He made pool interesting.
He could do mean-spirited very effectively.
This film hasn’t been on TV for years but when it was I was terrified that one day I would end up like Joanne Woodward’s character.
In honour of Lindsay Lohan’s “coming out” (though I would dispute that for the past year or so she has been out - certainly out and about), I watched Freaky Friday and it was a real treat.
Jamie Lee Curtis is a lovely actress and so is Lindsay who was as endearing in this as she was in Mean Girls. This is better than the Jodie Foster version because I don’t remember that being nearly as funny as this one is. It also kept its “walk in another person’s shoes” message from being treacly particularly through some great performances from the entire cast.
My only caveat is I don’t like what Tess did to Stacey’s test.
Titan A.E.
A terrible waste of voice acting and some stunning animation. I don’t understand why the plot isn’t the most important thing for a film that can’t be improvised and so developed that way. To hear the directors talking on the commentary that they didn’t know how to plot Akima’s journey from jettison to slave ship so they didn’t bother is mind-boggling.
And that music…
“Just because you can argue better doesn’t mean you are right.” Lianna in Lianna (1983) written by John Sayles
Humphrey Bogart - a poster from a Karsh exhibition featuring this photograph used to hang on my wall
James Cagney - he is not like the others
Charles Boyer - he had the most beautiful deep set eyes and I find the manner of his death moving
Steve Cochran - I couldn’t find a photo to do him justice compared with his on-screen presence - I love him in Come Next Spring
Clark Gable - he is so handsome in this photo - he really was a stunner without a moustache
Cary Grant - at any age after he hit his thirties he was gorgeous
Paul Newman - at any age he is handsome but in profile he was unbelievable
Conrad Veidt - there was something commanding but at the same time soft about this man
This is probably my favourite photograph of her. I hope there is no need to explain why.
When I was a teenager I saw every English language film Ingrid Bergman made from Intermezzo to The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (with the exception of either Rage in Heaven or Adam Had Four Sons, I can’t remember which) and I have seen the majority of the films she made thereafter.
I had never seen even a glimpse of her pre-Hollywood Swedish or German films until I found clips on YouTube. I love the Internet at times like these when the kindness of strangers results in the sharing of rare things.
I chose the second clip of Die Vier Gesellen because it shows Ingrid making sandwiches which I guess is something she loved to do. I hope it wasn’t just the cleaning she liked: This excerpt from Isabella Rossellini’s memoir, Some of Me, is hilarious
Second to acting, Mother loved cleaning, which is not to say she loved even that above me. I’m sure she loved me more than cleaning, but what made her happiest was combining the two. We cleaned together.
She was beautiful. At times breathtakingly so. She was a little gawky and she was very tall (and naturally perfect to play The Small Woman). In the clips from Die Vier Gesellen, she is considerably taller than her female co-stars which is not reflected in this programme cover:
Great play is made of her lack of make-up in her US films and her naturalness. I think the difference between tweaked and left alone is startling in the following two images from the same period:
I recognise now that I had a huge crush on her when I was a teen. She was gorgeous and charming. What’s not to crush on?
I’m not sure about her acting ability although I am hypercritical about people who I like a lot and so tend to over-analyse their performances. However, she was mesmerizing in Casablanca and Notorious and I love her “little brown babies” turn in Murder on the Orient Express (not that it was Oscar worthy!). Many of her films I have long since forgotten the detail of them. What was Saratoga Trunk about? I know I have seen For Whom the Bell Tolls but I can’t remember anything at all about it. The Bells of St Mary’s made me feel queasy, I remember that. Gaslight is a glossy version of the superior British film. Spellbound is excellent while Notorious is a top-notch gripping Hitchcock. The US films she made immediately after her Rossellini hiatus are awful. She must be the only triple Oscar to not actually deserve any of them - I mean Anastasia… She wasn’t even nominated for Notorious which is quite probably her greatest performance. She was nominated for For Whom the Bell Tolls and not for Casablanca. Wev! Oscars mean squat.
She died on her 67th birthday after suffering for many years with breast cancer. I was very upset.
Hmm, glasses.
A woman who enjoyed life.
Oh my.
Judy Davis is one of my favourite actors and has been ever since My Brilliant Career. She exudes intelligence and poise.
