All Good Links

Before we get to today's link roundup -- I went a little crazy as I sometimes do -- enjoy the heat sensor-like photography of the All Good Things poster. Perhaps Ryan and Kiki were a bit jealous of the ruckus Jake & Annie's nude poster caused online.

P.S. Jake Gyllenhaal is obsessed with Ryan Gosling. Just saying. I would try to quote his answer from Saturday night when the audience question 'who would you like to work with?' popped up but it was so rambling and long and confusing that I can't. But let's just say it began with Ryan Gosling, was jilted by Ryan Gosling via text "I'm busy" and then ended again with a circular non sequitor shout of "Ryan Gosling!" Jake likey. Ryan Gosling is what you might call an actor's actor... since everyone seems to want to work with him.

On to the linkage...
Candy Magazine A double take of pleasure. Yes, that's James Franco to your left continuing his trans formation from one of the great herd of Hollywood pretty boys to an actually interesting celebrity.
My New Plaid Pants is an über fan of Let the Right One In. Doesn't hate Let Me In. Since the response has been so positively muted like "it's good: also, a recreation" I've decided not to see it.
Broadway.com Carrie the Musical being revived. Wow.
Cinema Blend Me pal Katey basically says all I have to say about the trailer for Julie Taymor's Tempest so I don't need to cover it here. What she said, minus the positive bits since I liked the movie even less than she.
The Big Picture Tony Curtis grand sendoff in Las Vegas
Hero Complex Emma Stone will play Gwen Stacy in the new Spider-Man. I'm glad that early reports were wrong. Why do the whole Mary Jane story again. That said, isn't it weird that someone known as a redhead is going to play Spidey's favorite blonde and someone known as a blonde was cast as his favorite redhead. Weirdness.
The Awl Sasha Frere-Jones and Natasha VC on The Social Network. If you haven't read enough yet, it's fun as always to read these two.
50 Best Theater Blogs I'll have to investigate this list.
Just Jared Joseph Gordon-Levitt lost his older brother. So sad.
Towleroad celebs speaking about gay bullying on Larry King Live
Movie|Line offers tips to Renée Zellweger on how she could regain her A list status. I love the suggestion of a brilliant twitter feed. I hope she calls it @Zeéeee after my new nickname for her. Zeéeeee reads me right? *

Double Duty!
Movielicious Have you seen this great mashup poster for Toy Story and Tron? I wish I knew who did it to give them proper cred.
Scott Feinberg "Are Bening *And* Moore All Right." Some smart words on the The Kids Are All Right Oscar campaign.
John Luciano a Calvin & Hobbes mashup with Let the Right One In. Teehee. I used to love Calvin's girlcrush but can't remember her name right now

*Obviously I am kidding. Someone I am acquainted with who works in the industry once told me that every star googles themselves --whether they admit it or not -- and is familiar with their biggest cheerleaders and nemeses online. But I chose not to believe her because it weirded me out too much to think of Beelzebub, She Who Must Not Be Named, La Pfeiff and The Bening reading or even knowing of my puny existence.

Tony Curtis (1925 - 2010)

He was born in 1925 when the masses were still swooning for silent icons like Rudolph Valentino. By the late 1950s he was a household name heartthrob himself if not a silent one. Still, that oft imitated Bronx accent "yonda lies the castle of my fadduh" couldn't derail his movie ascendance.

History continually teaches movie stars -- though scant few of them seem to really listen -- that what's important is not the paycheck or even necessarily a great role but working on enough top notch material with top directors to wind up in a few classics. It's one of the only ways to ensure that you are remembered, if screen immortality is indeed your goal.

Curtis, like any star, had his share of duds but history has and will continue to remember him because he appeared in a good share of classics, most notably that one-two-three-four punch of Sweet Smell of Success (1957), The Defiant Ones (1958), Some Like it Hot (1959) and Spartacus (1960). That's a four year run of winners that would make any career a major one.

That kind of ascendance is nearly impossible to undo. Sure, huge stars usually fade and become "celebrities" rather than vital working actors... but you can't take the classics away from people.

