Funniest Movie Scenes: Although it would be impossible to compile a list of every single funny scene ever screened, this collection moves toward that goal. It should be obvious that a selection of funny movie moments and scenes is entirely subjective and can only scratch the surface.

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There was a parallel tradition of serials both in the United States and in Europe. In Europe, the motion picture serial was a close relative to today's TV series, with longer, self-contained episodes or segments. France, with pioneering auteur director Louis Feuillade, provided several magnificent chapter plays, including the five-part Fantomas (1913-France), the influential 10-part masterpiece Les Vampires (1915-France) with Musidora as villainous Irma Vep, the 12-episode Judex (1916-France), and Tih Minh (1918-France). Germany contributed the popular six-episode silent serial Homunculus (1916-Germany). Also, in the 1920s, Fritz Lang made the following two silent films in two-parts: the crime thriller Dr. Mabuse (1922-23), and Die Nibelungen (1924) (in two parts: Siegfried, and Kriemhilds Rache, aka Kriemhilde's Revenge)

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esterns became the staple subject matter for serials (and many feature-length films) for the first full decade after the coming of sound. Buck Jones, a western star in the 1920s during the silent era, was demoted to low-budget pictures and serials once talkies emerged. He starred in 19 westerns for Columbia from 1931 to 1934, and then in 22 westerns for Universal from 1934 to 1937.

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The Awful Truth (1937) is one of the classic, definitive screwball comedies of the thirties from Columbia Pictures, joining company with other classics including Gregory La Cava's My Man Godfrey (1936), George Cukor's The Philadelphia Story (1940), and Preston Sturges' The Lady Eve (1941). Producer/director Leo McCarey's stylish light comedy is a witty battlefield of marital misadventures, mismatches and snappy dialogue, with physical scenes of slapstick, spontaneous and improvised acting, and hilarious romantic antagonism between its two stars - Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. They appear as a mistrusting couple who decide to separate and file for divorce, but then attempt to sabotage and ruin each other's new romances and affairs, and are ultimately reconciled to each other just before the divorce decree becomes final.

It was the first of the major stars' three films together - Grant and Dunne were reunited in the romantic screwball farce My Favorite Wife (1940) (also produced by Leo McCarey) and then in the classic tear-jerker Penny Serenade (1941). This film also starred an Airedale, Scottish fox terrier named Mr. Smith (known as Asta in The Thin Man (1934) series of films, and who was later to appear in Bringing Up Baby (1938)) to bank on the previous success of a husband-wife and dog combination.

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Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) is producer/director Stanley Kubrick's brilliant, satirical, provocative black comedy/fantasy regarding doomsday and Cold War politics that features an accidental, inadvertent, pre-emptive nuclear attack. The undated, landmark film - the first commercially-successful political satire about nuclear war, has been inevitably compared to another similar suspense film released at the same time - the much-more-serious and melodramatic Fail-Safe (1964). However, this was a cynically objective, Monty Python-esque, humorous, biting response to the apocalyptic fears of the 1950s.

The witty screenplay, co-authored by the director (with Terry Southern), was based on Peter George's novel Red Alert (the U.S. title). [George's work, under his pseudonym Peter Bryant, was first published in England with the title Two Hours to Doom. Early drafts of the script were titled Edge of Doom and The Delicate Balance of Terror.] The novel's primary concern was the threat of an accidental nuclear war. Dr. Strangelove himself did not appear in the novel, however - he was added by Kubrick and co-screenwriter Southern.

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A wide variety of romantic melodramas in gaudy, lush, super-saturated Technicolor - classic, histrionic-laden, exaggerated, glossy, tear-jerking soaps, appeared from director Douglas Sirk. Since these overwrought films appeared during a time of Hollywood censorship, all of the sexual transgressions, ungratified desires, illegitimacies, psycho-sexual disorders (impotence, frigidity, nymphomania, Oedipal problems, etc.), rapes, adulteries, domestically-oppressed women, abuses, abortions, and affairs were not made entirely explicit. These potentially-subversive topics, nonetheless, were brought to the screen. Today, they are sometimes considered over-the-top, but should be viewed with irony for the hidden meanings contained within:

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Although the film traces the career of a fictional newspaper tycoon (patterned after William Randolph Hearst), Citizen Kane (1941) can be considered a life-story 'biopic.' Artists and literary authors have also inspired biographical film epics, such as two films from Vincente Minnelli. His film Madame Bovary (1949) starred James Mason as Gustave Flaubert on whose classic novel the film was based, and another film, Lust for Life (1956) featured Kirk Douglas as tormented Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh.

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Cast:

Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Ann-Margret, Sophia Loren, Kevin Pollak, Daryl Hannah, Burgess Meredith

Review:
As 1993 drew to a close, movie-goers in search of light entertainment were treated to the delightful (if formulaic) Grumpy Old Men, a reunion of the often-paired odd couple of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Now, two years later, John Gustafson (Lemmon) and best enemy Max Goldman (Matthau) are back at it again. Only this time, their barbs lack the zing of the previous outing. And that's not all that's missing in this ill- advised sequel. Grumpier Old Men isn't as fun, spontaneous, or amusing as the original. In short, it's a poor retread that can't be redeemed by the pleasure of seeing Lemmon and Matthau together.


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Starring Hilary Swank
Sam Rockwell
Minnie Driver
Juliette Lewis
Melissa Leo
Peter Gallagher
While all of the above-mentioned may be fiction, sometimes it’s the truth that can lead to even more rewarding filmmaking. In Conviction, director Tony Goldwyn takes a compelling script from Pamela Gray, throws in some tremendous acting and churns out his best film yet. Although he'd only directed only three feature films prior to this one (A Walk on the Moon, Someone Like You…, The Last Kiss), he’s been heavily involved in television. Having done episodes in series including Dexter (one of the best shows on right now), Justified, Damages, Kidnapped, Law & Order and Without a Trace, directing a movie like Conviction makes sense.



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Cast
Tamer Hassan - Pat Tate
Vincent Regan - Mickey Steele
Terry Stone - Tony Tucker
Adam Deacon - Darren Nicholls
Neil Maskell -Craig Rolfe
Dave Legeno - Jack Whomes
Johnny Palmiero - Bernard O`Mahoney
Lucy Brown - Anna Richards
Kierston Wareing - Kate Smith
Susie Amy - Donna Jagger
Duncan Meadows - Vic

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