Daily Archives: April 29, 2023

Ramakrishna alias Rikki (Akhil Akkineni), much like Karthi in last years Sardar has zero qualms about his family treating him like a slacker up to no good. He never provides an explanation, content with his family living in oblivion about his true aspirations. With a cheeky grin slapped across his face, he roams around town gathering intel on suspicious people in the hopes of being noticed by the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW), where he aspires to work someday. He even audaciously attends government job exams writing on the margins of his OMR sheets that he wants a job at the RAW, while declaring as a matter of fact that he is not interested in a desk job. After getting rejected thrice, he takes matters into his own hands to get his dream job one more time. While Telugu cinema is always game for fusing real-life details of a star into the fictitious character he is essaying, the unintentional parallels displayed in Akhil seeking that coveted break in the industry after a string of unsuccessful films, against Rikkis sincere but less-than-legal attempts to get into this countrys elite intelligence force is not lost on me.

It is a little hard to explain the rest of Agents plot coherently, considering it flits from one point to another like a tiresome, fidgety teenager.

Cast - Akhil Akkineni, Mammootty, Dino Morea, Sakshi Vaidya

Director - Surender Reddy

There is a mismatch so severe in the films tone, it feels like the body of a run-of-the-mill Hollywood spy actioner is possessed with the spirit of a politically incorrect Telugu masala film, the kind Surender Reddy and his writer Vakkantham Vamsi thrive in. Look at Rikkis relationship with Vidya (Sakshi Vaidya), for instance. There is a love at first sight on part of the former, followed by what sounds like a situationship in theory, only to have that inconsequential subplot (which is only rivaled by three out-of-place romantic singles) get hijacked by our hero winning the heroines heart by threatening her harasser.

Much like John Abrahams Jim in Pathaan, you get a capitalist villain with a grudge in Agent (Dino Morea), an antagonist who considers terrorism based on religious fundamentalism as passe. Ideologues are mere pawns for The God (Dino Morea) and The Syndicate, a secret, Illuminati-like organisation who have their hands in everything from governance to media and beyond. Contrast this with the way Syndicate is used in Pushpa: The Rise. Any newfangled concept in a film, irrespective of its specific connotations, is only as effective as the rest of its story. The writing of Agent, especially in its second half focuses on the unholy trinity of two men who are titled The God and The Devil, alongside Rikki who shuttles from one entity to another. It is interesting to note that the films stern do-gooder is called The Devil, while the ex-agent turned rogue syndicate head is The God. There is also some interesting writing in the backstory of Rikki and The Devil (Mammootty) and how it is pitted against the backstory of The Devil and Mahadev. While there is some noteworthy commentary on the difference between a good student/agent vs a bad one, all these interpersonal dynamics never weave their way into the story as they prominently should. We instead get a film with buzzwords like floating banks and sleeper cells, like empty shells on a scorched battlefield. Cinematographer Rasool Ellore lights the film with style and aplomb, trying to make up for the films lacklustre story with the brightest explosions. Just as the film manages to end on a sincere note on how heroes never die, on par with the films last act, we are also handed a post-credits sequence where the makers practically mock the films viewer by going, You really thought we would kill the hero, did you? You fool.

Akhil hams his way through Agent, with the audience never quite being able to believe the elevations he receives throughout the film. Mammootty, while handsome and formidable, is on the receiving end of a pithy, place card role. The film continues its streak of jarring, half-hearted executions with the way it recreates New Delhis RAW office in Hyderabads Raidurgam, which would have at least worked if they did not display the birds eye B-roll of the same Raidurgam area when they wanted to establish the story in Hyderabad.

There is a throwaway line of logic and magic somewhere in Agent, and the film falls short on both counts, leaving its viewer with a tedious, overwhelmingly unmemorable experience.

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Agent Movie Review: A spy film that puts the fire in misfire - cinemaexpress

Music star and civil rights icon Harry Belafonte died this week at the age of 96. A decade ago, on the heels of the release of the icons memoir and a documentary about his seismic influence, acclaimed journalist Jeff Sharlet wrote an intimate, lyrical profile of Belafonte. Its about his singular cultural symbolism and its complications, about witnessing the evolution of his own legacy, and about reckoning with what, in a life full of remarkable achievements, he couldnt accomplish:

Belafonte wants to tell me about a movie he never made, probably never could havemade.

Amos nAndy. Not likeBamboozled, Spike Lees postmodern riff on blackface, butAmos n Andyas a history of minstrelsy going back to the beginning. It was the director Robert Altmans idea. A movie of a minstrel show. White men in blackface who mimicked every brilliant song, every joke, every true story ever told by a black woman or man: stole it all and played it again, as both tragedy and farce, tragedy because it wasfarce.

Its about the mask, Belafonte says, speaking in the present tense like hes talking strategy and tactics, sipping Harveys Bristol Cream. Its about how much time people spend being false, how often we faade our behavior. Nobodys better at that than the minstrels. And in them I see all of us. Everybodys in the minstrel show. Behind the mask, you can say and do anything. The Greeks did it. Shakespeare used it when he wrote the jester. Those he could not give the speech to, he created the jester to say it. All of Americas problems are rooted in the fact that were all jesters. Not one of us truth tellers. So how do you get to the truth? Well, how doAmos n Andydo it? Whats behind themask?

This: In the mimicry and the falsehood, you can still find the roots of the song. The art for me is how do you bend it yourway?

Maybe it couldnt be done. He told Altman, Youre going to get us both fucking killed. Black people gonna be completely outraged. Dont go to black people with blackface. And white people know its politically incorrect. Theres noaudience.

Altman said, Excepteverybody.

Belafontes quiet. Then: But Altman left me here all alone. Altman died in 2006. His last movie wasA Prairie Home Companion. Belafonte shakes his head, talking to no one now. Everybodys in the minstrel show. Everybodys a minstrelact.

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Voice and Hammer - Longreads

In deference to his mothers unique reign, King Charles III turned down the idea of being crowned on the same day, 2nd June. Instead his big day, 6th May, melds in the calendar with the May Bank Holidays, the culmination of the football season and Eurovision in Liverpool.

It took fourteen months to make the preparations for the 1953 coronation following the monarchs death. This time the turnaround has been done in a mere eight. The big day will doubtless be celebrated by the majority of the British population but, it is fair to say, there is much less excitement about it than there was seventy years ago.

In part this may be because of a surfeit of ceremonial, instead of pinched wartime austerity; global video audiences in recent decades have been able to see live coverage ofRoyal events including funerals, weddings and jubilees, not to mention an endless stream of dramas and documentaries.

Famously, the Coronation of Elizabeth II inaugurated the mass television age in the UK. The cameras were let into the Abbey and the number of licence payers doubled to three million to watch the BBCs black and white transmission with an estimated seventeen people viewing each set. There were no satellites. The RAF were mobilized for Operation Dominion to air lift cans of film to make sure the people of Canada could see a recording on the same day. The US TV networks were left to make their own arrangements.

The difference in coronation mood seventy years on is not just because novelty has been replaced by overfamiliarity. Not surprisingly, after the biblical life span of a human life, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland sees itself very differently today and so do foreigners looking in.

In an essay to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the last coronation, the constitutionalist Vernon Bogdanor described Britain in 1953 as a time of optimism and self-confidence, hopeful of what the future might bring. Although the phrase The New Elizabethan Era never quite caught on there was so much talk about it that Elizabeth II used her Christmas broadcast to say that she did not feel like my great Tudor forbear who ruled as a despot and was never able to leave her native shores

We had just won the War. Winston Churchill was back as Prime Minister and was ending wartime rationing. Weeks after the coronation, Churchill would suffer an incapacitating stroke, which was hidden from the public for months, while his son in law, Christopher Soames, and private secretary, Jock Coleville, all but ran the country. Churchill would also be knighted in 1953 (along with the Derby-winning jockey Gordon Richards) and be named winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

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Nobody has floated the idea of a New Carolinian Age. A second Restoration doesnt apply since there has been monarchical continuity since Charles II although the novelist Robert Harris has shrewdly explored parallels between the Civil War period and the vicious divisions of Brexit Culture Wars Britain. There is little optimism or self-confidence in the way this coronation is being styled. There is an apologetic tone, which seems to fit with what we know of the exasperated demeanour of the new King. This coronation is to be about diversity and inclusion, as organisers bust a gut to inject women and ethnic minorities into the fusty rituals accumulated from the middle ages and the Victorians. Peers of the realm have been left fighting for their places.

The coronation of 1953 was an imperial one, minorities were invited as guests, or satraps, of the Empire. Attitudes then were epitomized by Noel Cowards widely circulated witticism that the comparatively small man, actually a Malayan Sultan, sharing an open carriage with Queen Salote of Tonga must be her lunch. Size-ist and racist, Coward subsequently disowned his politically incorrect quip, attributing it to a member of Whites club.

In practice the British Empire was already breaking down into the Commonwealth of independent nations, which its new head Queen Elizabeth would call an entirely new conception. With President Nasser installed in Egypt, the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden was wrestling with independence for the Sudan and withdrawal from Suez.

Decolonisation proceeded less bloodily for Britain than for France and Portugal but, alas, settled peace and prosperity have never arrived in Africa or the Islamic world. The Suez question would destroy Attlees premiership a few years later with a rude reminder to the British from the US that the Big Three were no more. The US and the USSR were the only superpowers.

The guest list in 1953 was topped by hereditary monarchies. General George Marshall, then pre-occupied with the Marshall plan to reconstruct continental Europe, represented US President Eisenhower. Little precedence was given to European politicians, unlike this year, where President Macron of France will be arguably and piquantly the most significant foreign attendee.

The ascent of Mount Everest by the New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and the Nepalese Tenzing Norgay, was hailed as a Great British triumph, even by the Prime Minister of New Zealand. The news of the conquest of the worlds highest peak was broken as a scoop by The Times journalist James Morris, later the transexual woman Jan Morris. This year Nepal has received over 400 requests for permits to climb Sagarmatha, as it is now called officially.

The most marked developments are within the United Kingdom. In 1950, four Scottish students abducted, and accidentally snapped, the Stone of Scone from Westminster Abbey, where it had been since 1296 as a trophy of war. In 1996 the UK government sent the Stone of Destiny, on which kings and queens are crowned, back to Scotland for good. It has been peacefully loaned back to Abbey for the Coronation. In addition the avowedly republican first ministers of Scotland and Northern Ireland have gratefully accepted their invitations to attend the crowning.

There are other reasons to celebrate now rather than then. British society was brutal in 1953. Corporal and capital punishment were both still in force. In January Derek Bentley, a mentally impaired 19 year old, was hanged, as an accomplice to a murder, for which he was granted a posthumous Royal pardon in 1993. Parliament was barred from debating his execution while it was pending.

In an equally notorious miscarriage of justice concerning what became known as the 10 Rillington Place murders Timothy Evans had been wrongly executed in 1950. The full extent of what were actually crimes by John Christie was discovered in March 1953; Christie was sentenced to death on 25 June and hanged on 15th July. British justice is neither so quick nor so peremptory today. In 1953 Homosexuality was still against the law. Theatre and literature were subject to official censorship.

