Why so much hype?

Expected more

Best movie of this year hands down!

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

TWIAT is about a has-been actor with the shakes who starts to rediscover his mojo as a director in Rome with the help of an Italian gamine (Dahlia Lavi), while everybody else around him manipulates and abuses him and one another. He's got to have been living in the world's most expensive sanatorium, by the way. He finally learns to rely on himself alone, not the people who have had their hooks in him - quite a contemporary message, if done in a very glib way, with a slight twist on 'Casablanca' at the end.There are two common threads with all the reviews here: George Hamilton's 'best' work was ahead of him substituting for Elvis in the Hank Williams story 'Your Cheatin' Heart', and while gorgeous to look at (eg Kirk's Maserati, the 60's Roman parties), and with performances that would go down a scream in pantomime/burlesque, the movie just drags - not too badly, but it does. (Though it picks up well with 9 minutes to go). The music is also very dated.The drag is because while the script expects us to invest our feelings in the post-suicidal Andrus (Douglas), it spends too much time and energy with the co-stars and their much worse neuroses and marriages from hell - and the sub-Fellini Italian traveloguery, while interesting of itself, is obtrusive. There's also a lot of casual violence against women which is not good.On the whole, it's worth watching if you don't have to pay for it and you'd like to see something halfway between Douglas Sirk and Martin Scorsese. Oh, and a bee-ootiful black Gibson archtop at about 1:39. Almost better than the Maserati ragtop, which ends up under a fountain.

Douglas does his best with what they've given him, and there is some really interesting chemistry between him and George Hamilton, but this film isn't even half baked. More than anything, it's like watching an extended Episode of an 80's soap-- Dynasty, Falcon Crest, take your pick. The motivations (other than sheer meanness) are unclear, the acting uneven (some characters are perpetually hysterical, others practically catatonic)the emotional pitch is fevered, the dialog ridiculous, and the scenery gets thoroughly chewed...To coin (oh all right, steal) a phrase, Two weeks in another town is a tale told by an idiot, full of the sound and the fury, signifying nothing.

What could be considered the sequel to the classic The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), Two Weeks in Another Town (1962) can be dismissed as trashy and overwrought but this movie has more than enough gusto, imagination and directorial brilliance than its poor rating on IMDb suggests. First, is the excellent performance by Kirk Douglas. His portrayal of a once famous star reduced to alcoholism and madness is very well observed. His physical frailty and stiffness of movement counter-act his past reputation as an overbearing egotistical bully. He cannot be violent any more because his body will not allow it.Another performance of note is by Edward G. Robinson. Showing what a remarkable actor he could be, the moment where he lies in bed complaining of the pain being "like a harpoon" is utterly convincing. Claire Trevor is superb as the annoying, bitchy, emotional crippled and paranoid wife. Trevor, as always, is nothing short of brilliant!!Vincente Minnelli is one of the greatest directors to ever work in Hollywood. With Two Weeks in Another Town his mark is made early with the use of a powerful musical score that on its own may be nothing remarkable but playing with the extraordinary images really brings the excitement and intensity of the movie to the foreground. An example of the use of music and image to perfectly compliment each other is during the final climax where Kirk Douglas, mad with jealously and drink, drives his car on a suicidal rampage. This sequence is pure cinema. The car is clearly shot in a studio with the camera moving around it like the eye of an insane god. The back projection of moving walls, roads and trees are used in expressionistic style and often the back projection is simply omitted altogether for smoke and blackness. The dramatic music and wild screams add to the insanity of the sequence. This is Vincente Minnelli effortlessly proving his command of the medium.Another bravura moment of direction is when Douglas walks into a hotel lift, only to have his nemesis, the beautiful and hedonistic Carlotta played with Cyd Charisse walk in after him. Any other director would have inserted a reaction shot of Kirk Douglas but Vincente Minnelli waits depriving the audience of the shot they expect to see until she arrives at her floor and walks out of the lift. Brilliant.Vincente Minnelli even tries to bend the fourth wall by having Kirk Douglas bemoan the acting profession and berate the audience that sits in the dark watching moving pictures. Technically Minnelli does not break the forth wall but the effect is that suddenly the audience has become a character in the story and for a moment is forced to think of themselves outside the context of the movie. Brilliant yet I assume the studio hated such radicalism.Yes, there are some faults in this movie and it is easy to dismiss this work as flashy and trashy but that is missing the point because there is more than enough pure film-making in this movie to satisfy any real movie fan.

Next to TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN, THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL looks like an all-around masterpiece of subtle drama. Both take a cynical look at the behind-the-scenes backstabbing in Hollywood.The story gets off to a slow start and then continues to move at a snail's pace, especially through the early scenes where we're introduced to characters like EDWARD G. ROBINSON and his shrewish wife CLAIRE TREVOR. Robinson seems to be playing a thinly disguised version of Darryl F. Zanuck and Trevor seems to think she has to overdo the tirades in scene after scene so she can win another supporting Oscar like the one she snared for KEY LARGO. The school of overacting seems to be rampant here.Irwin Shaw was obviously cynical about his own treatment by the Hollywood studios and has concocted a melodrama that is even more bitter about studio politics than THE BIG KNIFE or THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL.It's strange that Vincente Minnelli would be the director chosen to bring this story to life, but suffice it to say that it's not one of his best directorial achievements. KIRK DOUGLAS does a decent job in the central role but most of the performances are absurdly over-the-top in a film wherein the script itself is the main problem.Sorry, can't work up any enthusiasm for this one.