IN THE WINGS - September 2008 - Films

I was waiting for some good films to start coming out this year and it’s been a mighty long wait. However, they’re starting, they’re starting--- finally, after a long wait. Okay, DARK KNIGHT has finally arrived with the late, young Heath Ledger playing The Joker and he was really good. Wonder if he will receive a posthumous Oscar® for his superb last performance. Wouldn’t it be lovely if his parents came to Hollywood from Australia to accept on his behalf? Christian Bale returns as Batman to clean up Gothic City. The rest of the big cast is excellent too.

Fun and frivolity brings us the screen version replicated from the hit Broadway musical, MAMA MIA starring the amazing Meryl Streep as she sings and dances up a storm in all the songs from the 70’s pop Swedish group, ABBA. Filmed on a gorgeous Greek Island, Pierce Brosnan does a good job with the vocals also, as well as the two other guys, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard, all Streep’s former lovers. My favorite supporting character was Julie Walters, the fine British actress/comedienne. (I remember her from the 1983 “Educating Rita” film where she played a hairdresser trying to educate herself and Michael Caine was her ‘enry ‘iggins.) In Mama Mia, she and Christine Baranski play Streep’s old vaudeville partners who also came to attend the wedding of Meryl’s adorable daughter, played by Amanda Seyfried.

In the theatres are ELEGY with Penelope Cruz and Sir Ben Kingsley in a May-December romance and HOUNDOG with adorable Dakota Fanning, Robin Wright Penn, Piper Laurie and David Morse. How can a film be such an uninteresting downer with such a great cast? I dunno. A good one tho is the new Woody Allen picture, VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA” starring handsome Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall.

I would be remiss if I didn’t say something about a simply marvelous adult & thinking film, BRIDESHEAD REVISITED, the movie intelligent filmgoers have waited for all year with an extraordinary group of actors. “ This movie is a masterpiece” to quote critic Rex Reed.

Two gay films out soon are BREAKFAST WITH SCOT, about two gays, a former hockey player and a sports attorney. A precocious nephew visits them wearing make-up and high heels, upsetting their “butch” sports life. On a more serious note, MILK won’t be out for a few months but definitely worth waiting for. Remember when, in 1978, San Francisco’s Mayor Mascone was assassinated along with the gay supervisor, Harvey Milk. Sean Penn plays Milk while Josh Brolin plays the murderer. Young Emile Hirsch also stars and Howard Rosenman plays the owner/publisher of The Advocate, the only gay newspaper at the time.

Another chick flick will be out shortly, THE WOMEN, the 1939 classic about love, friendship, betrayal and gossip. It was such a big hit then and made super stars of Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard and Joan Crawford. The new one stars Meg Ryan, Annette Bening , Eva Mendes, Jada Pinkett Smith, Debra Messing, Candice Bergen, Bette Midler and a host of others.

Whew!, A lot of excuses to eat POPCORN!!! xoxo Harriette