I'm telling you ladies, look here at the script! this is the part of the movie where you both make out with me!

PG?

Cary Grant, Josephine Hull, Jean Adair, Priscilla Lane, Raymond Massey

Mortimer: Look, I probably should’ve told you this before, but…you see…insanity runs in my family.  It practically gallops!

Mortimer Brewster (Grant) has just gotten married and is about to embark on his honeymoon when he discovers that his two quiet, lovable aunts are actually responsible for 12 murders.  They consider them charitable murders, but Mortimer doesn’t see it that way.  As he’s trying to figure out what to do, the situation is complicated by the arrival of Mortimer’s brother, Jonathan (Massey), who himself is responsible for some murders of his own.

This is a busy, complicated movie with a lot of characters going here and there, mostly on one set.  What’s that ya say?  Why yes, it IS based on a hit Broadway play.

Cary Grant is entertaining as always, and the story is fairly funny and interesting, mainly due to the performances of Josephine Hull and Jean Adair as aunts Abby and Martha respectively.  They play it all completely straight, never wavering from the conviction that their actions are entirely understandable, and even kind in a way.

The only problems I had with the movie was that it was a tad bit overlong, some of the situations seem to repeat themselves, and the tone isn’t always successfully in the dark humor category.  It just felt a little uneven going from dark comedy to silly comedy and then to straight up drama.

Regardless, it’s still witty and entertaining for the most part.  It just could have benefited (as far as my enjoyment of it goes) from losing a few repetitive scenes here and there.

Old women are crafty and not to be trusted.

10 – 1 for being a bit overlong and repetitive – .8 for some tonal oddities – 1.3 because it wasn’t consistently funny enough for a comedy = 6.9

For decades they were sitting pretty at the bottom of stiff cartons d’invitation. Good, old fashioned smart dress codes. Smart like in Cary Grant. Smart ass!

Then came management by objectives and project management science. MBO. PM. And other acronyms. Such as S.M.A.R.T. objectives. Challenging…

The brain child of a car- and a watch-maker. Colorful and small, they colonized Rome and other maze-like Italian cities. Not so sure about the rest of the world. They were not made of chocolate, but they could be parked like thrash bins. They took up roughly the same size. Smart Mercedes Benz cars. Wow!

Then also cars became obsolete. Enter the smart cards. We can now check-in with them and unblock ubiquitous car-sharing vehicles. Cool.

Yes, you can liaise with the office from home, and the office liaises with you just everywhere else. Smartphones. Multitasking. (Or the end of cool).

Since a couple of years we’re reading more and more about them. Now we’re understanding better what they are. MeinMann is working now on their costs/benefits, who still protect their mystery fiercely, though. Smart grids are coming. They are the future. Awesome.

De Mazière, the new Interior Minister of the Merkel government, said stop to Aufbau-Ost. He said now innovation is needed. And growth. Guess what? A smart one. Ach so…

Suzy Menkes in Berlin, Techno Luxury Conference. Guess what the bikers-cum-entrepreneurs guys from Vexed talked about. Injury protection and moisture management. Smart materials. Urban.

Well. There has been a moment for all thing new. New Look. New Deal. New Romantic. New Economy. New Town. For thing high. High Tea. High rise. High Fliers. High Fidelity. High Octane. Highway. High protein. High yield. High Net Worth Individuals. And also things low had their heyday. Low Carbs. Low Fat. Low Cholesterol. Low Calories. Low Income. Low cost.

Now it’s the time for things smart. It ain’t be particularly strong or heroic. Nor depressive and minimalist. It has to have a good return on capital. Not maximising. Second-best maybe. Moderate investment, acceptable return. Low risk. No weigh restriction – within reason – must fit in 20×30x50. Like easyjet luggage.

Welcome to the new thrifty, also known as “smart”.

