Call me life-experienced.
At this point, you can't always be certain if you're remembering the '80s as they actually were or as the film industry has been portraying them ever since.
That's when you need to stroll down to the Bowtie and see "Pretty in Pink" for the first time since 1986 just to refresh your memory, the only downside being the row of middle-aged woman double-fisting mimosas in the row directly behind me because they never shut up.
No, I don't care to hear your commentary on the gym suits just like what you wore in Junior High.
I can't even guess how much in the film would seem downright archaic to millennials now. Like those bulky CRT screens we thought were so new-fangled at the time. The boomboxes next to everyone's beds. The princess phone on the nightstand.
Hell, Karmann Ghias.
And for everyone who thinks they know what '80s fashion looked like from more recent movies, think again. It wasn't just about legwarmers, it was about Duckie layering white socks over striped tube socks and wearing them all slouched down to show some skin under a cuffed pant leg.
It was about every single prom dress pulling directly from Princess Di's overly-gaudy wedding dress with enormous sleeves, too much fabric and a fussiness that begged for restraint, something that was in very short supply back then.
My takeaway was twofold, the good and the bad.
I think you'd be hard-pressed to name a movie with as strong a soundtrack - and a New Wave soundtrack at that, meaning not yet mainstream music - in the past 20 years. From Echo and the Bunnymen to New Order to the Smiths, it was like the amazing mix tape that guy made to impress you once (it worked).
And to prove that three decades does a number on the memory, sure, I recalled Psychedelic Furs' title song, but I had no memory whatsoever of OMD's "If You Leave" being the big closing song for the dramatic ending.
None at all. In fact, my big memory of that song is that I visited Dallas in 1986 for the first time and I definitely remember dancing to that song in two different clubs while I was there.
But in today's film? It was a complete surprise.
My other takeaway was how cliched the ending was. Why couldn't she have gone off with Duckie instead? I mean, besides that he was a closeted gay man, but why couldn't she have stayed at the prom, danced with Duckie (come on, a man who asks, "Can I admire you again today?") and gone on to college without giving in to the shallow Blane who would have disappointed her shortly anyway?
Not only is that kind of entitlement and instinctive condescension bone-deep, but milquetoast men like that lack any real passion, meaning he would have probably been lousy in bed, too. Of course, few 18-year olds would know any of that at such a tender age.
Turns out that John Hughes originally shot the film to have her ending up with Duckie, but test audiences back then wanted Blane.
Wow, we were still looking for the cliched wrap-up in 1986, weren't we?
Come to think of it, that part I do remember. It's just that three decades teaches you that there are far more interesting endings out there, plus you get to choose your own soundtrack.
I'm with the Smiths on this one: please, please, please let me get what I want.
Showing posts with label movies and mimosas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies and mimosas. Show all posts
Saturday, March 19, 2016
Sunday, March 6, 2016
You Go for Me
I'm white and gobsmacked.
As someone living in the era of #OscarsSoWhite, how is it even possible that in 1954, Hollywood made an all-black film with Otto Preminger directing and Darryl Zanuck financing, using Bizet's score and Oscar Hammerstein's lyrics?
How, how, how?
I didn't go for any of those reasons, I went to Bowtie's screening of "Carmen Jones" because I'd never seen a Dorothy Dandridge movie and I wanted to correct that. What I hadn't expected was a film without a single white face, not that I'm complaining.
But for all the CinemaScope films I've seen, for all the '50s musicals, for all the Hammerstein lyrics I've heard sung over the years, never have I seen it done with a black cast.
It felt audacious just watching it 62 years later.
Yet, in many ways, it was also refreshing seeing an Eisenhower world occupied solely by something other than whites. The army base was all black, as was the bustling neighborhood in Chicago, the parachute factory, the attendees at the big prize fight.
I'm talking about a world where patrons at a backwoods North Carolina bar go crazy for a drum solo, hollering, "Go, Max, go!" and it's Max Roach playing the drums.
Just as startling were the usual outlandish conventions of the Hollywood musical, such as Carmen working at a factory wearing a black off-the-shoulder blouse and a fitted orange skirt with a major thigh slit in it. Prisoners on the army work gang toil shirtless, their oiled well-muscled torsos gleaming in the sun.
But who minds skimpy outfits and half-naked men when you're watching beautiful people like Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge?
Far more disconcerting was watching them sing and hearing other people's voices come out of their mouths, voices of people who could sing the operatic score with 20th century lyrics ("You Talk Just Like My Maw") that apparently they couldn't.
Ah, but that's old-school Hollywood, where characters such as Pearl Bailey say things like, "I hate it when hip chicks act like dumb clucks" and mean it.
But the best advice comes from none other than hot tomato Carmen herself, who gives meek, little Cindy Lou the best advice on men.
"Bait your hook for fish you can fry." Amen, honey. There's no point in going after any other kind.
As someone living in the era of #OscarsSoWhite, how is it even possible that in 1954, Hollywood made an all-black film with Otto Preminger directing and Darryl Zanuck financing, using Bizet's score and Oscar Hammerstein's lyrics?
How, how, how?
I didn't go for any of those reasons, I went to Bowtie's screening of "Carmen Jones" because I'd never seen a Dorothy Dandridge movie and I wanted to correct that. What I hadn't expected was a film without a single white face, not that I'm complaining.
But for all the CinemaScope films I've seen, for all the '50s musicals, for all the Hammerstein lyrics I've heard sung over the years, never have I seen it done with a black cast.
It felt audacious just watching it 62 years later.
Yet, in many ways, it was also refreshing seeing an Eisenhower world occupied solely by something other than whites. The army base was all black, as was the bustling neighborhood in Chicago, the parachute factory, the attendees at the big prize fight.
I'm talking about a world where patrons at a backwoods North Carolina bar go crazy for a drum solo, hollering, "Go, Max, go!" and it's Max Roach playing the drums.
Just as startling were the usual outlandish conventions of the Hollywood musical, such as Carmen working at a factory wearing a black off-the-shoulder blouse and a fitted orange skirt with a major thigh slit in it. Prisoners on the army work gang toil shirtless, their oiled well-muscled torsos gleaming in the sun.
But who minds skimpy outfits and half-naked men when you're watching beautiful people like Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge?
Far more disconcerting was watching them sing and hearing other people's voices come out of their mouths, voices of people who could sing the operatic score with 20th century lyrics ("You Talk Just Like My Maw") that apparently they couldn't.
Ah, but that's old-school Hollywood, where characters such as Pearl Bailey say things like, "I hate it when hip chicks act like dumb clucks" and mean it.
But the best advice comes from none other than hot tomato Carmen herself, who gives meek, little Cindy Lou the best advice on men.
"Bait your hook for fish you can fry." Amen, honey. There's no point in going after any other kind.
Saturday, February 13, 2016
What Love Looks Like When It's Triumphant
When it comes to movie-watching, there are two kinds of people.
There are Netflix lovers, that is, those who prefer to stay at home with easy access to kitchen and bathroom (and the ability to pause the movie at any point) and watch a flick on the cheap. Then there are fans of the true movie experience, those willing to pay more to watch a movie as the director intended it to be seen, in a public place surrounded by strangers in the dark.
And, yes, I know some people do both. Not me. It's the theater of not at all, but its been rare that I find anyone else who felt the same way. Until now.
Consider how the Washington Post describes theater my way: When it comes down to it, movies aren't even about the movie-going experience. They're about getting lost in the movie itself. Cinema should make us fall in love with storytelling, gasp at technical feats and forget that there's anything else beyond the screen in front of us.
Can I get an amen? I have a friend who won't watch movies at home because they make her feel guilty for all the things she could be doing around her house instead, while she has no such qualms in a theater.
Sorry, watching a movie at home can't ensure that you forget about your world beyond the screen. It just can't.
So you can imagine my satisfaction in finally finding a like-minded soul, and not just in terms of the cinema experience, but also willing to walk the two miles to the theater with me on a day like today where Old Man Wind is making it feel like 14 degrees out there.
Our faces didn't freeze off, although they were numb with cold by the time we got to Movieland, but afterwards we agreed that it was well worth it to see "It Happened One Night" on the big screen.
Doubly so because everyone should see a classic romantic comedy on Valentine's Eve.
Sitting down in my favorite row, the large man chomping popcorn next to us welcomed us to a classic and then observed sarcastically, "I hear that Clark guy is going places." Har-har.
I'll tell you what, he was a gorgeous hunk of man meat in 1934, leaner than in "Gone With the Wind" five years later, a fact easy to discern during the undressing scene. Who cares about big ears when you you see a 33-year old with a body like that?
Having read a biography, "Long Live the King," of him last summer, I was surprised to hear his cronies in today's film refer to him as "king." In fact or fiction, I guess he was.
There was dame wisdom ("The cooler they are, the hotter they get"), period details (fabric curtains with tiebacks on buses, pillows available for "two bits") and men like Gable who traveled with two pairs of silk pajamas in their overnight bag.
Americana was represented with "auto camps," places for overnight stays, which naturally had outside showers, a fact that surprises our heroine, the heiress Ellie.
"Outside?" she asks Gable incredulously. "All the best places have them outside," he assures her. Yes, indeed, I do love an outside shower.
The only recognizable scene from the movie for me was the hitchhiking scene because the still of Claudette Colbert hiking up her skirt to entice a driver to stop is a classic, as was her wisdom about hitchhiking: "The limb is mightier than the thumb."
Tell me about it. When I got a flat tire on the way to a show in Norfolk, my friend asked what we were going to do about it. Unknowingly taking a page from Colbert's book and proving that the limb is mightier than a distress flag, I got out and stood fetchingly beside my car (in shorts) for about a minute before a kindly offer to change that tire was proffered.
Being a Frank Capra film, it was decidedly picaresque, with a screwball comedic leaning (nothing tops him carrying her over his shoulder, handing her his suitcase and smacking her ass), plus lots of snappy '30s dialog.
Your ego is absolutely colossal!
Yeah, yeah, not bad. How's yours?
And, given tomorrow's impending blizzard of Cupidity, appropriately self-deprecatingly romantic.
I asked you a simple question. Do you love her?
YES! But don't hold that against me. I'm a little screwy myself.
Walking home (but happily with the wind behind us this time), we agreed that we'd just seen a glorious movie. How glorious? Neither of us had had a single thought beyond the screen in front of us.
Don't hold that against us. We're screwy that way.
There are Netflix lovers, that is, those who prefer to stay at home with easy access to kitchen and bathroom (and the ability to pause the movie at any point) and watch a flick on the cheap. Then there are fans of the true movie experience, those willing to pay more to watch a movie as the director intended it to be seen, in a public place surrounded by strangers in the dark.
And, yes, I know some people do both. Not me. It's the theater of not at all, but its been rare that I find anyone else who felt the same way. Until now.
Consider how the Washington Post describes theater my way: When it comes down to it, movies aren't even about the movie-going experience. They're about getting lost in the movie itself. Cinema should make us fall in love with storytelling, gasp at technical feats and forget that there's anything else beyond the screen in front of us.
Can I get an amen? I have a friend who won't watch movies at home because they make her feel guilty for all the things she could be doing around her house instead, while she has no such qualms in a theater.
Sorry, watching a movie at home can't ensure that you forget about your world beyond the screen. It just can't.
So you can imagine my satisfaction in finally finding a like-minded soul, and not just in terms of the cinema experience, but also willing to walk the two miles to the theater with me on a day like today where Old Man Wind is making it feel like 14 degrees out there.
Our faces didn't freeze off, although they were numb with cold by the time we got to Movieland, but afterwards we agreed that it was well worth it to see "It Happened One Night" on the big screen.
Doubly so because everyone should see a classic romantic comedy on Valentine's Eve.
Sitting down in my favorite row, the large man chomping popcorn next to us welcomed us to a classic and then observed sarcastically, "I hear that Clark guy is going places." Har-har.
I'll tell you what, he was a gorgeous hunk of man meat in 1934, leaner than in "Gone With the Wind" five years later, a fact easy to discern during the undressing scene. Who cares about big ears when you you see a 33-year old with a body like that?
Having read a biography, "Long Live the King," of him last summer, I was surprised to hear his cronies in today's film refer to him as "king." In fact or fiction, I guess he was.
There was dame wisdom ("The cooler they are, the hotter they get"), period details (fabric curtains with tiebacks on buses, pillows available for "two bits") and men like Gable who traveled with two pairs of silk pajamas in their overnight bag.
Americana was represented with "auto camps," places for overnight stays, which naturally had outside showers, a fact that surprises our heroine, the heiress Ellie.
"Outside?" she asks Gable incredulously. "All the best places have them outside," he assures her. Yes, indeed, I do love an outside shower.
The only recognizable scene from the movie for me was the hitchhiking scene because the still of Claudette Colbert hiking up her skirt to entice a driver to stop is a classic, as was her wisdom about hitchhiking: "The limb is mightier than the thumb."
Tell me about it. When I got a flat tire on the way to a show in Norfolk, my friend asked what we were going to do about it. Unknowingly taking a page from Colbert's book and proving that the limb is mightier than a distress flag, I got out and stood fetchingly beside my car (in shorts) for about a minute before a kindly offer to change that tire was proffered.
Being a Frank Capra film, it was decidedly picaresque, with a screwball comedic leaning (nothing tops him carrying her over his shoulder, handing her his suitcase and smacking her ass), plus lots of snappy '30s dialog.
