Radioactive Bugging, Again

Spider-Man 3 sounds insane, and I can’t wait for a decent DVD to see just how insane — don’t have much choice now, do we… Poor, Poor Village and all.  As with many fan geeks, I have a love-hate relationship with Hollywood adaptations of books and comicbooks.  In Spider-Man’s case it started with the casting.  Let’s illustrate.  In the comicbooks, here’s how Peter Parker’s usually drawn by pencillers:

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At one point in history, Mike Deodato even modeled Peter after pictures of Jason Priestley.  Now here’s who’s casted to play him:

 

 

 

 

And as if that wasn’t enough, below shows how comic nuts usually identify Harry Osborn:

And this is he on film:

The spider sense tells me of a nefarious switcheroo.  How much did Tobey Maguire’s agent bribe Stan Lee?  Did James Franco piss someone off in the casting crew, thereby relegating him to the role of what originally was the heroic geek’s geekier-looking friend who sported what looked like funky midget cornrows?  It was a good thing the official hairstylist was apparently moved by the beauty of Franco’s luscious locks and desisted to be faithful to canon coiffure on account that this miscasting was sacrilege in the first place.

The creators expounded on wanting to emphasize Peter Parker’s geekiness when the first installment explored Spider-Man’s origins, and Tobey projected things just right.   Okay, Tobey does breathe geek in his sleep, but he’s kind of a boring actor (same tricks, it seems, on almost everything… Pleasantville, Cedar House Rules, Seabiscuit…), and I was just turned off by eventual reports of him kind of holding out for the role allegedly because he wanted to ask for a higher salary after it finally hit him the first movie unexpectedly did well at box office, and he cited a (possibly blown-up) gajillion of injuries from doing the stunts to back up his demand.  What a lame play, and of all excuses.  Like, if freaking Zhang Ziyi could sign her contract, meekly do all her Yuen Wooping stunts when Zhang Yimou tells her to, and still wind up looking like this on a ladies’ night out?  Just shut up, Grampaw. 

On getting casted as Mary Jane Watson, the character who eventually married Peter Parker in the comic books, Kirsten Dunst hardly looks like the top fashion model she was supposed to be.  Also, Dr. Tom Medicine Woman was dead on when she observed Kirsten is Billy Corgan — with hair and shiny lipgloss — because if you will please:

I am glad, though, that the movie franchise went with the family friend thing MJ Watson was in the book, and the confused childhood and teen years she had… she was a sad, bad girl who found redemption.  And though Kirsten was never the traditional classically beautiful ingenue, she more than made up for good looks with an earnestness with her roles, including this one. 

The script had Mary Jane Watson figure in the infamous Brooklyn Bridge scene where Gwen Stacy, who was Peter Parker’s original first girlfriend in the comicbook series, plunged to her death after being held hostage by the Green Goblin.  Definitely a big TNHIWOP! (that’s not how it went on paper!) factor, however, the creative team pulled the changes off without making things too forced or sometimes bordering on stupid, like what happened to the X-Men adaptations. 

So the characters on film developed and surprisingly they went down fine.  The script was all right, and the actors did well with the delivery.  Many friends thought the CGI web-swinging scenes were a little over the top, but I don’t know.  I kind of liked them, especially the ending on 1.  We dealt in our shallowly fashion: Peter’s gosh-darn mopey, but he’s a whiney nerd who didn’t deserve the very cool Uncle Ben, so fine.  Let him mope.  James Franco is SO not right for Harry Osborn (keeps checking the comicbook), but… SO CUTE!  MJ Watson — okay… she seems serious about liking Peter despite the fact that he’s a nerdy loser and Harry’s hot.  We’re nerds, we like nerds, right?  Non-whiney nerds, that is, and well, whatever.  She looks cluelessly in love, and true love’s so adorable, never mind it’s Tobey Maguire she’s macking with.  Let’s just awww… and get it over with, job well done to those three, and wow, Alex Ross paintings in 2.  Acceptance was inevitable, I was moved, I got carried away with their enthusiasm, and everything’s nicely digested by the time Peter and MJ hug with goo-goo eyes, right?

Then I find that in 3, Sam Raimi and Co. had a brilliant idea.  Phoom!  They recruit GWEN STACY to the motley crew to figure into what was a normal love triangle but is now, like, spatially dimensional.  Gwen Stacy, the girl who the Green Goblin originally pushed off the bridge and Spidey just had to save her by webbing, only for her to snap her neck or something, or maybe she was dead by the time Spidey arrived on the scene!  I was wrong to think Gwen was, like, cancelled out already given Mary Jane was picked to fall off the bridge, but not snapping her neck or anything (and she does not die and hooks up with Peter despite the presence of James Franco after many twisty turns).  And now she pops out of nowhere and she’s the other woman.  And she’s played by a narf.

Okay?

I wonder why they picked Gwen Stacy to complicate things between Peter and Mary Jane to keep the interest in their thing from tanking.  I mean, why not Felicia Hardy, who moonlights as the Black Cat?  The creators of the TV animation series didn’t exactly follow the canon storyline either, but Felicia Hardy worked out just fine in that love triangle mix… she’s a fun girl without the Black Cat persona, she acquires probability-altering powers, and she’s got hidden agenda and skeletons in her closet.  What, the contrast will be too much for mopey, aw-shucks film versions of Peter and MJ? 

I always thought Gwen Stacy was too one-dimensional, but that’s the product of writers during her stint as official girlfriend.  She was replaced by Mary Jane in media incarnations precisely because the Gwen was conceived in the age of comics when women were still stereotypically presented as damsels in distress, and this particular damsel was killed off, anyway, like Namor’s Lady Dorma, preventing character development.  In contrast, Sue Storm, Betty Brant, Jean Grey, Trish Tilby, and other super or non-super Marvelettes who lived or were killed off but brought back to life several times out of the 60s were morphed from Donna Reed and Marcia Brady clones to tougher femmes through the years.  Gwen Stacy never left the 60s.  But then this is Hollywood Marvel.  Perhaps there will be a Spider-Man 4 in which Gwen Stacy will mutate into something.

But that’s not all.  We have… the Sandman!  For convenience, they made him the same thug who killed Uncle Ben!  We also have Venom!  In the comic book, Spidey got the oozey symbiote when he helped the Fantastic Four, Avengers, X-Men, and other Marvel superheroes fight in the Secret Wars.  In space. The ooze followed him back, eventually binding with him until he started crossing to the dark side.  He finds out the symbiote was making like Glenn Close in Fatal Attractions.  He goes back to the Fantastic Four for help; Mr. Fantastic used a sonic thingamajig to drive the alien away, but the alien escapes and stealthily bonds back with Peter Parker again, so finally Spidey had to drive himself to the church tower so the loud bell clangs separate them again.  Film version: the symbiote fell from the sky, having hitchhiked on an asteroid chunk, and yadda-yadda, more or less the same thing happens plus the Gwen Stacy brilliant idea and minus the part with the Fantastic Four.

