245. Singin' in the Rain (1952)

Running Time: 103 minutes
Directed By: Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly
Written By: Betty Comden, Adolph Green
Main Cast: Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Jean Hagen, Millard Mitchell
Click here to view the trailer

NOTE: Couple things this week:

In addition to an update of NON-BOOK movies I've watched in the past seven days, I also wanted to give you guys a heads up and point you to another 1001 blogger. It's JD's 1001 Movies and "JD" himself was kind enough to give me a shout out on Twitter, naming me as one of his inspirations for starting the blog. I'm so appreciative of that, that I knew I had to, at the very least, give him a plug. So head on over and watch someone do it all over again, from the beginning. The cool thing about JD's blog is that he's not confining himself to one 1001 BOOK, but rather tackling all incarnations. That's a good idea...

NON-BOOK UPDATES

I Love You To Death (1990 - Lawrence Kasdan) 7/10 - Solid comedy, with a great performance from Kevin Kelly, backed up by a pretty great cast, including William Hurt, Keanu Reeves (he's solid here), River Phoenix, Joan Plowright and Tracey Ullman. This is actually an old favorite of mine, as I discovered it on Comedy Central when I was a kid.

Lady In the Lake (1947 - Robert Montgomery) 6.5/10 - Again, I've been recording stuff off of TCM left and right and this one sounded good enough for me to set it up. The gimmick is that the whole thing is shot as a POV shot, from the point of view of our main dick, played by Montgomery himself (directing and starring). However, his screen time is nil, as we only see him when he looks in a mirror, or interrupts the story to give us first person updates. I felt like the POV gimmick actually took away from the movie. It was a fun idea and they pulled it off semi-successfully, but I've seen much better noirs. Thumbs in the middle.

Antoine and Colette (1962 - Francois Truffaut) 6/10 - This is my problem with short films: they're just too short to amount to anything notable. That's really the only problem I had with Truffaut's second installment of his "Antoine series". I could've sat through a feature length production of this, I think, but at only twenty some minutes, it came off as almost pointless. Still good enough to warrant a '6' and have me wanting to see the next Antoine film.

The Bakery Girl of Monceau (1963 - Eric Rohmer) 7/10 - Okay, so I spoke too soon about short films, as this one is only twenty-three minutes and I felt like it was the perfect length. Clearly not enough material here to go much longer. The Six Moral Tales set has been sitting on my desk for weeks, dare I say MONTHS waiting for me to view it and I've been pecking away at it, like a bird does roadkill. A couple months ago I tackled Love in the Afternoon (which was so good, that I added it to my SINS OF OMISSION list, also adding it to my personal 1,000 films list), so when my wife was working the other day and I took the day off for my birthday (31 now, yee-haw), I decided to tackle the very first of the SIX MORAL TALES. Not bad at all. It seems that all of these deal with men who either ALMOST have affairs or feel like they've had affairs when actually they didn't. I'd call I Love You to Death the best NON-BOOK I saw all week, with this coming in as an extremely close second.

Now then...

GOTTA' DANCE!

If you've made it this far, kudos to you! Sorry you had to sledge through so many updates, just to get to the main course, but I hope it was worth it. I actually watched Singin' In the Rain on FRIDAY NIGHT! Saturday I was too tired, Sunday was my birthday which I spent being extremely lazy and Monday I took a sick day from work, being lazy again. So here we are and hopefully we can get back on the right track now.

I feel like a lot of people know that this is the movie where Gene Kelly sings (and dances) in the rain, but I think a lot of people only associate this film with that one, albeit iconic, scene. So sit back and I'll fill you in on the "deets". The film is set in the 20s, right around the time that talking pictures came to be a reality. It's the end days for silent films and the top silent stars Don Lockwood (Kelly) and Lina Lamont (Hagen) are going to be forced to dust off their vocal chords and start talking. After the success of The Jazz Singer, producer R.F. Simpson (Mitchell) decides to turn the lates Lockwood and Lamont picture into a talkie. It's called The Dueling Cavalier, however, because Lina Lamont has such a thick New York accent, no one onset wants her to be heard - ever. So Don and buddy Cosmo (O'Connor) come up with the idea to turn The Dueling Cavalier into a musical, dubbing Lina's voice with the voice of upstart actress Kathy Selden (Reynolds). Meanwhile, Don is falling for Kathy and EVERYTHING has to be kept a secret from Lina Lamont, who hates Kathy Selden, stemming from an earlier incident involving a pie in the face. And yes, the film itself is a musical, with great numbers such as: "Good Morning", "Moses Supposes" and of course, the very rewindable "Singin' in the Rain". Those are a few of my personal favs. The whole movie ends with the tad overlong Broadway Melody Ballet, which runs for what seems like twenty minutes or better.

