I Just Watched...

[Allhallowsday]

NOTORIOUS (1946) Haven't seen this at TCM in a long time. I think overall, HITCHCOCK's best film.

[Lorna]

!

the final film project of WILLIAM CAMERON MENZIES are interesting to say the least.

I think he did A LOT of acid before it got to be popular.

[Lorna]

i apologize for singling someone out in front of the class like this, but sometimes it just has to be done.

last night I watched the MURDER SHE WROTE season 3 episode DEAD MAN'S GOLD, one of the lesser CABOT COVE episodes, not because it features LESLIE NIELSON in his second MsW appearance as a possible paramour for JESSICA- but because there are some SERIOUS script issues and the cast is split right down the line between some verrrrrrrrry seasoned pros and some actors who, um, were not.

it also features what i think- after very careful consideration- THE WORST PERFORMANCE ever given in all 12 seasons of MsW, and I am well-aware of the work of WINGS HAUSER, LUCIE ARNAZ in the WEARING OF THE GREEN EPISODE, ELEANOR PARKER in the STAGE STRUCK episode, the repeated appearances of BILL MAHER and that one time they got a homeless guy off of skid row to play a detective in a season 11 episode.

sigh JULIA MONTGOMERY as the murder victim has a big drunk scene and- wow, it is something to behold.

I swear to God, after she delivers it, all the actors just have a 4 second silence that they left in the final cut, and you can CLEARLY see EVERYONE thinking, "Holy s***, she' sucks ON TOAST!""

it's like watching someone who has never drank or seen anyone drunk in real life- just THAT STUMBLEBUM who says "yoU'Re LaTE!" in LOONEY TOONS cartoons- have to play drunk on the spot after just being handed the script.

i bet you anything that after this, ANGELA LANSBURY went STRAIGHT TO HER TRAILER and wrote a long, heartfelt note to LOIS CHILES, apologizing to her for calling her THE WORST OF ACTRESS ALL TIME while making DEATH ON THE NILE, because GOD in his INFINITE CRUELTY has chosen to PUNISH HER by showing her just how VERY wrong she was.

also, she delivers her big scene while wearing A BUBBLEGUM PINK JUMPSUIT accessorized with A TORQUOISE WRAPAROUND BELT IN PLEATHER and (aaaaaaarrrrgh!!!!!!!!!!!!) A PAIR OF ****ING KITTEN HEELS.

Later on, when it is discovered that HER CHARACTER has been run over while walking on the highway late night, I had to wonder if just maybe KARL LAGERFELD was out on a MIDNIGHT DIET COKE RUN when he saw her and RAN HER DOWN IN THE NAME OF FASHION.



NOTE: This photo does not reflect the true HUBBA BUBBA color of the jumpsuit. seriously, she looks like SKYDIVER BARBIE.

PS- HER HAIR, while terrible, is THE LEAST terrible thing about her whole time on the show, so whatever on that.

[Lorna]

Ps- there are so many weird and odd things about the DEAD MANS GOLD episode that I left out.

Like I think, it’s the one time in “murder, she wrote” history where the killer’s motive is simply “I just didn’t like the b****.”

Spoiler

... which given her performance and everything- I kinda understand, but still. It’s a reach. Especially since one of the things that she did to provoke her killer into murdering her was to make fun of the fact that the killer (a woman) was always applying make-up. Seriously. I mean, are you telling me that you actually killed someone wearing a pink jumpsuit and kitten heels and THAT BELT in part because THEY criticized something about YOUR appearance and YOU took that personally? Gurl, get a grip.

[Lorna]

Also, I mean why even wear the belt begin with? Was she afraid the outfit was gonna fall off?

[Lorna]

She should be so lucky.

[CinemaInternational]

I have my own little Murder She Wrote story, but want to say first that Lois Chiles actually was invited on MSW as a guilty party in the season episode "The Return of Preston Giles", so I am not sure if Angela called her the worst actress of them all on the Nile set (although truth be stated, Chiles was much improved in minor roles in two 80s films: Sweet Liberty and Broadcast News)

And that is a flimsy motive in Dead Man's Gold (a weak episode, I agree), although I would argue another one with that motive was season 5's Alma Murder, where Kate Vernon's victim was so abhorrent, that even DINAH SHORE was trash talking her. The characters in that episode all seemed glad she was dead.


Want to say that if there is ever a Murder, She Wrote episodes where I begin to laugh, it is season 2's School for Scandal, in a scene where Jessica gets distinguished professor Polly Bergen to admit that she is the writer of some sexy potboilers, and agitated Bergen starts angrily spitting out and sometimes screaming (that is, if someone with Bergen's thick, deep, smoky voice was screaming) out her words in a display that quickly becomes campy.....