And aside from often solid work in a wide variety of genres from those classics to thrillers (The Boston Strangler) to romantic comedies (Sex & The Single Girl with my girl Natalie Wood) we must thank Curtis for bringing Jamie Lee Curtis into the world (she's the infant in mama Janet Leigh' arms in the photograph below). That definitely made the world a better place.

The Curtis Family (left to right): Kelly, Tony, Janet Leigh and Jamie Lee

How heady must Curtis & Janet Leigh's "golden couple" years have been? Consider that during one calendar year they delivered unto the world three classics: Jamie Lee Curtis,  Touch of Evil and  The Defiant Ones. Then, they chased that triple with Some Like It Hot, Psycho, Spartacus and The Manchurian Candidate in the last four years of their marriage. It boggles the mind it does.

A few admittedly more timely farewells

• Boy Culture remembers a Shelley Winters anecdote
• Coffee Coffee and More Coffee shares a personal memory and marvels at Curtis ability to slide so easily back and forth between comedies and drama.
• New York Times on his good looks and storied "vigorous heterosexuality" despite the sexually ambiguous roles.
• Vanity Fair his idea of perfect happiness was "top billing"

Related amusements

• Kissing Marilyn Monroe
• Jamie Lee Curtis is Perfect
• Tony & Janet... not the snappiest of dressers

Barbara Stanwyck (at the pool) and Tony Curtis (in the men's room)

Programming Note: We were trying to catch up with Mad Men @ The Movies before Season 4 of MM started (tomorrow!). We'll have to leapfrog Season 3 (sorry Ann-Margret and Bye Bye Birdie!) so that we can have contemporary weekly discussions for Season 4 each Monday after the episode, provided that there's a movie reference to sound off on. Will you be joining in?

Episode 2.10 "The Inheritance"
Pete Campbell is taking a business trip to Los Angeles and his wife Trudy (Alison Brie) wants to go with him.

Trudy: You know I'll stay out of your way.
Pete: Of course. Lounging by the pool. They'll think you're a young Barbara Stanwyck.
Trudy: Doesn't that sound like fun?

Young Stanwyck always sounds like fun! Poolside or anywhere really. Don't you agree?

Stanwyck in 1944. She was 37 here but doesn't she look fresh as a daisy?

poll by twiigs.com

Episode 2.11 "The Jet Set"
Don and Pete make it to sunny Los Angeles where Pete gets quite excited by the sun and stars.

Pete: I just saw Tony Curtis in the men's room!
Don: Handing out towels?
Pete: Tony Curtis, Don! ...a thing like that.

And if you think I'ma 'bout to post a photo of Tony Curtis in the men's room for Stanwyck poolside parallel's sake. Well... I like you're way of thinking, but who could find one?!

The closest I got was Tony Curtis in the steam room. With Rock Hudson in the back getting a rubdown.


The things you find on the internets. If only those things were in hi-res.

Other references in these episodes: (Cinema) Rope| (TV) The Twilight Zone, The New Loretta Young Show | (Literature) Ray Bradbury, William Faulkner | (Sports) The Yankees | (Celebrities) Bob Dylan, Rita Hayworth

Completely Morbid Thought of the Week

I've been so sad about Paul Newman all week. Now, everyone has to go at some point ...that's the way of life. And no one could argue that Newman, at 83, didn't have a full one. But it got me to thinking about how few truly massive screen stars remain among us. I'm talking classic film stars that were with us before the cultural upheaval of the '60s which brought a large wave of new stars to the cinematic forefront (Nicholson, Redford, Fonda, Christie, Eastwood, Streisand, Dunaway, Deneuve, Beatty, and more...) many of them still working steadily. Though Newman's work in the 1960s (Hud, The Hustler, Cool Hand Luke) is his most revered he actually ascended in the mid50s just as he was entering his thirties. Films like Somebody Up There Likes Me and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof made him a star.


