charming: The Guard Brothers' SPDR Spot

Little Fideux in the delightful SPDR TV spot

The Guard Brothers - Thomas and Charles - the British-born duo who made their tandem feature debut earlier this year with the Elizabeth Banks-David Strathairn starrer, "The Univited," a remake of Ji-woon Kim's 2003 South Korean thriller, "Janghwa, Hongryeon," started out about 10 years ago as teens, dabbling in shorts. Their talent was clear - clear enough to attract such estimable names to their short projects as actors Jason Flemyng, Jodhi May, Martin Freeman and Lena Headey.

And they worked alongside such heavyweights as Mike Lee, Peter Greenaway, Stephen Daldry, Ridley Scott and Christopher Nolan on the omnibus film, "Cinema16: British Short Films" (2003).

I liked "The Uninvited." It was pretty fastideous for a genre film and the Guards invested some credible psychology and enormous tension, taking the viewer on a flight of exultant nightmare lyricism, along the lines of Brian DePalma's "Carrie" (1976) and M. Night Shyamalan's "The Sixth Sense" (1999). The guys also coaxed a performance of delicious, juicy villainy out of the always game Banks.

But apparently, the brothers really excel at shorts, as evidenced by their charming, disarming - and delightfully odd - dog commercial for The State Street Corporation, , a company that specializes in investment, insurance and property development. Now you may wonder what a little dog has to do with investments - in this case, State's SPDR Exchange Traded Funds.



Not much. The idea is esoteric: A little dog, clearly a street stray in Paris, works hard to deliver "desirables" to an aloof pooch living in comfort. A baseball, an old catchers' mit, a teddy bear and a used bone are among the items that the little bandy-legged dog manages to dig up, while rival street dogs are in pursuit of him. But they can't catch up. He has the goods. He delivers. Just like the SPDR Exchange Traded Funds, see?

Shot in glorious black-and-white, all of this is played out, a la Albert Lamorisse's "Le ballon rouge"/"The Red Balloon" - in the simplest of ways, with a French chanteuse warbling in the background for further ambience.

Once seen, this spot is not easily forgotten, although I have no idea how successful it's been selling funds. (Alas, the original commerical, which had a voiceover - in English - only at the end, was subsequently replaced by an edited version with the pesky voiceover now heard throughout.)

The Gate Worldwide is the agency that was in charge. Gustav Geldenhuys served as producer for the Guards; the excellent cinematograhy was by Joost Van Gelder, and Chuck Willis, of The Cutting Room, edited.

As the French would say, Formidable!

cinema obscura: Harold Prince's "Something for Everyone" (1970)/James Lapine's "Impromptu" (1991)

Theater directors rarely get any credit when they venture into film. Case in point: I loved what Morton DaCosta did with the film versions of plays that he originally directed on stage, "Auntie Mame" (1958) and "The Music Man" (1962). Both are noteworthy for their fidelity to their stage predecessors and yet are impressively cinematic.

DaCosta would direct only one other film - 1963's now-forgotten "Island of Love," starring Robert Preston, Tony Randall and Walter Matthau.

You could say, "That was then, this is now." But matters haven't changed.

Harold Prince made what I thought was an auspicious film directing debut with the delicious 1970 Angela Lansbury-Michael York black comedy, "Something for Everyone," one of those sophisticated sex comedies in which the randy young hero (York) sleeps his way through every member of a family (shades of Pasolini's "Teorema" with Terence Stamp).

The film is just about impossible to see nowadays, although Prince's second (and last) film, a truncated version of the Sondheim musical, "A Little Night Music," sas been available on DVD.

The estimable James Lapine, meanwhile, made one of the best films of 1991 - now also forgotton, of course - with "Impromptu," a randy farce about the affair between Frederic Chopin (Hugh Grant) and George Sand (Judy Davis, alas, in oneof her last great film roles). Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Emma Thompson and Julian Sand round out the cast.

I can't think of anything wrong with this film.

Lapine subsequently filmed the Michael J. Fox-Nathan Lane show-biz comedy, "Life with Mikey" and the Anne Tyler adaptation for HBO, "Earthly Possessions," sarring Susan Sarandon and Stephen Dorf.

If rep houses still existed and had resourceful bookers, "Something for Everyone" and "Impromptu" would make a great double-bill.

1961 Twins - Wilder's "One, Two, Three"/Capra's "Pocketful of Miracles"

Pamela & Horst, wildly attractive in "One, Two, Three"

In 1961, two veteran directors - Billy Wilder and Frank Capra - each helmed an antic comedy that involved a lot of door-slamming and a fast-talking hero, his penchant for deception and his crafty knack for bending the truth and, ultimately, getting his own way. Of course, by the end of film, the exhusted hero finds some redemption.

