The scene at the end with Taylor taking Clough back was like the end of a rom com. It was sweet but I couldn't help thinking it just emphasised why there are few decent roles for women: the men have them.

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As a family we are only really partial to one superhero (and his sidekicks) and that is Batman. Andy hit the nail on the head when he said it was because Batman is aspirational. You can be Batman or Robin or Batwoman but you can’t be Superman (he’s an alien for a start) or Spiderman or Wonder Woman.

I am quite interested in the X-Men which I think is because they all seem to struggle with their powers and some aren’t that super.

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I found The Danger Girl with Gloria Swanson a little incoherent. It was nevertheless quite amusing and the few stunts that it had were jaw-dropping: a car passed within inches of a horse (twice), a car stopped in front of a person just in time and a small bus burst into a restaurant full of diners. The female vocal trio Juice did a fabulous job of adding to my enjoyment. They were a lot of fun.

Ich möchte kein Mann sein aka I don’t want to be a man was a disappointingly superficial three-reeler by Ernst Lubitsch. I suppose if it hadn’t played with gender roles quite so explicitly then I might have not have been quite so dissatisfied. The three leading performers were very funny and some of the situations were amusing (the governess smoking, Ossi being measured for a suit and, of course, the kissing) bit overall it fell a bit flat. The music by Zoe Rahman accompanied by her drummer was marvellous but by my cloth ears it didn’t quite suit the film.

This clip is from another Ossi Oswalda/Ernst Lubitsch collaboration and it is a huge amount of fun with a great new score.

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Midnight

Claudette Colbert was a fabulous comedian who seemed to have chemistry with any male actor. Imagine how great she might have been if she had just relaxed a little regarding her profile. She also wore a lot of make-up. I can’t imagine her posing as a twelve year old devoid (ish) of face paint like Ginger Rogers did in The Major and the Minor.

I adore Mary Astor. I find her sympathetic no matter how unsympathetic she is supposed to be and Andy and I decided she was better looking than Claudette.

The first moment I realised I was going to like this film occured with Colbert’s first appearance looking tiny and gorgeous in a gold dress.

Unfortunately, the film dragged on too long and I certainly could have done without the divorce court scenes and Colbert saying she would submit to a spanking if only her husband said he loved her.

Rex O’Malley was hilarious as the gay friend. John Barrymore was fine as the husband despite his eyes wandering around looking for his lines. Don Ameche was an attractive leading man but he was never one of my favourites.

Favourite scenes: Colbert on the phone to her “daughter” and Colbert convincing the others that Ameche was insane: “what is the matter with you people!”

It’s a millipede!

It’s a whole load of caterpillars!

It’s a right profile!

The Major and the Minor

This film was a hit for me until it got to the military academy and its icky premise fell off the bar and into the pit of tasteless and disturbing. The first boy’s Maginot Line stuff was a route to rape and Kirby’s stupidity was annoying. If the film had explored that he was attracted to Ginger as her mother as well as the child then the film might have got away with an explanation that he loved what was inside her not just the exterior.

I do particularly like Ginger’s five or ten minutes as an eleven year old at the station and on the train particularly when she conceals a cigarette in her mouth.

High Art

This was excellent. I get that some people are dismayed that it’s a lesbian film in which an unhappy lesbian dies fuelling the dead lesbian cliché. However, the sexuality of the leading characters is no more important that the sexuality of the characters in some other arty film. I do wish it had had a happy ending despite the fact they were a poorly matched couple.

Patricia Clarkson wobbled along the line of amazing and a little bit silly which is a shame because she was close to stealing the film from Radha Mitchell and Ally Sheedy who really impressed me. The former also looked like Cillian Murphy so if they could play siblings soon that would be great.

And I liked that Syd wasn’t having any of her boyfriend’s criticism of her work and interests. I am fed up with the b/f or husband either being a boor about such matters or being portrayed as being right.

The most moving moment was Syd weeping as she confesses that she loves Lucy.

