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hort of what he considers a woman of her position ought to be his cruelty makes your blood stop dr sloper flings his low opinion of her charms directly to her face and clift s morris the penniless lover working very hard to assure his own cushy landing is fascinating at this stage in his career clift s appearance was amazing his black hair full lips dark eyes and elegant cheekbones are so perfect he almost looks like a sculpture but behind those black eyes his mind is always working his character at war with himself as calculation and softer feelings do battle i ve always thought of clift for some reason when watching tom cruise not that cruise is anywhere in clift s league as an actor but there s something at war inside cruise and i m not going to get into gossip magazine speculation as to just what may be going on there as a movie star he seems always aware of how hard he s working to be liked to be charismatic to make an impression to seem strong and that churn undermines everything he s trying to portray instead of coming across as the immaculate movie star he instead seems like someone who wants to be that that imperfection and anxiety trying to fight its way out makes cruise interesting to watch when he s doing his better work i also think somebody should make a biographical movie about clift god knows his life was dramatic with cruise playing him not that there s a chance in hell that either of these scenarios will ever happen but it s an intriguing notion and how dark the heiress turns at its conclusion which i m watching now de havilland s catherine a flower that turns to stone her bitterness is so well polished it gleams and that voice amused broken and finally as cruel as her own father s was to her the final sequence is perfection black as velvet sharp as crystal morris the fortune hunter returns his confidence a little shaken but he s trying to pull off the old seductive charm catherine in steely control leads him to believe she has fallen again for his wiles at the end she has locked the door against him her face a mask of implacable revenge she climbs the stairs toward her room and a life lived alone outside the door morris knocks then knocks realizing in growing panic that the door is closed to him forever leave a comment filed under movies tv tagged as montgomery clift olivia de havilland ralph richardson the heiress tom cruise turner classic movies october 26 2009 6 59 pm mad men don draper unmasked photo carin baer amc com after falling into a familiar mid season vamping til ready mode over the last few weeks the third season of mad men ramped up for the approaching season finale with one of the best episodes ever don draper jon hamm the man who has navigated the tumult of the mid 20th century with uncanny skill has hit the rocks as dick whitman he was the come from nothing hard luck orphan cue the wistful end credits tune where is love from oliver the musical adaptation of oliver twist that was a broadway smash in 1963 sheer survival dictated dick either develop predator like skills or perish dick whitman is in fact a figure trailing echoes of the depression and the rural life of manual labor and low expectations that world war ii helped transform and then don remade himself into that other mid century archetype glossy as a magazine ad well suited well groomed well married as confident of his power as post ww ii america gone was the america of hardscrabble farmers and dugout homes on the prairie here was the world beater all tall buildings and college educations and upward mobility don draper is a transformative figure leaving the black and white memories of struggle hidden away in a box in a locked desk drawer with that behind him he s now free to swagger in the colorful sunlight of the american century but the brawny u s of the postwar boom years was also the nation shaken by nuclear visions terror of communist invaders from within and without and the knowledge that power and evil were sometimes one and the same and then it all comes crashing down long suffering betty january jones finds don s secret self jon hamm has already established himself as a compelling leading man but his performance in this episode is heartbreaking one by one the layers of protective coloring he so skillfully constructed fall away the man in control the dominant husband the unflappable success story the self contained loner keeping his own counsel underneath it all always was dick whitman as human flawed vulnerable and pained as don draper was immaculately artificially untouchable there s been much folderol lately about whether mad men is overpraised overanalyzed over fetished etc etc and yes january jones seems all but incapable of suggesting inner life under her porcelain exterior but this episode is a reminder that at its best mad men isn t just good it s breathtaking and poor miss farrell slinks away in the night leave a comment filed under tv uncategorized tagged as january jones jon hamm mad men oliver where is love september 17 2009 2 05 am inglourious basterds and district 9 movie love and recognizable human emotion among crustacean aliens what didn t surprise me about quentin tarantino s inglourious basterds was the fact that it was a movie about movies that after all has been qt s default artistic position for some years now what did surprise me was the fact that district 9 a sci fi movie from a first time feature director nobody has ever heard of neill blomkamp made such an unexpected emotional connection that it brought me to tears and left me blubbering for a good half hour after it was over i realize this may be an extreme reaction when i mentioned it during a radio appearance on rick emerson s show here in portland emerson and his valiant colleagues seemed perplexed but the more i think about it the more i think it wasn t some random hormone surge that made me respond that way the conventional hollywood release pattern pitted the time traveler s wife which i haven t seen because it just sounds too damned annoying as the female skewing picture in a field of supposed male dominated in fact fanboy dominated late summer movie field but what i would hope encourage and wish for is that female moviegoers would see district 9 as anybody who has attended comic con already knows the idea that women aren t interested in sci fi fantasy and genre work is ye olde moss encrusted stereotype but my own relation to sci fi in particular is a rocky romance at best and my fickle affections are strained every time some new cg bloated overstuffed mixture of action figure selling video game asthetic borrowing violence wallowing for the sake of empty spectacle porn screeches into view which is a long winded way of saying that i was expecting to get movie geek pleasure out of inglourious basterds and yawn stifling tolerance for district 9 with its alien race stuck on earth special effects i found however that indeed there s pleasure to be had in patting myself on the back when it comes to spotting tarantino s references the bravura opening sequence in inglorious basterds i smugly noted as i watched owes a steep debt to sergio leone s once upon a time in the west and it went on from there brad pitt s characters name recalls aldo ray a not well remembered but appealing mug of a second tier leading man of the 50s a la ralph meeker whose screen presence supposedly helped inspire tarantino to cast bruce willis in pulp fiction a closing door shot that all but screamed