I Just Watched...

[Lorna]

For the record, I liked THE WHALES OF AUGUST
But…
Had it ended with Lillian Gish pushing Bette Davis off of that cliff, I would have LOVED IT!!!!


(either in character or in real life, because as much as I love Bette, I’ve heard about how she acted on set, and she would’ve deserved it)

[kingrat]

Lorna, I wanted to agree with your earlier post that Steve Forrest is a good actor, even in inferior projects, which reminded me of the classic 1985 mini-series Hollywood Wives. If you have not seen this, beg, borrow, or steal a copy. I remember almost falling off the couch laughing at some of this. Based on a novel by Jackie Collins. The ultimate comment about Jackie Collins was made, in all seriousness, by a co-worker of mine who said that she didn't think Jackie Collins was as good a stylist as Jacqueline Susann.

Imagine, if you will:

--Steve Forrest as a fading film star. He gives a seriously good performance. His bored kleptomaniac Real Housewife of Beverly Hills wife is played by Candice Bergen, not yet the polished performer she would become in Murphy Brown, but no longer the girl in The Sand Pebbles who couldn't act her way out of a paper bag.
--Angie Dickinson as a power-hungry super agent. Whether this is based on Sue Mengers, I don't know.
--Stefanie Powers as a brilliant screenwriter who, like so many great writers, is named Montana. Or, as her director husband Anthony Hopkins calls her, "Moan-TAH-nah." Moan-TAH-nah doesn't know that hubby is having a fling with aging film star Gina Germaine, played by Suzanne Somers. Just imagine, Suzanne Somers as Margo Channing. Even more, imagine Anthony Hopkins being outacted by Suzanne Somers! His plummy voice and theatrical style are handicaps in this material. Hopkins must have been at a low point in his life and his career and his bank account--I mean, he's in this.
--Andrew Stevens provides some much-needed hunkaliciousness. I thought he might have a bigger career.
--His wife is played by Catherine Mary Stewart, who was in several projects around this time. She had started on Days of Our Lives.
--I see from imdb that Rod Steiger was in this. So were Joanna Cassidy and a bunch of other people.

It's great that Anthony Hopkins got his career back on track, but in the meantime you'll be on the edge of your seat, or falling off the couch, to see if he and Moan-TAH-nah can find their way back to happiness.

[Lorna]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[HoldenIsHere]

the classic 1985 mini-series Hollywood Wives. If you have not seen this, beg, borrow, or steal a copy. I remember almost falling off the couch laughing at some of this. Based on a novel by Jackie Collins. The ultimate comment about Jackie Collins was made, in all seriousness, by a co-worker of mine who said that she didn't think Jackie Collins was as good a stylist as Jacqueline Susann.


--Angie Dickinson as a power-hungry super agent. Whether this is based on Sue Mengers, I don't know.
--Stefanie Powers as a brilliant screenwriter who, like so many great writers, is named Montana. Or, as her director husband Anthony Hopkins calls her, "Moan-TAH-nah." Moan-TAH-nah doesn't know that hubby is having a fling with aging film star Gina Germaine, played by Suzanne Somers. Just imagine, Suzanne Somers as Margo Channing. Even more, imagine Anthony Hopkins being outacted by Suzanne Somers! His plummy voice and theatrical style are handicaps in this material. Hopkins must have been at a low point in his life and his career and his bank account--I mean, he's in this.
--Andrew Stevens provides some much-needed hunkaliciousness.

My grandmother had HOLLYWOOD WIVES on VHS --- one of the those two-tape packages!
I discovered it in her tape collection when I was staying over with her one weekend, popped it in the VCR and watched the entire thing!
Just what a 10-year-old gay Jewish kid needed to see at that moment in his life . . .

Andrew Stevens plays a dual role.

I see it's available on DVD now

[Lorna]

HELLOOOOO SPEEDO!!!!!

[kingrat]

Holden, thank you for posting the DVD cover with those tasteful, refined hairstyles. Of course Suzanne Somers is supposed to have Beyond the Valley of Murder She Hair hair.

And then there's the picture of Andrew Stevens. Thanks!!

[HoldenIsHere]

Suzanne Somers

as

Gina Germaine

"I play an anthropologist who gets captured by a band of pygmies."

