I Just Watched...

[Lorna]

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.

MGM'S THRILLING NEW SUSPENSE THRILLER: "SIX (OR SEVEN) WOMEN (EIGHT AT THE ABSOLUTE MOST)"
Would have made for a more accurate title, but more work for the marquee and promotional dept.

[Lorna]

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.

she also showed up on a couple of episodes of...you guessed it MURDER, SHE WROTE. , there's one- a season 10 or 11 CABOT COVE EPISODE called something like MURDER IN PAIRS (it's one of the DARKEST CABOT COVE EPS) and JENNIFER WARREN plays a NUTTY RELIGIOUS PARANOIC who is spying on her neighbors and it's surprising to see an actor investing so much in a later season of MsW when most everyone is on autopilot.

edit- MURDER BY TWOS is the episode.
ps- I really wish the later seasons of MSW were available somewhere at the moment. amazon just has 1-6
PSS- SERIOUSLY. WHERE THE **** IS KATE MIDDLETON YOU GUYS????????????? IM SORRY I KNOW IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING, BUT WHAT THE HELL YOU GUYS? IF SHE'S OKAY ENOUGH TO BE OUT SKIPPING LIKE A GAZELLE THROUGH A WINDSOR WHOLE FOODS, SHE CAN DO A 20 SECOND VIDEO!!!!!

[kingrat]

Since we've been posting lists of 1981 films in CinemaInternational's thread, I've had occasion to recall, from the deepest repressed memories, Tarzan the Ape Man (1981), starring Miles O'Keeffe. If you've seen the movie, and God bless you if you have, you may recall that he doesn't speak. According to acquaintances who said they had seen and heard him in the bars in New York, he had a high-pitched voice that seemed to contradict his manly physique.

If you check out his list of acting credits on imdb, the average ratings are hilariously low, with the exception of--wait for it, you know what it has to be--an episode of--what else????--MURDER SHE WROTE.

[Lorna]

Since we've been posting lists of 1981 films in CinemaInternational's thread, I've had occasion to recall, from the deepest repressed memories, Tarzan the Ape Man (1981), starring Miles O'Keeffe. If you've seen the movie, and God bless you if you have, you may recall that he doesn't speak. According to acquaintances who said they had seen and heard him in the bars in New York, he had a high-pitched voice that seemed to contradict his manly physique.

If you check out his list of acting credits on imdb, the average ratings are hilariously low, with the exception of--wait for it, you know what it has to be--an episode of--what else????--MURDER SHE WROTE.

aH YES, MURDER SHE WROTE- the BRIGHT SHINING ORB at the CENTRE OF OUR LITTLE UNIVERSE!!!!!

Just some notes on MILES O'KEEFE:



1. He actually plays a REALLY EFFECTIVE and DEADLY HANDSOME COUNT DRACULA in the 1988 film WAXWORK. That sequence is the arguable highlight of the film- won't post any clips here though because it's pretty graphic

2. one of the ATOR movies in which he appeared was spoofed on MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 and- as I recall it- he wrote the gang a letter to tell them how much he LOVED their treatment of the film and his performance and I think something of a friendship evolved- they were effusive in their praise of him as a person in THE AMAZING COLLOSSAL EPISODE GUIDE published in 1996. . ATOR: THE FLYING EAGLE has since been done by RIFFTRAX and it's pretty funny...and a remarkably bad film as well.

[Lorna]

i tried rewatching THIRTEEN WOMEN last night and couldn't make it much more than 30 minutes in, DAMN if it ain't a LOooooooNG 56 MINUTES.



It's so bad, and MYRNA LOY is SOOO BAD in it (although she LOOKS FABULOUS), and I will say, she seems to absolutely come alive when her character trash-talks IRENE DUNNE (who is apparently her least favorite of the "13" women, guess she borrowed her eyeliner and didn't give it back one time...?)

it just seems PERSONAL, I half expected MYRNA to start in with "she's really 38, you know; and did you see SHOWBOAT? What the HELL is the deal with her SINGING????"

