Favorite Fredrick March movie - The Best Years of Our Lives.

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basks in all the validation

So, uh, yeah... movies and shit.

So last night, pre-battle, we went to see Bell Book and Candle, which was much better than I remembered it:

• Visually extremely tasty, with one Hollywood beatnik set after another (Kim Novak's living room, in both its witchy and human incarnations, looked like something out of

The Incredibles)

• Gorgeous costume design (Kim Novak in one dark gown after another that looked very pretty but severely demure in front but were almost completely backless, and oh how I need to own the red robe with the jeweled obi)

• An incredibly personable and cooperative cat (seriously, the cat was so present he was a damn character in the film, not just a living prop, and he was terrific, and God knows cats are nobody's first choice for trainable biddable cute-trick-doing movie animals, so this cat's performance was nearly a bloody miracle)

• Jack Lemmon being his usual godlike self as a bongo-playing nonhuman (such a ridiculously fine actor -- this little weightless bit of fluff movie, and he was 110%

there for it, and he made you absolutely believe he was both a traditional movieland feckless younger brother, and a creature clothed in a human body that was carefully but not completely competently imitating human behavior and secretly harbored considerable amused contempt for humans)

• Elsa Lanchester as Queenie, who was sweet and tiny and curvaceous and vaguely bewildered but untroubled by her own bewilderedness, and whose red hair, perfect lips, dreamy drifty locution, and air of otherworldly kindness and affection for her niece (not to mention the many, many gorgeous crepey and lacey and deep jewel-toned velvet dresses and tiny oddball hats) were astoundingly and deliciously Plei-like

Alas, James Stewart was still just as much bordering-on-too-old as I remembered, without a suitably Hitchcockian explanation for his obsession with the severely younger Novak, and (just in case anyone on earth hasn't yet seen it) the ending was still a pastel nightmare of ugly tchotchkes and Look How Normal She Is Now!!!!1!, and then there was the March/Tracy quarrel afterwards, and now Hec is all laid out with a bad head cold and gagging down zinc lozenges, so altogether not the best possible night out at the movies.

Still, not bad, and worth seeing for the backless dresses and Jack and Elsa and the cat.

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and then there was the March/Tracy quarrel afterwards, and now Hec is all laid out with a bad head cold and gagging down zinc lozenges, so altogether not the best possible night out at the movies.

On the plus side, the experience might help condition him NOT to browbeat you about your taste in movies—it's like the universe took your side and administered a smackdown.

I take it as a sign that Katharine Hepburn has now (as is only right) ascended to godhood. Spencer was her favorite too, y'know.

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I take it as a sign that Katharine Hepburn has now (as is only right) ascended to godhood. Spencer was her favorite too, y'know.

She always had the locution for it, so it wouldn't surprise me. One. Bit.

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OH, JZ, and th leopard swing coat (which I am choosing to be completely convinced was chic faux leopard) with the matching colors of gloves-and-sleeves-and turtleneck-with-cowl! And La Gingold!

And I dearly love Veronica Lake in I Married a Witch!

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I can accept Katherine Hepburn as part of the panetheon. She was sensible and would do a good job.

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I went to see The Incredibles again last night and there was...umm...a preview for Revenge of the Sith. Interestingly, they used a significant amount of Original Trilogy footage (Obi-Wan explaining who Vader is to Luke).

And it seems that Amidala will have proto-Leia hair.

I know I'm going to feel obligated to see the thing, but I think I can at least wait a couple weeks.

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(Obi-Wan explaining who Vader is to Luke).

Also, Yoda explaining, "Shoot first Han did not."

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Frederic March was great in Inherit the Wind, where he played Matthew Harrison Brady, the prosecuting attorney and former (multiple) Presidential nominee. (Cool bit of trivia--the playwrights named this character after the overzealous prosecuting attorney in the Fatty Arbuckle trial.)

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Sad story: Arthur "Bo" Agee, Sr., minister and the father of Arthur Agee, Jr., from Hoop Dreams, was murdered last night during an apparent robbery.

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