Mailbox:

to: Scoop

re: Teri Hatcher Chronology

The Heaven's Prisoners release date of May, 1996 is misleading as the film was shown as a working project in Variety in January, 1993 for Savoy Pictures.

In fact, after languishing on the shelf as a result of Savoy's financial troubles, the film was finally sold to New Line Cinema for release, thus the May, 1996 release date.

So Teri Hatcher was actually younger than generally accepted when Heaven's Prisoners was made. I'll let you decide how Teri's age here stacks up vis-a-vis her age when The Cool Surface was made.

RF
 

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to: Scoop

re: JLH's boobs

With all this talk about JLH not doing a nude scene because she has a hit show and Teri Hatcher looking good a few years ago and not now -  can't we talk these girls into posing naked for photos when they are in their prime and selling them later when their careers start to dive. When JLH is 40 and they aren't offering her parts like they used to, why pose for Playboy then when you could sell Playboy pics of yourself when you were 25-30.

 

Cindy Margolis is going to be in Playboy now that she is 40 and I'm sure she will look great but I think most of us would rather see pics of her from a few years ago.  She may have even been able to get more money for them.

 

Tell Jennifer to get one of those great Playboy photographers to take some great nude shots, then lock them in a vault and sell them for a fortune in a few years.

 

JD

Scoop's note: That actually makes a lot of sense! On the other hand, I suppose stars like JLH don't realize the inevitability of either a career collapse or wanting to show off their beauty when they get a bit older. Not all of them end up doing it, after all. I don't see Sarah Jessica Parker rushing to do a Playboy layout now that she has passed the big four-oh, and it seems to me that SJP is the career model for JLH, for good or ill.  I'd love to talk Love into modeling her career after Kate Winslet or Emmanuelle Beart instead, or even after Gretchen Mol, but it just ain't gonna happen.

To tell you the truth, I think it's just fine if a shy actress keeps her clothes on. I can think of some actresses who have left no doubt about how they feel. Alba has basically said she'll never do nudity, end of story. So be it. But JLH is kind of annoying because she keeps talking about doing (or not doing) the topless scene. It seems that we've been printing some discussion of this topic for something like seven years. She almost seems to be using the possibility of a nude scene to maximize her top-of-mind awareness, all the while having no intention of actually doing one. At least that's the impression I'm getting.

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to: Scoop

re: Audrey Tautou

Hi, it's me again.

I worked on a scan of Audrey Tautou and cleaned it up considerably (I think). When I saved it, I put my Frypan logo on it since I had modified it so extensively (credit to the original scanner of course, though the scanner was not identified). Having done so, I am now questioning whether putting my logo on the reworked scan is appropriate. What is your take on this? Is this a no no? If it is, and you want to use the image, take the logo off.

Let me know what you think

Frypan

Scoop's note: What you did is OK, I think. Nobody really laid claim to that picture. There are no hard and fast rules but in general, if you want to be extra-cautious, don't use your logo unless you do both the scan/capture work and the editing.

The Sisters (2006)

Just a week ago I told Tuna that I had never seen this film, and never would. I finally broke down and watched it because several people said the nudity was Elizabeth Banks and several others were equally convinced that it was Maria Bello. As it turns out, it was Bello! LC's original identification was 100% correct.

 

It is no simple task to adapt Chekhov's plays to modern settings. I think I can illustrate this point most easily by getting directly to the task at hand. Here is the conclusion to The Three Sisters:

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(The three sisters stand close together supporting each other.)

 

MASHA. Listen, how the music is playing! They are going away from us, one of them has already gone, gone forever, and we are left here alone to start our lives again. We must go on living… We must go on living…

IRINA. (Leans her head on Olga's breast.) The time will come, and everyone will know the meaning of all this, why there is all this suffering, and there won't be any mysteries, but meanwhile, we must go on living… we must work, we must work! Tomorrow I will leave on my own, I will teach in a school and I'll give all my life to those perhaps who need it. It's already autumn, soon it will be winter, the snow will fall, but I will be working, I will go on working…

OLGA. (Embraces both sisters.) The music is playing so cheerfully, it's so full of high spirits that one wants to stay alive. Oh God, Oh God! The time will come when we will be gone forever, we will be forgotten, our faces, our voices, and even how many of us there were. But our suffering will be transformed into happiness for those who live after us, peace and contentment will cover the earth, and they will remember and bless with kind words all those who live now. My dearest, dearest sisters, our life is still not finished. We will go on living. The music is playing so happily, so cheerfully, that it seems, in just a little time, we will know why we live, and why there is all this suffering… If only we could know! If only we could know!

 

(The music becomes quieter and quieter; Kulygin, smiling and happy, brings Masha's hat and shawl; Andrey wheels out the pram with Bobik sitting in it.)