MYRNA LOY'S character just doesn't scream "sorority girl" at any point in the film, nor does her blackballing from DELTA KAPPA EPSILON seem like enough of a motive for multiple, highly staged elaborate murders- almost all of which seem to hinge on incredible luck and coincidence.

(I know SHOWBOAT came out after THIRTEEN WOMEN, allow me the liberty for the joke.)

MYRNA LOY- to her credit- actually does a great job playing an even more awful ASIAN STEREOTYPE in THE MASK OF FU MANCHU- can't recall if that came before or after THIRTEEN WOMEN.

FROM IMDB:
There were only eleven actresses in the movie, not thirteen. Scenes involving the remaining two, Phyllis Fraser and Betty Furness, ended up on the cutting room floor. Several other roles also were telescoped in the editing process when the film was shortened from its original 73 minutes to 59 minutes for theatrical release.-

HOW GREAT WOULD IT HAVE BEEN TO SEE A SEQUENCE WHERE BETTY FURNESS IS KILLED BY HER NEW WESTINGHOUSE WASHER AND DRYER SET??????

[Hibi]

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.

MGM'S THRILLING NEW SUSPENSE THRILLER: "SIX (OR SEVEN) WOMEN (EIGHT AT THE ABSOLUTE MOST)"
Would have made for a more accurate title, but more work for the marquee and promotional dept.

LMREO!!!!!!!!!!!! I checked out a library copy of the book some time ago, but still haven't got around to reading it.

[Hibi]

i tried rewatching THIRTEEN WOMEN last night and couldn't make it much more than 30 minutes in, DAMN if it ain't a LOooooooNG 56 MINUTES.



It's so bad, and MYRNA LOY is SOOO BAD in it (although she LOOKS FABULOUS), and I will say, she seems to absolutely come alive when her character trash-talks IRENE DUNNE (who is apparently her least favorite of the "13" women, guess she borrowed her eyeliner and didn't give it back one time...?)

it just seems PERSONAL, I half expected MYRNA to start in with "she's really 38, you know; and did you see SHOWBOAT? What the HELL is the deal with her SINGING????"

MYRNA LOY'S character just doesn't scream "sorority girl" at any point in the film, nor does her blackballing from DELTA KAPPA EPSILON seem like enough of a motive for multiple, highly staged elaborate murders- almost all of which seem to hinge on incredible luck and coincidence.

(I know SHOWBOAT came out after THIRTEEN WOMEN, allow me the liberty for the joke.)

MYRNA LOY- to her credit- actually does a great job playing an even more awful ASIAN STEREOTYPE in THE MASK OF FU MANCHU- can't recall if that came before or after THIRTEEN WOMEN.

FROM IMDB:
There were only eleven actresses in the movie, not thirteen. Scenes involving the remaining two, Phyllis Fraser and Betty Furness, ended up on the cutting room floor. Several other roles also were telescoped in the editing process when the film was shortened from its original 73 minutes to 59 minutes for theatrical release.-

HOW GREAT WOULD IT HAVE BEEN TO SEE A SEQUENCE WHERE BETTY FURNESS IS KILLED BY HER NEW WESTINGHOUSE WASHER AND DRYER SET??????

LOL! I guess Myrna saved the best for last. I'm sure the book went into great detail about what went on in their school days (plus a lot more) The film could've made a statement about racial prejudice, but it never developed that theme focusing on the melodrama. The choppy editing accentuates this. I haven't seen the film in a long time, now I want to see it again! One of the few films where Ricardo Cortez is the good guy.

I think IMDB is being generous with the amount of victims in the film. I don't remember THAT many!

[Hibi]

Since we've been posting lists of 1981 films in CinemaInternational's thread, I've had occasion to recall, from the deepest repressed memories, Tarzan the Ape Man (1981), starring Miles O'Keeffe. If you've seen the movie, and God bless you if you have, you may recall that he doesn't speak. According to acquaintances who said they had seen and heard him in the bars in New York, he had a high-pitched voice that seemed to contradict his manly physique.