Enthusiasm for the monarchy may be tepid but Charles has weathered the attacks from within by Diana and now Harry. In the latest British Social Attitudes survey, two out of three continue to say that the institution is important (29% very important, 26% quite important). His subjects seem broadly content that he should symbolically represent the nation as it is now.

King Charles has got it right. The UK has come a long way over the past seventy years. Ours is a fairer and kinder society and a less powerful one. The coronation in 2023 should not be a nostalgic repeat of 1953.

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This coronation is being styled in an apologetic tone - Reaction

Innovative comedies are rare in a copycat business. Generally, one major comedy success will create a rush to emulate the style or exploit a particular actor's newfound marketability. Some comedies are so innovative, however, they stand alone while creating continuing years of influence. The wave of talent that came from Saturday Night Live in the 70s and 80s created an experimentation in comedy filmmaking, concurrent to the films of Mel Brooks and the Zucker Brothers using a more old-school approach to joke writing. The seeds of this type of innovative comedy filmmaking go back as far as Guess Who's Coming to Dinner in 1967, which used the genre to force the adjustment of racial norms in film and television.

By the late '70s, films like Animal House had become so popular, they were spawning a wave of films hoping to capture their appeal to younger audiences, with films as late as Old School continuing the tried and true method. A truly timeless comedy can have a pervasive influence even decades after its release.

The following are 21 comedy movies that were far ahead of their time.

The Jerk's influence, like that of stand-up legend Steve Martin, is as pervasive nowadays as the years immediately following its release, with everyone from Will Ferrell to Zack Galifinakis emulating Martin's approach to idiotic characters. The entire premise of the film, which saw Steve Martin's character growing up in a family of poor black sharecroppers, was humor not typically broached in the 1970s in America but used such a stupendously moronic main character as to subvert the whole idea. Navin R. Johnson's attempt to keep a beat is one of the slapstick highlights of 70s comedy, and the film brought Martin from stand-up comedy and television success to full-blown movie star, setting up Martin's incredible run of 1980s comedies.

Related: Steve Martin's Funniest Movies, Ranked

Innerspace was a moderately successful action comedy, but its unique approach to practical effects remains its innovative earmark. Steven Spielberg Executive Produced Innerspace, and his fingerprints are all over the movie, which foreshadowed the films of Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze directors who love the tactility of practical effects. The film caught Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan on their way up the ladder to being full-blown movie stars, and Martin Short, whose body becomes the film's main set, gives one of his greatest slapstick performances.

One of Jim Jarmusch's most romantic films and also one of his funniest Mystery Train embodies all the magic of Jarmusch at his best. The director casts characters from all walks indie legend Steve Buscemi, The Clash frontman Joe Strummer, Japanese actor Masatoshi Nagase, and the inimitable Screamin' Jay Hawkins as the Night Clerk. Strummer wins the movie playing a sloppy drunk to perfection (he likely had some extra insight), and embodying all the rebelliousness of Jarmusch's '80s films when he blasts Rockets Redglare to kingdom come with a snub-nosed revolver. This film was so far ahead of its time, it remains without parallel testament to the experimentation in indie films of the '80s.

At the peak of his powers, Weird Al Yankovic was rifling off one parody video after another on MTV, bringing his polka funnyman routine to an enormous audience and selling many records in the process. His move to film was a rocky road, as his first movie UHF bombed at the box office, leaving Yankovic a gamble that studios weren't willing to take.

Regardless, the movie is hilarious, foreshadowing talents like Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim and the outlandish Eric Andre, who emulate the film's sketch-like approach to the crazy characters running a UHF television station. The film introduced the world to Michael Richards, who later that year would beam into living rooms as Cosmo Kramer on Seinfeld.

Val Kilmer, fresh out of Juilliard, made his feature film debut in the Zucker Brothers' spy comedy Top Secret in 1983, proving to be a triple threat actor, singer and dancer in the role of Nick Rivers, a singing heartthrob-turned-spy. Kilmer excelled in the spoof, which presaged the Austin Powers franchise by over a decade in parodying the James Bond films of the '60s and '70s. Kilmer made a brave move passing up The Outsiders for this role, and it paid dividends, as Top Secret showcased his amazing range, only two years before his bullyish role as Iceman in Top Gun opposite Tom Cruise, who opted into The Outsiders. The two continued their decades-long friendship and reunited for Top Gun: Maverick last year, as Kilmer overcame his loss of speech to give one of the most tear-jerking scenes from either actor.

Is it possible a film could be ahead of its time and also not have aged well? That may be the case for Trading Places, which raised some interesting socio-economic ideas, albeit in a very politically incorrect manner (even for the '80s). Still, it was prime Eddie Murphy, fresh off the success of Saturday Night Live and 48 Hours and released the same year as his incredible Delirious stand-up special. It's the type of plot that could find its way into a Jordan Peele film today, if refashioned into less of a human experiment idea.

The Kids in the Hall had a nice run on MTV and Comedy Central, two '90s Viacom properties with ties to Executive Producer Lorne Michaels. Still, the genius of their edgy sketch comedy that delved into drag, same-sex relationships and mental health, didn't always translate well to American audiences of the time. Despite that, Michaels produced The Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy, which flopped miserably at the box office despite some hilarious vignettes about chemical imbalances and the drugs we use to balance them. Audiences of the mid '90s may not have been ready to delve into those waters just yet.

The Broken Lizard Comedy Troupe hit new ground with Super Troopers, utilizing a brilliantly moronic brand of lewd humor and the guiding performance of Bryan Cox, long before Succession brought the actor to wider acclaim. The film was a clear inspiration for many subsequent tv series, including Reno 911! and the Trailer Park Boys. The troupe's most enduring legacy may be Jay Chandrasekhar, who has gone on to be one of television's most prolific directors.

