Well I DO LOVE THIS SERIES, especially when poor Ralph has to explain to someone else why he's going around with his sort of pijama and slippers suit. I think there's something of ill in the design of his suit: I'd be so curious to know who and why designed it, so ugly, cheap, cheesy!!! Maybe it was intended to be so ridicolous because of the satire about superheroes, but nobody, nowhere and never again, can imagine something as horrible as Ralph's "mise". The series was very amusing (I still remember with pleasure the episode about the electric monster come from outer space, when Ralph's hair keep on beezing after the flash! :)) ), though special effects were really corny and Katt's face was sometimes unbearable (never seen such a head in my lifetime!). The most against-USSR series in world history!!! With soviets represented as jokers or monsters or clowns!!! No other series brought in its face the signs of Reaganian era, and fortunately no other one will be able to bring them! But no panic!!! Maybe Bush's era will make worse! I imagine "THE NEW GREATEST AMERICAN HERO", with Jim Carrey in the red suit fighting against the Bad Muslims from Afghanistan! All in all Ralph Hinkley/Hanley was my favourite hero when I was a child, and my favourite spoof now. In Italy they show the series several times, especially in the morning. And every time it's better!
Reviews
6 Reviews
A Beautiful Mind
(2001)
A Horrible, False Fiction About A Real, Beautiful Pain (some spoilers)
8 April 2002
Warning: Spoilers
Spoiler Alert This film is a full loss of talent. Apart from Russell Crowe's good performance, the rest is pure Hollywood entertainment, sold as deep and pretentious study about madness and pain. Why doesn't Hollywood intend to risk anymore? Does someone remind that in 70's Hollywood mainstream meant "Network", "The Deer Hunter", "The Way We Were", "One Flew On the Cuckoo's Nest" etc., films where spectacular and "popular" tastes mixed beautifully with social themes and deep, sincere, honest feelings? "A Beautiful Mind" is neither honest nor sincere: it's empty, heartless, "overflowed", and above all it is unbelievable, devoid of the least "vraisemblance". In USA cinema representation of geniality has always some problems: "Good Will Hunting" had the same ridicolous faults of "A Beautiful Mind" (numbers that flow in the main character's eyes, moments of epiphany, geniality pushed in a some-fantasy atmosphere that is so contrastive in comparison with the realistic intentions of both of the films). Moreover, John Nash's hallucinations are ridiculous as well: they have a surplus of "adventurous" stories that are too far from reality. Fortunately Jennifer Connelly saves the love story, but her performance is not so extraordinary as the Academy thought (Maggie Smith and Helen Mirren were too much better than she). And, given that in John Nash's illness had such a deep influence the international political atmosphere of those years (the Cold War, the terror beholded by the American Government against the USSR etc.) and John Nash looks like a victim of social psychological terrorism nourrished in the American people by the Government, why didn't Ron Howard deepen the relationships between social environment and mental halienation (the scene where John Nash, captured by the doctors, cries "They're Russian! They're Russian! Help me! Help me!" is so awkward and superficial!!! A scene demanding for vengeance!!!)? So, what remains of this false triumph of cinema? Just a good Russell Crowe, and a false fiction about a real pain. Have a look to Nanni Moretti's "The Son's Room", rather, and you'll live a painful fictitious experience of a real pain. Cinema doesn't need cries, screams and deliria trementes to represent pain. The silences and the little movements of "The Son's Room" are quite enough to paint the schizophrenic life of people facing an unbearable, "unthinkable" pain.
101 Reykjavík
(2000)
Elegant, funny, bitter, GREAT!!!
24 December 2000
I was in the Jury of Viareggio Film Festival where this film was showed and prized. We decided to prize it because we thought it was such a perfect, elegant, well-told film that we couldn't decide either. The story is brilliant and bitter, humour is aggressive, black, acid, performances are great and direction is one of the most impressive ensembles (music, editing, cinematography) of the last years. While laughing about this ridiculous guy who doesn't care about social life it's impossible not to think about his empty, nichilistic, hopeless view of life and world. I think that Hlynur stands for most of young people in the world, and therefore the film is so valuable. It tells about empty life of now-young generation, by no rhetorical or moralistic or old means, but by original point of view and great humour. Victoria Abril, in an Almodovar-like performance, is astonishing again. Yes, all the film smells of Almodovar, but with original keys. BRAVI!!!
Love Circle
(1969)
Interesting, original, a bit arty and fictitious
19 December 2000
I watched this film recently, and it strongly fascinated me. I think it testifies a typical mood of 60's, with sexual freedom, new forms of attraction, and mockeries about middle-class' values. Here the author attacks the institution of marriage, and the conception of couple, playing with the characters as with the pieces of chess. Five main characters look for a balance of their sexual life, but the only solution seems to be the triangle, a new form of social institution, regular as the couple and the marriage. The film shows a very old style, no more valuable, with primary colours, heavy make-ups and some aged machine movements. And the characters are unbelievable, speaking by some literary style and far from any likelihood, but the subtended theory is interesting, sarchastic, acid, painful, and finally delivering and anti-hypocritical. And the cast is great, particularly Trintignant, Girardot and Musante. And what a marvellous score!!! Viva Ennio Morricone!!!
Baci e abbracci
(1999)
At the moment, the best Italian director
14 December 2000
"Baci e abbracci" is the final top of a wonderful Italian author. Paolo Virzì is grown up, step by step, and now he has reached the complete maturity of cinema expression and story telling. The direction of an enormous group of no-professional actors (except for Paolantoni) is an essay of perfect skill. And the film is tender, sensitive, amusing, according to the best tradition of Italian acid comedies. Monicelli, Germi, and a bit of Fellini (impressive the scene about the false Holy Family) are behind Virzì and sustain him, but now Virzì is a personal, singular Author. And by this film he tells us about the Illusion, the need of Illusion, and the Beauty of No-Truth. Thank you, Paolo!!! Thanks to you now Italian cinema can breathe again!!!
Weird and acid: a nice Italian sexy comedy
19 April 2000
Well I didn't believe that I could find this film in a serious catalogue! I don't know whether this crazy comedy is very famous outside Italy (I don't think so), but in the group of Italian sexy comedies is one of the most amusing. The story is a typical pretext of "sexual hunt" and "marriage prohibitions", but with much more black humour. The main character, a "slave husband" who tries unsuccessfully to betray his tyrannical wife, crosses the same series of misadventures, but this time he's also kidnapped by two weird criminals, and the wife refuses to pay the ransom. Filmed very poorly, and in a childish way, anyway it is nice, and has two, three sexy scenes (no more). But this film is also important because it is the real end of an era of Italian cinema: "La liceale al mare con l'amica di papà", and some others, close up definitively the era of sexy comedy.
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