I apologize that I have not been posting much, been busy (a rarity) with actual work.
I watched THE WICKER MAN (1973) for the umpteenth time this weekend, it's gotten to be a spring ritual for me. I wrote about my love for it extensively on ye olde boards and I dunno if there is much new I can say...except that I never stop LOVING the scene where OFFICER HOWIE (a devout Christian) berates LORD SUMMERISLE for allowing the locals on his secluded island in THE HEBRIDES to FULLY INDULGE in WILD SUPERSTITIONS and LUDICROUS, "IMMORAL" PAGAN BELIEFS-
to wit, LORD SUMMERISLE responds, "Oh, not like your Jesus- who was born of a VIRGIN who was, in turn, IMPREGNATED BY A GHOST?"
Say what you will about his curious taste in HAIRPIECES, but HIS LORDSHIP can
1. WERK a CRAVAT
and
2. Read a B**** into stunned silence.
Last edited by Lorna on March 19th, 2024, 1:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
ALSO j'adore THIS epic late 60's TINA TURNER "PROUD MARY" WIG and ambitious turtleneck/caftan combo he werks in the penultimate scene, which (for me) always gives CHER, HAD SHE NEVER UNDERGONE EXTENSIVE PLASTIC SURGERY:
Lorna wrote: ↑March 19th, 2024, 1:25 pm
I apologize that I have not been posting much, been busy (a rarity) with actual work.
I watched THE WICKER MAN (1973) for the umpteenth time this weekend, it's gotten to be a spring ritual for me. I wrote about my love for it extensively on ye olde boards and I dunno if there is much new I can say...except that I never stop LOVING the scene where OFFICER HOWIE (a devout Christian) berates LORD SUMMERISLE for allowing the locals on his secluded island in THE HEBRIDES to FULLY INDULGE in WILD SUPERSTITIONS and LUDICROUS, "IMMORAL" PAGAN BELIEFS-
to wit, LORD SUMMERISLE responds, "Oh, not like your Jesus- who was born of a VIRGIN who was, in turn, IMPREGNATED BY A GHOST?"
Say what you will about his curious taste in HAIRPIECES, but HIS LORDSHIP can
1. WERK a CRAVAT
and
2. Read a B**** into stunned silence.
ICE CASTLES (1978)
directed by Donald Wrye
screenplay by Donald Wrye and Gary L. Baim
story by Gary L. Baim
I re-watched this one in January when it was on TCM as part of a line-up of ice-skating movies and just got around to composing my thoughts about the movie. It tells the story of a teen figure skating prodigy from a small town in the upper Midwest who is thrust into the national spotlight and is poised to become a world champion. Thrown into the mix, there’s a romantic triangle and a life-altering tragedy for the heroine to overcome. You’re right if you think this sounds like a weepy 1940s melodrama --- which means ICE CASTLES is schmaltzy, manipulative and a damn entertaining movie!
The young ice skater is played by Lynn-Holly Johnson, in her movie debut. Before being cast in ICE CASTLES, she was a performer in the traveling Ice Capades and before that competed nationally at the novice level. So basically, she’s a skater who can act, but her lack of experience works to her advantage in her portrayal of the innocent Lexie, and she doesn’t stand out as amateurish in her scenes with her more seasoned co-stars, including one two-time Tony winner. Her reactions in one scene in particular --- where Lexie is reprimanded for showing off with a triple axel jump--- seems particularly authentic, and I wondered if director Donald Wrye had used an approach like the one that William Wyler used with Audrey Hepburn to get the performance that he wanted for her “crying scene” in ROMAN HOLIDAY.
Sixteen-year-old Lexie is a natural talent with little formal training and has never ventured far from her hometown of Waverly, Iowa. Her widowed father (played by Tom Skerritt) wants to keep her “safe” in their small town (she’s become an emotional substitute for his dead wife), but Lexie is aware of her abilities and longs to shine in a larger sphere. The only coaching she’s gotten has been from a local woman named Beulah who won the regionals 25 years ago and who owns the local ice-skating rink/ bowling alley combo. (Do such things really exist???) Beulah is played by acclaimed stage actor Colleen Dewhurst, known for her interpretations of Eugene O’Neill’s characters and for her work as Marilla Cuthbert in the ANNE OF GREEN GABLES television movies. In her stage work, she was praised for her ability to make dialogue sound as if it was being spoken by her characters for the first time. On film, her expressive face conveys an array of emotions with the impression that the shifts are happening from some real place in real-time. Beulah is described as a town kook who wears funny clothes, but nothing that she wears looks odd to me. Maybe the way she dressed was unusual for a woman in small-town America in the late 1970s?
