I Just Watched...

[speedracer5]

22 hours ago, HoldenIsHere said:

Lucille Ball's interviews for her LET'S TALK TO LUCY radio series are fantastic.  The interviews feel like authentic conversations.  The interview with Barbra Streisand was a particular favorite.  There was honest communication from both the interviewer and interviewee.  I did know that Streisand pursued singing because she found "making the rounds" to get representation as an actor frustrating. It was interesting to hear her expound on that to Lucy.

I loved Let's Talk to Lucy.  They were just little 10 minute interviews and I loved that so many of them seemed like it was Lucy who caught someone right before/after their show, or between scenes on a film set, or some sort of casual encounter.  The interviews weren't formal interviews.  It was just Lucy dropping in on people or people coming over to her and visiting.  It was also fun to hear Lucy talk casually, offering her real thoughts/opinions; versus in an interview setting where Lucy is usually promoting something--thus probably needing to be a little more cognizant of what she is saying and who the audience is.  

I think it's fascinating that there's all of a sudden a resurgence of interest in Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, I Love Lucy, and everything adjacent.  Is it because of the 70th anniversary of I Love Lucy? Is that the impetus behind all this focus on Lucy and Desi?  I'm not complaining, because I love Lucy, but I just find it very interesting.  I'm crossing my fingers for a blu ray and/or theatrical release of The Long, Long Trailer. 

[Tikisoo]

9 hours ago, speedracer5 said:

I think it's fascinating that there's all of a sudden a resurgence of interest in Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, I Love Lucy, and everything adjacent. 

I'm with you- I just loved the "real" Lucy fare that was newly available like LUCY TALKS radio shows and TCMs LUCY podcast.

Very sad they were only distributed via streaming. Those without streaming capabilities could have thoroughly enjoyed these as a regular radio broadcast.

Still,  preferable to the reenactment type movies with actor portrayals speaking dialogue written by screenwriters. 👎

[CinemaInternational]

On 2/13/2022 at 8:20 PM, txfilmfan said:

 

When I listened to Lucille Ball's interview with her, in New York, while Funny Girl was still running there, Streisand mentioned that she never really wanted to be a singer - her aspirations were always to be an actress.  I found that eye-opening, as I always thought of her as a singer first, then actress.

That is a bit surprising. I grew up watching Streisand films (my mother saw Funny Girl on its first release; my father's family were huge fans of hers), and she is always a fascinating actress on screen, but it was all too clear that most of her busy movie career early on was to fulfill a contract to Ray Stark, and unfortunately her films have become very few and far between. Since fulfilling the Stark contract in 1975, she has only appeared in ten films, three of them being her directorial efforts. 

I know she has turned down some films she was offered though in the years since the 70s: Richard Attenborough 's Shadowlands, Woody Allen's Small Time Crooks, likely others too.

On 2/14/2022 at 12:53 AM, King Rat said:

I don't know if you recall how upset the author and other people were about Vanessa Redgrave playing a Jewish concentration camp survivor in the TV movie Playing for Time (1980).

I recall hearing about that. This was shortly after her infamous 1978 acceptance speech, you know with the "hoodlum" quote and the PLO sympathies, and Hollywood was furious at her. She was almost fired from a role in John Schlesinger 's Yanks which was filming at the time. And then, when CBS announced that she was cast as a Jewish concentration camp inmate in Playing for Time, the rage hit the roof. She ultimately gave a much praised performance that won her an emmy, but there were large protests against her and the film due to her feelings on the Palestinian state. Speaking of which, were there many in that TV film who actually were Jewish? I know that the always wonderful Melanie Mayron (thirtysomething, Harry and Tonto, Girlfriends, Missing) is Jewish, but I know that Jane Alexander isn't. I don't know about Verna Bloom, Christine Baranski, or Maud Adams.

[Roy Cronin]

Streisand has joked about being responsible for half of Jane Fonda's movie career due to Barbra's rejects (Julia, Klute for example.)

I've read that Jane is not amused.

[LornaHansonForbes]

2 minutes ago, Roy Cronin said:

Streisand has joked about being responsible for half of Jane Fonda's movie career due to Barbra's rejects (Julia, Klute for example.)

