Tuesday 22 April 2008

I'd like to kiss ya, but I just washed my hair

That movie post was fun. I keep thinking of more quotes. Today's post title is an old favourite: you have to say it in a strong Southern accent, so that 'hay-uh' is two syllables. It was said by an actress who was usually brunette, but she was blonde in that film.

I thought you did very well, especially SuzySZ, who persevered and finally got Flawless right. Flawless is an odd movie; you could be forgiven for thinking that it was actually two films cut together as some sort of exercise or mistake. There is one perfectly adequate plot with Robert de Niro as a retired security guard who has had a stroke and is advised to have singing lessons to help recover his speech; the obvious teacher is his neighbour, the drag queen, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Usually in films, drag queens are played by tall, slim, beautiful leading men but Phil is often described as cuddly, and although I find him steamingly attractive (I have a thing about strawberry blonds), he's not the sort that you think of as having Hollywood good looks. He's terrific in the role, as he is in everything. I saw him in a number of films before I realized he was the same person; his early roles are all so different and this is a long way from his sleazy Scotty in Boogie Nights or the sharp-witted Freddie in The Talented Mr Ripley (I should point out that I don't find him steamingly attractive when he's playing Scotty). The story develops as these two who dislike each other on sight grow to some sort of understanding. And then there is a perfectly stupid crime plot which seems to have been grafted on, and is nothing but a distraction. I had this film on VHS but haven't got round to acquiring it on dvd; I think what I would like to do is record it when it's on tv, and then make my own cut, but it doesn't seem to crop up on television. I should just buy the dvd and skip the offending chapters - by the way, the small son of a friend of mine calls dvds 'deevie deevies' - I'm hoping it will catch on.

I watched Bus Stop on the weekend. I think it's the first time I watched it all the way through. There are some wonderful lines in it too, and some good female roles. How anyone could watch it and then say Marilyn Monroe couldn't act, I don't know. I thought she was just wonderful; her halting, nervous cabaret turn is perfect, and the bit where she has to lose her temper and end with the line, 'Give me back my tail!' which could have been excruciating, is perfectly convincing. The red-and-blue photography (Technicolor?) is marvellous, even if Cherie's 'green' scarf keeps showing up as blue. My favourite line was, 'Well it ain't actually a real diamond... '

There's been a bit of knitting and quite a lot of ripping going on here, but I'll save that for the next post. Thanks for joining in on the film quiz, and don't forget to add your guesses for the post title quote.

3 comments:

Lee said...

A reviewer of a recent Angelina Jolie movie (I can't remember if the review was for "A Mighty Heart" or "The Good Shepherd", but it doesn't really matter), said that she is such a blazing hot star it is easy to forget that she is also a very good actress. I suspect Marilyn Monroe suffered from a similar problem, but worse, since she didn't have much control over her own career. Have you seen "The Misfits"? It's so depressing, I haven't been able to make it all the way through, but Monroe is *amazing* in that movie, both her and Clark Gable's last.)

Judith said...

A Bette Davis Special from 1932, she was Madge in "The Cabin in the Cotton" I believe.
How is the swallowtail progressing?
Judith

Knitting Linguist said...

Don't you hate it when someone insists on cobbling together a perfectly good movie without something completely awful? Drives me batty. (I have the same thing with books; that was exactly how I felt about Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible -- what WAS the last quarter of that book? And I love her stuff.)