This is What You Get When You Mess With Us

Rob

Tangled (2010)

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We typically order takeout for our Friday Fun Family Fun Movie Night, but I wanted to make my own pizza dough because there are enough hours in the day when you’d rather not watch another episode of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

What Does *Your* Cutie Mark Say About You???

After slogging through a handful of personal anecdotes about how the writer to truly love bread-cheese-tomotosauce I found a dough recipe that looked straightforward and I made my pie. Shredded my own cheese! Baked it on my pizza stone!

Unfortunately, the bottom burned, the organic mozzarella ball was a touch past its prime, and the sauce was from a can.

Of course I ate it

SHE and the Bairn had bulgogi dumplings cooked in the air fryer. They were exceptional.

Anyway, our plan was to watch Penguins of Madagascar on Netflix because our girl loves the Madagascar films and the Penguins. But Your Wonderful Comcast decided Friday night at 5pm was the perfect time to reboot the Internet. So we dug through our Blu-Ray collection and pulled out Disney’s Tangled.

Tangled is a Disney interpretation of the story of Rapunzel. You can read the Grimm Brother’s version of it here. The Grimm’s telling itself is an interpretation of a story that occurs so often in traditions throughout the world, academics have assigned it a type: Type 310.1 The movie follows tale closely, but with a notable difference.

In the film, a magical plant grows wild, and the witch, Gothel (musical theater person Donna Murphy) nurtures it, but is certainly not interested in sharing the magic with anyone else. She has used that magic to keep herself alive and youthful for hundreds, maybe thousands of years.

The pregnant Queen is dying; the King directs his people to search the countryside for this mythical curative flower. The King’s men pluck the flower and turn it into a single dose elixir that saves Queen and gives their daughter, the princess Rapunzel, played by Mandy Moore, golden hair that can also cure the sick and heal the wounded. When cut, the magic hair dies at the root.

There are two bits of the film that trouble me; the first is the above. In the folktales, the witch cultivates salad greens (which is where the name “Rapunzel” comes from) and other vegetables, infused with her magic. A desperate husband steals these greens to heal his ailing, pregnant wife. To pay for this crime, the witch demands the child. The husband complies; the life of his wife is more precious to him than that of the child. The story never again mentions Rapunzel’s parents.

Although Gothel hoarded the power for herself, she kept the flower alive, recognizing the need to conserve it’s power. The King used up all of that power to save only his wife. How “good” can we assume this King to be if his people don’t object to using this power to save only one woman, even just a little? If the royal family had chosen to use his wealth and power to cultivate the magic flower, how many more of their people could he have saved? Gothel is “evil” for taking the child; the King exploited natural resources for his family alone, dooming the ancient Gothel and any other woman dying in childbirth.

I believe that any reasonable person would be angry enough to want to be made whole.

But this is a Disney Princess film and it goes as expected. Mandy Moore is funny, the script is funny and suspenseful (at least there were moments when my girl was really “scared” for the characters). Zachary Levi’s2 Flynn Ryder, who has stolen Rapunzel’s Princess crown3 from the castle, helps her escape from the tower. They spend the rest of the picture trying to stay away from his ex-partners, the witch, and the King’s soldiers, Rapunzel wants to see the floating lanterns the people of the kingdom release each year on her birthday. Thanks to her brains, his buffoonish bravery, and a mugging horse, they do succeed. It’s only after that they get caught…

Rapunzel is hopeful. Even though she is captive in the Tower and captive to Gothel’s guilt anxiety, she spends here time (shown in song) joyfully improving herself. And when Eugene (Flynn’s real name) comes along, he doesn’t rescue her. He helps, but she makes the choice and the leap to get out of the tower. Repunzel’s in control of herself, pretty ruthless with an iron frying pan…

And she is very conflicted.

Me, going to Target during the Pandemic

I thought this was incredibly authentic, especially for a Disney movie. She hadn’t been out of the tower for 16 years. Of course she’d be conflicted. This is a tremendous change for her. Thankfully, Flynn doesn’t try to make her stop, He lets her run it out. This is all very healthy.