[txfilmfan]

the classic 1985 mini-series Hollywood Wives. If you have not seen this, beg, borrow, or steal a copy. I remember almost falling off the couch laughing at some of this. Based on a novel by Jackie Collins. The ultimate comment about Jackie Collins was made, in all seriousness, by a co-worker of mine who said that she didn't think Jackie Collins was as good a stylist as Jacqueline Susann.


--Angie Dickinson as a power-hungry super agent. Whether this is based on Sue Mengers, I don't know.
--Stefanie Powers as a brilliant screenwriter who, like so many great writers, is named Montana. Or, as her director husband Anthony Hopkins calls her, "Moan-TAH-nah." Moan-TAH-nah doesn't know that hubby is having a fling with aging film star Gina Germaine, played by Suzanne Somers. Just imagine, Suzanne Somers as Margo Channing. Even more, imagine Anthony Hopkins being outacted by Suzanne Somers! His plummy voice and theatrical style are handicaps in this material. Hopkins must have been at a low point in his life and his career and his bank account--I mean, he's in this.
--Andrew Stevens provides some much-needed hunkaliciousness.

My grandmother had HOLLYWOOD WIVES on VHS --- one of the those two-tape packages!
I discovered it in her tape collection when I was staying over with her one weekend, popped it in the VCR and watched the entire thing!
Just what a 10-year-old gay Jewish kid needed to see at that moment in his life . . .

Andrew Stevens plays a dual role.

I see it's available on DVD now

Ms Sommers hairdo should be followed by one of these:

[CinemaInternational]

Anthony Hopkins ' career before The Silence of the Lambs is often inexplicable. He is a very talented actor, and at his best, there are few better actors around, but prior to playing Hannibal Lector, his career had a few films that should have helped to advance him (The Lion in Winter, The Elephant Man, The Bounty, 84 Charing Cross Road, and Magic, which touches the loyalty of his friend Richard Attenborough), but they didn't. He was much respected for his work on stage in this period, but the acclaim didn't seemingly make it to casting agents for films. Thus, too often, he found himself stranded in TV movies or caught in ventures that never had a shot, like the grim, sluggish Goldie Hawn film The Girl from Petrovka or the trite adultery saga A Change of Seasons, which probably was best known for Bo Derek bouncing nude in a hot tub repeatedly under the opening credits. The year before Lambs, he was stuck in the much-slated remake of The Desperate Hours, which was filled with other cast/crew members who had either fallen down the ladder (Mickey Rourke, director Michael Cimino, producer Dino De Laurentiis) or never fully made it up (Mimi Rogers, David Morse, Kelly Lynch).

So yes, Lambs was definitely a godsend for him, it made him a household name overnight, and helped to give him several years of juicy parts, and it brought his screen career into its own. (One could argue that right around the same time, Kathy Bates was another acclaimed stage performer who used a horror film to shoot her way to an Oscar and the A-list instantaneously, but unlike Hopkins, who did get some leading role opportunities, Bates' multimedia roles prior to Misery were largely limited to very brief, usually one-scene parts in films such as Taking Off, Straight Time, The Morning After, Men Don't Leave, and White Palace or one-off guest spots on TV shows, such as The Love Boat, Cagney and Lacey, LA Law, and China Beach, so her sudden success truly came out of nowhere.)

[Swithin]

The Young Offenders (2016)

I just watched this entertaining Irish film, which is alternately hilarious and sad. Two 15-year-old lower-working-class boys (Conor and Jock) have difficult lives in single-parent homes. Jock lives with his abusive, alcoholic father; Conor lives with his mother, who had him when she was 16. Although she does try, she calls him a retard too often, which upsets him.

Conor works with his mother in a fishmonger's market; Jock just steals stuff, especially bicycles. The town (Cork) is filled with crazy characters, include a nut job named Billy, and Sergeant Healy, a cop obsessed with bicycle theft.

When the news reports that a cocaine-trafficking boat has capsized near the coast, Jock and Conor are determined to find a bale and make a fortune. Jock steals bicycles and the two friends begin a bizarre road trip to the coast. (Evidently the cocaine shipwreck is based on a true news story.)

The actors are great, though the two leads seem older than 15.

The film spun off a multi-season television series with the same cast, which I am looking forward to watching.