After Peter’s rejection, the symbiote eventually finds Eddie Brock, a tabloid beat guy and part-time body builder whose familiar physique/countenance is, on average, like so:

   

Naturally they picked Topher Grace to best bring the bad-assed hardknock to life:

Do you get how these money-makers make money now?  Maybe that’s why I’ll never make money the way the money-makers do.  Anyway, that picture above was circa Ashton B.D. (before Demi) and Wilmer B.L.L.A.M.M. (before Lindsay Lohan and Mandy Moore).  But again, for most of Hollywood Marvel, what’s looks got to do with it?  Take Jennifer Garner, she looks nothing like Elektra’s Greek bone structure, exotic eyes and olive skin, and she managed to work the damn sai anyway.  Wolverine’s a well-packed 5 feet 3 inches, and Hugh Jackman was taller than James Marsden’s Cyclops, and Cyclops was supposed to be 6 feet 3.  Storm should be a majestic 5′ 11″ who’s into wisdom and intone words exchanged in battle like Iman or Grace Jones would, and they give us wispy Halle Berry with a bad wig who chose Marilyn Monroe’s breathey “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” to project that she’s gonna whup goons’ butts.  Dr. Doom is Mr. Fantastic’s diabolical and most brilliant arch nemesis — it’s the battle of the nerds here — and how cool was it that he was played by that smarmy demon in Charmed, and got exposed to the same rays the FF went through and wielded electromagnetic powers as a result in the movie?  Then he goes down just like that?  Where’s the dignity here, people. 

Anyway, hope I can check out Spider-Man 3 soon, lots of good reviews from pals (but unfortunately, M, who’s a worse comic geek than anyone I know, opted out of the Friendster loop.  His reviews should be interesting.  Come back to the F’loop, M, come back!).  And what if there will be a Spidey 4?  What more can we expect?  Wait… I forgot we’re considering insane displacements here.  Bryce Dallas Howard said it’s possible Gwen’s a future girlfriend.  How about Gwen Stacy becoming the Black Cat!?  The original alter-ego, Felicia Hardy, may or may not figure in — maybe it will be Gwen’s alias.  Maybe Peter will be more screwed up because of Venom than he thought, go stalker on her and she’ll go under a witness protection program like Mary Jensen.  Who cares?  It’s the movies.  How about Jonathan Lipnicki or Mary-Kate Olsen bagging Carnage, and Paul Giamatti playing the Kingpin?  The possibilities boggle the mind.

Old-Themed New Year Week

I love this week.  Very quiet.  The locals are off for their New Year holidays and I get the whole office almost all to myself! 

Technically it’s no big to work even as I check out an imaginary tumbleweed that just rolled by as I unlock our workspace, since Big Daddy and Jean-Luc Picard continue to forge onwards in another continent and would actually appreciate an idiot who opted to take on the stuff they continue to dump while everyone else is in partying mode.  Another thing is the customs and other gateways to fun spots here tend to get mobbed by the locals who are drunk with holiday cheer.  It’s a unanimous vote of one.  I will stay put.

I have revived a deep love for Maria Callas.  Her career was short, compared to La Stupenda Joan Sutherland, but Callas is truly amazing… she had the voice. And while most of her counterparts were merely belting the bejeezus out of their diaphragms and vocal chords, Callas was dedicated to the art of presenting great music to the very best effect.  I heard her stuff from classical radio stations back in the days of Blue and White, but I really had nothing else to work with other than the entry on Callas in Collier’s Enclyclopedia.  National Bookstores didn’t have Callas biographies — there were, however, lots on the Kennedys, and Callas merely figured as the other woman in Jackie’s second marriage. Nobody dug opera that much with the exception of the eldest aunt (displaced during my wonder years) and uncle (non-bonding type).  It’s yet another reason to be grateful for access to other bookstores and the Internet! 

Maria Callas was physically heftier during the 40s and the early 50s when her singing was at its prime, but to do the lead dramatic roles justice, she decided to shed a lot of pounds, presenting her audience with probably the most stunning Medea, the most compelling Violetta, and the most tragic Lucia they’ve ever seen in their lives.  To my knowledge, she never agreed to sing English translations of anything non-English to begin with.  She was like, Tosca was written in Italian?  It stays Italian!… though she wasn’t averse to singing the songs in alternative European languages like she did in Callas a Paris.  Maybe opera loses intensity in English — imagine Carmen singing ‘Habanera’ like, “… If-you.  Don’t.  Love-me.  If-you.  Don’t.  Love-me, Iiiiiiiiii… LOVE YOU!…”

Many of her admirers and critics attributed the drastic weight loss to one of the reasons her singing was never the same in her later years — a sudden weakening of body muscles that aid her singing naturally affected the results.  Nevertheless, in spite of early retirement, Maria Callas is hailed as possibly the greatest of 20th-century sopranos, a force that revived the appreciation for and changed how people perceived opera music.

I was lucky enough to get my hands on some recordings of Callas teaching at Juilliard during her retirement — I’ll locate the book soon.  People have painted her to be a spitfire and the epitome of the ultimate diva, but I think she’s a diva more because she’s a perfectionist than because she was a bitch — other sopranos have been illogically bitchier than she was.  In one segment of the Juilliard sessions, she was telling a fledgeling baritone to understand his lyrics. Part of the conversation was something like this:

Maria Callas: Do you know what you are singing?

Fledgeling Baritone: Yes.

MC: Tell me, what were you singing?

FB: Cortigiani, vil razza dannata, per qual prezzo…

MC: Yes, yes, but what does it say?  What is he singing about?…

… ‘Per qual prezzo vendeste il mio bene,’ what’s he talking about here?  ‘At what price did you sell my…?’ Who is the ‘mio bene?’ he is talking about?

FB: ‘My sweetheart.’

MC: ‘Sweetheart’?  No.  [The character is] talking about his daughter.  ‘At what price did you sell my daughter?’…

…So in this singing you must show you are crying, but angry. [Sings a few lines to prove her point]  Do you understand?

To Fledgeling Baritone’s credit, ‘mio bene’ did translate to an endearment something like ‘my darling’ — he answered Callas literally, whereas Callas was stressing on the importance of complete understanding of the story in the song — in this case, it’s Rigoletto being bitterly distressed about his daughter Gilda’s abduction — to fully convey the singer’s projection of the character onstage.  So the dude either had very little idea what the words were — he was mumbling while Callas gave instructions — or he misunderstood his instructor (and vice versa).  Maybe he was also a little star-struck. 

Maria Callas wanted every inflection to transmit the emotions of the character; she even advised that singers can help the conductor improve the music’s pace to enhance the overall effect.  In the Callas a Paris video the diva takes center stage with a host of singers in the background as she performed some arias in her repertoire.  Without the standard opera costumes and sets, you’d think she’d just settle for singing with a straight face, like the tuxedo-ed Orfeo/Orphee, also in the background, who sang a few bars in her first song during the performance, but no… facial expressions befitting a sad, unwordly Eurydice and others were in fine form.  I had Callas looped for days.

