I Just Watched...

[Lorna]

[BagelOnAPlate]

The writing is a bit excessive and makes at least two glaring mistakes (a flashback scene set in the 1950s mentions 60 Minutes which did not premiere until 1968, and Family, a series not on until early 1976, is seen on a TV screen in a scene set several months earlier), but it does capture the devastating feeling of the incestuous nature of high society and the pain of a betrayal of a close friend very well. I think I will continue watching due to the performances and also out of curiosity to see what New York society was like a few decades ago.

I watched the first two episodes. There is a "director's cut" of the pilot that my DVR picked up (from FXX), so I suppose there are 2+ episodes so far. I caught a few other glaring mistakes in the timeline as well, The Bermuda Triangle was referenced by Capote in the 1955 scene on the plane going to Jamaica, when the term wasn't coined until 1964. In the 1968 scene recounting Paley's Happy affair, Babe says she just walked off the Concorde from Paris, but that plane didn't fly until 1976.

I've enjoyed what I've seen so far of Feud: Capote vs The Swans, but I always expect these dramatizations of real-life stories to take creative license in order to have a cohesive narrative that has meaning to the audience they're meant for. William Shakespeare took a lot of liberties with his "history" plays. For example, there's the anachronistic clock striking in Julius Caesar.

The New York governor's wife that CBS executive Wiiliam Paley had the affair with --- the one who menstruated on the Paleys' bed --- was most likely the wife of Averell Harriman rather than Happy Rockefeller, the wife of Nelson Rockefeller, as depicted in Feud. Rockefeller was probably used in the series because the name is more recognizable.

Feud also takes some liberties with the character of John O'Shea. Truman Capote did meet him at a bathhouse, but the idea that it was O'Shea who suggested to Capote that he use his lunches with the Swans for the "excerpt" from Answered Prayers that was published in Esquire as “La Côte Basque 1965” is creative speculation. The scene on the subway where O'Shea plants this idea to Capote is admittedly a dramatic touch.

The idea that Slim Keith actively orchestrated the Swans in a plot to destroy Truman Capote after the publication of the Esquire article is also more about dramatic effect. In reality, she just never gave him the time of day again rather than expending any energy on a retaliatory plot. Her declaration of war at the end of the first episode admittedly has more dramatic punch.

So I am enjoying the “drama” of this season of Feud even though the truth of the Swans’ reaction to Capote’s thinly veiled depiction of them was more cold shoulder than fiery revenge.

[Grumpytoad]

Came across a new (to me) actress a while back. Not only a looker, but her acting ability was significantly better than average. Intrigued, I then checked her filmography. Then went grocery shopping. Saw a frozen product there that had the same name as one of the actress's movies. That is how it got into one of my movie queues, even though it was not a of a genre that I normally would seek out. Finally got around to watching:

MYSTIC PIZZA (1988)

Not a run-of-the-mill romance picture. Screenplay was first rate. The three lead characters were women (not girls) written as individual, interesting, and believable. Very different personalities, but they complemented each other perfectly. A tiny bit of comedy softens the drama without diminishing the stories.

Julia Roberts as a woman experienced with intimate relationships. More than anything, she wants her entire life to change.
Annabeth Gish plays the younger sister to Robert’s character. Future planned out, but then a distraction.
Lili Taylor as a friend and co-worker to the other two women. She and her significant other are at a crossroad and frustrated.

Also in the cast are Conchata Ferrell, Vincent D'Onofrio, Adam Storke, and William R. Moses.
Ferrell is excellent in her supporting role as the boss of the sisters and their friend. Makes a smaller part bigger. D’Onofrio is good too. The other two gentlemen serve their parts well, but not to the level of the other players.

All three leads were wonderful. But would give the edge to Taylor. In a scene with the other ladies focused only on her, she ranted frustration, confusion, anger, optimism, and resignation. All twisted together at the same time. Cannot take your eyes from her kind of thing.

There was little of the town’s scenery in the movie. Since it was set in an actual tourist destination, expected some pretty landscape shots. Not a loss, just a bit of a surprise.

Sounds picky, but the song played over the closing credits was awful. Did not fit the movies conclusion or even its general tone. If you watch the movie, mute the sound at that point. Seriously. It was like setting fire to a favourite meal.

Look for a child actor in this movie. Became well known as an adult.

Very good movie-lousy frozen pizza.

[Allhallowsday]

MURPHY'S ROMANCE (1985) Good!

[txfilmfan]

Watched The Zone of Interest with a surprisingly full house yesterday. I was very familiar with the background story, but the film approaches it in an unusual manner. Instead of showing us the horrors going on next door, it shows us what we believe is normality on this side of the wall and only hints at what's going on on the other side - mostly through sound, but occasionally we see glimpses of belching smokestacks, or bits of fallen ash, and other clues.

The film took me beyond those particular events and made me think about the capacity humans have for compartmentalization and normalization of horrific events, whether it's war, the Holocaust, natural disasters, famine, or mass shootings. I would hazard that we all are likely guilty of this to one degree or another.

