Farewell My Concubine (Ba Wang Bie Ji) by Chen Kaige, 1993 (R)

with Leslie Cheung, Fengyi Zhang, Li Gong, Qi Lü, Da Ying, You Ge, Chun Li, Han Lei

A seemingly unshakable friendship between two Chinese opera stars gets put to the test in the face of war, a communist takeover, the Cultural Revolution and the intrusion of a woman who tempts both of them. In a plot that captures 50 years of Chinese history, the once-inseparable Duan Xiaolou (Zhang Fengyi) and Cheng Dieyi (Leslie Cheung) find themselves increasingly at odds after Xiaolou weds a lovely courtesan (Li Gong). Palme D'Or, Cannes Film Festival. Farewell My Concubine is one of the central works of the Fifth Generation movement that brought Chinese film directors to world attention.

This is a very loooooong movie. Yes, poetic, touching, but god damn long. I really loved Leslie Cheung and Fengyi Zhang, but Gong Li was overacting (or was I the only one feeling that way?). Perhaps the masterpiece tags all over the film poster built the expectations too high. How sad, for a story that was so beautiful and a tragedy so important to tell...

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Sunset Boulevard by Billy Wilder, 1950 (NR)

with William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson, Fred Clark, Lloyd Gough, Jack Webb

Running from debt collectors, screenwriter Joe Gillis stumbles upon the crumbling mansion of former silent-film star Norma Desmond. As he begins penning a comeback screenplay for her, their professional relationship evolves into something more.
Duration: 110 minutes

"I am big, It's the pictures that got small!" What a quote, and many other brilliant ones punctuate a movie that really marked the end of an era. Hollywood studios, the decaying mansion of a fallen star, these are the two main set of the movie, between fake and isolation. It is a dark dark movie... but it wouldn't be as dark if it weren't for Gloria Swanson's mad character, and Erich von Stroheim's stoicism, dryness and impeccable attitude. I felt more and more awkward, uncomfortable, filled with the perspective of the young screenwriter, in a brilliant manipulation that the movie creates. Yes, because the movie starts with the end with quite some sense of humor, from the death of Joe Gillis, we already know the outcome. But the final act is not the disturbing one, this is actually the one moment we are the most used to in love drama. It is the whole situation in between, the confinement in luxurious heaviness, the longing and solitude, the slow but steady trap closing around the characters. Very disturbing.
I was also told, and I mention it because my ignorance did not allow me to notice it, that it was one of the first movies depicting a man who was attracted by the money of an older woman, living by her means and used as an object of desire.
Anyway, a classic.

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Blade Runner: The Final Cut by Ridley Scott, 1982 (R) 117min

with Harrison Ford (Morning Glory), Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos (Battlestar Galactica), M. Emmet Walsh, Daryl Hannah, William Sanderson, Brion James, Joe Turkel, Joanna Cassidy, James Hong, Morgan Paull

In a smog-choked dystopian Los Angeles, blade runner Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is called out of retirement to snuff a quartet of escaped "replicants" -- androids consigned to slave labor on remote planets -- seeking to extend their short life spans. This definitive special edition of director Ridley Scott's classic features his restored and remastered version with added scenes.

Ah, classics... ah K. Dick... (Blade Runner, I. Robot, Total Recall, Minority Report, The Adjustment Bureau...) What not to love? So what, shall we say perhaps it is a nicer version without the narrator, the acting is impeccable, the aesthetic hasn't gone old, the script is beautifully existential, poetic, and the love story in a way, tragic. Anyway, before we lost power on Sandy, the last reminder of our society evolution has been Blade Runner. Pleasure!

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Dial M For Murder by Alfred Hitchcock, 1954 (PG)

with Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings, John Williams, Antonio Margheriti, Leo Britt, Patrick Allen, George Leigh

Director Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece of double-cross and intrigue stars Ray Milland as former tennis champ Tony Wendice, who concocts a plan to kill his rich but unfaithful wife (Grace Kelly), who's embroiled in a liaison with a writer (Robert Cummings). When Tony's plans go awry, he improvises a second act of deceit, but the entire bloody affair turns out to be far messier than he expected. John Williams plays a sly Scotland Yard inspector.

Brilliant. It takes a while to figure what will be the outcome, the brain is active, the acting is simple and perfect, the lines are right on. The Hitchcock machinery is well oiled for this perfect murder story. Nothing better than a classic to remember the basics of good cinema: good acting, good plot, good dialogues.

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Summertime (Summer Madness) by David Lean, 1955 (NR)

with Katharine Hepburn, Rossano Brazzi, Isa Miranda, Darren McGavin, Mari Aldon, Jane Rose, MacDonald Parke, Jeremy Spenser, Gaetano Autiero

Dreams of romance for American spinster Jane Hudson (Katharine Hepburn) become a bittersweet reality when she meets a handsome but married antiques dealer (Rossano Brazzi) while vacationing in Venice, Italy. David Lean directed this sensitive portrait of an independent woman who finds that, even in a beautiful European city, her sense of loneliness is unavoidable, and her initial disgust with the idea of an illicit love affair doesn't last.