Photo: The Guardian

click the image to see full-size

—

—

DIALOGUE
Between Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Charade” (1963)

IMAGES
Christopher Lee and Caroline Munro in “Dracula A.D. 1972” (1972)
From Google and Brian’s Drive-In Theater

Amiable, sexy, witty, lighthearted entertainment, Alfred Hitchcock’s romance on the French Riviera, To Catch a Thief, nevertheless contains elements that stress this description of it. The principal element of this kind has to do with the past of John Robie, whose inconspicuous retirement from notorious jewel thievery is interrupted by a series of “cat burglaries” that duplicates his old modus operandi. But that is not the element of Robie’s past to which I refer; for, before becoming a jewel thief, Robie was a member of the French Resistance during the Occupation. Robie’s parole, as well as that of confederates in the Resistance who also turned to crime after the war, acknowledged his status as national hero.
     I am not sure why this aspect of Robie’s past is so often overlooked, but it means everything to me. John Robie is not French; perhaps he is American. When in the film he assumes a false identity, he claims to come from Portland, Oregon—the birthplace of John Reed, who as a journalist covered the Mexican and Bolshevik Revolutions, and who, committed to its cause of social justice, closely involved himself with the Bolshevik government. However, Robie’s wartime activism more strikingly resembles that of Americans who fought in the Spanish Civil War against Franco’s forces.
     The opening shot is of the store window of a travel agency; it is adorned by posters advertising France. I feel it may be somewhat condescending to attribute Hitchcock’s making the film to his love of foreign travel. His desire to visit the French Riviera coincides with the graver reason to relocate to a foreign country that his protagonist’s past reflects. Hitchcock the artist, even here, trumps Hitchcock the tourist.
     The film, it seems to me, asks us to consider the fate of such wartime heroes as the current and former criminal characters in it demonstrate. Their lives and activities were ones of terrific risk; what “second act” was then possible? A suggestion of causality arises; John Robie became “The Cat” to revive the riskiness of his wartime activities for which, with the end of the war, he had become nostalgic. Indeed, the plot he pursues to prove his innocence of the current rash of hotel and palatial home jewelry heists revives the old spirit of danger. He feels alive again, focused, purposeful; but a shift in times may also shift allegiances, and one-half of the danger he faces—the other half of it comes from the police—comes from old confederates in what was once their common cause.
     As Peter Bogdanovich points out in his often brilliant commentary for the DVD of To Catch a Thief, Hitchcock, preferring suspense to surprise, generally disdained “whodunits”—and, no doubt about it, To Catch a Thief is a whodunit. However, its being so perfectly suits the thematic material at hand. To Catch a Thief is very much a film about identity, about false identity and usurped identity—about “knowing” who you are when, absorbed in momentous or pressing activity, you don’t have time or the inclination to think about it, and suddenly not being so sure of yourself in another time, in other circumstances. Keep in mind that Robie’s “retirement” has been forced upon him by officialdom. In an imaginative sense, Robie is responsible for the new crime wave because it speaks to his heart’s desire to be emphatically himself again, and it provides the opportunity for his reconstitution and re-integration. Yes, yes, the film is charming and delightful beyond measure, one of Hitchcock’s most entertaining movies, but it isn’t just that.
     Robert Burks won an Oscar for his gorgeous VistaVision color cinematography, which achieves its deepest, loveliest results on rooftops at night when either or both the burglar and, in pursuit of the burglar, Robie are prowling like cats. (There is even an actual black cat that also is shown on the hotel roof.) (Perhaps it is the coincidence of my recent film-viewing chronology, but these dreamy, borderline fantastic scenes remind me of the dark, spacious room in which the solitudinous Queen, moving slowly like a cat, confronts her Magic Mirror in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937). Abetted by Burks, Hitchcock thus finds the visual means of conjuring an eerie and even melancholy realm where identity is hidden, lost and pursued.
     Cary Grant and Grace Kelly are both breathtakingly beautiful, each in more than one way, in the lead roles. Indeed, Kelly, as Bogdanovich points out, steals the movie, as a sophisticated, opinionated socialite from Philadelphia (where else?). Her mother, played wonderfully by Jessie Royce Landis, is the kind of rich widow that Uncle Charlie dispatched in Hitchcock’s own favorite among his films, Shadow of a Doubt (1943)—but here she is viewed largely sympathetically. Hers is the character, though, that extinguishes a cigarette in a breakfast egg yoke, as a not-so-sympathetic woman extinguishes a cigarette in a jar of cold cream in Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940), whose first movement opens on the French Riviera.

