

Queer As Folk

Like The Office, the American version of this show continued for much longer than the British one. Where Queer As Folk in the UK focused on a group of outrageously stereotypical gay men, the North American program (Canada broadcast it, too) made the characters a bit more relatable, adding a lesbian couple to its leading cast from the start and eventually going down its own path with new plotlines. The remake was more serious in general — unlike the original, it tackled AIDS, gay adoption, and gay marriage in its episodes instead of focusing solely on its characters’ personal lives. Running from 2000-2005, it became an important show for the LGBTQ community as homosexuality continued to find greater acceptance in the mainstream media.

Three’s Company

Don’t beat yourself up if you didn’t realize this American classic was a UK remake — we were a little surprised, too. Man about the House was successful in Britain, but it didn’t become a blueprint for future shows the way Three’s Company did here. British audiences found the premise somewhat shocking — a man sharing a flat with two women was terribly improper — but in the aftermath of the 1960s, American audiences were more receptive to the idea and found the humor an incisive reflection of the freewheeling 1970s. Most importantly, the show introduced the world to John Ritter, who remained a beacon of American comedy until his sudden death in 2005. Watching Three’s Company now is like being in a time capsule, and we bet they’re mighty jealous across the pond.