Monthly Archives: February 2018
Film Review: Ice Princess (dir by Tim Fywell)
In the 2005 Disney film, Ice Princess, Michelle Trachtenberg plays Casey Carlyle.
Casey is a brilliant high school student with a potentially wonderful future. At least that’s what her mother, Joan (Joan Cusack), has decided. As far as Joan is concerned, Casey’s destiny is to go to Harvard, become an award-winning physicist, and serve as an inspiration for young women everywhere. When Joan looks out of her kitchen window and sees that Casey is skating on a nearby frozen pond, she doesn’t praise her daughter’s athleticism. Instead, Joan taps on the window and holds up a text book. It’s time to study!
If Casey’s going to go to Harvard, she’s going to need to win a scholarship. And Harvard doesn’t just give out scholarships to anyone! I mean, I sent them a note asking for money a few years ago and I still haven’t heard back from them. So, Casey decides to prove that she’s Harvard-worthy by filming a bunch of ice skaters and showing how she can use physics to make their routines even more impressive. Or something like that…
(Look, I’ll just be honest. Science was always my worst subject in school. Quite frankly, I don’t have the attention span necessary for it and I kind of like the idea of not knowing how the universe works. I love the mystery of it all. I realize that Neil deGrasse Tyson would probably be disappointed in me but, honestly, I know more about movies than he ever will. So, I figure it all evens out.)
For her experiment, Casey tries to watch and film some other skaters, just to discover that the parents of ice skaters are insane. Not only are they convinced that Casey is some sort of spy who has been sent by a rival skater but they also put their children under a tremendous amount of pressure. They expect their kids to be champions and, even more importantly, to land the type of endorsement deals that go with being champions. Casey, on the other hand, just wants to skate.
When Tina Harwood (Kim Cattrall), a former Olympic skater, agrees to teach Casey how to skate, she is shocked to discover that Casey is a natural on the ice. Casey not only befriends Tina’s daughter, Gen (Hayden Panettiere), but she is also soon competing in regional competitions. However, Casey’s mother still doesn’t know what Casey is actually doing and Tina soon becomes paranoid that Casey will outshine Gen.
So, what happens?
Does Joan discover that Casey is more into skating than science?
Does Casey win her scholarship to Harvard or does she give it up so she can pursue her dreams?
Does Tina try to sabotage Casey?
Does Gen encourage Casey to follow her dreams?
And, most importantly, does Casey win the heart of the guy driving the Zamboni?
You probably already know the answer to all these questions. I mean, this is a Disney movie. It was rated G and, after a somewhat unsuccessful run at the box office, it found a second life on the Family Channel. Ice Princess is not exactly a revolutionary film. It doesn’t set out to rewrite the rules of sports film genre. Instead, it’s content to be a likable crowd-pleaser. Michelle Trachtenberg and Hayden Panettiere were both perfectly cast as the unlikely friends and their relationships with their respective mothers feel authentic and true. More importantly, the film features enough real-life ice skaters to lend verisimilitude to the competition scenes.
Right now, like all good people, I am insanely enthusiastic about the Winter Olympics. (For the record, I’m hoping that Team Ireland and Team Italy takes everything.) That’s one reason why I watched Ice Princess. While no one in the movie actually goes to the Olympics, it’s still a figure skating movie and I imagine that, if there had been a sequel, Casey would have been skating at the Winter Games.
Ice Princess is an entertaining and thoroughly light-weight film. There aren’t any surprises but you don’t really watch a movie like this to be surprised. In an uncertain world, there’s a definite comfort to be found in movies that are content to simply be likable and entertaining.
My advice is to watch Ice Princess as a double feature with I, Tonya.
(This trailer is Italian but you’ll get the general idea…)
Music Video Of The Day: Louisiana Blue (2012, dir by Steven Boyle)
It’s Mardi Gras weekend so I’m going to guess right now that people are flooding into Louisiana.
I’ve always loved Louisiana. My family lived in Shreveport for nearly two years, from December of ’96 to May of ’98. It was the last state that we lived in before returning to Texas and it’s a place that I’ve visited a few times since. (Shreveport, I might add, also celebrates Mardi Gras. It’s just that it tends to be a little bit more sedate in Shreveport than in New Orleans.) Louisiana is a state that is full of atmosphere and eccentric historical oddities. If you ever think your political leaders are crazy, do a google search on “Edwin Edwards” or “Earl Long.” If you ever think there’s never been a stranger moment in history than now, read T. Harry Williams’s biography of Huey Long.
Anyway, today’s music video of the day is all about Louisiana. Radney Foster’s Louisiana Blue has a nice mellow mood to it. Consider it to be the calm before the storm.
Enjoy!