Speaking of Gothel… yes, she’s made some terrible choices. But she is caring for this girl. She is parenting. She keeps Rapunzel confined, sure, but don’t we all? I can definitely see echos of their relationship in the mother/daughter relationships I know in real life. It’s certainly more realistic than other movie portrayed parent/child relationships.

But is Gothel “evil?” I’m not convinced. Angry, for sure. And scared.

The second bit I had a problem with was the resolution, especially considering Flynn’s openness to Rapunzel’s agency earlier in the movie. Ryder is mortally wounded by Gothel. Rapunzel is willing to stay with her if Gothel lets her save his life. Ryder, however, cuts off Rapunzel’s hair, killing her magic, and, ultimately, killing Gothel.

But are her powers gone?? Expectedly, Rapunzel’s tears heal Ryder and great joy is had by all.

Rapunzel made a reluctant choice to go with Gothel to save a person she loved. Flynn killed a part the root of her power (haha). He took away her agency. It worked out for him, of course. He lived. But Flynn he was more than willing to take her powers. That’s not a positive story. She didn’t ask to be rescued that time.

Anyway, my favorite scene:

Dream big, villains…

In all, I’m going to rate Tangled 6 out of 8 frying pans. My Bairn really loves it.4 So, watch it with your kids, but like all Disney movies, but with context.

  1. I like to think of myself a writer, and my dream has always been (and will likely always be) to write a novel. I read a bit and had a solid ‘3’ on the AP English exam I sat in 1996. I was not aware that there is an academic classification for Folktales. But there is. Explicitly stealing from the past and covering it with “tradition” is going to make writing stories for my Bairn a shit ton easier. ↩
  2. Levi also, too, is a lot to deal with. He delivers lines like he’s in some Tracey/Hepburn film, riffing with some spunky girl reporter who he marries in the last reel. Loud and Fast, not unlike his character in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Loud and Fast does not make something funny. It’s not a necessary ingredient in funny. Sherman-Palladino’s dialogue is not clever or smart; she tries to make up for that failing by having actors deliver it from a Gatling Gun. ↩
  3. Which the miserable King and Queen keep on a pedestal in the thrown room, awaiting their daughters return ↩
  4. She also likes the Disney+ TV version which, unlike other TV shows from movies, have all the voice actors from the movie reprise their roles. ↩

Cinema on Wednesday: To Catch a Thief (1955)

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My favorite part of To Catch a Thief – Alfred Hitchcock’s diamond heist film starring Cary Grant and Grace Kelly – is the first 10-15 minutes. We know the movie is set in the South of France because the titles and credits are shown over the window of a Travel agency, advertising the glamour of the Cote d’Azur. At the end of the titles, a woman screams. As the camera moves through the 5-star hotels and ornate villas of Nice Cote d’Azur, more women shriek in horror. A black cat creeps over roofs.

Jump to a villa on a hill, surrounded by grapevines. There, too, is a black cat, very much like the one prowling Nice, sitting on a chair, eyeballing Carey Grant. Grant plays John Robie, a “retired” jewel thief. A car is climbing the hill. Robie loads and places shotgun near his desk. They are police and it seems like he’s not going to go easily… but this is a diversion. He sneaks out of the house and the police follow his auto through narrow streets.

We don’t need a second of exposition to understand what is happening. Hitchcock and the actors have shown us. Women are being robbed of their jewels late at night and the Police believe that Cary Grant’s character is involved in those thefts. Maybe he is? As a viewer, we’re not sure. And we’re never really sure, at least until the very end. All of this is accomplished with images and sound. There is little to no expository dialogue.

Read more of my thoughts here: http://tiwygwymw.us/12k

To Catch a Thief (1955)

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My favorite part of To Catch a Thief – Alfred Hitchcock’s diamond heist film starring Cary Grant and Grace Kelly – is the first 10-15 minutes. We know the movie is set in the South of France because the titles and credits are shown over the window of a Travel agency, advertising the glamour of the Cote d’Azur. At the end of the titles, a woman screams. As the camera moves through the 5-star hotels and ornate villas of Nice Cote d’Azur, more women shriek in horror. A black cat creeps over roofs.

