WHAT FILMS HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

[Sue Sue Applegate]

Cinemaven, I was thrilled by your Comparison/Contrast, and it seems as if you've finally mastered the rhetoric of the C/C.

Ah. "Excremental remake" of The Women--an apt sound byte with teeth!

Jackie, Esther was always "the big prey!"

[CineMaven]

Thanks Christy. Coming from a teacher and a movie buff and a snazzy writer yourself, I shall run with that compliment. Big prey...heh heh. I like that Wendy.

[JackFavell]

Re: Virginia Weidler in the closet - I betcha a million dollars that was a tacked on scene added after the filming was done - you notice the heartbreaking look she gives to her mom in the first part of the scene? I bet that's the original. It's actually quite moving. It pretty much finishes with Mary hugging her and saying something comforting, while she inwardly cries, if you know what I mean. It's an obvious ending to the scene. Then there's a cut to Mary and daughter getting ready to leave and little Virginia says she has to get her coat or some such thing. Then she goes into the closet. It's like it was shot by another director! It was really flat, filmed really oddly and didn't flow at all from the previous scene. It seemed clear to me this time through. Maybe I'm cutting Cukor some slack, but it just doesn't fit with the rest of the film AT ALL. I've never looked at the sequence closely before, but I am now thinking that some exec or Code enforcers said, "better show how divorce affects this poor little kid. Give Weidler a chance to cry." and then someone, maybe Cukor went back and edited that scene in. Maybe he made it so awful on purpose thinking they wouldn't use it? Ah, who knows? But it's a real stinker, that's for sure. Even Weidler looks like she can't work up much enthusiasm for it, not like the terrific bathtub scene with Crystal where she is wonderfully precocious and sharp.. like cheddar cheese.

It's tough to recast, because none of the young ones coming up seems to have much range, or at least they aren't showing it. They are all the same type, there's no difference between them that I can see. How come? How come there are no really great roles for young women lately? Oh wait....Jennifer Lawrence could do it, I'm quite sure, she's very Gladdie-like in Silver Linings Playbook.... emotionally all over the place. she has chutzpah.

[CineMaven]

Whoa! I think you've got something there, Wendy...the scene being tacked on. I hadn't thought of that but you, ma'am think like a movie mogul! I literally pushed the mute button on Virginnie's scene. But there were other times where she was almost like a real human child ( playing with Shearer's buttons while the adult was talking to her. ) And she was a pro standing toe-to-toe opposite the mighty Crawford. Cheddar to cheddar. ( Or as your dear boy said "Killer to killer." ) I watched Crawford a little more closely this time, at least until Reno and Goddard blazes onto the scene. I like the Sisterhood scene when Goddard talks turkey with Shearer in Reno. "Sometimes we even have to be a cutie..."

The opening scene with the long tracking shot, with cuts of woman to woman to woman to woman gave me chills...in a good way. It grabs you by your brassiere straps and pulls you in and doesn't let you go until it's all over. I loved throughout the movie that women might've just had a walk-through with one line ( "...and from now on you'll refer to him as 'that heel!'" )

As I said, this time, I watched Crawford just a little closer. And she was masterful! She has to work opposite Russell and work opposite Shearer, two different energies. She was maneuvering and navigating her way through it all, bobbin' and weavin'. I laughed, smirked really, at the end when Russell is let out of the closet ( wassssup with the "closet" theme? ) in the ladies room and when Russell comes tumbling out, check out the indictment: "You you shopgirl!!" Class. It's all about class. But I particularly relish the Crystal / Mary dressing room scene. Of course ev'ryone knows it by heart. Whereas Shearer ( who I love ) has some vestigial traces of silent screen acting gestures, which endear her to me, Crawford is down down down to earth. I even watched how she lit her cigarette and dropped the matches. "You noble wives and mothers bore the pants off me. You probably bore your husbands too." She totally won that round, but Shearer was game...punching all the way. It's a sublime scene.

I'm still feeling your Emma Stone suggestion.

[JackFavell]

It grabs you by your brassiere straps and pulls you in and doesn't let you go until it's all over.

Gosh, I love that! that's so funny! I also took particular notice of the walk-ons in the film, especially that one you mentioned. God that woman with the kid said that line like a pro! I hope she got something of a career from that one off. I always like the maids scene. I love the way the younger one relates (I love her voice and delivery) and the older one counters everything she says, so you get the underlying meanings in the fight between Stephen and Mary. Did you also notice Jeannette MacDonald's sis Blossom Rock (Marie Blake at the time) as one of the shopgirls after Crystal and Mary's face off? I;m going to have to watch it again just to look at the background cast - when I just looked it up at IMDB to make sure it was Marie Blake, I noted about 10 character actresses and silent film stars I had no idea were in the film, from Dorothy Sebastian and Betty Blythe, to Natalie Moorhead to Barbara Pepper to Dorothy Adams to Aileen Pringle... though I did notice Butterfly McQueen and Ruth Hussey and Theresa Harris, and of course, Mimi Olivera (I looked her up finally) that manicurist who's in so many movies - Bugs Bunny makes fun of her: "Monsters are such Innn-ter-est-ing people..."

