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Megalopolis director Francis Ford Coppola has joined Letterboxd, the social cataloguing service where members can rate and review films and keep track of what they’ve watched. I’m a little addicted. Coppola has shared a list of twenty films that he would recommend to any cinephile or aspiring filmmaker, which you can check out below.

French Cancan (Jean Renoir) The Bad Sleep Well (Akira Kurosawa) The Bitter Tea of General Yen (Frank Capra) Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg) The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey) The Ladies Man (Jerry Lewis) The Burmese Harp (Kon Ichikawa) Tokyo Story (Yasujirō Ozu) The Last Laugh (F.W. Murnau) The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg) Splendor in the Grass (Elia Kazan) Punch Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson) Empire of the Sun (Steven Spielberg) Sunrise (F.W. Murnau) Joyless Street (G.W. Pabst) A Place in the Sun (George Stevens) The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese) After...

Helping you stay sane while staying safe… featuring Leonard Maltin, Dave Anthony, Miguel Arteta, John Landis, and Blaire Bercy from the Hollywood Food Coalition.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Plague (1979)

Target Earth (1954)

The Left Hand of God (1955)

A Lost Lady (1934)

Enough Said (2013)

Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941)

Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939)

Heaven Can Wait (1978)

Down to Earth (2001)

Down To Earth (1947)

The Commitments (1991)

Once (2007)

Election (1999)

About Schmidt (2002)

Sideways (2004)

Nebraska (2013)

The Man in the Moon (1991)

The 39 Steps (1935)

Casablanca (1942)

The Lady Vanishes (1938)

The Night Walker (1964)

Chuck and Buck (2000)

Cedar Rapids (2011)

Beatriz at Dinner (2017)

Duck Butter (2018)

The Good Girl (2002)

The Big Heat (1953)

Human Desire (1954)

Slightly French (1949)

Week-End with Father (1951)

Experiment In Terror (1962)

They Shoot Horses Don’t They? (1969)

Ray’s Male Heterosexual Dance Hall (1987)

Airport (1970)

Earthquake (1974)

Drive a Crooked Road (1954)

Pushover (1954)

Waves (2019)

Krisha (2015)

The Oblong Box (1969)

80,000 Suspects (1963)

Panic In The Streets (1950)

It Comes At Night (2017)

Children of Men (2006)

The Road (2009)

You Were Never Really Here...

Part of the Jerry Lewis tribute A Mubi Jerrython.Throughout his filmmaking career, Jerry Lewis would re-use food gags. A spoon too full forcefully inserted into an unprepared mouth, the exponential exhaustion faced at a meal never had, the exaggerated despair at food which is unsatisfactory: in these forms of jokes, the crux of Lewis’ relation to food is revealed. Using food consistently as a signifier of domestic comfort, Lewis would throughout his career take up food for emotional as well as comedic emphasis.As Herbert H. Heebert in The Ladies Man (1961), Lewis plays a youth terrified of women after finding his girlfriend has cheated on him. Ending up employed and living in an all-female boarding house, Helen Wellenmellen (Helen Traubel), the house’s owner, explains to her boarders how and why they must keep Herbert employed (a notoriously difficult hotel, they hope to keep him longer than other staff...

On August 20, 2017, Jerry Lewis took a pratfall off this mortal coil, presumably knocking an unwitting dowager on her keister and sending a surprised cop into an open manhole on his way out. The durable enfant terrible was all of 91 years when he finally left the building though he had been making spirited public appearances as recently as January of this year.