New in at Cinema Books: Sophia Loren The Quintessence of being an Italian Woman by Marinella Carotenuto, $24.95 cloth.  New picture book in English and Italian on the wonderful Italian actress Sophia Loren. Funny and glamorous poses of this dramatic beauty. The Italian filmmakers who directed her are highlighted. Here she is gazing longingly at Cary Grant and clowning around with Charlton Heston.  This is book is a joy, delighting in Sophia.

The Awful Truth

Pais: EU
Año: 1937
Género: Comedia romántica
Duración: 91 min.
Dirección: Leo McCarey
Guion: Viña Delmar (Play: Arthur Richman)
Música: Ben  Oakland
Producción: Columbia Pictures

Reparto:

Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Ralph Bellamy, Alexander D’Arcy.

Descripción:
Jerry y Lucy Warriner son un matrimonio en trámites de divorcio que luchan por la custodia de su perro, Mr. Smith. Poco antes de que salga la sentencia de divorcio, Jerry decide que quiere volver con Lucy, momento en el que se entera de que su esposa se va a casar con un hombre de campo que se ha hecho rico gracias al petróleo. Jerry contraataca anunciando su compromiso con la aristocrática Molly Lamont. (FILMAFFINITY)

Críticas:
Estamos en plena década de los treinta, las comedias locas (screwball comedies) están en su máximo esplendor, despúes de “Nobleza Obliga” con Laughton y “La vía láctea” con LLoyd, McCarey dirige esta comedia a la mayor gloria de la pareja protagonista un dinámico y elegante Grant y una sofisticada Dunne. Película de ritmo rápido, diálogos ágiles y escenas de chispeante humor que hoy se ve con agrado, aunque en algunos momentos el paso de tiempo le halla hecho algo de daño al haber cambiado los roles femeninos y masculinos.
Junto a la construcción de los escenarios y del vestuario que deliberadamente huyen de una realidad social muy distinta, MacCarey juega con su estilo limpio y nada pretencioso con las convenciones de la comedia donde la batalla de sexos, la réplica y contraréplicas a cada cual más ingeniosa, fabrica una comedia que servira de modelo a imitar.

Datos técnicos:
Tamaño: 1.33  Gb
Duracion: 01:26:58
Vídeo codec: Xvid (doble pasada)
Resolución: 624 x 464
Bitrate: 1989 Kbps. Qf: 0.275
Códec Audio: Mp3 Cbr
Bitrate Castellano/Inglés: 48000Hz 96 kbps. (1 chnl)
Subtítulos: [Castellano-inglés]

Capturas:

Película

Subs.es-en

]]> http://artofmarriage.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/become-her-cary-grant/ Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:37:04 +0000 Max Cooper http://artofmarriage.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/become-her-cary-grant/

The leading man's leading man, this is who you should strive to be...within reason!

In you’ve never seen nor heard of Cary Grant, stop what you are doing right now and go and rent a couple good Cary Grant movies, because this is the man against which ALL OTHER MEN ARE JUDGED!!!  Even if your wife has never heard of Cary Grant, believe me when I say that this is the man she wants you to be.  Cary Grant was an actor who worked throughout the 1930’s to the 1960’s and he is considered to be the epitome of the Hollywood leading man.  Every other leading man in Hollywood from George Clooney to Brad Pitt is inevitably compared to Cary Grant.  Charming, unbelievably handsome, witty, Cary Grant personified every single trait that women associate with a good husband.  It is no exaggeration to say that our idea of what defines a man was in many ways solidified by Cary Grant.  If you want to ensure a long and happy marriage, you need to identify what characteristics of Cary Grant you can emulate and then work your hardest to embody those characteristics as often as possible.  Now, there is an important caveat here because there were two sides to Cary Grant – the screwball romantic comedy Cary Grant and the drama/thriller/straight comedy Cary Grant.  Do not be the screwball romantic comedy Cary Grant.  I say this because the screwball romantic comedy Cary Grant was always the butt of every joke and was characterized by indecisiveness, wimpishness, and plain old buffoonery, and while entertaining to watch, these are bad traits to try and emulate.  Good examples of which Cary Grant not to be include Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, My Favorite Wife and Bringing up Baby.  While these are great movies and worth watching, they are not indicative of the sort of husband you want to be.  You want to be the drama/thriller/straight comedy Cary Grant.  This Cary Grant was defined as romantic, intelligent, worldly, daring, capable, and reliable.  Good examples include North by Northwest, To Catch a Thief and Philadelphia Story.  Just remember that while you should strive to emulate Cary Grant as often as possible, keep in mind that he was an actor who off the screen had a rather sordid personal history so don’t kill yourself trying to live up to his standard.  The character of Cary Grant was more of an idealistic version of what a man can be, rather than an attainable goal.  After all, even Cary Grant once remarked, “Not even Cary Grant can be Cary Grant all the time.”