This Comic Will Leave You With One Big “Shiner”
It’s a difficult thing to process, Nathan Cowdry’s Shiner — on the one hand it’s not a terribly complex narrative, despite the fact that’s it’s ridden with flashbacks, fever dreams, and less-than-reliable Ps OV. Really, I’m not kidding, the whole thing fits together in near-meticulous fashion even though by all rights it probably shouldn’t. But there’s so much simmering below the surface that it’s well-nigh impossible to determine how you feel about it even after two, three, or (in my case) four readings. Can I definitively state that I “like” this comic? I’m honestly not sure. I can, however, state without hesitation that I’ve found it impossible to get it out of my head, and that alone makes it worth talking about in some detail.
There’s something unsettling and potentially dangerous about Cowdry’s obsessions — like fellow Japan-obsessed Brit Trevor Brown, he blurs the lines between sex and violence…
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Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Hold Back the Dawn (dir by Mitchell Leisen)
(With the Oscars scheduled to be awarded on March 4th, I have decided to review at least one Oscar-nominated film a day. These films could be nominees or they could be winners. They could be from this year’s Oscars or they could be a previous year’s nominee! We’ll see how things play out. Today, I take a look at the 1941 best picture nominee, Hold Back the Dawn!)
Hold Back The Dawn is a historically important film for many reasons.
First off, this was the last film to be written by Billy Wilder before he launched his own legendary directorial career and, with its mix of sharp comedy and tearful melodrama, Hold Back The Dawn definitely feels like a Wilder film. Wilder, himself, claimed that he was never happy with the way his script was adapted. For instance, Wilder wrote a scene in which Charles Boyer, playing a Romanian who is stranded in a Mexican border town, was meant to deliver a monologue to a cockroach. Boyer felt that the scene was ridiculous and the film’s director, Mitchell Leisen, never filmed it. Wilder was so incensed that he declared that he would never again allow any of his scripts to be filmed by anyone other than himself.
Hold Back The Dawn also played a part in one of the most legendary feuds in Hollywood history, though there are some who claim that it was more the product of an overzealous pr agent’s imagination than anything else. For her role as the shy school teacher with whom Boyer falls in love, Olivia de Havilland was nominated for Best Actress and was considered to be one of the front-runners for the reward. (If nothing else, it was felt that giving her the Oscar would make up for not giving it to her when she was nominated for Gone With The Wind.) However, that same year, Joan Fontaine was nominated for her role in Hitchock’s Suspicion and many felt that, after losing the previous year for her performance in Rebecca, Fontaine was owed an Oscar as well. An Oscar night, Joan Fontaine beat Olivia de Havilland. What complicated matters it that, beyond issues of professional jealousy, de Havilland and Fontaine were sisters. For years, there were stories that de Havilland had never gotten over losing her Oscar to Fontaine and that, as a result, the two sisters had little to do with each other. (The truth, as is always the case with siblings, appears to have been a lot more complicated. de Havilland herself said it was less about the Oscars and more about just not having much in common with her sister.)
Beyond all that, however, Hold Back The Dawn is a charming dramedy that holds up remarkably well. Boyer is Georges Iscoveu, a Romanian gigolo who has spent eight years living in a Mexican hotel, waiting to be allowed to enter the U.S. Olivia de Havilland is Emmy Brown, an unmarried teacher who has nearly given up on ever finding love. At first, Georges just wants to trick Emmy into marrying him so that he can legally enter the United States. However, he soon finds himself truly falling in love with her. Unfortunately, his partner-in-crime — Anita (Paulette Goddard) — is also in love with Georges and is not at all prepared to lose him to Emmy. I know it all sounds very melodramatic but Wilder frames his story with a meeting between Georges and a Hollywood producer, a move the assures us that Hold Back The Dawn is content to be pure entertainment and we really should just sit back, not get too caught up on the specifics of the plot, and enjoy ourselves. Charles Boyer is all befuddled charm as Georges while de Havilland is both poignantly likable as Emmy. For me, as good as they are, the best performance came from Paulette Goddard, who is sharp-tongued and wonderfully cynical as Anita. All three performers are helped by a wonderful script. Even if Boyer never does talk to a cockroach, Wilder’s dialogue is still sharp and witty. This is a film that is as much fun to listen to as it is to look at.
Hold Back The Dawn was nominated for best picture but lost to How Green Was My Valley.
This tribute Olivia de Havilland in Hold Back The Dawn was put together by Monique Classique for Olivia’s 100th birthday.
The Man Who Would Be Bond (Almost): RIP John Gavin
Most people know John Gavin, who died today at age 86, as the nominal hero of Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO, who saves Vera Miles from a ghastly fate at the hands of maniacal Anthony Perkins. What most people don’t know is Gavin was once signed, sealed, and ready to go as the movie’s most popular secret agent of them all, James Bond!
Gavin in “OSS 117- Double Agent” (1968)
It’s true! Gavin had signed the contract with producers Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli to star as 007 in 1971’s DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER , taking over the role from George Lazenby. He would have been the first (and only) American actor to portray MI-6’s suave secret agent, except the powers that be at United Artists wanted someone with more star power to take the role. Saltzman and Broccoli then threw an enormous (at the time) sum of money at original Bond Sean…
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Artwork of the Day: My Romantic Adventures
Music Video of the Day: American Guilt by Unknown Mortal Orchestra (2018, dir by Greg Sharp)
There’s a lot of flies and a lot of trash in this video. There’s also some fireworks down at the bottom of the screen. At first, I thought that maybe they were meant to indicate that this video was taking place during the 4th of July. But then camera panned by that open briefcase and I saw all of that money. That’s when I decided that the video was probably showing us the spot where D.B. Cooper set up camp after he jumped out of that plane.
