Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Paul Newman’

Thursday’s Top Ten -Elizabeth Taylor’s Best Movies

Posted in BY THE WAY, From My Point of View - Personal commentary on Movies and Books, Thursday's Top Ten, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on March 24, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Screenshot of Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman...

Maggie and Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Everybody has an opinion and as readers, you know I certainly do.  I thought it would be apropos  post my favorite Elizabeth Taylor movies.  Probably there’s been hundreds of articles written in newspapers today but I have been working all day and have not seen the news or a newspaper.  So here’s my list not in alphabetical order:

  1. A Place in the Sun – A triumvirate of talent; Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Cliff, Shelley Winters.  Taylor portrays Angela Vickers,  gorgeous and sophisticated.
  2. Butterfield 8 – Elizabeth is beautiful fashion model, Gloria Wandrous who has an illicit affair with a married man.
  3. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof – Maggie the cat, Elizabeth starred opposite Paul Newman.  Hard to tell who was more gorgeous!
  4. Cleopatra – Offered this role, Taylor said she would only do it if they paid her a million dollars and 10% of the gross.  And they did so she did.  And she had Richard Burton to toy with on and off the screen.
  5. Giant – Elizabeth is joined by a star-studded cast including Rock Hudson, James Dean, Rod Taylor, Chill Wills, Carroll Baker, Sal Mineo and Dennis Hopper.  I loved this movie but not because of Taylor, this was all about Dean.
  6. National Velvet – Velvet Brown is portrayed by the young Elizabeth Taylor who once again is surrounded by strong actors; Mickey Rooney and Angela Lansbury.  This movie was probably the turning point in her career.
  7. Raintree County – Susanna Drake, a lovely Southern belle who also happens to have inherited the crazy gene.  And again, Taylor is in a movie with lots of talent including Agnes Moorhead, Rod Taylor, Lee Marvin, Eva Marie Saint, and one of her favorite (and mine) co-stars, Montgomery Cliff.
  8. Suddenly Last Summer – Another triumvirate of talent; Liz joins Montgomery Cliff again and Katherine Hepburn.  This time her character, Catherine Holly is driven to insanity.
  9. The Sandpiper – A twenty-something free spirit with an illegitimate son whom she home-schools and lives with  on the beach in Big Sur.  She plays the seductress who leads the minister astray.
  10. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – Saving the best for last (I think) Elizabeth Taylor relishes her role as the castrating wife, drinking herself into alternative rages, seductions, and pitiful slobbering denial.  She was at her best in this movie and the Academy knew it.  She walked away with Best Actress Oscar for this stellar performance which was enhanced by her co-star Richard Burton and Sandy Dennis and George Segal.
Related Articles

Read Full Post »

A Legend is a Legend – I’m Just Sayin’

Posted in Smooth or Crunchy, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 24, 2011| 2 Comments »

Liz Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor legend, Richard Burton, Eddie Fisher, Michael Todd, Michael Jackson, Rock Hudson, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, National Velvet, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Paul Newman, White Diamonds, violet eyes, Cleopatra, Richard Burton

A True Hollywood Beauty

They made a song celebrating the deaths of Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens – The Day The Music Died.  Elton John wrote a song honoring Princess Diana when she was killed in a car accident, A Candle Blowing in the Wind. They dimmed the lights of Broadway for the likes of Paul Newman and Natasha Richardson , Ron Silver and Jill Clayburgh. When Michael Jackson died, his music was aired both on radio and TV for days.

What will they do to honor Elizabeth Taylor?

She was a star for over 50 years and that’s a hell of a long time to be in the public eye.  As a child actress, she was as good as Margaret O’Brien and Shirley Temple BUT she was able to make the seamless transition into adult roles.

She was beautiful that goes without saying;  She had a luscious curvaceous body, an exquisite face with the forever-famous violet eyes.  She could embody the role of a country girl, a vamp, a drunken sot, a conniving bitch, a regal empress – you name it, she probably played it.  Clearly a Hollywood legend.

