Wiendish Fitch

The emperor said it best: "You don't meet a girl like that every dynasty!" In The Best Years of Our Lives, when Peggy (Teresa Wright) announces to her astonished parents her intent to break up Fred Derry (Dana Andrews)'s marriage, she lectures them that they shouldn't judge her, that they don't know what his marriage is like, because their marriage has always been so darned happy and easy. Her mother, Milly (Myrna Loy) then offers this gentle but powerful rebuttal, along with Peggy's father, Al (Fredric March): "We never had any trouble." How many times have I told you I hated you and believed it in my heart? How many times have you said you were sick and tired of me; that we were all washed up? How many times have we had to fall in love all over again? One, it's one of the most beautiful testaments on the reality of even the best marriages, and, also, unlike today's movie parents, they don't take their daughter's crap lying down and they get the final word.

She's a very good Cinderella... a good, traditional Cinderella. If you go in expecting Danielle Redux, you will be sorely disappointed.

Since you guys were talking about Magnificent Obsession (the 1954 one), may I take the time to admit that I un-ironically like, even love, that movie? Don't get me wrong, I'm not blind to its faults: it is melodramatic, it is over the top, I'm aware Douglas Sirk didn't like it much and never took it that seriously, but you know what? I don't care. As someone who hates living in a world where nearly everyone in Hollywood demands that we forgive Roman Polanski (nope, sorry, not happening, not for me), where young women earnestly proclaim that "Chris Brown can hit [me] any time", where the Boston Marathon Bomber makes the cover of Rolling Stone instead of his victims or the police and paramedics who aided in the aftermath, I like that Magnificent Obsession is about an asshole who becomes a better person. I don't know, maybe I'm just a pious blowhard, but, looking past its flaws and Sirk-ian gloss, I actually find Magnificent Obsession's moral kind of appealing and refreshing. I also really like Jane Wyman as Helen. She truly makes you care for her. I know she was an Oscar winner, but I think Wyman is underrated as an actress. And I think it's mean how people sneer that she's "too old and unattractive" for Rock Hudson. No one ever says anything about leathery Cary Grant wooing the likes of Deborah Kerr, Leslie Caron, or Audrey Hepburn (all young enough to be his daughters, just for the record), so I don't see why it's so ridiculous for Wyman, who was only a little over a decade than Hudson, to win the man. I will be shallow and admit her hairdo in the movie isn't doing her favors, but we can't blame her for that. I think Wyman looked nicer without bangs and with longer hair (like in Pollyanna).

Great choices, Spartan Girl. Ever After is my favorite Cinderella adaptation, and my personal "Hell yeah!" moment is when Danielle punches out Marguerite. Let's face it, don't you think, in too many Cinderella adaptations, the evil stepmother and stepsisters get off way too easily? If you're an abusive bully, you should get whatever shabby, well-deserved karma that comes your way. And, oh, Trading Places never gets old, especially the great Ralph Bellamy's priceless "My God... we're ruined!" (cue dramatic heart attack) and Don Ameche's shrill, panicky, outraged reaction (it took a lot of coaxing to get him to say "Fuck him!!"). It's always fun to see older legends play off younger talents, no?

May I sit at the "fart and poop jokes aren't that funny" table? The only fart scene in a movie I think is great is Blazing Saddles.

I've also noticed an ugly trend how when a husband cheats on his wife, his wife is always somehow to blame, whether it's by other characters or viewers. It's always for a dumb myriad of reasons: She wasn't exciting enough, she didn't want to have sex every damn night, she kept the same hairstyle for too long, her cooking's not that great, she's too ambitious (ugh), or, the one that really pisses me off, she was "arrogant" and "took their love for granted" by assuming the husband would never cheat (uh, that sounds like trust and confidence to me). Shouldn't the husband bear the blame? After all, he's the one who chose to stray!

