Entries in the Category "kate winslet"
Eternal Sunshine and Remember?: The Same Concept Across a Few Generations
So last week I watched this strange film called Remember? from 1939. The synopsis reminded me of one of my all-time favorites, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind—in both films, former lovers utilize mind-erasing technology to forget each other—and I was curious how such a postmodern concept was going to be executed circa 1939. What I found was that Remember? is not exactly the mind-bendingly awesome experience that Eternal Sunshine is, though there were interesting similarities.
Basically, what happens is this. Lew Ayers meets Greer Garson on vacation, gets quickly engaged to her and brings her home to meet his best buddy Robert Taylor. Of course, Taylor and Garson fall in love instead. Ayers has apparently not seen his own movie, Holiday, in which almost the exact same thing happens when Cary Grant meets this woman on vacation, gets quickly engaged, and she brings him home to meet her sister, Katharine Hepburn, prompting Grant and Hepburn to fall in love (but, then, Ayers is the drunk brother in that movie, so that would account for him not remembering it). Anyway, Garson and Taylor fall in love and, with Ayers’ blessing, get married themselves. It doesn’t work out, and they’re soon divorced, but LUCKILY, Ayers and Taylor work for an advertising company that is developing a campaign for a forgetfulness serum. Ayers feeds the serum to his terribly depressed best friend—and Garson gets a hold of it somehow, too, I forget how—and, just like Joel and Clementine in Eternal Sunshine, the pair meet again and fall for each other again.
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The Best Actress Fallacy
One of the more controversial Oscar winners from this past weekend was Sandra Bullock. This past summer, her career was seemingly in the toilet thanks to that All About Steve fiasco, and then suddenly The Proposal made a buck or two (although if my sister didn’t like it, I do not see what it could possibly have to recommend itself as a romantic comedy). And then this The Blind Side thing happened, and somehow her career trajectory veered so crazily in the opposite direction that she—as predicted—won a Razzie and an Oscar in the same year.
So the question becomes: does Sandra Bullock, mistress of pratfalls and goofiness, big opening weekends and almost supernatural hotness in her mid-forties (YES, REALLY), fit the profile of the Academy Award-winning actress?
First, we need to establish what the profile is. There’s this tendency to think of Oscar winning actresses as grande dames of cinema.
Bette Davis in All About Eve, for example
Or Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard
Would it surprise you to discover that both of those women went up for Best Actress in the same year, 1951? And that both of them lost? Who swiped the award from these two women in the prime of life, tackling two of the meatiest roles in Hollywood history?
Judy Holliday (age 29) in Born Yesterday
Nothing against Judy--that's a great movie, and her performance is more nuanced than 'dim bulb with a heart of gold.' Although that's a lot of it.
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The Oscars Day-After Recap
I watched the whole show, yes. I had a lesson plan to do for the next day, reading, all of it; I still watched all three hours of the Oscar telecast as well as two hours of red carpet.
Here are my impressions (and I'm putting in a jump, because this is gonna be a long one)...