Saturday, April 30, 2011

The Big Crimewave

(John Paizs, 1985)
This one hits the bulls eye. Carrying the standard early for the Winnipeg Weirdos, only it fetishizes the 50s the way Maddin fetishizes the 20s. It's bright and squeaky, it's consistently hilarious, and all the more so because it's also got perfectly balanced malevolent undertones. Almost a silent film, narrated by a 12-year old girl who says that writers-blocked tenant Paizs is "a quiet man" in the perfect mannered 12-year-old fashion, hooray for Eva Kovacs! With the whole movie revolving around stylized enactments of the guy's reject drafts, and with the retro production design color-saturated to the hilt, it's very arty, but it's arty in a way that's engineered for maximum entertainment value. And did I mention that it's consistently hilarious?

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