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| Joe Vitus |
 Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2011 12:06 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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| We'll always have Paris. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2011 12:47 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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| Actually, I should probably give Up the Down Staircase another shot. I've seen it several times, but long ago and always from the same source: it came on television either very late or when I would be at school (don't remember which), so I set the family Betamax to record it. I believe it was on a basic cable, which would mean it would have likely been cut, if for no other reason than commercials. I should give it a chance on a better transfer and assuredly uncut. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2011 2:04 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| It's certainly not the same animal as the book, nor could it be, since the book (absolutely wonderful in its own right) is a series of memos, notes, and other missives. What Tad Mosel, the screenwriter, has managed to do is to weave that style into a story. It's not 100 percent successful--the subplot about the alcoholic novelist wannabe is too schematic and on-the-nose--but most of it hits its mark. Robert Mulligan's direction combines pro actors like Ruth White, Eileen Heckart, and Roy Poole with non-professional kids in a way that doesn't jar. And Sandy Dennis, like her or loathe her, has an unpredictable way with a line of dialogue that frequently catches you off guard. Fred Karlin's music is constantly delightful and appropriate. I love this movie. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2011 3:43 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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| Sandy Dennis is so hit-or-miss for me. Generally miss, but Altman always used her well, and she is flat-out hysterical in the sadly-unavailable-for-home-viewing Nasty Habits. Anne Meara is great as the Gerald Ford character in that movie, as well. (Jerry Stiller gets a cameo as a priest in the Vatican.) |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2011 10:13 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Having something of a Zachary Scott festival here at the house. Saw 1948's Ruthless the other day, prompted by that Dave Kehr NYTimes article on streaming video that someone linked here. Directed by Edgar Ulmer of Detour fame, it's sometimes called a noir but isn't really. What it is is a highly melodramatic and somewhat turgid but fascinating psychological study of a "ruthless" tycoon, something on the order of Citizen Kane. Scott overacts the leading role but he's always watchable, and he's supported by a weirdly mismatched cast including Louis Hayward, Diana Lynn, Lucille Bremer, and Martha Vickers. Strange.
Then we watched Jean Renoir's The Southerner, which got Renoir an Oscar nomination as Best Director in 1945 and in which Scott and Betty Field are excellent as farmers trying to make their way. Never thought I'd see Scott in a farmer role, wearing jeans instead of his usual tuxedo. He's never been better. The movie is lovely, with a beautiful soul and really resonant black-and-white photography. The strong supporting cast features Beulah Bondi, J. Carroll Naish, and Charles Kemper, who I've never heard of but who is very fine.
Followed that up with Let's Make It Legal, a very minor but quite enjoyable rom-com starring Claudette Colbert, Macdonald Carey, Robert Wagner, Marilyn Monroe, and...Zachary Scott. Colbert and Carey are getting a divorce when old flame/millionaire Scott turns up. Marilyn is along for the ride. Zack is back in a tux. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2011 3:07 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
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The Southerner is a terrific film.
First thing I thought of when you mentioned Zach Scott. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2011 3:12 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
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Year of the Fish (2007) is a quirky indie film about a Chinese illegal immigrant, coerced into working in a massage parlor in Chinatown. It's an odd mix of realism combined with fairy tale elements, including a very obvious Cinderella reference towards the end for those very slow on the uptake.
It also has a fairly high indie-quirk quotient, with the film ostensibly narrated by a fish, which apparently accounts for the whole film looking unreal and as though it's been filmed underwater, courtesy of rotoscope-animation. This also fits with the fairy tale theme, as evil is overcome by love. I'm surprised that the jittery swirling effect wasn't more distracting than it was. Might look better on a bigger fancier setup than my 30" TeeVee. But overall, this odd swirly cross between live action and animation didn't seem to add much to the film.
I was a little distracted by the way the male love interest looks like a young Chinese Billy Crystal. Looking over the cast, it seems they used a variety of Asians -- a Vietnamese-American lead, Koreans and of course Chinese -- to represent the old NYC Cantonese Chinatown. The characters come off as rather stereotypical Asian. But there are also definite touches of authentic Asian culture mixed in as well. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 8:39 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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| The Night of the Hunter -- great! Like an eccentric fairy tale with expressionist touches I can see influencing everyone from Malick to the Coens. Robert Mitchum is both frightening and funny, a mix of psycho-killer and charming confidence man. Lillian Gish also memorable as a rifle-toting mother hen who cracks the Fourth Wall to tell us how durable children are, as if we needed to be reminded after all that has happened. Peculiar and compelling film. |
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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 5:37 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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| Caught An Unmarried Woman on tv the other night. Mrs. Whiskeypriest liked it a lot - especially Alan Bates. I thought it was rather dated in style, but was glad to be reminded what a beautiful, offhandedly sexy, talented actress Jill Clayburgh was. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 7:13 pm |
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Jill Clayburgh was good and always was. The movie itself was a chick flick to the core, cock full of female empowerment topped of with a perfect man who understands. Alan Bates, as bad as usual.