The mundane aspects of the household were shot with a multiple camera setup, where cameras were placed in several places (some sources say up to 10 simultaneously) that continuously captured the action, with no crew present. This lends a sort of documentary feel to the film, especially as no lighting equipment was used.

One note about the score. The film has virtually none. You only notice it at the beginning and end, with a few punctuations of sound interspersed throughout the movie. The beginning and ending score, however, is some of the most disturbing music I've ever heard.

[Lorna]

Came across a new (to me) actress a while back. Not only a looker, but her acting ability was significantly better than average. Intrigued, I then checked her filmography. Then went grocery shopping. Saw a frozen product there that had the same name as one of the actress's movies. That is how it got into one of my movie queues, even though it was not a of a genre that I normally would seek out. Finally got around to watching:

MYSTIC PIZZA (1988)

Not a run-of-the-mill romance picture.

Julia Roberts as a woman experienced with intimate relationships. More than anything, she wants her entire life to change.
Annabeth Gish plays the younger sister to Robert’s character. Future planned out, but then a distraction.
Lili Taylor as a friend and co-worker to the other two women. She and her significant other are at a crossroad and frustrated.

Also in the cast are Conchata Ferrell,

All three leads were wonderful. But would give the edge to Taylor. In a scene with the other ladies focused only on her, she ranted frustration, confusion, anger, optimism, and resignation. All twisted together at the same time. Cannot take your eyes from her kind of thing.

Very good movie-lousy frozen pizza.

what a lovely review. my sister rented this on VHS circa 1989 and I will always remember the sequence where one of the girls sees her boyfriend out with another woman at The Country Club and she snaps and dumps a load of shrimp (i think? maybe crabs?) into his convertible.

and then it turns out to be his sister.

!

CONCHATA FERRELL has been around forever. I remember seeing her in NETWORK as one of FAYE DUNAWAY'S assistants. she also appeared in the hilarious MURDER, SHE WROTE episode SOMETHING BORROWED, SOMEONE BLUE.

if you are into LILI TAYLOR, I have never seen DOGFIGHT (1991?) but I have read she is terrific in it. she also had a part in RANSOM (1996)- which some people took offense to because she worked largely in independent films and she was seen as "selling out>"

thanks also for the tip on the pizza, I myself am something of a connosseur of frozen pizza.

[Lorna]

Watched The Zone of Interest with a surprisingly full house yesterday.

THAT WAS A LOVELY REVIEW.
For anyone interested, here is the trailer for this 2023 film:

[Lorna]

I watched THE GOLDEN COACH (1952) over the course of 10 days, stopping and pausing it and walking away- only to finish it out of a sense of completion and having something to talk about with you guys.

sigh.

I LOVE ANNA MAGNANI, but I did not love this film; there's just something about it that did not come off for me- although MAGNANI, as always is A MARVELOUS FORCE OF NATURE...

You know how few actors can do A ONE-MAN show and get away with it? Well, ANNA MAGNANI could do a ONE-WOMAN show without a single line of dialogue- just communicating the story with EYES and HAND GESTURES and keep you on the edge of your seat.

only problem is that pretty much the rest of the cast is NOWHERE NEAR HER LEVEL OF TALENT- especially two of the actors playing her suitors- and they detract...as does THE STAGING and the SCOPE of the film, which is cramped and confined; probably a deliberate choice of the director's given the "twist end" but it doesn't make for compelling viewing.

on that note- was there something wrong with my TV or does the CINEMATOGRAPHY become ALL WEIRD and HYPERSATURATED at the end of this and it looks like a 3-D movie without the glasses..."

[HoldenIsHere]

Came across a new (to me) actress a while back. Not only a looker, but her acting ability was significantly better than average. Intrigued, I then checked her filmography. Then went grocery shopping. Saw a frozen product there that had the same name as one of the actress's movies. That is how it got into one of my movie queues, even though it was not a of a genre that I normally would seek out. Finally got around to watching:

MYSTIC PIZZA (1988)

Not a run-of-the-mill romance picture.

Julia Roberts as a woman experienced with intimate relationships. More than anything, she wants her entire life to change.
Annabeth Gish plays the younger sister to Robert’s character. Future planned out, but then a distraction.
Lili Taylor as a friend and co-worker to the other two women. She and her significant other are at a crossroad and frustrated.

Also in the cast are Conchata Ferrell,

All three leads were wonderful. But would give the edge to Taylor. In a scene with the other ladies focused only on her, she ranted frustration, confusion, anger, optimism, and resignation. All twisted together at the same time. Cannot take your eyes from her kind of thing.

Very good movie-lousy frozen pizza.

what a lovely review. my sister rented this on VHS circa 1989 and I will always remember the sequence where one of the girls sees her boyfriend out with another woman at The Country Club and she snaps and dumps a load of shrimp (i think? maybe crabs?) into his convertible.

and then it turns out to be his sister.

!

CONCHATA FERRELL has been around forever. I remember seeing her in NETWORK as one of FAYE DUNAWAY'S assistants. she also appeared in the hilarious MURDER, SHE WROTE episode SOMETHING BORROWED, SOMEONE BLUE.

if you are into LILI TAYLOR, I have never seen DOGFIGHT (1991?) but I have read she is terrific in it. she also had a part in RANSOM (1996)- which some people took offense to because she worked largely in independent films and she was seen as "selling out>"

I highly recommend DOG FIGHT (one of my favorite movies), which stars River Phoenix in addition to Lili Taylor.

