funnystrange.com

August 18 movie: This Man Is Mine. A very silly movie about Irene Dunne trying to prevent her husband (Ralph Bellamy) from running off with another woman. I really hate it when movies depict a love triangle where the point of the triangle is a totally passive object. Bellamy seems incapable of choosing for himself. And worse yet, none of the women in the picture -- his wife, his would-be mistress, or the wife's busybody best friend -- expect him to. No one holds him responsible for his actions. He's like Bugs Bunny following a robot girl bunny.

August 17 movie: 36 Hours. This one I did write up before. Last time the thing that bothered me most was the basic premise, that a man who knew all the details of the Normandy invasion would be put in a position where he might be captured by the Germans. This time I saw the first few minutes, and I'm disappointed to say that the setup was even more lame than I had imagined.

The British tell Garner everything about the impending invasion, then tell him that he has to go to Lisbon as usual for his weekly meeting with his contact. When Garner suggests that he shouldn't leave Britain with this knowledge in his head, they shrug and say that the Nazis have never violated the neutrality of Lisbon before, why would they start now? And besides, it would look suspicious if he didn't go. I really wished Garner would have said "Did it occur to you idiots not to tell me about the invasion then?" Honestly, if the British high command had truly acted so stupidly, we'd probably all be speaking German now.

That said, I still enjoyed the movie. It has well-paced tension, a good psychological thriller, & also explores the divided loyalties of Rod Taylor, both a patriot and a scientist. Plus there are small parts for John Banner (Sergeant Schultz) and Alan Napier (Alfred on Batman).

Hey, I just looked this movie up on IMDB and saw that the screenplay was written by Roald Dahl! I thought he only wrote children's stories.

August 17 movie: Boys Night Out. I thought for sure I had written this one up before, but I can't find it in the archive. Oh well. It's an incredibly sleazy 60s sex comedy in which four men (James Garner, Tony Randall and two other guys) rent a swinging bachelor pad where they put up a kept woman (Kim Novak) for a little fun on the side. Unbeknownst to them, she's actually a grad student writing a dissertation on the adolescent sexuality of the suburban male. Wacky hijinks ensue!

The funny thing about the movie is Novak actually learns nothing about their sexuality. The men take turns with her, and she tricks each one into feeling satisfied without ever getting any sex, by giving him what he really wants: lavish meals for the man whose wife has him on a strict diet, attentive listening for the boring accountant (Randall), the opportunity to repair things around the apartment for another guy. None of them even seems to notice that he isn't getting laid. But they all still think of her as the lowest form of trash. This movie reflects some really screwed up attitudes. (Not to mention, what university would approve "research" like this?)

August 16 movie: Swing Time. Another strong contender for Astaire and Rogers' best. The supporting cast isn't quite as strong -- Edward Everett Horton is missing, as is Eric Rhodes, and Eric Blore is only in the first few minutes -- but the singing and dancing are wonderful. This one includes the wonderful song "The Way You Look Tonight" and great dance numbers including "Never Gonna Dance" and "Bojangles of Harlem." In the latter of which Astaire is unfortunately in blackface, but it features three shadows of Astaire which eventually begin dancing independant of the Astaire on stage. A really clever effect.

August 15 movie: Top Hat. Fred Astaire day on TCM is a good day indeed. Besides Top Hat I also watched Swing Time and parts of Flying Down to Rio, Carefree and The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle. But I only got to watch the first two all the way through, so those are the only two that go on the movie list. (At least I got to see "The Carioca," perhaps my all time favorite song in an Astaire Rogers film.)

What is there to say about Top Hat? It's one of Astaire and Rogers' best, if not their very best. The movie includes all the regular stable of costars: Edward Everett Horton, Eric Blore, Helen Broderick, and Eric Rhodes. I think my favorite dance number in this one is "Isn't It a Lovely Day to Get Caught in the Rain." Great dancing, great singing, and great comedy, including a hilarious ongoing war between gentleman Horton and his valet Blore. "On my eye means on my eye!"

I'm super thrilled that the Starlite Drive-in will finally reopen in a couple of weeks. It's too bad that we'll be out of town and miss the grand opening on August 27, but then again I bet it will be crowded that weekend, plus I'm not really that interested in The Dukes of Hazzard.

I like their new website too, except for where they mistakenly credit me for the saveourstarlite.org site, when actually that was someone else's work. I don't know how that happened but I wrote to them and asked them to correct the error.

So anyway, I predict many fall evenings spent in lawn chairs watching movies at the Starlite. According to the faq, we can even bring our dogs!

August 14 movie: All That Heaven Will Allow. I confess, I didn't pay that close attention to this movie because I was going through my tax receipts while it was on. Why, you ask, was I doing my taxes now, in the middle of August? Well I'll tell you, it's because I filed for an extension back in April, and just remembered this afternoon that the extended deadline is tomorrow. And the post office isn't open late like it is on April 15. Eek!