I love old movies, and my daughter is starting to enjoy them, also.  Today, we watched Penny Serenade.  Some consider this a “Christmas” flick and that could apply.  But it’s just a dang good movie.  Cary Grant is great.

1. Rear Window
2. Vertigo
3. North By Northwest
4. Psycho
5. Notorious
6. The Birds
7. Strangers On A Train
8. Rebecca
9. Shadow Of A Doubt
10. Rope

NP: Oxbow – Songs For The French

Tonight I saw The Men Who Stare At Goats. It was brilliant.

Jeff Bridges was great. Ewan McGregor was good—-perfect given his previous role (extra humor snuck in there). But George Clooney was brilliant. I’ve not really seen him in a lot of movies (though I used to love him on ER), but he’s always seemed to me to be a real classic movie star. There’s just something about him—-it’s kind of cheesy but he’s suave and debonair, just like one of my favourite actors of all time, Cary Grant.

Sure, there are plenty of good actors out there. But there’s something special about these two. They’re the kind of dashing heroes the girls (including me) dream about.

I’ll go watch another Clooney movie. You go watch His Girl Friday or Charade. Deal?

New in at Cinema Books: In and Out of Hollywood A Biographer’s Memoir by Charles Higham, $29.95.  Well know film star biographer Higham reveals inside stories of Bette Davis , Cary Grant and Walt Disney.  A gay man in Hollywood since the 1960’s Higham remembers the  Hollywood community before Aids. Filled with telling details and memorable gossip.

Walk Don´t Run

Pais: US
Año: 1966
Género: Comedia romántica
Duración: 109 min.
Dirección: Charles Walters Guion: Sol Saks
Música: Harry Stradling Sr.
Producción: Columbia Pictures

Reparto:
Cary Grant, Samantha Eggar, Jim Hutton, Miiko Taka, Ben Astar, John Standing, Ted Hartley, George Takei, Teru Shimada.

Descripción:
El industrial inglés Sir William Rutland vuela a Tokio en viaje de negocios. Cuando llega, la influencia de turistas por los Juegos Olímpicos que van a celebrarse allí, le hace imposible encontrar alojamiento. Así que Rutland se las apaña para compartir apartamento con la guapa Christine Easton durante unos días. Para terminar de liar las cosas, Rutland invita a Steve Davis, miembro del equipo olímpico de Estados Unidos, a instalarse con ellos.
Definitivamente, tres son multitud, sobre todo cuando Rutland se pone a jugar a Cupido entre Christine y Steve, para sorpresa del pesado del novio de Christine… (FILMAFFINITY)

Críticas:
Cary Grant puso punto y final a su carrera como actor con esta película, y que mejor colofón que una de las comedias más divertidas de todos los tiempos.

Sir William Rutland americano en viaje de negocios en Tokio se ve obligado a compartir piso con la maniática y bella Christine Easton ante la avalancha de turistas que han dejado a los hoteles con el cartel de completo.

Steve Davis atleta norteamericano que se encuentra en la misma situación, es encontrado por Rutland y decide realquilarle parte de su habitación.

A partir de ese momento, los horarios del baño, la máquina de café, las carreras a través de la ciudad y los continuos intentos para que surja el amor entre Christine y Steve producirán hilarantes e inolvidables momentos.

Una joya que no es fácil encontrar, y menos en este género.