Mel Brooks mined the no frills, forward-thinking stand-up Richard Pryor for the script for Blazing Saddles. Pryor's drug and arrest history made casting him an impossibility, as Warner Bros wouldn't pay to insure the actor, but Cleavon Little stepped-up admirably. Gene Wilder and Pryor would continue their partnership in other films, but Mel Brooks coaxed a performance out of Wilder here that rivaled Young Frankenstein.

Included in the National Film Registry for its cultural relevance, Network peered behind the curtain of a television network whose greed for ratings leads to a tail wagging the dog as the programming chief Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) gradually loses control of the situation when a gang of terrorists insert themselves as players in the clamor for airtime. The film was the first to discuss the dealings of corporate powers behind closed doors, becoming a heavy influence on screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, who used Network's formula as inspiration for The West Wing and The Newsroom.

Charlie Chaplin's 1930s films seem to become more relevant with every passing year, chief among them Modern Times, which sees The Tramp suffer from shell shock as a factory worker at the height of The Depression, getting swept into Communist protests, even ingesting cocaine in a prison scene. This was incredibly provocative material for the time, maybe only second to The Great Dictator, which saw the brilliant Chaplin mocking fascist dictators after WWII had entered it's second, bloody year. Modern Times remains Chaplin's most relevant to todays recession-prone economy, global fears, and struggles of the ordinary American life.

Galaxy Quest was ahead of it time in tonality, lending an almost sitcom approach to a clever sci-fi idea, which saw Tim Allen essentially play a version of himself, and Sigourney Weaver play completely against type. The result was a cult classic movie, aided by perfectly crafted comedy that played to the strengths of Sam Rockwell and Enrico Colantoni as Mathesar, the leader of the Thermians. Colantoni gets the films greatest laughs, using an absurdist framework and weirdness that made its way into network tv shows in the early 2000s. The film was more influential than you might think, lending credence to the zany uber-fans featured in the documentary film Trekkies, and personified perfectly by Justin Long.

The campus comedy has become so pervasive over the years, it's hard to remember it hadn't really been done before John Landis' 1978 comedy, Animal House. John Belushi's performance as Bluto has become the film's calling card, but it was also a coalescing of talents in including Landis, who went on to direct the Thriller video and Coming to America, and writer Harold Ramis, who also went on to a top-notch career in comedy movies. It was also an important ladmark as a Saturday Night Live cast member crossed over to movie stardom, created the familiar pipeline of today.

Raising Arizona's rip-roaring pace, quick editing and high volume soundtrack set a bar for comedies in the 1980s. This was the film that elevated Nicolas Cage to full-blown movie star after some post adolescent roles in the early 80s that didn't yet show his talent. H.I. McDunnough remains one of Cage's greatest roles, as the Coen Brothers brought a new side out of the actor, dressing him up in pantyhose, stealing Huggies from a convenience store with maximal hilarity and physical comedy. Editor Michael Miller and the Coens borrowed a Scorsese-esque editing style to punch up the films sight gags and frenetic pace, creating a lovable slice of Americana that delighted audiences and foreshadowed the amplified cutting of comedies thereafter.

Some have argued that it is, in fact, Woody Allen who created the mockumentary and not Fellini, whose The Clowns was released a year after Allen's film. For better or worse, Take the Money and Run's influence on comedy movies may be wider than any other film, as mockumentary has become one of the main outlets for great comedy in the 54 years since this film's release. That can be hard to negotiate with today's knowledge of Allen's transgressions, especially given the autobiographical and sometimes perverse tone of his films. Virgil Starkwell is merely an avatar that Allen used to project the hilarity of his self-depricating shtick, but the knowledge of his past makes watching these films today cringey, even if the humor was so revolutionary that it still holds influence.

Stripes saw Hollywood testing the waters of what would become the buddy cop films of later in the decade, which pitted Bill Murray and Harold Ramis together, after Murray had become a sensation a year earlier in Caddyshack. Murray plays John Winger, who after losing his girlfriend and job enlists in the Army. The film was another hit for Murray, making $85 million against a $10 Million dollar budget, and laying the groundwork for Murray and Ramis joining the Ghostbusters cast. Stripes' success created a slipstream for 48 Hours, Spies Like Us, and Lethal Weapon all using this same basic duo premise in 80s films. Add in a hilarious turn by John Candy, and you've got one of the best comedies of the early '80s.

Guy Ritchie's first feature length film, Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels saw the director using a hyper-edited style of comedy, introducing a wider audience to Jason Statham's talents, as he was, till then, only a model. The film seemed inspired by mid 90s Quentin Tarantino films, adding footballer Vinnie Jones as Big Chris, a mob enforcer not to be trifled with. The once captain of the Welsh national football team, Jones embodied to hard-nosed London charm of the film, which benefitted from an ahead-of-its-time soundtrack of uptempo songs from Iggy Pop and The Stone Roses. Ritchie left an immediate stamp as an entertaining director, and, stylistically, his films have remained largely the same ever since.

Ah, the Multiverse. No matter your feelings about the film phenomenon, it certainly got an early look in Being John Malkovich, prescient in its exploration of alternate universes, albeit all of which exist inside the mind of John Malkovich. The stories about the script of this film are the stuff of legend, as Charlie Kauffman's manuscript got passed from studio to studio, then eventually to Francis Ford Coppola, who passed the film along to his daughter Sofia Coppola's visionary music video director boyfriend, Spike Jonze. Selling New Line Cinema and Malkovich, himself, on the idea was an uphill climb. Still, the combination of Kauffman's imagination and Jonze's visuals proved too much to pass up, and the result is one of the most visionary comedies in the history of film.