For the inquisitive Jerry fan, Shawn Levy’s 1997 King of Comedy: The Life and Art of Jerry Lewis, remains the first and last stop for the straight scoop on America’s premiere nudnik. Levy, who endured the full fury of the comedian’s legendary wrath to get his story, is as admiring of his subject’s accomplishments as he was repelled by his whiplash mood swings. The hard knock apprenticeship in the Catskills, the Freudian-fueled soap opera of his partnership with Dean Martin, the boastful sex-capades, they’re all there and then some.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSWe are devastated by the death of performer and director Jerry Lewis this week at the age of 91, one of the 20th century's greatest—and most inspiring—artists. Dave Kehr for The New York Times has penned an excellent obituary, and it's worth revisiting Christoph Huber's 2013 coverage of the Viennale's epic retrospective of Lewis's work as an actor and a filmmaker. Last year, Adrian Curry published a selection of the international poster designs for Lewis's films.The Locarno Festival wrapped last week, with the top prize going to Chinese documentarian Wang Bing's Mrs. Fang. We were at the festival covering it day by day, including its retrospective of Hollywood genre director Jacques Tourneur (Cat People, Out of the Past). See all the awards and read our coverage from the Swiss film festival.Recommended VIEWINGThe...

After polling critics from around the world for the greatest American films of all-time, BBC has now forged ahead in the attempt to get a consensus on the best comedies of all-time. After polling 253 film critics, including 118 women and 135 men, from 52 countries and six continents a simple, the list of the 100 greatest is now here.

Featuring canonical classics such as Some Like It Hot, Dr. Strangelove, Annie Hall, Duck Soup, Playtime, and more in the top 10, there’s some interesting observations looking at the rest of the list. Toni Erdmann is the most recent inclusion, while the highest Wes Anderson pick is The Royal Tenenbaums. There’s also a healthy dose of Chaplin and Lubitsch with four films each, and the recently departed Jerry Lewis has a pair of inclusions.

Check out the list below (and my ballot) and see more on their official site.

100. (tie) The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese,...

After taking the world by storm with one of the most beloved comedy acts of all time, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis bitterly ended their partnership 10 years to the day after it began.

The two men, different in almost every way except maybe stubbornness, refused to speak to each other for 20 years, until their mutual friend Frank Sinatra surprised them with a forced and uncomfortable onstage reunion in 1976. It would take another ten years after that before they were able to establish a more lasting reconciliation, which they maintained until Martin’s death in 1995.

When Lewis, who died Sunday at...

Las Vegas – For Jerry Lewis, the “King of Comedy” wasn’t just a mere nickname, but an apt description for his long career and influence. He went from being the most popular entertainer of an era, to notable and studied filmmaker, to charity spokesperson and finally to comic legend. Jerry Lewis died in Las Vegas on August 20th, 2017. He was 91.

When the gawky 19 year-old Lewis met the suave singer Dean Martin in 1946, little did they know that they would become the most popular act in America for several years. Their box office draw was white-hot, so much so that neither of them could keep up with the blur of what happened to them. They eventually broke up at the height of their fame in 1956, during which Martin famously said, “Jer, when I look at you, all I see is a dollar sign.” The second phase of Lewis’s career would be about his prolific filmmaking,...

Jerry Lewis, one of the zaniest, sharpest, and inspired comedic minds ever in the history of show business has passed away today. The mind behind such classics as The Nutty Professor and The Ladies Man was 91 years old, had passed away at his home in Las Vegas, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Born Joseph Levitch in 1946 in Newark, New Jersey, Lewis’ career in show business goes back over 70... Read More...

[[tmz:video id="0_jh56m7o6"]] Jerry Lewis still had his sharp wit and comedic edge 7 months before his death ... as seen here in his final on-stage performance ever. Jerry was performing at the Southwest Florida Event Center in Bonita Springs this past January, and it just so happened to be his final stand-up gig in front of a theater audience ... for which he stayed seated, presumably due to his age. Right out of the gate, you can see the legendary...

7:15 Pm Pt -- The White House has issued a statement on the death of Jerry Lewis, saying ... "Jerry Lewis kept us all laughing for over half a century, and his incredible charity work touched the lives of millions. Jerry lived the American Dream -- he truly loved his country, and his country loved him back. Our thoughts are with his family today as we remember the extraordinary life of one our greatest entertainers and humanitarians.

Comedian Jerry Lewis has been hospitalized in Las Vegas.

According to the Associated Press, the 91-year-comedian was taken to the hospital on Friday after developing a urinary tract infection. The actor was given antibiotics and is currently recovering, his rep confirmed to the news outlet. He is expected to be released imminently.