It's never been noted but Capra's "Pocketful of Miracles" and Wilder's "One, Two, Three" are essentially the same film, even though Wilder's is an adaptation of a Ferenc Molnár play that Wilder wrote with his partner, I.A.L. Diamond, and Capra's was a remake of his earlier film, "Lady for a Day," by way of Damon Runyon.

In "One, Two, Three," set during the Cold War, James Cagney is in rare form as C.R. MacNamara - "Mac" - who heads the Coca-Cola division in West Berlin and whose life becomes unraveled when his boss's daughter (Pamela Tiffin) comes for a visit and ups and elopes with a card-carrying Communist (Horst Buchholz). With the girl's parents - and Mac's boss - also coming for a visit, Mac has to scramble and transform the young Commie into an acceptable American Conservative.

In the Depression-era "Pocketful of Miracles," Glenn Ford is in his prime as Dave the Dude, a player who depends on the apples of Chicago vagerant Apple Annie (Bette Davis) for good luck. It turns out that Annie has used every cent she ever made to have her daughter (Ann-Margret) educated abroad where the girl fell in with a royal family. Now they're all coming for a visit and Dave has to scramble and transform the old street person into a genuine lady and socialite.

Bette Davis' Apple Annie Explains It All For You

Oddly enough, both titles, TMC staples, were released within months of each other in 1961 - and by the same studio, United Artists.

Note in Passing: The ingenués in the films - Pamela Tiffin and Ann-Margret - teamed up a year later in 1962 for José Ferrer's remake of "State Fair" and also again in 1964's "The Pleasure Seekers," Jean Negulesco's remake of his 1954 romance, "Three Coins in the Fountain."

when brüno met dieter

Teutonic Twins: Baron Cohen’s “Brüno” (above) owes its life to Myers' "Sprockets" (below)

Simply put, “Brüno” is "Borat" by way of "Sprockets."

Stylistically and in terms of its narrative drive, the new collaboration of star-auteur Sasha Baron Cohen and director Larry Charles is nearly indistinguishable from their "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" (2006), only not as special, given that, well, this schtick has already been done. And done better.

But the character of Brüno himself is a near replica of Mike Myers' Dieter creation, the West German television talk show host that Myers whipped up with Dana Anderson for the Second City sketch troupe and which became a recurring character during Myers' run on "Saturday Night Live." Surely, you remember, the aloof miminalist "Sprockets" host demanding that his reluctant guests pet his monkey, Klaus. "Touch him! Love him! Liebe meine abschmenkee!"

Deiter was marginally funny then and Brüno is marginally funny now.

The bottom line is, Brüno is essentially a sexed-up Dieter - no more, no less. But, wait, back to "Brüno" and "Borat"...

Both are episodic, although "Brüno" is noticeably more scattered with comic sequences that come to no natural conclusion - i.e., most end without a punchline. They just ... stop. Abruptly. But what really sets these two apart is that Baron Cohen's shallow, celebrity-fixated opportunitist isn't nearly as likable as his crazed journalist from Kazakhstan. But then rampaging narcissists are rarely amusing.

As Dieter often said: "Your story has become tiresome. Please leave."

Note in Passing: Oddly enough, Myers once planned to bring his Dieter/"Sprockets" character to the big screen for Universal Pictures and Image Entertainment (the Ron Howard/Brian Glazer company). There was a contentious lawsuit when he decided to pass on the film. Universal is also the production company that produced and released "Brüno."

The New Woody

Woody's latest isn't what it seems. That's the point.

Like most of Woody Allen's other late-career releases, his newest "Whatever Works" has been casually dismissed by movie opinion-makers, starting with the shrugs it generated at The Tribeca Film Festival.

And, frankly, for the first ten minutes or so, as star Larry David (standing in for Woody) talks directly to the camera and seemingly refuses to stop, the film had me squirming and cringing. "I already hate it," I whispered to my wife, ready to bolt.

But wait!

Its disasterous opening notwithstanding, "Whatever Works" quickly evolves into a highly companionable morality fable about a solitary, opinionated apathist/pessimist (the David/Allen character) who speaks authoritatively and negatively about life and people, threatening to poison everyone around him. The glory of the film is that it cleverly upends his dire theories, shrewdly pulling him into an extended family of free thinkers who have all taken his opinions and rehabilitated them - and him.

His life turns out to be a happy accident.

David plays Allen without resorting to the kind of mugging that other actors have adopted in Allen films and he's encircled by a deft ensemble - most notably, Evan Rachel Wood, Ed Begley, Jr. and Patricia Clarkson.