Related: Spike Jonze's Best Films and Videos, Ranked

Wet Hot American Summer had an indelible influence on a whole generation of comedy, thanks to the heights its cast rose to and the influence of this type of irreverent period comedy. Built around the Stella Comedy Troupe from Brooklyn, including now-directors Michael Showalter and David Wain, the film was essentially a group of New York City comedians and improvisors going upstate to summer camp to make a film. The film became a cult hit, leading to Amy Poehler joining the SNL cast, and Elizabeth Banks' rise to taste making director. Did we mention what it did for Paul Rudd's comedy movie career, as he crossed over into Judd Apatow's camp shortly thereafter. No film has had such a second life as its cast aged into superstars, paving the way for 8-episode Netflix comedy series and countless anniversary celeberations with live screenings. Not bad for a film that made $300,000 at the box office.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner broke ground as the first film to depict an interracial relationship positively, casting the brilliant Sidney Poitier opposite Katherine Hepburn's niece Kate Houghton, along with Hepburn herself. To speak to how revolutionary this film was in 1967, look no further than Spike Lee's Jungle Fever which came 24 years later and dealt with the topic in largely similar social context. Poitier had already wedged open the door for this type of social progress by winning the Oscar for Best Actor three years earlier for Lilies of the Field.

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21 Comedy Movies That Were Ahead of Their Time - MovieWeb

Barry Humphries, the celebrated Australian satirist and creator of the immortal television and stage comic characters Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson, has died, aged 89.

In addition to his stellar career as a writer, actor, and television performer and host, Humphries was a champion of museums, libraries and the arts in general, a collector of contemporary art, an enthusiastic amateur painter, the co-creator of the influential 1960s comic strip Barry McKenzie, and a prodigious connoisseur and acquirer of fin-de-sicle artists and authors. He was also a vivid memoirist and a serious bibliophile with a great knowledge of books of the 1890s.

John Craxton, Ex Libris bookplate for Barry Humphries Image: simonmartin_art/Instagram

Humphries found global fame through television appearances in the UK and later the US, and through the comic characters he created, and played, to lampoon the foibles of conservative Australians of his parents generationsthe warm-hearted, fashion-loving and scurrilous Dame Edna Everage in increasingly baroque rhinestone-heavy spectacles; the grotesque and politically incorrect cultural attach Sir Les Patterson, food spilling liberally from between his jutting, snaggled, teeth; and his most haunting creation, the mournful war veteran Sandy Stone rambling on, as Humphries put it, about an Australia that no longer exists.

Keeping his various comic personae in harmony for the past half-century became an act of performance art for Humphries. The Edna character was created for a Melbourne revue in 1955, and broke London in 1976 with the Housewife Superstar! stage showcalling her guest and audience possums and throwing gladioli into the auditoriumbefore (finally) repeating the magic in New York at the end of the century. Humphries used to refer to himself as Dame Edna's manager, and Humphries as Edna had a running gag about how much money Humphries had made as her impresarioeverything always in the third person.

In an early BBC mockumentary, La Dame aux Gladiolas (1979), Edna declares that Humphries had trussed me up like a chicken in this contract, likening their relationship to that of the Ballets Russes director Sergei Diaghilev and the star male dancer Nijinsky. Hes got used to some of the little luxuries that my fame has brought... him.

When interlocutors became (understandably) caught up in the complex interplay of his multiple professional personalities, Humphries reminded them that it was all an act, and that he had the great pleasure of being in the cheering up business.

Humphries was periodically subject to public campaigns back home that declared his satire to be bad for Australiaindeed the first two McKenzie compilation volumes, The Wonderful World of Barry McKenzie (1968), and Bazza Pulls It Off! (1971), were banned in Australia because they were considered, as Humphries put it, demeaning to Australia's national image as a nice countrybut he was latterly a venerated figure, regarded by many as the father of half a century of Aussie comedy. (In 2005 Humphries as Dame Edna featured in the hit comedy show Kath and Kim, whose most pointed characterstwo Melbourne homeware store vendeuses with exaggerated vowels and aspirations to holiday in the smart Queensland resort of Noooosadelivered a delicious lineal homage to Edna, half a century after Humphries first presented the character in Melbourne on 19 December 1955 in an Olympic hostess sketch in the revue Return Fare.)

Humphries was a friend and regular lunching partner of another formidable Australian dame, the late Elisabeth Murdoch, matriarch of the publishing dynasty, whose son Rupert Murdoch saw Humphries as the original article. To travel with Humphries in Australia in recent years was to witness the parting of crowds as if for a Commonwealth tour conducted by the late Queen Elizabeth II (a favourite fantasy foil in some of Dame Ednas more extravagant monologues). It was only after long expatriation and several marriages, Humphries wrote in the Daily Telegraph in 2021, that I began to really love Australia. His death was a national event Down Under with talk of a day of national mourning and arts awards in his name.

One of the most striking elements of the social media reaction to his death was the evidencewith people recounting memorable first-meeting conversations with Humphries on subjects ranging from Biedermeier glass to "the degenerate music suppressed by the Third Reichof how much he used his broad appreciation of the arts to connect with people from every creative walk of life.

The Barry McKenzie comic strip that Humphries created with the New Zealand artist Nicholas Garland for the satirical magazine Private Eye was one of the defining graphic art creations of the 1960s. Humphries had moved to London from his native Melbourne in 1959, to further his nascent acting career, and fell in with the Footlights generation of comedians, including Peter Cook, founder proprietor in 1961 of Private Eye, and Jonathan Miller. The title character, a lantern-jawed boorish Aussie visiting London and facing the condescension of the "home country" types, became the subject of a strip that ran from 1964 to the end of the decade, of three book compilations and two films directed in Australia by Bruce Beresford, another of the Australians of all the talents who had come to postwar London to further their careersthey included the writers Germaine Greer and Clive James, the art critic Robert Hughes, and their generational senior the artist Sidney Nolan.