Some mean UOs (apologies to those I might offend): I don't think Wachowskis are relevant anymore. The Matrix was their one big moment, but that's it. Jupiter Ascending had the kind of boring, dime-a-dozen, convoluted plot you'd see on any SyFY TV movie. In fact, that's all their movies are: SyFY movies with bigger budgets. Boy, I'm a Grinch... not only am I 500 different varieties of over Frozen, but I have the UO that Rapunzel from Tangled had it way, way, way rougher than Anna did. Rapunzel was kidnapped, kept prisoner in a tower, was exploited by her captor on a daily basis, deprived of her power as a princess, had no friends outside of a damn chameleon, and didn't even see the world until she was 18. Anna had a huge castle to run around and explore, had some human contact with the few servants who worked there (we're given no indication that they were anything but nice to her), had some clout as a princess, and could at least go outside if she wanted. So Elsa "shut her out"? For God's sake, that's how a lot of sisters are! My sister and I couldn't stand each other growing up! Hell, we didn't even like each other until we were in our 20s! I don't know why everyone acts like Anna is the most tragic character in history!

I respectfully disagree about it being worse than Carrie. At least only Josie and that asshole she had the misfortune of trusting knew what happened, and I'm willing to bet Josie could at least seek comfort with her loving mom. Carrie was publicly humiliated and toyed with, and stabbed by her psycho mother. Moving along, don't forget that Rob was the one who invented the nickname "Josie Gross-y." Also, his flirting with that underage girl was 100 kinds of disgusting. Rob was an asshole who deserved to be a failure. He shouldn't have succeeded at the end, he should have served as a cautionary tale against being a douchebag who peaks in his teens. And how about that teacher who humiliates Josie for being late to class… but doesn't utter a peep when that popular idiot waltzes in even later? What a hypocritical bitch! Gosh, no wonder I haven't re-watched Never Been Kissed since high school...

Aw, shucks, ribboninthesky1 and MrsRafaelBarba! *blushes and shuffles feet in a modest and hopefully endearing way*

I don't like it when people accuse you of "not having a sense of humor" just because you didn't laugh at their jokes. First off, everyone's sense of humor is different, everyone is not going to laugh at the same things. Second, I'm under no obligation to laugh at your wheezy, unfunny, outdated jokes. Two years ago, I had someone get all defensive because I didn't laugh at their rendition of the Michael Jackson/Wal-Mart joke. Seriously? That joke is legally old enough to drink! It wasn't even funny when it was relevant! You know the old saying if you have to explain a joke, there's no joke? I feel the same applies to defending a joke. If no one laughed, the fault isn't with them, it's you, you're not funny, and you're embarrassing everyone involved, including yourself. Sit down and shut up. But I'm not perfect, I have often wondered if I do lack a sense of humor, at least about certain things. So, to anyone who's ever gotten on my case about not laughing at their jokes, I propose a compromise: I'll take time to consider if I'm just a humorless stiff, as long as you consider that you're a needy, entitled, unfunny, untalented moron whom Dane Cook would boo off the stage. I think that's fair, don't you?

