Out of the Past, Into the Now ~ Amy Adams as Rita Hayworth

I really like Amy Adams. Especially after I saw the film Miss Pettigrew Lives for Day (2008), which just happens to be the theme of my new blog header. I like Amy Adams even more now with the November issue of Vanity Fair. She channels Rita Hayworth from Gilda (1946) in the photographs accompanying an article about her. They are stunning. Makes me want to break out and sing "Put the Blame on Mame". The video posted on Vanity Fair's website shows the photo session and the different Rita Hayworth-esque poses she did in the black dress and black gloves. Check it out!

Article & Video

You Otto See It: The Man With the Golden Arm

It was a strange coincidence that I watched Guys and Dolls (1955) and The Man with the Golden Arm (1956) back-to-back. Guys and Dolls is a musical about a gambler who gambles with love and stars Marlon Brando. Frank Sinatra co-stars as an illegal crap game organizer. Sinatra had been vying for the title role of Sky Masterson and lost out to Brando. Brando does most of the singing, which seems a utter shame given Sinatra's God-given talent. But Sinatra gave Brando his comeuppance the following year when he quickly snagged the role of Frankie Machine in The Man with the Golden Arm away from Brando, who was the first choice for the film. Sinatra steps out of his realm and does an amazing job as a dealer, finally clean from his heroin-addiction, trying to get his life back on track by becoming a drummer and staying away from drugs and cards. But his old life, and the people in it, keep getting in his way.

As I've said before, I absolutely love it when actors step out of their comfort zones and do something completely different. While it didn't work so much for Brando, it definitely worked for Sinatra. This is one of the best films I have ever seen and it has much to do with Sinatra's performance (which I'm sure Otto Preminger had a hand in).

I decided, instead of gushing on and on about this film, that I would keep it short. I'll give you 5 reasons to watch this film.

1) Frank Sinatra's astounding performance. He was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for this film.

2) The opposition between motherly yet sizzling hot Molly (Kim Novak) and the pathetic and conniving Zosh (Eleanor Parker). They play off each other very well even though they don't share very many scenes.

3) The musical score by Elmer Bernstein. I hardly ever notice music, but I did with this film. The music interacts with the motions of the scenes. Beautiful.

4) Otto Preminger's direction and Sam Leavitt's cinematography. Everything just falls into place.

5) Saul Bass' title sequence art. It's beautiful. He's well known for the title sequences in numerous Preminger and Hitchcock films. For Man with the Golden Arm, Bass created a minimalist black background cut by moving white bars. It's beautiful for its simplicity. See below. (thanks to Frank & Kevin for their help on this!)

New Blog Feature!

I thought to myself, why not take my obsessive Facebook status-updating compulsion and tie it into my blog? So thus, I started a new feature called "Newsreel ~ What I'm Up To Now". I'll just provide little snippets of what's going on in my personal world. And maybe I'll add some random thoughts. I promise to keep it all classic film-related (and amusing). Check it out on the sidebar!

Jungle Red!

I hadn't originally planned to see the newest incarnation of The Women (2008), but that's what I was doing last Sunday evening. As I spoke before about this subject (see previous post), there have been good and bad remakes. I didn't expect to like this one, but luckily when I went to the theater, I left all preconceived expectations behind and opened myself up to what was going to grace the screen. And guess what ? I kind of liked it!


There are some obvious flaws. First of all, the dialogue. The original, The Women (1939), had the most amazing cutting, witty and catty dialogue. Plus the pacing in the original is fast, where as its much slower and more casual in the remake. My biggest gripe is that while Cukor did such an excellent job showcasing all of the talent in the original, the remake did not take advantage of its ensemble cast as it should have. Poor Bette Midler gets only a couple minutes of screen time and her whole plotline is reduced to one flighty conversation. Gah!


Most of the bloggers who have reviewed the 2008 version did not like it. And I can see why. The original is just so great that it really can't be matched. But the remake is very conscious of its predecessor, making references to it throughout the movie. On its own however, the film was very enjoyable. My favorite was the climax scene (spoiler alert to those who aren't familiar with the original story), when Mary decides to get back together with Stephen. It happens in a delivery room when one of the characters is having a baby. It was so funny I near fell out of my chair laughing. And the remake made MUCH better use of the author character (Nancy Blake played by Florence Nash and Alex Fisher played by Jada Pinkett-Smith). The Sylvia Fowler character is very 3-dimensional in the remake. She can be evil, but she has a history and she's a good person at heart. Whereas, the Sylvia Flower in the original is a conniving stock character that Rosalind Russell played oh so well. In the same way Russell did in 1939, Annette Benning really does steal the picture. All in all, it was an enjoyable film.



And of course, I painted my nails my version of "Jungle Red" in honor of the movie!