Blume in Love

When this film came out in 1973 it was a pretty big deal. A young whippersnapper of a movie reviewer named Roger Ebert gave the film his highest rating of four stars. The script for Blume in Love was nominated for the Writers Guild Award for the best original comedy screenplay of 1973, and it lost to another George Segal film (A Touch of Class). George Segal himself was a major star at the time, and the 1973-4 period was probably the pinnacle of his career. This film came out at about the same time as A Touch of Class and Altman's California Split, and it was by no means considered the ugly stepchild of the other two.

I suppose what I'm saying here is that this was an A-list project. You probably wouldn't guess that if you watched it today without knowing what I have just revealed. You'd probably think it was sort of OK, but kind of quaint, rather politically incorrect by today's standards, and too slow to develop its themes.

To be honest, it would not be hard to nod off during this film.

TOTAL SPOILERS

Although I no longer find it to be a very good film (assuming I probably did back in 1973), and I have no idea why it was ever considered a comedy, I still find it interesting to analyze. It's a film caught in a time warp. On the surface it is a classic 1950s-style love story. A divorced husband sits alone in Venice, thinking back to his honeymoon in that same romantic city, recalling what went wrong in his marriage and the period just after it. He narrates from the present time, and his narrations merge into flashbacks. He was unfaithful to his wife. She caught him and would not forgive him. But, dammit, he loved her and he realizes how badly he screwed up. He pined for her, and did a of of begging, but she took up with another guy, and he found consolation with an ex-girlfriend. And still he loved his ex-wife, and thought of her constantly. They did get together briefly, and she got pregnant, but they did not reunite. Then the other guy split, but she still didn't want her ex- back. At the very end, as he mopes around Venice watching all the happy young lovers and wishing he were still in love, she shows up totally unexpectedly, they embrace, and they experience a happy reunion, having both learned from the experience.

Pretty straightforward Cary Grant stuff, eh?

But wait! As Paul Harvey would say, here's the rest of the story. Even though the filmmaking is 1955, the characters are filled with in-your-face hippie-era attitude. The "other man" is an itinerant musician who lives in his truck and smokes reefer all day (Kris Kristofferson, pretty much playing Kris Kristofferson.) He collects welfare, but has no intention of working. He's just sticking it to the man.

And mainly smoking reefer.

The wife chooses not to forgive her husband for the infidelity because she was starting to realize that she needed room to evolve and grow. After the split, she starts to take yoga and guitar lessons, has a lot of sex and and smokes a lot of reefer. Meanwhile, the husband and the "other man" bond, become close, and ... er ... smoke a lot of reefer. And the sympathetic ex-girlfriend who helps Segal through his pain knows that there's nothing permanent in it for her, but she likes the sex and companionship, and doesn't need it to turn into anything permanent. And the chick Segal picks up in a bar immediately wants to get him into a foursome. Oh, and remember how I said the husband and wife briefly got together and she got pregnant? Well, the specifics of that encounter are that he raped her and the boyfriend showed up during the act. And why did the boyfriend leave? Well, he just figured it was time to move on, because that's what itinerant musicians do. Besides, once she got pregnant, he figured she won't let him smoke as much reefer.

Rape and reefer. Definitely not Cary Grant stuff.

There is nothing in those characters or storylines that seems so daring today, but those characters were all new types of screen archetypes for that era (except for the philandering husband, who was an old-fashioned guy trying to figure everyone else out.)  This film is a perfect example of how the counter-cultural characters and attitudes from the late sixties had, by 1973, slipped completely into the mainstream of the culture itself, and thence into films with middlebrow stars like George Segal and Marsha Mason.

There's some nudity from some obscure woman named Erin O'Reilly (the foursome chick), but the real point of covering this film is the topless nudity from Oscar nominee Marsha Mason. She earned four "best actress" nominations between 1974 and 1982, but no wins. If you met Marsha at a party and she told you she was a famous movie star, you would never believe her unless you already knew of her career. She was an ordinary-looking person, not unattractive, and shapely enough, but not glamorous, beautiful or sexy. And she never did any gimmicky things to earn her nominations. No impersonations of famous people, no dramatic weight gains, no weird accents. So without anything to attract people's attention, how did she get all those good roles? Well, being married to the hottest scriptwriter in town helped, but in ironic fact, it was her very lack of star quality that made her a star. Turn a camera on her and she could convince you that she was a real person doing whatever it was the script called for. She never seemed to be acting at all, and audiences "bought" her completely. I can't think of many movie actresses like her today. Maybe Marcia Gay Harden, but she'd be about it, and she's more of a supporting actress. The Marsha Mason style of leading actress is a disappearing breed, isn't it?

Here's a film clip of her three topless scenes.

And here are the collages:

 

Bloody Mary

While investigating the disappearance of her younger sister, successful author Natalie Fitzgerald (Kim Tyler) and her ex-boyfriend Bobby (Matt Borlenghi), a police detective, find themselves in the middle of a murder spree at a psychiatric hospital with a sinister history. Although it makes some claim to kinship with supernatural thrillers dealing with long-ago crimes (à la The Ring and The Grudge), Bloody Mary offers just enough breasts and blood to appeal to genre fans interested in less atmospheric fare, and the story is fairly well-developed.

 

Babel

Normally, when an A-list movie with 7 Oscar nominations like 2006's Babel comes out, especially when it's well-known that it contains a big nude scene (or in this case several), I lay back and let everyone else jump on it because I prefer to do movies that people may not have seen. With this movie, I'm doing it just to voice my opinion that this may well be one of the most overrated movies of 2006. Furthermore, it's pretty obvious (to me) that Rinko Kikuchi's character Chieko, which is the sole source of the nudity, doesn't even need to exist to further the storyline. Most likely no one will say it, but the character is there simply to add sex and nudity to a storyline that otherwise would have none.

Make no mistake: I loved the nudity, but if I were the parent of a 15 or 16 year-old, and had made the decision to take my child to see it on the basis of it's nomination, I might have a very different reaction to the graphic depiction of a schoolgirl spreading her legs ala Sharon Stone. As is often the case with the stupid rating system, the R rating is a cruel joke.

During a visit to Morocco, an American woman tourist is shot while on a tour bus with her husband. Although the movie makes it very clear at the beginning that the shooting is the result of accidental stupidity, all the authorities immediately take it as a terrorist attack. Of course, this is done for political purposes, and the couple is stranded in a tiny village with her bleeding to death while the politicos argue over who has jurisdiction, who should take care of her, who is at fault, etc.

The movie also deals with four different families that are interconnected to the tragedy, although in the case of the Japanese girl and her father, the connection is so tenuous that it's pretty apparent their main role was to provide the bush and boob shots (in my opinion). Others will disagree, of course. In fact, I suspect most people will disagree with my review of this movie.

Babel was done in such a disjointed style timeline-wise that one of the last scenes in the movie actually took place about a third of the way through the story. The title is supposed to describe the communication problems that the characters endured, but actually refers instead to the makeup of the movie itself. It's a very good story, but the screenplay is kind of a mess, filled with gimmicks and told in very jumbled chronological order. Worth watching? Absolutely. Great nudity? Yes. Academy Award material? Probably not.

Rinko Kikuchi

Here's the best version of the best pic that is supposed to be American Idol candidate Antonella Barba. (And the "proof" that this series is really she.)

Cameron Diaz still looks great from behind.

Counselor Troi (Marina Sirtis) shows up in a see-through blouse at a sci-fi con ... definitely earning her appearance fee!

Anita Pallenberg in Performance (iconic Mick Jagger flick)

Ann Sydney in Performance

The Swankstress with some low-cut bikini bottoms. She looks great.