Your ego is absolutely colossal!
Yeah, yeah, not bad. How's yours?
And, given tomorrow's impending blizzard of Cupidity, appropriately self-deprecatingly romantic.
I asked you a simple question. Do you love her?
YES! But don't hold that against me. I'm a little screwy myself.
Walking home (but happily with the wind behind us this time), we agreed that we'd just seen a glorious movie. How glorious? Neither of us had had a single thought beyond the screen in front of us.
Don't hold that against us. We're screwy that way.
Saturday, January 16, 2016
Nothing Happens Here
I'm not going to lie, I'd never seen "Grand Hotel" before. Somewhere out there, I know my film friends are recoiling in horror.
Even so, I almost missed it today at Movialand, sleeping in longer than I intended to, although not as long as a friend off in Washington for the weekend, who posted, "Can't think of the last time I got out of bed after noon. Feeling 22 and 92 all at once. Thanks, D.C.!"
Personally, I see nothing old lady-like about sleeping in. My measuring stick is when I went to bed plus nine hours and, voila! I'm up, whatever time that may be. Today, it allowed just enough time for a quick bowl of cereal and a fast walk to the Bowtie under sunny skies.
Among the many surprises about this film (besides that only five people attended) was learning that this is where Garbo's famous line, "I want to be alone" came from. That and, man, was she flat-chested.
It was easily the youngest role I'd ever seen Joan Crawford in - Joan before she was a caricature of herself - so young she didn't yet have those awful eyebrows or exaggerated lipstick mouth. And no enormous shoulder pads, either. In fact, playing a stenographer, she wore the same dress the entire movie something Miss Crawford never would have allowed in her heyday.
But I could still see the seeds of the character she would become, such as when the meek Otto offers to buy her a drink, namely the same rum-based Louisiana Flip he's drinking, and she demurs with, "No, absinthe."
Now there's a woman after my own heart.
John Barrymore plays the baron, a charming man with no money who asks her, "Don't you like dancing with strangers?" She apparently doesn't, while I have no such hang-up.
Since the film began with naming the many characters and the actors playing them, I knew that Lionel Barrymore was one of them, but it took me until the final 15 minutes to recognize him, and then it was only because of his voice.
Yes, I know he's a member of the esteemed Barrymores, but my only frame of reference for him is "It's a Wonderful Life" and the physical similarities were non-existent (hair present, belly absent). During a key scene, though, he sounded so much like Mr. Potter that the light bulb finally went off in my head.
Since I knew almost nothing about the film going in besides a vague notion that it had a star-studded cast, I wasn't even sure when it had been made. Given the luminous Art Deco set of the hotel, my guess was the '30s.
But it sure wasn't the circumspect kind of '30s films that immediately comes to mind. Unmarried characters stay in the same hotel room overnight. A married man buys a woman's services to accompany him to London. An unscrupulous businessman lies to potential partners with no repercussions. Scantily-clad women sashay around men. Men exercising in nothing but a towel. Wait a minute...
Midway through the movie, it dawned on me that this had to be a pre-Hays Code film, otherwise these characters would never have gotten away with such "unseemly" (in other words, real life) behavior. Wow, this was an old movie.
More importantly, another notch in my cultural literacy belt.
Favorite line: "A man who is not with a woman is a dead man." It's good to know that some sentiments are timeless.
Even so, I almost missed it today at Movialand, sleeping in longer than I intended to, although not as long as a friend off in Washington for the weekend, who posted, "Can't think of the last time I got out of bed after noon. Feeling 22 and 92 all at once. Thanks, D.C.!"
Personally, I see nothing old lady-like about sleeping in. My measuring stick is when I went to bed plus nine hours and, voila! I'm up, whatever time that may be. Today, it allowed just enough time for a quick bowl of cereal and a fast walk to the Bowtie under sunny skies.
Among the many surprises about this film (besides that only five people attended) was learning that this is where Garbo's famous line, "I want to be alone" came from. That and, man, was she flat-chested.
It was easily the youngest role I'd ever seen Joan Crawford in - Joan before she was a caricature of herself - so young she didn't yet have those awful eyebrows or exaggerated lipstick mouth. And no enormous shoulder pads, either. In fact, playing a stenographer, she wore the same dress the entire movie something Miss Crawford never would have allowed in her heyday.
But I could still see the seeds of the character she would become, such as when the meek Otto offers to buy her a drink, namely the same rum-based Louisiana Flip he's drinking, and she demurs with, "No, absinthe."
Now there's a woman after my own heart.
John Barrymore plays the baron, a charming man with no money who asks her, "Don't you like dancing with strangers?" She apparently doesn't, while I have no such hang-up.
Since the film began with naming the many characters and the actors playing them, I knew that Lionel Barrymore was one of them, but it took me until the final 15 minutes to recognize him, and then it was only because of his voice.
Yes, I know he's a member of the esteemed Barrymores, but my only frame of reference for him is "It's a Wonderful Life" and the physical similarities were non-existent (hair present, belly absent). During a key scene, though, he sounded so much like Mr. Potter that the light bulb finally went off in my head.
Since I knew almost nothing about the film going in besides a vague notion that it had a star-studded cast, I wasn't even sure when it had been made. Given the luminous Art Deco set of the hotel, my guess was the '30s.
But it sure wasn't the circumspect kind of '30s films that immediately comes to mind. Unmarried characters stay in the same hotel room overnight. A married man buys a woman's services to accompany him to London. An unscrupulous businessman lies to potential partners with no repercussions. Scantily-clad women sashay around men. Men exercising in nothing but a towel. Wait a minute...
Midway through the movie, it dawned on me that this had to be a pre-Hays Code film, otherwise these characters would never have gotten away with such "unseemly" (in other words, real life) behavior. Wow, this was an old movie.
More importantly, another notch in my cultural literacy belt.
Favorite line: "A man who is not with a woman is a dead man." It's good to know that some sentiments are timeless.
Sunday, July 19, 2015
In Lincoln's Nose
I pity the fool who thinks they can watch "North by Northwest" on a TV screen - even a big screen - and experience anything like what Hitchcock intended.
Not me. Despite a heat advisory, I walked the two miles to Movieland to see the mystery masterpiece, where I was pleasantly surprised to see that for a change, the Movies and Mimosas screening included more than the usual eight or ten people. Today's audience even included a group carrying mimosas in hand to their seats.
Now here's the problem with people accustomed to watching movies at home: they've either forgotten the rules of public viewing or willfully choose to ignore the on-screen reminders that there is no talking during the film. None.
Either way, it's bad cinema behavior. I don't go to a movie to hear you tell your companions what to look for or how funny you think something is. Gasps, laughter, honest reactions are fine. Discussion, unacceptable, and today's showing was full of people who felt entitled to blather over the brilliance of Hitchcock, Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint.
Somebody needs parental guidance.
Talk abut a stylish movie! Both Cary and Eva Marie managed to look devastatingly fashionable at any given moment, whether making out, hanging off of Mount Rushmore or standing in a pine thicket. I may give Cary even more credit because he did it in just two costume changes, but Eva Marie scored for the gorgeous gloves she wore with every gorgeous dress.
Because the action took place in 1959, some mental adjustment was required on the audience's part. When someone moves into a new apartment and doesn't yet have a phone, you send them a telegram.
Men in train station bathrooms shave with straight razors. Because everyone's not bearded.
The train serves brook trout in the dining car. Nowadays you're lucky to get a bag of chips and a soda.
Hotel rooms have fresh flowers. I'd have loved to live in that world.
Men carry personalized matchbooks. And handkerchiefs.
Buses have open windows. People managed the summer without air conditioning, even in Indiana and South Dakota.
And the Ruskies were still the bad guys. "War is hell, even when it's a cold one."
Women still said things such as, "I never make love on an empty stomach" to men as suave and handsome as Cary Grant.
Too bad. I'd have liked to have seen that on the big screen.
Not me. Despite a heat advisory, I walked the two miles to Movieland to see the mystery masterpiece, where I was pleasantly surprised to see that for a change, the Movies and Mimosas screening included more than the usual eight or ten people. Today's audience even included a group carrying mimosas in hand to their seats.
Now here's the problem with people accustomed to watching movies at home: they've either forgotten the rules of public viewing or willfully choose to ignore the on-screen reminders that there is no talking during the film. None.
Either way, it's bad cinema behavior. I don't go to a movie to hear you tell your companions what to look for or how funny you think something is. Gasps, laughter, honest reactions are fine. Discussion, unacceptable, and today's showing was full of people who felt entitled to blather over the brilliance of Hitchcock, Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint.
Somebody needs parental guidance.
Talk abut a stylish movie! Both Cary and Eva Marie managed to look devastatingly fashionable at any given moment, whether making out, hanging off of Mount Rushmore or standing in a pine thicket. I may give Cary even more credit because he did it in just two costume changes, but Eva Marie scored for the gorgeous gloves she wore with every gorgeous dress.
Because the action took place in 1959, some mental adjustment was required on the audience's part. When someone moves into a new apartment and doesn't yet have a phone, you send them a telegram.
Men in train station bathrooms shave with straight razors. Because everyone's not bearded.
The train serves brook trout in the dining car. Nowadays you're lucky to get a bag of chips and a soda.
Hotel rooms have fresh flowers. I'd have loved to live in that world.
Men carry personalized matchbooks. And handkerchiefs.
Buses have open windows. People managed the summer without air conditioning, even in Indiana and South Dakota.
And the Ruskies were still the bad guys. "War is hell, even when it's a cold one."
Women still said things such as, "I never make love on an empty stomach" to men as suave and handsome as Cary Grant.
Too bad. I'd have liked to have seen that on the big screen.
Saturday, November 22, 2014
Looking Like an Old Maid
I'm a sucker for '50s movies, probably none more so than romantic comedies.
I know, I know, it's not a realistic world, but everything about it is so fabulous. The wardrobe! The nightclubs! The wooing!
Movieland was showing the 1953 classic "How to Marry a Millionaire" and while I no longer think that's a relevant topic for a film, you can be sure I was walking over there to see it for the first time.
The first movie filmed in CinemaScope's wide-screen process, meaning no should experience this film on their TV screen, no matter how big they think it is, it was big all right. Apparently exactly four other people in Richmond felt the same way and joined me at 11:00 on a Saturday morning.
To show off the movie's stereophonic score, it began with an enormous orchestra playing an overture, the camera panning side to side to take in all the musicians. What immediately struck me was that there were exactly four women in the entire orchestra: two violinists and two flutists, no doubt a sign of the times.
Only in the days before the sexual revolution could you have a movie about three 20-something girls renting a ritzy apartment as a way to ensnare rich men and get married.
To my great delight, the movie began with Percy Helton (as the real estate agent), a character actor I recognized as the train conductor from "White Christmas," another classic '50s movie.
Bossy Lauren Bacall is the ringleader because she already married a poor guy, is now divorced and determined not to make that mistake a again. As she puts it, "Of course I want to get married again. Marriage is the best thing you can do." Pretty sure that's not still true.
Despite having to sell the furniture out of the apartment to subsist, the girls manage to have fabulous wardrobes for all their outings, whether to the mink department at Bergdorf's, the grocery store for cold cuts or the Stork Club to pick up oilmen.
All the expected '50s tropes were there: traveling by train, sending telegrams, women carrying muffs (Monroe carried her glasses in hers), cars without seat belts, people coming down with measles. A vastly different world, in other words.
And definitely a different mindset.
Bacall: If you wanna catch a mouse, you set a mousetrap. All right, so we set a bear trap. Now all we gotta do is, one of us has to catch a bear.
Grable: You mean marry him?
Bacall: If you don't marry him, you haven't caught him, he's caught you.
Like in "White Christmas," there were also dated references to political affiliations, in this case about Maine being a completely Republican state. Not so much these days.
Much as I enjoyed the corny story, I had a hard time getting behind any of the characters. Bacall was too bitchy (but so beautiful), Betty Grable was too dumb (but, oh, those million dollar legs) and I just don't care for Monroe's breathy delivery and put-on sensuality. But an older William Powell, that I could enjoy.
I could totally relate when Bacall's date tells her she's really a hamburger kind of a girl despite her protestations that she wanted a swankier lifestyle. I'd be the first to admit that I'm a cheeseburger girl.
Fortunately, I'm not looking for a rich husband. Although, if the right muff or train trip came along, I might be singing a different (albeit off-key) tune.
I know, I know, it's not a realistic world, but everything about it is so fabulous. The wardrobe! The nightclubs! The wooing!
Movieland was showing the 1953 classic "How to Marry a Millionaire" and while I no longer think that's a relevant topic for a film, you can be sure I was walking over there to see it for the first time.
The first movie filmed in CinemaScope's wide-screen process, meaning no should experience this film on their TV screen, no matter how big they think it is, it was big all right. Apparently exactly four other people in Richmond felt the same way and joined me at 11:00 on a Saturday morning.
To show off the movie's stereophonic score, it began with an enormous orchestra playing an overture, the camera panning side to side to take in all the musicians. What immediately struck me was that there were exactly four women in the entire orchestra: two violinists and two flutists, no doubt a sign of the times.
Only in the days before the sexual revolution could you have a movie about three 20-something girls renting a ritzy apartment as a way to ensnare rich men and get married.
To my great delight, the movie began with Percy Helton (as the real estate agent), a character actor I recognized as the train conductor from "White Christmas," another classic '50s movie.