(Don’t know the story of D.B. Cooper? It’s an interesting one, check it out here!)
Then I went back and actually listened to the lyrics and I realized that probably wasn’t the case. Here they are:
American Guilt
Tape over the camera
No more utopian videos
Eyes painted on eyelids
Viva la Mexico
Oh no
Here it comes
the American Guilt
Land of the expensive
Even the nazis are crying
History’s private property
Viva la Mexico
Oh no
Here it comes
the American Guilt
Anyway, American Guilt is off of the upcoming “Sex and Guilt,” which will be released on April 6th! Here’s a link to stream/pre-order: https://unknownmortalorchestra.lnk.to/sexandfood
Enjoy!
Pre Code Confidential #17: BED OF ROSES (RKO 1933)
If someone you know is one of those film fans wondering what’s all the hubbub about “Pre-Code” films, may I make a suggestion? Watch BED OF ROSES with them, a totally amoral concoction from director Gregory LaCava , with Constance Bennett and Pert Kelton getting about as sinful as Stormy Daniels without actually performing onscreen sex! This one’ll have your eyes popping out seeing what they could get away with back in 1933, when the Great Depression was at its lowest and lust was riding high!
Lorry Evans (our gal Constance) and her pal Minnie Brown (the devilishly delightful Kelton) have just been released from a Louisiana slammer after serving time for hooking. You’d think they’d have learned their lesson, but no… soon as they get out, Minnie sweet talks a trucker for a ride, offering to pay by hopping in the back with him while Lorry drives! These two…
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Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: The Dresser (dir by Peter Yates)
(With the Oscars scheduled to be awarded on March 4th, I have decided to review at least one Oscar-nominated film a day. These films could be nominees or they could be winners. They could be from this year’s Oscars or they could be a previous year’s nominee! We’ll see how things play out. Today, I take a look at the 1983 best picture nominee, The Dresser!)
Taking place during World War II, The Dresser is a story of the theater.
Sir (played by Albert Finney) was once a great and famous Shakespearean actor but that was a long time ago. Now, he is reduced to playing in regional theaters, traveling across Britain with a company made up of a motley collection of forgotten has-beens and never-weres. He can still draw an audience, one made up of elderly theater goers who remember seeing him in London and people who are merely looking for a distraction from the war. While bombs echo outside, Sir alternates between playing Othello and King Lear. Backstage, Sir talks about the memoir he’s going to write and barks out orders to the members of his company.
Though Sir’s overly florid style of acting may seem old-fashioned, there’s no denying that his talent. We don’t see much of his performance but, when we do see him, we never doubt his claim that he was once declared to the greatest King Lear to have ever appeared on the British stage. Onstage, Sir is in complete control. Offstage, he often struggles to remember where he is or what play he’s going to be performing. At one point, when he’s meant to be getting ready to play Lear, he puts on his Othello makeup.
Fortunately, Sir has a dresser. Norman (Tom Courtenay) doesn’t appear to have much of a life outside of taking care of Sir’s every whim. Perpetually high-strung but blessed with a biting wit and an all-important bottle of Brandy that he takes a drink from whenever Sir gets too difficult to deal with, Norman is the one who holds the theatrical company together and who, most importantly, protects Sir. When Sir can’t remember who he’s playing, Norman reminds him. When Sir harasses a young actress, Norman is the one who hushes it up. When Sir insults another actor (Edward Fox), Norman is the one who brokers a peace. When it’s time for Sir to play King Lear, Norman is the one who helps Sir to transform into Shakespeare’s most tragic monarch. Neither Sir nor the rest of the acting company seems to have much respect for Norman. The other actors consider Norman to be an ass-kisser and Sir … well, Sir doesn’t have much respect for anyone. But for Norman, a gay man living at a time when homosexuality was illegal in Britain, Sir’s theatrical company provides him with the only safe place he’ll ever find.
The Dresser is an adaptation of a stage play. (A few years ago, another version was produced for the BBC with Ian McKellen as Norman and Anthony Hopkins as Sir.) It’s a good film, though I imagine that it’ll be best appreciated by people who have actually worked in theater. Finney and Courtenay are both great and I also liked the performance of Edward Fox. That said, it’s definitely a filmed play the feels more appropriate for PBS than for a movie screen. As a result, it seems to be a bit of an odd pick for a Best Picture nomination. I imagine that, much like Birdman, it benefitted from being a movie about actors and performing.
The Dresser lost Best Picture to Terms of Endearment. It’s still worth seeing, if just for Courtenay’s final monologue.
Through the Shattered Lens 