Against her father’s wishes, Lexie enters the regionals and heads to Cedar Rapids with Beulah’s blue old-school skating dress taken in a few sizes. In the dressing room, the other girls make fun of her old-fashioned outfit with the white collar and her long hair (they all sport Dorothy Hamill dos). In the competition she doesn’t even place (the politics of competitive skating are expounded on later in the movie), but her routine wows the audience, who protest the low scores the judges give her with boos and encourage her to return to the rink where they throw flowers to her in appreciation as the “winners” names are announced. She also catches the eye of a professional coach, who’s blown away by her talent and tracks her down to her hometown. The coach is played by Jennifer Warren, whose only work I’ve seen is her performance in ICE CASTLES. Her voice sounds so much like Jane Fonda’s that I wondered if they went to the same finishing school. The coach thinks Lexie can go all the way to the Big “O” (the Olympics) despite concerns that at 16 she’s much older than the optimal time to begin serious training. So, Lexie is whisked off to the Broadmoor World Arena where the younger girls make cracks about her being “over the hill.” Mostly though, they’re jealous of her talent and of all the attention she’s getting. Before long, she is the subject of a video sports essay chronicling her training, is performing on a Christmas TV special and is on the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine. Her sudden rise drives a wedge between her and her hometown boyfriend, whose attempt at establishing a hockey career has been much less successful.
Each time that I’ve watched the movie I expect the TV journalist character played by David Huffman to turn out to be a jerk. However, in fact, he does love Lexie. It is she who shuts him down when he tries to stay connected. Their relationship, of course, is problematic given that she is only 16 and he is an adult. While it’s never explicitly shown that they are sexually intimate, it is certainly strongly implied. Also, it is suggested that his past relationship with the Jennifer Warren character was much more than just a friendship. So, while the creepy element is somewhat mitigated by his genuine tenderness toward Lexie and by the fact that he is good-looking, we’re technically talking about statutory rape!
And then, there is that dreamboat phenomenon that is Robby Benson as Lexie’s hometown boyfriend. I read somewhere once that anyone who came of age in the late 1970s and early 1980s that didn’t have some kind of a crush on Robby Benson was an unquestionably straight male. I can believe that. Those eyes! That hair! That smile! That voice that defies description! That sweet vulnerability! He’s like a manga character come to life. From his first appearance in the opening credits driving into town, it’s clear why he received top billing. Could Lynn-Holly Johnson have imagined that she would get to make out with Robby Benson in her movie debut? His ”We forgot about the flowers” line at the end of the movie! SIGH . . .
The winter wonderland of the Minneapolis/St. Paul area (standing in for Waverly, Iowa) is beautifully captured by cinematographer Bill Butler, who died last year just two days before what would have been his 102nd birthday. Butler is probably best remembered for his work on JAWS and for completing the cinematography for ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’s NEST after the dismissal of Haskell Wexler. For the skating sequences in ICE CASTLES, Bill Butler uses long takes and fluid camera movement to present the reality of Lynn-Holly Johnson’s performance. Because he is filming a real skater, Butler’s camera can move from long shot to medium shot to close-up on Johnson’s skates in a single take. He also uses 360-degree tracking shots with Johnson also in motion, a technique that requires great coordination to pull off.
Marvin Hamlisch’s score is an eclectic mix of traditional orchestrations and disco-infused melodies (this was 1978 after all). The music used for the Christmas special has a part that sounds so much like a part from “Love Pains” that I expected to hear Yvonne Elliman singing “Midnight . . .” immediately following. Interestingly, Ms. Elliman’s recording of “Love Pains” for RSO was made the year after the release of ICE CASTLES. The piece of music that recurs throughout the movie (so much so that it might even be a motif) is the melody of “Through the Eyes of Love,” the Best Original Song Oscar-nominee with lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager, which is sung by Melissa Manchester during the opening credits. The Oscar winner that year was the now mostly forgotten “It Goes Like It Goes” from NORMA RAE. From today’s perspective the real head-scratcher is that the award wasn’t given to “Rainbow Connection” from THE MUPPET MOVIE. It’s not clear (at least not to me), if the “Through The Eyes Of Love” melody is meant to be the music played during Lexie’s skating routines or if it’s just the score heard by the movie’s audience. The arrangement played during her final performance includes an amazing trumpet solo like the one heard in Bill Conti’s opening theme for the TV series DYNASTY.
Oh yeah, there’s that “eye-conic” scene with Robby Benson on the phone wearing nothing but briefs . . .