If you check out his list of acting credits on imdb, the average ratings are hilariously low, with the exception of--wait for it, you know what it has to be--an episode of--what else????--MURDER SHE WROTE.

aH YES, MURDER SHE WROTE- the BRIGHT SHINING ORB at the CENTRE OF OUR LITTLE UNIVERSE!!!!!

Just some notes on MILES O'KEEFE:



1. He actually plays a REALLY EFFECTIVE and DEADLY HANDSOME COUNT DRACULA in the 1988 film WAXWORK. That sequence is the arguable highlight of the film- won't post any clips here though because it's pretty graphic

2. one of the ATOR movies in which he appeared was spoofed on MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 and- as I recall it- he wrote the gang a letter to tell them how much he LOVED their treatment of the film and his performance and I think something of a friendship evolved- they were effusive in their praise of him as a person in THE AMAZING COLLOSSAL EPISODE GUIDE published in 1996. . ATOR: THE FLYING EAGLE has since been done by RIFFTRAX and it's pretty funny...and a remarkably bad film as well.

It seems like half of Hollywood (on their way up or down) starred in a MSW episode!! Angela got a lot of people work (LOL).

[Lorna]

It seems like half of Hollywood (on their way up or down) starred in a MSW episode!! Angela got a lot of people work (LOL).
[/quote]

mostly down, but the occasional CLOONEY or COURTNEY COX shows up.

I THINK that's the chief reason I love MURDER, SHE WROTE- now that I am older and know the backstories and work and career trajectories (or lack thereof) of many of the guest stars- I can sort of imagine the "backstory" of every episode.

[CinemaInternational]

Since we've been posting lists of 1981 films in CinemaInternational's thread, I've had occasion to recall, from the deepest repressed memories, Tarzan the Ape Man (1981), starring Miles O'Keeffe. If you've seen the movie, and God bless you if you have, you may recall that he doesn't speak. According to acquaintances who said they had seen and heard him in the bars in New York, he had a high-pitched voice that seemed to contradict his manly physique.

If you check out his list of acting credits on imdb, the average ratings are hilariously low, with the exception of--wait for it, you know what it has to be--an episode of--what else????--MURDER SHE WROTE.

I have been fortunately been spared the spectacle of Tarzan, the Ape Man with Bo Derek, but the film is legendarily horrid. I recall Leonard Maltin's movie guide candidly admitting that it was so bad that it nearly forced the editors of the book to create a rating lower than BOMB. As a matter of bleak record, when the film showed up on TCM a couple of months ago, it stayed in the cable company's on demand section for a whole month.....


I loooked up the episode of Murder She Wrote that O'Keefe was in.... that episode was something.... Season 9's "The Sound of Murder" where Jessica investigates a death at a music recording studio where the dead body turns up in the middle of shooting a music video. It's one of the few episodes of the show that my father hated..... And the music video in the episode is the epitome of cheesiness; but then again that was to be expected because for some reason, they decided to hire the choreographer whose very bad dance designs helped to make the otherwise surprisingly strong Cop Rock (alright some of the lyrics were bad, but the show was well-written and acted) into a TV laughing stock for the ages in 1990.

[CinemaInternational]

*sighs*

Every now and then, an avid moviegoer goes on a journey they do not wish to go, but feel as though they have to fulfill anyway. In the last few days, I decided to wrap up some loose ends and watch some films that were up for Acting Oscars that I hadn't seen. Three were because I just hadn't had access to them before, but the others were due to my trying to avoid them for one reason or another, one of the biggest of which was re-entering *shudders all over* the 2000s. Yes, most of my Academy related blind spots are from 2000 onward, and I dealt with a few of those. The feeling after watching some of these films is that they are the visual equivalent of rusty razor blades, but I digress.... Anyway, brief recaps.....


