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I was at a screening of The Dukes of Hazzard and walked out after an hour. It was terrible, but not as bad as you'd think it'd be (but still terrible, you know? Don't see it). I wanted to catch Suspicion, which was playing on the National Mall on the big outdoor screen.
Why bother to talk about these movies in the same breath? They're both stinkers. Sure, one's a Hitchcock, the other's the latest trash remake from Hollywood. One's got Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine, the other's got Jessica Simpson and her exquisitely trashy breasts and buttocks. Both aren't very good.
Even now I struggle to find a purpose for this post. Is it just the novelty of regarding Fontaine and Simpson side by side, so close together? They're both ingenues, I guess, though Simpson is no actress. Both are blonde, pretty, popular. Fontaine is still alive, in her late 80s, living in Carmel. Completely out of the spotlight, a la Johnny Carson. I wonder if Simpson will someday retreat to some mansion on the outskirts of Los Angeles.
Or whether we'll even remember her, as I do Fontaine now, decades after her retirement.
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5 comments:
I think it's fairly safe to say Jessica Simpson isn't a keeper.
"One's got Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine, the other's got Jessica Simpson and her exquisitely trashy breasts and buttocks. Both aren't very good."
Are you talking about the films or the body parts?
;)
Ah, well, the films. Though if you don't like your shanks and boobs tanned and skanky, then I guess the body parts.
I think you should stop seeing movies on the National Mall. SIERRA MADRE and SUSPICION, though far from perfect movies, are both more interesting than you give them credit for. But they're not movies you can appreciate from half a football field away, outside in the heat and humidity, surrounded by people who just want to sit on blankets and drink cheap wine. Wait a few years, then check those two out again on DVD.
I did appreciate your thoughts on LAURA, though. It's based on a very interesting book by Vera Caspary, unfortunately out of print last time I checked.
You're right about seeing movies on the Mall--not the best environment for attentive watching. But I have seen Suspicion many times, and while I'm always delighted by Hitchcock's compulsive use of the spider-web shadow in the house, I think it's a clunker. I've corresponded with Fontaine via mail, and she herself said the ending was a ridiculous compromise. But the film did introduce "monkeyface" into the lexicon...
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