Datos técnicos:
Tamaño: 1.45 Gb
Duracion: 01:49:06
Vídeo codec: Xvid (doble pasada)
Resolución: 704 x 288
Bitrate: 1709 Kbps. Qf: 0.337
Códec Audio: Mp3 Cbr
Bitrate Castellano/Inglés: 48000Hz 96 kbps. (1 chnl)
Subtítulos: [Castellano-inglés]

Capturas:

Película

Subs.es-en

]]> http://johnshore.com/2009/11/13/god-help-me-im-my-father/ Sat, 14 Nov 2009 07:09:41 +0000 John Shore http://johnshore.com/2009/11/13/god-help-me-im-my-father/

Me

Tonight my wife Catherine and I went to Pottery Barn to buy two white panel curtains that I’ll later hang in her office using my drill, a screw driver, a pencil, a level, and a step-ladder. When we arrived home at around 8 p.m. I made myself a martini, which I sipped at the dining room table while Cat warmed us both up some soup. We enjoyed our soup while sitting in front of our big TV watching “Indiscreet,” starring Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. About 10:30 I got tired, and went off to bed.

But now I can’t sleep. And the haunting thought that’s keeping me awake?

When—oh, God, when??— did I become my father?

**********************************************************************************************************
Follow: http://twitter.com/johnshore
Befriend: http://www.facebook.com/john.shore1
Be Fan: http://www.facebook.com/pages/John-Shore/89494795412?ref=s

I call myself a pacifist.  I’m pretty sure that there isn’t a time when killing swaths of your fellow humans could be justified.  I can’t think of a war that 1) couldn’t have been avoided if the right people were in charge, 2) didn’t go terribly wrong in terms of casualties, civilian and military and 3) bring out the worst in human behaviour.  But I have a dark, dirty secret (that isn’t so secret to those who know me well)…I LOVE war movies.  I don’t just mean the anti-war classics like All Quiet On the Western Front and Paths Of Glory.  I mean good old-fashioned jingoistic flag-wavers with John Wayne and Van Johnson.  I mean modern classics like Saving Private Ryan and Platoon.  I know this seems like a disparity and I suppose it is, in a way.  But in war movies, I often see men (and women) rising to humanitarian heights, overcoming physical limitations and demonstrating partisanship and cooperation, bringing out the man’s best in the worst of circumstances.  This week is Remembrance Day here in Canada and in Britain and Veteran’s Day in the United States and at this time, I always feel led to watch a few of my favourites as well finding one or two I may have overlooked.  As I grow older however, I become more aware of my mortality and more appreciative of the sacrifices made  by others who chose to go into harm’s way for the ideal of freedom and this year in particular, I have been thinking of people I have known who were connected to war in some way and of course, the movies their situation brings to mind.

Although my dad was a couple of months shy of active service in World War 2 (he joined up on his 18th birthday but all he saw was basic training outside Toronto and weekend furloughs in Toronto), I have several uncles who saw a great deal of action.  My uncle Mike was shot down behind German lines early in the war and sat through the war in a POW camp.  As a child, when he and my aunt Kaye would come over for a swim and he would take off his shirt, I would marvel at the foot long scar rippling across his left shoulder from stray bullets during his capture.  The Canadian military was ultimately very generous, providing him with a pension and a cushy job chauffeuring military types around Southern Ontario until his retirement but that would be a small price for the indignities he must have suffered and horrific sights he must have been privy to in those years in the German camp, as in the quintessential POW movie, The Great Escape.  Although this rollicking and exciting adventure strays sometimes from the source material, the book by Paul Brickhill that outlines his own experiences as a prisoner at the infamous Stalag Luft II, the truly amazing thing is that the most unbelievable parts in the film are those that actually happened with Steve McQueen’s unpredictable behaviour and demands accounting for the bulk of the changes from the book.  Another great movie (and book) from this same event is the British classic, The Wooden Horse, the true-life story of how an escape tunnel was dug essentially using only a wooden gymnastic horse and the ingenuity of dozens of prisoners.