Her best performances include A Passage to India, High Tide, Impromptu, Barton Fink and Life With Judy Garland.
This picture was taken outside court during a recent libel case so I guess she is under stress but I think she looks splendiferous.
Mamma Mia!
I went to see this film with my mum and I suspect that I’m not the only one to do so. The last film I went to see with my mum was Titanic and I suspect the audience in the cinema then was the same composition as this one: overwhelmingly female.
Mammia Mia! is not a good film and for the first twenty minutes or so I was frozen in my seat thinking “why am I here? why? why?” Then there was the exhilarating “Dancing Queen” which culminated with the cast dancing on the dock and I told myself to just let go. So I did and from then on it was an enjoyable film.
The ending made me sigh more than a little (not the very ending in all its campy glory which was fabulous) because I really dislike happy endings equals weddings. In this case it didn’t matter who got married it just equals happiness.
Christine Baranski was the highlight for me. I have liked her since she consistently stole the show from Cybill Shepherd and she was made to sing “Does Your Mother Know?” Meryl Streep was just great - she is one of the greats and certainly doesn’t lack humour. I must defend Pierce Brosnan’s voice. He can’t sing too well but he’ll never be as bad as Ewan “foghorn” McGregor.
The only feminist thing about this film is the fact it was directed, written, produced, edited and designed by women.
Spider-Man 3
Bloody hell. I appreciate this film was going for the humour but it missed by miles. The clues were in the secretary’s buzzing of JJ and in the comedy French maître d’ but the nadir was Peter “Saturday Night Fever” Parker and that awful, awful “Fever” dance scene.
The humour wasn’t the worst thing about it. There was also the coincidence strewn plot: without knowing Venom’s back story just how is the casual viewer supposed to know Eddie Block was a Catholic but even knowing that doesn’t explain what Spidey was doing in the church tower. There were too many villains, Peter and MJ’s relationship was painful and useless and the acting was abysmal (except Bryce Dallas Howard and Thomas Haden Church).
And it was interminable and it had a retcon and it was rubbish.
Mr Blandings Builds His Dream Home
Often comedies of stupid behaviour strain my own considerable good humour but this I loved. It helps when it is impeccably played by Cary Grant (surely the best re-actor ever), Myrna Loy (and her big nose) and Melvyn Douglas (who I feel I have neglected).
It is daft and the characters are really too stupid to be successful at anything but it made me smile and laugh throughout. It slipped in a bit of preachiness re housing near the end but I’ll forgive it as I will forgive Melvin Frank and Norman Panama for letting Mr B tell Mrs B to be quiet for doing something as daft as all the other things he had been doing throughout.
Crash
I saw this ages ago but I don’t have too much coherent to write about it. It was heavy-handed and not that clever. I resent Matt Dillon’s character doing heroic things as if it redeems his rape of Thandie Newton’s character (a repulsive and stomach churning scene). Is it stretching to make the comparison with a soldier who is as brave as anything in the field but who rapes women the next day? Does risking your life for another cancel out other morally repugnant behaviour? I don’t think so but I’m not great on really deep thoughts.
Not Matt but Ryan.
Kinky Boots
I was seduced by Chiwetel Ejiofor in this because for a long time he blinded me to how poor this film actually was. Why can’t the girlfriend/boyfriend/partner/spouse ever be supportive? How are we supposed to believe that this couple never talked to each other about major financial decisions? I’m not a writer but surely there is a better way of introducing tension than having our hero behave utterly abysmally towards the key to his and his factory’s success?
It started on a high with Simon dancing on the promenade and with two beautiful shots: the train whisking Charlie away and Lola’s red boots reflected in Charlie’s face as he lies on the pavement. The fact that this shot wasn’t repeated in the climax says it all.
The rest of the film was watchable but stupid. The final scenes in Milan were too contrived and the exuberance of the girls’ performance couldn’t quite overcome that. I thought Joe Edgerton looked like Albert Finney and Ejiofor was just absolutely fabulous.