Give 'Em Hell, Harry (1975) --- this is a photographed version of James Whitmore's one man show playing harry Truman. He's fully committed to the part, and does a decent job, but the script material itself is underwhelming, feeling more like Truman filtered through a stand-up comedy act.....

Reuben Reuben (1983) -- crisp comedy-drama stars Tom Conti as a boozy, womanizing poet who lurches from one event to another and ultimately falls for Kelly McGillis. The two leads are wonderful, and the script is both classy and pleasingly tart (it was written by one of the brothers who wrote Casablanca), but the gallows-humor conclusion is very odd.....

Dark Eyes (1987) -- foreign-language offering is a juxtaposition of several Chekhov stories starring Marcello Mastroianni. It looks great, it is at times touching, but there isn't any real narrative cohesion.....

Boys Don't Cry (1999) -- grim offering of the events leading up to the murder of a transgender individual (Hillary Swank) in 1993. The film is stricken, glum all the way through, even before the gory conclusion with dank photography, mumbled dialogue, and characters which are always held at a distance. It's hard to get involved in this.

Requiem for a Dream (2000) -- Another drug addiction is absolute hell film, more graphic than most. Ellen Burstyn gives a tremendous performance as a woman who loses her sanity after getting hooked on diet pills, but the side of the plot with Jared Leto and Jennifer Connelly looks like a retread of Panic in Needle Park. The incessant hopped-up quality of the visuals gets to be irritating.

Traffic (2000) -- more drugs here. Episodic film tries to follow three different plotlines involving drug cops, a supplier, and the family of an addict. It does not coalesce and the blurry, often discolored photography makes it had to connect to nearly all of it. Michael Douglas gives a good performance though, and I was happy to see Amy Irving again.

Shadow of the Vampire (2000) -- Lengthy opening and closing credits want to help to disguise the fact that the film proper only runs 85 minutes. The setup i intriguing: what if the star of the shocking 1922 horror film Nosferatu was an actual vampire, who between takes kept munching away on unfortunates around the film's set. As it stands, the film is a bit slow, but the visual design is impressive, Willem Dafoe is chilling as the villain, and John Malkovich gives a committed performance as the obsessed director FW Murnau.

Quills (2000) -- I have come to believe that between this and Marat/Sade, that any film with the Marquis De Sade in a big part is an automatic no from me. This is utterly repellant in every way and truly sickening. A big letdown from gifted director Phillip Kaufman.

Before night Falls (2000) -- the life story of a gay Cuban poet (played wonderfully by Javier Bardem) is told in a slightly confusing way, switching between languages, times, and and areas, but despite overlength, it is still an arresting, engrossing film, very well made.

Sexy Beast (2000/2001) -- grimy crime saga is short (88 minutes), but impenetrable. Good cast does what they can with slithery circumstances.....

Tropic Thunder (2008) -- extremely raunchy comedy involving a hapless Hollywood production filming a ridiculous war film in Asia, when suddenly they find themselves put upon by real-life danger. The film scores some points for some good digs in at egotistical actors, but I'm not fully comfortable with the material here, its more funny peculiar than funny ha-ha.

A Single Man (2009) -- Somber drama based on a Christopher Isherwood book finds a gay college professor circa 1962 (played extremely well by Colin Firth) on the last day of his life, having lost the will to live following the death of his longtime companion eight months earlier. The film follows his work, memories, and encounters with an old friend (Julianne Moore),a male gigolo (platonic here), and a bisexual student (Nicholas Hoult, and slightly disconcerting to see him nude only 7 years after his charming childhood turn in About a Boy). The film is intelligently written and well-acted across the board, but it is more than slightly disconcerting that everyone in this tale of depression, male or female, looks like a photogenic fashion model, maybe to be expected since director Tom Fords is a fashion designer. (It's as though the character of Betsy Faye Sharon from Soapdish was the casting director)

[nakanosunplaza]

Dark Eyes (1987) is a fantastic film I have seen it when it was released,have not seen it since,will try to watch it again,it won many prizes and Mastroianni is great in it.