the searchers the insiderish tributes to leni riefenstahl german mountain films g w pabst the weird tribute to hollywood golden age world war ii epics and their stiff acting the bit with mike myers incongruous anachronisms david bowie s song from paul schrader s remake of cat people popping up diane kruger s marriage of maria braun style and so on and so forth and i m sure others have spotted many more than me the point is whatever affection or emotional reaction at all i had to inglourious basterds derived not from its story but from the aura around it which was tarantino s love of film a love i and countless other nerds raised by pop culture in lieu of attentive parents share what impressed me about district 9 by contrast was how it took a concept that was intriguing to begin with creatures from another planet being treated literally like illegal aliens with all the contemporary resonance that phrase immediately conjures and grounded it in recognizable human emotion should be simple but such a thing seems as alien to tarantino and his movie nourished view of the world yet the team behind district 9 the filmmakers and actors make their situation grittily specific and by doing so render it universal the two major threads of the story are so strong the subhuman treatment meted out to the aliens and the bond that our schlubby human protagonist sharlto copley feels toward his wife could be corny but instead it s mind broadening and emotionally wrenching and while i wish it were otherwise i can t imagine tarantino for all his gifts demonstrating that plain rich understanding of how hearts actually work and souls mourn leave a comment filed under movies uncategorized tagged as aldo ray brad pitt comic con district 9 kufo movies once upon a time in the west quentin tarantino rick emerson sharlto copley the marriage of maria braun the time traveler s wife august 30 2009 1 03 am lolita and the genius of james mason wonderful wonderful turner classic movies yes i can decide which movies i want to see and when and get them through netflix or the indispensable portland video store movie madness or if my online skills were more highly developed find them gratis somewhere on the net but i love the random stumbling upon quality of finding movies on tcm that i ve either never seen or not seen in a while right now i m having the pleasure of watching lolita again this is the stanley kubrick version with screenplay supposedly by nabokov though speculation is kubrick and other hands re wrote it though there s divided opinion about peter sellers turn as quilty pauline kael was a prominent fan david thomson a naysayer the self awareness of the performance and how it s used in the film remains utterly modern i d say post modern if i weren t fearful of the pretension police bursting in but how rich it is to watch james mason he s the embodiment of humbert humbert the romantic rotted crumbling emblem of the old world who falls for the shallow shiny avatar of america young unformed animal lolita and he manages to be heartbreaking ridiculous gallant and squirmily hypocritical all at once right now he s playing one of my favorite scenes the too human too ghastly charlotte shelley winters grasping perfection has found his diary in which he writes of his obsession with lolita and distaste for her crass clutching mother i e charlotte to whom he s now married mason s humbert feebly brazenly unconvincingly claims these were notes to a novel nothing real and that her threats to disgrace him and most heinous deprive him of access to lolita are needless and misguided oh the humiliation the pain the sleazy posturing and excuse making mason is marinating in corruption and human frailty it s awful and divine and his voice oh that voice it s like aged scotch deep and burnished and golden leave a comment filed under movies uncategorized may 20 2009 3 46 am american idol guy next door vs guyliner adam triumphant was it just me or was there a distinct going through the motions feeling about the final performance night on this year s www americanidol com yes the usual elements were in place screaming fans in the audience displaying signs for their faves the presence of mystifying celebs in the crowd anthony hopkins katie holmes the two finalists adam lambert and kris how did he get in here allen singing three songs one chosen by them another chosen by unseen idol creator simon fuller what happened to clive davis did the idol powers decide that his role as music mogul imprimatur of talent was seeming too unhip given davis age and the third the obligatory bombastic live your dreams ballad written for the winner the awkwardness level threatened to sail off the charts since this year s pap spectacular was co written by this season s shoehorned in fourth judge kara i mnotgoingtogooglehowshespellshername when simon cowell made a passing swipe at the cliched nature of the tune kara muttered something like i know doesn t anybody take this seriously anymore so adam does his thing he delivers all three songs with his signature mixture of show tune style selling it to the back row hyper dramatic passing for rock n roll screeching and his ability to really feel the music and lyrics he reprises his earlier season high point mad world in a long trenchcoat surrounded by more moody fog than a hammer horror film version of london a change is gonna come and the bombast ballad no boundaries kris allen cute and so generic he looks like the guy who joins a band after its charismatic frontman has gone on to a solo career does a credible version of that old chestnut ain t no sunshine the judges go gaga but kris then does the fuller choice the marvin gaye classic what s goin on with the same laid back white guy soul he used on ain t no sunshine and the judges go less gaga though of course paula dressed in lucky charms leprechaun green tonight is still proud and announces kris made marvin gaye proud quite a feat since marvin as we know has gone onto that great motown medley in the sky somehow though it lacked that old time idol combo of giddiness and cheese it was good to hear paula so oddly coherent most of this season revert to some vintage style blurts to adam after a change is gonna come she burbled i know with every fiber of my being you are gonna be iconic welcome back paula so what can we expect tomorrow night a two hour padfest leading up to the big reveal of this year s winner but maybe what has taken some of the wind out of the big finale this year is the fact that as time has gone on it seems a crapshoot whether the winner or runners up will have the stronger careers kelly clarkson and carrie underwood won and have thrived ruben studdard and taylor hicks on the other hand meanwhile also ran chris daughtr y has done just fine so is it really such a big deal who wins at this stage isn t it all about the exposure and who s smart and or talented enough to handle their careers to benefit from the idol exposure without getting stuck in the idol machinery to put it another way i m rooting for adam but i m not at all sure that winning is the best thing for him or even that it matters very much so i ll tune in tomorrow just to see if there s any juicy craziness but as to the supposed suspenseful outcome that we ll endure all the puffery and padding to find out in the last few seconds of the show it just doesn t seem to matter as much anymore kind of like american idol leave a comment filed under uncategorized older 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