I go home and my Lock & Seal containers are still my best friends; normally I stew meat over the weekend — adobo and nilaga are pretty popular since they can last a few days in the fridge and it’s really convenient making them.  Upon mealtime I heat a portion and sautee some vegetables, and there we go.  The silence in the neighborhood gets interrupted with occasional firecrackers set off by the shops below the apartment; this week is not so good for the laundry I hung to dry.

I haven’t been adventurous with DVDs of late, so to note what are also looping: Jane Austen adaptations!  I’ve yet to tire watching daily marathons of Sense And Sensibility (1995), Emma (1996), and Pride & Prejudice (2005) as I type away after chores are done.  Eek!  I like the later, more traditional adaptations because the chosen actors happen to be closer to what I imagine the characters to look like when I read the books.  Jane Austen stuff was probably how Sweet Valley High moments would be set in the late Georgian and Regency periods. 

Sense And Sensibility, of course, was the very first Ang Lee film featuring Western actors, and he did a superb job.  It blew my mind… a man from Taiwan directed an English period film!  A fine cast of actors, too, which included Emma Thompson (Elinor Dashwood), who did the Oscar-winning screenplay; Kate Winslet (Marianne Dashwood), Alan Rickman (Colonel Brandon), Hugh Grant (Edward Ferrars), and Tom Wilkinson (Mr. Dashwood).

I now find Emma stiff compared to the other two films, but it’s probably the closest portrayal of the way Austen wrote the book and Regency fashion’s (personally) unflattering empire-waisted gowns — Gwyneth Paltrow looked like a pregnant toothpick in some scenes.  The film’s also notable due to it having a revelation that Gwyneth can act with a credible English accent in place — other similarly English-accented performances were Sliding Doors and Shakespeare In Love, and these, with Emma, were her finest works beyond the head in the box gig.  I loved Alan Cummings (when did I never love Alan Cummings?) as the pompous Mr. Elton and Toni Colette as Emma’s naive protegee, Harriet Smith.  A happy surprise for me was the girl playing Jane Fairfax… a young Polly Walker!  Her name and identity barely registered the first time I saw this movie, but, ha ha ha.  She’s perfectly prim and proper here, and now she’s the perfectly rapacious, calculatingly promiscuous, and fabulously unscrupulous Atia of the Julii in Rome! 

My current favorite and addiction, though, is Pride & Prejudice, and I can’t help it, Keira Knightley was so right for the role.  Joe Wright, the director, was saying he was hesitant to cast Keira fearing she might be too pretty to play Elizabeth Bennett, but the book did say Lizzy was attractive in her own right, so what’s the problem here, Joe?  Mr. Collins here, instead of a big, fat, arrogant man in the book, is a terribly funny short guy (a brilliant Tom Hollander, who in turn played villain in another Keira starrer, Pirates Of The Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest), and the team behind P&P made it work.  Loved Matthew McFadyen’s restraint and dreamy voice for Darcy.  And the part where Darcy proposes for the first time after getting wet in the rain?  Big improvement over the original where the couple confronted each other in the Collins’s parlor.  I think this is one of the times I like the movie adaptation better than the book — some of Jane Austen’s paragraphs were too convoluted and would sound corny onscreen.  The screenplay writer did a very good job trimming and mashing together parts of the book for the end result.

Will someone tell me why it seems I’m caught in a time warp here?  I’d also plunked in Merchant-Ivory’s adaptation for E. M. Forsters’s A Room With A View and Curran’s film version of W. Somerset Maugham’s The Painted Veil (another adaptation I prefer over the book; Watts and Norton were awesome!).  I’d re-view Somewhere In Time for its sentimental value, only I sent that DVD home last year.

Once in a blue moon, ladies and gentlemen, and perhaps a calm before more storms, but let’s not think of stormy stuff, because, like I said.  It’s quiet around here, and I LOVE it.  No ear-splitting conversations in the background that visiting foreign customers would mistake for heated exchanges of Fu Manchu venom and not the expressions of good camaraderie they are.  Is there any way I can make this arrangement more frequent, if not permanent?  OK, e-mail messages downloaded.  MP3s, check; mug of tea, check; pencils, pens, and notebooks, check.  I wonder how long before the Big Heads change minds and sharpen axes yet again because I’m so looking forward to next New Year’s quiet week.

Wint O Green LifeSavers Are Scarce

And I want more.  They’re like a cross between energon cubes and catnip, except they’re round, with the hole in the middle.  How come all we have here are the tubes of fruity flavors and boring peppermints?  Import more of the spearminty flavor, please.

Smart move, they’re stifling the suspense for now by not talking.  You know, this should be standard practice.  Hopefully it’s catching.  And while it’s not likely I’m turning to Pollyannaism, I just want to enjoy a bit of quiet as everything falls into place.  Things will happen soon enough, and there was at time when a certain Physics adviser wisely advised us to shut up so we can solve the problems.  Makes sense.  So we ease into cruise mode — I guess they’ll just surprise us one day — but for now, it’s comforting somewhat to resume business as usual.  If additional comfort is needed, we turn to Mike Wazowski and the usual Fleetstreet stuff.

And there are things needed to be done before all four of us break from the huddle: a gunk of Glenn Frey From Oz’s legal stuff, a PowerPoint presentation, a print ad, a press release, a newsletter, a website, babysitting people who are no longer getting freebies, a video script, several chairs and an overhead swinging light bulb for possible interrogation seminars, and a set of pegs, cables, and duct tape for roping off our area.  Maybe peat, moss, and camouflage, to hide from incoming detour agents in Office Space (note to trademark and post our slogan on an overhead billboard: “Not now.” Or, “Don’t make another step.”  Or, “Look at the cow.”  Or, “We never liked the Fugees.”).

Twink is getting married (yay).  I am happy for her because I’ll always remember and make tangents from her answer on how she dealt with her biggest disappointment so far.  Twink’s boyfriend is a nice man with very kind eyes.  I made the guy’s acquaintance only this year on my birthday, around two months since Twink started working with Curly, Muffy, Jinkz, Aloysius, and me.  As it happened, the day was on a weekend, and DSTS and I decided on a quiet dinner for two.  On the way, Twink got on the bus we took.  She naturally has a perky personality, I guess, and talked about showing us her apartment, and maybe around her area if we liked, and she said her boyfriend will be there so she could introduce him to us, too.  So DSTS and I were like, what the heck, would you both join us for dinner?  My treat, of course, but we didn’t need to mention the occasion, and it was an interesting enough evening.  Afterwards we met Twink’s sister and brother-in-law at their apartment, who said we looked kinda young, which wasn’t helped by the fact I wore my sneakers, which I usually do especially after work.  Back home, that bit might probably tickle most people pink, but we’re here, and it’s usually not a compliment when people in China say you look young — alternative doubt-filled comment: you don’t look your age — when it’s said in relation to your work.  So later that evening DSTS and I discussed enhancing our age visually; I seriously considered growing a moustache and a beard, maybe sideburns.  And DSTS will let all his hair fall off, and he’ll walk like he has a bunion on one of his toes.