It was a strange thing to watch that movie. It a very stretched way, I felt I experienced a similar journey, but when I was 18. I went to the south of Spain, on my own, and realized soon enough that the beauty of the country and region couldn't help me forget how lonely I was. I met a lot of random people, and a man that really seduced me. But at my age, I wasn't ready to do anything with a stranger. There stop the comparison, only the loneliness. Then the movie goes on with the relationship she has with this Italian man, making her feel young again, alive, beautiful, seductive. But the movie made me uncomfortable in the sense of what to expect at the time of Italy, the snob attitude of wanting so badly not to be the typical American tourist, but falling inextricably into the cliché, with shots of the canals, stones, monuments, behaviors. Venice was indeed beautiful anywhere you would look. Perhaps it is just how Katharine Hepburn plays the woman facing the wonders, almost like in a silent movie, alternating in a very non-subtle way smile and sobbing... Exasperating...

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Bringing Up Baby by Howard Hawks, 1938 (NR)

with Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Charles Ruggles, Walter Catlett, Barry Fitzgerald, May Robson, Fritz Feld, Leona Roberts, George Irving, Tala Birell, Virginia Walker, John Kelly

Love runs wild for a hapless scientist and an unstoppable heiress in Howard Hawks's classic screwball comedy that ranks high on the American Film Institute's list of the funniest Hollywood films ever made. With her eye on paleontologist David (Cary Grant), heiress Susan (Katharine Hepburn) lures him to her home. But the hilarity begins when Susan's dog steals David's prize dinosaur bone and her pet leopard, Baby, is mistaken for a zoo escapee.

I believe this was a movie to fail from the reviews point of view, that had a huge success with the audience. I was a bit terrified to see that Cary Grant was again in this movie, after the experience of "The Philadelphia Story" but he turns out to be good and goofy in the clumsy scientist, probably slightly inspired by Charlie Chaplin. She is exuberant and tiring, as well as most of the cast. Everything goes very fast, people speak at the same time into a blurry loud noisy, but it turns out that I actually laughed a lot, it was refreshing and cute.

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Morning Glory by Lowell Sherman, 1933 (NR)

Not to confuse with Morning Glory (2010)

with Katharine Hepburn, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Adolphe Menjou, Mary Duncan, C. Aubrey Smith, Don Alvarado, Fred Santley, Richard Carle, Tyler Brooke, Geneva Mitchell, Helen Ware

Stagestruck but unseasoned actress Eva Lovelace (Katharine Hepburn) heads for Broadway's bright lights, where she eventually gets her break with help from a paternal thespian (C. Aubrey Smith), an ambitious playwright (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) and a womanizing producer (Adolphe Menjou). Hepburn's luminous performance in this showbiz drama resulted in the first of her four Best Actress Oscars and became the launching pad for her stellar film career.

It was an interesting film debut for an actress to start in a movie about young ambitious girl who starts a flourishing career, to fall into what could be called a Morning Glory, or perhaps not. I wonder how close it was to the reality, all I know is that later on, she was never that kind of person, wanting to be glorified (or perhaps a little, deep inside) by the press, the fans, the success didn't seem to change her so much. She was brilliant, perhaps knew it, allowed herself not to format to the conventions of Hollywood, and after some good and back luck, became one of these female heroes of the 20th Century. Impressive. About the movie, I felt they needed to deliver the lines so fast I got a bit stressed out. The character of Eva evolves from the naive opportunist to a talented opponent to the major stars of her time, the evolution being a bit overacted, just as the other actresses of the film, but the casting surrounding her, made of men of the Broadway industry, still stereotypes, are being much more sensitive in their acting, tempering the high energy of the women. I remained a bit clueless to whether I enjoyed the movie or not...

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My Fair Lady by George Cukor, 1964 (G)

with Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway, Wilfred Hyde-White, Gladys Cooper, Jeremy Brett, Theodore Bikel, Mona Washbourne, Isobel Elsom, John Holland, Alan Napier, Marni Nixon
From the director of The Philadelphia Story, Pat and Mike, Adam's Rib, Keeper of the Flame...