Bossy Lauren Bacall is the ringleader because she already married a poor guy, is now divorced and determined not to make that mistake a again. As she puts it, "Of course I want to get married again. Marriage is the best thing you can do." Pretty sure that's not still true.
Despite having to sell the furniture out of the apartment to subsist, the girls manage to have fabulous wardrobes for all their outings, whether to the mink department at Bergdorf's, the grocery store for cold cuts or the Stork Club to pick up oilmen.
All the expected '50s tropes were there: traveling by train, sending telegrams, women carrying muffs (Monroe carried her glasses in hers), cars without seat belts, people coming down with measles. A vastly different world, in other words.
And definitely a different mindset.
Bacall: If you wanna catch a mouse, you set a mousetrap. All right, so we set a bear trap. Now all we gotta do is, one of us has to catch a bear.
Grable: You mean marry him?
Bacall: If you don't marry him, you haven't caught him, he's caught you.
Like in "White Christmas," there were also dated references to political affiliations, in this case about Maine being a completely Republican state. Not so much these days.
Much as I enjoyed the corny story, I had a hard time getting behind any of the characters. Bacall was too bitchy (but so beautiful), Betty Grable was too dumb (but, oh, those million dollar legs) and I just don't care for Monroe's breathy delivery and put-on sensuality. But an older William Powell, that I could enjoy.
I could totally relate when Bacall's date tells her she's really a hamburger kind of a girl despite her protestations that she wanted a swankier lifestyle. I'd be the first to admit that I'm a cheeseburger girl.
Fortunately, I'm not looking for a rich husband. Although, if the right muff or train trip came along, I might be singing a different (albeit off-key) tune.
Sunday, February 2, 2014
To Ancient Evenings and Distant Music
Nothing like starting your day with a good cry.
I hadn't made up my mind about going to see 1995's "The Bridges of Madison County" at Movieland, but when I woke up in time and saw the sunny day outside, it seemed like the ideal way to get myself up and out of the house.
As expected the crowd at the theater was overwhelmingly female: nine women and one guy and she'd supplied him with sliders, a mega-soda and pizza to keep him there.
What was unexpected was the commercial before the film began.
"An hour from now, your movie will have a plot twist. Don't have the worst seat in the house." Cut to stall door with someone sitting on the toilet. "Go before the show."
Thanks, Charmin, for the reminder.
As for the "Bridges," I'd read the book back in the '90s at a friend's insistence, but I'm not sure I ever saw the movie, so I had no idea Meryl Streep's character would be Italian-born.
I did understand how a woman would be charmed by a man who'd gotten off a train in her hometown knowing no one and simply because it looked pretty.
The kind of man who says, "I was just picking you some flowers. Men still do that, don't they?"
If you're very lucky, yes, they do that.
They also slowdance with you to romantic songs by Johnny Hartman, my favorite jazz singer, although I didn't even know who he was back in 1995.
And they tell you things like, "Don't kid yourself, you're anything but a simple woman," because what woman wants to hear that she's simple?
Men like that quote Yeats. "And when white moths were on the wing and moth-like stars were flickering out." And often.
Most importantly, with absolute conviction, they say, "This kind of certainty comes but just once in a lifetime."
So naturally when they end up unable to be together with him standing across the road looking at her for the last time, the tears come. And come.
I'm not sure if I just needed a good cry or if the story just resonated differently now than it had two decades ago, but I was pulled in completely, right down to nose-blowing and mascara running.
Let's just say when I left the theater, I was grateful it was a beautiful day and I had all afternoon to take my walk and get over a sad love story.
After shedding a layer and touching up my mascara, I started south toward the river, passing all kinds of joggers and people in shorts.
As I crossed Brown's Island to get to the pipeline walkway, I crossed my fingers that the pipeline wouldn't be underwater as it had been the last couple of times I'd come down to walk it.
Happily, it wasn't and I took it all the way, amazed at the two dozen nests I spied in the heron rookery across the river, three of them adorned by their impossibly long-necked owners.
After scrambling down to the sandy beach to sit and watch guys fish and kids skip rocks, I headed back up the pipeline, eventually getting behind a slow-moving couple.
Suddenly, the guy turned to me and quipped, "Come here often?"
Sure do, regularly even, I told him, inquiring if he did.
Nope, he was a first-timer brought by the woman he was with.
"Oh, do you live there?" he asked, gesturing at the condo building looming over us.
As if. Nope, I live in Jackson Ward, I said, anticipating exactly the reaction I got.
"How long have you lived there?" he asked. Seven and a half years says I.
"Alone?" he inquired with such incredulity I had to ask where he lived.
No surprise, West End. At this point, he finally introduced himself and his companion, also named Karen.
But he wasn't finished grilling me yet.
"Why'd you move to Jackson Ward?" he needed to know. Let's see, central location, arts district, nearby music venues and restaurants. To avoid homogeneous neighborhoods like the one you probably live in.
Turning the conversation to them, I asked what was next for them after the walk. No surprise there, lunch in Carytown.
"Where would you recommend?" he asked, somehow presuming that I knew something about where to eat.
With my two favorite Carytown brunch locations closed today, one due to fire and one due to the business of corporate sports, I tried steering him to J-Ward instead.
"What about the place on the corner where I had some great shrimp and grits?" he said, eager to show he knew a little something about the 'hood.
Croaker's Spot moved to southside a good five or more years ago, sir. May I suggest Lucy's or Mama J's instead?
By this time, his Karen was glowering at me so I politely excused myself so they could get on with their afternoon.
Oddly enough, Karen did not seem the least bit sorry to see me go.
Coming up the hill from the river, I saw the same bagpipe player I'd seen on Brown's Island last month, only this time he was under a shady tree at 2 Street and Byrd, his bike and backpack at his feet, playing to the hills.
He was kind enough to turn and play uphill as I walked by so I got to hear his music for another block before losing it to the breeze.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands
I will find out where she has gone
And kiss her lips and take her hands
Nothing like ending your afternoon with the sound of bagpipes in your ears and Yeats in your head.
I hadn't made up my mind about going to see 1995's "The Bridges of Madison County" at Movieland, but when I woke up in time and saw the sunny day outside, it seemed like the ideal way to get myself up and out of the house.
As expected the crowd at the theater was overwhelmingly female: nine women and one guy and she'd supplied him with sliders, a mega-soda and pizza to keep him there.
What was unexpected was the commercial before the film began.
"An hour from now, your movie will have a plot twist. Don't have the worst seat in the house." Cut to stall door with someone sitting on the toilet. "Go before the show."
Thanks, Charmin, for the reminder.
As for the "Bridges," I'd read the book back in the '90s at a friend's insistence, but I'm not sure I ever saw the movie, so I had no idea Meryl Streep's character would be Italian-born.
I did understand how a woman would be charmed by a man who'd gotten off a train in her hometown knowing no one and simply because it looked pretty.
The kind of man who says, "I was just picking you some flowers. Men still do that, don't they?"
If you're very lucky, yes, they do that.
They also slowdance with you to romantic songs by Johnny Hartman, my favorite jazz singer, although I didn't even know who he was back in 1995.
And they tell you things like, "Don't kid yourself, you're anything but a simple woman," because what woman wants to hear that she's simple?
Men like that quote Yeats. "And when white moths were on the wing and moth-like stars were flickering out." And often.
Most importantly, with absolute conviction, they say, "This kind of certainty comes but just once in a lifetime."
So naturally when they end up unable to be together with him standing across the road looking at her for the last time, the tears come. And come.
I'm not sure if I just needed a good cry or if the story just resonated differently now than it had two decades ago, but I was pulled in completely, right down to nose-blowing and mascara running.
Let's just say when I left the theater, I was grateful it was a beautiful day and I had all afternoon to take my walk and get over a sad love story.
After shedding a layer and touching up my mascara, I started south toward the river, passing all kinds of joggers and people in shorts.
As I crossed Brown's Island to get to the pipeline walkway, I crossed my fingers that the pipeline wouldn't be underwater as it had been the last couple of times I'd come down to walk it.
Happily, it wasn't and I took it all the way, amazed at the two dozen nests I spied in the heron rookery across the river, three of them adorned by their impossibly long-necked owners.
After scrambling down to the sandy beach to sit and watch guys fish and kids skip rocks, I headed back up the pipeline, eventually getting behind a slow-moving couple.
Suddenly, the guy turned to me and quipped, "Come here often?"
Sure do, regularly even, I told him, inquiring if he did.
Nope, he was a first-timer brought by the woman he was with.
"Oh, do you live there?" he asked, gesturing at the condo building looming over us.
As if. Nope, I live in Jackson Ward, I said, anticipating exactly the reaction I got.
"How long have you lived there?" he asked. Seven and a half years says I.
"Alone?" he inquired with such incredulity I had to ask where he lived.
No surprise, West End. At this point, he finally introduced himself and his companion, also named Karen.
But he wasn't finished grilling me yet.
"Why'd you move to Jackson Ward?" he needed to know. Let's see, central location, arts district, nearby music venues and restaurants. To avoid homogeneous neighborhoods like the one you probably live in.
Turning the conversation to them, I asked what was next for them after the walk. No surprise there, lunch in Carytown.
"Where would you recommend?" he asked, somehow presuming that I knew something about where to eat.
With my two favorite Carytown brunch locations closed today, one due to fire and one due to the business of corporate sports, I tried steering him to J-Ward instead.
"What about the place on the corner where I had some great shrimp and grits?" he said, eager to show he knew a little something about the 'hood.
Croaker's Spot moved to southside a good five or more years ago, sir. May I suggest Lucy's or Mama J's instead?
By this time, his Karen was glowering at me so I politely excused myself so they could get on with their afternoon.
Oddly enough, Karen did not seem the least bit sorry to see me go.
Coming up the hill from the river, I saw the same bagpipe player I'd seen on Brown's Island last month, only this time he was under a shady tree at 2 Street and Byrd, his bike and backpack at his feet, playing to the hills.
He was kind enough to turn and play uphill as I walked by so I got to hear his music for another block before losing it to the breeze.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands
I will find out where she has gone
And kiss her lips and take her hands
Nothing like ending your afternoon with the sound of bagpipes in your ears and Yeats in your head.
Saturday, January 25, 2014
None Such as She
You know it's unpleasantly cold and windy when I forgo my walk for a movie.
I'll concede that part of the allure was that it was "The Philadelphia Story," guaranteeing the wittiest of dialog from Hepburn, Stewart (no one says "doggone" like that man) and Grant, but I'd also read that it was considered one of the best "comedies of remarriage," a genre I hadn't even know existed but was apparently big in the '30s and '40s.
What is it about a couple being together, divorcing and then remarrying that seems romantic to people, I wonder?
Cracks about the working class like, "I can't afford to hate anyone. I'm only a photographer," got things rolling.
For the record, writers can't afford to, either.
Or the mother/daughter conversation.
Mother: We both might face the facts that neither of us has proved to be a very great success as a wife.
Tracy: We just picked the wrong first husband.
I've heard it happens.
Give the film's year (1940), politically incorrect jokes abounded, like, "Since this is the south parlor, I rather expected picaninies and banjos" and "I thought all writers drank to excess and beat their wives."
I heard a woman in the row behind me ask her companion incredulously, "What year was this film?"
Three quarters of a century ago, my dear. We've come a long way, baby.
Language aside, the movie demonstrated three essential things: that champagne is the great leveler, women who don't drink lose their husbands and that you can never be a first class woman until you've learned to have some regard for human frailty, namely your husband's.
Lessons learned.
I finally got around to walking late this afternoon, once the sun peeked out from behind the bank of clouds and the temperature reached a balmy 35 degrees although it felt like 26 with the wind still gusting.
But I had no choice because my legs were aching to stretch, cold or not.
The highlights were the woodsy aromas of fireplaces smoke and seeing a skater knocking a hockey puck around on the frozen tennis court at Abner Clay Park.
Probably a transplanted mid-westerner or northerner.
Once the sun went down, I joined a group of poetry-lovers, partially to share body heat but also because I love having poetry read to me.
Chop Suey Books was filling up fast when I arrived in time to see the store cat, Wonton, knock over books as he sashayed from table to table.
Owner Ward said Joshus Poteat had been doing readings at the store since they'd opened and I bet I've been to almost all of them.
Naturally he read first, and like the poet who introduced him, Allison Seay, said, Josh has his own Wikipedia page, so he's a pretty big deal.
Allison is right, though, for as many times as I've heard him read, I always enjoy it.
From his "Orinthology" collection we heard "People Who Kill Me" with lines like the evocative, "Evening light folded around her" and "As if her nakedness was a chore I could forget."
Now there's a way to woo a woman - tell her more about the evening light folding around her nakedness.
Explaining that he was getting to the point in his life where he didn't care to explain things and his books were getting more conceptual, he said he was just going to start reading and we could extract what we wanted from it.
Given the past week's weather, I was taken by the line, "The snow, absolute in all its vastness," from "Illustrating the Snow Line."
He referred to a joint project he'd done with architectural historian Roberto Ventura but didn't want to go into detail about it.
He didn't need to for me because I'd not only gone to Ashland to see the show, "For Lucy and Yard Sale," here, but bought one of the pieces the two had created for it.
As he read "Illustrated Construction for Railroad," I eagerly awaited hearing, "There is agreeable sound here under the thistle," the line carved into the collaged piece that now hangs in my living room, reminding me of Josh's poem whenever I need a fix.