[txfilmfan]

Menus-Palisirs -- Les Troisgros A four hour documentary by Frederick Wiseman about a legendary family dynasty in haute cuisine and later, nouvelle cuisine, concentrating mostly on their Michelin 3-starred property Le Bois Sans Feuilles, in a transformed rural home near Lyon.

It is a detailed look at how restaurants in this category source their ingredients, plan their menus, prepare the food, stage it and cater to their guests. The film uses only diegetic sound - no narration and no music score, so it enhances the "you are there" sensation. It's a bit daunting at 4 hours, but absorbing, as you rarely get this level of access to back of the house operations like this. My understanding, however, is that the owners often allow their clients as they (or the translator) call their customers, to tour the kitchen. And it is an amazing kitchen with a very large staff who know their clients well.

It's a glimpse into a world I'll never visit - I prefer simpler (and frankly, cheaper) meals, and the intricacies of the wine world are lost on me - but it was nice to tour virtually. I had to laugh, though, when an entire table of 4 guests simultaneously brought out their phones to take the obligatory photos of their food.

Mostly in French, with open subtitles. Ran theatrically in the autumn of 2023, but is now being screened on many PBS stations around the country.

[Lorna]

I came across a real obscurity on AMAZON PRIME, "A GREEN JOURNEY" aka THE LOVE SHE SOUGHT.



it appears to be a TV MOVIE from 1990, we all know I love ANGIE, but I also love DENHOLM ELLIOT, so I gave it a watch and found myself pretty into it, even though there are issues.


ANGELA LANSBURY plays a deeply committed, stern, SPINSTER-b****-GODDESS MIDWESTERN CATHOLIC SCHOOL TEACHER (without a whit of accent and NO PRODUCT IN HER HAIR!!!!)- very much the sort of role EDNA MAE OLIVER or MARIE DRESSLER or HELEN WESTLEY would have done for RKO/MGM back in 1933. She takes in a pregnant teen played by CYNTHIA NIXON (!!!!!!)- also without a hint of accent, but looking very charming and pretty good in her part. The film at this point seems like it is going to be episodic rather like ANNE OF GREEN GABLES, but no- we leap ahead four years and LANSBURY is on her way to IRELAND on a CATHOLIC SCHOOL TRIP- while there, she plans on meeting up with a LONG TIME PEN PAL PLAYED WONDERFULLY by DENHOLM ELLIOT in the strange fleeting moments of screen time he gets (i DON'T wanna spoil anything, but his character has a secret and is something of a queer (in the classic sense of the term) duck, ELLIOT is of course perfect for the part.) The real "romantic lead" by default becomes ROBERT PROSKY (also without a Midwestern accent) who costars as THE WORLD'S CHILLEST CATHOLIC BISHOP.

(SERIOUSLY, he gives "COOL POPE" a run for his money, it's...weird.)

The movie is clearly a rushed affair- in better hands and with a better script, something interesting could have happened, and while it was filmed partly (and cheaply) in the UNITED STATES (I think BURBANK stands in for MINNESOTA), it was also filmed on location IN IRELAND and I would like at this point to say that I have been to IRELAND and it is ONE OF THE LOVELIEST, IF NOT THE LOVELIEST PLACE I HAVE EVER SEEN.

You would not know it from this movie, it's GENUINELY IRELAND, i can tell, but it's like the LOCATION SCOUT was a MANIC DEPRESSIVE- they film in some of the most KUBRICKIAN and HIDEOUS LOCATIONS IN THIS AND I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY.

AGAIN, this was obviously a rushed affair and it was helmed by JOSEPH SARGENT- three years after JAWS THE REVENGE- so he was no stranger to rushed affairs.

the end credits to this thing are SO CHEAP.