A Letter to Three Wives

Joseph Mankiewicz had a good 1949 and 1950 with this and All About Eve and judging by how I feel today, I think I prefer A Letter to Three Wives, it was that good. It starts off slowly but when Deborah says “great leveleller” I knew we were onto a winner.

The use of sound effects was a little cheesy but was also unusual and rather quirky which was cool.

Fabulous rude dialogue: “Sadie may not realize it, but whether or not she thinks she’s listening, she’s being penetrated.”

I liked George and Rita the most. George was witty and Kirk Douglas played him perfectly. Rita at first seemed best friend material until the fact that she was radio writer proved to be very important. George’s attitude was very modern (so modern, in fact, that I find it hard to imagine him in a film in these reactionary times) and, although I could have done without him shoving Rita into her seat, I did like what he said. He was less concerned that he wasn’t the main provider than he was with his wife selling out. He didn’t mind her earning more than him he just wanted her to be proud about how he was earning it and not kow-towing to commercialism.

Coincidentally, the narrators of this and All About Eve are called Addie and Addison.

Come Next Spring

I adored this when I was younger but hearing Ann Sheridan taking and getting the blame for men’s behaviour was not nice in my “oh my god, feminism has ruined everything for me” days.

Ann and Steve Cochran made a hot couple. I liked her a lot, she had so much oomph!

I like Steve in this but I have this feeling that he was totally sleazy in real life but I don’t know the details.

Night and the Fog

In general, I don’t like film noir not even noir set in post war, pre Festival of Britain London so I don’t know why I tried. The wrestling/fight scene was bloody unpleasant as was every single character except Gene and Hugh and they were boring.

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Will Ferrell is great too. My favourite bit is when he hears the narrator say “Little did he know that this simple seemingly innocuous act would result in his imminent death.” because I like how we both say “what?” in unison.

I like the contrast that in a novel, a happy ending is simply an “okay” compromise while that in a film of this nature, a happy ending is vital. Simply put, in a great book Harold has to die but in a great film he certainly cannot.
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After the magnificent Volver, Broken Embraces was a bit of a letdown. It was funny and full of great scenes but it was overlong and I’m also not convinced of Penelope Cruz’s acting ability. I do think Blanca Portillo is fabulous though. Her ageing was done exceptionally well but I’m afraid the younging of the man who played Ray X made him look like David Walliam’s Lou character from Little Britain.

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WARNING: THIS CONTAINS RAMBLING

I have been struggling to find a reason just why Angel just doesn’t engage me in the way that Buffy does. I have some idea: in “Apocalypse, Nowish”,  Angel, Gunn, Wesley and Lorne are trying to decipher the papers from Wolfram & Hart in order to prevent the Apocalypse meanwhile Cordelia and Fred are absent; they are not there as part of the team. OK, Cordelia has a good reason to be missing but Fred is in a café moping about the men in her life and what they did for her.

However, I don’t really mind that Cordelia and Fred aren’t there; it’s more that there aren’t any other women on the show who could be there. The men are in the majority. Of the seven main characters in S4, five are men and two are women.

The question that then popped into my head was, does everything I watch have to be about women? Erm, let’s examine the evidence by considering my favourite recent shows, Mad Men, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Battlestar Galactica.

Mad Men and BSG have more male cast members than female but women are central to how much I enjoy the series. Without Betty and Peggy and Joan and Starbuck and Six and D’Anna, I really wouldn’t be interested.

[I wonder how often I use the word “really”.]

I am bored by John and Derek in T:TSCC while I love Sarah and Cameron. I also liked Riley and Jesse (but only after I got used to Stephanie Jacobsen’s nasal voice and after they were linked together.

Okay, I definitely prefer to watch things with women in prominent and active roles and, if you are like me, I heartily recommend Torchwood: Children of Earth and, no, you don’t need to have seen the previous series (it didn’t stop Andy and I liking it).