My taxes are pretty complicated, what with salary income, self-employment income, royalty income, and "cost of goods sold" inventory to keep track of. Each of which requires a different schedule. But it could be worse, I don't have any dividends to report. And it all turned out fine, I didn't owe anything and I didn't even claim all the deductions I could have.

But anyway, the movie. This was another Douglas Sirk melodrama starring Jane Wyman as a widow who falls in love with younger man Rock Hudson. Sounds a lot like Magnificent Obsession, doesn't it? Unfortunately I think it seems a bit that this movie was put together to cash in on the success of the previous one. The plot isn't as baroque, and the characters aren't as complex. Sirk is best when he's wallowing in shades of grey, with people doing the right thing for the wrong reason, the wrong thing for the right reason, and all possible variations. All That Heaven Will Allow was just too straightforward. They fall in love, the narrow-minded town disapproves, they separate but eventually reunite and tell the neighbors to get stuffed. End of story.

It was all worth it though, for the final scene. I hate to give away final moments like this, but Wyman goes to visit injured Hudson and tell him she still loves him, and there's this humongous deer standing right outside the window staring at them the whole time. And they just ignore it! It's hilarious. If it were me, I'd be all, "Oh honey I love you t-- What the hell is up with that deer? Shoo! Stop staring at us!"

August 13 movie: Oh Brother, Where Art Thou. I thought this was going to be based on Sullivan's Travels, because of course that's about a Hollywood director who wants to make a movie called Oh Brother, Where Art Thou. But actually it was based on The Odyssey. Which I haven't read, so I guess a lot of this must have been lost on me, but I still enjoyed it a great deal.

There are a few elements in common with Sullivan's Travels: it takes place in the rural South during the depression, and there's a chain gang. But actually it reminded Georg and I both of Raising Arizona. There's the presence of Holly Hunter of course (and I must say, she is developing the sad, pinched look of someone who is suffering way too much to stay way too thin), but also there's something in Clooney's line delivery that reminded us of Nicolas Cage in the earlier movie. And both movies straddle the line between "laughing with" and "laughing at" in a similar way. In a little DVD extra one of the Coen brothers called Oh Brother a "hayseed movie." I guess they must have also seen Raising Arizona as a "hayseed movie" which is why they had a similar approach. And may also be why the people I've met from Arizona all hated Raising Arizona. I wonder how people from Mississippi feel about Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

This weekend I did a little bit of yardwork, some paying work, did my taxes, reread the first half of The Book of the Long Sun and even had time to watch a few movies. What a luxury!

August 13 movie: Wise Girl. Rich socialite Miriam Hopkins's sister and brother-in-law died and left their two children to the husband's brother, starving artist Ray Milland. Hopkins poses as a bohemian to get the dirt on Milland so she and her father can win custody of the children. It's a fairly conventional romantic comedy, but worthwhile for the heavily romanticized depiction of Greenwich Village in 1937. Milland lives in an apartment complex full of artists, writers and actors, who pay no rent to the kindly antique dealer who owns the building. Somehow snooty socialite Hopkins manages to fit right in. And does she follow through with her plan, or fall for Milland and learn the value of his free-wheeling lifestyle? If you have to ask, you haven't seen many romantic comedies.

At some point I realized that I had already seen this, but I kept watching because I only vaguely remembered it. There are a few great scenes, notably when Hopkins, Milland and Guinn "Big Boy" Williams (playing a great character: a boxer/sculptor/dressmaker and one of the most together people in the artist community) dress up in silly bohemian clothes and earn $3 each, plus dinner, to sit in an Italian restaurant all night to "add atmosphere." Also another scene where Hopkins gets a job as a living model in a department store window, which turns into a brawl.

August 12 movie: Alfie. This was not at all what I expected. I heard it was Michael Caine as a "charming cad," and I thought it would be like The Italian Job with more romance. But apparently "cad" means "dickhead." I never realized that before. Most of the movie is a series of sad women debasing themselves to Alfie while he uses them for sex and then discards them. He's so cruel, even while he's with them, that it's hard to understand why they keep falling for him. He doesn't even use human pronouns to refer to women; they're all "it" to him.

The last third of the movie is even darker, but at least it's intentionally so. Shelley Winters has a nice part as an older, sexually confident woman who turns the tables on Alfie, and there's a heartwrenching scene involving an illegal abortion (but not Shelley Winters).

I wish I could say I enjoyed this, but I really didn't. I'm not surprised the Jude Law remake did so poorly. Even if they changed the particulars, the mentality behind this movie doesn't play well in today's world.

August 11 movie: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. There's a reason this is my 160th movie this year, but only the 3rd seen in a theater. The reason is, of course, the audience. What a bunch of louts! I don't know which was worse, the kids yelling, or their parents yelling back at them in an utterly futile attempt to shut them up. I wanted to tell them all to shut up, but it was (sort of) a kids movie so I kept quiet.

