Awesome! I did a Rage War (aka The Dungeonmaster) Mad Max mash-up a few weeks ago…
There’s also a side-by-side comparison here:
Redder reds! Bluer blues! Yellower yellows! Use real film!
I saw “Mad, Mad World” for the first time only a few months ago. Yes, the colour is beautiful but what a train wreck. Terrible!
Nicely done. I love me some mashup.
Not a format issue (digital cameras far exceed film’s capabilities now), a colour grading issue. Modern cinema is graded to emphasise teal and orange for flesh and background contrast. It’s very boring.
Nice side-by-side.
Wah??? Not sure about this “Mad, Mad World” you speak of, but “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” is fantastic. One of the few movies that boasts a huge ensemble cast and actually manages to utilize most of them to great potential. With tons of fun cameos, too. When that movie hits its stride, about a third of the way in, it’s a thing of frenetic, slapstick, old school comedy beauty, and manages to be poignant at the end too.
Needs more Three Stooges.
Agreed, but… is there anything you can’t say that about?
Film is lovely, but there is indeed no technical reason for digital cinema not to look nice and colorful.
For instance, here’s a Technicolor-inspired process developed by a single talented person, generously made available for free for anyone with a $1000+ Blackmagic Cinema Camera and some color grading skill.
Imagine the reds and yellows one could get on a Hollywood budget, if they wanted to.
“It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” was one of my favorite movies growing up. It may not have aged well, but it was hardly a “train wreck.”
I am assuming you didn’t get the near-constant stream of “easter egg” style jokes relying on 50’s pop culture references. If you missed these jokes – and there’s no reason you should a half-century later – then much of the pacing and character development would seem really odd.
Presumably you at least recognized the the firemen at the airport?
and Spencer Tracy doing a send-up of himself?
If time has rendered the jokes and characterss inaccessible, you can still revel in the action scenes: almost almost all those stunts were all physical. They really DID fly an airplane through a hangar – and nearly crashed the plane with they smahhed throught the billboard!
and Ethel Merman was priceless…
Needs redesigning into mugs (so they’d be useful), and with slightly narrowed bottom with outer diameter matching the inner at the top (so they could be stacked this way).
If they were useful they wouldn’t be the Three Stooges.
I’m not sure what separates the people who love this movie vs. everyone else (who usually hate it). Count me in the first category. I grew up watching this movie with my brothers which may have helped but I still love it to this day. I even purchased the special “fully restored” version a little while ago (actually the only DVD/Bluray I’ve ever bothered to buy).
But I’ll never forget my bitter disappointment when I tried showing it to a bunch of friends in college and it was pretty much universally hated. I haven’t bothered trying to turn anyone on to it since
I understand the bit with the ladder at the end was something of a technological feat of filmmaking at the time (Willis H. “King Kong” O’Brien’s final job, apparently), but it sure doesn’t do much now.
I will confess to having a certain soft spot for Rat Race, which is really just Mad Mad World dragged kicking and screaming a few decades into the future. It might just be the John Powell score.
I accept there are almost certainly references I won’t get, but I did recognise most of the cameos - I might come from the wrong decade and hemisphere but thanks to pax hollywoodus they were all familiar faces. My response as I watched it was that it felt forced - each new cameo was meant to bring an “aha! It’s Don Knotts!” moment, but instead it felt like a roll call of the nearly-dead strung together with hope instead of a script.
This might be one of those films that you love if you grew up with (ala @Cunk). I’ve stopped recommending my childhood favourites to my kids - it’s too disappointing, and when you know they’re humouring you it’s just a little bit humiliating.
I accept that, like with many movies, it can appear dated. Especially to generations now used to a much faster, quick-cut pace and more risque or gross-out humor. Plus, like a lot of old classics, many of its bits and styles have been duplicated and refined over the years, so there’s likely a “seen that before” quality to it. (People probably said the same thing about this movie, for that matter. So it goes…)
Still I honestly don’t know how the movie can’t be appreciated as a near perfect example of the madcap comedy genre–with genuine hilarious moments and great performances by some amazing comedic icons of the time. Definitely not something to put on with a bunch of college kids in the room, though–I imagine even in 1963 that wouldn’t have flown. I showed it to my kids when they were in the 8-10 age, and they loved it–sadly, much older and I think they would have felt the humor was too tame while still being too young to appreciate it’s other qualities.
The day the next generation fails to appreciate “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, though, is the day I write 'em off for good.
The day the next generation fails to appreciate “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, though, is the day I write 'em off for good.
Amen. But to respond to a “near perfect example of the madcap comedy genre”, my choice would be Blake Edwards’ “The Party”. Now that I think about it though, it’s pretty plot-deficient too…
