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December 29 movie: The Man Who Came to Dinner. We ran out of time to watch this at my folks house. So I brought the DVD back home and Georg and I watched it on Saturday night. This is my favorite Christmas movie. It's so delightfully misanthropic.

Coincidentally I'm reading a great biography of Bette Davis (thank you Georg!) which provides a lot of behind the scenes gossip about this movie. Davis' role is strangely restrained and secondary, considering how big a star she was at the time. I had read before that The Man Who Came to Dinner was a punishment, Warner's way of taking Davis down a peg and reminding her that no matter how many Oscars she won, they still called the shots. According to the biography, that isn't true at all. Actually the movie was Davis' idea: she convinced Warner to buy the rights and then campaigned for the starring role (and she almost didn't get it!). The book says that she had just come off a series of heavy, serious movies like The Letter and wanted a comedy where she played a nice character that audiences could root for.

The book, written by a film critic, talked a lot about the "what ifs" of potential stars and directors for The Man Who Came to Dinner. Apparently Orson Welles was at one point attached, to both star and direct! I think Welles would have done a terrific job directing but I can't imagine anyone but Monty Wooley as the star. The author of the biography called the movie a "disappointment," an opinion which I emphatically do not share. The only disappointment to me is Davis' love interest, who is so bland I don't think anyone would have noticed if he'd been replaced with a literal cardboard cutout. Just think what someone like Robert Montgomery would have done with that part. At least it would have been believable that Davis would fall for him.

December 27 movie: The Third Man. Unfortunately I didn't get to see the whole thing, but my dad and I watched about half and caught all the really good parts. Except the final shot, which I had to miss, alas. I went out with my sister that night and I couldn't very well tell her to wait so I could watch the last few minutes of a movie I've seen a bunch of times already.

When we got to the big reveal (the scene that, if you've seen this movie you know what I'm talking about, and if you haven't, go see it right now!!!) I said to my dad that I felt a little sad that I can never see that scene for the first time again. He made the most hilarious comment: "Just wait thirty years, and it's as if you're seeing it for the first time again." I bet that's true, but as I said to him at the time, I don't think I can stay away from this movie for that long.

December 26 movie: Enigma. This was a WWII thriller about, you guessed it, the Enigma machine. Starred Kate Winslet, Jeremy Northram, and some guy and woman I didn't recognize. It was a decent movie, hung together well and it was interesting to see a movie set at Bletchley Park. Although I think I might have had trouble following the plot at the end if my dad hadn't been there to explain the historical events the movie referenced. According to my dad they changed the ending a lot and added the romance between Winslet and Guy I Didn't Recognize. I guess they had to have a romance in there somewhere. He lent me the book (my dad, not Guy I Didn't Recognize) so I can find out for myself.

There's a very brief scene where the two main characters visit the facility where women are intercepting and recording German transmissions. I'm reading a really good nonfiction book about those women, called The Enemy is Listening. The book is a memoir by a woman who worked in the "Y Service," and their role was a lot bigger than I had realized. I had imagined what you see in the movie, a roomful of people writing codes down with no idea what it is they're transcribing. The woman in the book takes a much more active role. Her group helps with code breaking, logging and analyzing not just the transmissions but their context (i.e. who sent the transmission and what were they doing at that moment) and she gets good enough to decode on the spot, making her an invaluable resource for immediate information. Granted, the woman in the book (at least the part I've read so far) worked mostly on transmissions to and from German fighter pilots, who did not use Enigma. She wrote that the women working on Enigma transmissions were dealing with what you see in the movie: countless hours of transcribing random gibberish, never learning what any of it meant. What an incredibly tedious and difficult job that must have been.

December 26 movie: Beauty and the Beast. I mostly watched this one by myself while my folks were doing other things, but they came in at the end. What a lyrical, magical movie. It's like poetry. Cocteau has such a delicate touch. This is one of those movies that I could watch over and over, but I won't, because I want to feel this delight every time I see it. If I overwatched the movie it might start to feel ordinary and that would be a crying shame.

December 26 movie: Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial. My folks and I watched this together, the recent Nova documentary about the Dover school board trial. My dad had closely followed the case while it was happening, so he was able to add context & more information during the movie. I also followed the trial, though not as closely. I remember where I was when I heard the verdict though. I was driving home from work, I had just gotten on on I-85 north. On the radio they read quotes from the decision, like "breathtaking inanity," and I bounced up and down in my seat, whooped for joy and waved my arms in the air. One at a time, of course! Had to keep one hand on the wheel.

The movie did a good job, I think, of explaining the basic principles behind evoutionary biology in a clear and understandable way. With nifty graphics. Whether it was accurate or not, I'll leave to the scientists. Of which I am emphatically not one; in fact I have trouble following the discussions of evolution vs. intelligent design on the cool science blogs when they get down to details. I still try to read them anyway, because they are cool. And who knows, I might learn something before they go over my head.