Last Sunday, the temperature took a drop as it tends to around the Mid-Autumn Festival.  It’s been pretty warm, though, probably the warmest September since I’ve been here.  And lately it’s been raining nonstop, and I took to putting some favorite notebooks, pens, and, on occasion, travel documents in Ziploc bags as to not repeat what we went through when DSTS had a soggy experience with his backpack containing our passports.  Twink filed for a leave of absence weeks before for today so she and her boyfriend can have wedding pictures taken.  But she was in the office this morning because the clouds were gray and there was a slight drizzle.  Then around 10 am to 1 pm, the sun peeked out of the clouds and for a while I thought she went ahead with the leave because we didn’t see her anywhere, but actually, she was kidnapped by Glenn Frey From Oz again to translate the legal stuff we were talking about. 

The general air in Office Space caused Twink to send for vibes from time to time if it was a good idea to file for an extra five days in addition to the October national holidays the locals were entitled to every year and not worry about anything.  She’s getting married after all, and need to go home, take care of documents filed to the government, visit the spiritual adviser recommended by the parents, consult the calendar some more, meet friends and greet relatives and get nice food and perhaps have a nice honeymoon, and girl, I know how you feel.  These with the sitch at work is kinda de ja vu for me, and work shouldn’t surprise us so much anymore.

Anyway, Big Daddy should be off again sometime soon, and hopefully we survive for the extra five days without Twink, who is a very far cry from Curly and in fact takes care of A LOT, from translations and reports to coordination and admin stuff.  We have to do something about Glen Frey From Oz, though. He’s getting a little too attached to her these days; he might fall apart during those five days. 

Plan lots and use available stuff wisely, we must.  On other mentionables, my hoard of relatively useless stuff now has audios of Chomsky on war and The Cure: MTV Unplugged; PDF files of books on sentence diagramming, direct mail marketing, advanced Excel, PowerPoint, and Acrobat Pro, The Island Of The Day Before and JLA: Secret Origins, and video files of The Flight Of Dragons, The Bandwagon, and Vertigo.

The hoard will soon have video files of The Cure: MTV Unplugged (seeing Robert Smith and Co. pluck strings, light candles, pound on bongos and blow on kazoos is so much more satisfying than just listening to the MP3s) and what is supposedly a William Faulkner adaptation retitled as The Long Hot Summer.  This is before Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, and Paul Newman married Joanne Woodward after making this movie.  Also starring Lee Remick, Orson Welles, Angela Lansbury, and… hum.  I forgot the name of the actor who played Joanne Woodward’s brother, Orson Welles’s son, and Lee Remick’s husband.  Must remember names, or must content oneself with long substitutes.

Banana Fana Fo Fums

Fangirl alert is on for the months that will bring more of mainstream comicbook titles to widescreen yet again.  Spidey’s cast is a proven winner, can’t wait for that.  X-Men snagged its heavyweights, but too many disappointments outweigh the pros.  I’ll be looking out for the installment for old time’s sake, though — still the undefeated Melrose Place Marvel title in my opinion.  But the new Superman movie should be interesting… Kevin Spacey is Lex!  How whee is that?  I’m finally feeling the love after going through all those years with Icemagistrate running down details every free period that Nicholas Cage was gonna turn up in tights any moment, receding hairline and all, and directed by Tim Burton.  Yiii.  I mean, Tim Burton films are GREAT, and so are films with Tim Burton in it, but Nicholas “Bella bambina, I ditched my real surname ’cause I can be a Hollywood box office king ’cause of my talent and not family connections” Cage as Superman?  Aargh.  Okay, I liked Matchstick Men (because of Sam Rockwell), The Family Man (because of Tea Leoni) and Lord Of War (because Jared Leto was in it and no matter how many doped up guys he plays on film, I’m afraid to me he will be, forever more, Jordan Catalano, that stupid but adorable ass). 

Then again I said the same thing about Michael “Beetlejuice” Keaton and somehow Tim made him work (and Beetlejuice is a classic).  But dudes, could you honestly visualize Nicholas Cage as the Man?  He is either mopey or an asshole in films.  Superman is neither; more importantly, he should have a nice hairline.  How would Cage look with a cowlick drooping on his airport for a forehead?  It’s just… no.  And never had I feelings of utter loathing for the Salkinds (aka Shuster and Siegel’s Merciless Milkers) until then — it was as if sacking John Haymes Newton (he was a great poster boy!  Honest!) from Adventures Of Superboy and replacing him with Gerard Christopher wasn’t enough pain already. 

As for what’s currently available, I don’t follow Smallville, too many personal issues to work out — wussy Clark’s too luscious, Lex is too involved, and Lana Lang’s some sort of schizoid.  You may not agree with me but listed below are my personal preferences.  And much as I respect the classics, I can only go back as far as the 70s for Superman.

Best Superman film/TV incarnation so far: Christopher Reeve, Superman I, II.  People were a bit skeptical when they announced him as the next Man of Steel, what with his delicate classical features and all.  But he showed them.  By the time III and IV came out, the special effects people were on arrested development, affecting Supes’s action sequences.

Best Clark Kent film/TV incarnation so far: Christopher Reeve, Superman I, II.  The geekiness.  The voice.  The dorky suit and hat.  He’s got them all down pat.

Best Lois Lane film/TV incarnation so far: Teri Hatcher, The Adventures Of Lois & Clark.  She’s a big pain, yes, but she convinced everybody that Clark would be stupid not to be crazy about her.  A nice surprise for everyone given the most prominent of Teri Hatcher’s TV roles prior to this Lois was Penny, the airhead in MacGyver.

Best Lex Luthor film/TV incarnation so far: Michael Rosenbaum, Smallville. He’s been badly twisted by his scary dad, runs circles around the people, and is capable of cold and calculative murder.  Not exactly brilliant yet, but hey, he’s just in his twenties here.  Lotsa potential.  I was seriously considering John Shea (The Adventures Of Lois & Clark) — a megalomaniac disguised as Metropolis’s Bruce Wayne, and Sherman Howard (The Adventures Of Superboy) for the insane creepiness factor.  But John was too debonair and Michael’s Lex’s violence factor beat him out, and Sherman’s goofy factor was bigger than he was creepy.  His Lex combined with the show’s younger jock version (Scott Wells) now reminds me of Stiffler.   

Worst Superman incarnation so far: Dean Cain, The Adventures of Lois & Clark. He makes me feel his discomfort every time he dons the tights.

Worst Clark Kent film/TV incarnation so far: Gerard Christopher, The Adventures Of Superboy. Haven’t seen a smarmier-looking Clark than this version.

