The Nance (2013)

The Nance takes place in the mid 1930s - a time in which burlesque was on life support - and tells the story of a prancing homosexual performing from the closet. More than a straight play and less than a musical, it interpolates old burlesque bits with original comedy and songs in a way that makes the play all the more thoughtful. It's a fascinating, historical story with a poignant performance by Nathan Lane and an excellent supporting cast of burlesquers including Cady Huffman, Jonny Orsini, Jenni Barber, Lewis J. Stadlen and Andréa Burns.

My ass covered in $40 swag from The Nance

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The Unchastened Woman (1925)

Heeding my own advice, I lost myself in the mystery of Theda Bara in The Unchastened Woman. Although made after her most prosperous years were behind her, it is clear the titular Caroline, a married cock teaser who hides the existence of a two year old son from her husband, is a post cursor to the vamp Bara so profitably portrayed for Fox Corporation in the teens. The movie is surprisingly risque and engrossing and Bara is fascinating to watch when given the opportunity.

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Devil's Playground (2010)

Devil's Playground has precious little to do with the devil and everything to do with Danny Boyle's living zombie flick 28 Days Later. You might also add a pinch of Doomsday as the characters fight to bring Angela (who has immunity to this version of the rage virus) to safety. I fell asleep at the end but I would assume she's being tested in some laboratory right about now.

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Top Of The Lake (2013)

Elisabeth Moss and New Zealand landscapes made me turn on Top Of The Lake and it turns out that the unwavering script about a small town engulfed in murder and a young girl's pregnancy is the television equivalent of a page-turner. Moss centers the story as the detective and there are many mesmerizing performances that help tell this uncomfortable tale (including director Jane Campion staple, Holly Hunter). This mini-series is one of the finest I've seen on television in years.

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Oblivion (2013)

Oblivion is full of laughs; weak CGI (a spaceship moving like a panther) and a lackluster script (with similarities to Moon) make it funny. But neither of those is funnier than the inexplicable hiring of Suri Cruise look-a-like Olga Kurylenko (looking 25) to play the wife of dad Tom Cruise (looking 55). The best laugh was when I turned to my chum with a What'd she say? and the only other person in the theatre turns to tell me the line - "They can't have you."

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Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982)

When I saw Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (a play by Ed Graczyk about the reunion of a James Dean fan club) on Broadway, Cher, Karen Black and Sandy Dennis stopped the performance midway through and herded the audience out to the New York street because of a bomb threat. Despite this eventful scare, the show did finish with no loss of artistry or poignancy. This thought-provoking production (with a bullying theme that was way ahead of its time) has pretty much been transferred from stage to screen intact by director Robert Altman and loses nothing - except the bomb scare in the middle.

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The Lords Of Salem (2012)

Rob Zombie has tried, with The Lords of Salem, to make a movie you can take grandma to see. To be sure we're talking teen birth grandmas but this story of Salem witches, a somewhat bizarro mashup of Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby and Mario Bava's Black Sunday, is an attempt on the director's part to stretch as a filmmaker, make something less horrific and broaden his audience. The jury is out on the latter because the movie's just not consistently interesting OR scary (although a great game of guessing the actors not seen in decades did help pass the time: Meg Foster, Dee Wallace and sweet holy mother of god academy on i love jesus street Judy Geeson aka Miss Pamela Dare).

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Jeanne Eagels And The Letter (1929)

(Eugenia) Jeanne Eagels, a theatre and film actor who died at age 39 from a mix of booze, pills and heroin, is best remembered for a salacious 1957 film biography starring Kim Novak and her performance as Leslie Crosbie in the 1929 film of the W. Somerset Maugham play The Letter (for which she is also recognized as the first actor posthumously nominated for an Academy Award). Eagels plays Leslie Crosbie who kills her lover, claims rape to her husband and is jailed, a story with more than a few similarities to the 1928 play Chicago in which Eagels was cast as Roxie Hart but quit during rehearsals. Although Katherine Cornell originated the Crosbie role on Broadway and not Eagels (who did originate the role of Sadie Thompson on Broadway in W. Somerset Maugham' play Rain), Eagels is convincing in a crazed sort of way and the film feels contemporary - with a visceral end that must have been a real shock back then because it was a real shock right now.

