CinemaInternational

Don't really watch the modern side, though that's how I saw The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Across the Universe. For a while they were running the lovely 2013 film About Time, but not anymore.

It's been part of the cable package here for the last three years. They repeat clasics a lot, but there have been many Fox films that I've been able to see for the first time because of it. Plus occasionally they drop in a new title to savor. A Clifton Webb comedy is coming up in about two weeks that hasn't been on in the last three years.

The last film to go out with the Fox name on it was the horror film Underwater starring Kristen Stewart in January. It grossed $17 million.

i didn't see The Favorite.

Also Hayley Mills had already had a critical hit with Tiger Bay before being given the introducing credit on Pollyanna. Then there was also the sarcastic use of it on 2001's Ocean's Eleven remake where Julia Roberts got it at the height of her stardom.

This reminds me of that little delayed joke moment in 1988's Scrooged, when Robert Mitchum suggests adding things to programs that would draw the eyes of pets to TV screens, and late in the film it shows Mitchum's cats perched right next to the screen when there is a closeup of some mice.

Another introducing credit I recall: Christopher Walken on The Anderson Tapes (1971)

Yes, just saw one last night. Isabella Rossellini was given an introducing credit for White Nights in 1985, but she had had a small role as a nun with a few lines in Vincente Minnelli's final film A Matter or Time (which starred her mother, Ingrid Bergman) 9 years earlier.

It was a close call on Doubt. Adams had the bigger role and was very impressive, but Davis nails her scene so well that even Meryl Streep seems dumbstruck. McDormand is a delight in Almost Famous, Maggie Smith gets the best moments in a wonderful film, Latifah gives a nicely sassy performance, barraza is heartbreaking, and I simply remember Kendrick more from the film.....

I went to check that after you said about the F originally, and that really is the most confounding thing over there, because that A- piece could not possibly have been written this year because Owen Glieberman who wrote it (and was one of EW's two critics in 2001) was let go by the magazine around 2013 or 2014 and now works at Variety as one of their chief two critics. And as far as I know nobody would continue to write for a magazine that dumped them after almost 25 years of employment. It's a real enigma. Now I do know for certain one film that Glieberman gave an F to in the early 2000s that was very controversial: O Brother Where Art Thou. That said, I didn't much care for that film either, although the cinematography was really nice.

The 1991 film Frankie and Johnny really is a very charming film......

I started The Bell Jar not too long ago.....

The one link that could be made from Candy to TCM is Only the Lonely.... its technically a variation on Marty, you have Maureen O'Hara (excellent) as his mother in her final film, and Anthony Quinn on hand as well. Plus music by Maurice Jarre. Now if that turned up on TCM some day, that would be nice.

I hesitated for a while on Terms on Endearment, because lithgow's role was super small, but he had some of the best lines in the film. I ultimately went with Nicholson, who was very good and more cenral to the film at large. The others were all pretty much easy calls: Lange is low key and lovely in Tootsie, Margaret Avery was a dynamo in The Color Purple, Joan Cusack stole all of Working Girl with just seven minutes of screentime, Harvey Keitel simply had a lot more to work with in Bugsy than Kingsley (who was barely in it as I recall)

I remember seeing that when it first aired. I can't remember too much, but remember being impressed by Bisset's performance as Joan's mother. it was up for a lot of Emmys (Miniseries, Sobieski, Bisset, Dukakis, Directing), but only ended up with one : Peter O'Toole. He might have never won an Oscar in competition, but the Emmys made sure he didn't go home empty handed.