The term "docudrama" has a bad rap, but I think it maybe applies here: it's mostly documentary, with interviews, news footage and narration. Plus they added dramatizations of the trial because cameras weren't allowed in the actual courtroom.

From what I understood at the time, this case was a crushing defeat for the ID people. And the movie definitely confirms that perception. The defendants made some major mistakes, such as saying on camera they wanted to bring "creationism" into the classroom in an early interview; lying about the source of money to buy the ID book that was added to the school library; and probably the most glaring gaffe, cdesign proponentsists. It made me wonder if the trial might have gone differently had the ID crowd been able to pull their act together.

One thing that really bothers me about modern American journalism is this focus on "objectivity" at the expense of all else, including "accuracy." It seems like much of the media think their job is to repeat what each side says about a controversy, giving equal weight to all sides, regardless of which statements are true and which are false. In essence, they give up reporting and reduce themselves to stenographers. The Nova documentary didn't do that at all. They thoroughly refuted the claims made by ID as they went along. I guess it's no surprise that Nova would come down on the side of science, but the people from the Discovery Institute must have hated it. Oh what am I saying. It was PBS! They would have hated it no matter what it had said.

December 24 movie: Cover Girl. The message of this movie is repulsive. Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth play romantic partners performing together at a small theater. Hayworth gets a big break to be a magazine cover girl. Kelly tries to convince her to give up the opportunity, because he can't stand the thought of her being more successful than he is. When he fails and her career flourishes, he tosses her over and all their mutual friends ostracize her. Eventually she comes crawling back, begging forgiveness for the high crime of having value in her own right. But don't worry! He deigns to forgive her. The end.

Ugh. At least the songs are good.

December 22 movie: The Incredibles. We had forgotten how funny this movie is. It came on ABC Family, which we've been watching because they show most of the Rankin-Bass specials in December. Anyway we came in on The Incredibles about 1/2 hour in, and they repeated the movie so we watched it again to catch the beginning which we had missed. And we enjoyed it so much that we watched the whole thing over. The Edith Head character is definitely the funniest part.

December 22 movie: Anthony Adverse. Historical melodrama starring Fredric March and Olivia de Havilland. The best thing about the movie is Claude Rains as the villain. Come to think of it, Claude Rains is the best thing about every movie he's in.

December 18 movie: The Joker is Wild. Frank Sinatra stars in this biopic of Joe E. Lewis. The story is that Lewis was a promising young singer until he defied a Chicago mobster who had him beaten nearly to death, which beating destroyed his singing voice. So he became a comedian instead. I've read that there's no evidence this story is true except Lewis' own word, so who knows. Makes a good story though. I love Sinatra in this movie, and there's a terrific supporting cast: Eddie Albert, Mitzi Gaynor, Jeanne Crain, Jackie Coogan, and Sophie Tucker in a small role as herself. (She gives Lewis his big break in comedy.)

December 18 movie: Drums Along the Mohawk. John Ford drama starring Claudette Colbert and Henry Fonda as revolutionary-era pioneers building a farm and battling Native Americans in upstate New York. It lacks the subtlety of say Fort Apache but is well worth watching. Both stars are great, and Edna Mae Oliver steals the show as a widow who takes them in.

December 14 movie: Dangerous Female. The first film version of The Maltese Falcon. I've seen this before, and it isn't a bad movie. I would have considered it a pretty good movie if it hadn't been followed by a spectacular movie made from the same source material. Georg and I decided that there were two main differences between these two versions.* First, the acting. This version starred Ricardo Cortez -- who was not Spanish or Latino, but was given that stage name in hope that he would become the next Valentino. Unfortunately he was the kind of actor who conveys emotion by making a frowny face when something sad is happening.

Second, the script. Huston's script was so much more, what's the word. Elliptical? The Dangerous Female script is riddled with as you know Bob dialogue. (Many, many thanks to Nellorat for that wonderful and useful phrase.) The Maltese Falcon puts the information out there much less intrusively, and lets the viewer connect the dots. There is a somewhat explainy scene at the end, as I recall, but for the most part you have to pay attention to keep up. Whereas in Dangerous Female there's always a scene coming up where the main characters will explain everything to each other, and to you.

The differing quality of the scripts is most painfully clear at the ending. Dangerous Female goes on and on with an epilogue that might have come from the book, and probably worked well there, but drained the life right out of the movie. Unlike the Huston version, which ends with so much impact.

For me at least, the main value of Dangerous Female was that it made The Maltese Falcon shine more brilliantly in comparison. Which made it worth watching, twice, but probably not a third time. At least not for awhile.