I've read that Jane is not amused.

Are you freaking kidding me? I cannot imagine Barbra in KLUTE, I can only see her doing her whole motormouth Dolly Levi schtick. 

[CinemaInternational]

Babs also passed on They Shoot Horses Don't They, and made Liza Minnelli happy by passing on Cabaret. She turned down  Evita in the 80s

[Roy Cronin]

So she's also responsible for Madonna not having a movie career.

[LornaHansonForbes]

23 minutes ago, Roy Cronin said:

So she's also responsible for Madonna not having a movie career.

I don’t know, I think there’s a good chance that Madonna is as much to blame for her not having a film career as anyone else.

[EricJ]

3 hours ago, LornaHansonForbes said:

Are you freaking kidding me? I cannot imagine Barbra in KLUTE, I can only see her doing her whole motormouth Dolly Levi schtick. 

Sort of like she did in Nuts (1987), which, TBF, probably would have been even more hysterical (shouting, not funny) if Fonda had taken that one.

And Madonna probably would have taken that one.  🙄

[speedracer5]

5 hours ago, LornaHansonForbes said:

Are you freaking kidding me? I cannot imagine Barbra in KLUTE, I can only see her doing her whole motormouth Dolly Levi schtick. 

Barbra is to George Raft as Jane Fonda is to Bogart, apparently.

I cannot picture Barbra in Klute either.  In the movies of Barbra's that I've seen (What's Up Doc?, Funny Girl, and The Way We Were), she seems to have a monopoly on the fast-talking New Yorker, prone to burst into song at any time.  I've seen Jane in a wide array of different characters.  Who else could have played so many different types of characters, like  Barbarella, Kitty Twist, and Bree Daniels? 

[speedracer5]

4 hours ago, LornaHansonForbes said:

I don’t know, I think there’s a good chance that Madonna is as much to blame for her not having a film career as anyone else.

I'm still thinking about this little blurb I read about Madonna trying to shop around a remake of Casablanca back in the early 00s.  Apparently, she was going to have the Ingrid Bergman part and she wanted Ashton Kutcher in the Bogart (!) part.  Madonna was rejected, being told that Casablanca was untouchable.  While that might be true, who wants to see Ashton Kutcher trying to be Rick Blaine?

[JamesJazGuitar]

Just saw most of The Skipper Surprised His Wife;    An MGM 1950 comedy film that featured Joan Leslie and Robert Walker and a sound supporting case of Edward Arnold, Spring Byington and an underutilized,  slightly out of place, Jan Sterling.    (Jan was making a splash in gritty roles like Mystery Street, Caged and the following year Ace in the Hole).

The film is only OK but at least it wasn't a repeat!  (well for me,,,,  I don't know if TCM has shown this film before or not).

[speedracer5]

17 hours ago, TikiSoo said:

I'm with you- I just loved the "real" Lucy fare that was newly available like LUCY TALKS radio shows and TCMs LUCY podcast.

Very sad they were only distributed via streaming. Those without streaming capabilities could have thoroughly enjoyed these as a regular radio broadcast.

Still,  preferable to the reenactment type movies with actor portrayals speaking dialogue written by screenwriters. 👎

Yes. I wish that the Lucy Talks were available in some sort of permanent form.  I listened to the series on Sirius XM, because it aired nonstop on one of their radio stations for 3 weeks.  I drive a lot though, so Sirius is awesome for me, because I hate Portland's radio stations, because they're so repetitive and don't even get me started on the commercials! I am hoping that maybe Lucie Arnaz will release them on some sort of compilation or something. 

I am not a fan of the reenactment movies, though in some cases, like Rocketman about Elton John, I did like that one because Elton John himself was heavily involved.  I know Lucie Arnaz was involved in Being the Ricardos, but I am still not convinced about that movie.  I think that with biopics, I need to know the intent behind it.  If the intent is just to tell their story, a la Rocketman, then I can usually get behind it.  However, if the film claims to tell the "real story" the "behind the scenes story" or any other phrasing that makes it sound sensational, then I'm not interested.  I despise biopics and biographies whose intent is literally to slander the subject, especially if they are not around to defend themselves. 