Last night a 1979 episode of QUINCY M.E. with guest star NEVILLE BRAND... I think KEVIN KLINE makes an appearance early in his career with no lines in a "video" of a crazed PCP patient...! WILLIAM DANIELS also appears as a self-appointed advocate for causes more leftist than QUINCY himself!
I feel like I'm running out of films to see, but I was pleasantly surprised today by the 1997 mob movie Donnie Brasco, which might have a very profane script (the language level is off the charts), but it is a remarkably intelligent offering in a genre that was getting pretty hackneyed by this point in the 1990s. Al Pacino is quite good in it, as is Johnny Depp and the late Anne Heche. There is also a very interesting musical score that is nicely understated.
Jennifer Warren had her moment and then sort of vanished. She had a major role in NIGHT MOVES. She played the mother of a teenage model in BARE ESSENCE, which was briefly a TV series.
A concert pianist (Mary Astor) marries a man (George Brent) but it is annulled when it is revealed that she was still legally married to another, she becomes pregnant and he marries his true love (Bette Davis).
First time viewing for me, it was pretty good, worth seeing for the cast and the unusual story. It starts off seeming like a light hearted comedy, but soon descends into soap opera territory. Astor won a supporting actress Oscar for this, it was a showy performance but at first she seemed to be doing a Bette Davis imitation. It was talky and slow at the beginning, not getting into the plot until about 40 minutes in, further complicated by the subplot of Brent being missing in South America. Hattie McDaniel shows up to steal a few scenes as Davis's loyal maid.
I just watched Thirteen Women. Running at 59 minutes, this film was of interest to myself, being an Asian\White half-breed.
Myrna Loy was often a bad girl in pre-code films. She looked very sexy with that make-her-look-somewhat-Asian make-up. Note that there were only 11 gals featured in the film since editing cut out two of them. At least they Irene Dunne remained. The scenes with Loy and Dunne being my favorite.
jamesjazzguitar wrote: ↑March 20th, 2024, 8:02 pm
I just watched Thirteen Women... The scenes with Loy and Dunne being my favorite.
They'd be my reason to watch... but I missed it.
THIRTEEN WOMEN is sooooooooooooooo disappointing- but, like FREAKS and MARK OF THE VAMPIRE, it was pretty heavily edited (like 20 minutes of footage was cut in all three cases (i think) resulting in each being barely over an hour. even by PRECODE stadards (or lack thereof) one IMAGINES what they cut HAD TO HAVE BEEN pretty SPICY. but who knows?
A LOT OF FOOTAGE from THIRTEEN WOMEN hit the cutting room floor, whether it was any better than what got left in I DEARLY HOPE SO, but in all likelihood, it's gonna remain one of those enticing CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD HORROR MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN stories.
also, of course, there is the whole PEG ENTWHISTLE angle.
as i recall it, the book on which the film was based has a LESBIAN COUPLE included among the titular TITULAR THIRTEEN WOMEN.
jamesjazzguitar wrote: ↑March 20th, 2024, 8:02 pm
I just watched Thirteen Women... The scenes with Loy and Dunne being my favorite.
They'd be my reason to watch... but I missed it.
THIRTEEN WOMEN is sooooooooooooooo disappointing- but, like FREAKS and MARK OF THE VAMPIRE, it was pretty heavily edited (like 20 minutes of footage was cut in all three cases (i think) resulting in each being barely over an hour. even by PRECODE stadards (or lack thereof) one IMAGINES what they cut HAD TO HAVE BEEN pretty SPICY. but who knows?
A LOT OF FOOTAGE from THIRTEEN WOMEN hit the cutting room floor, whether it was any better than what got left in I DEARLY HOPE SO, but in all likelihood, it's gonna remain one of those enticing CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD HORROR MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN stories.
also, of course, there is the whole PEG ENTWHISTLE angle.
as i recall it, the book on which the film was based has a LESBIAN COUPLE included among the titular TITULAR THIRTEEN WOMEN.
The film wasn't that long to begin with. I don't understand WHY the need to cut it further. They should've changed the title to SIX (or SEVEN) WOMEN.
To follow up: Holden mentioned that Jennifer Warren had the same finishing school accent as Jane Fonda. Some critics have noted that although Jane Fonda's performance in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? is very good, her finishing school accent is wrong for the part. Later in her career, it's interesting to hear Fonda working to get a standard New York accent in California Suite. In that film and in Julia, where a very attractive Jane Fonda plays a not so attractive Lillian Hellman, you can see the actress at work trying to create a character very different from herself. Neither performance is completely successful, but you can see the wheels turning in a way you can't where Fonda is more exactly cast.