The hardworking comedian isn’t planning to scale back on his commitments, though: He’s reportedly still set to head to Toronto this week, where he’s scheduled to work on a movie.

The legendary star, famous for...

The great comedian/director Jacques Tati’s 1967 comedy, focusing on events taking place during a single day and set in an enormous phantasmagorical movie set, recalls both Ulysses and Jerry Lewis’s The Ladies Man. Tati also pays homage to animator Tex Avery’s cautionary cartoon The House Of Tomorrow when he finds himself in an exhibit touting technological advances that are more horrifying than heartening. In short, a movie-lover’s dream date. Filmed in 70mm over the course of two years, Tati’s meta-masterpiece was not a commercial success, perhaps because, in Truffaut’s words, “it is a film that comes from another planet, where they make films differently.”...

“Here y’are, baby. Take this, wipe the lipstick off, slide over here next to me, and let’s get started.”

The Nutty Professor will screen double feature with Jerry Lewis, The Man Behind The Clown will screen Saturday Nov 12th at 1pm at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood) as part of this year’s St. Louis International Film Festival. This event is Free

Since his earliest days, Sliff Lifetime Achievement Award honoree Jerry Lewis had the masses laughing with his visual gags, pantomime sketches, and signature slapstick humor. But Lewis was far more than just a funny performer. After his breakup with partner Dean Martin, he moved behind the camera, writing, producing, and directing many of the adored classics in which he starred. In this double bill, Gregory Monro’s brisk, informative documentary reveals the man behind the clown, and The Nutty Professor provides the proof of Lewis’ comic genius.

The schedule for the 25th Annual Whitaker St. Louis International Film Festival (Sliff) has been announced and once again film goers will be offered the best in cutting edge features and shorts from around the globe. The festival takes place November 3-13, 2016.

Sliff kicks off on November 3 with the opening-night selection St. Louis Brews, the latest home-brewed documentary by local filmmaker Bill Streeter, director of Brick By Chance And Fortune: A St. Louis Story (read my interview with Bill Here)

According to Sliff, the festival will feature more than 125 filmmaking guests, including honorees: Actress Karen Allen (Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Animal House), director Charles Burnett (Killer Of Sheep, To Sleep With Anger), winner of the Cinema St. Louis Lifetime Achievement Award; and director Steve James (Hoop Dreams).

Full information on Sliff films, including synopses, dates/time, and links for purchase of advance tickets is available on the Cinema St.

Above: Danish poster for Geisha Boy (Frank Tashlin, USA, 1958).On March 16 Jerry Lewis turns 90 years old, making him one of the oldest living great filmmakers along with Jonas Mekas (93), Seijun Suzuki (92), Stanley Donen (91), D.A. Pennebaker (90), Claude Lanzmann (90) and Andrzej Wajda (90). And if you have any doubt about his status as one of the great auteurs go and see any of the films he directed at Museum of Modern Art's’s current retrospective: Happy Birthday, Mr. Lewis: The Kid Turns 90.To flip through the films of Jerry Lewis in poster form is to encounter an awful lot of crossed eyes, toothy grins and outsized heads on small bodies (a familiar trope for comedians in movie posters whether it's Fernandel or Cantinflas or Buster Keaton.) That said, Lewis also seems to have inspired illustrators around the world. The French love Jerry Lewis, as the cliché goes, but so, it seemed, did the Germans,...

Jerry Lewis and Martin Scorsese collaborated on the classic film "The King of Comedy". Now Scorsese will moderate an evening with Lewis at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens on Tuesday, October 6. Here is the official description:

With Martin Scorsese and Jerry Lewis in person

Co-presented with the Comedy Hall of Fame

A true Renaissance man, well recognized as one of the greatest comedians in the history of the field, Jerry Lewis helped define so much of comedy’s vast language as a stand-up performer, actor, producer and writer. Perhaps his greatest innovation was as a filmmaker. Taken together, movies such as The Bellboy, The Ladies Man, The Errand Boy, The Nutty Professor, The Patsy, and The Family Jewels form a breathtaking virtual dictionary of every aspect of what is important and essential to the language of comedic film. His films would help forge the cradle of...