[CinemaInternational]

I will say that one comment that I will always recall in relation to the offerings of the late Jackie Collins came from her own sister, Joan Collins.

Jackie had written two potboilers in the late 70s with the intention of turning them into movies that her sister could star in and receive a career lift from. They were called The Stud and The Bïtch. Joan's comment on the latter book/film' s name was: "I never liked that title...." (And even worse, it also happened to have a title song to go with it).


As for Jacqueline Susann, I never read her books, but I know the films, and Valley of the Dolls is a real trash classic, overwrought, catty, unintentionally hilarious, sordid, and absolutely delightful. Neither of the other films made from her books could match its entertainment value as The Love Machine, which had the dishy potential, was chilled by a a horrible physical abuse scene (although Dyan Cannon is great fun in the film), and Once is Not Enough was played seriously and low-key by everyone....except for Brenda Vaccaro, who made every moment count in her role inspired by Cosmopolitan magazine's longtime editor Helen Gurley Brown. She gave it the full guilty pleasure special, and stole the whole show. Some of her diologue though, oh boy it was rough. I remember there was a scene where her character's friend (played by Deborah Raffin) admitted that the man she was seeing was having troubles with impotence, and Vaccaro's response was to say the unforgettable line "You mean to tell me that his dingle is as limp as spaghetti?" . You just can't forget a line like that, no matter how much one would want to....

Harold Robbins was another author of similar ilk. Where Love Has Gone (1964) is the height of that school, a campfest filled with memorable histrionics from Susan Hayward and Bette Davis. Like Valley of the Dolls, it is nearly irresistible.

One of the other Robbins adaptations for the screen though, 1970's The Adventurers, was notorious from the first day it opened. Pauline Kael didn't just dislike it, she took it to be one of the most morally corrupt films she ever witnessed, due to its recurring scenes of revolutionary torture and brutality. It wasn't quite that bad (indeed Leigh Taylor-Young was very poignant and touching in one of the supporting roles), but it wasn't really of the guilty pleasure variety, unless you wished to see Olivia De Havilland in a bedroom scene or a fashion show with a light-up disco floor ...

Then there was also Sidney Shelton. He had once been a scriptwiter in the classic era and had even won an Oscar before turning to more salacious topics later in his career. 1979's Bloodline is a slightly awkward film, with a morally repugnant subplot involving deadly snuff films that doesn't even have any ties to the main action, but its better than its reputation due to Audrey Hepburn giving the main character part her typical all. If only because of her, it's not bad. 1977's The Other Side of Midnight though, that is just simply a sea of torpor. The leading characters were not charismatic at all, and the whole deadly affair dragged on for 165 minutes, only enlivened by decent photography and a game supporting turn from pre-stardom (but post-Rocky Horror) Susan Sarandon.

[Lorna]

It's not my intent to be controversial but I am curious to hear opinion...

This morning, I started watching THE LAST METRO- a TRUFFAUT FILM set in WWII that sounds interesting- but I could only make it about 20 minutes in before turning it off and that is for one reason and one reason only:

GERARD DEPARDIEU- WHO IS AN UTTERLY LOATHSOME HUMAN BEING in real life- playing something of a KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOR was a bridge too far.

his literal crimes are well-documented and admitted on his part and I am not going to tolerate any apologists for him (there's one poster here who seems to make it their life's mission to defend every public figure regardless of whether they are clearly guilty or not, and DEPARDIEU gave an interview in 1978 (TWO YEARS BEFORE "THE LAST METRO") where he said some HORRENDOUS things that I'm not gonna reprint here [mistranslation my ASS), but suffice it to say, he should have never been hired again.) (and he is STILL AWFUL- accepting money and asylum from PUTIN after leaving FRANCE due to pending sex crime charges,, disparaging UKRAINE (until recently) and having been accused of about 2 dozen assaults by women I believe.

Roll your eyes at me if you must for not drawing a line between ART and REAL LIFE, but I really don't care how good this film is- I am not watching it and it's a DAMNED SHAME that the makers IN 1980 couldn't commit to the principles of not hiring an admitted gang rapist in their little film about artists having the courage to stand up to FASCISM.

(I was a much nicer person before 2016)

(EDIT- actually that's not true, but I wasn't AS UNPLEASANT as I am now)

[Swithin]

It's not my intent to be controversial but I am curious to hear opinion...