That said, I greatly enjoyed the movie. I only barely remembered the book and the Gene Wilder movie, and deliberatly did not refresh my memory because I wanted to see this one without preconceptions. All I remembered was the extreme poverty of the Bucket family, and two of the childrens' demises -- the gluttonous boy going up the chocolate pipe, and the gum chewing girl turning into a blueberry. The rest of it was all basically new to me.

It was certainly nasty enough to be Roald Dahl, which I appreciated. Thogh I cannot fathom why people said Johnny Depp's performance was like Michael Jackson. I don't get that at all. They're both weird, and both live in vast houses, but that's about it.

August 11 movie: Strangers May Kiss. This was another one of those Norma Shearer pre-code movies. Shearer falls in love with a modern man who's married to someone else, convinces her to shack up with him in Mexico, then ditches her for a a job. Now that she's a fallen woman she runs off to Europe and lives it up. The guy reappears, newly divorced, and wants her back. Then he gets to Paris and hears the gossip that she had (gasp) sex, with not just one but lots of men. He says some really ugly things to her, she says some ugly things back, they break up.

Eventually she admits that she was wrong and she should have waited chastely forever, even though he gave her no reason to believe he'd ever be back. So he magnanimously forgives her and they reunite. It sounds kind of appalling, but if this movie had been made twenty years later she probably would have died of a wasting illness after being disowned by her family and stoned by angry villagers or something. At least in 1931 her only punishment for enjoying sex is to be called nasty names by some uptight guy. Robert Montgomery is also in it, as Shearer's remarkably nonjudgmental friend. Come to think of it, wasn't Robert Montgomery the friend Shearer had an affair with in The Divorcee? I'll have to look that up.

August 8 movie: These Three. This, the first movie adaptation of the play The Children's Hour, starred Merle Oberon, Miriam Hopkins and Joel McCrea. The basic plot is the same: two young women run a school for girls and one of the students tells a vicious lie with just the tiniest kernel of truth, which ruins the teachers' lives. But in this version they removed all references to lesbianism (duh, the movie was made in the 30s) and gave it a somewhat happy ending.

The 60s version of this story starred Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn, and I've heard it's more true to the play. I've kind of been putting off watching it because it sounds too tragic. I've seen a clip where the teacher confesses her lesbian desires by shrieking about how "dirty" she feels and I don't know if I could handle a whole movie like that.

I've heard that although everyone talks about Bette Davis' rivalry with Joan Crawford, it was Miriam Hopkins who Davis saw more as a professional rival. Which I never understood until seeing this movie. Hopkins' part would have been perfect for Davis. Which is not to say Hopkins wasn't good; she was. Just that I can imagine Davis thinking that part should have been hers. It's not that easy to find Miriam Hopkins movies on TCM. I wonder if they're going to do a day for her this month? I'm going to check their online schedule and find out.

August 3 movie: The Palm Beach Story. I watched this while I was getting ready for the trip. Luckily I know the movie inside and out, so I could watch while I was packing and not really miss anything.

The very ending of this movie is always a little unsatisfying to me. Screwball comedies always wrap up a little too neatly, but it's kind of creepy for Colbert's sister and McCrea's brother to be treated as stand-ins without identities of their own. I guess it's one of those things that you just can't think about much.

August 1 movie: A Fish Called Wanda. When this came out, I didn't understand why everyone thought it was so funny. This is my second viewing and I still don't understand. I found this movie completely wretched, ugly, meanspirited and most of all, not funny.

It's not just squeamishness on my part. I can appreciate black humor; for instance Kind Hearts and Coronets is about a man murdering his entire extended family, and is hilarious. What irritates me is when a movie thinks that pure nastiness is enough. It isn't black humor if it isn't funny!

July 31 movie: Another Thin Man. They showed a bunch of Thin Man movies (in reverse chronological order, for some weird reason) but I only watched the second and third. (I watched them in normal chonological order.) This one was darker than the first two -- the movie kicks off with a dog getting its throat cut -- but the mystery follows the same basic structure as every Thin Man movie I've seen: Lots of people get killed. The police run around like chickens with their heads cut off. Eventually William Powell gathers everyone in a room together and comes up with some bizarre speculation which "proves" that the most unlikely person did it. Which person immediately confesses all and is led away by the police.

Nick and Nora have a baby in this one: little Nicky Charles. Which I could have lived without -- especially Nick calling Nora "Mommy" -- but I guess it would have been odd for them not to have kids eventually. As always, much hay is made out of Nora's highbrow vs. Nick's lowbrow backgrounds. My favorite scene is when Nick's shady friends decide to throw a birthday party for the baby. Each crook, lug and jamoke has to bring a baby; those who don't have babies rent them for the afternoon.