Saying, "It's nice that people want to come out for poems," he showed a map of the land in North Carolina where he'd grown up and said he was working on an essay about it.
Then he clarified that whenever a poet says he's working on something- an essay, a novel, an article- he's really working on new poems and so was Josh.
So new it doesn't have a name yet, but my favorite line so far was, "A living radio mouthing news to the wind."
Then it was Allison Seay's turn to read from her book, "To See the Queen," about her struggles with depression.
"I saw a figment of my imagination, I was healed and that's my story," she said to explain the progression of the book, which had not been written in order, the third section's poetry having been written first.
"I strung up a clothesline in a room and hung my poems up to figure out the structure of the book," she explained. I don't know about you, but the thought of poems on a clothesline struck me as poetic in and of itself.
"I wish I could arrange the disturbances of my life," she wrote in "The Difficult Way."
She said that learning that stanza was Italian for room changed her poems as she began thinking of each poem as a house or town with rooms.
In the title poem, "To See the Queen," she wrote, "My life for a while was forgotten and so repaired."
With lines like that, it wasn't surprising that she acknowledged, "My book is despairing, so I have to check with the audience to see if you're okay."
We were, but she seemed a tad shaky at times.
Sharing a favorite lines from Yeats, "We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, out of the quarrels with ourselves, poetry," she went on to read some new work written during or since her first trip to Italy.
It was wonderfully different, as in "Inside the Well," with the lines, "All I need is the climate of you."
She closed with what she's calling her "spinster poems," a term referring to her 14-year old students' concerns for her unmarried status and her own jokes that she is a spinster.
"When we can, we save what we wish would come back," came from "May, the Occasion," and concluded the reading.
It's nice that poets want to come out and read to us on a Saturday night.
With words of longing and blackberries swirling around in my head, I walked a few doors down to Secco for dinner, finding a stool open in the middle of the bar.
I began with a small plate of delicately tempura-fried oyster mushrooms with lemon-espellete ailoi while chatting with the couple next to me who were curious why I wasn't drinking ( a fair enough question at Secco).
Moving on to an earthy and filling Asturian bean stew with smoked chorizo, slow-braised pork and leeks and the last order of garlic and herb focaccia in the house (they'd also 86'd the Spanish tortilla), the couple on the other side of me requested an audience.
"Are you Karen from 'I Could Go On and On'?" he asked, remembering meeting me at Amour Wine Bistro last summer. I'd noticed her earlier, specifically her curly hair, but couldn't place her out of context.
Like me, they'd been at Amour's anniversary party last May when the disco music was loud, the mirror ball spinning and we'd met and talked.
Tonight we just talked...about Amour's reopening and the couple's upcoming move to Dallas (a place I don't care for except when it houses my best friend).
It didn't seem to bother them that I wasn't drinking, much less to excess like a writer should. In related news, I don't have a wife to beat, either.
I only wish I had enough quarrels with myself to write poetry.
I'll concede that part of the allure was that it was "The Philadelphia Story," guaranteeing the wittiest of dialog from Hepburn, Stewart (no one says "doggone" like that man) and Grant, but I'd also read that it was considered one of the best "comedies of remarriage," a genre I hadn't even know existed but was apparently big in the '30s and '40s.
What is it about a couple being together, divorcing and then remarrying that seems romantic to people, I wonder?
Cracks about the working class like, "I can't afford to hate anyone. I'm only a photographer," got things rolling.
For the record, writers can't afford to, either.
Or the mother/daughter conversation.
Mother: We both might face the facts that neither of us has proved to be a very great success as a wife.
Tracy: We just picked the wrong first husband.
I've heard it happens.
Give the film's year (1940), politically incorrect jokes abounded, like, "Since this is the south parlor, I rather expected picaninies and banjos" and "I thought all writers drank to excess and beat their wives."
I heard a woman in the row behind me ask her companion incredulously, "What year was this film?"
Three quarters of a century ago, my dear. We've come a long way, baby.
Language aside, the movie demonstrated three essential things: that champagne is the great leveler, women who don't drink lose their husbands and that you can never be a first class woman until you've learned to have some regard for human frailty, namely your husband's.
Lessons learned.
I finally got around to walking late this afternoon, once the sun peeked out from behind the bank of clouds and the temperature reached a balmy 35 degrees although it felt like 26 with the wind still gusting.
But I had no choice because my legs were aching to stretch, cold or not.
The highlights were the woodsy aromas of fireplaces smoke and seeing a skater knocking a hockey puck around on the frozen tennis court at Abner Clay Park.
Probably a transplanted mid-westerner or northerner.
Once the sun went down, I joined a group of poetry-lovers, partially to share body heat but also because I love having poetry read to me.
Chop Suey Books was filling up fast when I arrived in time to see the store cat, Wonton, knock over books as he sashayed from table to table.
Owner Ward said Joshus Poteat had been doing readings at the store since they'd opened and I bet I've been to almost all of them.
Naturally he read first, and like the poet who introduced him, Allison Seay, said, Josh has his own Wikipedia page, so he's a pretty big deal.
Allison is right, though, for as many times as I've heard him read, I always enjoy it.
From his "Orinthology" collection we heard "People Who Kill Me" with lines like the evocative, "Evening light folded around her" and "As if her nakedness was a chore I could forget."
Now there's a way to woo a woman - tell her more about the evening light folding around her nakedness.
Explaining that he was getting to the point in his life where he didn't care to explain things and his books were getting more conceptual, he said he was just going to start reading and we could extract what we wanted from it.
Given the past week's weather, I was taken by the line, "The snow, absolute in all its vastness," from "Illustrating the Snow Line."
He referred to a joint project he'd done with architectural historian Roberto Ventura but didn't want to go into detail about it.
He didn't need to for me because I'd not only gone to Ashland to see the show, "For Lucy and Yard Sale," here, but bought one of the pieces the two had created for it.
As he read "Illustrated Construction for Railroad," I eagerly awaited hearing, "There is agreeable sound here under the thistle," the line carved into the collaged piece that now hangs in my living room, reminding me of Josh's poem whenever I need a fix.
Saying, "It's nice that people want to come out for poems," he showed a map of the land in North Carolina where he'd grown up and said he was working on an essay about it.
Then he clarified that whenever a poet says he's working on something- an essay, a novel, an article- he's really working on new poems and so was Josh.
So new it doesn't have a name yet, but my favorite line so far was, "A living radio mouthing news to the wind."
Then it was Allison Seay's turn to read from her book, "To See the Queen," about her struggles with depression.
"I saw a figment of my imagination, I was healed and that's my story," she said to explain the progression of the book, which had not been written in order, the third section's poetry having been written first.
"I strung up a clothesline in a room and hung my poems up to figure out the structure of the book," she explained. I don't know about you, but the thought of poems on a clothesline struck me as poetic in and of itself.
"I wish I could arrange the disturbances of my life," she wrote in "The Difficult Way."
She said that learning that stanza was Italian for room changed her poems as she began thinking of each poem as a house or town with rooms.
In the title poem, "To See the Queen," she wrote, "My life for a while was forgotten and so repaired."
With lines like that, it wasn't surprising that she acknowledged, "My book is despairing, so I have to check with the audience to see if you're okay."
We were, but she seemed a tad shaky at times.
Sharing a favorite lines from Yeats, "We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, out of the quarrels with ourselves, poetry," she went on to read some new work written during or since her first trip to Italy.
It was wonderfully different, as in "Inside the Well," with the lines, "All I need is the climate of you."
She closed with what she's calling her "spinster poems," a term referring to her 14-year old students' concerns for her unmarried status and her own jokes that she is a spinster.
"When we can, we save what we wish would come back," came from "May, the Occasion," and concluded the reading.
It's nice that poets want to come out and read to us on a Saturday night.
With words of longing and blackberries swirling around in my head, I walked a few doors down to Secco for dinner, finding a stool open in the middle of the bar.
I began with a small plate of delicately tempura-fried oyster mushrooms with lemon-espellete ailoi while chatting with the couple next to me who were curious why I wasn't drinking ( a fair enough question at Secco).
Moving on to an earthy and filling Asturian bean stew with smoked chorizo, slow-braised pork and leeks and the last order of garlic and herb focaccia in the house (they'd also 86'd the Spanish tortilla), the couple on the other side of me requested an audience.
"Are you Karen from 'I Could Go On and On'?" he asked, remembering meeting me at Amour Wine Bistro last summer. I'd noticed her earlier, specifically her curly hair, but couldn't place her out of context.
Like me, they'd been at Amour's anniversary party last May when the disco music was loud, the mirror ball spinning and we'd met and talked.
Tonight we just talked...about Amour's reopening and the couple's upcoming move to Dallas (a place I don't care for except when it houses my best friend).
It didn't seem to bother them that I wasn't drinking, much less to excess like a writer should. In related news, I don't have a wife to beat, either.
I only wish I had enough quarrels with myself to write poetry.
Sunday, January 19, 2014
You Won't Bore Him, Honey
After a walk down Leigh Street, past the bustle of Sunday morning doughnut-seekers converging on Sugar Shack and a pussy willow covered in fuzzy little buds, I made it to the Bowtie for a movie, but no mimosa.
And I have to say, I may be late to the party but now I understand why "All About Eve" was nominated for a record-breaking fourteen Oscars.
I don't know about anybody else, but I found so many facets to the story that fascinated me - the challenges of aging gracefully, the machinations of the theater world, older woman dating younger man.
Then there were the usual period details that I always enjoy - talk of girdles and women with size five feet, neither of which applies to anyone on the planet anymore, I don't think.
But really, it was the dialog that made the movie...and I'm not even talking about, "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night."
I'm talking about aging cracks like, "I'll admit I may have seen better days, but I'm still not to be had for the price of a cocktail, like a salted peanut."
Or, "My native habitat is the theater. In it, I toil not, neither do I spin. I am a critic and commentator. I am essential to the theater."
And it's hard to top a bald statement like, "She loves me like a father. Plus she's loaded."
Or the best line from the character named Karen, played by Celeste Holm. "The cynicism you refer to I acquired the day I discovered I was different from little boys."
But on the off chance you've never seen "All About Eve," it can be summed up in one classic 1950 quote by Bette Davis' character, Margo.
"Funny business, a woman's career, the things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. That's one career all females have in common, whether we like it or not: being a woman. Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter how many other careers we've had or wanted. And in the last analysis, nothing's any good unless you can look up just before dinner or turn around in bed and there he is. Without that, you're not a woman."
Now I know. Without a man, I'm nothing more than a salted peanut.
And I have to say, I may be late to the party but now I understand why "All About Eve" was nominated for a record-breaking fourteen Oscars.
I don't know about anybody else, but I found so many facets to the story that fascinated me - the challenges of aging gracefully, the machinations of the theater world, older woman dating younger man.
Then there were the usual period details that I always enjoy - talk of girdles and women with size five feet, neither of which applies to anyone on the planet anymore, I don't think.
But really, it was the dialog that made the movie...and I'm not even talking about, "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night."
I'm talking about aging cracks like, "I'll admit I may have seen better days, but I'm still not to be had for the price of a cocktail, like a salted peanut."
Or, "My native habitat is the theater. In it, I toil not, neither do I spin. I am a critic and commentator. I am essential to the theater."
And it's hard to top a bald statement like, "She loves me like a father. Plus she's loaded."
Or the best line from the character named Karen, played by Celeste Holm. "The cynicism you refer to I acquired the day I discovered I was different from little boys."
But on the off chance you've never seen "All About Eve," it can be summed up in one classic 1950 quote by Bette Davis' character, Margo.
"Funny business, a woman's career, the things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. That's one career all females have in common, whether we like it or not: being a woman. Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter how many other careers we've had or wanted. And in the last analysis, nothing's any good unless you can look up just before dinner or turn around in bed and there he is. Without that, you're not a woman."
Now I know. Without a man, I'm nothing more than a salted peanut.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
So Not Starving
The last thing I expected when I went to the movies was to get a full day out of it.
But walking into the theater to see the Movies and Mimosas screening of "Auntie Mame," I heard someone call, "Hey, lady!" and somehow knew it was directed at me.
A favorite couple was already in my row so I joined them as we waited for the projectionist to figure out how to make the movie show correctly.
It seems like projector issues are standard at Movieland these says, at least from my recent experiences.
Finally they figured it out and "Auntie Mame" began in full Technicolor with sets and costumes designed to dazzle.
Whether I'd never seen it or just long since forgotten that I had seen it, I did at least know what it was about: an eccentric woman's philosophy of life.
Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving.
Well, needless to say, I can certainly get into that kind of attitude.
Drinking humor was abundant, whether Mame chiding her nephew, Patrick, "Pipe down, kid, I'm hung!" or asking for "a light breakfast- black coffee and a sidecar."
Or leaving for a trip, "Don't forget the maps and the martinis!"
Ah, the good old days.
After Mame loses her money in the 1929 stock market crash, she takes a job as a telephone operator, something both my grandmothers did for a living, and then at Macy's during Christmas season.
There she meets Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside (which, by the by, is only one name removed from much-beloved local drag queen Magnolia Jackson Pickett Burnside) and falls in love.
When she goes down to meet his kin at his estate Peckerwood (!) in Savannah, every cliche about the south is put into play.
A banjo playing "Way Down Upon the Swanee River." Truly awful southern accents. An old lady with a snuff box. Men in Colonel Sanders-esque white suits.
Oh, it's bad.