Worst Lois Lane film/TV incarnation so far: Margot Kidder, Superman I, II.  Okay, I’m… being shallow here.  And maybe a jigger influenced by the toothless loon episode.  But this is classic comicdom, and people are entitled to be shallow!  Who said acting ruled — just look who producers cast as Storm!  And Barb Wire!  Anyway.  I first watched Margot as Lois in II, when my mom… or was that Aunt Bebop?… who with a couple of friends managed to convince the theater staff that I was old enough to watch the movie with them and not throw a tantrum for snacks, or pee during the show, or ask too many questions about the film that will elicit passionate shushing or worse.  The memory is hazy.  I do remember the Goth-Punk Trio scaring the hell out of me, especially the woman.  She picked this guy up… CRASH!  And she seemed to loom over me during her close ups… even her make up looked painful.  Anyway, after deciding that Christopher Reeve really is Superman, my then parental guidance agent said, “Look, Jill.  That’s Lois Lane.”  That’s Lois Lane?  I didn’t like her.  Soon after that an uncle rented a video of Superman I and I still didn’t like her.  Hard as I tried, I couldn’t root for her.  I had more sympathy for the crevice that swallowed her up.  It’s a similar reaction to when I watched Lori Petty in A League Of Their Own… okay, I get it — she’s vulnerable underneath that prickly exterior… but durnit, girl, STOP WHINING. 

In Kidder’s case I think all the swooning in II got to me.  And it’s not that Kidder’s not pretty or sexy — here she demonstrates with a pose, if you please (and try Googling for her images why don’t cha).  Was it the intense stare?  Those bangs?  Not sure.  Weird.  The processors just couldn’t fully equate why Christopher Reeve’s Clark/Superman should bother rewinding Earth (must be the same writers who were responsible for the Somewhere In Time space continuum concept) to get her unsquished.  At all.

I can’t speak for the Lois in Smallville ’cause I stopped watching the show by the time she got there. 

Worst Lex Luthor film/TV incarnation so far: A tie.  Gene Hackman, Superman II; and Scott Wells, The Adventures Of Superboy.  Many may not agree with me on Gene, who’s an actor I like.  But he shouldn’t have accepted this role.  He was dressed more like The Joker than the Lex, he had hair that didn’t dramatically fall off at some point, and he was about as diabolically scary as Richard Pryor in III.  Lex is the arch enemy, dangit, and he was NOT portrayed with respect in the big screen!  In fairness, Gene’s Lex Superman I did not get enough meat in the role like everyone else ’cause it was a movie in the introduction mode (the most exciting thing for me there was probably Clark running next to the train), and then in the second Superman movie Lex was more of just a foil for the scary exiled trio, the stars of the show.  They were so cool, and the Phantom Zone mirror prison thing was so bizarre that the idea was rehashed for Supergirl.

As for Scott’s college-aged Lex in The Adventures of Superboy, he was just plain idiotic.

Will definitely be checking how Routh, Bosworth, and Spacey bat up.  Haven’t seen soap actor Brandon Routh anywhere but as one of the college boys who picked up Madeline and Louise at the Bangles concert on Gilmore Girls, first season.  Kate was in Blue Crush, Remember The Titans, and Win A Date With Tad Hamilton!  I hope Bryan Singer followed the script in which Diana makes a cameo picking up Clark at the  Daily Planet for a little talk at Stonehenge.  That’d be a nice touch. 

Then again I’m not expecting much from the man who chucked several pegs off the X-Men characters’ IQs, and… is that James Marsden again?  Kind of attached to Singer now, is he.  And he’s part of a love triangle AGAIN.  Let’s review his repertoire: Second Noah, Disturbing Behavior, X-Men, and The Notebook.  Just what is it that makes you so love-triangley, Marsden? 

My comments for now: Supe’s kinda bulging slightly on the sides (whoo, luuuv handles), the red parts are toned, and the costume seems a bit out of proportion.  What’s the tiny ‘S’ for?  Small?  And cheese and crackers, there’s another ‘S’ near his crotch.

I recently upgraded my secret identity to reflect that DSTS and I are indeed joined at the hip and the National Geographic Channel.  Personally I prefer using my own ID, but we both kind of belong to an archaic system in which government and non-government organizations might find lotsa loopholes to make me jump through upon the coming of a heinous age of Arroyopocalypse in an alternate reality future.  This just won’t do!  People deserve to have their welfare protected, to be informed that their middle names are NOT their mothers’ maiden names so those chowderheads at the embassy will stop making me write mine like so for my passport, and to have standards improved so people can opt for the luxury of an extra and unnecessary black Macbook to toy with.  Anybody with great moral fiber and the brains to amend the Charter, please raise your hand.

[SFX: Buzzing flies]

Heniwoo, my maiden name is now my new middle name.  Guess what the proletarian officials at the border will now insist I write under ‘given names’.  Teachers, hope ya stop messing with the definition of middle names so we’ll have cool and enlightened government officials in a decade or two.  My mother gave me a four-letter name for a reason, glammit. 

I’m on the lookout for a manually operated, downsized version of the food processor, the one I usually see in home TV shopping channels, ’cause I want to indulge in fresh salsa anytime I want to without having to heat the mixture every time I make it to kill the germs — and most of the tang — in the process (plus the chopping board at staff quarters must be all of eight years old.  Steelwool or no, there must be some life forms persisting to flourish in there). 

Part of the fun is the hunt.  I’m all up for flavor and am open to live a little dangerously to attain the taste… just not that dangerously (warily eyes the first-ever mouse, the creepy-crawly kind, recently caught in the proletarian aluminum rat trap).  I also regard food processors utilizing complicated sets of blades with extreme caution , especially once Yayis regaled us with accounts of gushing blood upon getting slightly punctured (or was it her mom) with a similar thingamajig during dishwashing, but out of concern for the palate’s wellbeing, why the heck not try risking some hemoglobin spillage every now and then, I say.  Sure.  Let’s do it. Mini food processor, if you’d be so kind as to show yourself in Poor, Poor Village, I’d be much obliged to ya.

In A Hollywood Classics Funk

I am in a rut at work… plodding on, yes, but in a rut nontheless, because… have you ever heard of work really inspiring you?  Dudes?  No.  Wait!  Work?  Work, honey, I wuv you, I need you, I’d absolutely dah without you. But when you come the wishy washy lead-ons and a string of sucky colleagues attached, I’m bound to have some days when I don’t miss you so much.  It’s not you, babe, it’s me.  And I want to work on my conceptual Voltron.  And I want to watch comfortable movies. 

Christmas is in the air, but here in Poor, Poor Village we have stencilled Merry Christmases on window panes.  Some of them inverted.  Anywho, I’m more of a Scrooge kind of person until the very last week, I dunno, probably because I associate rush jobs with months around the year-end.  So I tend to look for comfort movies in addition to good food and pillows.  Anyway, what is it with December and old Technicolor movies — musical or no?  Though I do rule out Bing Crosby Christmas movies and similar because I can only tolerate that much snow.  Look at The Sound Of Music.  It was sweeping at the start and then they had to run to Switzerland in winter, which made the movie drag on until the last scene shot from the helicopter. 

In addition, December is the Metro Manila Film Festival month.    Most of these movies are experimental, and that doesn’t do so much for my comfortable factor.  So when one is looking into feel good movies, it ain’t happening unless you rent.

Old movies and Christmas may be weird combination, I know, but this one goes way back when I was a kid and RPN 9 had this habit of rerunning The Sound Of Music, The King And I, and South Pacific on same timeslots for two consecutive days on a weekend.  T2jim and Dozer_021 were too young to sear these over-the-top color extravaganzas to their relatively younger brain cells.  I don’t know… most movies in that era were just so wholesome, ergo the comfort, and they are also quaintly dated, ergo the tons of snark and mock possibilities.  I mean, isnt’ mocking fun?

