Follow the Feet

Well I couldn't find a picture of this movie so here's a nice one of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. My parents really like these movies. They're easy to watch. Fred and Ginger are pretty good dancers and singers I guess too. We also watched Top Hat and Shall We Dance and some other of their movies once. Pretty talented people. Don't know what else to say. I wonder why they don't make movies like this anymore?...Okay I did think of something to say. Fred used to dance with his older sister until she got married. Ginger just worked her way through stuff with her single mother. They both kind of grew up in the same place and just worked hard. Fred was more into dancing then Ginger and was quite the perfectionist. Ginger wanted to be more of a dramatic actress. They say Fred had the talent and Ginger had the looks.But they made one of the best couples on film. Pretty amazing people. Hey did Ginger Rogers ever get married? AND what are Snow White's lips compared to? That question has been bugging me forever! "Skin white as snow, lips red as...___!!!!"Scarlet? Blood? Flame? ....!!!!!!

Sudden Fear

Wow! This was a good mystery movie. I wish it didn't have quite so much kissing though. But other than that I thought it was pretty suspenseful. Joan Crawford might have worn too much make-up, but I liked her scared eyes. Although they might have a resemblance to certain Muppet characters, they still made me scared too. I'm glad she had a change of heart at the end. Boy! What a dramatic ending! At least it didn't end like a European movie. Oh I forgot to explain. So Sudden Fear is about a rich lady who likes to write plays. She marries this dude she fired once and soon discovers he only married her for her money and didn't have very happy plans set for her. Yeah it's pretty exciting. But why didn't she just call the police! My favorite part is when she's hiding in a closet and this little wind up dog almost gives her away. I was covering my eyes it was soo good. It might have been a little more dramatic then it needed to be, but I just thought it was a good suspenseful movie that gets your adrenaline going. I believe it was made by the same director of Midnight Lace. Kind of has the same story line if you think about it. The art stuff in it I thought was pretty cool. Like one time she's planning out a...scheme and the camera only shows her face with the shadow of a clock thingy ticking right between her eyes. Then that picture kind of fades, but still stays on the screen and you see what she plans to do. And also at the end when she symbolically throws off her head shawl thingy and it drifts away in the gutter. Anyway it's pretty clutch. I liked it.

Calamity Jane

After renting it about 900 times and running out of time to watch it, I finally sat though Calamity Jane. It was alright. A good plain musical. If you want to see pretty much the same movie with a different main lady, go for Annie Get Your Gun. I liked that one better, maybe just cuz I saw it first or maybe because it had more songs I liked. Anyway It's pretty much the same story line and leading man... hey maybe even set and director too I don't know. Doris Day did an okay job. She seems to sing loud and Americanish so this role worked well for her. I was surprised at her ability to take on such a tom boy character. I've watched lots of movies with her this summer for some reason. Some people say her acting abilities get overlooked because of her singing. Maybe it's true. I personally think she's only good at certain types of acting. For example when she gets scared in one of my favorite movies, Midnight Lace, it's extremely fake, but hey I still like it. As for Howard Keel? Does he ever change? I can only remember off the bat seeing him in this movie and Annie Get Your Gun so to me it seems like he's always just the friend of some cow girl who turns into a lady. But he always has a nice deep voice. I was also surprised that more songs from this musical weren't as popular. There was, "Once I had a Seceret Love" or something but that was about it. I thought that song was long and boring compared to some of the others. Well there you go. I like fudge. If you ask me what I like I say I like fudge.

The Wrong Man

Here's a Hitchcock I liked pretty well. Henry Fonda does an excellent job as a cello player who does everything he can to pull things together for his wife and 2 sons. But one day something goes terribly wrong. While trying to get insurance for his wife's wisdom teeth, he's mistaken for a bank robber. How's that for an intro? I really like Henry Fonda's acting job in this movie. Oh fine I like Henry's acting in all his movies. He's so versatile. Around the time I watched this movie I also saw him in War and Peace as some college intellectual dude in Russia and Yours Mine and Ours as a father of 10 and soon 18 or something I don't remember. Anyway the point is that it seems like you can put Henry Fonda at any role and he'll always impress you. As for Hitchcockness of this movie? Well the plot seemed pretty typical. A regular person thrown into some crazy thing by accident, but one thing not so typical was that Alfred doesn't make an appearance in this movie like he does in all the others. He just comes in at the start and says something about not wanting to be a distraction cuz this really happened to some guy somewhere. Anyway I wish he had appeared anyway I look forward to those occasions. Jk. Well yeah. This movie just makes you question yourself about how sure you are of things all the time. And it's kind of frustrating cuz you're expecting this guy to jump out and stand up for himself but it never happens, he just conforms to everything deciding that,"an innocent man has nothing to fear." But gosh he has everything to fear! Run away! Instead his wife blames herself for his problems and gets stuck in a mental hospital for 3 yrs. But they all live happily ever after. So I recommend this movie. It's a decent Hitchcock. Oh and I think the music was good, I haven't seen this in a while.