Humphries's knowledge of artists of the 1890s and 1900s bore fruit in BBC television documentaries of the late 1960s and 1970s. The first was on the English-born painter Charles Conder (1868-1909), who did his best en plein air work in his Australian Impressionist phase in Sydney and Melbourne. Humphries, who once owned the largest private collection of Conder's work, described him as "an exquisitely insipid 1890s artist who passionately interested me". The film included footage shot in a suburb of Manchester because, as Humphries remembered, "representative works by this artist" were "obscurely hung at... the Whitworth Gallery".

The second documentary was A Summer Sideshow (1977) on artistsincluding Conder, Aubrey Beardsley, Oscar Wilde, Walter Sickert and Ernest Dowsonwho gathered in the Normandy sea port of Dieppe at the turn of the 20th century. During filming, Humphrieswho suffered throughout his life from "an acquisitive streak"spotted "a rather attractive art deco light-fitting by Daum [crystal] forlornly hanging in a desuetudinous bathroom" of an abandoned building in Dieppe. "A year later," he remembered in a memoir of his friend Julian Jebb, who directed the Conder and Dieppe films, "I sent Julian a polaroid photograph of the 'liberated' lampshade with the eccentric roof of the Opera House visible in the background."

Humphries (right) with Simon Martin, director of the Pallant House gallery, at the gallery's 2015 Sickert in Dieppe show Image: simonmartin_art/Instagram

The Dieppe glass lampshade anecdote captures some of the main markers of the Humphries style: the expatriate lexicon-ransacking aesthete who returned regularly to his homeland, never losing his connection to the Australian Zeitgeist (Humphries as Dame Edna once wore a Sydney Opera House hat to Royal Ascot); who thrived on finding rarities or absurdities in all genres; and whose often recondite literary and bibliographical passions (the inclusion of Wilde and Beardsley) were as strongly held as his abiding concern for art and artists, living and dead.

Humphries was born in 1934, and grew up in Camberwell, an affluent suburb of British-centric 1930s Melbourne. His father was a successful builder and architect and one of Barry's grandfathers had emigrated to Australia from Lancashire. He was a precocious, intellectually inquisitive, schoolboy"way beyond his age group" as one of his teachers at Camberwell Grammar rememberedwhose talents were indulged by his parents. When he evinced a passion for shopkeeping his father built him a a miniature shop; when his eye turned to chemistry his father obliged with a child-sized laboratory. For his 12th birthday he elected to join the Post-Impressionists and describes in his memoir My Life as Me (2002) persuading his parents to buy him the Phaidon books on Czanne, Van Gogh and Gaugin. Duly inspired, he graduated from painting his mother's brightly coloured garden, to making easel paintings of the local coastline, heavy with pigment applied with a palette knife.

An early cloud over this domestic bliss came when his mother gave his prize illustrated books to a "nice man" from the Salvation Army to sell for charity. "But you've read them," his mother countered when he objected. For the rest of his life, Humphries said on an Australian chat show in 2003, he had been trying to find them. (By the time of his death he had a collection of over 25,000 books in his London house, the library of a serious bibliophile strong in ghost stories and late 19th-century and early 20th-century British and Australian authors.)

Darker family clouds gathered after Humphries showed his first signs of rebellion when a pupil at the austere and hearty Melbourne Grammarsporting for the first time his trademark floppy Wildean fringeand when he neglected his studies first at school and then at Melbourne University (where he had won a scholarship) to devote himself to Dadaist pranks and acting. He had become stagestruck at the age of 14 after seeing Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh in Thornton Wilder's The Skin of our Teeth during the Old Vic Theatre Company's 1948 tour of Australia.

Humphries was "shattered" by his once-adoring mother's disapproval, and the genteel Philistinism of the Humphries parents and their Camberwell circle became an immediate and long-term source for his seven decades as a satirist.

Humphries first "met" his creation Edna Everage on 19 December 1955 after appearing in a touring Union Theatre repertory company production of Twelfth Night, as Orsino to Zoe Caldwell's Viola. He had perfected Edna's harsh, half-throttled falsetto by imagining the gushing thanks that they could anticipate from the lady mayoress, or local "culture vulture", at the next small-town stop. At the succeeding Christmas 1955 revue this creation morphed into Edna, "probably the dullest [first] name we could think of", a woman whose family name was a phonetic play on "Average". The part had been intended for Caldwell, soon to become a global superstar herself, and when she could not take it on, it fell back into Humphries's lap, and remained part of his professional dramatic persona for the next 68 years.

Humphries and his second wife, the dancer Rosalind Tong arrived in London by steamer, and via north Italy, in 1959. The succeeding decade was a challenging one. His Australian monologues did not "take" at the Establishment Club, in London, in 1963, with only Bamber Gascoigne, then theatre critic of The Spectator, staying until the end of his routine. He won the part of Mr Sowerberry in Lionel Bart's smash-hit musical Oliver! (and later the lead character Fagin), but his own act had so far taken off only in Australia. He was beset at the time by personal demons: bouts of depression driven by his increasing dependence on alcohol. The nadir came in 1970 when, back in Melbourne for treatment for depression and drink, he woke up on a piece of wasteland, badly beaten up, and was arrested for public intoxication. He gave up drinkremaining sober for the rest of his lifeand the post-drink Edna and, later, Les Patterson, became his passports to a half-century at the head of his profession.