Jump to a villa on a hill, surrounded by grapevines. There, too, is a black cat, very much like the one prowling Nice, sitting on a chair, eyeballing Carey Grant. Grant plays John Robie, a “retired” jewel thief. A car is climbing the hill. Robie loads and places shotgun near his desk. They are police and it seems like he’s not going to go easily… but this is a diversion. He sneaks out of the house and the police follow his auto through narrow streets.

Another diversion: it was his housekeeper driving the car. Robie hitched a ride in a bus out of town.

That bird looks familiar…

We don’t need a second of exposition to understand what is happening. Hitchcock and the actors have shown us. Women are being robbed of their jewels late at night and the Police believe that Cary Grant’s character is involved in those thefts. Maybe he is? As a viewer, we’re not sure. And we’re never really sure, at least until the very end. All of this is accomplished with images and sound. There is little to no expository dialogue.

His vineyard is the life he’s earned for both his crimes and his good deeds. Robie was jailed by the Nazis. When his prison was bombed by the Allies, he and the other escaped prisoners joined the French Resistance. After the war, the French government made them all citizens and cleared their criminal records, as thanks for their service. He and his Resistance pals (who all work at one beach-side restaurant) do their best to stay legit. It’s not easy and they live under the eye of the gendarmerie.

With this new “Cat” on the prowl, the police are sure that Robie is up to his old ways. His friends are furious; the police have been visiting them, questioning what they know.

Rather than leave France (as urged by Bertani, owner of the restaurant and reformed criminal, and Danielle, the forward daughter of Foussard, another Resistance fighter) Robie decides to find the new “Cat.” He teams up with the insurance guy, H.H. Hughson, played by John Williams1 to identify possible future victims. Robie chooses to stake out the wealthy, baudy, middle-aged American woman, Jessie Stevens, and her daughter, Frances Stevens, played by Grace Kelly. Because: Grace Kelly.

I don’t know what a gentleman thief looks like so I don’t know why I don’t believe he would look or sound like Cary Grant. He is certainly believable as a man with great confidence who effortlessly inserts himself into the lives of these two women. Jessie wants a husband for her daughter, and Frances is DTF. Both agree Robie is the right guy, even though they are very aware that he is not the Portland-based lumber magnet he pretends to be (I mean, the accent is a clue).

She’s supposed to be a teenager… he’s in his 50s.

Incidentally, Jessie, a widow, is closer to in age to Robie than he is to Frances; Jessie is appropriately aged to be the mother of a 25 year old. Brigitte Auber who plays the supposed teenage Danielle, is at least 5 years Kelly’s senior. Everyone in this moving looks at least a decade older than they really are. Goes to show you that sun damage is real. Please wear sunscreen.

Driving, especially reckless driving along narrow, rural roads, is common theme in many of Hitchcock’s films. In this scene, Frances takes Robie on scenic drive through the hills, driving recklessly and ultimately dropping their police tail.

She’s a pretty cool lady.

During this viewing, this scene immediately reminded me of end of Suspicion, where Joan Fontaine tried to get out of Carey Grant’s car and over a cliff But like I said, the driving theme pops up often in Hitchcock’s movies. Here’s a short playlist:

Crazy Drunk Drivers…

My least favorite scene is near the end: to catch the thief impersonating the original Cat, Robie, Frances, and her mother attend a masquerade at a villa that will their host ostentatiously bejewelled guests overnight. How can the new Cat stay away?

Yeah, I’m now wild about this, either.

Mother and daughter are in period ball gowns, escorted by a man – perhaps Robie? – done up in Moorish blackface. One can try to explain to modern viewers that that blackface was just as racist then as it is now, but that 1950s moviegoers and filmmakers were more comfortable in their own racism. Yes, there is a reason in the story why the man’s costume needed to be head-to-toe, and black, but Hitch certainly could have made a different choice.

Although I’m partial to Hitchcock’s earlier, black and white films, whether produced in London or Hollywood, of his color Hollywood films I’m truly fond of Rear Window with Jimmy Stewart, which was released a year earlier than this one. Grace Kelly is the star of that film, even though it’s Stewart’s face is on all the advertisements. Same for Princess Grace in Dial M for Murder. If you have not yet seen either of these movies, please do as soon as humanly possible.

