Silver Screen in a Red Envelope: A Diary of Time Wasted

This film was remarkably amusing. The acting was certainly adequate to the task of a light comedy, and the scenes had a sort of fluffy chemistry that kept me laughing. Although this 50's flick makes a good attempt at equality between newlyweds Chantal (Sandra Dee) and Eugene (Bobby Darin), I still felt the ending erred on the side of the female, balanced only by the portrayal of vamp Tina (Stefanie Powers). If the film had been more about individuals, I'm not sure I would have worried so much about the battle of the sexes, but as it stood, the male and female characters seemed to line up into teams - the mother helping her daughter, and the fathers helping their son, each gender keeping secrets and using strategies against the other. The coloring and camera style smacked strongly of the fifties, and I felt a little as if I'd stepped into some thick fantasy in chiffon and chintz, but that seems to be a characteristic of the age/genre. As a relative feminist in some are...

   So I'm screening four different versions of Much Ado, and so far, these are my least favorites. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to finish the second one at all. The good bits of the first include that moment at the end when the two admit publicly that they're in love. The performance was nuanced and believable. My favorite version so far is still the BBC with Robert Lindsay. Unfortunately, it's only available on VHS from my local library. I'll keep the blog updated on my progress. I shall be screening a fourth filmed version which I've never yet seen. This should be interesting.

The humor caught my attention. So did the really great car, and the lovely scenery, which according to imdb.com, is really Italy. Not one of the filming locations included California or Toronto, which is nicely refreshing. Tragically, it's supposed to be about a genius writer, but the director/writer made the mistake of trying to be his character. The writing lacked brilliance or memorability. The example of a description of a sunset disappointed. Although the writing was certainly above average (if spelled correctly), it wasn't anything to write home about. It was the kind of thing you imagine being taught in an evening creative writing class at your local community college. Fortunately, the film didn't have the budget for a sex scene, so I escaped that piece of tedium. The whole film seemed so tragically blase! I feel truly sad for all that, because I loved the actors, and enjoyed the story very much, I just felt cheated, somehow, as if spotting the canvas texture u...

 This forgotten classic has a really amazing cast, including Donald O'Connor, Vera-Ellen, and George Sanders (a personal favorite), and if you can fast-forward through the long, boring, Irving Berlin ballads, it's a very fun movie. The dance numbers were great, I'm just not a fan of melodramatic love songs. Donald O'Connor is always brilliant. His dancing and singing are quite up to par in this film, and his character, while a little small for my taste, shows intelligence, taste, and slight self-deprecation, as well as some courage. Poor Cosmo, though (George Sanders) was forced to smoke a cigarette just to have something to do while Ethel Merman belts out another ballad. And I'm certain his voice was dubbed. I'm not going to bother to look that up. I love the guy anyway. Anyway, if you're a fan of musicals, you might give this one a try.

 This lovely remake caught many of the best aspects of the original (1936 Oscar nominee), and is difficult to judge purely on its own merits, especially as the original was such a favorite. David Niven truly does capture a very proper sophistication that strikes a true chord. He proves himself a man of unusually sound moral character, and it doesn't hurt his image that the character has a probably aristocratic family history. June Allyson plays the slightly mad younger daughter almost believably. She's possibly a little old for the role, but her body type and acting ability compensate. The actress who plays Cordelia, her sister (Martha Hyer), is very beautiful, and puts Ms. Allyson into something of an unpleasant relief. This film is older, and the colors have faded a little, making the whole thing seem a little drab. The contrasting scenes could have been used much better in a kind of visual symbolism, but they weren't. Sad. The set builders could really have done a ...

 I think this film contained some real quality, and developed profound imagery, but without really garnering the charisma necessary to make it shine. I want to blame the book, and ultimately the author, but since I haven't read it (sorry) I'll keep my finger pointed squarely at the film. I think the idea of a tiny city buried for two hundred years away from some nameless apocalypse sounds fascinating and full of Dickensian potential, but I don't think that the characters inside this city really shone. I think the people were much too realistic (and yet culturally disproportionate) for the idea. I felt a little moved by the idea of the ancient machinery with a hidden purpose. I felt the slightly religious overtones, and generally approved. It felt exciting to see that particular revelation, although some of the ironic tension caused by an early introduction of the countdown box could have been a little frustrating, or counter-productive. It felt a little like being shown...

 Isn't the cover truly atrocious? It's just as bad as the previous one. The movie itself startled me in a couple of different ways. Firstly, I could have sworn from reading the book as a child that the Indians were supposed to be from India, not Missouri. Well, I can live with that. We Americanized the story like we do everything else. Secondly, the music was bright and springy. I felt truly disturbed listening, fully expecting an ending with a cast all corpsed. I should have taken the era into account. A noir film may have ended with all ten party members dead, but would it have included Stanley Holloway? Perhaps. Thirdly, snow. I know, it's not a complete sentence. Eitherhow, I remember the book being set on a small island during a storm. I think that might have been a little more dramatic (and a little more cliched) than a dinner party on top of a snow-sparkling mountaintop. I remember one version, though, set in the middle of a desert. I think I enjoyed that one i...

 This movie, apparently a more positive remake of the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers ,  has several things in its favor for the general, female audience. Both Daniel Craig and Jeremy Northam give passable performances (acting in a film full of stepford-zombies is a tricky proposition for anyone), and Nicole Kidman gets in on the indomitable mother-love fun. Always a crowd-pleaser. Truthfully, though, the film resonated unpleasantness from the nasty brain-eating slasher previews to the distrust and misery in the final pseudo happy-ending scene. Nicole Kidman's acting was better than, say, the opening third of Australia , but worse than her playful Moulin Rouge . Boys may enjoy an early scene in which Kidman does a Meg Ryan/catwalk strut commando under her pyjamas. I found it a little nauseating. I suppose my socio-economic background calls for granny-panties. The strut is probably what irritated me. I don't like Meg Ryan either. A few nit-picky points include unrealist...

 Okay, I really do not enjoy watching Shirley Temple, in ANY of her incarnations (perky teen OR precocious tot), so I'm going to ignore her. The appeal of this film remains elusive through most of it. Ginger Rogers's acting seems wooden, or even stony until we realize that her portrayal was accurate, and her restraint admirable. She could easily have slipped into histrionics (the script did allow some few words) or flirtatiousness. When the audience realizes this, it also begins to realize the profound psychology of the whole film. The most memorable moment includes a frighteningly accurate portrayal of a panic attack brought on by acute PTSD. I was stunned and appalled by the callousness with which the minor characters treated Mary (Rogers). After the list of her own mental anguishes becomes completely revealed, it's no wonder she acts broken. The poor girl is stuck in a prison, more trauma, to compound her already damaged psyche. I pity the age that did not yet unders...

 . . . and DEATH!!! So, laughably, began this intriguing story. Although the film itself is deeply noir, and the soundtrack and camera styles all shout 40s, the style of its telling shifts distinctly into what some might name post-modernism. The tension begins, as the film, in medias res, followed by a series of long flashbacks from different perspectives brought on by various telephone conversations. Through these (very dime-novel) conversations and the revealing flashbacks, the audience slowly begins to understand the increasing tension until the final, seriously noir ending. The characters in the story, acted by Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster, are distinctly unlovable. They're protagonists without being either heroes, or anti-heroes. They have flash, glamour, and personality, but not anything larger or enlightened. Even the character actors in smaller parts struggle to make their characters anything more than just people doing their thing, which seems to ground the film ...