"I put her in a box after a while," he said to The Observer of Edna Everage. "And then later, when I took her out again, she seemed to have become a bit brighter. She started to wear diamant glasses and her hair was an implausible mauve colour. Humphries's knowledge of art history shines through in some of Edna's high-Philistine malapropisms. In La Dame aux Gladiolas, the 45-year-old Humphries portrays his diva in Norma Desmond mode, but with easel pictures in her hotel suite in the manner of an 1890s Paris saloniste, and a dazzling array of tongue-in-cheek absurdities. Edna brandishes a pamphlet on Sigmund Freud's "forgotten years" in Melbourne. Edward Munch'sEdna refers to him as "Edward Scream"The Scream is, she says, set on the harbour bridge in Sydney, painted during the "artist's two days in Australia" (on other occasions Edna was known to sport a "Scream" dress on stage). During filming, Humphries and his interviewer had frequently to switch off the recording while they collapsed into laughter at their own jokes.

Humphries grew up to be what he called a "cheerful amateur" landscapist, and painted to the end of his life. The pictures he painted were very different to those he collected, and If a dealer had offered him one of his own flamboyant works, he wrote in My Life as Me, "I would probably never speak to them again." Despite that, examples of his own paintings, up to and including works made in the mid 2010s, are among the large bequests he made to the Barry Humphries Collection at Arts Centre Melbourne. (Other donations include costumes and memorabilia from the Humphries career including the 1981 Marsupial Dress, made for Dame Edna's appearance on the Joan Rivers Show in the US and latterly exhibited in Dame Edna's Frock-A-Thon: A Journey from Cardigan to Couture, at Melbourne's Performing Arts Museum, April-June 1999.)

He was a convinced bibliophile by the time he arrived in London at the end of the 50s, after haunting the bookshops and record stores of downtown Melbourne. In London he found a rich and formidable cast of dealers and hunters of rarities. A privately published volume, At Centurys Ebb (2009), a "Selection of Unpublished and Unfamiliar English Prose and Verse from the Turn of the 19th Century" captures some of the Humphries book-collecting passions nicely. Much of the collection had not appeared in print but had been discovered by him "tipped into, or inscribed on the flyleaves of books in my own library". They include a letter about Aubrey Beardsleys becoming a Catholic, Beardsley on the Popes new encyclical, and the poet-diplomat Rennell Rodd to Oscar Wilde about watching the Boat Race from William Morriss window. They convey he hopes, "the authentic sensibility of the period: a chaste classical demeanour, ill-concealing a smouldering eroticism".

Humphries had been a member of the Roxburghe Club, the oldest society of bibliophiles, whose members are mostly heirs to the great aristocratic libraries of Britain, since 2011. He was a great supporter of libraries, speaking to the Friends of National Libraries, and Patron of Honour since 2013 of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB).

The last time I saw Humphries he came on a visit in 2015 to see some manuscript letters from one of his literary enthusiasms, the essayist and historian of aesthetics Vernon Lee (1856-1935, pen name of Violet Paget) to the novelist Maurice Baring (1874-1945)both of whom had contributed in the 1890s to The Yellow Book, a prime Humphries interest. Leea prodigious talent known for flights of befuddling verbal exposition as extravagant as anything in the Humphries comic repertoirescored on this occasion, in her supremely illegible hand, with a 1919 letter assessing Proust's Du Ct de Chez Swann (1914). She allows the genius of Proust but finds the second, "jealousy", section of the book "brings out... a certain insufficient motility and circulation, a sticky, sea-slug shiny slowness temperamental to the man ... a lack of moving alongwitness Swinburne, Wagner, dAnnunzio. These are the sensual tempers... the people who go on sucking & sucking, rolling things in their mouths; lolling, trailing, and when it comes to Proust leaving a not very appetising trail behind them." Matter made, we thought, for the billowing Humphries lexicon.

Humphries was eyes ablaze at the time for his latest art historical enthusiasm, a documentary that he and Beresford were developing on the bequest of paintings left in the 1950s to the Mildura Arts Centre, in rural Victoria between Adelaide and Melbourne, by the newspaper proprietor Robert "R.D." Elliott, a publishing rival of Keith Murdoch. While in England, Elliott had bought 50 works by one past master of the British art establishment, William Orpen, and a similar number by another, Frank Brangwyn. Funding for the documentary from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) was ultimately not forthcoming, but Beresford and his daughter Cordelia Beresford held on to the dream, creating a 30-minute documentary on the subject in 2021.

Humphries produced numerous books under the guise of Dame Edna, Les Patterson and Sandy Shawa mix of monologues and mock memoirs. Under his own name he produced two beautifully written, uproarious and often heartbreaking, autobiographies, More Please (1992) and My Life as Me (2002). He also left sparkling descriptions of encounters with artists, including a bravura account of sitting for his portrait to David Hockney in California in 2015 who made two drawings and one painting of Humphries.

Humphries loved museums and on the Clive James Show in 1987 said that if the bottom fell out of show business he would like to be "a museum attendant in a remote suburb of Brussels dedicated to the works of a forgotten Belgian artist" in a museum that was never visited. "That would be a peaceful life." Oscar Humphries, his elder son by his third wife, the artist Diane Millstead, is a gallerist in London, and the former editor of Apollo magazine.

Late in life, Humphries might turn up at a party, where he already knew half the guests, but would still "do his bit", taking the trouble to doff his familiar fedora and announce "Barry Humphries". He had an old-fashioned courtesy that noticed if someone, whoever they might be, was not included in the heart of a party. He was always in on the joke, and wanted others to join him in that pleasure. The precocious child whose parents called him "Sunny" remained in the "cheering up" business until the end.

