Tag Archives: movies

An Open Letter to An Anti-celebrity Celebrity, A Celebrity, and Y’all

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Dear Toby Stephens,

Please be in more comedies. You are quite funny and have cracking comedic timing. If you are lacking comedy screenplays, I have one that would suit you. I’ve written it. OK, so, it’s not exactly a screenplay, it’s a novel, but it could be adapted as a screenplay. It’s an unconventional story and would win us both  laughs, awards, and stuff.

I’ve intrigued you with the ‘and stuff’ part, haven’t I?

Love, your pal,

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Oldbitey ~~~~~

 

Dear Bitey-ites,

I do not expect an answer, from Mr Stephens, but you know I know dreams, as goofy-arsed as they are, do come true. I had that big fat ridiculous dream where I pulled an Emma Thompson and won an Oscar for Best Sceenplay and Best Actress. I thanked Toby for his talent, generosity and making me look so damn good. Yes. Yes! I know it was a dream, but please, recall if you will my Glenn Tilbrook fantasy-come-true moment of 2007–Jeepers was it three years ago that I stood on stage (albeit a tiny one) and sang Genitalia of A Fool with GT– was also dream, a big fat ridiculous goofy-arsed dream, and it came to fruition. So who’s to say what will happen with Mr Stephens? We know, that is, you, Glenn, and I know we’ll do another duet (if he ever comes back here again). How dreamy is that?

Love, your pal,

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Oldbitey

And on that note…

Dear Glenn Tilbrook,

Please, when you are done with your Japan leg of the Love Hope & Strength tour, come back here. Oz misses you and I am primed to step beside you again and croon.

Maybe we could do Lost In Space this time? Although I’m not averse to doing a Squeeze song, such as Messed Around if you prefer. Come on. You know you want to. I sing well and I’m cute and stuff.

Or so I’ve been told.

Love, your pal,

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Oldbitey

 

 

Enter the Carousel. This is the Time Of Renewal.

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The 70s Sci Fi gem Logan’s Run is being remade!

Well, you know how it is. Everything old is new again. Unless of course if you’re a human being, or more specifically, if you’re a woman over 35.  Then you’re a cougar, or evil stepmother, or matron, or dowager, or…you see where I’m going with this, don’t you? If you don’t, if you’re not familiar to riding with OldBitey, hang on to the handlebars and eventually we’ll get to the bottom of the hill.

Logan’s Run. It has everything a 1976 Sci-Fi film ought to have. It’s cheesy with semi-decent pre-Lucasfilm ILM Star Wars special effects, and you know how I LOVE cheesy 70s stuff. It’s got Michael York who will forever be D’Artagnan to Racquel Welch’s Constance in 1973’s Oliver Reed/Charlton Heston/Faye Dunaway/Richard Chamberlain version of Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers. Iconic Farrah Fawcett-MAJORS has a part in it too. Some of you might remember the TV series it spawned. I liked Logan’s Run because, unlike the Chuck Heston-fests Soylent Green and the Omega Man or Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Logan’s Run made the 23 Centruy look…clean.

And you know I like clean.

There was just one teensy-weensy problem with all this clean living in Logan’s time. On your thirtieth birthday, you got to trundle yourself off to Carousel. If you weren’t sure about how old you were, the little crystal your were born with, the one embedded in the palm of your hand, turned blood red to remind you to get your ass to Carousel. And once you were there, with everyone else who shared the same birthday (SPOILER ALERT!!), you and all your birthday-sharing spandex-clad buddies stood before a stadium filled with spectators cheering you on as you were swept up into the Heavens…and zapped by a death ray.

In the Remake of Logan’s Run (expected in 2012) the "age of Carousel" has been changed.  It’s no longer an ancient 30. Now your best before date is 21.Twenty-one is now suddenly a lifetime Twenty-one is now old.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Sorry. I was recalling days when I was stupid and knew everything at twenty-one.

Anyhow, romance fiction is a bit like Logan’s Run, and the LR remake, especially when it comes the age of heroines. While the women between the pages of a romance novel don’t have a crystal embedded in the palm of their hand, nothing turns red the day they turn thirty, apparently they do have a ‘best before’ or as they say here in Oz, a ‘use by’ date. The list of romance novels featuring heroines over 40 would barely fill two pages. Don’t worry I’m not about to go on another tirade about ageism in romance novels. I’m simply curious about something. 

If remakes are the continuing rage in Hollywood movies, if 70s movies and 80s TV shows are being recycled and revamped into new versions (I can’t WAIT for The Golden Girls Movie!), into new movies, into something that deserves a second look, isn’t it about the hour to rethink the romance heroine? If Logan’s Run 2012 is making 30 elderly, in this time of Carousel, in this time of Renewal, isn’t it about hour to make the romance heroine a ripe, life-experienced 15?

The MBRITW

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I’m sure you Bitey-ites know 1939 was a HUGE year for classic films. Historians and film buffs alike call it "The Greatest Year in film history," and If you don’t know this, shame on you.  How could you possibly miss The Wizard of Oz? Gone With the Wind? Mr Smith Goes to Washington? The Women?  Have you been living in a cave on a Pacific desert isle with a beaded Tom Hanks and a soccer ball named Wilson?

