I Just Watched...

[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.

[CinemaInternational]

Watched the next episode of the Feud miniseries, which again took some liberties. (There never was a documentary filmed about Capote's famous black and white ball, but I assume that this was invented for the sole purpose of getting an episode that is over 90% B&W [ and in the old academy ratio to boot] made in the 21st century in the first place)

This episode, in spite of making a few nods to Capote's future book and downfall, plays basically as an ornate standalone showing how powerful Capote was at his height, given that it doesn't really push the plot forward as the whole thing is shown in retrospect.

The faux documentary look take a while to warm to or for the actors to relax to. Tom Hollander, Diane Lane (who steals the show with her foul-mouthed, catty, peppery lines) and Chloë Sevigny seem most at ease with the format, while Naomi Watts is noticeably a little nervous. Demi Moore comes back for one brief scene, and frankly it is one of the best scenes she has ever had in her career, somewhat reminiscent of the Betty Buckley cameo in Another Woman.

Yet again, Calista Flockhart (about 2 minutes screentime) and Molly Ringwald (30 seconds tops) seem like afterthoughts to the writer of the episode.

Still, in spite of a few reservations, it is still interesting, so onward I will go with this miniseries.

[Bronxgirl48]

The Many Lives of Martha Stewart (CNN) was surprisingly even-handed toward America's Domestic Goddess, although I have always thought, even before her incarceration (karma!), that the woman was and still is an unscrupulous, greedy, shallow, narcissistic, high-functioning sociopath (as are many super-successful control freak entrepeneurs and politicians).

[Andree]

Where are the boring socialites of yesteryear!
Babe, Slim, the charming Lee.

I saw this on the DirecTV on screen guide a while back but forgot about it, then saw it
again last night and decided to watch it. Not bad, though Truman seems a bit on the
dull side as do his celebrity pals. I liked the Capote movies better. I did get a laugh
out of the diversity of the Black and White Ball--rich white businessmen, rich white
actors, rich white socialites, etc. Henry Fonda was one of the invitees. Gosh Truman,
I haven't had chicken hash since I was a boy in Nebraska. Thankfully, chicken hash
was just one of the items on the menu. Kind of entertaining in a days of the dinosaurs
way.

[Hibi]

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.

I loved Julie Adams on that show. I seem to remember she had a lot of longwinded dialogue on that show (she talked a lot) And she talked very fast, too.

[Allhallowsday]

Last night (real party above) was much tamer. Poor Ann Woodward ... embroidery a'la Capote?

[Cinemaspeak59]

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

I agree. And possibly Cary Grant's best performance.

[Cinemaspeak59]

Double Harness (1933) William Powell plays the heir to a shipping line, but business is a distant second to his playboy lifestyle. Ann Harding, conservative but not prudish, tries to reform his impulses. They get married thanks to some skullduggery on Harding’s part. But the marriage is strictly a business arrangement. If Powell isn’t happy, Harding will gladly divorce him, and not bother about alimony. What a deal, at least for Powell. Double Harness is a clash between old fashioned values like industriousness and responsibility, versus doing as one pleases. The movie resolves this dichotomy by showing they need not be in conflict at all.

[Swithin]

Double Harness (1933) William Powell plays the heir to a shipping line, but business is a distant second to his playboy lifestyle. Ann Harding, conservative but not prudish, tries to reform his impulses. They get married thanks to some skullduggery on Harding’s part. But the marriage is strictly a business arrangement. If Powell isn’t happy, Harding will gladly divorce him, and not bother about alimony. What a deal, at least for Powell. Double Harness is a clash between old fashioned values like industriousness and responsibility, versus doing as one pleases. The movie resolves this dichotomy by showing they need not be in conflict at all.

It's also a clash between the butler and the Chinese chef! I haven't seen the film for a while but I remember enjoying it very much.

[jamesjazzguitar]

Isn't Double Harness one of those "Lost RKO" titles that TCM rescued some years ago?

From Wiki:

This (Double Harness) is one of the "lost RKO films" owned by Merian C. Cooper and only re-released in April 2007 when Turner Classic Movies acquired the rights and showed all six films on TCM.

Cooper accused RKO of not paying him all the money contractually due for the films he produced in the 1930s. A settlement was reached in 1946, giving Cooper complete ownership of six RKO titles: