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Joe Vitus

Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 8:06 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston

Inlare,

Do you really believe "Phoebe" is a member of a college campus "Eve Harrington Society"? I don't. I think, like Eve before her, she's inventing a history that she knows will appeal to her audience in order to insinuate herself into that person's life.

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You've got a great brain. You should keep it in your head.

-Topher

Joe Vitus

Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 8:11 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston

The suggestion of Audrey Hepburn doesn't work for me for a purely idiosyncratic reason: I'm sick to death of Audrey Hepburn. Since about the early 90's, Hepburn has become the star of stars for nearly everyone. The most beautiful. The most unique. The most gifted. I think she is indeed beautiful, unique, and gifted, but I don't think she's the essential Hollywood star. And I'm suffering from over-exposure.

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You've got a great brain. You should keep it in your head.

-Topher

billyweeds

Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 8:20 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City

Lindsay Lohan would be a perfect Eve Harrington if they did a remake, which they shouldn't. But Cate Blanchett as Margo and Lohan as Eve could pull it off. Add Forest Whitaker as Bill Sampson and you have a rich new subtext.

inlareviewer

Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 8:45 pm

Joined: 05 Jul 2004 Posts: 1949 Location: Lawrence, KS

Joe Vitus wrote:

Of course. However, Erasmus Hall is her story, so I'm not about to contradict her, since it's pretty clear that she's even more lethal than Eve, tee-hee.

Billy, I think that casting is very interesting, but

NO REMAKE OF "ALL ABOUT EVE"!
NO NEED!!

(instashift to Maria Montez)

AYE HEFF SPOK'N!!!

_________________
"And take extra care with strangers/Even flowers have their dangers/And though scary is exciting/Nice is different than good." --Stephen Sondheim

billyweeds

Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 9:38 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City

inlareviewer wrote:

Joe Vitus wrote:

And who am I to argue with Tondelayo, who makes Phoebe look like Mary Poppins!

inlareviewer

Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 9:51 pm

Joined: 05 Jul 2004 Posts: 1949 Location: Lawrence, KS

billyweeds wrote:

And who am I to argue with Tondelayo, who makes Phoebe look like Mary Poppins!

(insert roaring with glee emoticon) Oh, billy, that's rich.

And all joking towards the left side, I cannot imagine improving on that script, but if there were enough brass in Screeneyville to dare, as with Sunset Boulevard, they'd better damn well cast it properly and bring in Someone Of Impeccable Entitlement to helm/adapt it.

_________________
"And take extra care with strangers/Even flowers have their dangers/And though scary is exciting/Nice is different than good." --Stephen Sondheim

Rod

Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 11:58 pm

Joined: 21 Dec 2004 Posts: 2944 Location: Lithgow, Australia

Kurosawa’s The Idiot (Hakuchi, 1951).

Dostoievsky’s novel is one of the few works I’ve ever encountered that leaves you feeling shaken up for days after, after being tremendously entertained on the way. Such a combination, one of the greatest books written filmed by one of the greatest directors ever, is one of those discomforting promises almost bound to disappoint. Kurosawa made this film - one of his favourite novels too - on a high from Rashomon’s international success, and his cut was 260 minutes, the version I bought 159, meaning 100 minutes, enough for a full other feature, was cut out by Shochiku Studios. No wonder he decamped to Toho. The marks of this butchery are evident in the film, with wipes in the middle of scenes denoting where passages have been cut; characters vanish; scenes are alluded to but unexplained. All this hardly bodes well for the film, but despite its jumps, gaps, and problems, enough of both Akira and Fyodor’s art burns in this film to make it a hypnotic, rich, disturbing experience. It’s not quite a total success, even taking the edits in account. Masayuki Mori is fine as Kameda, the equivalent of Prince Myshkin, but he’s a more nervy, spindly, neurotic creature than that in the novel; Myshkin, whilst delicate and awkward, was good-looking and showed spunk when needed (like when he prevents a woman being slapped by a greasy egoist; in the film, Kameda himself gets slapped), which made it more logical how he could appeal to the novel’s fearsome pair of heroines, Aglaia and Nastasya. Kameda appeals almost purely by his damaged saintliness. The Wimp almost seems a better title.