My uncle Harry was one of the 76,000 Canadian troops that participated in the invasion of Sicily and ultimately Italy and spent many long months working his way north to free Italy from the fascist grip of Mussolini.  On a recent trip to Italy, we were in Salerno, where the disembarkation of the Allied invasion of Italy took place and and as I walked on the boardwalk next to the Mediterranean, I couldn’t help but think of the thousands of young men who lost their lives where I was walking.  The invasion of Sicily brings to mind the Oscar-winning film about the man who led the great invasion, Patton.  General George Patton was an imposing, brash, egotistical man but a brilliant tactician and the ideal fodder for a movie biography.  Francis Coppola and former military man Edmund North wrote a terrific script that perfectly captured the enigma that was Patton.  George C. Scott would not give a better performance, even if he felt it necessary to turn down the Oscar that came with it and the movie would famously become Richard Nixon’s favourite.

Many years ago, I watched what was essentially another rip-off of The Dirty Dozen, The Devil’s Brigade.  An entertaining romp, this one held a place of importance  and pride to me though because it concerned a ragtag U.S. commando unit drummed into shape by Canadian Special Forces officers, led by Cliff Robertson.  For once, the Canadians were the real heroes.  It was many years later that my dad informed that not only was the Devil’s Brigade a real World War 2 unit, but the best man at my parent’s wedding, George Stocking, was a former member of the Devil’s Brigade.  I promptly rushed home and watched it again and got a copy for my dad, who had never seen the movie.

My favourite war sub-genre is the submarine movie.  The idea that a small group of men from every background works together for the greater good (and their own safety) inside a giant tube, constantly facing stress and danger is a formula that never gets old for me.  Purists will list Das Boot and Run Silent Run Deep as the classics of the genre but my favourite is a propaganda piece that may lack in realism, but more than makes up for it in heart, Destination Tokyo.  Released at the start of the Second World War to give audiences a glimpse into the heretofore unknown world of the silent service, it stars Cary Grant as the skipper of a sub that has the unenviable task of sneaking into Tokyo Bay on an espionage mission, providing us with humour, pathos, excitement, and sheer bravado in spades.  Yeah, it’s old-fashioned but it’s old-fashioned fun.

Many may feel, even with the advent of ultra-realistic movies like Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line, that war movies diminish the great sacrifices the men and women who have served have made but I know that during virtually every war movie I watch, I have at least a moment of reflection when I’m thankful uncles Mike and Harry and all the other uncles, fathers, brothers, sisters, wives and aunts were willing to make the decision to serve their country so that pacifists like myself can enjoy the freedom they fought for.

things get awkward...

PG?

Cary Grant, Irene Dunne

Armand: I really don’t know what to say.
Jerry: Yeah, well if you’d go, you really wouldn’t have to say anything.

After Jerry (Grant) thinks he has caught his wife possibly cheating on him with her voice coach, the couple decides to file for divorce.  While waiting for it to become final, both try to make the other jealous while simultaneously sabotaging each others new romances.

If there’s anything funnier than divorce and suspected infidelity, I’ve yet to see it!  Okay, not really, but it sure does seem to be the basis for a lot of romantic comedies.  It’s not particularly believable in this case, though, as a simple suspicion leads, almost immediately, to a decision to divorce.  It has to be that way so that we can jump into the real comedic situations.  And yes, they are funny quite often.  Though, the comedy isn’t quite as sustained as some other classic comedies I’ve seen.

It’s a very familiar story.  Two people who are clearly in love split up, then can’t admit how they still feel, so they try to make the other jealous enough to cave in and proclaim their love.  It sort of reminded me of the 1941 Hitchcock romantic comedy, Mr. and Mrs. Smith.  They’re about equally funny movies, but I like Grant more than Robert Montgomery, and I like Lombard more than Dunne.  Put Grant and Lombard together and then you’d have something!

One thing did puzzle me, and maybe somebody who has seen this can help me out here.  Where was Jerry actually when he was pretending to be in Florida at the beginning?  Either I missed an explanation on that, or there never really was one, outside of Jerry telling a friend not to ask about it.  Was Jerry the one who was actually off being unfaithful?

Regardless of that, the important thing is that it’s a funny movie.  Not uproariously so, but amusing throughout.  Though there are some scenes with big laughs.  Plus, there’s a cute dog.  Everybody loves a cute dog, right?