And this might be silly; but if the subject is a person (or people) who I really love, like Lucy and Desi, I don't need to see their dirty laundry dramatized.  I know that Lucy and Desi had a tough marriage.  They divorced after 20 years! Yes, Desi had problems with alcohol and fidelity.  But Lucy had her issues too.  This is all common knowledge to those who know even a little bit about them.  But as much as I love Lucy, I hate that she's seen as infallible, whereas Desi is vilified for his problems and his accomplishments are completely ignored.  Desi Arnaz' contribution to television is huge.  Yes. He had problems. But so did a lot of other people.  Give the man the respect and acclaim that he deserves.  

[Tikisoo]

5 hours ago, speedracer5 said:

Yes. He had problems. But so did a lot of other people.  Give the man the respect and acclaim that he deserves.  

Another example of separating a personal life from their work/career. 

[Fading Fast]

Side Street from 1950 with Farley Granger, Cathy O'Donnell, Paul Kelly, James Craig and Jean Hagen

 

 

Side Street is a solid noir driven by Farley Granger making one awful decision after another. His reasoning is so terrible, you almost don't care if this not-bad guy is killed - life is cheap in this one anyway - just for being so stupid. 

 

Granger and Cathy O'Donnell are soon to be parents living with her parents in New York City because Granger's gas station failed. Sure, living with your in-laws, even though these seem like okay ones, isn't great, but Farley's need for money doesn't equal Jean Valjean's.

 

As a part-time letter carrier, Granger sees an opportunity to steal a few hundred dollars. It's important to note that the money wasn't lying in the open, but he had to, one, enter an unoccupied office, two, get the fire ax from the hallway, three, use the ax to open a locked file cabinet and, four, stuff the money in his bag and leave quickly. 

 

You know you are stealing when you do all that. Oh, and when he got to the money in the file cabinet, he saw it was $30,000 and not the expected few hundred dollars. Well, Granger appears to think, in for a penny, in for a pound, which stupidly ignores the fact that stealing big money puts the crime on a whole other level. 

 

The stolen money, we learn, was extorted from a businessman who was having an affair with a pretty, young blonde, Adele Jergens, who shows up dead after she passes the money to the extortion ring leaders. That murder lands with homicide, which effectively puts Granger in the crosshairs of an extensive police investigation.

 

Granger, with his wife about to enter labor, concocts a story for her about getting an advance on a new job upstate and, then, gives her a few hundred dollars. Following that, he asks the local bartender to hold a wrapped package for him (containing the $30,000 - dear God) and, then, hides out in New York City as he tries to decide what dumb thing to do next.

 

The rest of the movie is the police, led by Paul Kelly with Charles McGraw (a Lawrence Tierney doppelganger) and the crooks who extorted the money, led by psychotic James Craig and his shady lawyer Edmon Ryan, trying to find Granger and the money. 

 

When he realizes he's in way over his head, Granger tries to give the money back. But since he stole money that had been obtain by extortion - money that is now linked to a murder investigation - nothing is simple. Plus, the bartender already stole the money from Granger.

 

In classic noir fashion, the police do their methodical crime-investigation thing at a measured pace, while the thugs do their usual threatening and killing thing at a frenzied pace. 

 

With iconic New York City as a backdrop, including some incredible overhead blimp shots, Granger runs all over the place trying to unwind the unwindable.

 

Along the way, he gets beat up a few times and, then, connects with Craig's gun moll, Jean Hagen (playing nearly the same brainless and devoted-to-a-psychotic-crook girlfriend she does in Asphalt Jungle). 

 

Granger also manages to visit his wife in the maternity ward, where they have the obligatory "we love our baby and each other" moment, before the climax, where he, the money, the thugs and the cops all intersect in a wonderfully filmed car-chase scene. 

 

Side Street is a classic noir at the height of the classic-noir period. With smart, deliberate cops, violent, unhinged crooks, a few shady characters and a regular guy sucked into a criminal vortex, all taking place in a major metropolis, it checks many of noir's boxes. 

 

You'll have to decide, though, how you feel about Granger's character as he didn't make a small mistake, like finding a little money and not returning it, instead he clearly committed a crime and, then, compounded it with more real crimes and several crimes of stupidity. Sure, he got unlucky along the way, but he wasn't an innocent bystander either. 