Despite repeated promises of retirement, and final toursespecially from Dame EdnaHumphries was performing until the final year of his life, launching a new act, Barry Humphries Weimar Cabaret, in London in 2018. At the conclusion of La Dame aux Gladiolias in 1979, Humphries as Dame Edna is asked if there were any regrets. The answer"Je ne regrette reeen"is followed by a loud chuckle and fade to black.

John Barry Humphries; born Melbourne, Australia 17 February 1934; Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) 1982; CBE 2007; married 1955 Brenda Wright (marriage dissolved 1957), 1959 RosalindTong (two daughters, marriage dissolved 1970), 1979 DianeMillstead (two sons, marriage dissolved 1989), 1990 Lizzie Spender; died Sydney, Australia 22 April 2023.

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First things first: What is the Met Gala?

Officially, it is the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute benefit, a black-tie extravaganza held the first Monday in May to raise money for the museums fashion wing.

Unofficially, it is the party of the year, the Oscars of the East Coast and an ATM for the Met (the last according to publicist Paul Wilmot). To understand the latter, consider that last years event raised $17.4 million while the Mets regular old Spring Gala raised just over $2.6 million.

How is that possible? What is the secret sauce?

Two words: Anna Wintour. The Vogue editor has been the galas chief mastermind since 1999 after first signing on in 1995, and she has turned the event from a run-of-the-mill charity gala into a mega-showcase for Vogues view of the world the ultimate celebrity-power cocktail of famous names from fashion, film, tech, politics, sports, and (now) social media. Every brand scratches every other brands back.We think of it as the Fashion X Games or the All-Star Game of Entrances.

When is it?This year, D-Day is also May Day: Monday, May 1. In theory, the timed arrivals each guest is allotted a slot start at 5:30pm usually with the evenings hosts, and end around 8pm, but you try telling Beyonc when to show up! The most famous generally arrive whenever they want, sometimes as late as 9:30pm.

Is there a theme?The party signals the opening of the Costume Institutes annual blockbuster show, and the party is usually themed to the exhibition. This years show is Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty, an homage to the imagination and creativity of Lagerfeld, the longtime designer of Chanel, Fendi and his own line, who died in 2019 and helped shape (pun intended) not just the modern wardrobe, but the modern fashion world.

Lagerfeld famously hated retrospectives I dont want to see all those old dresses, he once said (he said a lot of things and often seemed to revel in being politically incorrect) so this is conceived more as an exploration of his aesthetics.

What about a dress code?Guests have been instructed to surprise dress in honor of Karl. Expect to see a lot of Chanel, Fendi, and Lagerfeld, as well as Chlo, Balmain, and Patou (where Lagerfeld worked early in his career). Hopefully, that will mean a lot of vintage, which could make this the most sustainable Met Gala ever an exciting possibility.

Certainly, it will most likely be less costume-y than past themes. (For the Camp exhibition in 2019, Billy Porter, dressed as a golden phoenix, was carried in on a litter by six shirtless men; at Heavenly Bodies the year before, Rihanna came dressed as the pope.) Still, there may well be a lot of pseudo-Karls.

Lagerfeld, after all, was famous for his personal style, which latterly involved a white powdered ponytail, dark glasses, fingerless leather gloves, black jeans, Hilditch & Key high-collared white shirts, and black jackets. Also loads of Chrome Hearts jewelry. (Earlier in his career, before he lost a lot of weight and wrote a diet book, he favored fans; expect a lot of those, too.)

Plus, there may be a Choupette or two, given how attached Lagerfeld was to his white Birman cat, who had her own nanny and Instagram account. At the very least, expect some dresses in Choupette blue, a shade Lagerfeld introduced to his Chanel collections and named in honor of his pets eyes.

Who are the hosts?Joining Wintour as the galas co-chairs this year are Penlope Cruz, Michaela Coel, Roger Federer, and Dua Lipa. Like the party, the host combo is all about the mix: sports, music, movies. Cruz has been a Chanel ambassador since 2018. Wintour, a famous tennis fan and a regular player, is a close friend of Federer.

Dua Lipa and Michaela Coel both appeared on the cover of Vogue last year. Plus, they are cool. And Lipa once performed at the opening of a Chanel store in Shanghai.

Can I go?Dream on. Unlike other cultural fundraisers, like the Metropolitan Opera gala or the Frick Collection Young Fellows Ball, the Met Gala is invitation-only, and entry is not just about price which this year is $50,000 for one ticket, with tables beginning at $300,000 (prices have gone up since last year; inflation!).

Qualifications for inclusion have more to do with buzz and achievement (and beauty) the gospel according to Anna than money. Wintour has the final say over every invitation and attendee.

That means that even if you give tons of money to the museum, you wont necessarily qualify, and even if a company buys a table, it cannot choose everyone who will sit at that table. It must clear any guests with her and Vogue and pray for approval. This year, as in 2022, there are about 400 Chosen Ones, according to a spokesperson for the Costume Institute.

Whowillbe there?The guest list is guarded with the obsessive secrecy of the Illuminati members roll until the night itself, but rumor has it Brittney Griner may attend this year. Past and present Chanel ambassadors such as Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, Marion Cotillard, Kristen Stewart, Charlotte Casiraghi and Pharrell Williams may well show up.

How can I watch?Some stalwart fans line up on Fifth Avenue behind sidewalk barriers and security officers across from the (tented) museum steps, hoping to catch a glimpse of their favorite celebrities as they emerge from their black vans and town cars, but Vogue keeps a tight leash on the livestream (no Live From E! for the Met red carpet), and this is not a moment for the rabble. You get a better view from your small screen or computer.

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