The first time I saw anything from a Godard film, I hated it.

My first encounter with his work was perhaps appropriately abrupt and fragmentary. I was in my first year as a Film Studies major, in an introductory class about the French New Wave. Having grown up on a steady diet of Hollywood classics, I was hoping this would be an exciting new discovery. Mid-lecture, the professor showed a clip from the near the end of Tout va bien, his 1972 film co-directed with Jean-Pierre Gorin. The scene was the famous ten-minute-long tracking shot in which the camera moves laterally along a supermarket’s checkout aisles as student demonstrators wreak havoc. Going in, the professor warned us that we would likely find the scene annoying and overlong, and that that was “the point.”

I watched. I waited for enlightenment.

I was unimpressed.

I did not get it, but I was a quiet,...

In all of Frank Tashlin’s work, there is nothing quite so boldly staged as the delirious sequence in 1961′s The Ladies Man, in which Jerry Lewis, the film’s director and Tashlin’s nominal pupil, deconstructs a panic attack in twenty five seconds. Framed inside an enormous set that resembles the interior of a gargantuan and painstakingly detailed dollhouse, Lewis’ character, a terrified schlemiel by the name of Herbert H. Heebert, is in the midst of a mad dash up the set’s elaborate staircase when suddenly he’s literally beside himself with fright, splitting into two, then three, then four similarly fearstruck replicants, zig-zagging about the hallways until they all disappear one after another into the safety of their bedroom, the door slamming in quick succesion with four emphatic bangs. No, there was nothing close to this deft and dizzy blend of Psychology 101 and slapstick in Tashlin’s portfolio,...

1955′s Artists and Models, directed by Frank Tashlin, neatly satirizes the cold-war paranoia of the fifties (and the McCarthy hearings in particular) by focusing on a similar witch hunt, the war against comic books.

Tashlin’s film, starring Dean Martin as a failed “fine” artist reduced to drawing for comic books and Jerry Lewis as the fella who reads them, has its basis in fact (more or less): future Mad publisher William Gaines actually appeared before a 1954 Senate subcommittee on juvenile delinquency where he defended his comics line including the politico’s favorite easy target, Tales from the Crypt.

Tashlin cut his teeth directing some of the more transgressive cartoons for Columbia and Warner Bros. so it’s no surprise he’s on the side of the angels (in this case Gaines), blasting anything in sight with a pretentious bone in its body. In Artists and Models, fine art...

The 2014 TCM Classic Film Festival will honor legendary actor, filmmaker and humanitarian Jerry Lewiswith a multi-tiered celebration of his remarkable career. Highlighting the tribute, Lewis will have his hand and footprints enshrined in concrete in front of the world-famous Tcl Chinese Theatre IMAX. In addition, Lewis will be on-hand for a screening of one of his most memorable films: The Nutty Professor (1963). Marking its fifth year, the TCM Classic Film Festival will take place April 10-13, 2014, in Hollywood. The gathering will coincide with TCM’s 20th anniversary as a leading authority in classic film.

“Jerry Lewis is a very important name whenever movie comedy is discussed and enjoyed,” said TCM host Robert Osborne, who also serves as the official host of the TCM Classic Film Festival. “Jerry has provided the world with great merriment and laughter, while also showing, in such films as Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy,...

Infinite Anticipation

Here at the Vienna International Film Festival there are no multiplexes devoted to the festival. Every cinema is a single screen—all quite beautiful and some, like the Urania, Metro, Künstlerhaus, and Austrian Film Museum, very special indeed—and, scattered at a bit of a distance from one another, they trace a lopsided kind of ellipsis, a loop of cinema if you plan your itinerary right.

Above: Out 1, noli me tangere.