 

That's the moral challenge to sort out as you watch Side Street. (Spoiler alert) Hollywood decided it needed a happy ending, so the narrator avers that Granger won't pay too big a price for his colossal stupidity and will soon be reunited with O'Donnell and the baby. You might think a different ending is in order. 

 

 

[txfilmfan]

8 hours ago, speedracer5 said:

Yes. I wish that the Lucy Talks were available in some sort of permanent form.  I listened to the series on Sirius XM, because it aired nonstop on one of their radio stations for 3 weeks.  I drive a lot though, so Sirius is awesome for me, because I hate Portland's radio stations, because they're so repetitive and don't even get me started on the commercials! I am hoping that maybe Lucie Arnaz will release them on some sort of compilation or something. 

If you have a SiriusXM subscription, Let's Talk to Lucy is still available.  They release one episode per week, on Thursdays.  You can access them on the SiriusXM app or via their website.  After logging in, just do a search for it.

 

[CinemaInternational]

Last week, I said about how delighted I was by At Long Last Love, a one-time critical and financial bust from 1975. I decided to be adventurous again and tried out another 20th Century Fox fiasco of 1975, Lucky Lady, with Burt Reynolds, Liza Minnelli, and Gene Hackman. This one didn't work out. All three stars left the production feeling exhausted (all three called it the most arduous shoot of their careers) and blamed Donen for ruining the film in the editing room.  And frankly it shows on-screen; it simply refuses to get any chemistry going. The stars play bootleggers/ a menage a trois combining sex and violence in the early 30s. They should be charismatic, but, aside from Liza, they aren't able to get a rhythm going because of the editing, and the film is horribly uneasy in tone, too slapstick at some moments, too violent at the next. Despite looking great, its really just an extremely noisy waste of time.

It seems like 1975 was a very mixed year for 20th century set period films: Day of the locust was stunning, At long Last Love and Hearts of the West were delightful, and Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Great Waldo Pepper were solid, but this is leaden, Funny Lady was curiously unpleasant, and The Hindenburg , Peeper, and The Fortune are mixed.

[rosebette]

On 2/15/2022 at 7:52 PM, speedracer5 said:

I'm still thinking about this little blurb I read about Madonna trying to shop around a remake of Casablanca back in the early 00s.  Apparently, she was going to have the Ingrid Bergman part and she wanted Ashton Kutcher in the Bogart (!) part.  Madonna was rejected, being told that Casablanca was untouchable.  While that might be true, who wants to see Ashton Kutcher trying to be Rick Blaine?

If there were a retching emoji, I think I'd use it right now!

 

[sewhite2000]

1/16 Scream (Paramount, 2022)
Source: Theater

One character in this movie gives an extensive discrouse on the concept of the "re-quel", a revival of a franchise after absence of many years that spotlights new characters placed in the same setting and probably facing the same scenarios with scattered appearances by characters from the original franchise entries in an effort to attract both newer viewers and nostalgic older ones. The word "re-quel" gets used so often in such a short time it seemed pretty obvious to me that the writer(s) of this film were desperately trying to introduce a new term to the pop-culture lexicon. Unfortunately for them, the phenomenon has been so widespread other terms are already in use. The ones I've heard most frequently are "fan service" or "legacy sequel". No fancy playing with words there, but it conveys the same idea. I'm not sure precisely when the phenomenon started. It might have been with the new Star Wars trilogy which moved the story forward 30 years and focused primarily on a new core trio of characters, although each movie in the trilogy prominently featured an old-school cast member of the original trilogy - Harrison Ford in the first, Mark Hamill in the second and Carrie Fisher in the third (ironically, Fisher was already dead by the time filming started on that one, but they edited in unused footage from, I think, the second film). The last couple of months, "legacy sequels" have been all over the place. There's Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Matrix Resurrections, a new Halloween trilogy and now a new entry in the Scream franchise, purporting to be enough of a clean break that they can just sort of reboot with the original title but still reaonably mired in nostalgia.