Then there was this time we lived with Elder Aunt, Tactical Genius, who was a teenager during the Hollywood Technicolor and Cinemascope years, so she had this modest collection of 50s and 60s films in VHS format, mostly the popular stuff from Audrey Hepburn (bracketing her on-screen partners Gregory Peck, Humphrey Bogart, Rex Harrison, Cary Grant), Gene Kelly (bracketing co-stars Cyd Charisse, Leslie Caron, and former child star Donald O’Connor), Fred Astaire — famous partner of Ginger’s — and of course, the one exception in Elder Aunt’s favorite cultured persona-ed, all-star cast: Elvis Presley the tease, of the swiveling hips and dyed raven locks (covering Ann-Margret and a dozen other starlets not worth noting).  Elvis’s black-and-white films are by far the best, though, but he sings in every one of them.  Why couldn’t he have something similar to Sinatra’s Maggio in his lifetime, hum?  Wait.  Hey, anyone, vouch for me please.  Did Sinatra sing as Maggio?  I forgot.

You know what?  I wish I look like Cyd Charisse then.  She was gorgeous, she danced divinely… I couldn’t dance to “Agustus Gloop” even if you paid me. And gawd, those legs!  I’m really, really jealous.  Oh-kayy.   How about a before and after.  Cyd is what, 76 now?  Hum.  We have a very evolved Cyd.

Anyway, getting back, I was introduced to Cyd Charisse fandom because of the Gene Kelly musical, Singin’ In The Rain.  I love this film!  Another personal treat here was seeing Princess Leia’s biological mother.  I wonder if this was pre- or post- the Elizabeth Taylor man-snatching thing.  God, Jean Hagen really cracked me up there as the hilariously cacophonous Lina Lamont: “No-no-no!”  “Yes-yes-yes!”

How about, “Ew, Pee-eh, yew shewdn’t hev come!”

Or, or…

Lina Lamont: “I keent steend’im!” 

Snooty diction coach: “‘I cahn’t stahnd him.’ Round tones, round tones.  ‘Cahn’t.’” 

LL: “Keent.”

SDC: “Caahnt.”

LL: “Kee-eeeent.”

And of course one of the best ones yet:

“(Very shrill) I make more money than… Calv’n Coolidge… put together!”

Bwa ha ha ha!  Jean Hagen delivered some of the funniest and funniest-sounding lines there.  Okay, I’m so officially a dweeb. 

Cyd’s short bit as the silent but potent femme fatale in Gene Kelly’s Broadway Melodies sequence (“Gotta dance!”) was so hot in a classy way.  We should really take notes here.  This role led to another musical favorite, Brigadoon — see it if only for the priceless spectacle of ballet guys singing tenor stuff and traipsing around the set with all the fake heather, in skirts.  Elder Aunt, Tactical Genius was a Fred Astaire fan as well, a fact reinforced with an Audrey Hepburn pairing in Funny Face. Fred was probably Cyd’s greatest onscreen dancing partner after Ginger Rogers.  Did I mention I’ve also watched Elder Aunt’s copy of The Band Wagon? Sadly, it’s my only taste of an Astaire-Charisse pairing so far.  Clearly we need more creative bootleggers here.  Where do we orient these guys on the classic fluffs?

Cyd was a minor player in black and white 40s musicals, so I really don’t care much for the Ricardo Montalban dancy stuff — unless I get inspired and fool around with shallow ballet for an hour or so, probably.  So I’m trying to get some DVDs with special features — if those who made the film are still alive to talk about it that is, but mostly they get the Paris Hilton-y offspring that hog all the royalties that came about not because of their own talent — on films starring Kelly, Charisse, Astaire, and Caron in the most bad-assed clashing colors: 

1. Singin’ In The Rain – brief Cyd Charisse segment but great casting; absolutely loved the performances by Jean Hagen, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O’Connor when he was not trying too hard, making me want to pop him with a pin.  I even liked that bit part by Madge Blake, otherwise known as Dick Grayson’s aunt? nanny? in that campy 60s Batman television series.  And need we still mention that signature scene which Huggies (or was that Pampers) cutely ripped off?  The umbrella has always been Gene Kelly’s most popular dance partner.

2. An American In Paris – Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, and lots and LOTS of ballet and Gershwin. I had to hum “Our Love Is Here To Stay” for two months after seeing this movie.  Token French guy, because they are in Paris.  Also, have you ever heard anything wilder than a GI staying behind in Paris to paint?  Crazy. 

3. Gigi – Leslie Caron and Maurice Chevalier… kind of resembles My Fair Lady, but with French people.  I don’t care much for the songs but it was… charming.  Holy cow, Gigi was training to be a courtesan?!  Huh.  I didn’t get that then.  I should’ve read the book.  See, that’s how wholesome these movies were… they euphemized almost every element they can get away with euphemizing you can have your movie and take your kid to it, too, and watch about little girls training to be courtesans.  Eat your heart out, Arthur Golden.  Props to Amy Sherman Palladino for working in “Thank Heaven For Little Girls” in Rory’s hilarious debutante fan dance scene for Season Two.  I hated that song and the accompanying sequence in Gigi until that Gilmore Girls episode.

4. Brigadoon – where Cyd Charisse is Fiona, the centuries-old lass whom Gene Kelly’s tap dancing 20th-century swain falls hard for.  Brigadoon would have been too saccharine-y for good taste if not for Van Johnson’s hilarious “seduction” scene, complete with sheep and the amorous but desperate sheperdess who just refuses get a clue.  The film featured very fetching green and yellow dresses the women can conveniently ballet in, and men in skirts without Mel Gibson’s woad overkill.  I was actually bent on naming a baby girl Fiona because of this film… that was, until Shrek came along –  the green Fiona might have more memory retain for future brats who make fun of poor defenseless Fionas originally meant to be identified with graceful pop ballet and sappy, dated songs, like “Waiting For My Dearie”. 

5. The Band Wagon – This, my friends, is dancing with style.  Cheek-to-cheek, too. The only thing I can complain about this is Fred Astaire clearly looks old compared to Cyd, similar to the effect of playing opposite Audrey Hepburn.  What can I say?  I’m shallow. But by Ginger, Fred and Cyd were funny and made the chemistry thing work.  And Cyd can act beyond the fake Scottish accent in Brigadoon!  Hooray.  She should, after having to wait for almost a whole decade before being given speaking parts by those idiot movie producers.

6. Silk Stockings – I haven’t watched this so this is first on my wishlist, provided I can find it.  Another Fred and Cyd film, a remake of Ninotchka in Cole Porter.

