This being Thursday, it's normally time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. We continue with the theme of the seven deadly sins and, this time, the sin is gluttony. I came up with two movies right away, and had to think a bit to come up with a third:
Fatso (1980). Dom Deluise plays a glutton who eats his family's good Italian food to the point of getting quite fat. A cousin who got similarly fat died at the age of 39, and now Deluise's sister Anne Bancroft is begging him to lose weight. It's tough, but when he meets a nice lady (Candice Azzara), he might just get the motivation to drop that weight.
The Loved One (1965). A biting satire of the American funeral business, this one looks at British expats in Hollywood and a nephew (Robert Morse) of one of them who dies (John Gielgud) and has to bury him. Rod Steiger plays an insane embalmer named Mr. Joyboy, and it's his mother who is the glutton here.
Cool Hand Luke (1967). Paul Newman, prisoner on the chain gang, gets into a wager that he can eat 50 hard-boiled eggs in an hour:
Maybe if he didn't have a failure to communicate he wouldn't have gotten himself into that bet.
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6 comments:
The acting was good but I didn't much care for Fatso.
The Loved One is such a strange film. I was glad it had all those cameos, the story was so bizarre and morbid they kept me watching. If not for them I probably would have bailed on it.
We match on Cool Hand Luke. The scene is such a small part of the film but still memorable, as is the other quote you referenced.
I struggled a bit with this week’s theme but then happened upon my first pick, which until now I hadn’t known existed. It’s a series of vignettes for each of the sins and it’s provided me with at least one title for each transgression for the rest of the year!
The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins (1971)-Gluttony: The manufacturer of dietary biscuits Slimmo exhorts that you can exist on 8 of them a day while being a closet glutton with rich food hidden throughout his office. When he inevitably starts to gain weight the company doctor limits him to two biscuits a day but everywhere he looks he sees food! We follow his comic adventures as he tries to sneak whatever tidbits he can. But he pays for it in the end. Co-written by Monty Python’s Graham Chapman.
The Big Feast (aka La Grande Bouffe) (1973)-Four middle aged disenchanted French men of the bourgeoisie (including Marcello Mastroianni and Philippe Noiret) gather at the villa of one of their number with the express goal of eating themselves to death. Looking to indulge to the utmost they include three prostitutes in the party and from then on its food then sex, sex and food, sex while eating food and finally just food and more food. You might never want to eat again once it ends.
Cool Hand Luke (1967)-Non conformist Luke Jackson (Paul Newman) is behind bars on a Florida chain gang but his spirit isn’t imprisoned. While he is a thorn in the side of the guards he becomes a source of inspiration to the other inmates particularly after accepting a spur of the moment bet to eat 50 hard-boiled eggs in an hour. After he achieves the gluttonish goal he lays on a table splayed Christ like suffering but venerated.
"The Loved One" sounds hilarious and I'm going to look for it. Thanks! ☺ My choices also included Fatso, a movie that was mostly panned. I liked it anyway, as well as Cool Hand Luke. Gluttony was definitely a tough category!
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Oh that egg scene in Cool Hand Luke...I've never seen the entirety of that movie but every time I have caught it on TV, it's on that damn egg scene.
Fatso is not a great film by any means but I actually didn't mind it although I haven't seen it since it came out. I wouldn't mind seeing The Loved One which sounds bizarre. I love Cool Hand Luke and almost chose this film for this egg scene. I could never eat 10 never mind 50.
The Loved One is a movie that I think will sharply divide opinions. A lot of people love it, but like Joel, I found it less than the sum of its parts and trying too hard to be funny.
I didn't like Fatso as much as I wanted to, either, I think because Anne Bancroft directed the cast to be too loud and obnoxious.
I actually specifically saved Cool Hand Luke for this theme, after considering it for the "Lust" theme what with that scene of George Kennedy and the rest going nuts watching the car washing.
I really wanted to use The Private Life of Henry VIII, since Charles Laughton's Henry is quite the glutton, but I used it last year.
I have not seen any of these but that egg scene... wow. :D
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