Quote of the Day

Everybody say thank you to Interview Magazine today because they got Tony nominees Mia Farrow and Cole Escola to chat with each other and you've got to go read it right now -- I promise you it's a gay movie nerd's slice of heaven. Cole's a Classic Hollywood nerd of course and they get Mia to dish all sorts of stories from her storied Hollywood past hanging with Bette Davis, George Cukor, and in the best passage of their chat an incredibly strange and hilarious series of happenings with Joan Crawford which I must share in full...

FARROW: You’re a real movie buff. Are you seeing enough big emotions in movies these days?

ESCOLA: No, I like melodrama and high stakes that maybe don’t make sense. Silent movies, I find particularly moving right now. Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid or even Joan Crawford in Dancing Daughters.

FARROW: She’s scary. And she was scary in person as well.

ESCOLA: Oh, did you meet her?

FARROW: Yes. I more than met her. I forget what movie was shooting, probably that one with Betty Davis, the scary one. 

ESCOLA: Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? 

FARROW: If that was shot at Fox, then that was what they were shooting. And for whatever reason, she started sending a whole refrigerator of Pepsi Cola for my trailer ’cause I was in a TV series called Peyton Place. I don’t particularly like Pepsi Cola, but a lot of Pepsi Cola kept coming to my trailer, more than anyone would ever want. And then she came over to see me and I got a strange vibe from her. So I’m back in New York, and she knew my mother. I hung up people’s coats for my mom when they came into the house. And I hung her coat and out falls a flask of alcohol. She grabbed it like that, and she put it in her handbag. She drank quite a lot. Then she invited me to her apartment. I thought it was a party, but I arrived, and I was the only one there. 

ESCOLA: In New York? 

FARROW: Yes. I was 17, and everything was green in her apartment. It just had very low lighting. And there were no other guests, just Ms. Crawford and me. And I just wasn’t very comfortable. 

ESCOLA: Of course. 

FARROW: So I just made up a lie that I wasn’t feeling very well and I didn’t want to give her any diseases. I think I said the word “diseases” as I walked out of the room. I was scared of Ms. Crawford.

Do we think Joan was coming on to baby Mia? I've heard many a bisexual rumor about Joan before and this feels like Joan was hot for the little girl. I laughed so hard at Mia saying "I think I said the word 'diseases' as I walked out of the room" lol. What a life. 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

The Unknown (1927)

Nanon: Hands! Men's hands! How I hate them! 

Men! The beasts! God would show wisdom 

if he took the hands from all of them!

A red letter day at Criterion HQ today as their box-set of three Tod Browning horror movies is hitting the shelves -- click here to snap up your copy, which includes the above film along with Browning's 1932 masterpiece Freaks along with his 1925 silent The Mystic, which I have never seen! I have this set at home though and I'm saving that one for closer to Halloween-time. I have seen The Unknown though -- it stars Joan Crawford so of course I have -- and it's terrific. Maybe not Freaks terrific, but what is?

Pedro's Strange Ways

Speak o' the devil! (Did you see those hot-cha-cha pictures of Pedro Pascal we posted earlier?) Here is the official poster for Pedro Almodóvar's short film Strange Way of Life starring Pascal and Ethan Hawke -- this is the "gay western" that Almodóvar's been talking about ever since ye olde Brokeback days. Here's an official still too:

Knowing how rich Pedro's short film The Human Voice with Tilda Swinton was a couple years back the fact that this is only thirty minutes long gives me no pause whatsoever. Anyway it's premiering at Cannes and we cannot wait. That poster up top is so Johnny Guitar we might explode!

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from::

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

Jane: You know, we're right back where we started.

When I was on the stage you had to depend on me

for everything. Even the food you ate came from me.

Now you have to depend on me for your food again.

So, you see, we're right back where we started.

Blanche: Why are you doing this to me? Why?

Jane: Doing what?

Blanche: Making me afraid to eat.

Trying to make me starve myself.

Jane: Don't be silly. If you starve you die.

Bette Davis was born 115 years ago today! I was going to call her 'the legend Bette Davis" but "legend" doesn't even seem adequate for Bette fucking Davis, ya know? She's so beyond mere "legend." Bette Davis has truly ascended into the heavens and stands beside Zeus and Mickey Mouse. Anyway in a very strange coincidence I got myself a brand new Bette Davis poster in the mail this very morning! Do y'all know the artist who goes by ElvisDead? This is their website here -- I became obsessed with their movie-poster work thanks to their truly terrifying Night of the Living Dead poster (see that here), and so the second it was on sale I snatched up a copy of the Baby Jane poster, which I will now share with you:

Fucking killer right? I am obsessed. I unwrapped that beauty from the tube before coming to work this morning and it's even better in person. It looks like she's reaching right for you! That bitch is going right over my bed! Happy birthday, Bette!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from::

Rain (1932)

Sadie: Music and a nip of liquor --

that's what a rainy day is for, says I.