In this classic cinematic version of the Broadway smash, Audrey Hepburn is at her most radiant as Eliza Doolittle, the Cockney flower girl transformed into a poised duchess by Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison, reprising his Broadway role). The film won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

When I was in school, the English teacher (I am French), to make us work out our British accent, put us to learn "Why can't the English teach their children how to speak" and as a demonstration, the entire movie for several classes. No complain, since we didn't have homework in the meantime. I really liked the songs, the style, Huggins' house, the costumes for the race, the stiffness of the education, perhaps was a bit displeased with her being so predictably in love with her teacher, but the sense of humor was good enough it made me very happy Higgins had to change his macho attitude to get her. Anyway, refreshing, witty, a little bit deranging in the way social classes are depicted, but after all, a very good musical, specially looking at its competition. Definitely one of my favorite.

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The African Queen by John Huston, 1951 (NR)

with Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, Robert Morley, Peter Bull, Theodore Bikel, Walter Gotell, Peter Swanwick, Richard Marner, Errol John, Gerald Onn

Charlie Allnut (Humphrey Bogart), the booze-guzzling, rough-hewn captain of a broken-down East African riverboat, teams with a straitlaced, iron-willed missionary Rosie (Katharine Hepburn) to take on a menacing German gunboat during World War I.

A peculiar movie, it is a period piece in a way, but not from long before. But because it happens in west africa with missionaries, it really feels as if Rosie was from the previous century, cut out from her own country with proper manners and old-fashioned sense of herself as a missionary, devoted, a good soul, with perhaps not much excitement in her life. There come the Nazis, destroying everything, from her community to the church itself, and finally her brother, so she is left by herself, welcomed to the boat of the only man who can get her out of this, but really, who would believe they could possibly have anything in common. Turns out she needed some excitement in her life, and when the austere Rosie comes into colors, she is probably the wildest creature you could find, with still that sense of respect and honor, and with something else that is reckless, and perhaps feelings, over-boarding the African Queen. The beginning depict a certain reality of the time, somehow in a comical way, still with a primitive eye to what was western countries culture that Christianity have ignorantly eradicated. The rest is more interesting, a performance of two amazing actors and nature, with a relationship that create an equilibrium between two persons of different sex, learning to lean on each other, eventually surprise one another, and love each other. I am still not used to the idea of the steamboat captain ending up with the brother of the pastor, but the movie is convincing, they truly look like love birds in a shitty cruise, looking at the sky and everything around with the eyes of oblivion. I thought it would have a bad ending, but that was forgetting that this was a Hollywood movie from the very best of tradition, with a twist in the end.

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The Sea of Grass by Elia Kazan, 1947 (NR)

with Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Robert Walker, Melvyn Douglas, Phyllis Thaxter, Edgar Buchanan, Harry Carey Sr., Ruth Nelson, Robert Armstrong

Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn mark their fourth onscreen pairing as tyrannical New Mexico cattleman Col. James Brewton his reluctant wife, Lutie, in this sweeping Elia Kazan Western based on a novel by Conrad Richter. In a moment of misdirected passion, Lutie conceives a child with her husband's enemy (Melvyn Douglas). But years later, Lutie's grown son (Robert Walker) inadvertently brings the estranged couple back together.

The movie is very very very slow. And the way it is written, it is hard to know what the director means to go towards, what is the main focus. There is no climax, there are no real direction, it is very much like a summary of a book, which it is. The book must be amazing, but its summary takes too much time telling all the stories instead of focusing on developing the characters and their relationship. We get it at the end, subtly, in gets in you, these characters which had to choose a life that they didn't fit in, and live with their choice for a long long time. The movie reminded me because of the theme, of "Rango", yes! The issue told in Rango of Las Vegas is definitely similar what happened in The Sea of Grass, wasting grass land for greed. It also reminded me of "Giant", with the trio of the characters, the identity and misfit of Katharine Hepburn identical to Elizabeth Taylor, which in a way is the other way around, since Giant was shot long after "The Sea of Grass". It definitely affected me, since the story is quite poignant despite the coldness of the tone, with the parallel loss of children and husband for a mother and a wife, and the loss of such an amazing land for this man who had a vision, and nowadays so strikingly relevant for our actual environmental crisis. In a way, this movie reminds me of another movie, about a man who refuse to let the last piece of untouched land of Hawaii in "The Descendants".

Apologies, for this movie, there are no trailer available.

Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon) by Georges Méliès, 1902

with Georges Méliès, Victor André and Bleuette Bernon

A group of men travel to the moon by being shot in a capsule from a giant cannon. They are captured by moon-men, escape, and return to the earth. Soundtrack by Air.

I watched a documentary on Georges Méliès and the creation of the movie, the reconstitution of the shooting and restauration of the film (Le Voyage extraordinaire by Serge Bromberg, Eric Lange, 2011). Very interesting, talking about cinema and technology, a true lesson. The documentary was followed by Le Voyage dans la Lune, in its fullest version, with original soundtrack by Air. I was expecting better, for some reason. Because of the extract I had already seen in the documentary, but mostly because I really like Air and felt they had done the job half way. Anyway, still a masterpiece.
Ok, coming back to it, the story is a little bit surreal, naive in a way, but it was made 110 years ago, so our vision of the trip to space has definitely changed. It is fascinating how the special effect were ingenious. I saw it colorized from the original version, it is another trip to take. How meticulous this was. And the final effect is quite convincing!
By the way, for those who wonder, yes, it is about the Georges Méliès of "Hugo"!