The original Scream came out in 1996. I saw it in the theater as well. The concept was to have some fun with the by-then cliched teen slasher movie tropes that had become a genre all its own I guess you could say since Halloween in 1978 but definitely since the Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street franchises, both from the early '80s.  The movie was scary but with a lot of winking self-awareness. Two prominent names were atttached. Kevin Williamson, the writer, was the creator of the TV show Dawson's Creek, itself sort of a postmodern spin on the 90210 teenage soap operas. And the director was Wes Craven, who'd come to prominence with such Texas Chainsaw Massacre-style gorefests like Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes and Deadly Blessings, who'd already been credited for turning the teen slasher genre on its ear with the introduction of a supernatural element in A Nightmare on Elm Street. I haven't revisited this franchise in a long time. It was unavoidable back in the day - I don't care for slasher films and probably wouldn't have ever sought them out, but they'd somehow always be on when I visited somebody's house or apartment. They were hard to get away from. I only kind of remember Craven's creation Freddy Kruger was a shadowy creeping menace in the original but over the course of four sequels (only one more of which was written, but not directed by Craven), he sort of devolved in the rooting interest, dispatching the increasingly anonymous teenagers with groan-inducing one-liners that made bad puns on the various methods used to dispatch with them. The concept had a life of its own - in addition to the sequels, there was a Twilight Zone-style anthology TV series called Freddy's Nightmares, a Freddy vs. Jason movie and a series of video games. A lot of product in 10 years. Craven had pretty much completely divorced himself from the franchise when I guess he decided he needed the money. He wrote and directed and played himself in 1994's New Nightmare, which was itself sort of a pre-Scream meta-concept, in which onscreen Craven decides to make a new Freddy movie and brings back original movie stars Heather Langenkamp and Robert Englund, also playing themselves, but maybe they draw Freddy into the "real" world while making their movie - I really don't remember much about this one; I probably never have seen all of it. 

The 1996 Scream featured a serial killer in a white mask modeled after the Edward Munch painting (hence the title) and a black cloak terrorizing the teenagers in a small California town called Woodsboro. The victims all seem to have a connection to Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell, also on TV's Party of Five at the time), a high school student whose life has already been touched by tragedy, and both her boyfriend (Skeet Ulrich) and her father (David Booth) become suspects. We're also introduced to Sidney's constant companions in solving the mysteries/being terrorized by an endless succession of Ghostfaces: her good-hearted but bumbling sheriff's department brother "Deputy" Dewey (David Arquette, occaionally brilliant) and his on-again/off-again love interest, TV news magazine celebrity Gale Weathers (Friends' Courtney Cox, who was married to Arquette in real lifefor some stretch of the series' run, I guess adding some extra poignancy to their tumultous on-screen relationship). The movie was a big hit and I think somewhat liked by critics as a "re-invention" of the genre (perhaps a bit hyperbolic), and like Elm Street, it had a long shelf life. There were three sequels in the next 15 years - I think all written by Wiliamson and directed by Craven - and a show that ran on MTV for two seasons when that network was experimenting with some scripted programmning that had only the most tenuous of connections to the film franchise (other than the masked killer). I can't much discuss the new movie without mentioning how the original turned out, so - Retroactive spoiler alert! - it turns out there were two guys running around in the "Ghostface" masks, killing everybody, Ulrich and his buddy played by Matthew Lillard. They both ended up dead by the end of the movie.

There was a pattern to all the Scream movies, following the format established by the first one. First, every movie opens with a pre-credits sequence featuring a celebrity - maybe not a Hollywood A-lister but generally someone pretty recognizable to viewers of many movies - getting a call from Ghostface, being asked about their favorite scary movie and then ending up dead just before the opening credits roll (an actor named Robert Jackson has provided Ghostface's "behind the mask" voice in all the movies, including this one). In order in the first four movies, they were: Drew Barrymore, Jada Pinkett, Liev Schreiber and two victims in the fourth movie, Anna Paquin and Kristen Bell. In the  two seasons of the MTV show, the pre-credits victims were, to the best of my memory, Bella Thorne and Paris Jackson (Looks like there was a third season, of which I didn't watch one second). Second, the killer in every movie turns out to be someone who has a connection with Sidney. Third, every movie is loaded (weighed down?) with meta references to whatever the latest trend is in slasher films or horror films in general (specific titles are frequently referenced), and as the years went on, specifically about horror movie sequels and re-makes or just movie sequels in general; then typically, the trends discussed by the characters end up figuring into the plot of the movies in some way. 