7. It’s Always Fair Weather – Another Gene Kelly-Cyd Charisse starrer I’m wanting to see, directed by Gene Kelly.

8. Funny Face – Audrey and Fred do a few turns, rhapsodize after the usual love mumbo-jumbo, and live happily ever after.  It’s extra interesting because Audrey originally trained to be a ballerina, but because perhaps in part of malnourishment during her childhood in Europe brought about by World War II, she did not develop a good stamina for the demands of ballet as a profession.  Okay, I repeat I really don’t have the usual romantic thrill I get when seeing ethereal or sultry looking stars being paired with the likes of Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire (the most believable pairing I’ve seen with Gene Kelly was Debbie Reynolds and Jean Hagen — ’cause they’re more cute and funny than beautiful, and above all, accessible to the regular Joe gene plays most of the time — and for Fred, well, of course it’s Ginger Rogers, with whom he doesn’t look too old).  They’re Heavenly Dance Partners, that’s all.  But it’s a joy to watch them dance, definitely.  Anyway.  The best part for me here is Audrey’s character worked in a library.  Librarians are so cool (hee).

Okay, those stars mentioned above are more general patronage so they should be comparatively easier to find.  Some shout for me to go and order on the ‘Net already.  Dudes, the pleasure, in part, comes with the search for the goodies itself.  Plus I’m trying to be economical.

On a lesser I-must-have degree, I present the Kim Novak movies wish list — based on experience, much more difficult to find back home, because the Pinoy market never cared much for Kim movies compared to those of Elizabeth, Ava, and Marilyn.  Just check out your local Astrovision, man.  I’ve scoured what DVD underworlds are available here, and in two years I find out the same thing applies to Chinese in Poor, Poor Village area.  Kim’s real name happens to be Marilyn.  And Cyd Charisse’s is Tula Ellice Finklea — I don’t blame that Cyd is probably the most aliased performer in her day… at least four stage names! I mean, Finklea sounds like something neighborhood kids probably called Christie Brinkley when she was still a brown-noser.  ‘Tula’ is like a bonus.  What were the parents thinking? 

Kim Novak perfected the ice-princess-on-the-surface act.  She had a coolly quiet speaking voice I preferred.  She hadn’t maintained the consistency after the golden decade, though… I think she’s more of a foil kind of actor rather than someone who holds the show together.  I mean they tried with Bell Book & Candle, which was a predominantly Kim vehicle opposite James Stewart.  That didn’t hold up well compared to Vertigo, another James and Kim movie which James Stewart carried more than Kim did.  Or maybe lots of movies especially after BB&C were just plain stinkeroos.  So here’s the wishlist of movies that have Kim Novak in common:

1. Picnic - William Holden is Hal Carter, the uncouth bad boy Kim Novak’s Madge Owens falls for.  William is okay, I guess, but they said the role was originally offered to Marlon Brando, and Brando declined.  Brando was supposedly hell moody to work with.  But dudes, Hal Carter had his shirt taken off a lot in the story, and boy, what I would do to see Marlon Brando’s not-yet-flabby pecs in color.  I imagine his balking may have to do with that part where Madge and Hal danced to “Moonglow”…does Brando look like the dancing, preening type?  I’ve still to acquire my Brando films back when  he was still cute and all, but anyone here ever saw Brando dance in a really sexy way when he was still a studmuffin?  Lemme know.  I actually read Picnic the play years before being able to watch the movie version — one of my aunts or uncles bought a yellow paperback edition which I found in my grandfather’s stack of musty books when I was a high school freshman.  About four or five years later, Radio Mindanao Network was testing its channel frequency by airing classic movies.  It was because of this that I got to know about the Kim Novak movies — there would be a Kim Novak night, a Frank Sinatra night, an Elvis Presley night, a James Dean night, a Julie Andrews night.  And we stayed with Elder Aunt, Tactical Genius about this time, too.  Anyway, I loved the Moonglow scene.  I originally imagined that scene in a stilty, Mr. Roboto kind of way, if that was possible in those days — because it’s not like I majored with the arts of Terpsichore, mmm’kay, and the play’s script details were not very specific so as to open the scene to all possible interpretations by stage actors, I guess.  But the instrumental music in the movie was just perfect.  And William and Kim got the effect of barely contained longing for each other just right.

2. Pal Joey – Joey (Frank Sinatra) suckers an ex-burlesque dancer turned rich widow Vera, played with bitchy relish by Rita Hayworth, into falling in love with him mainly so he can live in style and finance his dream nightclub, Chez Joey.  In the process he falls for Linda, the newbie showgirl who’s really just a nice girl in a place like this.  Rumor has it that real-life player Frank Sinatra dated both Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak, though some sources say Kim’s dates were just publicity dates very in vogue that time to boost a rising starlet’s media popularity.  I think for all the cringe inducing moments (Frank’s Joey zinging aces at the expense of his “broads”), this movie was generated enough buzz as Kim Novak was originally groomed by her Columbia Studios’ management to replace Rita Hayworth, who was becoming very difficult to work with, as the studio’s main female talent.  Also, when she was younger, Rita Hayworth played the role of Linda English on stage — Kim Novak’s role in this version.  Featuring the maudlin classics “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” (Rita) and “My Funny Valentine” (Kim) and the snappy “The Lady Is A Tramp” (Frank). Absolutely K-L-A-S-Y.

3. The Man With The Golden Arm – Frank Sinatra’s interesting portrayal about a drummer hooked on speed.  Kim Novak locks him up in a room while he writhes in agony.  Yes there was this sort of thing in this era no matter what your folks told you.  Black and white and nitty gritty.  Not comfortable.  Rare to find in Manila.  Has Kim Novak in it.

4. Vertigo – James Stewart stars as yet another Alfred Hitchcock private eye who sees double on this suspenseful masterpiece.  This story differs from the rest in the batch because most are happy musicals, and though some, like Picnic, leaves a sad feeling (Madge inevitably heading for a fate similar to her mother’s), but you get to hope for possibilities for the character (Madge walking on to look for Hal)… like maybe it wouldn’t turn out so bad.  You know?  The Man With The Golden Arm was mostly depressing but the loser is liberated in the end.  With Vertigo, well, as expected of Hitchcock’s films, it takes you for a ride, puts one over you, temporarily makes you hope only to find the story is resolved with a very morbid aftertaste that leaves you shaken and disturbed.  Talk about extreme psychotherapy!  And I can’t find it anywhere.  And it has Kim Novak in it.  And she gets to wear Edith Head!  And I want my own copy no matter what.  Psycho be damned, I happen to like showering.

5. Bell, Book, & Candle – The last gasp after Kim’s royal flush of blockbuster movies… I have to admit I watched it because James Stewart was in it, reprising their Vertigo team-up, but in less paranoia.  The trouble is it’s not as interesting.  And I hated how Kim Novak’s pencilled eyebrows and pale lipstick photographed in color for this movie.

6. The Eddie Duchin Story – This is kind of similar to the concept of Till The Clouds Roll By, only that one featured Oscar Hammerstein III’s true-to- er… romanticized… story. This musical — more of piano music than transitions from stage scene to stage scene and third-tiered actors bursting into song in the middle of brewing coffee until you get dizzy from all those clouds rolling by — is loosely based on the life of a widowed composer and here it’s shown his son Peter shared his talent… I don’t know if that’s a fact, what the hell do I know about the real Duchins?  Featuring Eddie Duchin’s songs, like the title says, and he gets to marry again, a girl who resembles Kim Novak. 