Back in the real south, it was during the fox hunting scene (of course) that the man sitting in front of us called out loudly to a guy in another row, "Sir, would you put your phone away, please?"
I don't know about the rest of the audience, but the three of us nodded in affirmation.
Despite Patrick's trustee's opinion of Mame ("You're a deceitful, irresponsible bohemian"), she is also a cultured, witty and intelligent woman who brings up her nephew the same.
So when he brings home a pretentious social climber who observes of Mame's apartment, "Books are really decorative, don't you think?" she knows everything she needs to know about the girl.
Like so many mid-century movies (this one was 1958), the movie was a blend of the period represented (late 1920s through early 1940s) and the time it was filmed, with clothing especially far more '50s than anything and lots of modern art.
At two hours and 23 minutes, it was a long movie but between the elaborate sets, fanciful costumes and depiction of la vie boheme, before we knew it, it was the end.
I asked my friends about their afternoon's plans, sharing that mine included a trip to the VMFA and suddenly we had a date to meet at Amuse for lunch.
They were already ensconced in the mid-century modern green lounge chairs and a bottle of J Brut Rose arrived moments after I sat down, thus allowing us to continue with Mame's decor and penchant for bubbles.
One of my friends shared a Mame-like anecdote about a trip to the beach and a Tupperware pitcher of Bloddy Marys that the back seat contingent consumed before the ocean was ever in sight. Bravo.
We barely got started when three seats opened up at the bar and we took them and our J with us.
Since I have to be a hired mouth tonight, I chose the cornbread waffle with spicy apples, maple syrup and applewood-smoked bacon while they went heavier with pork belly poutine and corned beef hash biscuits.
Given the ridiculously cold and windy weather outside, it was a pleasure to eat and sip in Amuse's sunny dining room, although even its magnificent windows weren't immune to the weather and had big areas of condensation on them.
While enjoying my waffle, I spotted Lady Di coming in, as he always does, to meet friends for drinks on Sunday afternoons.
Kiss, kiss and he was on to his friends, promising that we'd see each other tonight at GLAP.
Once lunch was history, my friends and I went downstairs to get our tickets for "Made in Hollywood," the companion photography show to "Hollywood Costume."
As a photography devotee, I have to admit that this show interested me even more than the costumes.
With 93 vintage photos of stars during the golden years of Hollywood, it was both a memory jog and a reminder of the studio system that shaped human beings and careers.
And sometimes, it was just a breathtaking look at a superbly-composed photograph, like the one of Louise Brooks in a black dress against a black background.
The only things you can discern are her face, neck, hands and a knee-length strand of pearls. It's a study in black and white contrast.
A shot of Marilyn Monroe applying lipstick was striking for the book laying next to her purse, "The Thinking Body."
From what I read of her in ex-husband Arthur Miller's biography, that's exactly how she wanted to be thought of.
In a photo of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing, they are so fluid, so graceful-looking, that it's a shock to lean in closer and realize that both have their feet are on the floor not in the air.
Passing a picture of Rita Hayworth, a woman next to me said to her companion, "I forgot all about her."
Based on the father/daughter duo I heard in the gallery, many of the people in the photos needed an explanation for some visitors.
A stunning photograph of 16-year old Liz Taylor was proof positive of why when, as a child, I asked my mother who the most beautiful woman in the world was, she said without hesitation, Elizabeth Taylor.
Many of the photographs were stills, taken between scenes when the photographer had limited time to capture a moment but did so wonderfully anyway.
The most playful was one from "The Thin Man" with William Powell in pajamas sitting on a couch with his legs up and a gun between them, Myrna Loy at his side and alcohol behind them.
In that one photo, the crux of "The Thin Man" movies is distilled to its most basic elements - Nick, Nora, booze and humor.
Despite being on an impromptu couple date, I didn't walk through the show with my friends because we each started in different directions and strolled at our own paces.
But afterwards, we met up to look at some photos together and discuss others, before they decided to go home and take a nap.
Just between you and me, they may have been a little hung, as Mame would say.
Drinking in the afternoon...just one of many little pleasures of the bohemian life.
But walking into the theater to see the Movies and Mimosas screening of "Auntie Mame," I heard someone call, "Hey, lady!" and somehow knew it was directed at me.
A favorite couple was already in my row so I joined them as we waited for the projectionist to figure out how to make the movie show correctly.
It seems like projector issues are standard at Movieland these says, at least from my recent experiences.
Finally they figured it out and "Auntie Mame" began in full Technicolor with sets and costumes designed to dazzle.
Whether I'd never seen it or just long since forgotten that I had seen it, I did at least know what it was about: an eccentric woman's philosophy of life.
Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving.
Well, needless to say, I can certainly get into that kind of attitude.
Drinking humor was abundant, whether Mame chiding her nephew, Patrick, "Pipe down, kid, I'm hung!" or asking for "a light breakfast- black coffee and a sidecar."
Or leaving for a trip, "Don't forget the maps and the martinis!"
Ah, the good old days.
After Mame loses her money in the 1929 stock market crash, she takes a job as a telephone operator, something both my grandmothers did for a living, and then at Macy's during Christmas season.
There she meets Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside (which, by the by, is only one name removed from much-beloved local drag queen Magnolia Jackson Pickett Burnside) and falls in love.
When she goes down to meet his kin at his estate Peckerwood (!) in Savannah, every cliche about the south is put into play.
A banjo playing "Way Down Upon the Swanee River." Truly awful southern accents. An old lady with a snuff box. Men in Colonel Sanders-esque white suits.
Oh, it's bad.
Back in the real south, it was during the fox hunting scene (of course) that the man sitting in front of us called out loudly to a guy in another row, "Sir, would you put your phone away, please?"
I don't know about the rest of the audience, but the three of us nodded in affirmation.
Despite Patrick's trustee's opinion of Mame ("You're a deceitful, irresponsible bohemian"), she is also a cultured, witty and intelligent woman who brings up her nephew the same.
So when he brings home a pretentious social climber who observes of Mame's apartment, "Books are really decorative, don't you think?" she knows everything she needs to know about the girl.
Like so many mid-century movies (this one was 1958), the movie was a blend of the period represented (late 1920s through early 1940s) and the time it was filmed, with clothing especially far more '50s than anything and lots of modern art.
At two hours and 23 minutes, it was a long movie but between the elaborate sets, fanciful costumes and depiction of la vie boheme, before we knew it, it was the end.
I asked my friends about their afternoon's plans, sharing that mine included a trip to the VMFA and suddenly we had a date to meet at Amuse for lunch.
They were already ensconced in the mid-century modern green lounge chairs and a bottle of J Brut Rose arrived moments after I sat down, thus allowing us to continue with Mame's decor and penchant for bubbles.
One of my friends shared a Mame-like anecdote about a trip to the beach and a Tupperware pitcher of Bloddy Marys that the back seat contingent consumed before the ocean was ever in sight. Bravo.
We barely got started when three seats opened up at the bar and we took them and our J with us.
Since I have to be a hired mouth tonight, I chose the cornbread waffle with spicy apples, maple syrup and applewood-smoked bacon while they went heavier with pork belly poutine and corned beef hash biscuits.
Given the ridiculously cold and windy weather outside, it was a pleasure to eat and sip in Amuse's sunny dining room, although even its magnificent windows weren't immune to the weather and had big areas of condensation on them.
While enjoying my waffle, I spotted Lady Di coming in, as he always does, to meet friends for drinks on Sunday afternoons.
Kiss, kiss and he was on to his friends, promising that we'd see each other tonight at GLAP.
Once lunch was history, my friends and I went downstairs to get our tickets for "Made in Hollywood," the companion photography show to "Hollywood Costume."
As a photography devotee, I have to admit that this show interested me even more than the costumes.
With 93 vintage photos of stars during the golden years of Hollywood, it was both a memory jog and a reminder of the studio system that shaped human beings and careers.
And sometimes, it was just a breathtaking look at a superbly-composed photograph, like the one of Louise Brooks in a black dress against a black background.
The only things you can discern are her face, neck, hands and a knee-length strand of pearls. It's a study in black and white contrast.
A shot of Marilyn Monroe applying lipstick was striking for the book laying next to her purse, "The Thinking Body."
From what I read of her in ex-husband Arthur Miller's biography, that's exactly how she wanted to be thought of.
In a photo of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing, they are so fluid, so graceful-looking, that it's a shock to lean in closer and realize that both have their feet are on the floor not in the air.
Passing a picture of Rita Hayworth, a woman next to me said to her companion, "I forgot all about her."
Based on the father/daughter duo I heard in the gallery, many of the people in the photos needed an explanation for some visitors.
A stunning photograph of 16-year old Liz Taylor was proof positive of why when, as a child, I asked my mother who the most beautiful woman in the world was, she said without hesitation, Elizabeth Taylor.
Many of the photographs were stills, taken between scenes when the photographer had limited time to capture a moment but did so wonderfully anyway.
The most playful was one from "The Thin Man" with William Powell in pajamas sitting on a couch with his legs up and a gun between them, Myrna Loy at his side and alcohol behind them.
In that one photo, the crux of "The Thin Man" movies is distilled to its most basic elements - Nick, Nora, booze and humor.
Despite being on an impromptu couple date, I didn't walk through the show with my friends because we each started in different directions and strolled at our own paces.
But afterwards, we met up to look at some photos together and discuss others, before they decided to go home and take a nap.
Just between you and me, they may have been a little hung, as Mame would say.
Drinking in the afternoon...just one of many little pleasures of the bohemian life.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Who You Gonna Call?
Flash back to 1984.
Seriously, the last time I'd seen "Ghostbusters" was when it first came out at a theater in D.C. back in the Reagan years.
Buying my ticket today at Movieland behind a group of what looked like Girl Scouts and their leader, I couldn't help but be surprised at how many people were in line for this show.
Ditto the ticket seller, who said perplexed, "Usually when we show these old movies, hardly anyone comes."
Don't I know it, honey. I'm usually one of six in the theater for Movies and Mimosas.
Inside the theater, there were already at least three dozen people in place, but I found a seat in my favorite row and the only other people in it were a couple of barely twenty-somethings.
I overheard them say that the rest of their group was out in the lobby finishing their mimosas. The ones who were legal, I guess.
When the rest of the clan arrived, they filled up all the seats in our row and began chatting.
Not a problem, or at least it wasn't until the movie began.
Several immediately started squawking because there were no previews.
"What could they preview? 'Ghostbusters 2'?" one challenged.
"They could show 1980s previews," another suggested.
And then as the featured film began, one piped up, "So what is this movie about?"
If the non-stop chatter had stopped there, I'd have been fine, but it didn't.
"Ghostbusters" has no opening credits; you see the title and the story begins at once. Meanwhile these idiots are carrying on multiple full-volume conversations like they're in their dorm room.
I couldn't help myself.
You guys are going to have to be quiet. Thank you, I said in my firmest voice and was rewarded with a mollified look and a timid "oh, okay" from the lone male.
Were you raised by wolves?
The movie begins in the New York public library with a spirit wreaking havoc, sending books flying off shelves and the cards in the card catalog exploding out of the drawers.
I feel quite certain the others in my row had no clue what the drawers or the cards were but at least they were quiet now.
Not sure why I was surprised at how baby-faced Dan Aykroyd looked or how adept Bill Murray was at ad-libbing lines, but the risque-for-the-time humor was as '80s as I expected.
Are you menstruating?
What does that have to do with it?
Back off, man, I'm a scientist.
Hysterical dialog aside, as always, it's the snapshot of the period that fascinates me.
Sigourney Weaver sported a very 1984 perm almost identical to the one I was wearing when I first saw this movie. Hell, every female character had big hair.
"Print is dead," one character declares authoritatively. Wait, we knew that then?
We heard Casey Kasem's Top 40 on the radio, a man and a program I hadn't thought of in years.
After seeing a spirit in her refrigerator, Sigourney enlists Bill Murray to come check, only to find it full of junk food. "What was he doing in my icebox?" she asks. People still said icebox in 1984?
Smoking was rampant and even the ghostbusters smoked while wearing their highly flammable proton packs.
Once Sigourney is possessed, she wears a full-on "Flashdance" one-shouldered dress, just like we all wore in 1984.
Her accountant neighbor Louis, played by geek extraordinaire Rick Moranis, throws a party (inviting clients so he can write it off, natch) and to further show how uncool he is, not only plans to play Twister, but the music at his party is "Disco Inferno."
Gawd, Louis, that song is so 1976.
But the most telling line for me was when Ernie Hudson's character, Winston, the new hire at Ghostbusters, gets freaked out by the demons facing them.
"This job is definitely not worth eleven thousand a year!" he screams.
That's just about exactly what I was making in 1984, big hair, off-the-shoulder shirt and all.
But let's be clear. I was not listening to "Disco Inferno."
Seriously, the last time I'd seen "Ghostbusters" was when it first came out at a theater in D.C. back in the Reagan years.
Buying my ticket today at Movieland behind a group of what looked like Girl Scouts and their leader, I couldn't help but be surprised at how many people were in line for this show.
Ditto the ticket seller, who said perplexed, "Usually when we show these old movies, hardly anyone comes."
Don't I know it, honey. I'm usually one of six in the theater for Movies and Mimosas.
Inside the theater, there were already at least three dozen people in place, but I found a seat in my favorite row and the only other people in it were a couple of barely twenty-somethings.