Smashing Time (1967) Source: DVD This is such a surreal, crazy film! It's a mixture of the some of the most shocking late 60s sets on film (enough to leave your teeth on edge), homages to silent comedy (Laurel and Hardy especially), slapstick, satire, in-jokes, social critique, music, camp, and, yes, early feminism. Its really hard to try to compare this film to much else, but it has some similarities to the famous Czech film Daisies, and part of the ending, while slapstick and without bloody deaths, has some similarities to the freakish endings of Phantom of the Paradise and Carrie made in the next decade. Rita Tushingham and Lynn Redgrave make a fine comedy team, with Redgrave as the amiably flighty ditz brimming over with enthusiasm and Tushingham as the sensible if occasionally bumbling friend (who at one point successfully saves her friend from the threat of drunken date rape Home Alone style).. And yet under all the manic comedy including slapstick and pie fights and spray paint battles, its a surprisingly perceptive film, looking critically at the ways of the social class system, the way women are treated by caddish men, and the way pop culture first uses and then abuses young talent. The joyful point about this film is that, although they may not seem like it at times, these two friends are troopers and survivors, and the end shows them ultimately victorious. That's like having your cake and eating it too. Well worth a look.

The closest call here was the Nashville duo, because they are both exceptional. Easiest call was the one for Rocky.....

Three more movies seen. My Blue Heaven, a Fox musical, from 1950 is kind of a more upbeat musical version of Penny Serenade. Its not as tragic, has much more comedy, and is definitely more tuneful. Betty Grable and Dan Dailey continue a winning screen partnership well, and the film itself is charming. The other two films both followed the racing circuit, and shall it be said much more successfully than 1990's Days of Thunder which I saw this week as well.... Grand Prix from 1966 is the classic era example, a smooth, cautionary tale set against the background of many European Formula 1 races. Characterization is quite sketchy (Frankenheimer's later film The gypsy moths was more fleshed out in this regard), but the charm of the cast helps put over the non-racing scenes (especially high marks must go to Eva Marie Saint, Brian Bedford, and Jessica Walter), and the racing scenes are strikingly good, especially the first one at Monte Carlo. The film makes vivid use of split screen effects too. The new example is Ford v Ferrari, a big hit last year, and deservingly so. Although it has a sting in its tail, much like Grand Prix had, the film is as cool, tart, and refreshing as blackberry jam. Matt Damon is top billed, but this is really Christian Bale's film. His flashy performance complete with his natural accent, has the same cocky charm as a youthful Sean Connery, and he electrifies the film. It's long (152 minutes) and I really don't think people really swore quite this much in the early 60s, but this is very, very appealing, smart, well-paced, technically gleaming. This is grand old fashioned entertainment and the best film made to date on the topic of auto racing. A knockout.

I'll go with LonesomePolecat. Mildred Natwick seals the deal.

Knives Out (2019) If only this film moved at a breezier pace, this could have been something very special. Ana De Armas is a charming lead and Daniel Craig's take on a Foghorn Leghorn/Colonel Sanders voice is distinctly amusing. Jaime Lee Curtis and Toni Collette are great fun as suspects, while its always a pleasure to see Christopher Plummer (whose role as the victim is a bit larger than I thought it would be). The script is also perceptive on the subject of modern social dysfunction so glaringly portrayed by this very wealthy and mixed-up family. And yet, at 130 minutes it feels distinctly overextended, and yet there is not as much examination of the suspects as I would have hoped. Maybe I was destined to be a little bit underwhelmed; my expectations were sky high, salivating at the prospect of a modern day equivalent of the 70s Agatha Christie films. This isn't like those, but it is not a complete wash. There is enough about it (plus a nice Murder She Wrote reference and a nod in the direction of Travels with My Aunt) that makes for a nice timefiller.

I was just at the video store in town (open for who knows how much longer thanks to virus lockdown) and another man there (who was talking first about it ) and I broke the news of the real fate of Sharon Tate to the clerk. Meanwhile, I picked up Knives Out and Ford Vs. Ferrari.....

I love Peggy Sue Got married. Such a lovely film, and very underrated today. Kathleen Turner was touching, and it was such a moving film. (Also loved seeing Barbara Harris and Maureen O'Sullivan again). And I'll always remember Bette Midler's K-Mart line from Ruthless People......

You have a point. The best actress category is famously prone for having heroic characters win the prize. Only three have won for being flat-out villains: Lousie Fletcher in 1975, Kathy Bates in 1990, and Charlize Theron in 2003.

She makes any film a better film with her presence.