Mary Poppers.

Spoonful of sugar?

Let's go fly a kite?

Chalk?

There's no way this film isn't about a secretly alcoholic nanny who sedates the children with pot and hallucinogens right?

Project Old Hollywood: The Harder They Fall

I am light years behind on my classic movie viewing and reviewing due to laziness and having found an unpaid position of literary research and archiving for a writer. I am under a confidentiality agreement not to reveal anything but suffice it to say the English nerd in me is busy drooling over Important Writers. As a side note, one of the volunteers looks uncannily like my mother even though we're the same age -I mean ridiculously so, from physical appearance to the way she sits, walks, her mannerisms, her general aura. It's really psyching me out. But I digress.

I must have seen The Harder They Fall practically three weeks ago so it's not fresh in my mind anymore but I'll do my best. This was my first Humphrey Bogart film and his last before he died. I don't know whether to call that ironic or not but it's a neat parallel no?

Summary: The basic story of this film noir revolves around corruption in boxing. Bogart plays a sports journalist who tries to revive his career by working with a bunch of crooks to promote a new boxer from Argentina called Toro Moreno, whose enormous physical size is completely offset by his utter lack of skill. Shady fights, manly angst and moral dilemmaz ensue. When recounting my experience of this film I seem to naturally gravitate towards my gripes -not to say that I didn't like it, but it wasn't mind-blowing or anything.

Gripe #1: Poor acting and awkward scripting

This mostly applies to Mike Lane, who plays Toro. As far as I can tell, he was cast purely for his appearance and size, so I guess you can't blame the poor guy for delivering his lines like Tommy Wiseau. My friend defended his wooden portrayal on the grounds that that was how his character was meant to be -thick and bovine. Toro. Get it? But to borrow some wisdom from Tropic Thunder, you don't go "full retarded." And like Mark Waters noted about it taking a nice girl to play a mean one, it takes someone intelligent to play someone dumb. That's why it's called acting.

Gripe #2: Bogart and Sterling

I get that in this "manly" film it would be foolish of me to expect a strong female role, but my main problem with Jan Sterling's character Beth Willis, even as an undeveloped side-dish, is the utter lack of chemistry between her and Bogart's Eddie Willis. They are completely unconvincing as a couple, let alone supposedly loving husband and wife, which makes all the drama surrounding their relationship hard to get into. I'll give her credit for sassing out the head crook Nick Benko (played by Rod Steiger) in one scene though. Which leads to the one thing I consistently enjoyed:

Rod Steiger

Okay, so he may have had it easy playing Asshole-In-Charge Nick Benko, but he got some darn good ranty and oh-snap lines and delivered them at lightning screwball-comedy speed, and was in general a fabulous Angry and Stressed Man archetype that kept me entertained. Besides him, the one other thing you should watch this film for is the Toro Bus which I can't find a picture of but just know that it's amazingly camp.

Coming next: Bonnie and Clyde

Project Old Hollywood: Singin' in the Rain

Having blazed through season 4 of Ugly Betty in 3 days and now catching up on House episodes, the couch potato in me wants to work my way through old Hollywood as well because, to borrow a cliche, they don't make 'em like that anymore. Besides, it's classy.

My housemate Emma and I finished "Singin' in the Rain" (1952) last night and adored it. Here's why:

1) The dancing. You know how people say how much fun life would be as a musical? Unfortunately musicals like this...

...would only make life an endless cycle of embarrassment. Now if my life was an extended tap dance sequence, that I would be more than happy with.

Wikifact: Debbie Reynolds' feet were bleeding after filming this sequence. She had no previous training in dance but had a gymnast background. Also, Gene Kelly insulted her lack of dance experience and was a dick to her in general. Fred Astaire found her crying under a piano and volunteered to teach her how to move like pro.

Gene: -10 for being a dick

Fred: +15 for being a gentleman

Debbie: +20 for sticking it to the bully

Speaking of points, the one who wins the most in my opinion is

2) Donald O'Connor. Yes yes, I know Gene Kelly is a total dreamboat...but see above for the jerk factor. Also, did you know he wore a toupee? That's a wig for those of you who don't know French. Not so dreamy now eh? Eh?

But back to the actual movie...O'Connor plays funny man Cosmo Brown, who totally stole my heart as the often neglected but much more intelligent and less douchey sidekick of film star Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly). As lovely as the eponymous song is with the lamppost and umbrella and a sexy drenched douchebag (har-har), Gene just doesn't.... make you laugh. Watch and learn buddy:

Donald O'Connor: +100 for pioneering Lady Gaga's piano quirks and running up the wall like a ninja

3) The metafilmajigness. In addition to being a delightful movie musical, "Singin' in the Rain" is also a really interesting and hilarious look at a seminal period in the history of film: the decline of silent movies and birth of talking pictures, or "talkies." This transition is nicely framed in the context of the successful The Jazz Singer (1927), the first ever motion picture that featured synchronised dialogue sequences (and a film worth watching in itself). In the face of this new technology and competition, John Lockwood and his unfortunately tinny co-star Lina Lamont (played by the beautiful Jean Hagen) try to follow suit in The Dueling Cavalier, a film-within-the-film that comically reveals all the problems of synchronising sound and image (see link since YouTube is a bitch and won't let me embed).

Up for more meta-trickery? Okay, so in the film Lina Lamont's voice is so terrible when it comes to making The Dueling Cavalier that Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) has to dub all her lines and songs. In actuality however, they simply used Hagen's normal voice and Reynolds herself was dubbed for two of her songs. Gotta love it when Hollywood mindfucks with you like that.

At the risk of giving you some second-hand embarrassment, I leave you with this to rest my case that "Singin' in the Rain" is too cool for even Usher to emulate. Good job bro, but it just aint the same without a toupee.