LANSBURY does get TWO BIG EMOTIONAL SCENES, which I know was the point of her doing TV MOVIES (I have a strong suspicion that WORD CAME DOWN FROM ON HIGH over at CBS that JESSICA FLETCHER was NOT ALLOWED to EMOTE on MSW- it must'vde been confining for a performer of LANSBURY'S talent and range and even though she ACES both her BIG CRYING SCENES, they are not worked into the plot organically AT ALL and they stand out as more FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION than anything else.

it's still an interesting hour and a half, and it's on AMAZON PRIME and for some weird reason there were NO COMMERCIALS!!!!

[CinemaInternational]

More dispatches from the Oscar battle lines of the *groan* 2000s.

21 Grams (2003)-- I approached this with severe hesitation, knowing full well that I never liked a film made by the director of this film (although one worked in sections). My reservations proved to be justified. The director is 0 out of 4 still. Strong performances from Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, and Benicio Del Toro can only help so much to compensate for an awkwardly structured tale of misery with pathetically bad photography. There are some moments where the narrative works, but it never comes together as a whole.

Brokeback Mountain (2005) -- Well, I waited until the hype cloud was over, at least to some degree. Everyone basically knows the basic gist of the film, so talked about at the time it was, so suffice to say that the film is distinctly understated, with good acting, strong photography, and generally intelligent handling. It's no real surprise upon seeing this why TCM aired it in the last year or two, because this hearkens back to an earlier, deeper, more classical storytelling style than most of the other films of the gimmicky 2000s.

Hustle and Flow (2005) -- This one is certainly earthy. It's the saga of a pimp/drug dealer who yearns to leave behind crime and become a singer of hard-edged rap songs. Almost all of the female characters in this film are either prosititutes or strippers. So, this is uncomfortable in many ways, but the writing is more nuanced than expected and the performances from Terrence Howard, Taraji P. Henson, and Taryn Manning are remarkable.

A History of Violence (2005) -- Nihilistic neo-noir finds former gangster Viggo Mortensen refacing and returning to his violent past after spending decades as a diner owner in small-town Indiana. The film seemingly indicates, once a hitman, always a hitman. I gather this is much acclaimed, but the only thing that really clicked for me in the whole film was William Hurt's chilling, dynamic extended cameo as a brutal mob boss. Hurt only has six minutes, but he obliterates everything else onscreen.

The Lovely Bones (2009) -- I recall that this was a fiasco in 2009. It pretty much obliterated all the goodwill that director Peter Jackson had following the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It lost a lot of money. And yet, Stanley Tucci was up for supporting actor for playing a serial killer (even if his part gives him little to do outside of looking and acting creepy. His nomination should have been for Julie and Julia that year.) In actuality, the actors cannot be faulted for what went down: Saoirse Ronan is touching as a murder victim looking on from Purgatory on those she left behind, Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz are moving as her grieving parents, Susan Sarandon is her usual professional self. But this story is HORRIBLY structured, with the final 20 minutes so inanely put together, its a wonder who exactly thought that it would work. And then there is also the element of the film's depiction of Purgatory; nobody knows what the afterlife looks like, but surely it doesn't look like the arch, irritating, Microsoft-screensaver-like CGI-green-screen- fest shown in the film In fact, the CGI goes a long way to kill the film's chances. The movies lost a lot when they started relying on computer effects....

District 9 (2009) --- 2009 was a famously limp year for films, done in by the lingering effects of the 2007-2008 writer's strike. It was also the year that the Oscars expanded their Best Picture lineup for the first time since 1943. (I'm not exactly sure it has worked out, given that every year since then, there has been at least one mediocre to dreadful film up for the prize every year.) And as a result, this thing, one of the most Academy -unfriendly films ever given a top nod, was up for the prize. Its a sci-fi horror action social commentary from South Africa, with ugly outer space aliens being given the aparthaid treatment, and a government official succumbing, bit by bit, to the most grotesque onscreen disintegration since Jeff Goldblum in The Fly, learning empathy for the aliens' plight in the process. The film works for its type, but it just seems weird that the Academy went for something so far outside their wheelhouse.