Mori is, then, outshone by the battery of actors around him. Nastasya, maybe the greatest femme fatale in literature, here called Taeko Nasu, played by Setsuko Hara, who conjures her character’s brittle pride and smouldering madness with awesome grace; Aglaia is Ayako, expertly played by the lovely Yoshiko Kuga with an accurate mix of gamine affection and aristo-arrogance; and, of course, Toshiro Mifune, here cast as the Rogozhin figure, Akama. He glows in satanic majesty, his beautiful, malefic presence taking over proceedings. Kurosawa's gift for filming is innate, and even his passages of talk are beautifully balanced. He portrays Dostoievksy’s great melodramatic set-pieces and lancing psychology with precision, and conjures atmosphere of snowy climes and fetid emotion, although the vaguely clean-cut air of post-war bourgeois Japan cannot match the dreamy intensity of Dostoievsky’s St Petersburg. The myrid subplots are garbled by the editing; missing, most painfully (especially as he was a character one would have imagined later Kurosawa handling so well) is the consumptive nihilist Ippolit. The late scenes where Kameda has to choose between the two women, and where he and Mifune both disintegrate in catatonic insanity, are vivid to the point of being hard to watch, but Kurosawa leavens Dostoievsky’s postscript, where Aglaia is ruined and finishes up an exiled tart, by giving Ayako a greater measure of self-possession and an I’ve-Learned-A-Lesson final shot.

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tirebiter

Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 1:12 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 4011 Location: not far away

Always fun to imagine remakes of classics-- either as divine or ridiculous. I recall a TV remake of Casablanca some years ago. But who to play the role of Rick? Who could follow in Bogart's footsteps? Of course-- David Soul!!

jeremy

Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 1:19 am

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 6794 Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)

I think David Soul lives in England now. He played Jerry Springer in Jerry Springer the musical. And he's always cropping up as the 'older American guy' in assorted British crime serials and dramas.

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I am angry, I am ill, and I'm as ugly as sin.
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking.
I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit.
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it.

bart

Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 1:09 pm

Joined: 05 Dec 2005 Posts: 2381 Location: Lincoln NE

Saw Crash (1996). I love you, Crones, and I sense what you were about, the whole understanding the world through the body theme, but...

what a sad self-indulgent piece of trash.

I've been in three car crashes. Not that this is normally a basis for expertise, but I'm thinking no one, not even the deepest S/M buff, registers a serious injury in a car crash quite like the characters in Crash. Maybe someone of that inclination can find an amusing stroke fantasy in there somewhere, but.....blecccchhhhhh.

If you've really been in a crash, as I have, you tend more toward screaming "watch the road, idiot" when you see one of those old B/W movies where the driver is looking too long at the passenger.

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Trish

Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 1:14 pm

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 2438 Location: Massachusetts

Quote:

what a sad self-indulgent piece of trash.

damn for a second I thought you referring to the 2005 film and was going to high-five you

bart

Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 1:25 pm

Joined: 05 Dec 2005 Posts: 2381 Location: Lincoln NE

Get that hand up there, dudette! That quote would apply almost as well to Crash (2005).

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inlareviewer

Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 4:03 pm

Joined: 05 Jul 2004 Posts: 1949 Location: Lawrence, KS

deleted

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"And take extra care with strangers/Even flowers have their dangers/And though scary is exciting/Nice is different than good." --Stephen Sondheim

Marj

Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 4:09 pm

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 10497 Location: Manhattan

inlareviewer wrote:

billyweeds wrote:

And who am I to argue with Tondelayo, who makes Phoebe look like Mary Poppins!

Well, there is Sunset Boulevard, the musical. It's Andrew Lloyd Weber. That's worth at least two gags.

inlareviewer

Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 4:41 pm

Joined: 05 Jul 2004 Posts: 1949 Location: Lawrence, KS

Marj wrote:

inlareviewer wrote:

billyweeds wrote:

And who am I to argue with Tondelayo, who makes Phoebe look like Mary Poppins!

Well, there is Sunset Boulevard, the musical. It's Andrew Lloyd Weber. That's worth at least two gags.

I'll see your two gags, and raise you one retch.

_________________
"And take extra care with strangers/Even flowers have their dangers/And though scary is exciting/Nice is different than good." --Stephen Sondheim

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