 

CHEBUTYKIN. (Sings quietly.) Ta-ra-ra boom-de-boom, I sat upon a stone… (Reads the paper.) It doesn't matter! It doesn't matter!

OLGA. If only we could know! If only we could know!

CURTAIN
 

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Be advised that there are some very long monologues earlier in the play which make the speeches above seem like Lee Marvin quotes. Now place yourself in the position of one who will create a modern interpretation on film. How will you go about it? After all, your first responsibility is to create credible characters and, well, let's face it, people don't talk like that. I don't know if people talked like that in Chekhov's time either, but the point is that his audiences accepted characters who spoke in such a manner. Critics did not ridicule him for his ridiculous dialogue. In fact, quite the opposite is true! Chekhov is considered a modernist who helped the great Stanislavsky, inventor of the modern acting style, to create a more realistic style of drama, with fewer stylized conventions, and with "natural acting" - absent the traditional rhetorical style of speechifying on stage. Chekhov wrote this play especially for Stanislavsky's troupe.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking. If this was the modern, natural stuff, what must the old-fashioned material have been like?

Oh, well, that doesn't concern us today. What does concern us is how a modern screenwriter can take dialogue like the lines above and present it so that modern audiences can relate to it as the interaction of contemporary people. The first decision that must be made is the nature of the prospective audience. Will it consist only of the most educated 5% of the population - the same group that could relate to it in Chekhov's day - or will it consist of mainstream filmgoers? In creating The Sisters, the playwright/screenwriter Richard Alfieri didn't seem to have this matter resolved in his own head. The characters often prattle on like overeducated dullards, the sorts of people who were never the brightest in their peer groups, and thus had to try extra hard to flaunt erudition and to take an arrogant attitude toward those with less education. The high-falutin' hostile banter is the sort of material which might be targeted directly at the Masterpiece Theater crowd, but the things they discuss are strictly dragged out of the Lifetime Network, slathered with a triple layer of melodrama, and aimed directly at the crowd which watches their soap operas with a few wine coolers.

Is it supposed to be a film for the few or a film for the many?

Your guess is as good as mine, but it ended up a film for the very few, because a good percentage of the few people who would be interested in a modern-day setting of The Three Sisters will be appalled by the fact that they seem to be watching The Young and the Restless with more hostile and flowery speeches. Chekhov's story of failed marriages, unfulfilled yearnings, and the winter ennui of the bourgeoisie gets a fresh injection of crystal meth addiction, unfulfilled lesbian romance, and father-daughter incest, added at the rate of one major tragedy per sister. Despite the story's tendency toward melodrama, I think it still might have worked if it had not drifted so far toward rhetoric and affectation. I think Tuna hit the nail right on the head in his comment that it is like a hyper-version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf with dozens of Martha and George clones sharpening their verbal claws and ripping each other apart.

The film has some good moments. It gripped me when the middle sister's true love had to return to his wife and kids, and I thought their farewell scene was played beautifully by Tony Goldwyn and Maria Bello. I enjoyed Rip Torn's interpretation of the kindly old drunken English Professor, partly because Torn inserted some notes of civility and human decency in an otherwise corrosive environment, and mostly because I found him to be the one believable character, even if his accent did keep disappearing and reappearing.

Overall, it is trapped in multiple limbos: the limbo between great drama and tawdry melodrama, and the limbo between conventionalized 19th century theater and modern day screen realism. I can't really recommend it to anyone.

 

Maria Bello

Elizabeth Banks

 

Other Crap:

Movie Reviews:

Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format. Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.

Corina Toader

Massachusetts State Senator Jarrett T. Barrios touched off a controversy by trying to regulate fluffernutters.  Barrios was outraged when he discovered his son's school lets kids have the popular New England treat, a peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich, any day they want. So he attached an amendment to a school nutrition bill severely limiting the serving of fluff in
schools.  But even some nutritionists think regulating fluff is silly.  And Don Durkee, president of the local company that makes marshmallow fluff, said he's eaten it all his life and he's 80.


* When most people hear he wants to ban fluffernutters, they assume it's some kind of anti-porn bill.



Angelina Jolie told CNN that she and Brad Pitt plan to adopt more children, but in a gender and ethnic mix to "balance" their current brood of one natural child, an adopted Asian boy, Maddox, and an adopted African girl, Zahara.  She said, "We don't know which country, but we're looking at different countries...It's gonna be the balance of what would be the best for Mad and for Z right now.  It's, you know, another boy, another girl, which country, which race would fit best with the kids."


*  She might have to consult a good decorator.


*  We used to all be God's children; but eventually, we'll all be Angelina
Jolie's children.


 

Police in Tucson, Arizona, raided a home that contained 220 bails of
marijuana, about two tons worth; so much that the cops could smell it in
the air as soon as they entered the block

* That block is also home to America's most profitable Krispy Kreme franchise.