Darn you, Spartan Girl, you beat me to the punch! :) But chiming in, this movie was crap. Serena joins the ranks of the 2012 The Lorax as one of the most appallingly wretched, not-even-trying-to-grasp-the-point-of-the -source-material adaptations I've ever seen. I share in your assessment 100%. For those who haven't read the book, let me fill you in on who Serena is: She is aloof, elegant, cold, calculating, feminine but, at the same time, disdainful conventional womanly behavior (chick doesn't have a shy or swoony bone in her body), one step ahead of everyone in the room, and is absolutely not to be trifled with. She is also described as tall, extremely slender, with high cheekbones. Imagine Lady MacBeth (to whom Serena has rightly been compared), with elements of Kathie from Out of the Past in the body of a Hitchcock blonde. That is not who we get in the movie. This Serena banters and teases her husband adorably (Serena in the book is capable of banter, but of the cruel, cutting variety, and with people she doesn't like). Movie Serena greets the eagle with a girlish "hi" (Book Serena in the book would never, in a million lifetimes, ever stoop to saying "hi"). The last third of the movie, Movie Serena is prone to ugly crying and blubbering (if Book Serena cries, we are never privy to her doing it). Movie Serena gets drunk when she's depressed (Book Serena would sneer at such weak behavior). Let me just say that I love Jennifer Lawrence, but even if I didn't, I'm fully aware that she is more talented and successful than I will ever be. I understand this, I've come to terms with it, it is fact. However, that doesn't alter one whit the fact that she is completely wrong as Serena. Now, the blame goes primarily to the director and the screenwriter (a pox on both of them), but I maintain that, in spite of her talent, Lawrence is wrong for Serena. Aside from being too young and looking it (Serena in the book is 27, but, remember, being 27 in 1929 was completely different than what it is today), her Serena is too smiley, too girlish, too giggly. When she was with the eagle, there was none of the mystical quality of their bond in the book; for God's sake, I expected Movie Serena to baby talk the stupid bird ("Who's a pwetty birdy? Who wuvs you? Mama wuvs you!"). Lawrence is a damn good actress, but, again, you can tell she was too young and out of her depth. There's none of the icy sophistication that made Serena so compelling in the book. It doesn't help the direction is piss-poor; you don't get the sense that Serena outlived her family members, you sense that the worst thing that happened to her was that boys didn't like her at school. Again, I'm aware I have no right to say this, but Jessica Chastain would have made a magnificent Serena. Please understand, I don't expect movie adaptations to be perfect mirror images of the books. That is unreasonable and a recipe for disaster. But just keep the overall spirit and theme of the book, that's all I ask. Gone Girl was an excellent adaptation, tight as a drum (it helps that Gillian Flynn wrote the screenplay, but no matter). The Lord of the Rings trilogy? Fine and dandy, in spite of the liberties. The 2005 The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? I don't think C.S. Lewis would have many complaints. Gone with the Wind? Flawless, even at the expense of Scarlett's two other kids (and how many people care about them, anyway?) But that brings me back to the main point: the screenwriter. Whoever it was, I doubt they even read Ron Rash's book. It's like they skimmed the blurb on the back, checked Wikipedia just in case, then went from there. I'm aware Susanne Bier spent ages editing this festering pile of a movie, but her efforts were in vain. There is no sense of time or place in the movie, we don't learn what life is like at the lumber mill, the national park plot line is forgotten halfway, and we know nothing of the characters or what makes them tick. Bradley Cooper is the mayonnaise of movie stars: blandly pleasant at best, but easily substituted with healthier, more flavorful alternatives (Mr. Fitch thinks Tom Hardy would have made a better George Pemberton, and I'm inclined to agree). What was that accent Cooper was aiming for? Southern? Boston? Canadian? Dude, if in doubt, forgo the accent! You have less to lose that way! By the way, anyone notice how, when Pemberton goes inside to confront Buchanan during that comically loud rainstorm, he isn't the least bit wet? Speaking of accents, I normally love Toby Jones, but, bless his heart, the man cannot do a Southern accent to save his life, at least not for long. He seemed to switch from George Bush to Michael Caine in the twinkling of an eye. Same with Sean Harris's Campbell, who appeared to go Australian at some point (even though Harris is British, what's that all about?). Poor Rachel, an important, sympathetic character with a wonderful arc and resolution in the book, is reduced to a nonentity with less than 10 lines to her name. We don't even get the stage-setting knife fight in the beginning! Go to Hell, screenwriters. I hope Ron Rash never sees this, for it would break his heart seeing his work defaced like this.

If it makes you feel any better, I couldn't help but say "Hell yeah!" when Jerry slapped Masha after escaping in The King of Comedy. Being kidnapped and held hostage by a repulsive, entitled, vile loser like Rupert Pupkin is bad enough, but to have a psycho bitch like Masha serenade you, come on to you, rant and rave in your face while you're bound and gagged for hours? Good lord, I'm amazed he didn't do worse! Still, I would have liked to see Jerry exact even deeper, more well-deserved revenge on Rupert, but, alas...

Hey, he's a man, what does it matter if he's 37? Men in Hollywood can make it at 37, 47, or, in Bryan Cranston's case, 57. If Ackles were a woman? Then, yes, his window would most likely be closed.