Loved and admired by her fans and friends, Elizabeth Taylor was known to be a kind, honest, generous and a loyal friend.   We all know about her steadfast relationships with both Rock Hudson and Michael Jackson proving just how loyal she could be.  She was also an entrepreneur who knew way back when before the term branding was being tossed around that she herself was a brand to be marketed;  White Diamonds made her a fortune.

On the other hand, she was self-indulgent, a drunk, a junkie, guilty of at least 5 of the 7 Deadly Sins, a heart-breaker, a home-wrecker and 8-time divorceé, proving either she was not a good wife or she made very bad choices or perhaps she was incapable of truly loving another person.  She was condemned from the pulpit of Catholic churches for her roles in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.  I remember sitting in  Sunday Mass at St. John’s RC church in Middletown, CT  when Father Miller delivered a hell fire and brimstone sermon condemning Cleopatra and warning parishioners that going to see “that movie which was playing down the street ” would be a sin!

When it’s all said and done and “at the end of the day” as my daughter, Chiara, likes to say;  Elizabeth Taylor was a legend, a title appropriately conferred and not lightly given.  Thank God, for the preservation of films and let’s hope (if they haven’t already planned it) that TCM has a week of Elizabeth Taylor films.


Related Articles

Read Full Post »

The American – George Clooney Gets Shot

Posted in BY THE WAY, From My Point of View - Personal commentary on Movies and Books, tagged , , , , , on September 28, 2010| 2 Comments »

THE AMERICAN

George Clooney. Castle Vechio, Italy,

Run George Run

YUP that’s right – the title is a spoiler so if you don’t want to know anymore about the movie STOP READING now.

So here we have a thinner, trimmer George Clooney and unless he had a body double (duh!) he also showed off some very visible Pecs and Lats.  He bears the same sad, detached and tired demeanor that was characteristic of  Michael Clayton.  These characters are haunted men,   weighted down under the heavy cloak of their misdeeds and sleepless over their sins.  Was it all done in the line of duty? Duty?? We’re not talking about a soldier in the defense of his nation – we’re talking about MONEY, mercenaries if you will, a gun for hire, well  Mr. Clark kills, I don’t think an actual death was part of Michael Clayton’s job description.

Anyway the travelogue is beautiful as Mister Butterfly flits through Sweden and Rome and into the hills of Tuscany.  And the butterfly thing – what was that all about?  Were we supposed to see the softer side of this killer?  From cold-blooded murderer to lepidoperist all in an afternoon.  He even had a butterfly tatttoo!

This isn’t going to be a long review, the movie was long enough or so it seemed.  And why did it seem that way? Because it practically felt that it was being shot in real time. It moved ever so slowly.  I thought it was too slow and then I thought maybe this was the way movies used to be made, you know with the long shots and no cuts and not made up of hundreds of sound bytes.  This question is still up in the air.

Basically we watch Clooney kill a few people, get shot at by a few people and see how he forms an ego-manical sexual liason with a prostitute.

Edward Clark, a/k/a Mister Butterfly to those  from whom he is hiding his real identity, is a loner, a man who turns to a whore for sexual solace and ends up caring for her (??) – that’s debatable since he was prepared to shoot her during their picnic.  He suspects everyone and well he should because this character is the perfect exemplification of the cliche:  What goes around comes around. He can trust no one – even his boss (?) tells him not to make friends.

Following a tried and true and time-worn story line;  we see the bad guy who wants to get out of the game and wants NOT to be alone anymore so he picks a woman definitely below his own intellect but one who either satisfies him sexually or feeds into his own lack of self-esteem so he doesn’t deserve any better – does this sound like Paul Newman in The Hustler?

Anyway Clooney’s fate is sealed-Hollywood does not want to send the message that is okay to kill people and get away with it.  They stopped doing that when they stopped making John Wayne and Gary Cooper westerns.

Read Full Post »