Just a thought #1

I was reading the famous Kael essay about Cary Grant, “the Man from Dream City“. The excerpt below was a revelation: ironically enough, I finally understand now why I’ve always found Clark Gable (whose mustache Johnny Depp sports in the amazing last fifteen minutes of Public Enemies) infinitely more seductive than the suave, but distant Grant:

The romantic male stars aren’t necessarily sexually aggressive. Henry Fonda wasn’t; neither was James Stewart, or, later, Marcello Mastroianni. The foursquare Clark Gable, with his bold, open challenge to women, was more the exception than the rule, and Gable wasn’t romantic, like Grant. Gable got down to brass tacks; his advances were basic, his unspoken question was “Well, sister, what do you say?” If she said no, she was failing what might almost be nature’s test. She’d become overcivilized, afraid of her instincts–afraid of being a woman. There was a violent, primal appeal in Gable’s sex scenes: it was all out front–in the way he looked at her, man to woman. Cary Grant doesn’t challenge a woman that way. (When he tried, as the frontiersman in “The Howards of Virginia,” he looked thick and stupid.) With Gable, sex is inevitable: What is there but sex? Basically, he thinks women are good for only one thing. Grant is interested in the qualities of a particular woman–her sappy expression, her non sequiturs, the way her voice bobbles. She isn’t going to be pushed to the wall as soon as she’s alone with him. With Grant, the social, urban man, there are infinite possibilities for mutual entertainment. They might dance the night away or stroll or go to a carnival–and nothing sexual would happen unless she wanted it to. Grant doesn’t assert his male supremacy; in the climax of a picture he doesn’t triumph by his fists and brawn–or even by outwitting anybody. He isn’t a conqueror, like Gable. But he’s a winner. The game, however, is an artful dodge. He gets the blithe, funny girl by maneuvering her into going after him. He’s a fairy-tale hero, but she has to pass through the trials: She has to trim her cold or pompous adversaries; she has to dispel his fog. In picture after picture, he seems to give up his resistance at the end, as if to say, What’s the use of fighting?

No Comment #1

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David Carradine

1 year and one day ago now, I managed to lure the b/f back to my room, a fact we celebrated yesterday. He was understandably nervous, and in fact so was I. We didn’t want to go to sleep… so we put on Kill Bill pt.1

Bill, of course, does not in fact appear in that first part. But his shadow looms over the movie, and it saddens me that on the first anniversary of that night when we sat next to each other on the couch, nervously making conversation until the inevitable kiss, we got news that Bill had, in fact, been killed.

Rest in peace.

Roderick Jaynes

I saw Burn After Reading this morning. And while I cannot write about it until my filmtotaal review is published several weeks from now, I did not want to deprive you of this tidbit from my press pack about the Coens’  faithful collaborator:

RODERICK JAYNES (editor)

Roderick Jaynes began his career minding the tea cart at Shepperton Studios in the 1930s. The U.K. native eventually moved into the editing department, where he worked on some of the British film industry’s more marginal features from the 1950s and ’60s.

With the demise of the Carry On series, he retired from film editing, only to emerge from retirement to work on Joel and Ethan Coen’s first feature Blood Simple. He has since worked on most of their films.

Mr. Jaynes resides in Hove, Sussex, with his chow Otto. He remains widely admired in the film industry for his impeccable grooming and is the world’s foremost collector of Margaret Thatcher nudes, many of them drawn from life.

Hedwig van Driel, MSc.

Ok. Now what?

Dr. Horrible concludes…and how

Leave it to Joss Whedon to lead a story in which the supervillain is the hero to its logical conclusion, regardless of it being a rather silly musical concoction. And leave it to Joss Whedon to make you care for characters in a mere 45 minutes, and to make the ending shot a simple, but really poignant one.

The last episode was also – let’s not forget – really funny, even if there was nothing approaching the brilliance of “these are not the Hammer” (and the line that follows it) in Act II.

I have more to say, but I have to get the work. Besides, the most important thing I want to say? Go see this!

Dr. Horrible

I know: I’ve been a bad, bad blogger. I can’t quite explain why, nor can I promise it will get better soon, so let’s just get on to more urgent business.

Go see the first installment of Dr. Horrible. Now.

I never bought the “Joss Whedon is my Master Now” T-shirt (written in Star Wars font, of course), but now I think I’ll definitely have to. Rewatching Buffy reminded me of how great that show was, I still love Firefly, and now there this: Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along blog, and well…

A Sunday read

(Note: I tried to make this Courier, as it should be. WordPress didn’t agree)

EXT: Day

A house. Light-colored, slightly yellowish, with a slanted roof. It stands alone, and it’s quiet. It’s a sunny day, clearly the afternoon. The air is hazy.

A car. It’s first heard, then seen coming up the driveway. Out of it step a middle-aged MAN (dark hair, avergage heigh and build, jeans) and a twenty-something GIRL (blonde, also in jeans, sunglasses). The girl streches, lets her arms fall back. She points up with one finger.

GIRL: hear that?
MAN: what?

4 effin’ 1

Look: I don’t like sports. I don’t like engaging in them, and I don’t think watching them is particularly interesting. But every two years, for a few weeks in summer, I make an exception for the boys in orange. So tonight, I was sitting there yelling at the screen with the best of them, my hopes soaring with every attack from “our” side, my heart beating faster every time a ball came way too close to the hero-like Edwin van der Sar. I cheered and I whooped, and while my francophile side tried to murmer a faint “Allez Les Bleus” every once in a while, I quickly shut it up.

I repeat: 4 fucking 1 – excuse my French.

This, of course, following a 3-0 against the reigning world champ, a match I unfortunately did not see because I was… otherwise occupied.

Which brings me to the dearth of updates lately. It’s a combination of factors: my thesis talk got scheduled two months from now (which means I truly should get a move on), a math assignment from hell that has me throwing up my hands in despair ten times a day for the past three days, and… well. there’s this boy. And it turns out that when it comes down to it, I’d rather snog than blog. At least for now.

Anyway, Hup, Holland, Hup, as we say, and I promise there WILL be updates again. I’ve given up hope for a weekend double feature (for last weekend, as you might recall), but I’ll try to get a Sunday reading up, I have unfinished pieces about Logan’s Run and Point Blank, and I’ll be watching Touch of Evil with faithful commenter Kaj this Monday.

Oh, and if you have no idea what this whole piece was about? There’s a European Championship going on. Of football (I refuse to call it soccer). And while I’d pretty much given up on the team before it started (I wasn’t the only one, either, bookies had us at 14:1), we might actually get somewhere this time. And when the whole nation gets up, dressed up in the ugliest color, and cheers, who am I to stand aside, uncaring?

Sydney Pollack is no more

Every morning, my radio switches on for about ten minutes, and it’s the news that wakes me. Usually it flies right past me: the sound is enough to wake me, but I’m still too groggy to pay attention to all the horrors happening daily in this world of ours. But every once in a while, a headline will wake me right up.

“Sydney Pollack overleden”

My first reaction was “nah!”. It just didn’t seem possible: to me, Sydney Pollack was, and always had been, about 65, perpetually the slightly dodgy older guy with a glint in his eye and a skeleton or two in his closet. I’ll admit he wasn’t a must-see director for me – I really like Three Days of the Condor, for example, but his later work seemed well-crafted, but not particularly exciting. As an actor, however, he was always a welcome presence. His part in Eyes Wide Shut was both amusing and more than a little sinister. And I’ll remember him not by his very last acting performance, but rather by one from 2007 that slyly nodded to the films he directed in the 70’s:

Sydney Pollack: 1934 – 2008