I came anticipating this particular suggestion of cinematic infinity, not just because of my memories of the last two years of repeatedly treading this touring path around the constrained city center of Vienna, but because of the promise of a much desired (by Jonathan Rosenbaum since 1996, and thereafter by an untold multitude of tantalized cinephiles) festival pairing of Jacques Rivette and Suzanne Schiffman's improvised serial intended for television, Out 1, noli me tangere (1971), and Louis Feuillade's...

Cannes, France — Jerry Lewis, so beloved in France, isn't quite overcome with emotion now that he's back at the Cannes Film Festival.

The festival, he says, is "for snobs," and when he meets a reporter from his native land, he exhales, "It's so nice to hear an American." To him, Cannes isn't an epicenter of rabid Lewis fandom, it's simply "business," he says, chomping on gum.

And at 87, Lewis is back in business. Nearly two decades since his last film, he's at Cannes with "Max Rose," a modest independent film in which he stars as an elderly man reconciling himself to life without his late wife.

"I'm very happy to relax and stay home with my family, and if something comes up, I'll consider it," Lewis, in an interview, said of his return to movies. "That's the nice part about 87. You just tell people: Oh, you're very tired."

At Cannes,...

Motion picture and television legend Jerry Lewis will return to Cannes this year for a special screening of Max Rose, a feature film starring Lewis, Claire Bloom (The King’s Speech), Kevin Pollak (Three Nights, The Usual Suspects), Kerry Bishé (Argo), and Mort Sahl. A Lightstream Pictures production, the film is directed by Daniel Noah, from his original screenplay. Max Rose is produced by Lawrence Inglee (The Messenger, Rampart) and Garrett Kelleher (Rampart), executive produced by Paul Currie, Matthew Malek, Charlie O’Carroll, Gaston Pavlovich and William L. Walton. ICM Partners will represent the domestic sale while International Film Trust (Ift) will handle international sales beginning in Cannes.

In addition, Lewis’ The Ladies Man will be screen in Cannes Classics, a program presenting old films and masterpieces from cinematographic history that have been carefully restored.

President Ariel Veneziano of the newly announced Ift said, “To have a title in the...

With the words, "I never play over twenty-eight," Mae West supposedly ruled herself out of consideration for the role of Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder's Sunset Blvd. It's hard to work out why she was considered, since she had no associating with silent cinema, but perhaps at that stage the character was pre-Code rather than pre-sound. At any rate, Gloria Swanson took the role and enjoyed a renaissance, in the process obscuring the fact that she had enjoyed some brief success in early talkies (including one co-written by Wilder).

Maybe West just seemed like someone who wouldn't be shy about playing love scenes with a younger man. Much, much younger. She got her chance to prove this in Myra Breckinridge (1970), at the age of at least seventy-six. It's a moronic adaptation of Gore Vidal, directed by a British actor whose big idea was to make the whole thing a dream sequence.

“When history is what it should be, it is an elaboration of cinema.” —Ortega y Gasset

“The key for me is finding some rhythm of the film, not so much in the plot from a traditional sense but, rather, from its internal rhythm.” —Matías Piñeiro

1

There are works of art that affect in bulk, all at once; these are the aesthetic experiences that unify, that impose boundaries on the license of eye and ear. Other works of art achieve a dissociated and dissociating stylistic program; these are the works that cannot be experienced or understood as feats of synthesis, or as products of a single point of view.

While much of the art of the past century might be described as an effort toward a radical disaffiliation of elements—word and image, depth and surface, form and content—awareness of a quarrelsome relationship between two presumably incompatible ways of making...

The cinematic world of Robert Reinert is an overheated madhouse. His Nerven (Nerves, 1919) anticipates Caligari by a year, but feels as if the expressionist classic's angular, hand-painted house of cards has been exploded and scattered on the winds into the real, three-dimensional world. It also feels as if it's set in the "very nervous little community" that opens Jerry Lewis's The Ladies Man.

But maybe Reinert was the man for his time: there are reports of audience members being hospitalized, and one woman wandered into the street in her nightgown, screaming, "Now I am going to die! Now I am going to die!" Whether this was caused by seeing the film is unprovable, but she apparently thought it was, which is in itself suggestive of the film's power. One is reminded of the horror movie slogan proposed in the Dudley Moore comedy Crazy People: "This film will fuck you up for life!