SPOILER ALERT!

I've probably seen Singin' in the Rain something like five times in my life and I don't think I've ever seen it without rewinding and rewatching the Singin in the Rain number, at least once. I did the same thing when I watched it on Friday. It's a bold statement, but I'd have to say that it's one of my all-time favorite scenes, in any movie. It's a scene that ALWAYS makes me smile, always makes me tap my toe or clap my hands, it makes me want to see more Gene Kelly movies and it always reminds me of why I love movies. It' sheer entertainment, but in fact, the whole film is sheer entertainment, which is why I have to give it a positive review, despite a handful of flaws.

Man, how annoying was Donald O'Connor in this. THE BOOK notes his "Make 'Em Laugh" performance as one of the highs of the picture, but I'd call it easily one of the most annoying things I've ever seen and I don't think I laughed once. I, for some reason, just really, really disliked Donald O'Connor's character here. Also, as I mentioned in the plot synopsis, the ending musical number was just way too long. It got to the point where I just didn't think it would ever end and I had to push the "display" button on my remote to see how much of the film was left (that's sort of the measuring stick for me to know when a film is dragging, whether or not I push that button). I'd also say that the plot is a little thin. I mean you have this close to two hour film that all hinges on whether or not they'll let this annoying woman talk on film.

Other than those things though, how can you not, at least a little bit, love Singin' in the Rain. It's a smile inducer of a film, one that I'll happily watch periodically for the rest of my life. It's a fun watch and one where the flaws are easy to overlook, just to get to the good parts. If you don't smile (at least a little) watching Kelly sing (and dance) in the rain, then I'm not sure we can be friends.

RATING: 7.5/10  One that will probably land on the next (and last) TOP 20 list, just because it's one that I know I could watch over and over, always overlooking the flaws and ALWAYS rewinding to see Gene Kelly sing (and dance) in the rain, one more time.

MOVIES WATCHED: 934
MOVIES LEFT TO WATCH: 67

July 14, 2015  10:10am

271. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)

Running Time: 102 minutes
Directed By: Stanley Donen
Written By: Albert Hackett, Frances Goodrich, Dorothy Kingsley, from the story The Sobbin' Women by Stephen Vincent Benet
Main Cast: Howard Keel, Jane Powell, Russ Tamblyn, Jeff Richards, Matt Mattox
Click here to view the trailer

BLESS YOUR BEAUTIFUL HIDE!

So we go from an underground, almost softcore pornography in Pink Flamingos to the cute, lively and 100% sexist film from the 50s, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. You couldn't get two different movies and yet, I disliked them both.

It all begins with Adam Pontipee (Keel, who looks like a cross between Ron Burgundy and the Brawny paper towel man) going into town to buy some supplies and noting that he's also looking for a bride. The shopkeepers basically tell him to get lost, saying that there are no brides to be in the town. Adam is persistent though, so he goes through town singing a song and finally lands at the doorstep of a cute blonde named Milly (Powell). He introduces himself to her, talks to her for all of two minutes and somehow convinces her to marry him in that time. So it's back to his cabin in the outskirts of nowhere, where she meets his six brothers: Benjamin, Caleb, Daniel, Ephraim, Frankincense and Gideon (named in alphabetical succession and all Bible names - how adorable!). The boys are all wild men at first, but Milly works on the lot of them and eventually transforms them into gentlemen. While attending a barn raising, the boys dress in their finest colored shirts (each one in a different color - how adorable!) and end up meeting six women. Back home, the boys mope about not being married like Adam, so Adam convinces his brothers that they just need to go and get their brides to be. So that's what they do. They literally go to these women's homes and kidnap them, taking them back to their little shanty in the woods. And this is all supposed to be cute, you see. It's a 50s musical people, so you better know that it all ends up sunshine & roses in the end and if you can't predict the ending you must be new to the cinema game.

