Welcome to the 160th Edition where I got quite carried away with the
Barrymore family. I got started with it, then I just felt that I had to
keep featuring more. There are plenty of unsuccessful Barrymores that I
did not bother to look into. I also start the Random Myspace Profile
selection where I have chosen nine names randomly, three of which on on
this one. I don't believe anything will be on next week's but I will be
featuring all of them in the coming weeks and then I will choose the
next nine so you could all be next. Well, I will shut up now and give
you my ten for the week.
Jonestown: The Life and Death of
People's Temple (2006): This is a movie Travis showed for his Co-Op film
festival. It is a PBS documentary on the famed cult leader Jim Jones
who lead the bizarre mass suicide. It talks about his origins in my
state of Indiana and his rise in the church. He was also very known with
his love of diversity which showed in his adopted children and the
people in his church but also the control he gained over everyone. It
has many of his surviving church members speaking on the things that
went on and the last days in Guyana. There's not much more to say except
to check this one out. If you don't know who Jones is, just google the
name and you'll learn.
Full Metal Jacket (1987): Stanley Kubrick
directed this great Vietnam film and one of my dad's favorite movies.
Matthew Modine stars in this movie as Joker who starts out in Boot Camp
which was the big highlight of the film. Retired Boot Camp instructer R.
Lee Ermey plays the boot camp officer. LAW AND ORDER: CI star Vincent
D'Onofrio had a great early role as the soldier given the name Gomer
Pyle who was quite slow and a bit of a loose cannon. After that it shows
the war from Joker's point of view and the effects of it. My mom's
boyfriend Tony was pointing out the realness of the scenes to me.
Kubrick also put this together with many unknown actors.
In Her
Shoes (2005): This is part one of nine in the Myspace Profile Selection
and for this I choose Beth. I went to school with her from elementary
school and up to graduation in high school and her name was the first
that came up in this random selection process. Curtis Hanson directed
this film based on the novel by Jennifer Weiner. Cameron Diaz and Toni
Collette star as a pair of two very different sisters. Diaz plays
Maggie, a party girl who can't hold a job. Collette, one of my
favorites, stars as Rose, a very successful attorney. What they have in
common is their mother, who died and a very difficult step-mother. When
the sisters have a falling out, Maggie goes to track down her long-lost
grandmother played by the legendary Shirley MacLaine and that's where
things kind of start. This could be dismissed as a chick flick and my
friend Chelsea at the Blue Bottle made fun of me a little bit but I
found this to be quite moving and as I said I have always liked Toni
Collette so this movie became quite worth it to me.
The Little
Colonel (1935): I now bring in Shirley Temple in this post Civil War
film. We start with Southern belle Elizabeth Lloyd, played by Evelyn
Venable, who marries a yankee soldier much to the dismay of her father, a
former confederate soldier played by Lionel Barrymore. He soon disowns
her but years later when moving back into town, Elizabeth has a
daughter, played by Temple who slowly forms a relationship with the
grumpy Colonel. Bill "Bojangles" Robinson plays a servant and a great
tap dance scene occurs on the stairsteps. Respected actress Hattie
McDaniel stars as a servant of the house. This has some rather racial
elements by today's standards but if you can understand of those times,
you might find this to be a good movie.
Never Love a Stranger
(1958): This is part two of nine in my Random Myspace Profile selection
where I chose the tribute profile of Steve McQueen. I have many myspace
friends that are tribute profiles and when they are chosen I will look
into some of their more unknown work if possible. This is where my
Barrymore obsession for the week started for this is very early McQueen
and the star of the movie is John Drew Barrymore and since I have always
been curious to see a movie of his, I knew this was the one. Barrymore
stars as Frankie Kane whose mother dies at childbirth and stays at a
Catholic orphanage who they learn his parents were Jewish and kick him
out. He then takes up a life of crime slowly rising to the top. Steve
McQueen plays a childhood friend but becomes his adversary when becoming
a cop. This was something I found on Netflix which was worth a view to
see a very young Steve McQueen and to even see John Drew Barrymore who
had a very unsuccessful acting career. They did what they could and even
Barrymore was not horrible but never got to rise in his career due to
things like drugs, among many other things.