Watch The Letter now from archive.org

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Evil Dead (2013)

I'm not sure when hacking off infected body parts yet surviving to fight evil became a horror film staple but Evil Dead hacks and survives in droves. It adds even more unbelievability to this remake of 1981's The Evil Dead while the new back story adds nothing (unlike the remake of The Hills Have Eyes). There are plenty of homages to the original (from the cellar to the tree to the chainsaw) so watch the original instead for frights and laughs - two things it has in droves.

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The Truthiness Of Christina Crawford

Christina Crawford is poised, honest, insightful and direct in this fascinating interview in a time bubble from 1978 that coincided with the publication of her memoir Mommie, Dearest. The audience questions about her abusive relationship with mother Joan Crawford are surprisingly spot on and somewhat sympathetic but (25 seconds into part two) one wackadoodle (who speaks her disgust over the telephone) is respectfully rebuked by Crawford, further illustrating the caller's idiocy and Crawford's truth. Interviewer Phil Donahue does less prancing around then he is wont to do in his interviews - notwithstanding a precarious leg lift (two minutes into part three) that in another dimension puts Christina almost eye level with his crotchal area!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Christina Crawford 2012

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Gloria Swanson in Yentl Territory?

Photographed by Edward Steichen 1924

Gloria Swanson, born on this date in 1899, would've been 17 years old in The Danger Girl, the frenetic twenty minute comedy supervised by Mack Sennett (and embedded below). With six (count 'em, six!) lead characters, Swanson stands out as the madcap who dresses as a man to lure her girl friend's boyfriend away from the other woman who is vamping him. It's all extremely complicated for twenty minutes but Swanson gets a chaste kiss on the cheek from the vamp (while she's dressed as a man) and moves further into Yentl territory when, dressed in a tuxedo with top hat, she comes out as a woman to the man she loves (her girl friend's boyfriend, no less) and gets a kiss from him too - all in 1916!

The Danger Girl 1916

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Mother's Day (2010)

Despite the horror cliches, Mother's Day, a remake of the 80s flick (which I never saw so I can't compare), has in its favor a creepy lead performance by Rebecca De Mornay - channeling her faux mother slash babysitter from 1992's The Hand That Rocks The Cradle. The acting, in general, is good (despite having to deal with some ridiculous plot points) and the film ends with a nice yet somewhat predictable twist so is passable for its genre. And yes, I had more sympathy for Ma and her kids than the people whom they are terrorizing - jeesh.

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The Women (2008)

Jungle Red, the fashion show and an all female cast are still part of The Women, a remake of the 1939 film version of the Clare Booth Luce play; unfortunately, humor, catty remarks and the original cast are missing. The movie is not unwatchable - it's just dull watching stock characters play out a one note script. Writer/director Diane English's fifteen year journey to remake the classic should've ended before it began.

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Harper Valley PTA (1978)

Today they'd call it stalking and bullying (and illegal to boot) but in 1978 Harper Valley PTA was just a good-ole boy redneck revenge comedy. Barbara Eden looks beautiful and does her best with the material but this is a three minute song extended into a two hour movie. Listen to the song and have dinner with a friend instead.

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The Charms of Louise Beavers

Louise Beavers (born this date, 1902) is largely remembered as Delilah, the pancake-making business partner/companion/maid opposite Claudette Colbert in the fascinating, racially-charged tale from 1934, Imitation Of Life. She worked steadily throughout a forty year career accumulating a long list of credits playing less complex versions of the same domestic servant character but was always a delight, especially in films like The Pickup, Made For Each Other and Mae West's She Done Him Wrong.

Ms. Beavers had a luminous smile and was in a select group of actresses (including Hattie McDaniel and Ethel Waters) who portrayed the housekeeper Beulah in the long-running radio and television comedy, The Beulah Show.

The Beulah Show

as Aunt Delilah in Imitation of Life
'the face that sold 32 million pancakes'

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Auntie Mame (1958)

Auntie Mame is a fantabulous comedy about a young boy raised by his quirky aunt; there is no music in this one but the film flows like a musical. Rosalind Russell is at the top of her game recreating Auntie Mame (a role she played on Broadway) and the script (adapted from the play which itself was adapted from the Patrick Dennis novel) is top-notch! Director Morton DeCosta (born this day, 1914) has created a fine film that, like its titular character, never gets old.