Same here. I'm actually very leery of people who have "no regrets". Either they're lying, or they're those rare people who have actually done everything right, or they're sociopaths. I could never, ever be friends with someone who doesn't regret, say, being being a bully, or putting loved ones through hell. I think it's a sign that something very vital and essentially human is missing.

Billy Gray, who played Bud on Father Knows Best, had this to say about the show: "I wish there was some way I could tell kids not to believe it - the dialogue, the situations, the characters - they were all totally false. The show did everybody a disservice. The girls were always trained to use their feminine wiles, to pretend to be helpless to attract men. The show contributed to a lot of the problems between men and women that we see today....I think we were all well motivated, but what we did was run a hoax. Father Knows Best purported to be a reasonable facsimile of life. And the bad thing is that the model is so deceitful. It usually revolved around not wanting to tell the truth, either out of embarrassment, or not wanting to hurt someone....If I could say anything to make up for all the years I lent myself to that kind of bullshit, it would be: *You* Know Best."

Funny, at my Costco they call it the "Senior Lunch". One sample of each is fine. Two…. eh, pushing it, but forgivable. Five of each, though? Tacky to the extreme.

I thought Topol was absolutely, undeniably fantastic in Fiddler on the Roof. Sometimes I prefer it when they get a fresh talent for the film adaptation of a Broadway musical. I've no doubt Zero Mostel was marvelous, but you know what? After that many performances, who's to say he wasn't burned out on the part? Rex Harrison seemed to be treading water in the film version of My Fair Lady, and Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick may as well have been comatose in The Producers. Topol was great, and I think it's unfair to him that, almost 45 years later, we're still lamenting that Zero Mostel wasn't in the movie. I'm not saying this is always the case; Joel Grey was wonderful in Cabaret (I'm so thrilled he beat out Al Pacino for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar). And the good folks at Motown should have fought tooth and nail to get Stephanie Mills to star in the film version of The Wiz and told Diana Ross to sit her skinny, too old ass to sit down and shut up ("Dorothy's an ageless character"? Whatever, Diana).

Thank you for having my back, quof. Children should learn to wait for treats, or else you're going to have hateful, gluttonous brats on your hands. If you're not starving, you can wait until you've paid to eat. Not to mention it's gross when people stick their dirty fingers in packages of fruit and leave them, leave a crumb trail down the aisles as they shop, and I used to work as a bagger, I've seen many a greasy credit card handed to the poor cashier to pay because they just had to have their fried chicken from the deli right now. One woman in line was licking and sucking her fingers from the chicken so damn loudly, I wanted to ask her if she wanted a minute alone.

My favorite pre-code film is Design for Living. It's directed by the great Ernst Lubitsch, and it's about a menage a trois. Yup, it's a love triangle movie, where no one (refreshingly, it's two men, not two women) is "chosen". It's handled in a lighthearted yet surprisingly adult way that could never, ever be made today. Lubitsch was the only director who could make the normally shrill and hammy Miriam Hopkins tolerable, and Gary Cooper (who I admit has never done anything for me) has never looked more handsome. It even has good ol' Edward Everett Horton, and for once the screenplay is almost sympathetic towards him (though he's still as hilariously pompous and clueless as ever). I think it's one of Lubitsch's best. I also admire Red-Headed Woman. Holy Moses, Jean Harlow is out of control in this movie! She seems to truly relish playing of the most amoral anti-heroines ever (for the record, Harlow was said to be an absolute doll in real life), and she really gives a fearless, visceral performance… and she was only 21! I really think it paved the way for movies like Body Heat, The Last Seduction, and Basic Instinct. Red-Headed Woman was written by Anita Loos, who also wrote Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and I think the former is superior to the latter. Harlow's Lil would eat Marilyn Monroe's Lorelai for dinner.