To Catch a Thief, though, is worth your time, particularly the first bit and the later car chase. And Grace Kelly. I give it 3 and 1/4 Hitches out of 4.

  1. Williams acts mostly with his face, with who has appears in a ton films, including Dial M for Murder. His last role was on the original Battlestar Galactica. ↩

Cinema on Wednesday: Twilight (1998)

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If you’re of a certain age, you too may remember visits to the video store. If you don’t (drugs, booze, youth), VHS tapes and DVD cases took up a ton of space. Once demand for a title dried up, they were stacked on a table and sold, three or four for $20. So sometimes I bought tapes instead of renting, because, if I’m being honest, I never return anything on time. In the end, $5 was a deal, in the end, even if you ended up that copy of Waterworld no one wanted to permanently borrow.

Twilight was one of those. No, not the silly vampire movie that’s inspired so much fanfic and enforced many ill-considered gender roles. This Twilight was made when Kristen Stewart was a wee baby and stars Paul Newman as private investigator Harry Ross.

In the first act, Harry is down in Mexico looking for Reese Witherspoon‘s character, Mel. She’s (presumably; we never really know) living it up with her much-older boyfriend Jeff (Liev Schreiber) and Harry’s been hired to bring her home to her parents. While he’s dragging her out of the resort, Mel manages to get hold of Harry’s gun. She drops it, it discharges, and the round finds a home near his balls. This is important.

Read the rest of the review here: http://tiwygwymw.us/124

Twilight (1998)

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After college, I lived alone in a tiny apartment in Allston, MA where I watched a lot of video tapes I rented from an independent video store. The store was at the corner of Allston and Commonwealth Avenue. Ultimately, the shop was was sold to Hollywood Video. Hollywood Video went bankrupt in the early 2000s, obviously.

If you’re of a certain age, you too may remember visits to the video store. If you don’t (drugs, booze, youth), VHS tapes and DVD cases took up a ton of space. Once demand for a title dried up, they were stacked on a table and sold, three or four for $20. So sometimes I bought tapes instead of renting, because, if I’m being honest, I never return anything on time. In the end, $5 was a deal, in the end, even if you ended up that copy of Waterworld no one wanted to permanently borrow.1

Twilight was one of those. No, not the silly vampire movie that’s inspired so much fanfic and enforced many ill-considered gender roles. This Twilight was made when Kristen Stewart was a wee baby and stars Paul Newman as private investigator Harry Ross.

In the first act, Harry is down in Mexico looking for Reese Witherspoon‘s character, Mel. She’s (presumably; we never really know) living it up with her much-older boyfriend Jeff (Liev Schreiber) and Harry’s been hired to bring her home to her parents. While he’s dragging her out of the resort, Mel manages to get hold of Harry’s gun. She drops it, it discharges, and the round finds a home near his balls. This is important.

Jump forward a few years, Harry is now living with Mel and her family, doing odd jobs around their mansion, as he recuperates from his physical and mental wounds. Mel’s parents are Catherine and Jack Ames, 1970s-era Hollywood Royalty, played, respectively, by Susan Sarandon and Gene Hackman. No one really says why they keep him around, but one suspects Harry’s there foe Jack to take advantage of and for Catherine to tease with nude swims in their giant pool.

One day Jack, who has terminal cancer, asks Harry to take an envelope of money to a woman across town.

“It’s not a bribe,” he tells Harry.

Of course it’s a bribe.

And, of course, at the drop-off, instead of a woman with the goods on Jack and Catherine’s shady past, Harry finds another terminal man, retired cop Lester Ivar and, also, the business end of Lester’s .38.

Seems that Lester was the lead on the investigation into the disappearance of Catherine’s first husband. Was Lester really getting the bribe to keep quite about a 30 year old disappearance? Lester’s death and nearly getting his own ticket punched twice in as many years – not to mention his lust for Catherine – sets Harry off on his journey to find out.