Here we have the random pieces with none to minor actor connect-the-dots thingy:

1. Seven Brides For Seven Brothers – really cool macho ballet, if you go for that thing.  Billy Elliott’s first dance instructor could’ve found him a copy, just for variety’s sake, you know… because life is more than sticking with tutus.  I just want to say, really cool barnraising sequence in 7B47B.  We have seven uncultured, big and strapping brothers, first shown in manly and messy Ozark-y splendor and sporting alphabetical Bible names — the sixth guy was called Frank, short for Frankincense.  Howard Keel and Jane Powell lead the ensemble of hopping boots and swirling petticoats.  When I saw this, there’s this bride character, Dorcas, who was credited as Julie Newmeyer, and like a loon I was thrilled because it’s another alias for Julie Newmar!  The original Catwoman in the Adam West Batman!  And she has more hair here!  As in To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything — Julie Newmar! How whee is that (Just shut up.  Okay?  So I have problems about getting sedated for Six Degrees To – stuff). 

2. An Affair To Remember – Ladies, if you were weaned on the Warren Beatty-Annette Bening version before this original starring the great Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, get ready to make notes.  I mean, true, Katharine Hepburn was a more plucky grandma in the remake, but do cut that grotto church and those mantilla lace thingies some slack.  Cary Grant was in it, for Pete’s sake.  Nobody talks to girls with that look the way Cary Grant did anymore.  And sure, Annette Bening’s Terry teaching the kindergarten kids a Beatles song shows good taste, but those original kids lining up in front of the classroom with the “program”?  Beyond words.  And the Grant-Kerr chemistry is way hotter than Beatty and Bening’s onscreen stuff.  Witty repartee?  Intellectual banter?  Mostly fallacies in real life, both of them… but Grant and Kerr and talking about things and the you-go-first-no-you-go scenes sent me. 

3.  Oklahoma! – This is the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical with the haziest brain cell in my head, so I’m really looking for a good copy to get on re-memorizing the details of the surrey with the fringe on top.  Hey, this brings back The Fifth Dimension’s “Stone Soul Picnic” to me again.  It’s a song written by Laura Nyro.  A surrey is an old buggy, used around the turn of the century, but exactly what did that 60s vocal group mean by “to surrey” (Can you surrey / Can you picnic / Whoa, whoa)?  I can assume, but an exact interpretation is such a useless thing for me to do.  And coveted.  Anyway, this is one of the classics I’d like to get reacquainted with.  I mean, even Hugh Jackman saw the sense of doing that musical in Broadway.  That counts for something, right?  Right?

4. A Many Splendored Thing – Okay, Janet Leigh plays Han Soo-Yin, a Eurasian doctor in Hong Kong in love with William Holden’s war journalist character, in a film most definitely one of Wong Kar-Wai’s inspirations.  Boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, World War II bombings break out, boy dies.  Girl gets to publish their story for Hollywood to cannibalize.  The director could’ve included that bit about writing the screenplay for the movie, too, so AMST would have the option not to end.  An interesting interpretation of The Ring concept.  And hey, I’m a sap for kids who’re multiracial, pass for medical practice, date guys who are not necessarily Chinese, and write books of different genres in English.  And it featured Janet with her eyelids taped.  It’s a useless story to many people I know, but I like it.  That’s about it.

5. Giant – The one with Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean in it.  Man, this is the only James Dean film I was able to watch and I found he really was scamming off Marlon Brando’s style.  And Rock really had the most charming dimpled smile, alas a great loss for womankind.  Who’s the idiot who casted Bob Seeger as his son?  The film in a nutshell: hyped up Texas soap operatic saga told in 50s Hollywood format, with lots of cowboy hootin’, ugly extras, copious oil, and blowing up issues to Cinemascope proportions.  Great landscapes, loaded with moral stuff.  Remember to bring your Values Education book and cross off things as each sequence comes and goes. 

6.  Calamity Jane – Of course I can’t mention Rock Hudson without bringing up super pal and soul mate Doris Day.  Here, Doris Day plays the historical frontier woman who lives in a place where women are scarce.  She’s one of the boys, and soon enough her friends get lonely, so she was assigned to go to the town (or was it a city) to ask a very popular stage actress to perform for Calam’s friends.  The stage actress she got was in fact the stage actress’s maid, but she passed for the stage actress.  Of course the standard utter bedlam ensued when every guy, including the one Calam was crushing on, competed for the new girl’s attention!  In the course of the film, Calamity Jane transform from a rough-riding adventurer to a skirt-wearing belle and stuns the audience with “Once I Had A Secret Love” after the build-up scene.  May not be Doris Day’s best but it brought me the most laughs.

7. Bye, Bye, Birdie – What’s the story, morning glory? What’s the tale, nightingale?  Make sense out of that and you’ll do just fine throughout the film.  This film was released in ’63 but the story took place in 1960… so let’s just go along with it.  Certainly has the 50s feel to it.  Here, Dick Van Dyke is Albert, an agent-slash-composer who has yet to sell a hit pop single so he can marry his girlfriend Rose De Leon, played by Janet Leigh.  Say, isn’t Jamie Lee’s mom a very flexible actor in those days?  She played a Caucasian who was stabbed to death by Norman Bates, a Eurasian girl in A Many Splendored Thing, and a sassy Latina in this film.  Okay, it might’ve been easier to type that bit as ‘agent/composer’, but ‘agent-slash-composer’ wins because it’s more time consuming.  I so love to make my wrist suffer.  Back to the story. Albert is a mama’s boy and has to get the marriage plans past his domineering mother.  Albert proposes a song for Conrad Birdie, a character loosely based on Elvis Presley, the teen idol who signs up for the army. Rose helps him attempt a shoot or bust publicity featuring “One Last Kiss”, which Conrad Birdie will sing to one lucky girl plucked from the Conrad Birdie fan club.  Bobby Rydell and Ann-Margret star as the squeaky clean teens (though Ann-Margret is a tad too curvy here to be fifteen) whose puppy love shall be severely tested by the diabolocal appeal of Conrad Birdie.  Who’s squeaky clean by today’s standards, really?  Anyway, I’d like to comment Bobby Rydell looks too much of a geek for a womanly looking fifteen year old girl.  I don’t care if he was a swoon-worthy crooner then.  Ann-Margret would move on to finer things, like an affair and a lifelong friendship with the real Elvis Presley (Viva Las Vegas, 1964).  And you know what, Bye, Bye, Birdie was remade with Chynna Phillips as Kim and Jason Alexander as Albert sometime in the late 90s? Early 00s?  Which is whatever.  Never mind. 

So.  Those will have to be enough personally comforting lunacy for now.  When I get home, I am gonna sift through what stuff we have, because old movies are my kind of beer for these kind of days.  I’m also not so taken with beer, anyway.  Did I mention I was a dweeb?  Who prefers not to go out in December.  Happy holidays and merry Metro Manila Film Festival to you lucky, normal people.