Scream 4 was already a "let's pick up the plot 10 years later" sequel, though not what would necessarily call a "legacy sequel" or "re-quel". A new generation of potential victims and suspects was introduced, but they were de-emphasized in favor of the original characters, whose reintroduction wasn't nostalgia-laden. It was also Craven's last film. He was 72 and died of cancer only four years later. But Williamson returns for the new film, set 10 years after the most recent entry and 25 years after the original,  which the producers opted to simply call Scream rather than Scream 5, for reasons I speculated on above (there is some passionate debate among the movie's characters whether the latest entry  Scream franchise within-the-movie equivalent should have just been called  Stab or Stab 8). 

Immediately, there's a change as the character introduced in the pre-credits sequence is not a celebrity, nor does she actually die. She's severely wounded by the new Ghostface but survives. This opening sequence sets up the plot as the victim's sister travels to Woodsboro with her boyfriend to be at her sister's hospital bedside. The near-tragedy has also brought in a bevy of fresh (meat?) faces, introduced in blinding rapidity along with the introduction of several tangled webs of broken relationships and friendships between the variious characters. I didn't recognize any of them, except the face of one was vaguely familiar. This turned out to be Dylan Minette. I'm still not sure how I know him after checking out his IMDB resume. He was on a popular streaming series based on the young adult novel 13 Reasons Why, which I never actually watched, but maybe I saw some stills. He plays a character called Wes, clearly a tribute to Craven. Wes,I think (haven't seen the movie since January) is an ex of the protagonist Samantha or "Sam" (Melissa Barrera). I found pretty much of all these good-looking actors rather generic, although I saw the trailer for X (an A24 horror movie that appears to be equal parts Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Boogie Nights) over the weekend, and it looks like Jenna Ortega, who plays Sam's younger sister Tara in this film, may have a star-making turn in it.

Anyway, it becomes obvious there's a new Ghostface in town, and the young people contact Dewey, who's now the sheriff, and he in turn contacts Sidney and Gale. Dewey explains the rules the young people need to follow. Some of them ignore these rules and end up dead. The focus moves more and more toward the OG cast members as the movie progresses, and the movie pretty much follows the pattern of the predecessors from there. I should mention here that one of the three stars from the original movie gets killed in this one. I won't reveal which one, though if you've seen the trailer, it's a pretty guess - when I saw this character walking alone down a long corridor brandishing a gun in the trailer about two months before I saw the actual movie, I thought to myself, "Yep, this character is probably going to die," and I was correct.

 There's a plot twist early on that Sam is the illegitimate daughter of the Ulrich character (and thus only Tara's half sister) who fears following her father's footsteps into homicidal insanity. At the beginning of the  movie, she's on meds but ultimately abandons them. We see shots of Ulrich in mirrors and hear his voice ringing in her head - I'm pretty sure this was new material for this movie. Heather Matarazzo and Marley Shelton, whose characters are survivors of the old movies(it's been 10 years since I've seen even Scream 4 - I have no idea which one or ones they were in), both of whom are revealed to be mothers of one or of the members of the new cast. One of them gets killed as well. The final act is a party taking place in the same house where most of the carnage of the original also went down at a party. There is an **** of violence that seems to be inspired by the Brad Pitt vs. the Manson Family scenes late in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

 I do have to say the movie looks terrific. There are some gorgeous shots, and everyone behind the camera seems to know what they're doing. I suppose we have to attribute this to the director, a man with the rather improbable name of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin. He appears to be a committed "genre" director. I didn't know such animals still existed. He's made three features in the last eight years, all of them horror movies, including the "my fiancee's family wants to hunt me down and kill me The Most Dangerous Game-style" thriller Ready or Not with Samara Weaving and Matt Brody, and Devil's Due, a modern spin on the Rosemary's Baby scenaro with Allison Miller and Zach Gilford (I don't know who they are either). Prior to that, he spent 10 years making shorts or segments in anthology projects, all of which also appear to be horror-related.