Cute dogs are even cuter when they play hide and seek.

10 – 2 because, while funny, it wasn’t as funny as it could’ve been – .3 for a couple characters that annoyed me = 7.7

People tell me I’m “unique.” Sometimes they mean it in the “oh wow, you really are strange, I’m crossing my fingers that you don’t have a weapon in your purse” way. Sometimes they really mean unique, as in individual, either as a compliment or merely an unfortunate yet apt descriptor. Some of what makes me unique is attributed my sense of humor, my limited social skills and a panache for being blunt. Some is related to my interests and particular tastes. Some of these interests include museums, science fiction, baking, and old things.

Old things are the inspiration for my Monday column. I need a name. Should we go for something purely descriptive or the more classic alliteration? What do you think? Vintage Monday? Musty Monday? Things with which I am somewhat obsessed and which are also old, and now let me share with you my reasons for loving these things?

Let me know, I’m all ears.

Some of the vintage/old/creepy things that I enjoy include:

Screwball Comedies from the 30s and 40s. The Thin Man series is brilliant (almost anything with William Powell is brilliant- have you SEEN My Man Godfrey?!?). So is anything with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, particularly Bringing Up Baby – heck, nearly everything with Cary Grant is enjoyable. Also, most things with Jimmy Stewart, when he’s being funny.

I love old jazz. Old. As in still a bit more ragtime than jazz, awesome musicians with equally awesome names like Jelly Roll Morton, and the knowledge that many early jazz musicians felt that marijuana helped them let go and flow with the music and create better improvisation, and how that random tidbit ALONE makes me giggle at anyone who has ever told me that jazz is stuffy.

Also, rockabilly. I know nothing about rockabilly except that I like the old stuff and it makes me want to dance.

Okay, I led with the slightly more cool old stuff. Here comes the less cool old stuff.

Graveyards and very old tombstones. A graveyard brings out the Anne of Green Gables in me. I love to wander through graveyards and read epitaphs and imagine what the person looked like, what they liked to do, who they loved, and how they died. This is probably the same reason I love…

…old snapshots and postcards. Like my esteemed colleague, I adore photography. But that’s (for the most part) a horse of a different color – and possibly a different column. Old photos and postcards both offer a glimpse into someone else’s life. Taken by an amateur, usually without any artistic merit or interesting style, casual portraits and candid snaps delight me with their potential to tell a story, raise historical questions, or simply entertain.

Finally, I’m the only person I know, and, I suspect, the only person under the age of 40, with a collection of vintage handkerchiefs. And gloves. Some people may have a hankie that belonged to Great-Grandma Felicia tucked away in a drawer, or a pair of gloves left over from a high school dance (or, if you’re of the museological persuasion, a pair of white gloves for artifact handling), but somehow I ended up with stacks and stacks of used hankies and gloves.

So LORD knows if anyone wants to read about anything in this vein, but my next post is going to try to tackle the hankie issue in the style of a persuasion speech. With an eco-angle (I hate the term green. Maybe someday I’ll write about why). That should be interesting, right?

New in at Cinema Books: High Society The Life of Grace Kelly by Donald Spoto, $25.95 cloth.  Filled with unpublished interviews with Grace Kelly and many of friends and colleagues: Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, Alfred Hitchcock. Spoto promised the princess that he would not write this book until twenty-five years after her death.  This is a  sympathetic biography written in the voice of a friend and  concentrates on her film career with forays into into her love life.

I love the shower scene in Charade.. and if I could find it I would also add the final scene!

// Oh I love you Adam, Alex, Peter, Bryan, whatever your name is.