I overheard them say that the rest of their group was out in the lobby finishing their mimosas. The ones who were legal, I guess.
When the rest of the clan arrived, they filled up all the seats in our row and began chatting.
Not a problem, or at least it wasn't until the movie began.
Several immediately started squawking because there were no previews.
"What could they preview? 'Ghostbusters 2'?" one challenged.
"They could show 1980s previews," another suggested.
And then as the featured film began, one piped up, "So what is this movie about?"
If the non-stop chatter had stopped there, I'd have been fine, but it didn't.
"Ghostbusters" has no opening credits; you see the title and the story begins at once. Meanwhile these idiots are carrying on multiple full-volume conversations like they're in their dorm room.
I couldn't help myself.
You guys are going to have to be quiet. Thank you, I said in my firmest voice and was rewarded with a mollified look and a timid "oh, okay" from the lone male.
Were you raised by wolves?
The movie begins in the New York public library with a spirit wreaking havoc, sending books flying off shelves and the cards in the card catalog exploding out of the drawers.
I feel quite certain the others in my row had no clue what the drawers or the cards were but at least they were quiet now.
Not sure why I was surprised at how baby-faced Dan Aykroyd looked or how adept Bill Murray was at ad-libbing lines, but the risque-for-the-time humor was as '80s as I expected.
Are you menstruating?
What does that have to do with it?
Back off, man, I'm a scientist.
Hysterical dialog aside, as always, it's the snapshot of the period that fascinates me.
Sigourney Weaver sported a very 1984 perm almost identical to the one I was wearing when I first saw this movie. Hell, every female character had big hair.
"Print is dead," one character declares authoritatively. Wait, we knew that then?
We heard Casey Kasem's Top 40 on the radio, a man and a program I hadn't thought of in years.
After seeing a spirit in her refrigerator, Sigourney enlists Bill Murray to come check, only to find it full of junk food. "What was he doing in my icebox?" she asks. People still said icebox in 1984?
Smoking was rampant and even the ghostbusters smoked while wearing their highly flammable proton packs.
Once Sigourney is possessed, she wears a full-on "Flashdance" one-shouldered dress, just like we all wore in 1984.
Her accountant neighbor Louis, played by geek extraordinaire Rick Moranis, throws a party (inviting clients so he can write it off, natch) and to further show how uncool he is, not only plans to play Twister, but the music at his party is "Disco Inferno."
Gawd, Louis, that song is so 1976.
But the most telling line for me was when Ernie Hudson's character, Winston, the new hire at Ghostbusters, gets freaked out by the demons facing them.
"This job is definitely not worth eleven thousand a year!" he screams.
That's just about exactly what I was making in 1984, big hair, off-the-shoulder shirt and all.
But let's be clear. I was not listening to "Disco Inferno."
Saturday, September 14, 2013
You're a Good Man, Sister
It was a beautiful day for the RVA Street Art Fest.
But since I'd already been to it two of the past three days, I opted for a dark theater instead.
Movieland was showing "The Maltese Falcon," yet another classic I'd never seen.
But apparently everyone else has (or they were at the festival) because when I walked in, there was one couple in the theater.
"We're all full up," the husband called down to me, employing his best corny humor.
Once the pre-movie advertising began, I discovered just how much I had in common with the couple.
After a particularly atrocious commercial for a new ABC series, the husband said, "I'm glad we don't have a TV!"
Amen, I called up to them, knowing I had found my people.
Once the movie started, a smattering of other people came in, but I can't be sure they were of our ilk.
As so often happens when I see an old movie for the first time, I learn cultural history tidbits.
I had no idea that the names for the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan came from characters in this movie.
First Bert and Ernie and now this.
The beautiful black and white cinematography, the creative angles from which it was shot (looking up at Fatman's jowls as he talks) and the frequency with which everyone smoked (giving many scenes a hazy, film noir look) made for a whole lot of eye candy.
Not to mention how handsome Humphrey Bogart was in 1941...especially when he smiled
"That's the stuff that dreams are made of," he says at the end.
From Shakespeare's pen to Bogey's lips. Now I know that, too.
But since I'd already been to it two of the past three days, I opted for a dark theater instead.
Movieland was showing "The Maltese Falcon," yet another classic I'd never seen.
But apparently everyone else has (or they were at the festival) because when I walked in, there was one couple in the theater.
"We're all full up," the husband called down to me, employing his best corny humor.
Once the pre-movie advertising began, I discovered just how much I had in common with the couple.
After a particularly atrocious commercial for a new ABC series, the husband said, "I'm glad we don't have a TV!"
Amen, I called up to them, knowing I had found my people.
Once the movie started, a smattering of other people came in, but I can't be sure they were of our ilk.
As so often happens when I see an old movie for the first time, I learn cultural history tidbits.
I had no idea that the names for the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan came from characters in this movie.
First Bert and Ernie and now this.
The beautiful black and white cinematography, the creative angles from which it was shot (looking up at Fatman's jowls as he talks) and the frequency with which everyone smoked (giving many scenes a hazy, film noir look) made for a whole lot of eye candy.
Not to mention how handsome Humphrey Bogart was in 1941...especially when he smiled
"That's the stuff that dreams are made of," he says at the end.
From Shakespeare's pen to Bogey's lips. Now I know that, too.
Sunday, September 1, 2013
I Coulda Been Somebody
Church bells ringing, weed eaters buzzing, and a guy saying, "Good morning, beautiful."
That's the way to walk to Bowtie on a Sunday morning.
I was taking care of another glaring omission in my film viewing, this time of 1954's "On the Waterfront."
And while I'm really not a fan of crime dramas, the film had two things going for it, at least as far as I was concerned.
Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 100% critical rating and it was written by Budd Schulberg.
After discovering Schulberg's iconic "What Makes Sammy Run?" in a used book store years ago, I devoured the insider's story about the harsh realities of Hollywood.
That led me to read his second book, "The Disenchanted," an imagining of why a handsome, talented post-WWI writer (a thinly veiled F. Scott Fitzgerald) would end up a dissipated alcoholic.
Geek that I am, knowing that the same author wrote what is considered a film masterpiece had me walking down Leigh Street this morning.
I'll be honest, it didn't hurt that Leonard Bernstein did the score, either.
Eight other people and I watched the gritty black and white story about the corruption of NYC's longshoremen and the violence that accompanied those who dared to speak out against it.
As always for me, the period details were a draw.
All-male "saloons," pigeon coops on building rooves, women in full slips.
And a very handsome 30-year old Marlon Brando to boot.
So it was that I finally heard him say, "I coulda been a contender."
I coulda been sleeping in, but I'm better off for not.
That's the way to walk to Bowtie on a Sunday morning.
I was taking care of another glaring omission in my film viewing, this time of 1954's "On the Waterfront."
And while I'm really not a fan of crime dramas, the film had two things going for it, at least as far as I was concerned.
Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 100% critical rating and it was written by Budd Schulberg.
After discovering Schulberg's iconic "What Makes Sammy Run?" in a used book store years ago, I devoured the insider's story about the harsh realities of Hollywood.
That led me to read his second book, "The Disenchanted," an imagining of why a handsome, talented post-WWI writer (a thinly veiled F. Scott Fitzgerald) would end up a dissipated alcoholic.
Geek that I am, knowing that the same author wrote what is considered a film masterpiece had me walking down Leigh Street this morning.
I'll be honest, it didn't hurt that Leonard Bernstein did the score, either.
Eight other people and I watched the gritty black and white story about the corruption of NYC's longshoremen and the violence that accompanied those who dared to speak out against it.
As always for me, the period details were a draw.
All-male "saloons," pigeon coops on building rooves, women in full slips.
And a very handsome 30-year old Marlon Brando to boot.
So it was that I finally heard him say, "I coulda been a contender."
I coulda been sleeping in, but I'm better off for not.
Saturday, August 3, 2013
Bonjour, Riviera
Here I'm trying to get my French Riviera on and I run smack dab into fan appreciation day.
Drat the luck.
Walking to Movieland for the 11:00 screening of Otto Preminger's 1958 film, "Bonjour Tristesse," I was caught up in a sea of football fans.
"You must be a Redskins cheerleader," one jerseyed guy illogically said to me, "your walk is so nice."
No, sir, if you want to see a former Redskinette, go down to the governor's mansion.
Passing a guy wearing a "D. Green 28" jersey, I told him it was nice to see a Darrell Green fan amongst a sea of RGIII fanatics.
"Will you marry me?" he joked, clearly thrilled to get the acknowledgement.
Nope, sure won't.
Crossing the street against the tide, a Capital policeman inquired of me, "Leaving already?"
Explaining that I'd checked out camp on a weekday, he nodded. "Smart! We're expecting 25,000 people today and we've already got 7,000."
Good god, it was 10:40.
I marched past the Redskins marching band blasting out music for those 7,000 and kept right on going.
Once inside the theater, I was the lone attendee.
After a while, I was joined by an older couple and he took a moment to rant about the city's poor preparation for today.
"They took away parking, there's only fifteen bathrooms and I just have to wonder how Mayor Jones is getting away with this!"
I don't know, sir, I just want to see a Technicolor version of a story about a father and daughter with no moral compass.
So while I didn't like the characters, I did like two of the credits in the film: paintings by Kumi Sugai and wardrobe by Givenchy.
You don't often see paintings get their own credit and what a treat to look at Givenchy fashions circa 1958.
Leave it to Otto Preminger.
David Niven was the rakish father and Jean Seberg the spoiled daughter not willing to give up her libertine and lush way of life with her father when he considers marriage to her dead mother's best friend.
It was a movie with a profound devotion to recreational drinking, always in cool places like subterranean boites and supper clubs where everyone danced divinely.
If only I still had those options for my evenings out.
The film began in black and white and flashed back to the summer before in color and the scenes of a summer on the Riviera were breathtaking - the bluest water, dappled sunshine as they lounged on the patio, a villa with sea views from every room.
It was hard to empathize with any of the characters; even the goody two-shoes Deborah Kerr was difficult to feel for, at least until she drove her car off a scenic cliff.
With its hints of incest and the father's non-stop womanizing, I'm willing to bet it went over far better with the French critics than the American ones, at least when it came out.
All I know is that it was a far more pleasurable place to be than on a field with 24,999 other people.
Even if it ultimately was a sadly tragic film, with lines like, "I am as suspicious of summer as I am of you."
What a waste.
Put me on the Riviera for a summer and I'll trust whatever comes along. Try me.
Drat the luck.
Walking to Movieland for the 11:00 screening of Otto Preminger's 1958 film, "Bonjour Tristesse," I was caught up in a sea of football fans.
"You must be a Redskins cheerleader," one jerseyed guy illogically said to me, "your walk is so nice."
No, sir, if you want to see a former Redskinette, go down to the governor's mansion.
Passing a guy wearing a "D. Green 28" jersey, I told him it was nice to see a Darrell Green fan amongst a sea of RGIII fanatics.
"Will you marry me?" he joked, clearly thrilled to get the acknowledgement.
Nope, sure won't.
Crossing the street against the tide, a Capital policeman inquired of me, "Leaving already?"
Explaining that I'd checked out camp on a weekday, he nodded. "Smart! We're expecting 25,000 people today and we've already got 7,000."
Good god, it was 10:40.
I marched past the Redskins marching band blasting out music for those 7,000 and kept right on going.
Once inside the theater, I was the lone attendee.
After a while, I was joined by an older couple and he took a moment to rant about the city's poor preparation for today.
"They took away parking, there's only fifteen bathrooms and I just have to wonder how Mayor Jones is getting away with this!"
I don't know, sir, I just want to see a Technicolor version of a story about a father and daughter with no moral compass.
So while I didn't like the characters, I did like two of the credits in the film: paintings by Kumi Sugai and wardrobe by Givenchy.
You don't often see paintings get their own credit and what a treat to look at Givenchy fashions circa 1958.
Leave it to Otto Preminger.
David Niven was the rakish father and Jean Seberg the spoiled daughter not willing to give up her libertine and lush way of life with her father when he considers marriage to her dead mother's best friend.
It was a movie with a profound devotion to recreational drinking, always in cool places like subterranean boites and supper clubs where everyone danced divinely.
If only I still had those options for my evenings out.
The film began in black and white and flashed back to the summer before in color and the scenes of a summer on the Riviera were breathtaking - the bluest water, dappled sunshine as they lounged on the patio, a villa with sea views from every room.
It was hard to empathize with any of the characters; even the goody two-shoes Deborah Kerr was difficult to feel for, at least until she drove her car off a scenic cliff.
With its hints of incest and the father's non-stop womanizing, I'm willing to bet it went over far better with the French critics than the American ones, at least when it came out.
All I know is that it was a far more pleasurable place to be than on a field with 24,999 other people.
Even if it ultimately was a sadly tragic film, with lines like, "I am as suspicious of summer as I am of you."
What a waste.
Put me on the Riviera for a summer and I'll trust whatever comes along. Try me.
Saturday, June 15, 2013
A Woman of Many Parts
Wait, there was a 008?
That just goes to prove why it's about time I'm getting around to seeing the James Bond series, courtesy of Movieland's Movies and Mimosas.
Two weeks ago it was Dr. No and today, after walking to the theater on an exquisite morning, it was "Goldfinger."
Or, as Shirley Bassey sings it, "Goldfingahhhh."
The movie got my attention (and no doubt that of women for the past 50 years) in the opening scene where James is wearing a bathing suit and getting a massage.
