{"id":19130,"date":"2019-04-26T22:28:52","date_gmt":"2019-04-27T02:28:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=19130"},"modified":"2019-04-26T22:33:11","modified_gmt":"2019-04-27T02:33:11","slug":"dazzled-by-bedazzled-and-filled-with-inertia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=19130","title":{"rendered":"Dazzled by Bedazzled (and filled with inertia)"},"content":{"rendered":"

As shameful as it was, I’d never seen the original\u00a0Bedazzled<\/strong><\/a> (1967) until last week, which means I’d never had a sampling of the brilliant satire and gift of creating sublime nonsense which Peter Cook and Dudley Moore had refined during the 1960s and early 1970s.<\/p>\n

\"\"Prior to the film, the pair had already established reputations as pioneering comedians on stage and TV, and there’s a sense Cook and Moore form a bridge between the lunacy of Spike Milligan and his Goon Show colleagues, and the Monty Python troupe – each offering their own brand of silliness and pokes at politics and class divisions.<\/p>\n

Harold Ramis’ 2000 remake with Brendan Fraser has its merits – the first half and first set of wishes are brilliant – but where the remake clearly heads to conventional confrontations and familiar resolutions, the original sometimes stops cold for pure social commentary, or nonsense.<\/p>\n

Case in point is the Devil \/ George (Cook) and soulless Stanley (Moore) changing wardrobe from GPO phone technicians to tonic vendors, conning a granny into buying stock for a non-existent contest, and while she’s out of the house, devouring her fresh stock of berries with cream and sugar. It’s pure mischief, and a more genial equivalent to that classic moment in the original trailer for\u00a0Dirty Rotten Scoundrels<\/strong> (1988) in which Michael Caine pushes a granny off a waterside walkway.<\/p>\n

Twilight Time’s Blu-ray sports a superb transfer and Moore’s excellent score is isolated in a mono music & effects track (and probably contains a few cues not on he original soundtrack album).<\/p>\n

There wasn’t time to do a full review of the loaded special edition DVD of Fox’s 2000 remake, but I note some overt differences between the two films, both of which hold their own in spite of sharing he same central story of a schnook who sells his soul to the Devil to gain the heart of a co-worker who barely acknowledges his existence.<\/p>\n

Coming next: an interview with composer John Murphy and review of his latest project – the fine BBC mini-series of Victo Hugo’s bubbly, life-affirming, super-positive tale of love,\u00a0Les Miserables<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Also in the works is a short podcast on the recent National Canadian Film Day and pioneering multi-hyphenate filmmaker Nell Shipman, and Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray of\u00a0Becky Sharp<\/strong> (1934). I’ve waited 27 years to see a restored version of the first feature shot in 3-strip Technicolor.<\/p>\n

Now if I could only stop whistling the opening bars of Bedazzled<\/strong><\/a>‘s\u00a0main titles…<\/p>\n

Thanks for reading,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mark R. Hasan<\/strong>, Editor
\nKQEK.com<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Review of the classic Peter Cook-Dudley Moore-Stanley Donen comedy BEDAZZLED (1967), on Twilight Time Blu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[6082,2163,2562,2563,6083,6084,2160],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-4Yy","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19130"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19130"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19144,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19130\/revisions\/19144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}