Only now does it occur to me... that the Coen Brothers must be closet HIGHLANDER fans. Why else would they cast Clancy "The Kurgan" Brown:
and Christopher "Connor 'The Highlander' MacLeod" Lambert:
in the same film? (aside from the fact that they're both great, and wield a mean broadsword). With Sean Connery retired, I suppose my only complaint is that Michael Ironside didn't make the cut.
Regardless, this film does not in fact revolve around HIGHLANDER sequel/prequel fan-fictions, though from the standpoint of a character-actor fan, it has much to offer. Amid the pastiche of Busby Berkeley and Vincente Minnelli-style musical numbers, there are wonderful bits by Robert Picardo as a finicky, test audience rabbi:
Fisher Stevens (who really knows how to make an entrance) as a furtive, blacklisted screenwriter:
Tilda Swinton in dual roles as twin-sister gossip columnists:
and Dolph Lundgren as the silhouette of a Russian submarine captain:
(since it's the 1950s, I can't tell if he's Ivan Drago's father, or the father of his henchman from A VIEW TO A KILL).
Sure, it's no BARTON FINK, but I enjoyed it.
4 comments:
Tangentially related, I recently watched Michael Ironside in a great Ray Bradbury Theater episode called The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl.
Gweeps,
Awesome––I've been meaning to check that out for a while. How is it?
It's both tense and comical. Gets you thinking.
And it's on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2uoqfM4bRg
Gweeps,
Nice, I'll watch it one of these days!
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