The Running Jumping Richard Lester Thread

I really hate that How I Won the War

Every once in a while TCM digs up his first film It's Trad Dad!, which to my knowledge hasn't been out on DVD. It's a cute little music movie that manages to overcome it's genre (low-budget quickie pop exploitation) thanks to Lester's ingenuity and the performers involved (Del Shannon, Gene Vincent, Helen Shapiro, Gene McDaniels and more). Very much worth a look.

The Knack...And How To Get It wasn't aged well at all.

a hard day's night is k-lassic and help! is fun but i can't rep for any of that other 60s-era stuff.

i once read an interview with him where he claimed he'd never, ever felt depressed in his life, which kind of figures really.

Help! is fun. And, far less organically, Superman II. I need to see Petulia again, I was quite resistant to its alleged charms the first time, long ago.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is fitfully funny in spite of his frantic overediting. Works waaaay better on the stage.

The Bed-Sitting Room, anyone? (Anyone who's still able to watch it?)

OK, why did I think he was dead?

http://www.avclub.com/content/interview/richard_lester

It's Trad, Dad! is on in the wee hours tonight, tomorrow.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004PYERHE?tag=thedigitalbit-20&link_code=as3&creativeASIN=B004PYERHE&creative=373489&camp=211189

^^$39.95 FOR A DVD-R (and a booklet, but still...)

The all but forgotten Royal Flash is now on Blu, which I've never seen but will be reviewing cuz Malcolm McDowell was so hot back in the day, also he does a commentary!

NY retro in August... how often do you see 35mm prints of The Bed Sitting Room or Cuba?

http://www.filmlinc.com/daily/entry/richard-lester-retrospective-a-hard-days-night-help-the-three-musketeers

as i said

http://www.filmlinc.org/films/the-bed-sitting-room/

Kino's got blus of that, The Knack..., and How I Won The War in the works.

well, i've seen the other two projected.

TBSR is must viewing for proto-Python black comedy. I laughed quite a bit. (Marty Feldman's first film too)

Third Musketeers movie way better than it had a right to be... Even with C Thomas Howell as Oliver Reed's son! Philippe Noiret is at least as good a scheming cardinal as Heston.

Quality rundown of Lester's films: http://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/keep-moving-the-films-of-richard-lester

my reaction to Petulia is still complicated. could be Scott's best film performance though.

Three/Four Musketeers could be his second-greatest achievement after AHDN. It's 70% ambitious slapstick, and that's fine with me.

On the DVD supps, someone on the crew said you could get whatever resources you needed shooting in Franco's Spain, as long as you had the budget for bribes.

The Bed Sitting Room out now via Kino

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/69977/bed-sitting-room-the/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX03EbWiJP0

Was always interested in Juggernaut because of Kael: "Fast, crackerjack entertainment..." I liked it, but for completely opposite reasons: next to Airport and The Poseidon Adventure--I think the second Airport is the only other '70s disaster film I've seen, so my sample's kind of limited--it seemed unusually austere and methodical. Good throwaway Titanic joke.

Seems likely Roy Andersson saw THE BED SITTING ROOM at some point, if not he was thinking along very similar lines. That was special.

— Vadim Rizov (@vrizov) July 23, 2017

^^Yeah.

Bed-Sitting Room is currently free for Prime members. Screened last night. A film for these times? Perhaps.

From the overview I linked to upthread:

Needless to say, when the studio heads at United Artists took a look at it, they were appalled at what they saw (to be fair, it seems that the famously hands-off organization was still under the impression that Lester was doing a musical version of Joe Orton's "Up Against It" starring Mick Jagger, the project he had been working on before shifting his focus after that one fell through) and shelved it for more than a year.