I briefly discussed the new actors earlier in the review. I don't know that any of the performances really grabbed me, but it may have been more the material than their abilities. Of the three big "legacy characters" the meme-worthy Arquette is the standout, the constant sad sack who's noble and brave despite his quirks. I was alarmed by how much facial work Cox appears to have done (and Campbell maybe to a lesser extent). I overheard two tweener girls during one of my substitute teaching assignments rhapsodizing about how awesome Botox is and how they couldn't wait to get injected with it (even though they were like 12 or something), and I wanted to show them photos of Liza Minelli and Goldie Hawn and I guesss Cox and say "For the love of God, please reconsider," because I don't find their appearances awesome. There's some nice affectionate bickering between Cox and Arquette, exes both in real life and in their movie lives. Campbell is sort of one-note as the grimly determined survivor. I don't know that I'm clamoring for a sixth entry in the franchise.

Total films seen this year: 26

 

 

 

 

[EricJ]

46 minutes ago, rosebette said:

If there were a retching emoji, I think I'd use it right now!

🤮

(The short-lived 80's David Soul TV series wasn't too bad, though, if your standards aren't high.)

[TomJH]

Dance, Fools, Dance (1931)

Risque, at least, for the time, pre code gangster drama, featuring Joan Crawford and William Bakewell as a pampered society brother and sister who have to rough it on their own after their father croaks on the stock market floor leaving them penniless. Crawford goes to work as a reporter while her weakling brother gets himself mixed up with bootleggers and murder. Crawford is then called upon by her paper to go undercover in a gangster's cabaret in order to find the murderer, not realizing her brother is involved.

This MGM production is a fun romp, primarily for the unmistakable sexual chemistry on screen between Crawford and a sixth billed Clark Gable as a gangster honcho. This was the first of eight films in which the two would be co-starred (they'd be more than pals in real life too). All the other males in the film, including Bakewell and Lester Vail as Joan's wimpy high society boyfriend are blown off the screen by Gable's brooding machismo.  Watching him here in only his third real screen role (excluding bit parts), it's little wonder that he would soon be a star.

This melodramatic film features a young vivacious Crawford, too. She does some vigorous hoofing in a cabaret scene and looks pretty spectacular doing it. Cliff Edwards (nicknamed Ukulele Ike and later the voice of Jiminy Cricket) scores well as a reporter.

Dance, Fools, Dance occasionally comes on TCM. While it pales beside the big gangster dramas being churned out at the same time by Warner Brothers, it should still be a treat for those unaware of how attractive Crawford was at the beginning of her career and for the eye catching appearance of a pre stardom Gable as a hood.

2.5 out of 4

 

[speedracer5]

Joan is NOT a good dancer. Oof. She and Ruby Keeler must have attended the same dancing school. 

[TomJH]

5 hours ago, speedracer5 said:

Joan is NOT a good dancer. Oof. She and Ruby Keeler must have attended the same dancing school. 

I've seen an early talkie clip of Crawford in which she looked like a clunky dancer (I think it might have been in one of the That's Entertainment documentaries), as well as her heavy footed dancing in Dancing Lady. That's why I was surprised that she looked so good as a high kicking night club performer in Dance, Fools, Dance. Mind you her dance moves are for less than a minute of screen time (including cutaways to reactions from others watching her). Who knows about many retakes it took before she looked as good as she did. I think you're right about Crawford not being a good dancer, Speedy, but she had good legs and and in that shimmering skimpy outfit sure looked sexy doing it in that cabaret scene.

[Tikisoo]

8 hours ago, TomJH said:

 

Crawford's got beautifully shaped legs but boy are they short. You can clearly see how small a person she was by this low camera angle-she has a big head, long torso & short legs.  No she's not a good dancer but she sure tries a lot of erratic movements to distract you from the fact- a very energetic flapper!

She had a pretty face when made up well, pity she took that aspect over instead of leaving it to professionals. Her tireless, bullish determination is what made her a star, it certainly wasn't natural or talent.

[TomJH]

6 minutes ago, TikiSoo said:

 

She had a pretty face when made up well, pity she took that aspect over instead of leaving it to professionals.

"You don't like my makeup skills?"