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LX: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? (Stanley Kramer, 1967)
Last of the Hepburn/Tracy pairings in a political film that is both dated and still timely. Joanne Drayton returns home from a whirlwind romance in Hawaii, looking for the blessing of her parents, Hepburn and Tracy. Whilst both are good liberals, the boyfriend in played by Sidney Poitier, and the marriage would be mixed race. If the Draytons are taken aback, Poitier's character's parents, the Prentices, are equally appalled, and the Draytons' maid, herself black, is disgusted. Given the middle class and liberal nature of the central characters, the ending is perhaps never in doubt, and in most cases the fear is more about whatever other people think, ater than what the characters think. It is also striking how often the word "negro" is used here, in a way that wouldn't be possible now.
LXI: The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (Rebecca Miller, 2009)
Uneven film by Arthur's daughter, based on her own novel. Pippa Lee (Robin Penn Wright) is married to the much older and now retiring publisher Herb Lee (Alan Arkin), and is experiencing a series f sleep walks. She reflects upon her life - bipolar mother who dressed her up, lesbian aunt whose girlfriend involved her in pornography, and a descent into drugs. Now she has to have hobbies and charity work, her son is training to be a lawyer and her photo journalist daughter ignores her. Only her neighbour's dissolute son (Keanu Reeves) offers a way out of her dull life and a way back to more fun. Wright is very good but not when in a crisis, Arkin is always watchable and Reeves even acts.
LXII: The Fall (Tarsem Singh, 2006)
Beautiful film, which is a combination of The Wizard of Oz and The Princess Bride. A young girl (Catinca Untaru) with a broken arm befriends an injured stuntman (Lee Pace) in a teens of the twentieth century hospital. He tells her a story of a blue bandit and a gang of men (and a monkey) who have sworn vengeance on Odious, partly as a means to persuade her to get hold of morphine pills with which he will kill himself. The characters within the story are played by many of the actors who play characters in the hospital, bith patients an staff, and the reality of the story leaks into the hospital just as the girl attempts to wrench the story to something more pleasurable.
Astonishingly, the film was made on location rather than with digital special effects - in South Africa, in Cambodia, in China, in South America and above all in India. It is incredibly beautiful to look at, often moving, but lumbered with a bit of a dying fall (ahem) of an ending. But go watch.
Totals: 62 - [Cinema: 17; DVD: 42; Television: 3]
Last of the Hepburn/Tracy pairings in a political film that is both dated and still timely. Joanne Drayton returns home from a whirlwind romance in Hawaii, looking for the blessing of her parents, Hepburn and Tracy. Whilst both are good liberals, the boyfriend in played by Sidney Poitier, and the marriage would be mixed race. If the Draytons are taken aback, Poitier's character's parents, the Prentices, are equally appalled, and the Draytons' maid, herself black, is disgusted. Given the middle class and liberal nature of the central characters, the ending is perhaps never in doubt, and in most cases the fear is more about whatever other people think, ater than what the characters think. It is also striking how often the word "negro" is used here, in a way that wouldn't be possible now.
LXI: The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (Rebecca Miller, 2009)
Uneven film by Arthur's daughter, based on her own novel. Pippa Lee (Robin Penn Wright) is married to the much older and now retiring publisher Herb Lee (Alan Arkin), and is experiencing a series f sleep walks. She reflects upon her life - bipolar mother who dressed her up, lesbian aunt whose girlfriend involved her in pornography, and a descent into drugs. Now she has to have hobbies and charity work, her son is training to be a lawyer and her photo journalist daughter ignores her. Only her neighbour's dissolute son (Keanu Reeves) offers a way out of her dull life and a way back to more fun. Wright is very good but not when in a crisis, Arkin is always watchable and Reeves even acts.
LXII: The Fall (Tarsem Singh, 2006)
Beautiful film, which is a combination of The Wizard of Oz and The Princess Bride. A young girl (Catinca Untaru) with a broken arm befriends an injured stuntman (Lee Pace) in a teens of the twentieth century hospital. He tells her a story of a blue bandit and a gang of men (and a monkey) who have sworn vengeance on Odious, partly as a means to persuade her to get hold of morphine pills with which he will kill himself. The characters within the story are played by many of the actors who play characters in the hospital, bith patients an staff, and the reality of the story leaks into the hospital just as the girl attempts to wrench the story to something more pleasurable.
Astonishingly, the film was made on location rather than with digital special effects - in South Africa, in Cambodia, in China, in South America and above all in India. It is incredibly beautiful to look at, often moving, but lumbered with a bit of a dying fall (ahem) of an ending. But go watch.
Totals: 62 - [Cinema: 17; DVD: 42; Television: 3]
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