Hellboy
I have a disappointing almost next to nothing to say about this – the “most underrated comic book adaptation” or, indeed the “best comic book adaptation” – which feels peculiar. It failed to engage me perhaps because the actors (with the exception of Ron Perlman and David Hyde Pierce’s voice) were bland and uninteresting and the story was, erm, the story was, sorry, I’ve forgotten it already. Finally, cgi fights are most of the time uninteresting: I watch the trailer for The Incredible Hulk and as the two cgi creations leap towards each other, I start snoring.
The Man Who Wasn’t There
Around about three quarters through this film I realised that when it ended I was guaranteed to think sfw? I was right. Dull, dull, dull and having Scarlett Johansson offer Ed a blow job when she had shown no signs of sexual precociousness pissed me off no end. The Coen brothers peaked a long time ago.
Stardust
What a gem. I bought the DVD on a whim (Play and their damn sales) and after half an hour we all agreed that we were enjoying this very much. I was very disappointed afterwards to read so much negativity about it.
Yes, the three witches are obsessed with their looks and the attainment of perpetual youth which is a stereotype. Yes, all the bad women are ugly which is another stereotype. Yes, our heroine is a beautiful blonde which is yet another stereotype. Yes, the heroine can only shine when her heart is not broken which means the witch can only be defeated through a man’s love. All these factors sound bad but take the last point – our hero is unable to beat the witch by any means except by the accident of giving his heart to the heroine.
The princes are so greedy and power-hungry that they all get themselves killed in their attempts to attain the throne. They don’t care at all about each other.
The hero as one commentator said in the comments of the Body Impolitic blog is a “thick as a brick” and has to be turned into a mouse (a funny looking mouse, mind you, ok, a rodent of some sort) before he realises that the woman whom he is trying to impress isn’t worthy. He spends a significant part of the finale cowering with his mother behind a cabinet (for so long that Adam started urging him to do something). When he does stand up to Lamia, he can only do under the protection of the snowdrop and he stills fails to beat her.
A lot of criticism is aimed at Claire Danes and while I suppose it does irk that she is an American keeping a Brit out of work - well that hardly happens the other way does it? Her character does moan a bit but she was tumbled from the sky, did hurt her leg and did get kidnapped by a lad that called her mother so I think she was justified in a bit of whinging.
Una is a clever character – she totally manages her own escape from captivity even though she has to wait eighteen years to do so.
Anyway, it is funny, exciting, intricately but lucidly plotted, has a great cast and I want to watch it again – right now - even though it’s not perfect, I am bored of clearly shallow women being the objects of desire – it reflects badly on women and men. I would have liked a twist in the bore that is primogeniture to see the first born child actually become monarch but since it is a fairy tale, I’ll let that slide.
More disturbing (and it does surprise me that few commentators have mentioned it) was the threat of rape to Yvaine from Captain Shakespeare. You can argue that she knew she was in no danger, the captain’s mate knew she was in no danger and quite probably the rest of the pirates knew she wasn’t in danger (which makes their macho posturing a little more distressing because a nod, a wink and a hurghhh to rape isn’t, oddly enough, manly) but we, the audience, didn’t know she was in no danger.
It has also been compared to The Princess Bride and, quite frankly, if someone wants to aim a gender gun at that, please do.
And finally, goats and chariots are funny:
Iron Man
I went to see this with raised expectations with endorsements like the best comic book film ever and how refreshing Pepper Potts was as a heroine. What I had forgotten was that Jon Favreau had given us the verging on atrocious Zathura and that when people said Pepper was a decent heroine they meant as long as you only compare her to Mary Jane in the Spidey films. Robert Downey Jr is always interesting and he made the film as watchable as it was. However, I felt beaten over the head with the message that arms weaponry sales are a bad thing because that seems kind of obvious.
Robin and Marian
I used to maintain that this was my favourite Audrey Hepburn film and that isn’t saying much – not much about the film anyway which is a mish-mash of broad comedic and broad dramatic elements as well as a touch of melancholy. Why were all the Merry Men Scottish? Just to match Sean’s accent? After all, we know that halfway through The Untouchables he gave up on the Irish one.
Walk the Line
This was on TV the other day so I watched it with Andy. I now have two more problems with it – his dad is too mean and June is too perfect. Reese is so damn lovable and June is too and that can’t be entirely true, can it? Walk the Line is a standard biopic with outstanding music.