Harry Langdon, that pasty imp, enjoyed a brief renown in the heyday of silent comedy, assisted by his gagman-turned-director Frank Capra, then fired Capra and sank into a decades-long post-fame afterglow as a poverty row clown (briefly emerging to stand in for Laurel opposite Hardy in 1939's Zenobia). This portrait, painted by Capra, is somewhat true, but Capra embroidered it with his own self-aggrandizing version of events: Langdon didn't understand his own screen persona, which had been entirely created for him (mostly by Capra), and so without the guiding influence of greater talents, he sank inevitably into obscurity. Capra created a whole tragedy for his enemy, making Langdon sympathetic yet foolish, a man who achieved brief greatness thanks to the genius of others, but who lost out in the long result of time. Since none of Langdon's films were easily available for study when Capra was speaking, he got away with this.

Before this weekend, Kevin Smith was always known as a comedy guy. "Clerks," "Chasing Amy," "Zack and Miri Make a Porno," plus his Smodcast podcast and Q&A-slash-stand-up films like "An Evening With Kevin Smith." He stretched himself a little into drama, animation, and acting, but until his new film "Red State" -- available now on VOD -- the scariest thing Kevin Smith had ever directed was "Jersey Girl" (I kid).

The transition from comedy to horror is rarely an easy one for directors. Few guys as entrenched in the comedy genre as Smith have ever tried to break out of it, and even fewer have made their break successfully. Here are five interesting -- and very different -- examples of horror movies made by guys we'd typically classify as comedy directors. We'll get to see soon enough how Smith's big move compares with theirs.

"Misery" (1990)

Directed by Rob Reiner...

Jerry Lewis brought to you by John Landis.

The spirit of Frank Tashlin hovers over Jerry Lewis’s first auteurist triumph which came at the height of his power at Paramount, allowing him to construct a huge set, add video tape (which he’d been using since The Bellboy) and fill the stage with a large number of microphones a decade before Altman did the same. Mel Brooks contributed a number of gags, but his original script wasn’t used.

Click here to watch the trailer.

And this on the day that Jerry Lewis has been ousted as the host of the Mda telethon and as it’s national chairman. Weird. Maybe there’s still time to go grab a gig as a citizen of Gotham City in whatever the latest Batman production is. He’s got experience, at least.

When we shot this commentary, there was some discrepancy about...

A week of Landis bringing you 3 classic comedies starts now.

On Monday, August 1, join John Landis for the trailer to A Chump at Oxford.

Like Saps at Sea, this Hal Roach Laurel & Hardy vehicle was originally conceived as a four-reeler, but was bumped up to 63 minutes to compete in the feature market. These were arguably their last substantial theatrical releases before a contract with 20th Century Fox reduced them to formula B-pictures. It’s a cultural crime that today’s kids know nothing of Stan and Ollie, but that’s their loss. John McCabe’s 1961 biography “Mr. Laurel & Mr. Hardy” remains the definitive word on the duo.

On Wednesday, August 3, join John Landis for the trailer to Have Rocket Will Travel.

This cheap but popular sci fi spoof was the first Columbia feature for the Stooges, who had contemplated retirement until the galvanic response to the release of the Stooges...

In the summer of 1988, I paid to see Who Framed Roger Rabbit five times in the theater, which is still my personal record. I loved it unconditionally, and I still do. It struck me as a great comedy, a brilliant satire, a social commentary, a solid detective film, a breakthrough technical achievement, and also a potential classic. The character of Roger Rabbit (voiced by Charles Fleischer) already seemed worthy of company like Bugs Bunny and Donald Duck; he made the transition to just three animated shorts, but in a simpler time, he could have been the star of dozens more.

I loved Roger. I liked his attitude. I liked his philosophy. I thought he was funny. But I guess I wasn't too surprised when I discovered that there were people out there who despised him. They thought he was too frantic, too squeaky, altogether annoying. Which brings me to our summer double feature.