Another movie with LIli Taylor I recommend is GIRLS TOWN. Yes, the women playing the 18-year-old "girls" are nearly 30, but their performances and the dialogue are fantastic. The screenplay was written using the approach that British writer/director Mike Leigh uses to develop his scripts whereby directed improvisation is crystalized into the working screenplay. But, in the case of GIRLS TOWN, the four lead actors in addition to director Jim McKay are given writing credit.

On a personal note, Lili Taylor (like Ann-Margret) graduated from the same high school in suburban Chicago that I did.
Lili Taylor's speech pattern (when she's not affecting a different accent) is one that I grew up hearing. That is the way educated people in the North Shore Chicago suburbs sound.

[CinemaInternational]

Oh yes, I do remember Mystic Pizza (1988) very clearly, as I saw it quite a few times. The script was written by four different people: Amy Holden Jones (who wrote a provocative but very underrated film called Love Letters in 1983 that is easily Jamie Lee Curtis' finest hour), a pair of sisters whose names escape me right now (they wrote the Robert Downey Jr/Cybill Shepherd film Chances Are the following year) and Alfred Uhry, the Pulitzer Prize winning writer of Driving Miss Daisy. It is very well written, and yes, the performances are a wonderful bunch. Julia Roberts got the big career (and yes, she dumped a big bucket of fish chum on her boyfriend's car), but I lean toward Taylor and Gish as having the best parts here; they both should have had bigger careers (for Gish, this and 1986's Desert Bloom were her best, Taylor is terrific in Dogfight and in Household Saints, where her boyfriend in this film, Vincent D'Onofrio plays her father in that film [the film, briefly thought lost, is currently in theatrical rerelease in some major cities]. I've seen her in a few other films: Short Cuts, Arizona Dream {a certifiably insane film, but one that does offer good work from Jerry Lewis and Faye Dunaway}, Rudy, Pret-a-Porter, Pecker {John Waters in his most feel-good mode}, High Fidelity, and Starting Out in the Evening, but she didn't get enough screentime in them although she's good in all of them). And Conchata Farrell delivers as usual. It's a good film.

Murphy's Romance is also a charmer of a film, although I don't know why it

I saw The Golden Coach a few weeks ago, shortly after it recently aired on TCM, but it didn't leave the biggest impression outside of the florid colouring. I'm not certain if it was ever in 3-D, but it would be at the right point of cinema history if it was.....

Anyway.....

I've been learning into the foreign-language films quite intently the last few days. (That said, I have also seen a few English-language films recently too). This is largely due to a comment on another website last week, so I wanted to rectify the situation. There haven't been any that are outright bad, although a few left me a bit indifferent (forgive me while I commit cinephile sacrilege, but the steamy 2002 Adrian Lyne film Unfaithful has better, more nuanced writing than the 1960s Claude Chabrol film it is based on, La Femme Infidele). There have been four though that really impressed me...I

Leon Morin, Priest (1961) is an austere but striking film set in WWII about a young priest (Jean-Paul Belmondo) leading a woman (Emmanuelle Riva) spirtually, which goes well, until she develops an unrequited crush on him, which leads to a crisis of faith. It's all very internalized, theologically sound, and very absorbing.

Mamma Roma (1962) concerns a woman of the night (Anna Magnani) who tries unsuccessfully to save her son from the mean streets of Rome. This film is mostly noteworthy for Magnani's exceptional performance.

Two English Girls (1971) is a very moving experience. Its about a caddish young man who becomes obsessed by two sisters, and how it leads to heartbreak for all three of them. The film isn't quite perfect; I could have lived without two bedroom scenes and a shockingly frank scene concerning a sexual habit, but it is nearly ideal. Strong performances, sensitive writing, extremely fine direction by Truffaut, and a haunting score by Georges Delerue make this one of the strongest films of the early 1970s.

The Green Ray (1986) is a delicately handled film staged like a series of diary entries (the screen frequently cuts to writing listing a given date) concerning the summer vacation of a jittery, depressed, slightly neurotic young woman who quietly matures over the course of a lenghty summer vacation. It is truly charming, and while I have seen and liked other Eric Rohmer films before, this makes me want to check out some other ones.

[Lorna]

Oh yes, I do remember Mystic Pizza (1988) very clearly, as I saw it quite a few times. . Julia Roberts got the big career (and yes, she dumped a big bucket of fish chum on her boyfriend's car),

oh.
that's worse than crabs.

[Lorna]

Murphy's Romance is also a charmer of a film, although I don't know why it

you know what? I don't know why it either.

(all kidding aside, was watching a bunch of OLD 80'S COMMERCIALS on youtube and one of the ones they showed was A BEEF AD WITH JAMES GARNER right before he had a heart attack or triple bypass or something.)

[Lorna]

glad to know it wasn't just me who was "meh" on THE GOLDEN COACH.