Crawford definitely wins the battle, if not the war in that scene. And there is absolutely NO mistaking her meaning when she says, "If Stephen doesn't like something I wear, I take it off." She knew this was a role of a lifetime and she made the most of it. I bet she was a competitive person, and she knew she had to win against Shearer, even if "Mary" won at the end of the film. She positively sparkles with venom, earthy like you say, but man, you've got to hand it to her, she plays the hell out of that part.

[The Ingenue]

I loved throughout the movie that women might've just had a walk-through with one line ( "...and from now on you'll refer to him as 'that heel!'" )

God that woman with the kid said that line like a pro! I hope she got something of a career from that one off.

There wasn't very much more to her career. And, very sadly, there was little left of her life. She died in 1941. That was Peggy Shannon.

[JackFavell]

Oh what a shame!

[charliechaplinfan]

The kids are back at school, back to movie viewing.

Yesterday it was Boomerang, a Kazan directed court room drama starring Dana Andrews as a state attorney who doubts the guilt of the man he is to prosecute. It's based on a true life case of a priest who was gunned down on the street in front of many witnesses, Andrews gives a strong performance as the attorney especially in the later scenes, Arthur Kennedy as the accused is also well cast but making an early appearance in a Kazan film is Lee J Cobb as a weary detective.

Wendy I found the movie with Dana Andrews and Ida Lupino While the City Sleeps with a stella cast of Thomas Mitchell, Rhonda Fleming, Vincent Price, George Sanders and John Barrymore jnr who looks so spookily like his father it's untrue. The film contains a murder, the lipstick killer and a newsroom, Andrews is the TV anchor man who is also a top news hound, Pirce is the son who inherits the newspaper and turns all the other paper men against each other to try to gain the editorship. Ida has the best part, as the newswoman who's a bit jaded and is hand in glove with Sanders until he manoeuvres too far. Rhonda Fleming is tame as Andrews fiancee in comparison. Interestingly Andrews plays an successful alcoholic, a man woh is successful in his job but likes the sauce too well, like Lupino, I wonder how much his portrayal is based on life. It's a good movie albeit it's not about the murder as much as it's about the newsroom shenanigans.

[CineMaven]

Hi Alison, how's it going?

Wendy - I did notice those gals with the one-liners. I saw Mrs. Ziffel of "Green Acres" ( Barbara Pepper ) and I did see Jeanette MacDonald's sister - Blossom Rock. Remember her as Mama in "The Addams Family"? What was the name of the saleswoman that dealt with Mary? She had a lot of poise.

Ingenue - that's really sad about Peggy Shannon. Hollywood is soooooo full of tragic stories. And the even deeper tragedy is when they're forgotten.

[JackFavell]

Maven, I believe that saleswoman was Aileen Pringle, but I'm not sure, there are so many salesladies in this movie!

Alison, thanks for figuring out which movie was the one with Ida - I should have remembered it was the one with George Sanders. I just have trouble with those titles! I like both Boomerang! and While the City Sleeps... how can you not like a movie with that cast? Beyond a Reasonable Doubt is the one that let me down... I guess I expected more since it was Lang, and I think I'd just watched Secret Beyond the Door right before it and was blown away by it. Lang's later films with Dana are direct, straightforward crime dramas, and I guess I was expecting something more... Langian.

Where the Sidewalk Ends is another of those 4 word Dana films I get mixed up.... I think that one's Otto Preminger though. Or is it Elia Kazan? Oh the confusion!

[movieman1957]

The process of finding a good movie lately is kind of like my dating life in high school - sparse and painful.

Not giving up yet. (After all I did get married.)

[JackFavell]

Ha! We are into the summer season, when the best you are going to get is Avengers 16 or Hangover 12 or Despicable Me 92, or possibly an end of the world scenario starring Will Jaden Smith. The Oscars have come and gone and we ain't going to see anything interesting for a while.

[movieman1957]

I mean even old stuff from Netflix. I just haven't been having any luck. Some of the things you mentioned recently I've moved up in my queue.

I watched a mess last night called "In Old Arizona." Warner Baxter as "The Cisco Kid" made in 1929. YAWN! It may be the first talking western but being so early the requirements of sound killed any movement in it. Bad Mexican accents, terrible overacting (though Baxter won an Oscar,) and not much going on. They had the sound equipment so they decided t otalk you to death.

It's funny you mention "Hangover." My new church is meeting a new movie theater and we have to be out of the theater by about 11:00 so people can come in and watch "Hangover."

[Mr. Arkadin]

I mean even old stuff from Netflix. I just haven't been having any luck. Some of the things you mentioned recently I've moved up in my queue.

I watched a mess last night called "In Old Arizona." Warner Baxter as "The Cisco Kid" made in 1929. YAWN! It may be the first talking western but being so early the requirements of sound killed any movement in it. Bad Mexican accents, terrible overacting (though Baxter won an Oscar,) and not much going on. They had the sound equipment so they decided t otalk you to death.

It's funny you mention "Hangover." My new church is meeting a new movie theater and we have to be out of the theater by about 11:00 so people can come in and watch "Hangover."

Chris, check out The Decalogue (1988), it's a series of one hour films, each of which deals with one of the Ten Commandments. It's not an American film (Polish), but I think it would be right up your alley. As far as westerns go, if you haven't seen The Big Gundown (1966) yet, you're in for a treat. Not sure if Netflix has this, but I can help you if need be.

The Decalogue:

[youtube][/youtube]

The Big Gundown:

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