A Year with Kate: Without Love (1945)

Episode 21 of 52 of Anne Marie's chronological look at Katharine Hepburn's career.

When a star’s career is as long-lasting and iconic as Katharine Hepburn’s was, there are going to be dramatic highs and lows in terms of quality. Mapped out on a timeline, it would resemble a mountain range. The glittering Mount Holiday would stand tall on the horizon, dwarfed on either side by Bringing Up Baby Peak and The Philadelphia Story Summit. Behind it would be the dark valleys and caves of RKO. However, the most treacherous topographical feature on our Atlas Hepburnica would be the Seven Year Desert, stretching seemingly endlessly from Woman of the Year Peak to Adam’s Rib Ridge. The Seven Year Desert is a vast sea of grass that barrages a traveler with its unending, monotonous mediocrity. Woe to the weary wanderer who gives up, rather than trudge through another undistinguished Hepburn vehicle.

Faithful readers, you and I are currently in the middle of the Seven Year Desert, so forgive my heavy-handed metaphors as I attempt to mine our next few movies for something, anything to talk about. Currently, we’re stuck in Without Love, a serviceable comedy reteaming Kate with Spencer Tracy. Tracy plays an engineer designing a new helmet for the US Air Force. Kate is a widowed heiress who volunteers to be his assistant. They marry out of convenience with the agreement that they absolutely will not fall in love. Three guesses how that turns out. Your first two don’t count.

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A Year with Kate: Keeper of the Flame (1942)

Episode 18 of 52 of Anne Marie's chronological look at Katharine Hepburn's career.

In which I'm not entirely sure what's going on but it seems to involve boy scouts and fascism.

So, you’re a major studio with a bona fide hit on your hands. You’ve thrown two Academy Award winners, neither a matinee idol in their own right, into a romantic comedy, and the sparks between them burst with unexpected chemistry. The result is a commercial and critical smash that will garner two Oscar nominations and one win (for Best Screenplay). Clearly, another movie between Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn is desired. The next question is: how do you follow an immediate classic?

If your answer is “with a heavy-handed, jingoistic melodrama about fascism,” then you’re crazy, but you’re also right. The tonal about-face from the lighthearted Woman of the Year to Tracy and Hepburn’s next film, Keeper of the Flame, is severe enough to cause whiplash. [more...]

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A Year with Kate: Woman of the Year (1942)

Episode 17 of 52 of Anne Marie's chronological look at Katharine Hepburn's career.

In which Tracy and Hepburn explode on screen in a dynamic maelstrom of celluloid chemistry.

What sparks great star chemistry? Katharine Hepburn, an actress who was all angles and independence, bottled that lightning not once, but twice, with two men who were polar opposites: Cary Grant and Spencer Tracy. Near the end of Bringing Up Baby, Grant’s character tells Katharine Hepburn “...in moments of quiet, I'm strangely drawn toward you, but, well, there haven't been any quiet moments.” This stuttering sentence sums up the banter-based rapport between Hepburn and Grant that played through their four films together. Watching Grant and Hepburn is watching two master comedians play a scene - glamorous, theatrical, loud, and wonderful. Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy are the complete opposite: authentic, intimate, sexy, and sweet.

Woman of the Year, the first Tracy/Hepburn film, is full of those “moments of quiet” abolished from Bringing Up Baby. But, oh! how loud a quiet moment can be! The electricity crackling through those moments between Kate and Spencer isn’t born of perfect comedic timing or a well-written script. It is one of those undefinable energies, like the always elusive “star quality,” that you know as soon as it hits you like a bolt of lightning.

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Linkers Dozen

TFE Mrs de Winters or Danvers? So little time to vote for these ladies without first names. It's Beauty vs. Beast
Google has Valentine's stories today, with simple line animations and audio, and they're just adorbs 
NY Times film restoration isn't only for old hollywood. They also do porn!
/Film Black Widow film still being considered by Marvel Studios. But then, what isn't?
Coming Soon Ron Howard replacing Alejandro González Iñárritu in the director's chair on a new Jungle Book. Because a) they're so interchangeable! and b) we need another Jungle Book for some reason I guess.
LA Times what are the most memorable clips for the lead nominees. How to choose a key moment?

 

Extension 765 features a must-read list by Steven Soderbergh of everything he's watched last year. All I can say about this is that I LOVE THAT HE WATCHED ALL THE EPISODES OF "SMASH"
All Things Considered on the friendship between Shirley Temple and Bojangles
Cinema Blend The Spencer Tracy & Katharine Hepburn romance may get its own biopic. Take that one millionth, Liz Taylor movie!
Variety with her remake of Murder She Wrote no longer happening, Octavia Spencer picks "Red Band Society" as her TV series
Awards Daily "Meet the Academy" a pie chart
VF Leonardo DiCaprio on why he didn't star in Moulin Rouge!

To be honest, I’m not really prepared to do a musical, simply because I think I have a pretty atrocious voice 

Bye!

P.S. Right after I posted this news update, Ellen Page came out. What timing.

DVD: Gwynnie, Kate and Dolph?

Today's DVD releases cover a lot of ground. But let's start with the most amusing. Two collections arrive today. One, Tracy & Hepburn the Definitive Collection, collects every film that co-starred Spencer Tracy & Katharine Hepburn, one of moviedom's most legendary couples both onscreen and off. The other is Dolph Lundgren Triple Threat. Hee. Because my movie-addled brain is always mushing things together I couldn't help but imagine a Lundgren/Hepburn series for a split second. What kind of movie could they possibly have made together?

The Lundgren triple doesn't even include any movie you've heard of. It's mostly post 90s stuff. Unfortunately none of the films are musicals despite the title of "triple threat" . When you hear triple threat you automatically think of a actor/singer/dancer, right?  Make your next straight-to-DVD action pic a musical, Dolph.

The best of the new releases is Claire Denis's typically hypnotic and disturbing White Material, which I wrote briefly about in January and the worst is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 1 which I'm off-trend about it because it got wildly thumbs up reviews but I think it's easily the worst Potter feature  (give or take the Chamber of Snoozing) and aside from that admittedly stellar animated sequence, it was the most cynical (and successful) cash grab of 2010. The debuts  I haven't seen: the Gilles Marchand thriller Black Heaven starring Grégoire LePrince-Rinquet (Love Songs) and the acclaimed documentary Marwencol, about a brain damaged man recreating a World War II era town to 1/6th scale.

Finally, Country Strong also debuts on DVD today. But since we've heard Gwyneth's lovely voice crooning the  tracks, is there any reason left to see the movie? Have any of you?

I feel a poll coming on...

poll by twiigs.com