Don’t come at me with your Steve McQueen. Newman, Hackman, and James Garner (Raymond Hope, Harry’s lifelong frenemy) are my idea of cinematic cool. Even in their 70s, they were tougher than you. At 71, Hackman bopped a guy in the face over a fender bender on Sunset Boulevard. The accident was was likely Hackman’s fault anyway, but so it goes…

But it’s not just the old dudes. I like Schreiber a lot here as a bumbling idiot with a rambling dick, in way over his head, and especially as a woebegone spy in The Sum of All Fears or as Ray Donovan in Ray Donovan.2 Giancarlo Esposito, super young in this movie, is good in everything he does. I’m partial to his work on Homicide, but you probably know him from Breaking Bad. You can check him out in The Get Down, too, because that show was good and could have stuck around.3 And then there’s Margo Martindale, who played Gloria ‘Mucho Tits, Mucho Ass’ Lamar. She’s been in almost everything, but I know her best as the character Mags Bennet in Justified, a gangland matriarch who kills her enemies by putting a little poison in their mason jar before they take a sip of her moonshine.

They all do a good job of delivering the dialogue written by Richard Russo, even if the overall story is a bit workmanlike. The tale is one we’ve seen before, including the femme fatale who is MORE THAN SHE SEEMS and sleeps with our hero to keep him OFF THE CASE.

[Harry turns away when he sees Catherine swimming nude.]
Catherine Ames: Honestly, Harry. Did you see me in “The Last Rebel”?
Harry Ames: Yeah.
Catherine Ames: And you saw me in “The End of Desire”?
Harry Ames: Yeah.
Catherine Ames: Then I think you’ve seen everything there is of me to see.
Harry Ames: I also remember a movie your husband made. He shot 12 guys with a 6-shot revolver. I ain’t gonna argue with that kind of marksmanship.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119594/quotes/qt0105608

There’s also a weird exchange between Harry and Raymond. After Ivar’s murder, Harry’s old girlfriend, Verna Hollander (Stockard Channing), a police lieutenant, arrests him and brings him to the local station house. After she releases him, Harry runs into Raymond, who notices the Verna.

Raymond Hope: You tell Verna if she ever gets the urge to hump an old man… she can hump me. I’m in the book.
BOTH: Under “Hump.”

http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/t/twilight-script-transcript-paul-newman.html

When they both say “…Under ‘Hump'” they act like it’s a joke I should get but I don’t think anyone born after 1940 could understand why this was HI-LARIOUS.

Twilight is not a perfect movie. The savvy viewer will see the red herrings brightly. The foreshadowing darkens every scene. The tough guys aren’t really that tough and the seemingly easy going have been scheming from frame one. No one lies, but if they try, we know and Harry knows that they are lying.

It’s not Hallmark Mystery Channel light, but it’s pretty close.

James Garner essentially plays “James Garner” in his movies and this was the least interesting iteration of “James Garner.” Except for the “Hump” quote, naturally.

Still, as Paul Newman is pretty cool, even at 73 years old and the dialogue is snappy, it’s a perfectly fine movie for a night in, with an overstuffed sub or greasy Chinese takeout. A solid 7 out of 10.

Oh, I lost track of the cassette an apartment move ago and the DVD is hard to come by. I watched it on Amazon Prime.

  1. Waterworld was one of the most expensive films every made because the first set sunk in a typhoon. The $ is not reflected in the script or the acting. I prefer The Postman which is essentially the same movie. ↩
  2. Although I had to stop watching as they gave Jon Voight more screen time. It’s not just his politics. He’s creepy AF. ↩
  3. Also, check out his bio: “(Esposito) was one of the chorus of children who sang the theme song of The Electric Company” !!! ↩

Cinema on Wednesday: Prospect (2018)

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Prospect is a small budget film from 2018 that just showed up on my Netflix queue, so I decided to give it a shot.  It reminded me of a good episode of a science fiction anthology series, or an extra long episode of Firefly, with dialogue written by Elmore Leonard or David Milch.  Prospect clearly falls into that Space Western sub-sub-genre. 

Read more about my recommendation here: http://tiwygwymw.us/11y