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner by Stanley Kramer, 1967 (NR)

with Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Sidney Poitier, Katharine Houghton, Cecil Kellaway, Beah Richards, Isabel Sanford, Roy Glenn, Virginia Christine

Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn star as wealthy Californians who consider themselves progressive until their only daughter (Katharine Houghton) brings home her African American fiancé (Sidney Poitier) in this snapshot of race relations in the late 1960s. The film earned two Academy Awards (for Hepburn's performance and William Rose's screenplay) and eight other nominations. Stanley Kramer directs.

After a series of classics I felt not much for, I was surprised by this one. It is funny, right on, well acted, ironic, an amazing portrayal of mirrors, from an evolving society that through two generations, shows a drastic change of mentality, questions that are raised on being open minded and respectful of ones decision. Also, honestly, how not to fall in love with Sidney Poitier? He is the ideal man. The rest of the cast is just so good, everything is put into an orderly chaos, with amazing dialogues, essential logic and finally a change. Intelligent, so intelligent.

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Gone with the Wind by Victor Fleming, 1939 (G)

with Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard, Thomas Mitchell, Olivia de Havilland, Hattie McDaniel, George Reeves, Victor Jory, Harry Davenport, Jane Darwell, Ona Munson, Ward Bond, Jackie Moran, Cliff Edwards, Yakima Canutt, Olin Howlin, Irving Bacon, William Bakewell

Director Victor Fleming's 1939 epic adaption of Margaret Mitchell's novel of the same name stars Vivien Leigh as self-absorbed, headstrong Scarlett O'Hara, a Southern Belle who meets her match in Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) just as the Civil War breaks out. Living on a large cotton plantation called Tara in rural Georgia in 1861, Scarlett sees her beloved home and life as she knows it go up in flames -- but will her true love be lost too?

Another past of America, unusual story because of the rules: winners write history. The other side is hard to get. The format of the movie is of course nowadays horrible. Intermission? Hysterical Scarlett? Over-dramatic relationships? The story tho is amazing. Long fight of a woman in a time where women are not to be listened to, the definition of abolition of slavery, view from the North and the South, wartime and capitalism. Fascinating. Perhaps it would be more interesting to read the book.

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Giant by George Stevens, 1956

with Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean, Carroll Baker, Jane Withers, Chill Wills, Mercedes McCambridge, Dennis Hopper, Sal Mineo, Rod Taylor, Judith Evelyn, Earl Holliman, Robert Nichols, Paul Fix, Alexander Scourby, Charles Watts

In Oscar-winning director George Stevens's sprawling epic, Texas cattleman Bick Benedict (Rock Hudson) journeys to Virginia in the early 1920s, falls in love with aristocratic, independent-minded Leslie Lynnton (Elizabeth Taylor) and takes her back to his ranch -- setting the stage for an intergenerational saga that spans decades. James Dean (in his last film appearance) co-stars as sulking, nouveau riche Jett Rink -- the root of Bick's worries.

It is different. The way they were making movies. The way the story was told. The codes of society. It is almost like watching a societal analysis of America and honestly feels like there is a lot of it that came to a certain truth about Americans mentality nowadays. The acting is a bit bizarre, overacted is not the word, it just feels like when reading a book from the beginning of the century, and not understanding too much the way the characters expresses themselves. I watched it with some distance, and sometimes lack of interested. The worst is that I watched it for the only reason that it is listed as one of a hundred best movie of all time. Maybe. Must be. I will document myself more.
PS: the movie was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It makes sense.

Fame by Alan Parker, 1980 (R)

with Irene Cara, Eddie Barth, Lee Curreri, Paul McCrane, Laura Dean, Gene Anthony Ray, Antonia Franceschi, Boyd Gaines, Anne Meara, Albert Hague, Teresa Hughes, Steve Inwood, Barry Miller, Jim Moody, Debbie Allen, Richard Belzer, Isaac Mizrahi, Meg Tilly

"At the New York City High School for the Performing Arts, students get specialized training that often leads to success as actors, singers, etc. This movie follows four students from the time when they audition to get into the school, through graduation. They are the brazen Coco Hernandez, shy Doris Finsecker, sensitive gay Montgomery MacNeil, and brash, abrasive Raul Garcia." IMDB

In time! It took me forever to watch this movie. Too short! What an enjoyable moment. And really interesting vision of the end of the seventies and what would become the 80's, probably because of the influence of the movie.

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