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SITTING PRETTY – Clifton Webb, Maureen O’Hara

Sitting Pretty (1948)
Direction: Walter Lang
Screenplay: F. Hugh Herbert; from Gwen Davenport’s novel Belvedere
Cast: Clifton Webb, Maureen O’Hara, Robert Young, Richard Haydn, Louise Allbritton, Randy Stuart, Ed Begley
 

 

In the late 1940s, the bucolic suburb of Hummingbird Hill is shaken in its tranquil complacency by the scandalous actions of two middle-aged, unmarried men. Each of these elitist, academic bachelors threaten the norm of twin beds, parlor games, and ladies who lunch. One escapes his overbearing mother in persistent eavesdropping and snooping; the other inserts himself as a platonic wedge between a husband and wife, usurping household authority with conceited pleasure.
The couple eventually separates under the strain, while the community itself is exposed for its flaws and hypocrisy. The convention of the two-parent, heterosexual family [...]

WHATEVER WORKS d: Woody Allen

Whatever Works (2009)
Direction and Screenplay: Woody Allen
Cast: Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood, Patricia Clarkson, Ed Begley Jr., Henry Cavill
 

Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood
 

Woody Allen’s return to NYC has resulted in one of his best comedies in years. Of course, he hasn’t been making comedic films of late, but whatever.
"Hello, I Must Be Going" by Groucho Marx plays during the opening credits of Whatever Works. The song is perfect for setting the film’s contradictory tone. At the start, Boris (Larry David) speaks directly to the audience, commenting that this is not a feel-good movie – if you want to feel good, get a foot massage.
His character is miserable, a pessimist suffering from “I’m a genius and everyone else sucks” disease. [...]

THE MERRY WIDOW d: Ernst Lubitsch

The Merry Widow (1934)
Direction: Ernst Lubitsch
Screenplay: Ernest Vajda and Samson Raphaelson; from Franz Lehár’s operetta
Cast: Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Edward Everett Horton, Una Merkel, George Barbier, Minna Gombell, Sterling Holloway
 

 
The Merry Widow is not one of Ernst Lubitsch’s most discussed films. Critics generally tend to focus on his early Paramount talkies, such as One Hour with You (co-directed by George Cukor) and Trouble in Paradise, and his later comedies Ninotchka and To Be or Not to Be.
Yet, The Merry Widow is a superior musical, boasting sumptuous sets (production design by Cedric Gibbons), exquisite cinematography (courtesy of Oliver T. Marsh), a magnificently staged ballroom-dancing sequence, witty lines and situations (by Lubitsch collaborators Samson Raphaelson and Ernest Vajda, from Franz Lehár’s operetta), [...]

SHALL WE KISS? – Q&A with Emmanuel Mouret

In Emmanuel Mouret’s quietly observant Un baiser s’il vous plaît / Shall We Kiss? (literally, "A Kiss, If You Please"), which opens today in Los Angeles, a young, good-looking couple, Émilie and Gabriel (Julie Gayet and Michaël Cohen), meet accidentally and are just about ready to go for some physical intimacy when Judith decides to tell Gabriel a story. See, she’s in a relationship. But then again, so is he.
Well, the story in question is about another young, good-looking couple, Judith and Nicolas (Virginie Ledoyen, Mouret, top photo) who broke the barriers of social conventions and personal trust — Judith was married — by kissing one another. But it was all for a [...]

Sacha Baron Cohen in BRÜNO Trailer

Written by Sacha Baron Cohen and directed by Dan Mazer, Brüno stars Cohen as a flamboyant Austrian fashionista who, in his desire to become "the biggest Austrian celebrity since Hitler," decides to launch himself in the United States, adopting an African baby (à la Madonna) in the process while trying to pass for straight.
As a result of several sex scenes, Brüno has been slapped with a NC-17 rating in the US. I don’t believe anyone was surprised. Its distributor, Universal, will now have to trim the sex bits in order to get the mockumentary an R rating. Apparently, one sequence involves anal intercourse, the sort of stuff that drives the MPAA censors wild. That and the other soon-to-be-cut [...]

MY FAIR LADY, THE GREAT RACE Screening

My Fair Lady (1964) and The Great Race (1965) will be screened at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood on Friday, March 27, and Saturday, March 28, respectively. Screenings will begin at 8 p.m. The programs are being presented by the Academy’s Science and Technology Council in conjunction with its "Dressed in Color: The Costumes exhibition," which includes costumes from both films.
Though its reputation in critical circles has somewhat faded in the last four and a half decades, I find George Cukor’s film adaptation of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s My Fair Lady one of the top ten Best Picture Oscar winners — and this [...]

Paul Rudd, Jason Segel in I LOVE YOU, MAN Trailer

Written and directed by John Hamburg (who wrote both Meet the Parents and the godawful Meet the Fockers), I Love You, Man stars Paul Rudd (ouch!) as Peter Klaven, a guy with no male friends who must find a best man for his wedding.
Peter ends up bonding with a gross-out type played by Jason Segel, which makes it understandably difficult for his fiancée (Rashida Jones) — especially if the guys don’t wear condoms when they’re together. Well, okay, for better or for worse it’s not that kind of bonding.
Anyhow, in the trailer above there are jokes about dog shit and man fart, which makes I Love You, Man a highly likely family-pleasing box-office hit come next spring. Hopefully this movie [...]

The Amazing ROAD Series: Pop Culture for the Sake of Pop Culture

Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Bing Crosby

I’ve made no secret of the fact that my Mike Taylor/Tony Solantro novels are very much influenced by the movies. The classic films of the ’30s and ’40s, mostly. That said, no other films influenced the style of my book series more than the Road comedies starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and the girl forever associated with the sarong, Dorothy Lamour.
These things were an industry phenomena, not only because they raked in the bucks like no previous musical-comedy series, but for the very nature of what they were — ’40s pop culture for the sake of being ’40s pop culture, quite unashamedly not pretending to be anything else. A reviewer once likened Hope and [...]

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