Any man who really likes this movie (I'm not counting gays) has to start exploring his sexuality.
OK, that may be an exaggeration in some cases, but that's my opinion. The movie was, well, not good, save Clayburgh. |
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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 7:50 pm |
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Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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That seems rather... homophobic. I enjoy many of what some deride as "chick flicks" provided they are well made and intelligent. My problems with Unmarried Woman have more to do with, well, its earnestness and lack of focus in dialogue. I don't mind dialogue that meanders, mind you, as long as it is interesting.
Oh. and the score, which is flat awful.
But it has Jill Clayburgh, who never seemed to break through to that level where she got the scripts to match her talent. She should have been Streepian. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 8:23 pm |
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I've liked chick flicks too. That's why I said this one was a chick flick to the core. Meaning most guys wouldn't like it.
I'm certainly not homophobic but in general gays would like a movie like An Unmarried Woman much more than non-gay men.
I saw the movie when it was current and don't remember the score. |
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| grace |
| Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 8:46 pm |
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Joined: 11 Nov 2005
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marantzo wrote: The movie itself was a chick flick to the core, cock full of female empowerment topped of with a perfect man who understands.
Not that I don't enjoy the turn of phrase, but is this a Freudian slip or what? |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 7:32 am |
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An Unmarried Woman is about as far from a "chick flick" as a movie can get without becoming a Sergio Leone western.
I like An Unmarried Woman (and doubt that has anything to do with being gay), but the delays in getting it made caused a lot of problems. For instance, by the time it came out there had been plenty of feminist pictures, but it was celebrated by Hollywood as something daring and groundbreaking, and that makes the picture and Masursky both look self-congratulatory and phony by proxy. And those interminable therapy sessions where we never learn much, but seem so "relevant" don't help. (Is the goal how much she's giving and what a blank slate her therapist seems? is that the point from running into her and what seems to be her lesbian lover at a party?) At least Musursky recognized how much time had past by not referring to her regular get together with her female friends as a consciousness-raising group.
The delay on the part of the studios to finance the picture for something like half a decade also might have lead to the stridency of the final movie (and maybe that says something about what happened to the 70's feminist movement, too). There are also strange, suddenly whipped up moments of rage and the soundtrack music going crazy that don't really seem like they need to be there.
They kept saying "Well, okay, do it, but only if the woman and the artist get together at the end" and Masurski dug in his heels and resisted. And if the movie had been made in 1970, this might have felt right. Ideologically there's nothing wrong, and it makes a lot of sense, for a recently divorced woman who has never been on her own choosing to learn to survive on her own rather than just becoming dependent on another man. Especially if the woman is young. But by the time was made, and the script had gone through everything it did, and Clayburgh and Bates had been cast, it just seems pointlessly stubborn and messagey. She's made into the perfect 70's woman, and he's made into the perfect 70's man: the two so clearly belong together. Both characters are older people and already seem to have weathered their individual storms and grown into the people they are going to be. So the meaning of the ending makes little sense.
Maybe they should have pulled a Manhattan-like ending where she refuses to go with him at the end but says "You know, New York will be here after the summer. I'll be here. Give me a call sometime" And gone off with the big painting and an open-ended future.
But most problematic is the movie's lack of humor Wiskeypriest noted. I suspect it was originally meant to be much funnier, especially considering the still funny (but oddly out of place) moment when Michael Murphy tells her he's leaving her for another woman, and he assumes she will feel sorry for him for hurting her, and even breaks down and cries on her shoulder, as she just stares ahead, looking unemotional, pretty much unsurprised that he's turned out to be such an asshole. It's a great moment, and the movie would be better if it had a lot more like them. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 8:09 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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Haven't seen An Unmarried Woman since it was first released, but Joe's analysis sounds spot-on, with the caveat that anyone discussing this movie without mentioning Jill Clayburgh's great performance in the title role isn't doing his/her job. The "feminist-leaning woman finds perfect feminist-inclined man" trope was repeated practically verbatim with Ellen Burstyn and Kris Kristofferson in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. That's such an annoying meme.
Joe is absolutely right on the money about the humorlessness of AUW.
Oh, and Paul the director's last name is spelled with a "Z" like Liza. Mazursky, that is. |
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