I don't wanna' make like I was totally offended by the plot, because I really wasn't; but damn, it was seriously sexist wasn't it? I mean, I'm not one to really be bothered by such things, but I could totally see how someone (especially women) might be put off by all this "kidnapping in good fun" stuff and singing songs about how macho you are and how your wife just needs to stick to the housework and the cooking. Speaking of the songs, I'm usually up for a good musical, but these songs pretty much sucked to put it bluntly. I mean, I wasn't humming one five minutes after it ended and would be hard pressed to even remember the names of the tunes even now, less than twenty-four hours after finishing it. I mean, there just wasn't a whole lot to like here and even the words "above average" appeared in THE BOOK'S summary of this one - in a BOOK where those words don't really make me feel like I MUST SEE something. I wasn't impressed by the acting and the plot was just stupid. Man goes off and married a woman, treats her like crap and then his brothers wanna' do the same thing so he tells them to kidnap six girls. Geez!

How did I not know that the guy who played Riff in West Side Story and the guy who played Dr. Jacoby in Twin Peaks were the same person and that they were both named Russ Tamblyn? While watching this I thought I recognized Riff and pulled out my phone to consult Wikipedia, only to find a photo of Dr. Jacoby plastered to his Wiki entry. A real "wow" moment for me. Anyway, not a lot left to say here folks. If you dig old, cutesy, goody-goody musicals then this might be for you, but beware because there's definitely some potentially offensive material wound throughout the tunes. It's no wonder you probably haven't heard of a lot of the actors here, because the acting on display here just isn't up to snuff. I love Tamblyn, but he's doing nothing of note here and Keel and Powell aren't worth writing home about either. I will note that the choreography is pretty great and keep an eye out for the scene where the boys try to raise the barn and get into a fight AND the scene just prior to that where they dance with the girls and square off with the guys. Probably the only good thing about this one.

RATING: 4.5/10  Can't even get it to the halfway marker and that's a shame because I really could've used something great to lift my spirits after the dread that was Pink Flamingos. Oh well...

MOVIES WATCHED: 871
MOVIES LEFT TO WATCH: 130

November 15, 2014  6:08pm

222. On the Town (1949)

Running Time: 98 minutes
Directed By: Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly
Written By: Adolph Green & Betty Comden, from their play
Main Cast: Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Jules Munshin, Ann Miller, Betty Garrett
Click here to view the trailer

SINGIN' SAILORS

Who doesn't love to watch Gene Kelly dance and hear Frank Sinatra sing? I know I do! However, this film fell short of my expectations and I'd much rather watch Gene Kelly splash through the rain than see him donning a sailor suit and singing songs about the Big Apple.

Gabey (Kelly), Chip (Sinatra) and Ozzie (Munshin) are three sailors who have been granted a 24-hour leave and plan to spend it scouring New York City, taking in the sights and picking up dates. Gabey sets his eyes on a local girl named Ivy Smith (Garrett), whose face he spots on a poster in the subway, as she is the current Ms. Turnstiles for the month of June. Gabey has been shot by cupid's arrow and plans to search the city until he tracks her down. Along the way, Gabey's buddies meet gals of their own, with Chip being chased by a female cab driver named Hildy and Ozzie being seduced by anthropologist Claire (Miller). These five split up to track down Ms. Turnstiles so that they can triple date the night away in NYC and eventually Gabey finds her and the two make a date to meet atop the Empire State Building. However, Ivy feels she must admit to Gabey that she really isn't the hotshot that the posters made her out to be and really, she's just an everyday girl, who happens to hail from the same small town that Gabey does. When she can't admit her true identity to Gabey, she runs away and the chase to find her resumes.

Before I rip this film apart, let me just say that "On the Town" IS a whole lot of fun - there's no doubting that. If you don't smile at least a handful of times while watching this, then obviously you're incapable of being entertained. I was able to have fun with this movie, allow myself to be entertained and come out thoroughly enjoying it, but still having to admit that it was just a little too perky for my tastes. I've seen dozens of better musicals than this, musicals with better music and a better story. There were really only a few songs that I found myself really enjoying, such as: "Prehistoric Man", "You're Awful" and "Count On Me", while the rest just weren't catchy enough, especially the title song, "New York, New York". The story itself wasn't that great either, but I can say the the choreography was quite good, especially the "Miss Turnstiles Ballet" scene and the "A Day in New York" piece. The film also gave me a chance to gander at a new find, as I found Ann Miller to be very enjoyable, very talented and very good looking.

RATING: 5.5/10  Am I short changing you guys with these short reviews? I just don't want to ramble, that's all. Anyway, I've seen a lot of memorable musicals on my quest through THE BOOK, but "On the Town" isn't one of them. Aside from Ann Miller and a few numbers, this film was quite forgettable...fun while it lasted, but forgettable.


MOVIES WATCHED: 430
MOVIES LEFT TO WATCH: 571

April 22, 2012  9:36pm