I want to do my star assesment paper on Cary Grant. I have done two supplemental screenings tht both starred him as the leading male role and I loved him in both movies. I watched him in Only Angels Have Wings and His Girl Friday and I really liked him in both. Becase he left a good impression on me I canremember asking my Nana if she has seen any of his movies and she told me she loved Cary Grant and that he was so handsome and such a good actor, so that made me even more interested. The era I plan to study him in is from the late ’30s to mid ’50s era. I deffinately think that he brought a whole new deffinition of what it mean to be a man…or a new type of man who could still be manly and macho. I plan to watch An Affair to Remember (McCary 1957), North by Northwest (Hitchcock 1959),  The Awful Truth (McCarey 1937), and The Philedelphia Story (Cukor 1940). Two sources I plan to consult are Parsons, L. O. Cary Grant stars in a Cosmopolitan story. Cosmopolitan (New York, N.Y.: 1952) v. 139 (October 1955) p. 86, and Martin, P. How Grant took Hollywood. The Saturday Evening Post v. 221 (February 19 1949) p. 22-3+.

The Star I would like to write my paper on is Cary Grant focusing specifically on the period between 1940 and 1950, though obviously to understand his stardom I’ll have to look at his career as a whole, rather than just this ten year span.

I’ve been interested in this star for a while now and of the movies of his that I HAVE seen, I have liked them all and think that he has had a very interesting career.

My initial thoughts of the meaning of his persona is generally that Cary Grant was one of those that guys wanted to be and girls wanted to be with. A quote I found on IMDB said “everybody would like to be Cary Grant”. I would be interested in learning more about him as a star and how he got to where he was at his peak of stardom.

I plan to watch Arsenic and Old Lace (Capra 1944) and Notorious (Hitchcock 1946). Both are very different kinds of films and would allow for different perspectives on how he worked as a star.

Two sources I plan to use will be The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times as well as other sources such as biographies and fan magazines (that I haven’t had a chance to look up specific names of yet, because I wanted to get this posted so I didn’t miss the chance to use this star)

The Talk of the Town

Pais: EU
Año: 1942
Género: Comedia
Duración: 118 min.
Dirección:  George Stevens
Guion: Irwin Shaw & Sidney Buchman
Música:Frederick Hollander
Producción: Columbia Pictures

Reparto:

Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Ronald Colman, Edgar Buchanan, Glenda Farrell, Charles Dingle, Lloyd Bridges.

Descripción:
Leopold Dilg se escapa de la cárcel donde cumplía condena acusado de pirómano y se esconde en casa de una amiga de la infancia, Nora. Ésta ha alquilado la casa durante el verano al candidato al Tribunal Supremo Michael Lightcap. Haciéndose pasar por el jardinero, Dilg y Nora intentan convencer al magistrado de que Dilg fue encarcelado injustamente. La locura continúa cuando los tres intentan atrapar por su cuenta a los verdaderos delincuentes y por el camino descubren que los dos se han enamorado de Nora. Pero… ¿de quién se habrá enamorado ella? (FILMAFFINITY)

Críticas:
Equilibrada, divertida y magnífica comedia que combina lo melodramático y el suspense de un argumento en el que una joven (Arthur) se enamora a la vez de un presunto asesino (Grant) y y de un brillante abogado (Colman) que la ha alquilado la casa en la que precisamente está escondido Grant.

Datos técnicos:
Tamaño: 1.45 Gb
Duracion: 01:52:23
Vídeo codec: Xvid (doble pasada)
Resolución: 608 x 448
Bitrate: 1653 Kbps. Qf: 0.243
Códec Audio: cbr mp3
Bitrate Castellano/Inglés: 48000Hz 96 kbps. (1 chnl)
Subtítulos: [Castellano-inglés]
Compatible con reproductores de sobremesa.

Capturas:

Película

Subs.es-en

Grace Patricia Kelly ( 12 November 1929 – 14 September 1982) was an American film and stage actress and fashion icon who later became Princess Grace of Monaco.

Kelly became an actress in the 1950s, starring in such films as Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, High Society, and The Country Girl, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She retired from acting in 1956, at age 26, when she became “Her Serene Highness The Princess of Monaco” upon marrying Rainier III, Prince of Monaco. The couple later had three children: Caroline, Albert, and Stephanie. Kelly maintained dual American and Monegasque citizenship after her marriage.

Kelly died after being critically injured in a car accident with her daughter Stephanie in September 1982. The American Film Institute ranked her #13 amongst the Greatest Female Stars of All Time.

Grace with Cary Grant

If you know me I have most likely made you watch this movie

She is one of my favorite fashion icons.

Grace was very elegant