I hate, hate, haaaaaaaate people who eat food at the grocery store before paying for it. Whether it's opening cookies to appease your little brat, grazing on chips as you shop ('cause, you know, you don't want to starve), or, even worse, breaking open cases of berries and eating a bunch then closing them back up and putting them back, exposing others to your grubby, sticky-fingered germs, I have to fight the urge to scream at them in a spittle-flecked rage. Honest to God, if you can afford to shop for groceries, you can afford to wait to eat after you pay, you entitled bunch of pigs!

I loathe Doug Stamper on House of Cards. He's a vile, creepy, evil, disgusting monster. Frank and Claire Underwood are monsters, too, but at least they're interesting monsters. They have ambitions, personalities, motives, and charisma. I'm entertained by them even as I root against them. Doug is nothing but a despicable toady, a soulless, not even interesting henchman that the show had the audacity to try and build sympathy for in early Season 3 (what was that all about?!). I'm sure Frank and Claire will suffer their comeuppance in some form or another in the future, but I sure as hell hope that Doug suffers just as bad (if not worse).

Thank you! I think it is lazy beyond belief. Oh, it's a fun conceit sometimes, and it's fine and dandy when it's done well (the American House of Cards, for instance) but lately I feel we've been bombarded with mediocre, unnecessary reboots and the like, and I'm tired of it. Duck Tales? Great show back in the day, but why a reboot? If kids today (God, I'm getting old) want to watch it, what's stopping them from getting the DVDs from Netflix? Or checking out the numerous TV sites that undoubtedly stream episodes? It's not broken, don't fix it. No one asked for it, so why bother? Likewise, Boy Meets World was a merely okay, white bread, middle of the road sitcom that had its time in the sun, why do we need a show about Cory and Topanga's kid? Who cares? It sure doesn't say much about Ben Savage and Danielle Fishel that they can't move on in their careers from characters they played when they were friggin' children. Not that I ever thought they'd conquer Shakespeare or Beckett, but still... I honestly can't decide which is more disturbing: the idea that the younger generation just unquestioningly joins the Kat hate train despite not even being a sparkle in their parents' eyes when she was on the show, or the idea of not-getting-any-younger adults still carrying the torch of hatred for a fictional character*. I've read some of the anti-Kat stories ('cause I have no life) and I find them not only badly written (natch), but despicable. One story had Kat accuse Tommy of still loving Kim, and Tommy's gallant response? He threatens to "kick [Kat's] ass". And, no, he is not framed as the bad guy in this scenario. The story ends with him back with Kim, happily ever after. Yeah. Fucked up stuff out there. *Okay, at the risk of being hypocritical, I admit I still hate Dawn from Buffy, but I almost never think about her or the show anymore, and I'm sure as hell not going to vent my seething hatred in fanfiction.

Margot Robbie was born the year Fresh Prince of Bel Air premiered. Let that sink in.

See, this is why I prefer the original, 1950 Father of the Bride. Being a Golden Age MGM film directed by that most stylish and stylized of directors Vincente Minnelli, it has that certain fantastic mood that you'd expect, the kind that movies back then could get away with. Is the wedding in that one bloated and overpriced? Sure (though, to be fair, it's nowhere near as ridiculous as the 1991 version), but, as one author put it, MGM films back then "only had a passing acquaintance with reality". I'm sorry, but in the more cynical, modern 1990s, Father of the Bride just doesn't work.

I also think Marilyn Monroe is criminally overrated, and the ongoing deification of her kind of nauseating. An ardent fan of hers told me that she felt bad for Monroe, and wished she could have "been her friend and helped her through her problems". I think Judy Garland, Vivien Leigh, Rita Hayworth, Gail Russell, and Gene Tierney needed friends much more than Monroe did, but no one seems to care about them. And, sweet juggling John the Baptist, enough with the onslaught of Monroe biographies!! I swear we must get 10-20 new Monroe biographies a year (meanwhile, I have found all of two biographies of Myrna Loy, a woman who outclasses Monroe in every respect)! The woman has been dead for over 50 years, we are not going to learn a single new thing about her! Trust me on this! Screw Some Like it Hot, I think The Apartment has the greatest final line in a Billy Wilder movie ever (with Sunset Boulevard nipping at its heels).