I am going to try to quote it as best as I can....

"Do you know how much I was paid for the Walt Whitman biography? Barely enough to pay off a secondhand car. And then I learned what those TRASH MERCHANTS were getting for their latest opuses. Sex. That's all that they want. Meanwhile, I was one of the PROPER PAUPERS in the literary community while HACKS WITH A THIRD-GRADE VOCABULARY raked in money. So I sat down and wrote the first one in six weeks. Not six years of my life, but SIX SILLY WEEKS!"

[Lorna]

"LEAVES OF GRASS, MY A**!!!!!!"

[Lorna]

I usually skip ALMA MURDER. Even though EG MARSHALL is EXCELLENT, DINAH SHORE gets on my nerves.
And also we're just supposed to ignore that the sorority is in THE MUNSTER'S HOUSE.

SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL is fun though, especially when the daughter rips off her fur coat and she's nude at a faculty party.

i forgot about LOIS CHILES being in THE RETURN OF PRESTON GILES, she's all right in that episode.

for the record, I have no idea if CHILES and LANSBURY got along on NILE or not (I know LANSBURY and OLIVIA HUSSEY became gooD friends)

however, there is the undeniable fact that LOIS CHILES is baaaaaaaaaaaaaaad in DEATH ON THE NILE. Read what PAULINE KAEL wrote about her. (don't repost it here, it's not very PC)

[Grumpytoad]

Came across a new (to me) actress a while back. Not only a looker, but her acting ability was significantly better than average. Intrigued, I then checked her filmography. Then went grocery shopping. Saw a frozen product there that had the same name as one of the actress's movies. That is how it got into one of my movie queues, even though it was not a of a genre that I normally would seek out. Finally got around to watching:

MYSTIC PIZZA (1988)

she snaps and dumps a load of shrimp (i think? maybe crabs?) into his convertible.

and then it turns out to be his sister.

!

CONCHATA FERRELL has been around forever. I remember seeing her in NETWORK as one of FAYE DUNAWAY'S assistants. she also appeared in the hilarious MURDER, SHE WROTE episode SOMETHING BORROWED, SOMEONE BLUE.

if you are into LILI TAYLOR, I have never seen DOGFIGHT (1991?) but I have read she is terrific in it. she also had a part in RANSOM (1996)- which some people took offense to because she worked largely in independent films and she was seen as "selling out>"

thanks also for the tip on the pizza, I myself am something of a connosseur of frozen pizza.


Not a run-of-the-mill romance picture.

Julia Roberts as a woman experienced with intimate relationships. More than anything, she wants her entire life to change.
Annabeth Gish plays the younger sister to Robert’s character. Future planned out, but then a distraction.
Lili Taylor as a friend and co-worker to the other two women. She and her significant other are at a crossroad and frustrated.

Also in the cast are Conchata Ferrell,

All three leads were wonderful. But would give the edge to Taylor. In a scene with the other ladies focused only on her, she ranted frustration, confusion, anger, optimism, and resignation. All twisted together at the same time. Cannot take your eyes from her kind of thing.

Very good movie-lousy frozen pizza.

what a lovely review. my sister rented this on VHS circa 1989 and I will always remember the sequence where one of the girls sees her boyfriend out with another woman at The Country Club and she snaps and dumps a load of shrimp (i think? maybe crabs?) into his convertible.

and then it turns out to be his sister.

!

CONCHATA FERRELL has been around forever. I remember seeing her in NETWORK as one of FAYE DUNAWAY'S assistants. she also appeared in the hilarious MURDER, SHE WROTE episode SOMETHING BORROWED, SOMEONE BLUE.



Glad you enjoyed my post. Car dumping sequence was fun!
Coincidently, Ferrell turn up on an episode of Night Court the day after I wrote the review. Tiny little part as a nurse taking care of Quon Le, Mac's wife.