There are so few stars left from the days when cinema was BIG in that way... and I'm not just referencing CinemaScope. Many still-living once household name actors have very low profiles; Olivia DeHavilland, Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, Van Johnson, Karl Malden, Jennifer Jones, Mickey Rooney, Luise Rainer (all well into their 80s or 90s) aren't topics of conversation much anymore unless you're in the good, nay, glorious company of true cinephiles.

The truth of it is that most celebrated actors don't maintain the kind of decade after decade Name in Lights prominence that Paul Newman did to his very last. Shirley Maclaine and Sophia Loren who rose to fame roughly concurrently with Newman still walk the earth (in heels), god bless, both at 74. But the closing chapter I fear the most will be losing Elizabeth Taylor. La Liz, who is 76, has been internationally famous for sixty-two years now. To me she's the last of the Immortals. She's had so many health scares for so many decades that it became a joke to think of her as being perpetually at death's door. It's not at all funny anymore. I hope there's a great screening room in heaven. When Taylor finally arrives -- and I hope that's a long long time from now -- Newman, Monroe, Brando, the Hepburns, Bogie and Garland will undoubtedly have a seat ready for her: diamond encrusted, the one right between Richard Burton's and Montgomery Clift's.
*

Worst Workout Clothes - EVER!

Well this month here on Film Experience will focus on the Olympiad so I guess we better get in shape. Tony and Janet will start us off with a few curls. The two seem to have fun staying in shape but Tony's line of designer workout clothes never quite caught on. Too bad. Imagine how much more fun it would be going to the gym if everyone wore short dress pants, tube sock style argyles and dress shoes. I'd go just to snap pictures.

Kissing Marilyn Monroe

Monroe... she wants to be kissed by you
_______ [staccato breathy voice] "Just. you. nobodyelse. but. you"

I'd forgotten how dreamy Marilyn Monroe was, singing and puckering up for the camera in Some Like It Hot (1959) as Sugar Kane Kowalczyk. I'd been a little cool on her for the past few years. I was tired of seeing her. Those ready to go lips (and resulting lipstick print) are beautiful but overly familiar. They're even part of the logo at her official site.

But this happens to a lot of icons. Their estates overexpose them. You see them all the time through the inevitable over merchandising. They infiltrate every large discussion since they're so busy signifying something else, something less flesh and blood; an abstraction personalized. Monroe is Hollywood. Monroe is sex (the movie variety). Monroe is that Troubled Actress™ we're still always reading about.

But here's the niftiest thing about Monroe: watching her work her magic provides an instant cure to the disease of her over familiarity. Just pop the DVD in the player and ta-dah: her radiance, her talent, that breathy delivery...she huffs and she puffs and she blows the Icon down. For a couple of hours in the resultant rubble you're left with a fine actress and the character she's playing, just as it should be.

Some Like it Hot, one of the comedy greats, gets a lot of mileage from her kissability. It's not just the puckering but the literal smooching. In one of the film's most famous sequences, Joe (Tony Curtis) whom she knows in drag as "Josephine" fools her into sexcapades with an elaborate charade as a yacht-dwelling frigid millionaire named "Junior". It's a little icky. The audience is essentially asked to root for the cad to trick her into putting out. Without Monroe's deft playing this scene would play too misogynistic for comfort. Her unique pathos and aggressive sexuality (it's still eyebrow raising to watch her pounce --she's the top) keep the comedic ball in the air. The love scene that could've felt like an abusive game of dodgeball plays more like a tennis match.


For all of Sugar Kane's funny enthusiasm, Monroe never hides the character's heartbreak either. Soon Sugar is "Through With Love" a broken hearted songbird right there on the stage. And whaddya know, she melts the jerk's heart. The con artist is finally feeling for her rather than objectifying her and knows he's done her wrong. Joe plants another on her, but this time the kiss is honest --he does it as Josephine, thereby giving up his game.

Chaos that has nothing at all to do with Sugar erupts as gangsters chase Joe through the hotel and he runs for his life. The songbird also gives chase "Wait! Wait for Sugar!" Guess she wasn't through with love after all.

a-deedalee deedalee deedalee-dum, boop boop-a-doop!

previously on "kissing" (new series) Volver