*There's a third version of The Maltese Falcon, called Satan Met a Lady, which I'm pretty sure I haven't seen. I put it in my Netflix queue.

December 10 movie: Man Wanted. This was a a pre-code movie about a married lady executive (Kay Francis) who hires a male secretary and then falls for him. A fun bit of fluff. It was part of a birthday tribute to Una Merkel, who played the male secretary's girlfriend. I like Una Merkel. She seemed to play only two characters: the crass best friend of the heroine, or the crass girlfriend who gets dumped for the heroine.

December 9 movie: High Society. Wow, this goes by quick if you fast forward all the parts with Grace Kelly acting like an annoying snot. The first half of the movie takes about ten minutes this way. Whose idea was it for her character to be so shrill and unsympathetic, anyway?

Decmber 8 movie: Two Rode Together. Fair to middling western starring Jimmy Stewart and Richard Widmark as two cowboys hired to rescue white Americans being held prisoner (slaves would be more accurate in my opinion) by Comanches. The movie is complicated and somewhat dark, as John Ford movies tend to be. It doesn't really develop any momentum until they get to the Comanches, but I thought it was worth the wait.

December 8 movie: Ratatouille. What a delightful movie! Marvelous from beginning to end. I think my favorite part was the DVD extra called "Your Friend the Rat": the two main rats narrated a little history of rat-human interaction. So cute! And accurate too, if I can trust the book about rats I just read a few months ago.

December 8 movie: The Violent Men. Decent Western starring Glenn Ford, Edward G. Robinson and Barbara Stanwyck. They said after the movie that Robinson hated Westerns and only did it because his career was on the wane. It's too bad; he was such a great actor.

December 8 movie: Jessica. Ann-Margret plays a young widow working as a midwife in a small Sicilian town. All the Sicilian men want to get with her, and all the Sicilian women hate her for it. The women all refuse to have sex, so there will be no more babies, so that hotsy totsy midwife will be out of a job and will move away and stop stealing their husbands!

The movie is about as bad as you'd expect from that description. It did have lots of beautiful exterior shots of Ann-Margret riding a Vespa around a picturesque Sicilian town.

December 6 movie: Footsteps in the Fog. Edwardian thriller starring Stewart Granger and Jean Simmons. Did you know they were married in real life? I just found that out recently. This movie was surprisingly dark. Not totally successful, but there was a lot worthwhile in it. I enjoyed it a lot.

December 4 movie: Highlander: The Final Dimension. Oh lordie! So bad. So hilariously bad. I had never seen a Highlander movie before. Were they all this bad?

December 3 movie: Hera Pheri. Sean and Pam came over to watch this terrific 70s Bollywood movie with us. Amitabh and Vinod Khanna star as con men who cheat at cards, engage in a little petty theft, try to find love, and get caught up in a complicated plot involving Vinod's father, who murdered Amitabh's father, which drove Amitabh's mother crazy. Fantastic music by Kalyanji/Anandji. And yet again I forgot to take any screen caps before sending the movie back. Take it from me, this movie is way cool.

I just read a good post on Something Old, Nothing New about The Shop Around the Corner, and then it was on TCM! What luck. I love this movie. It definitely has that Lubitsch sparkle. The entire ensemble shines. I'm a particular fan of Frank Morgan and Felix Bressart. It was a good choice to cast Jimmy Stewart, because the character has a real mean streak -- after he finds out who Margaret Sullavan is, more than once he messes with her head in a way that's almost sadistic -- but Stewart is so extremely likeable that somehow he didn't lose my sympathy.

December 2 movie: Visions of Light. I love this documentary about cinematography. I was a little frustrated by the focus on American movies -- they briefly mention German Expressionism and French New Wave, and that's it for non-Hollywood. I was hoping they'd show something from The Man With a Movie Camera, which I adore, but no dice. Georg and I were both amused by the guy who said the invention of sound had been a setback for moviemaking, and that film as an art would have developed so much more if the silent era had lasted ten years longer. Spoken like a cinematographer!

Still, it's a great movie with lots of interesting tidbits, mainly about lighting. I particularly loved the story about Rosemary's Baby. And this movie (the first time I saw it, back when it came out) was how I first learned about the "dolly counter-zoom," tracking in and zooming out at the same speed. I had seen it before but didn't understand what was going on.

I wish that other filmmaking guilds would make documentaries. I'd love to see a documentary about editing.

November 28 movie: Ocean's 13. I was pleasantly surprised by how well this movie held up on second viewing. Like Soderbergh's Ocean's 11, it's best not to think too hard about this movie. Just enjoy the koo-koo hipster vibe and the tribute to Vegas. Eddie Izzard was a nice addition to the cast, and the absence of Julia Roberts was also nice. Even if you like Julia Roberts, it doesn't seem like there was anything left for her character to do in this series.