Today is generally agreed upon to be Joan Crawford's birthday but that iconic scamp changed the year she was born in several times, so we don't know if she was born in 1905, 1906, or 1908. I think we should all work under the assumption that the oldest one is the one, though. That seems a fairly safe bet! Anyway this is one of my favorite of Joan's early performances -- have you seen it? There's a really great quality blu-ray of it you can get if not -- it's a gorgeously filmed movie even besides Joan getting to play her speciality: a trampy trash hooker with a heart of iron, aka exactly who we should all aspire to be. Icon!

Thursday's Ways Not To Die

Sudden Fear (1952)

Normally I would gift us with a holiday-themed "Ways Not To Die" for, you know, the holidays. But I saw Sudden Fear for the first time this week and all set standards and practices flew right out the window the second I saw Joan Crawford's death fantasy after she finds out her new husband (played by Jack Palance) is out to murder her. It was much like the way her car flies down into that ravine, exploding into a fiery ball of Crawfordian flame on impact. I had no choice. I mean I had to do it just for that first gif alone. Let's look at that baby again...

... because I already know I'll never in the entirety of my existence have enough of that one. It's my new reaction to everything. This movie might not be holiday-themed but it's a goddamned gift alright, and there she is wrapped in a great big bow! Don't know how this movie  had slipped past me all these years but it's a ton of trashy fun -- classic Noir hokum with some gloriously filmed sequences in the black hills of San Francisco (that final sequence with Jack Palance trying to run her over!) So if you've never seen  I recommend you spend some time with it this holiday season. It's streaming for free on Tubi, and I promise you that you will be entertained. Joan Crawford demands it!

Hit the jump for links to the Previous Ways Not To Die...

March of the Inland Empires

This one isn't a surprise because we've known it's been coming ever since the film made the rounds in theaters earlier this year, but today Criterion -- as part of their announcement for the month of March in the year 2023 -- has made their release of David Lynch's epic masterpiece Inland Empire official! It's out on March 23rd, and includes that new restoration alongside a heap of extras, check 'em all out on that link. I don't have a ton of interest in technical mumbo-jumbo -- there's a reason I left Film-making school to become a Film Studies major instead -- but I'm not surprised this is just a blu-ray and not 4K UHD, given this film's very purposeful lo-fi early-HD look. I know there was some controversy over this restoration, with it messing with that original look, but that stuff just sort of goes in one eye and out the other with me. If Lynch is happy, I can be happy, and I'll also keep my old blu-ray just in case. 

March's other three releases are a 4K upgrade of Mildred Pierce (out on March 7th) and then two movies I'm not familiar with -- John Woo's Last Hurrah For Chivalry from 1979 and Joan Micklin Silver's Chilly Scenes of Winter, also from 1979. The latter stars John Heard and Mary Beth Hurt and was produced by Griffin Dunne -- I did see Dunne let this release outta the bag earlier this week when he also said they're still working on the upgrade for Scorsese's masterpiece After Hours. Now there is a movie I need in 4-fuckin-K already!

5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1952

Here, a treat for your Monday -- now that I've got a break from the film fest stuff I'm diving back into trying to finish off my "Siri Says" series! The last one we did was back in April when I finished off the 1930s -- indeed we're getting perilously close to finishing this series, as I think we've got about ten years out of one hundred left to survey? In case you're new round these parts or just need a refresher this series is where I ask my iPhone to pick a number between one and one hundred, and then I give y'all my five favorite films from the year that corresponds to the number given. So for example today the number we've got is "52" and I will be giving you my favorite five films from the Movies of 1952. 

Funny enough I'm not finishing off the 50s this time -- I have at least one more year to go until I do -- which makes me kind of sad, as the 1950s are a pain in my ass. I don't love the 1950s to be honest! I've probably complained about this previously one of these times but it's all Noir and Musicals and big bloated Technicolor literary adaptations and it's just not my cuppa. I barely scavenged up this episode's top five and I mostly only like these films, as opposed to loving any (except the first one, which I deeply adore). But hey these are all turning 70 this year, I suppose that's of interest! And with that ringing endorsement I give you...