Laura

Wow! Laura is probably one of my favorites! I really have no idea how to write about it. Well to start it was made after the book Laura and was nominated for 5 academy awards. My favorite thing about it is the music by David Raskin. It's phenomenal (not just a bunch of dead violins like in some old movies)! It stars Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews , Clifton Webb and Vincent Price. They all do a pretty decent job I guess. I'm not sure how good a judge I am of acting, especially when the music is so good like in this movie. But they say it's the ultimate film noir of the 1940's. I've always wondered why this movie isn't as well known. I loved it! So there's this girl named Laura who's very intelligent and enchanting and pretty much everyone she meets falls in love with her. Including this possessive," acid tongued" writer(Clifton Webb) and some playboy who she becomes engaged to(Vincent Price). Anyway the first line of the movie totally draws you in with, "I shall never forget the weekend Laura died..." And then it shows this beautiful set and everything. It's clutch cuz ya know the person you think is going to be the main character is apparently dead from the start. So you kind of have to live off of other peoples impressions of... Laura. Then this detective dude comes in (Dana Andrews) and starts digging into Laura's personal letters and stuff and ends up falling in love with her even though she's dead. Then one night he's sittin there mulling over her case by himself at her apartment, staring at this huge portrait of her hanging on the wall when suddenly who walks in? Nobody but Gene Tierney ofcourse (Laura herself).Yeah anyway I don't want to ruin this movie . It gets ,"soo good." So yeah . I really like it. I strongly recommend it. And it doesn't swear or get too violent or anything so it's really nice. I also like the costuming. Yes, contrary to popular belief, even the floppy hats. But what really got me glued to this movie was the biography of Gene Tierney in the DVD special features. I'd never seen her in any movies before and this movie got me attached to her. She'll never out due Audrey Hepburn ofcourse, but she had such a sad fascinating life, I had to start trying out more of her movies. GENE TIERNEY So from what I can remember, Gene Tierney was born into a pretty rich family. Her dad was some kind of bossy business man and her family was pretty tight. Then one day her dad's business was having some problems so he sent the family out on vacation to California so it would appear like nothing bad was happening. While they were touring through Hollywood, some movie guy saw Gene and thought she was really beautiful. So just for fun they had her do a screen test and were surprised at how good she was at mimicry. Anyway they offered her a job, but her dad didn't really approve of Hollywood people so instead he let her try things out on Broadway which was apparently more sophisticated. She got her first role there carrying a bucket of water across the stage, and someone famous said,"she was the most beautiful water carrier I'd ever seen." So anyway yeah things went from there. Then she met this designer dude who was kind of risque and she wanted to marry him. But her dad didn't like him so he wouldn't let her. But then one day Gene made a surprise visit to her dad in Chicago and found out her dad wasn't being that loyal to her mom, which was quite a shock for her. So then her dad divorced her mom and she started living with her mom, but then she discovers that her dad had used up her life's savings so she had nothing! Ouch! So then she decides to marry the designer and does some movies with him designing her clothes. Laura was her first big role and made her huge. Then she got nominated for an Oscar in Leave her to Heaven and some other stuff that I have yet to see. So yeah she does pretty good with the designer guy, but then suddenly WW2 breaks out and he goes off somewhere to fight and she goes and tries to promote women workers or something. Anyway at the time she was expecting her first child which she was pretty excited about. But then this stupid fan of her's who's been quarantined for German measles sneaks away from her quarantine..ation to go see her. So Gene gets German measles from this fan and because of that her baby is born deaf and blind and mentally handicapped. They say she never recovered from the tragedy. Then to top that off years later she meets this same fan who had the measles and that just rubs things in to her that because of her own success she had to face such a trial. Wow this is going to be a really long blog. Anyway then eventually she has another child who's healthy but then she has some marriage problems forever and she almost marries a young JFK, but gets denied. Then she finally gets a divorce with her husband and then she marries some rich guy and he dies and another guy and he dies too. Anyway all this time....(gosh there's something else I can't remember...oh well) she's facing some kind of stress I can't remember why and pretty much she has a mental breakdown. Then years later after recovering from her mental problems she can't really get back into acting...even with the help of Henry Fonda. So yeah she just dies an old lady of some kind of cancer I think maybe. Anyway. I thought her life was pretty interesting so I thought I'd write about it. They also had a biography on Vincent Price. He had a much happier life, even though he's like the king of Sci-fi horror movies. And he really liked art. Well there you go. That was really long. I don't think my movie reviews will be this long in the future, I really don't have time for this. But someone aught to watch this movie. It's quite a hidden treasure.

Excuses for this Blog

As you might know, I have a huge fascination with old movies. They're pretty much the only movies out there worth watching I've decided. But I can't very well speak about old films cuz no one has ever seen them, so to relieve the excessive amounts of bottled up excitement I get from watching unknown classic movies all week, I've decided to start writing about them. Not all the movies I'll write about are particularly my favorites, but all old movies deserve some kind of acknowledgment. So here's my tribute to them. No wait, here's my way of venting out stuff I pick up at the Orem Library every weekend, thanks to my free movie rental luxury. Okay fine! The true reason I've started this blog is because I'm forced to talk to yucky returned missionaries and old married college students 37 hours a week and I desperately need an escape! But I do hope this blog will inspire someone else to discover the captivating charm of old movies. If it doesn't make any sense just consult my dog. She's quite an avid movie watcher.