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In & Out (1997)

In & Out is the sweet but somewhat unbelievable coming out tale of a forty year old man in a small Midwest town. A genuinely funny script (by Paul Rudnick) and excellent performances (especially Kevin Kline, Joan Cusack and Tom Selleck) brought bemused tears to my eyes as the end credits rolled. It's not Preston Sturges but it's probably as close as we'll get in this decade.

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Steel Magnolias (2012)

Having now seen this remake of the Steel Magnolias I'd ask executive producer Queen Latifah one question: why? Nothing has been added to the original story by making all the characters black, the acting is hackneyed (excepting Jill Scott) and the movie is SO familiar it could be considered plagiarism. An integrated cast might have made this a more interesting remake but since that was not the road chosen, skip it.

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Dance Of The Dead (2008)

Had John Hughes (Pretty In Pink, The Breakfast Club) directed Return Of The Living Dead, it might have been similar to Dance Of The Dead, a sometimes over-the-top zomedy about teens kicking some dead ass. The script by Joe Ballarini is fun, the acting (by no one I've ever seen) is uniformly entertaining and it's got some original zombie moments. I'd go to director Gregg Bishop's dances any time.

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Kisses For My President (1964)

Kisses For My President is racist (all White House staff are black), misogynist (check out the ten minute strip club scene and the ending) and, more to the point, boring. The story of the first female president is actually the story of her poor husband, the first male First Lady, and badly riffs on Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. Both Fred MacMurray and Polly Bergen (especially) are wasted as is the celluloid on which this one was developed.

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The Boy Friend (1971)

Ken Russell's 1971 film version of The Boy Friend is an alternative interpretation, weaving the basic plot of the musical into a more complicated story in which the seaside dramatic company performing the musical is visited by a scouting film producer on the very night that the leading lady (Glenda Jackson) is replaced by her shy understudy Polly Browne (Twiggy). All that said, it is charming and tuneful and buoyant as it pays homage to numerous Busby Berkeley and MGM movie musicals of the 1930s. The National Board of Review voted Russell best director and Twiggy won Golden Globe awards as best newcomer and best actress (musical/comedy), but the film did not make a significant impact monetarily, perhaps because MGM edited it down to 109 minutes from its currently available 136 minutes.

NOTES

which technically pushes the limits but this exception proves the blog

• There is a well known continuity error at the end of the film. The closing scene was filmed beside the real stage door of the New Theatre Royal, Portsmouth. This is located in a narrow side street marked off with yellow "No Waiting" lines. For the filming, these lines were very badly painted over with black paint leaving easily recognisable marks on the road.


• MGM/UA Classics' Michael Schlesinger reissued the full version theatrically in 1987. It was also released on laser disc and finally, in 2011, in a remastered edition.


• Wilson's original score was freely adapted and augmented by Peter Maxwell Davies for the film. Davies subsequently prepared (and recorded) a concert suite based on the music.

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The Legend of Lizzie Borden (1975)

After Elizabeth Montgomery made her career as a cute television witch, she turned her sights to portraying a fancy, historical bitch and drew raves from critics and audiences alike. The Legend of Lizzie Borden purports to solve the centuries old murder of Borden's parents and does it with style and significance. It's criminal (ba dump bump) that this movie has not had a home release; it's well-made and a true crime stunner that's involving and fascinating.

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Romy and Michelle: In The Beginning (2005)

OMFG, Romy and Michele: In The Beginning puts Katherine Heigl (blech!) and Alex Breckinridge (who?) screen center as younger and paler imitations of the characters from the beloved original who move to Los Angeles (again). This claptrap was written (and directed) by the same author (Robin Schiff) but has none of the intelligence or heart. Paula Abdul shows up for a paycheck as did, it seems, everyone ese.

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They Live (1988)

They Live is a freaky science fiction flick with a great lead performance by Roddy Piper, an awesome script by the pseudonymous John Carpenter, and careful direction from the real John Carpenter. Piper is a hot hunk (in great jeans, no less) who is able to see underneath people's skins to tell if they are an alien. This effect is done very well and is scary which gives the film, along with its other good qualities, a fascinating authenticity.

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The China Syndrome (1979)

Despite the polyester and wide lapels, The China Syndrome is still a relevant and troubling film about an accident in a nuclear power plant. The acting is excellent with stars Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon and Michael Douglas joined by a stellar supporting cast including Peter Donat and Wilford Brimley. In an interesting subplot, the film fictionalizes the 1974 death of Karen Silkwood which was, itself, made into a movie starring Meryl Streep and Cher some four years later.

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