This morning, I started watching THE LAST METRO- a TRUFFAUT FILM set in WWII that sounds interesting- but I could only make it about 20 minutes in before turning it off and that is for one reason and one reason only:

GERARD DEPARDIEU- WHO IS AN UTTERLY LOATHSOME HUMAN BEING in real life- playing something of a KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOR was a bridge too far.

his literal crimes are well-documented and admitted on his part and I am not going to tolerate any apologists for him (there's one poster here who seems to make it their life's mission to defend every public figure regardless of whether they are clearly guilty or not, and DEPARDIEU gave an interview in 1978 (TWO YEARS BEFORE "THE LAST METRO") where he said some HORRENDOUS things that I'm not gonna reprint here [mistranslation my ASS), but suffice it to say, he should have never been hired again.) (and he is STILL AWFUL- accepting money and asylum from PUTIN after leaving FRANCE due to pending sex crime charges,, disparaging UKRAINE (until recently) and having been accused of about 2 dozen assaults by women I believe.

Roll your eyes at me if you must for not drawing a line between ART and REAL LIFE, but I really don't care how good this film is- I am not watching it and it's a DAMNED SHAME that the makers IN 1980 couldn't commit to the principles of not hiring an admitted gang rapist in their little film about artists having the courage to stand up to FASCISM.

(I was a much nicer person before 2016)

(EDIT- actually that's not true, but I wasn't AS UNPLEASANT as I am now)

I guess I was fortunate in that any Deparadieu movies I've seen were pretty much when they were released, before his vileness became known, or at any rate before I'd heard about it. My favorite of his films was Going Places (1974). I share your concerns. There are actors whom it's difficult for me to appreciate their performances, although in most cases, I learned of their vilenesses after having seen the films (e.g. Walter Brennan).

[Lorna]

It's not my intent to be controversial but I am curious to hear opinion...

This morning, I started watching THE LAST METRO- a TRUFFAUT FILM set in WWII that sounds interesting- but I could only make it about 20 minutes in before turning it off and that is for one reason and one reason only:

GERARD DEPARDIEU- WHO IS AN UTTERLY LOATHSOME HUMAN BEING in real life- playing something of a KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOR was a bridge too far.

his literal crimes are well-documented and admitted on his part and I am not going to tolerate any apologists for him (there's one poster here who seems to make it their life's mission to defend every public figure regardless of whether they are clearly guilty or not, and DEPARDIEU gave an interview in 1978 (TWO YEARS BEFORE "THE LAST METRO") where he said some HORRENDOUS things that I'm not gonna reprint here [mistranslation my ASS), but suffice it to say, he should have never been hired again.) (and he is STILL AWFUL- accepting money and asylum from PUTIN after leaving FRANCE due to pending sex crime charges,, disparaging UKRAINE (until recently) and having been accused of about 2 dozen assaults by women I believe.

Roll your eyes at me if you must for not drawing a line between ART and REAL LIFE, but I really don't care how good this film is- I am not watching it and it's a DAMNED SHAME that the makers IN 1980 couldn't commit to the principles of not hiring an admitted gang rapist in their little film about artists having the courage to stand up to FASCISM.

(I was a much nicer person before 2016)

(EDIT- actually that's not true, but I wasn't AS UNPLEASANT as I am now)

I guess I was fortunate in that any Deparadieu movies I've seen were pretty much when they were released, before his vileness became known, or at any rate before I'd heard about it. My favorite of his films was Going Places (1974). I share your concerns. There are actors whom it's difficult for me to appreciate their performances, although in most cases, I learned of their vilenesses after having seen the films (e.g. Walter Brennan).

OH MY GOD I KNOW RIGHT?!?! B
WALTER BRENNAN was THE WORST IRL!!!
(Hardcore racist for those who don’t know)

And yet, knowing that actually makes me appreciate his villainous performance in “the Westerner” even more

[Lorna]

Oh, and just for the record, ITS FINE THAT TCM showed “the last Metro”, I am most certainly NOT advocating it be pulled or not shown, and if any of you want to watch it, or have watched it or to enjoy it – that’s fine (not that you need my approval )

I’m just expressing the fact that there’s no way in hell I can make it through more than half an hour of watching it and that is entirely because of DEPARDIEU