Do you think that any men ever wonder at any point why the majority of things they watch are about men? “Oh, my favourite films are Apocalypse Now, The Shawshank Redemption and 12 Angry Men, just why do I like watching films about men all the time?” These two IMDb lists are interesting. No room on the male list for Amelie and To Kill a Mockingbird and no room on the female list for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Goodfellas. I feel a post coming on.

So I do know why I like Angel less than Buffy but it most certainly isn’t the only reason. Angel has clunky dialogue, poor line readings, and character dynamics that I don’t care about because I don’t believe in them due to their contrivance. This list makes me cringe:

* Wesley/Lilah
* Angel/Lilah
* Fred/Gunn
* Fred/Wesley
* Angel/Cordelia

while I only care about Angel/Connor and Cordelia/Connor (spot the connection).

On to the episode: Lilah as Fred was disturbing particularly since at first I thought she was supposed to be a schoolgirl. And having her hair done up in plaits caused Lilah’s hair to be tremendously bouffant later on.

Chocodiles are a real thing!

Satan was rather immobile except when he Springheel Jacked over the rooftops. I don’t dislike slow motion except when it is used in a hackneyed way or to serve no purpose except to prolong a scene and that’s exactly how it was used here.

A bright spot was Lilah (despite her relationship with Wesley) because she gets to call Fred a “Texas twig” (although part of me thinks that is mean to Amy Acker) and summarizes this audience member’s feelings when she says “so let’s say we skip the usual two-step, you threaten me, I threaten you, yadda, yadda, yawn”.

I’m not sure what to think of Cordelia and Connor having sex but I do know that in the Buffyverse sex can only lead to bad things happening. And, by bad, I mean worse than the Apocalypse.

Sigh. Why do I continue to watch it? The obvious reason is that I have watched Angel and Cordelia over seven seasons of Buffy and Angel and I do want to see the end of their journey. And the DVDs are cheap. And there are occasional crossovers with Buffy. And I like Cordelia Chase/Charisma Carpenter. And I like Lorne. And I like Vincent Kartheiser (even if I do have to check how to spell his surname every single time I type it). It isn’t hard or difficult to watch. Finally, I want to work out why Amy Acker can’t sell Fred to me but can do so with her portrayal of Dr Saunders in Dollhouse.

Why haven’t I seen the Oscar winning film There Will Be Blood? Because a film styled as a “story about family, greed, religion, and oil, centered around a turn-of-the-century prospector in the early days of the business” which has “ Less than two women in [it]” is simply not high on my list.

I don’t need the money. Not needing the money puts me in a magical place because I can say no. I like the idea of having good movies made or having no movies made.

Neil Gaiman on The Anansi Boys, black characters, white Hollywood and ethics.

Apparently Terence Stamp turned down the role of Montag because he thought he would be overshadowed by Julie Christie. Well, to this set of eyes and ears he needn’t have worried. I am at a loss to understand the attraction of Julie Christie. She doesn’t seem either talented or compelling or even that good looking.

Andy and I started thinking about who was good-looking in the sixties and seventies and we had a problem thinking of anybody. I suggested that Terence Stamp himself was beautiful and maybe that was the problem – the era was full of beautiful men like Stamp, Hemmings, Beatty and McDowell. The women couldn’t get a look in.

Fahrenheit 451 is almost a great film but it suffers from its limited locations (making it look like a TV programme), its disconnected continuity, its lacklustre lead and from any sense of urgency. It failed to make Montag’s wife at all interesting when I think in the book she was clearly depressed and repressed and not simply shallow.

I did like the locations they did find especially the Alton Estate and the SAFEGE Monorail.

The most powerful sequences were in the old woman’s house with the increasing tension between the Captain and Montag and the old woman’s suicide along with her murdered books.

The spoken opening titles were fabulous and Bernard Hermann was the Danny Elfman of his day: instantly recognisable.

Doll House Crowd Convicted, originally uploaded by moley75.

This is a poor screengrab of the final few seconds of Walk on the Wild Side (1962). The dollhouse in question is a brothel.

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