When he stands up wearing those fitted '60s-style swim trunks, that's an impressive hunk of man.
I was especially tickled when he then put on a romper, zipping it up to his hairy chest and belting it.
When's the last time you saw a guy in a romper?
Of course, he was still full of 007 technical information, like, "My dear girl, there are some things that just aren't done, like drinking Dom Perignon '53 above the temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That's just as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs!"
His advice still holds on the first, although never on the second.
When the location moved to Goldfinger's stud farm in Kentucky, things got all southern.
There was a huge Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in the background ("Colonel Sanders' secret recipe") and James refers to "bourbon and branch water."
When all was said and done, I didn't like it quite as much as "Dr. No" because it seemed like James spent less time romancing women.
That said, I was terribly impressed that the actress who played Pussy Galore was 37 at the time, especially since back in 1964, 37 was not the new 27 like now.
Once Bond had saved Fort Knox, parachuted from a failing plane and was rolling around making out with Pussy under a parachute, the credits told us that it was the end of "Goldfinger" but that Bond would be back in "Thunderball."
Which probably means I'll be back at Movieland, hoping for a few less dead bodies and a lot more drinking advice and action on the sheets.
Walking back home beside the endless throng of workers always at Redskin Park, I got in the car to go to Manchester.
Blue Bee Cider (Virginia's only urban cidery) and Anderson's Neck Oyster Company (which I'd had at Dutch & Co.) were doing a tasting all afternoon and having recently tasted (and enjoyed) some Blue Bee Cider, I wanted more.
The tasting room had a lively crowd when I arrived, mostly guys but a few of my people.
There were two cider choices, Charred Ordinary, a more traditional cider, and Aragon 1904, an off-dry cider more reminiscent of champagne.
With a glass of the light and crisp (and not at all cloying) latter, I wandered over to the shucking table where I had a dozen Eagle Flats awaiting me.
"How's your day going so far?" one of the shuckers asked.
I told him I'd just seen "Goldfinger" for the first time at the theater.
"Wow, "Goldfinger" then oysters and cider? That's a really awesome Saturday!" he enthused.
Don't I know it.
That just goes to prove why it's about time I'm getting around to seeing the James Bond series, courtesy of Movieland's Movies and Mimosas.
Two weeks ago it was Dr. No and today, after walking to the theater on an exquisite morning, it was "Goldfinger."
Or, as Shirley Bassey sings it, "Goldfingahhhh."
The movie got my attention (and no doubt that of women for the past 50 years) in the opening scene where James is wearing a bathing suit and getting a massage.
When he stands up wearing those fitted '60s-style swim trunks, that's an impressive hunk of man.
I was especially tickled when he then put on a romper, zipping it up to his hairy chest and belting it.
When's the last time you saw a guy in a romper?
Of course, he was still full of 007 technical information, like, "My dear girl, there are some things that just aren't done, like drinking Dom Perignon '53 above the temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That's just as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs!"
His advice still holds on the first, although never on the second.
When the location moved to Goldfinger's stud farm in Kentucky, things got all southern.
There was a huge Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in the background ("Colonel Sanders' secret recipe") and James refers to "bourbon and branch water."
When all was said and done, I didn't like it quite as much as "Dr. No" because it seemed like James spent less time romancing women.
That said, I was terribly impressed that the actress who played Pussy Galore was 37 at the time, especially since back in 1964, 37 was not the new 27 like now.
Once Bond had saved Fort Knox, parachuted from a failing plane and was rolling around making out with Pussy under a parachute, the credits told us that it was the end of "Goldfinger" but that Bond would be back in "Thunderball."
Which probably means I'll be back at Movieland, hoping for a few less dead bodies and a lot more drinking advice and action on the sheets.
Walking back home beside the endless throng of workers always at Redskin Park, I got in the car to go to Manchester.
Blue Bee Cider (Virginia's only urban cidery) and Anderson's Neck Oyster Company (which I'd had at Dutch & Co.) were doing a tasting all afternoon and having recently tasted (and enjoyed) some Blue Bee Cider, I wanted more.
The tasting room had a lively crowd when I arrived, mostly guys but a few of my people.
There were two cider choices, Charred Ordinary, a more traditional cider, and Aragon 1904, an off-dry cider more reminiscent of champagne.
With a glass of the light and crisp (and not at all cloying) latter, I wandered over to the shucking table where I had a dozen Eagle Flats awaiting me.
"How's your day going so far?" one of the shuckers asked.
I told him I'd just seen "Goldfinger" for the first time at the theater.
"Wow, "Goldfinger" then oysters and cider? That's a really awesome Saturday!" he enthused.
Don't I know it.
Saturday, June 1, 2013
Shaken, Not Stirred
The film was fun and the eater was gross.
Since I'd never seen the first Bond movie, "Dr. No," much less on the big screen, I was once again seduced by Movies & Mimosas at Movieland.
Honestly, I expected it to be crowded, but the ticket seller told me I was only the eighth person to go in.
So at least I got a great seat.
I settled in to admire a young Sean Connery (relatively speaking, anyway, he was 33) and the beautiful Jamaica location shots.
It was maybe ten or fifteen minutes into the movie when a big guy lumbered in, his hands laden with food and drink.
He sat down (naturally) two seats away from me and took a few minutes getting settled in, even standing up to remove his jacket despite the movie being in progress.
All at once I heard a sound like a buzz saw and looked over to see him eating so fast and furiously that he was making a continuous noise scarfing and chewing.
No kidding, he was making it difficult to hear the dialog.
I couldn't see what he was eating but soon that sound stopped and he slurped down his drink in one fell swoop.
The good news was things were quiet in my row again.
A couple of minutes later, he got up and left.
What the hell?
Moneypenny! What gives?
Me, given an ounce of encouragement.
Since I hadn't seen the old Bond movies, I found it charming to see the source of all the cliches and catchphrases now associated with Bond.
Are you looking for shells, too?
No, I'm just looking.
Of course, he was looking at Honey Ryder in that bikini copied years later for Halle Berry, but what struck me was how different Ursula Andress' body was than Halle's or any ideal woman's today.
No sculpted arms, no washboard abs, just soft curves and the firmness of youth.
Bond also showed his inner oenophile, stating that he preferred the '53 Dom Perignon over Dr. No's coveted '55.
I'd happily take either.
I'd also take Ursula's body or an evening with Bond.
When the movie ended and I got up to leave, I saw what the big guy had left in his wake.
The floor was strewn with empty boxes, bags, napkins and cups.
It looked like a family of four had been eating there.
I can forgive the guy his gluttony, but how he left before Bondtook off his clothes saved the U.S. space program, I'll never understand.
To paraphrase a friend, that was a good-looking hunk of 37-year old man meat.
An ounce of encouragement? Shoot, it wouldn't have taken me a gram.
Since I'd never seen the first Bond movie, "Dr. No," much less on the big screen, I was once again seduced by Movies & Mimosas at Movieland.
Honestly, I expected it to be crowded, but the ticket seller told me I was only the eighth person to go in.
So at least I got a great seat.
I settled in to admire a young Sean Connery (relatively speaking, anyway, he was 33) and the beautiful Jamaica location shots.
It was maybe ten or fifteen minutes into the movie when a big guy lumbered in, his hands laden with food and drink.
He sat down (naturally) two seats away from me and took a few minutes getting settled in, even standing up to remove his jacket despite the movie being in progress.
All at once I heard a sound like a buzz saw and looked over to see him eating so fast and furiously that he was making a continuous noise scarfing and chewing.
No kidding, he was making it difficult to hear the dialog.
I couldn't see what he was eating but soon that sound stopped and he slurped down his drink in one fell swoop.
The good news was things were quiet in my row again.
A couple of minutes later, he got up and left.
What the hell?
Moneypenny! What gives?
Me, given an ounce of encouragement.
Since I hadn't seen the old Bond movies, I found it charming to see the source of all the cliches and catchphrases now associated with Bond.
Are you looking for shells, too?
No, I'm just looking.
Of course, he was looking at Honey Ryder in that bikini copied years later for Halle Berry, but what struck me was how different Ursula Andress' body was than Halle's or any ideal woman's today.
No sculpted arms, no washboard abs, just soft curves and the firmness of youth.
Bond also showed his inner oenophile, stating that he preferred the '53 Dom Perignon over Dr. No's coveted '55.
I'd happily take either.
I'd also take Ursula's body or an evening with Bond.
When the movie ended and I got up to leave, I saw what the big guy had left in his wake.
The floor was strewn with empty boxes, bags, napkins and cups.
It looked like a family of four had been eating there.
I can forgive the guy his gluttony, but how he left before Bond
To paraphrase a friend, that was a good-looking hunk of 37-year old man meat.
An ounce of encouragement? Shoot, it wouldn't have taken me a gram.
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Morning Matinee
The trouble with an 11 a.m. movie is being there by 11 a.m.
But it was Hitchcock and a fine morning to walk to Movieland for a black comedy like "The Trouble with Harry."
The opening credit told me it was shot in VistaVision, which means absolutely nothing to me besides knowing that "White Christmas" was also shot in it and that it guarantees garish colors throughout.
In this case, it was fall in Vermont, so everything was orange and green.
The other interesting credit was "Introducing Shirley MacLaine," a baby at only 18 years old, despite playing a woman, Jennifer, who'd already been married twice.
For 1955, the script was kind of racy, with painter Sam (played by an incredibly handsome and charming 37-year old John Forsythe) meeting Jennifer and immediately saying he'd like to paint her...nude.
By the end of the movie, he's in love with her and then his greatest wish is a double bed, so I think we know where Sam's mind was.
The secondary love story was between the Captain, who was only looking to shoot a plump rabbit for his evening stew, and Miss Gravely ("a woman of gentle habits"), who claimed to be 42 and looked like she was 62.
"She's very well preserved and preserves have to be opened someday," the captain says of her, showing that his mind was in the same neighborhood as Sam's.
Which means, of course, the same neighborhood as Hitchcock's mind, which we all know lived in the gutter.
When I'd gotten to the theater, there were only five other people seated and waiting, so I figured that I wasn't the only one challenged by an 11 a.m. film.
But then within the first ten minutes of the film, a dozen more people straggled in, proving my theory that 11 a.m. on a Saturday morning is hard for just about everybody.
But even as I grumble about getting up early, just thinking about the witty dialog reminds me that it was worth it.
Marriage is a good way to spend the winter," the captain says.
So single is a good way to spend the summer?
"He looked exactly the same when he was alive, except he was vertical," Jennifer says.
And since it was 1955, she wasn't even being ironic.
Probably the raciest line after the nude modeling comment was when Sam finally kisses Jennifer and she warns him, "Lightly, Sam. I have a very short fuse."
I guess that's how you can be on your third marriage-to-be at eighteen.
The trouble with having a short fuse is how quickly it can be ignited.
Even, I would add, if you're well-preserved.
But it was Hitchcock and a fine morning to walk to Movieland for a black comedy like "The Trouble with Harry."
The opening credit told me it was shot in VistaVision, which means absolutely nothing to me besides knowing that "White Christmas" was also shot in it and that it guarantees garish colors throughout.
In this case, it was fall in Vermont, so everything was orange and green.
The other interesting credit was "Introducing Shirley MacLaine," a baby at only 18 years old, despite playing a woman, Jennifer, who'd already been married twice.
For 1955, the script was kind of racy, with painter Sam (played by an incredibly handsome and charming 37-year old John Forsythe) meeting Jennifer and immediately saying he'd like to paint her...nude.
By the end of the movie, he's in love with her and then his greatest wish is a double bed, so I think we know where Sam's mind was.
The secondary love story was between the Captain, who was only looking to shoot a plump rabbit for his evening stew, and Miss Gravely ("a woman of gentle habits"), who claimed to be 42 and looked like she was 62.
"She's very well preserved and preserves have to be opened someday," the captain says of her, showing that his mind was in the same neighborhood as Sam's.
Which means, of course, the same neighborhood as Hitchcock's mind, which we all know lived in the gutter.
When I'd gotten to the theater, there were only five other people seated and waiting, so I figured that I wasn't the only one challenged by an 11 a.m. film.
But then within the first ten minutes of the film, a dozen more people straggled in, proving my theory that 11 a.m. on a Saturday morning is hard for just about everybody.
But even as I grumble about getting up early, just thinking about the witty dialog reminds me that it was worth it.
Marriage is a good way to spend the winter," the captain says.
So single is a good way to spend the summer?
"He looked exactly the same when he was alive, except he was vertical," Jennifer says.
And since it was 1955, she wasn't even being ironic.
Probably the raciest line after the nude modeling comment was when Sam finally kisses Jennifer and she warns him, "Lightly, Sam. I have a very short fuse."
I guess that's how you can be on your third marriage-to-be at eighteen.
The trouble with having a short fuse is how quickly it can be ignited.
Even, I would add, if you're well-preserved.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Guns 'n Gowns
All I wanted was a little Noel Coward.
But when I got to Movieland to buy my ticket , I couldn't remember the name of the movie.
Asking what the Movies and Mimosas feature was, I was told, "Logan's Run."
Wrong answer. I knew for sure I hadn't come out for a '70s sci-fi flick. No way I'd screwed up that badly.
A check with her manager revealed that it was, in fact, 1933's "Design for Living."
But when I hand her my card to buy a ticket, she charges me $7.50. Wrong again.
