chillyfillyinak

Tovarich! One of the only films I have not seen starring the great Claudette Colbert.

Thanks, I think. Science fiction? And I thought nothing could be worse than the slapstick course...

Gosh, I have been waiting for the announcement of the online film course for summer 2019. Where is it? (Don't disappoint me!).

Musical biopics, Sondheim musicals, Rogers and Hart musicals, Bing Crosby, Disney live action musicals,...the possibilities are endless and endlessly entertaining.

Well, before "Mama Mia," "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" was my least favorite movie musical. Afterwards, you guessed it; "Mama Mia."

Pardon me if I am distracted by the fabulous Omar Sharif. I wish we were analyzing his exciting seduction song "You Are Woman I Am Man." As it is I wonder why the great William Wyler staged the scene with Sharif in it at all; I always feel a bit uncomfortable when one character is singing to another character who gets to stand around watching the performance, with just a reaction shot here and there interrupting a big solo. After all what can Sharif do in this scene but just observe Streisand from afar or in reaction shots, trying hard not to move so as not upstage her? 1.How might Streis

A couple of comments on the Daily Dose notes. First, Cukor was called a woman's director because that was code to signal others that he was gay, not that he was better at working with women than men. Second, Cukor was not fired as the first director of GWTW because he was a woman's director. Selznick knew Cukor well as they had worked together quite a few times before and were friends. Selznick knew that Cukor was gay and hired him anyway. The reason Cukor was fired was because he had trouble with the pace and timing of the direction on that particular film. If you watch some of the early scen

Meredith Willson called "The Music Man" a Valentine to Iowa, and "An Iowan's attempt to pay tribute to his home state." He revealed all of the rivalries, small mindedness, pettiness, meddling, and family interconnectedness of small town, midwestern life in the early part of the last century. It is clear Willson remembered all of his childhood lovingly. This is a very different musical concept from "Victor/Victoria in which Julie Andrews asks: "So, I'm a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman?" The gender bending concept also contains a lead gay male character portrayed by P

Just received an email "announcement" from Dr Edwards, however, there was no "announcement" contained in the email. Can any of my fellow film critics enlighten me? It would be nice to know what he is trying to communicate to his students. Thanks.

Arthur Laurents, who wrote the book for the original Broadway production of "Gypsy" said of the film, "...it was one of the worst movies ever made. Rosalind Russell in black-and-white shoes is all I remember. " According to Samantha Ellis, Laurents wasn't even sure he wanted to write the book for "Gypsy:" "Arthur Laurents wasn't sure - he was, he thought, "too grand for any of that trash." What changed Laurents' mind was a girl at a cocktail party. "Everybody was getting smashed," he said later. 'We all got to talking about our first loves, and one girl said, 'My first lover was Gypsy Rose L

This is an interesting modern take on AAIP. Irrespective of that, anyone who can work Lucy into film criticism of AAIP deserves recognition.

Minnelli's view of life, whether that life is in St Louis (as in "Meet Me In..." 1944, Technicolor), NYC (The Clock, 1945, B&W), the suburbs (Father of the Bride, 1950, B&W) or Paris (AAIP, 1951, Technicolor) was a painterly aspect. Each scene in his films is akin to a genre painting. As stated in a previous essay during this course Minnelli paid meticulous attention to set design, lighting, costumes and shot composition. All of his careful construction of a scene equally inhabits Spencer Tracy's bursting cutaway sequence in FOTB, and the fantasy ballet in AAIP. The problem with A

Gosh. I must have seen this scene two dozen times since I first viewed the film in a high school course on the history of cinema. It is never old or boring. I always get sucked right in to the multi faceted satire of the film. The song and dance reflect the slapstick of the silent era from which Kelly and O'Connor are emerging to the sound era in which the studios thought that their stars had to have weirdly cultured imitations of upper class speech. (Listen to Joan Crawford in some of her early sound films, the audience is challenged to divine from what country she hails). While Jean Hagen st

Agreed. You named two my favorite Day films in which she didn't sing in the context of the movie, but would watch the film over and over again ("Teacher's Pet" (1958) and "Midnight lace" (1960) - I guess I just like "Doris being Doris!"

Doris Day is a favorite of mine, but I always avoided this film because it is a poor man's Annie Oakley. Day's voice is lovely, and her appearance is beautiful as well - she looks great in trousers. It is amusing that Howard Keel thought Day would have been a better Oakley than Betty Hutton. In an interview with Robert Osborne I remember Hutton stating that when she replaced the fired Judy Garland on the Oakley film, the entire cast resented her and was unpleasant about Garland's termination and Hutton's casting in the lead role. I wonder if Keel would have accepted anyone as Garland's replace