Horror Costuming: "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?"@60

by Cláudio Alves

I had such grand plans for October. There was going to be plenty of spooky season with horror-themed write-ups and the return of my miniseries on scary movie costumes. But then COVID hit, and then the flu -- it's been a perpetual state of foggy-brained sickness. Still, it wouldn't do to let October end without one Horror Costuming post. even if I have to write the damned thing in between coughing fits. Since I already wrote about one one genre pic that won the Costume Oscar (the Eiko Ishioka-dressed Dracula) let's look at another. On its 60th anniversary, let's discuss the essential What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, the genesis of the Grand Dame Guignol craze...

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Almost There: Marilyn Monroe in "Some Like It Hot"

by Cláudio Alves

September started with the Venice Film Festival where Andrew Dominik's controversial Blonde premiered and closes with its arrival on Netflix. As a Marilyn Monroe fan who tried and failed to get through Joyce Carol Oates' doorstop of a novel, I had early apprehensions about this production and its fictionalized account of the star's troubled life. However, the combination of a gorgeous-looking trailer and moralistic backlash online led me to anticipate the movie with bullish optimism. Yet, having seen the thing, I'm afraid I can't sincerely take on a contrarian positive take nor defend most aspects of the misbegotten mess.

Worst of all, I'm stricken by the picture's puddle-deep purview of stardom, image-making, and Monroe herself as a person and phenomenon. Considerations of her as an actress are similarly shallow, verging on nonexistent. This is especially disheartening because, above all else, she was an amazing actress whose talent is often overlooked, either obfuscated by the glare of tragedy or dismissed by those who can't see beyond media objectification. So, to combat both narratives, let's remember Marilyn Monroe, the actress, in one of her best films – Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot…

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Almost There: Nancy Kwan in "The World of Suzie Wong"

by Cláudio Alves

Arthur Dong's documentary Hollywood Chinese, about the complicated history of Chinese and Chinese American lives on the big screen, serves as a starting point for one of the Criterion Channel's new collections. Spanning over a century of American filmmaking and 24 films, this curated program highlights issues of representation, racism, erasure, and more. At the same time, it serves as a chance to illuminate the cinematic contributions of marginalized artists who found unlikely success in Hollywood. They were people like the Chinese-American cinematographer James Wong Howe, Taiwanese director Ang Lee, and Hong Kong-born American actress and dancer Nancy Kwan.

In 1960, Kwan made her film debut in Richard Quine's The World of Suzie Wong, became an overnight star, and surely came closer to that elusive Best Actress Oscar nomination than most performers of Asian descent…

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Exciting Project Alert: 'Spanish Dracula'

Remember the filmmaking brothers Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz? Their career together started strong with a box office smash American Pie (1999) and a well-loved modest hit About a Boy (2002). The brothers soon went solo as directors though they kept working together, producing and what not. Their subsequent work didn't capture the zeitgeist in the same way though there were sure-fire sequel hits (Little Fockers, The Twilight Saga: New Moon) a troubled attempted franchise (The Golden Compass) a few well received smaller pictures (A Better Life, Grandma) and an award winning TV series (Mozart in the Jungle). Their next project, their first co-directing gig in ages will be a biopic of their Mexican film star grandmother Lupita Tovar (pictured left) and it sounds just great...

Because of our long running "200 oldest living film stars" list we already knew that the brothers were descended from actresses...

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Esther Williams @ 100: Million Dollar Mermaid

Team Experience has been celebrating Esther Williams Centennial with a three part miniseries. Previously we featured Thrill of a Romance and Neptune's Daughter. 

by Cláudio Alves

In some ways, Million Dollar Mermaid is both the quintessential Esther Williams movie and a departure in the screen siren's career. During the 1940s, Williams achieved cinematic stardom through self-knowing exercises in romantic silliness and musical extravagance, lighthearted productions that wore their escapist possibilities as a badge of honor. One can often feel the screenwriter's strain, trying to shoe-horn swimming scenes in stories that could function just as well without them. Even the baseball comedy Take Me Out to the Ball Game had to be retrofitted into having an out-of-place pool number where Williams gets to lip-sync while swimming under the gaze of Busby Berkeley's camera. Consequentially, MGM never presented Williams as a great dramatic actress, preferring to exhalt her natural charms, radiant presence, and aquatic athleticism.

Loosely inspired in the life of Australian professional swimmer, vaudevillian, and early movie star Annette Kellerman, Million Dollar Mermaid is a lavish biopic with inspirational aspirations...

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