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1952

Ikiru

(dir. Akira Kurosawa)

-- released on October 9th 1952 --

High Noon

(dir. Fred Zinnemann)

-- released on July 24th 1952 --

Singin' in the Rain

(dir. Stanley Donen)

-- released on March 27th 1952 --

Clash By Night

(dir. Fritz Lang)

-- released on May 28th 1952 --

Don't Bother to Knock

(dir. Roy Ward Baker)

-- released on July 18th 1952 --

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Runners-up: The Quiet Man (dir. John Ford), The Narrow Margin (dir. Richard Fleischer), The Star (dir. Stuart Heisler), Monkey Business (dir. Howard Hawks), The Marrying Kind (dir. George Cukor), Pat & Mike (dir. Cukor)

Never seen: The Greatest Show on Earth (dir. Cecil B DeMille), The Bad and the Beautiful (dir. Vincente Minnelli), Umberto D (dir. Vittorio De Sica), Othello (dir. Welles), Forbidden Games (dir. René Clément), The Importance of Being Earnest (dir. Anthony Asquith), Sudden Fear (dir. David Miller)

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What are your favorite movies of 1952?

5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1929

Somehow six months have passed since I did an entry in my "Siri Says" series -- shame on me! I had been doing pretty well with them last year but late July was right around the time I went into three straight months of film festivals so it's not too big a shock this series fell off right about then. I can't promise I'll keep up with this (Sundance is in just a couple weeks after all!) but for today I have a minute and the voice that lives inside my telephone was kind enough to give me an easy enough year (since I've seen very few movies from it) -- I was given "29" and so we're talking the Movies of 1929. 

This was an interesting moment in Hollywood -- beyond the fact that many of these movies are among the earliest batches of "Talkies" (The Jazz Singer came out at the end of 1927) 1929 was also the first year of the Oscars! On May 16th of that year Hollywood gathered together at a private dinner at Los Angeles' Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and awarded statues to their favorite movies of the previous two years, 1927 and 1928. Has anybody ever written about there being any overlap between sound innovation and the awards system? It feels like there must have been something in the air. Anyway right now we're talking the movies nominated and not nominated for the 2nd Academy Awards -- and now for my five faves!

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1929

Lucky Star

(dir. Frank Borzage)

-- released on July 20th 1929 --

Man With the Movie Camera

(dir. Dziga Vertov)

-- released on January 8th 1929 --

Blackmail

(dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

-- released on October 6th 1929 --

Un Chien Andalou

(dir. Luis Buñuel & Salvador Dalí)

-- released on June 6th 1929 --

Pandora's Box

(dir. G.W. Pabst)

-- released on January 30th 1929 --

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Runners-up: Wolf Song (dir. Victor Fleming), Sunny Side Up (dir. David Butler), Untamed (dir. Jack Conway), The Manxman (dir. Hitchcock), The Broadway Melody (dir. Harry Beaumont)

Never seen: The Virginian (dir. Victor Fleming), Diary of a Lost Girl (dir. GW Pabst), Eternal Love (dir. Ernst Lubitsch), The Kiss (dir. Jacques Feyder), The Awful Truth (dir. Marshall Neilan)

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What are your favorite movies of 1929?

5 Off My Head: Viva Lange!

Today we celebrate the 72nd birthday of the legend Jessica Lange! The two-time Oscar winner -- she's actually just one "G" short of being EGOT; can we count a Golden Globe in that spot instead? -- has largely been working on the stage (she was so good in Long Day's Journey Into Night, you guys) and on her photography (and she's real good at that too!) for the past decade, but she still finds time to pop up in a Ryan Murphy series here and there, always gifting us gold like this gif:

I hope she works more; I see there's no future projects lined up on her IMDb this morning, which is infuriating if it's not by choice (and with her it could be by choice) -- imagine being able to write and direct movies and not making them star vehicles for Jessica fucking Lange while you still can! Martin Scorsese's off there jerking it in some field when he knows what she's capable of directly. I'll never understand it. Never. So I'm choosing to believe she's just picky and interested in other things. The alternatives are too gruesome. Anyway we'll celebrate her today anyway, with a list of favorite roles, with one caveat -- there's a lot of her stuff I've never seen still! I dole her out in small doses, keeping in mind there are finite resources at hand. 

My 5 Favorite Jessica Lange Performances

Big Edie, Grey Gardens

Leigh Bowden, Cape Fear

(see my write-up of this performance here)

Julie, Tootsie

Frances Farmer, Frances

Joan Crawford, Feud: Bette and Joan

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Runners-up: All That Jazz, 

A Thousand Acres, King Kong

All her work on American Horror Story

Never seen: Blue Sky, Country, Titus, 

Crimes of the Heart, Losing Isaiah 

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What are your favorite Jessica Lange performances?