Some notes in relation to Hibi's comment to my post last week, as well as some others made then....
Thanks for the compliment. It comes from years and years of study of movies and television, from a very early age, from early elementary school days onward (maybe before...I was eagerly watching Oscar ceremonies by the age of 4). I wouldn't say it is complete knowledge since I've basically walled myself off from current pop culture, but I love to read about happenings in the business from the 20s through the 90s.
As for my father, it is simply tragic because it all happened so quickly. At this point last year, he was pretty close to normal aside from some bizarre tall tales and an obsession with shopping for furniture, but by this point, he can't keep his head up due to severe arthritis, he is seemingly in a fog, and he's having great difficulty walking. It's scary, and very depressing. I'm an only child, so it's only my mother and I attending to him. Since my mother still works to help pay for the medical bills, I'm with him for most of the day since he came home from a temporary stay at a nursing home. However, I was separated from him yesterday, today, and tomorrow, because he had to go for a two-day appointment to the Cleveland Clinic clear across the state, and I had to stay home and watch the house and take care of the dog, since there was nobody else who could do it. I hope his trip up there was productive and that they will find some way to help him, because he needs it desperately.
Yes, Kate Mulgrew's story is shocking to hear, and I was taken aback at the details when she finally opened up to People magazine about it several years ago (it was during the time she was on the Netflix series Orange is the New Black). No woman should be forced to give up a child and go through what she had to face back in the 1970s with Ryan's Hope. (There was also another story like this around the same time involving a very talented black TV actress named Lynne Moody [who was brilliant in her short run as an ill-fated character on Knots Landing], although in her case, her unwanted decision to put her baby up for adoption in the mid 1960s was due to extreme poverty, not because of ruthless executives. For Moody, it took her nearly 50 years to find her daughter. Ironically, the daughter loved a short-lived sitcom in the 70s called That's My Mama...in which her real mother actually co-starred in)
I'm also glad to see that you aren't a fan of Friends either. The enduring embrace that show has had from the public is baffling, because it is far from special . The two creators of that show seemingly borrowed heavily from a black sitcom called Living Single, but in the process missed that show's snap and sassy attitude. Maybe they should have taken notes on how to write a sitcom from Norman Lear who they briefly worked with in 1992. Lear had hired them as chief writers on a sitcom about a seriously dysfunctional political family called The Powers That Be which premiered in March of that year. The show had a great cast: John Forsythe, Holland Taylor, David Hyde Pierce, Valerie Mulhaffey, Robin Bartlett, Peter MacNicol, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, but NBC axed it just before Bill Clinton's inauguration in January 1993. Perhaps it was just as well; it made Pierce available to do his wonderful turn on Frasier.
And thank you, Lorna for the clip. I'm going to watch it the first chance I get (when I have a strong internet connection), because I definitely need a laugh about now.
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
I'm looking forward to it.
As for true crime shows, I've glanced at a few; some are better than others. I prefer the ones that don't dwell so much on the killers. As for Paula Zahn, I really don't know her, but I do recall that she's not well-liked here. The only thing I can say one way or the other about her is that I was horrified when I found out last year that back in 2010, (the episode is still on demand) she covered a murder case from the early Eighties that happened in this neck of the woods, only about 14 miles from where I am in a town with a population of less than 200. This is a very rural area (the whole county has only about 30,000 people), so it was beyond shocking to see the area's dirty laundry splashed across cable.
Susan Hayward always was a bit tough, moreso than most leading ladies , but I liked her. She's obviously though one of those stars who isn't quite as familiar to many these days because most of her films were done at 20th Century Fox, and they don't often appear on TCM. Still, she had plenty of career highlights: I Want to Live, I'd Climb the Highest Mountain, I'll Cry Tomorrow, The President's Lady, Ava, and the irresistible purplish melodrama Where Love has Gone, to say nothing of her hilarious part in Valley of the Dolls. I should probably see My Foolish Heart again....
And now some concerning more recent posts....
Yes, its hard to believe that Norma Crane is the same one in both Tea and Sympathy (and the later Penelope, where she is made up to look glamorous) and Fiddler on the Roof, but it should also be noted she was ill when she made Fiddler and passed two years later from cancer. In real life, she was a very good friend to Natalie Wood.
Tea and Sympathy is a very moving film, personally one of my favorite Vincente Minnelli films. Debrorah Kerr especially shines.
I saw Gosford Park illegally. *laughs* It's rated R and I snuck around and watched it alone at 16 without "the parent or adult guardian" . I recall being very impressed by it, especially by Maggie Smith (as usual), but Emily Watson and Kelly MacDonald also made big impressions. Helen Mirren is good in her big scene. The script was wonderful, and Fellowes would end up mining similar territory to fine effect in the series Downton Abbey and The Gilded Age (don't know if you saw this one, Lorna, since its on HBO, but I'm willing to give you a hookup to my Max account so you can watch it if you PM me. It's set in New York society in the 1880s, the sets and costumes are extraordinary, and Christine Baranski gets some really great lines, but the whole cast does well). It remains one of my favorite Altman films.
You mentioned Viola Davis' scene in Doubt. It was indeed electrifying, so much so that Meryl Streep seemed like a KO victim in the scene. No wonder it started her career in earnest. She's a very good actress, perhaps one of only five to seven who have come up in the last 15 years that is always worth watching.
Yes, I noticed that Amazon Prime added commercials, unless you are willing to fork over an additional $4 a month, thus doing the same thing Netflix and Hulu do. It stinks.
Commercials on a whole are irritating because not only do they interrupt a program, but they repeat so much. With many channels, I'm used to them though, so I normally don't quibble..... But there was a channel the other night that nearly drove me crazy with their commercials and one other thing too. It was a channel mostly meant for rock music called AxsTV, and on Saturday night, they aired Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), which is a beautiful, tender, sensitive, and poignant film. But every time they went to a commercial break, they started with an ear-splittingly shrill commecial filled with CGI, that was mood shattering to the film in question. In addition to that indignity, the film was slightly edited, and in a shocking move, one scene didn't just bleep out a few words, they covered them with the blaring loud sound of a DAMN FOGHORN. It felt like an insult to a wonderful film and to Kathleen Turner's extraordinary performance. (Also, watching it again made me realize how beautiful the film looks. I knew the musical score was touching, but the cinematography, production design, and costumes are all superb)
As for rewatching films.... I used to do it a lot with childhood films, and my father typically likes to watch his favorites over and over again (especially Moonstruck). But the vast majority of the films I have seen, I saw alone, and most I only saw once. It wasn't so much because some of them didn't deserve a second viewing (indeed, there are movies that are tremendously impressive that I only saw once, and wouldn't mind if I saw again, and there are also titles I should see again because I missed some things the first time around). It was more the desperate desire to try to go though as much of cinema history as I could. I went through a period where I was gunning through over 6 films a day. I wanted to see as many classics as I could, both the well-known ones and the ones that went by the wayside in the public's memory. I didn't want to leave anything out in studying the 20th century. (As opposed to recent films which I mostly shun). And that probably explains why I went so overkill. I've seen close to 7,800 films by the age of 29. It's an awful lot, and I really don't know what could possibly be left.