Glóin the Dark

Merlot, I hope.

The music is the biggest sticking point for me. It comes across as artificial and derivative.

Except, I would say, that it looks quite brilliant. It's packed with shots that display interesting colour schemes across the widescreen canvas.

I like this one.

Indeed! With Palm Springs I guess it's primarily the scenes involving explicit fantasy elements that give it the tone that I would call "broad" or "cartoonish", like outrageous violent incidents that are really the equivalent of pratfalls in the film's idiom. Behind this there's probably a lot of comedy of a more subtle nature, but the big gestures have coloured my overall impression of the film. For "non-broad" comedy I'm thinking of the likes of Noah Baumbach...

They both have a somewhat cartoonish and very tongue-in-cheek tone - Freaky more so than Palm Springs, but the latter still easily passes my standard for qualifying as "broad" comedy.

It's not that there's a concrete connection between them; just some striking similarities. They're both broad, zany comedies having plots based around supernatural phenomena, and they're both modern spins on well established films/tropes. In my mind, at least, they sit alongside one another among the recent films that I've seen.

I thought that Palm Springs was better but Freaky was funnier, in a very broad, lightweight sort of way.

On the contrary. The last few years have been a great period for films. I remember that Shrek has a funny line about waffles.

If needs be. I could easily play Ferocious Bespectacled Warrior.

Wish I'd known they were filming so close to me. I could have been in it.

One of the few films that I've watched in a version dubbed into English is Truffaut's Day for Night, which was shown in such a vandalised form on UK television in the 1990s. Coincidentally, the film itself has a very funny reference to dubbing when an actor on the fictional film set, after repeatedly being unable to remember her script, suggests "I'll just say numbers like I do with Fellini. Twenty-two eighty-three sixteen seventy-two..."; the director responds "No, in France we have to say the lines!"

Robert Bresson's effort will always be top for sheer riproaring excitement.

Among the Camelot films, I don't think it can surpass The Spaceman and King Arthur.

Well, he doesn't class these features as artistic weaknesses; just commercial disadvantages.