After a call to her manager asking why the Mimosas feature was coming up at full price (instead of the reduced price they wisely charge for people willing to be up at the ungodly hour of 11 a.am.), she got it corrected.
Am I the first person to buy a ticket for this show, I inquired. It was 10:59, so it seemed unlikely.
Nope. I was the first, hence the wrong title, wrong price and general confusion.
Inside, I had the theater to myself.
The Paramount picture began with a credit saying, "N.R.A. Member, We Do Our Part."
Who knew the gun lobby was in bed with Hollywood in the '30s?
The film begins on a train in France and the 3rd class car where the characters met looked surprisingly like the train I'd been on Italy a few months ago.
The entire first conversation between the three main characters took place in French (sans subtitles), perfectly appropriate but unlikely now in ADD-driven Hollywood.
Ten minutes into the movie, two women joined me in the audience. My private screening had been violated.
Frederick March and Gary Cooper played a playwright (of un-produced plays) and a starving artist, respectively.
Miriam Hopkins, the girl they met, was an artist for an ad agency who responded to their attentions and quickly took to both men.
And as all women know, it's problematic when you like two men.
A thing happened to me that usually happens to men. You see, a man can meet two, three or four women and fall in love with all of them, and then, by a process of interesting elimination, he is able to decide which he prefers. But a woman must decide purely on instinct, guesswork, if she wants to be considered nice.
I feel your pain, honey.
The three become fast friends, ignoring that both men are attracted to her and want her for their own.
They live in a little flat near Montmartre where the painter paints and the playwright types and they welcome people to their home saying, "Welcome to Bohemia."
I intend to start saying the same when people come to visit me.
Miriam's character decides that her role will be as muse and critic to make them better artists ("I'm going to be the mother to the arts").
The movie walked a fine line between Depression-era decorum and innuendo-laced dialog and situations.
The Edward Everett Horton character was the fuddy duddy who tried to provide the moral compass, no doubt because he really doesn't play any other type of character.
Immorality may be fun, but it isn't fun enough to take the place of one hundred percent virtue and three square meals a day.
Actually, I'm pretty sure that it is.
The film was pure '30s Hollywood escapism, with Hopkins wearing feathered satin dresses at breakfast after which March asks her, "What shall we do after lunch? Take a long walk for our digestion?"
Oh, yes, darling, let's do, I'd answer.
Since it was pure Hollywood, the playwright sold his play and became a sensation and the painter got commissions (although he stood true to his art and refused to paint women with double chins) and Hopkins gave up her own career to support the men she loved.
The sorrows of life are the joys of art.
By the end, she'd tried marriage (unconsummated, naturally) to her boss but had returned to Bohemia and hr two favorite guys.
But no sex; this was a gentleman's agreement, despite one of the trio being a lady.
And they all three lived happily ever after, with Hopkins promising to continue using her "baseball bat" of criticism to make them better men.
Sigh. They sure don't make 'em like they used to.
The two other women in the theater clapped when the movie ended and as I joined in, I went over to say hello to the only other people in Richmond interested in seeing Noel Coward on a sunny Saturday morning at the crack of dawn.
Both raved about the movie and I agreed, chiming in about what an ideal platonic arrangement it would be to have two very different men to mold.
The look on their faces was borderline appalled, so I smiled and exited.
Not bohemian types, I'm guessing.
But when I got to Movieland to buy my ticket , I couldn't remember the name of the movie.
Asking what the Movies and Mimosas feature was, I was told, "Logan's Run."
Wrong answer. I knew for sure I hadn't come out for a '70s sci-fi flick. No way I'd screwed up that badly.
A check with her manager revealed that it was, in fact, 1933's "Design for Living."
But when I hand her my card to buy a ticket, she charges me $7.50. Wrong again.
After a call to her manager asking why the Mimosas feature was coming up at full price (instead of the reduced price they wisely charge for people willing to be up at the ungodly hour of 11 a.am.), she got it corrected.
Am I the first person to buy a ticket for this show, I inquired. It was 10:59, so it seemed unlikely.
Nope. I was the first, hence the wrong title, wrong price and general confusion.
Inside, I had the theater to myself.
The Paramount picture began with a credit saying, "N.R.A. Member, We Do Our Part."
Who knew the gun lobby was in bed with Hollywood in the '30s?
The film begins on a train in France and the 3rd class car where the characters met looked surprisingly like the train I'd been on Italy a few months ago.
The entire first conversation between the three main characters took place in French (sans subtitles), perfectly appropriate but unlikely now in ADD-driven Hollywood.
Ten minutes into the movie, two women joined me in the audience. My private screening had been violated.
Frederick March and Gary Cooper played a playwright (of un-produced plays) and a starving artist, respectively.
Miriam Hopkins, the girl they met, was an artist for an ad agency who responded to their attentions and quickly took to both men.
And as all women know, it's problematic when you like two men.
A thing happened to me that usually happens to men. You see, a man can meet two, three or four women and fall in love with all of them, and then, by a process of interesting elimination, he is able to decide which he prefers. But a woman must decide purely on instinct, guesswork, if she wants to be considered nice.
I feel your pain, honey.
The three become fast friends, ignoring that both men are attracted to her and want her for their own.
They live in a little flat near Montmartre where the painter paints and the playwright types and they welcome people to their home saying, "Welcome to Bohemia."
I intend to start saying the same when people come to visit me.
Miriam's character decides that her role will be as muse and critic to make them better artists ("I'm going to be the mother to the arts").
The movie walked a fine line between Depression-era decorum and innuendo-laced dialog and situations.
The Edward Everett Horton character was the fuddy duddy who tried to provide the moral compass, no doubt because he really doesn't play any other type of character.
Immorality may be fun, but it isn't fun enough to take the place of one hundred percent virtue and three square meals a day.
Actually, I'm pretty sure that it is.
The film was pure '30s Hollywood escapism, with Hopkins wearing feathered satin dresses at breakfast after which March asks her, "What shall we do after lunch? Take a long walk for our digestion?"
Oh, yes, darling, let's do, I'd answer.
Since it was pure Hollywood, the playwright sold his play and became a sensation and the painter got commissions (although he stood true to his art and refused to paint women with double chins) and Hopkins gave up her own career to support the men she loved.
The sorrows of life are the joys of art.
By the end, she'd tried marriage (unconsummated, naturally) to her boss but had returned to Bohemia and hr two favorite guys.
But no sex; this was a gentleman's agreement, despite one of the trio being a lady.
And they all three lived happily ever after, with Hopkins promising to continue using her "baseball bat" of criticism to make them better men.
Sigh. They sure don't make 'em like they used to.
The two other women in the theater clapped when the movie ended and as I joined in, I went over to say hello to the only other people in Richmond interested in seeing Noel Coward on a sunny Saturday morning at the crack of dawn.
Both raved about the movie and I agreed, chiming in about what an ideal platonic arrangement it would be to have two very different men to mold.
The look on their faces was borderline appalled, so I smiled and exited.
Not bohemian types, I'm guessing.
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Get Your Tootsie-Frootsie
A day at the races required a morning out of bed.
I'd invited a Marx Brothers enthusiast to join me at Movieland for "A Day at the Races," a movie I'd never seen.
No, not on TV, not on tape or disc. Just never saw it.
But today I was out of bed at an unattractive hour (9:50 on a Sunday?) to walk to the Bowtie and be entertained.
And, I gotta say, for an 11:00 movie, there were more people than I expected.
A surprising number of couples, first of all.
And lots of guys laughing uproariously at every Groucho-ism uttered.
Like, "Emily, I have a confession to make.I really am a horse doctor. But marry me and I'll never look at another horse."
Guffawing abounded with this crowd.
And while a lot of the corny humor got little response from me, I was delighted to be surprised more than once during he film.
An entire ballet scene.
Extended music numbers, one with Chico playing piano and another with Harpo doing the same, at least until bits of the piano began flying off and he resorted to the strings in a harp performance.
Then there was the amazing and mildly politically incorrect scene with the large black contingent of first children dancing followed by a full-on swing number complete with musicians and Lindy Hop dancers.
Never saw that coming.
A full-on black cast dancing, jiving, swinging, making for the highlight of the movie.
And because it was 1937, it ended with the Marx Brothers in blackface.
But the singing and dancing parts were great.
And I loved the portrayal of a nightclub, the Water Carnival.
Guests at tables floating on the water. The band had water surrounding the stage.
It was exotic, it was elaborate. It was pure Hollywood.
And pure Marx Brothers.
You know, corny.
"If I hold you any closer, I'll be in back of you."
I'm laughing already. But I'm not going to stop looking at horses.
I'd invited a Marx Brothers enthusiast to join me at Movieland for "A Day at the Races," a movie I'd never seen.
No, not on TV, not on tape or disc. Just never saw it.
But today I was out of bed at an unattractive hour (9:50 on a Sunday?) to walk to the Bowtie and be entertained.
And, I gotta say, for an 11:00 movie, there were more people than I expected.
A surprising number of couples, first of all.
And lots of guys laughing uproariously at every Groucho-ism uttered.
Like, "Emily, I have a confession to make.I really am a horse doctor. But marry me and I'll never look at another horse."
Guffawing abounded with this crowd.
And while a lot of the corny humor got little response from me, I was delighted to be surprised more than once during he film.
An entire ballet scene.
Extended music numbers, one with Chico playing piano and another with Harpo doing the same, at least until bits of the piano began flying off and he resorted to the strings in a harp performance.
Then there was the amazing and mildly politically incorrect scene with the large black contingent of first children dancing followed by a full-on swing number complete with musicians and Lindy Hop dancers.
Never saw that coming.
A full-on black cast dancing, jiving, swinging, making for the highlight of the movie.
And because it was 1937, it ended with the Marx Brothers in blackface.
But the singing and dancing parts were great.
And I loved the portrayal of a nightclub, the Water Carnival.
Guests at tables floating on the water. The band had water surrounding the stage.
It was exotic, it was elaborate. It was pure Hollywood.
And pure Marx Brothers.
You know, corny.
"If I hold you any closer, I'll be in back of you."
I'm laughing already. But I'm not going to stop looking at horses.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Love Among the Ruins
For about ten minutes there, I thought I was going to get a private screening.
Then just moments before the showing of "A Foreign Affair" at Movieland, a few people straggled in to see the Billy Wilder comedy I'd never even heard of.
Made in 1948 and shot mostly in Berlin (where apparently they still had horses and carts in the streets next to cars and bikes), it was like an old newsreel with its bird's eye view of the badly bombed-out city.
As in, "Let's go to my apartment. It's only a few ruins away from here."
The story was about a Congressional committee going to Germany after the war to check on the possibility of "moral malaria" infecting our peacekeeping troops.
Seems we were worried about our soldiers flirting with Frauleins and "soaking their feet in sparkling Mosel."
Because it was a Billy Wilder film, the dialogue was smart and funny. "Never let another woman tell you how you look. Ask a man," our hero tells the Congresswoman from Iowa.
I'd take that man's advice.
The kissing scenes were great. Early on when he first wants to kiss her, she puts her defenses up, opening file cabinet drawers between them to keep him at a distance.
When someone suspects that she might be interested in a man, a fellow Congressman scoffs at Cupid, saying, "You can't shoot an arrow through steel."
Eventually, she buys a sexy, black dress and some lipstick (after being chastised by siren Marlene Dietrich for her "scrubbed face") on the black market for her evening with the hero.
He thinks he's taking her to the Officer's Mess for dinner but she's got another kind of evening in mind, suggesting the dive bar Lorelei instead.
"I want it dark and gay and with music."
Let's just say he falls prey to her charms there.
By the last scene, he's picking up chairs in the bar to hold her off and she's tossing them aside to kiss him.
With romance like that, I didn't care how many other people were in the theater (six).
Ain't love grand?
Or, as the heroine said, "What a waltz we had!"
Then just moments before the showing of "A Foreign Affair" at Movieland, a few people straggled in to see the Billy Wilder comedy I'd never even heard of.
Made in 1948 and shot mostly in Berlin (where apparently they still had horses and carts in the streets next to cars and bikes), it was like an old newsreel with its bird's eye view of the badly bombed-out city.
As in, "Let's go to my apartment. It's only a few ruins away from here."
The story was about a Congressional committee going to Germany after the war to check on the possibility of "moral malaria" infecting our peacekeeping troops.
Seems we were worried about our soldiers flirting with Frauleins and "soaking their feet in sparkling Mosel."
Because it was a Billy Wilder film, the dialogue was smart and funny. "Never let another woman tell you how you look. Ask a man," our hero tells the Congresswoman from Iowa.
I'd take that man's advice.
The kissing scenes were great. Early on when he first wants to kiss her, she puts her defenses up, opening file cabinet drawers between them to keep him at a distance.
When someone suspects that she might be interested in a man, a fellow Congressman scoffs at Cupid, saying, "You can't shoot an arrow through steel."
Eventually, she buys a sexy, black dress and some lipstick (after being chastised by siren Marlene Dietrich for her "scrubbed face") on the black market for her evening with the hero.
He thinks he's taking her to the Officer's Mess for dinner but she's got another kind of evening in mind, suggesting the dive bar Lorelei instead.
"I want it dark and gay and with music."
Let's just say he falls prey to her charms there.
By the last scene, he's picking up chairs in the bar to hold her off and she's tossing them aside to kiss him.
With romance like that, I didn't care how many other people were in the theater (six).
Ain't love grand?
Or, as the heroine said, "What a waltz we had!"
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