That Midnight Kiss
(1949): This is my musical for the week which stars Kathryn Grayson as
an upcoming soprano actress Prudence Budell who gets her chance in an
opera. She must sing with tenor Guido, played by Thomas Gomez. She then
discovers another man with a great tenor voice played by Mario Lanza who
then becomes her love interest. Ethel Barrymore co-stars as Prudence's
grandmother and adviser. This is a fun little musical romance for if you
like musicals.
The Legend of Drunken Master (1994): This is my
martial arts film for the week and in my opinion Jackie Chan's best
work. He stars as Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-Hung, who Jet Li has played
many times in the ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA series. Here, he accidently
gets caught up in a smuggling ring and must fight a group of
foreigners. He learns the fighting style of Drunken Boxing which his
father Wong Kei-Ying, played by Ti Lung, is very opposed to. Anita Mui
stars as Fei-Hung's stepmom. This movie has some great action and good
fight scenes. I just wish it was not English dubbed when I saw it.
Fever
Pitch (2005): The Farrelly Brothers directed this baseball comedy which
stars SNL alum Jimmy Fallon as a teacher named Ben and a die-hard fan
of the Boston Red Sox. Drew Barrymore stars as Lindsey, a businesswoman.
Ben and Lindsey then form a relationship but she sees complications
when the Red Sox are playing. I guess I relate a lot to the Ben
character. Lately, my life is community theater, watching movies, and
hanging out at the Blue Bottle coffee shop and I would be hard to have a
relationship with but I am very content with my life right now. This
movie was set during the World Series season of the Red Sox and was a
nice light-hearted comedy by the Farrelly Brothers who have been known
to do some very obsene things.
The Invisible Woman (1940): This
is one of the sequals to THE INVISIBLE MAN thought this was more of a
comedy than the first one. Virginia Bruce stars as the title character
whose name is Kitty Carroll who is a model that answers an ad to
volunteer to become invisible. John Barrymore plays the eccentric
Professor Gibbs who has invented a machine to become invisible the
success leads to some pretty funny moments. This is a much later movie
for Barrymore and definetely an overlooked Universal film.
The
Trial (1962): I now end with part three of nine in the Random Myspace
Profile selection process, this time choosing movie buff Midnight
Desperado who I appreciate having this movie I had never heard of until
now. Orson Welles directs and co-stars in this strange movie which stars
Anthony Perkins as a man who is arrested on this 30th birthday and is
never told what for. It then leads him into a strange journey to look
for the truth. This is something that has to be followed straight
through which has some strange camera angles from Welles who is known
for his camera work. Anthony Perkins is very good and it is unfortunate
that he is really only known for playing Norman Bates in PSYCHO. I am
always glad to check out his unknown but good work which he has quite a
bit of.
That is it for this week. I don't believe I have anyone
from the Random Myspace Profile selection for next week so I really
don't know when I'll get all nine in but when I do, I just choose
another nine. Thank you all for reading and please tell me what you love
and what you hate and I'll be back next week in a week which includes a
Pete Smith short, a River Phoenix film, and even something with Sean
Astin.
FUN LITTLE FACTS
Vincent D'Onofrio (Full Metal
Jacket) plays Orson Welles (The Trial director and co-star) in the 1994
film ED WOOD and later in a 2005 short film called FIVE MINUTES, MR.
WELLES which he also directs.
Cameron Diaz (In her Shoes) and
Drew Barrymore (Fever Pitch) played two of the three CHARLIES ANGELS in
the 2000 film and in the 2003 sequal CHARLIE'S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE.
Not
much explanation really needs to be made here but Lionel Barrymore (The
Little Colonel), Ethel Barrymore (That Midnight Kiss) and John
Barrymore (The Invisible Woman) are all siblings. John Drew Barrymore
(Never Love a Stranger) is the son of John whose career never rose like
the three mentioned. Drew Barrymore (Fever Pitch) is the daughter of
John Drew and the only survivor of these five and the most successfuly
Barrymore since the first three mentioned. For those who do not know the
Barrymores are a four generation acting family starting in the late
1800s with Maurice Barrymore and Georgiana Drew, so you see where the
name Drew comes from.
My Facebook friend Terry played the ghost
of John Barrymore (The Invisible Woman) in an Anderson Mainstage comedy
called I HATE HAMLET.
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