Trust me when I say, 1939 was a stellar year for cinema and a brilliant year for underwear too–maybe not in the same way as 1934, when, in It Happened One Night, Clark Gable took off his button-down shirt to reveal a bare chest. That’s right Dear Mr. Gable wasn’t wearing–gasp–an undershirt! and that little moment in film caused the bottom to fall out of the t-shirt industry. If you don’t believe me check out this link to TIME in 1970:
www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,902714,00.html

Yes indeedy-do, look who knows so much. Now, back to the matter at hand;1939 and ladies lingerie.

Now, the other night, and I have no idea what possessed me to do it because frankly, Meg Ryan looks as if her face is made of moulded plastic, and that alone should have skeert me off, but because I loved director George Cukor’s1939’s Norma Shearer/Joan Fontaine/Joan Crawford/IPaulette Goddard/ Rosalind Russell (Oh, I love, love LOVE Rosalind Russell) bitch-fest, I happened to watch the 2008 Diane English remake of The Women. I figured it would be great for my PhD research, as it starred a slew of amazing actresses over 40.  Despite Meg Ryan’s Bakelite face (why Meg, why?!), with actresses like Annette Benning,  Debra Messing, Bette Midler and Candace Bergen and Cloris Leachman (watch The Last Picture Show right now to see how fine and beautiful an actress Cloris is), I expected something wonderful. What I got was…Well, let’s put it like this:

Clark Gable took off his shirt and instead of a bare chest all I got was a sweat-stained t-shirt that said, I‘m with Stupid. 

Bear with me for a moment. I’ll get to the lingerie bit in a sec, yet before I do, let me tell you about my New Year’s resolution. I’m not one who usually makes an NYR, but I did this year. I’m trying to find something good in everything I do and everything I’m exposed to. While the 2008 version of The Women was disappointing, I have to admit that the white bustier Meg Ryan wore in the scene where she confronts the "Perfume bitch" who’s having an affair with her husband, was a probably the nicest bustier I’ve ever seen. But it’s not as nice as the frilly lingerie the ladies wore in the 1939 version.  That stuff was amazing! It cinched and showed off and made those women look wonderfully womanly

Yet, as  lovely as that lingerie was, it’s nowhere near as pretty as the pale pink silk robe I got in 1993 from Victoria’s Secret–when they were making lovely, soft, romantic lingerie based on 1930s and 40s vintage style. it is quite simply The Most Beautiful Robe In The World, or for those of you who aren’t Shrinky or Noolie Poolie, The MBRITW. With one silk-covered button strategically placed, it shows off my figure the way lingerie is supposed to. Whisper light, diaphanous, it falls softly around my ankles. The photo of Barbara Stanwyck up there, in the corner, she’s wearing something close to what I’m trying to describe, yet failing miserably. Trust me. It’s THE most beautiful robe in the world. IIn fact, it’s such a beautiful robe, I bet it could have saved the remake of The Women.

Well, maybe not. But it gives me an idea. I have a suggestion for Hollywood (one that goes hand in hand with making better romantic comedies). Instead of remaking classic films that still hold their own 71 years later, remake the lingerie!

The disagreement stops here!

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Don’t believe me?
Go and look at arghink and check out the photo posted 14 Aug. Jenny Crusie can’t be wrong!

Did you look?

Now, who does that man look like?

Yes, yes, you FINALLY see! It’s Hans Gruber fresh from his attack on the Nakatomi Building!
 
Or maybe his name is Bill Clay.

Live Free or Die waiting

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Finally. At  last. It my wait is over. Live Free or Die Hard opens here tomorrow. A month later. With a different title. Die Hard 4.0

Huh??

What’s with the name change? Are we Antipodeans too thick to understand the subtlely of  LIve Free Or Die Hard ? 

Bill Bryson’s book about Oz was title Down Under here. In the USA it was I Love a Sunburnt Country. Why? I doubt Yanks got that poem reference. Down Under sort of said it all.  

Sequels need better titles. Just don’t stick a number after it (a big blah to you, Spiderman 3!) Hey, marketers, give us some credit. There was The Thin Man and the sequel After The Thin Man, Batman and Batman Returns. We understood we were seeing a sequel without that number.

Imagine if songs titles were numbered. How many would the Beatles have in their book?  

I wanns know why. Somebody give me a real reason.

Flyin’ down the infomation superhighway in a makeshift Model T A

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Thanks to the internet, contact was made, success was mine. Kudos to you, Jenny Crusie. A big wave to DL!

Now, I wonder if I can connect myself to some other elusive human being–say Clive Owen. That whole six-degrees of separation started with a package posted through the US PO. So could I really, really and truly get a postcard to Clive Owen in six steps or less? 

This sounds like one of those emails that goes around, the kind where some kid in Idaho is trying to get as many people as possible to make an electronic chain around the world, a virtual Hands Across America.

Was that successful? Weren’t there gaps in places like the Mojave Desert or Death Valley?

Hm, gaps between me and Clive Owen (or Kenneth Branagh, Dominic West, Toby Stpehens, Simon Baker) …besides the location, the time it takes for international postage, the fact I know no one who knows Clive…or do I? 

Someone out there on myspace probably has Clive as a ‘friend’. What would I say to Clive anyhow, Dear Clive, loved you in  Children of Men and Gosford Park?  

AHAHAHA!  You laughed too. I heard you.

I can be all goo-goo eyed with Glen Tilbrook, but Somehow the fantasy of contacting Clive is more exciting than finding a real way to contact Clive. 

Tell me something. Is it even called the Information Superhighway anymore?