By Holly
Celebrating friendship and growth, along with beautiful scenery and clothes. I liked both of these films very much.
An American in Paris
By Holly
There's so much good in this movie, and so much annoying. Gene Kelly, who I find very smug, plays a "charming" artist who is basically an annoying stalker. He sees Leslie Caron and will not leave her alone. (Also, he's 19 years old than she is.) If you can get past the fact that he and Leslie Caron never say anything truthful to each other but are supposed to be this great love, go for it. He should've gone off with Nina Foch, who he's only 12 years older than.
However, the Gershwin music is divine. The 17 minute finale is MGM and musicals at their peak of dazzling perfection. Foch is excellent. Oscar Levant hard to watch in his acting scenes and impossible not to watch as a pianist. If you do find Gene Kelly smug, just watch the kids in the "I Got Rhythm" number, or the older women in "By Strauss." They're a lot of fun.
Back to the final number: it has to be in the top 3 of the greatest ever made. Music, costumes, dancing, backgrounds, all brought together...perfectly. A total wonder and joy.
Fringe
By Wendy
When I graduated from college, I made myself a promise to never again finish a book unless I absolutely wanted to--a promise I have kept over and over again.
And I've always been willing to walk out of shows at intermission, because I don't want to waste my time after I've already wasted my money.
But for some reason, in the world of streaming, I found myself finishing seasons and series of shows even when they were no longer worth my time. Now I'm pleased to announce that I've broken that bad habit. There is too much to see and read and do to spend any time finishing up a show just because I started it.
Fringe is a show I might have kept up with in the past. It stars Anna Torv, an Australian actor whose work I've enjoyed a great deal. It also stars Joshua Jackson, who isn't particularly good, but he can be enjoyable and he's nice to look at. The third lead, John Noble, is tasked with playing a very annoying man, and he's altogether too good at it.
The storyline: Torv is FBI. Weird stuff has been happening. Noble is a mad scientist sentenced to life in an asylum for criminals after a lab explosion that killed his assistant. Torv knows that Noble has information that will help her on her case, but only a family member can access him. She tracks down Jackson, Noble's son, who is of course estranged from him and doesn't want to get involved. But, blah, blah, blah, they end up working together at Noble's old lab at some university (Yale, maybe?), where every single episode goes like this:
- Something weird happens: a plane full of dead people, a baby who grows to old age in minutes, all sorts of bizarre deaths
- Torv gets the case
- Noble posits some bizarre explanation
- Jackson pooh-poohs the suggestion in derisive terms
- Noble turns out to be right
- Noble--whose memory is erratic at best--realizes that the phenomenon in question may be the result of his own earlier research
In terms of character "development," Torv is stubborn, Jackson is cynical and stubborn, Noble is weird, brilliant, and stubborn.
The show does have moments. My favorite may be when a bunch of bank robbers somehow temporarily soften the material of a wall so that they can walk through it. When one of them gets delayed leaving the vault, he ends up stuck with his back half in one room, his front half in the other, and his middle at one with the wall. Pretty cool (though not for him, of course).
Overall, however, the joys are far outweighed by the tedious predictability, and what a pleasure it was to just press "stop"!
The Suspect
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By Holly
Interesting, slightly different film, starring Charles Laughton and Ella Raines. He's married to a miserable woman and meets Raines and they take a liking to each other. Moody, sort of English film...with many American actors, and accents all over the place. Enjoyable!
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