[Grumpytoad]

Oh yes, I do remember Mystic Pizza (1988) very clearly, as I saw it quite a few times. The script was written by four different people: Amy Holden Jones (who wrote a provocative but very underrated film called Love Letters in 1983 that is easily Jamie Lee Curtis' finest hour), a pair of sisters whose names escape me right now (they wrote the Robert Downey Jr/Cybill Shepherd film Chances Are the following year) and Alfred Uhry, the Pulitzer Prize winning writer of Driving Miss Daisy. It is very well written, and yes, the performances are a wonderful bunch. Julia Roberts got the big career (and yes, she dumped a big bucket of fish chum on her boyfriend's car), but I lean toward Taylor and Gish as having the best parts here; they both should have had bigger careers (for Gish, this and 1986's Desert Bloom were her best, Taylor is terrific in Dogfight and in Household Saints, where her boyfriend in this film, Vincent D'Onofrio plays her father in that film [the film, briefly thought lost, is currently in theatrical rerelease in some major cities]. I've seen her in a few other films: Short Cuts, Arizona Dream {a certifiably insane film, but one that does offer good work from Jerry Lewis and Faye Dunaway}, Rudy, Pret-a-Porter, Pecker {John Waters in his most feel-good mode}, High Fidelity, and Starting Out in the Evening, but she didn't get enough screentime in them although she's good in all of them). And Conchata Farrell delivers as usual. It's a good film.

Murphy's Romance is also a charmer of a film, although I don't know why it

I saw The Golden Coach a few weeks ago, shortly after it recently aired on TCM, but it didn't leave the biggest impression outside of the florid colouring. I'm not certain if it was ever in 3-D, but it would be at the right point of cinema history if it was.....

Anyway.....

I've been learning into the foreign-language films quite intently the last few days. (That said, I have also seen a few English-language films recently too). This is largely due to a comment on another website last week, so I wanted to rectify the situation. There haven't been any that are outright bad, although a few left me a bit indifferent (forgive me while I commit cinephile sacrilege, but the steamy 2002 Adrian Lyne film Unfaithful has better, more nuanced writing than the 1960s Claude Chabrol film it is based on, La Femme Infidele). There have been four though that really impressed me...I

Leon Morin, Priest (1961) is an austere but striking film set in WWII about a young priest (Jean-Paul Belmondo) leading a woman (Emmanuelle Riva) spirtually, which goes well, until she develops an unrequited crush on him, which leads to a crisis of faith. It's all very internalized, theologically sound, and very absorbing.

Mamma Roma (1962) concerns a woman of the night (Anna Magnani) who tries unsuccessfully to save her son from the mean streets of Rome. This film is mostly noteworthy for Magnani's exceptional performance.

Two English Girls (1971) is a very moving experience. Its about a caddish young man who becomes obsessed by two sisters, and how it leads to heartbreak for all three of them. The film isn't quite perfect; I could have lived without two bedroom scenes and a shockingly frank scene concerning a sexual habit, but it is nearly ideal. Strong performances, sensitive writing, extremely fine direction by Truffaut, and a haunting score by Georges Delerue make this one of the strongest films of the early 1970s.

The Green Ray (1986) is a delicately handled film staged like a series of diary entries (the screen frequently cuts to writing listing a given date) concerning the summer vacation of a jittery, depressed, slightly neurotic young woman who quietly matures over the course of a lenghty summer vacation. It is truly charming, and while I have seen and liked other Eric Rohmer films before, this makes me want to check out some other ones.

For a foreign film, please consider Breathless from 1960.

[Lorna]

Glad you enjoyed my post. Car dumping sequence was fun!
Coincidently, Ferrell turn up on an episode of Night Court the day after I wrote the review. Tiny little part as a nurse taking care of Quon Le, Mac's wife.

THAT'S FUNNY, I was thinking of a scene between MAC and KWAN LI just yesterday morning....HER FAMILY comes to NEW YORK CITY from whatever Asian nation they were from (don't recall the specifics) and then expect to live with the two of them forever.

when MAC refuses, her family grab knives off the table and threaten to harm themselves from shame, to wit he remarks to his wife "those are BUTTER KNIVES, KWAN LI. What are they gonna do, SPREAD THEMSELVES TO DEATH?!"

[Lorna]

JUST SO IT DOESN'T SEEM LIKE I'M ALWAYS TRASH TALKING THE ACTING ON "MURDER SHE WROTE"-

Was watching the season 4 episode BENEDICT ARNOLD SLIPPED HERE (one of the best CABOT COVE eps) and sat up and really noticed just how good the acting in THE FOLLOWING SCENE IS, especially from JULIE ADAMS who has a looooong, complicated line of dialogue that she has to deliver and she absolutely nails it. and then BARBARA CASON comes in and starts SLICING UP THE FRUITCAKE.

[Lorna]

I'm really sorry that EMILY THE UNBALANCED, SHOE-STEALING DOMESTIC did not become a recurring character on MSW.
also love how she lightly brushes the duster over THE DUST CLOTH spread over the desk.