Oh, I'm familiar with the Code, but they just never showed that many pre-1933ish films on TV while I was growing up, and I really haven't taken that much of an effort to search them out. IIRC, the first Weismuller Tarzan film was pre-Code (wasn't Jane nude in the swimming scene in that film?), and I have seen that. (And, damn, did JW have a hot bod! My first exposure to what swimming can do for a physique.)

Take a look at some of the really early (19-teens) short films, and you'll see some pretty salacious stuff in comparison to later in the 1920s. The first Code in Hollywood, brought about by the Fatty Arbuckle trial (talk about a career that crashed and burned). When I was in HS, I read Moviola, which did a pretty good job of novelizing early Hollywood.

Oh, yes. Like the partial female nudity in Intolerance.

I just netflixed The Women...next time I rent a classic, I might see if it's on cable first. I liked it, but did not feel the great LOVE of many movie fiends...uh, aficionados.

I can vouch from personal experience that the proper way to view The Women is at the Castro theater with a crowd of very opinionated queens who hiss and holler during the opening credits. (Saving most of their ire for the child actress.)

I'll bet they are funnier than the movie! Which was pretty funny but gets less so as we come into the homestretch for the MGM Happy Ending. Maybe if I still believed in happy endings...

Also, I tend to think that Empire dresses are a lot more flattering to round people than to stick-shaped ones. If you dont't got no boobies, there's nothing else the dress shows off, you know?

From way back, because Jilli was not here to say it: empire dresses are not flattering to most round people. Empire dresses have the distinct habit of making round people look rounder, and possibly as if they're starring in the next round of Ready to Pop porn vids.

Slender women with a B or C cup can pull them off, but that's about it.

From way back, because Jilli was not here to say it: empire dresses are not flattering to most round people.

Heh. Yes, you beat me to it.

See above, re: me avoiding them like the plague.

Although, I'm not even sure they are flattering to slender women with a B or C cup.

I object to the de-nerding of the character (also to Emma's dislike for the character in the original and the subsequent (though I won't fully blame it on that) re-writing of the character).

I never knew she disliked Hermione! Still, it seems to me like it would be easier to get another 12-year-old actress than to rewrite to the whims of one. If Hermione is being systemically de-nerdified, rather than just having that element excised through standard movie magic, it's on the producers.

I think Emma Watson is plenty pretty, but she hardly strikes me as head-and-shoulders above every other girl her age in the world.

Also, this. She's nice-looking, and definitely blossoming, but she's not unbelievably gorgeous. (And why do I feel mean saying that about a teenage actress?)

when my friend worked backstage at a celebrity fashion show for Newman's charity, Damon not only had absolutely no temperament, butwhen he heard as he was leaving that they were selling all the clothes worn that day on ebay, asked "would this help?" and peeled off his own cashmere sweater and donated it. He went home in a t-shirt on a crisp November day.

It sounds like he's a good guy, Robin. That's a nice story.

NYT on sucky movies: [link]

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 23 - With the last of the summer blockbusters fading from the multiplex, Hollywood's box office slump has hardened into a reality that is setting the movie industry on edge. The drop in ticket sales from last summer to this summer, the most important moviegoing season, is projected to be 9 percent by Labor Day, and the drop in attendance is expected to be even deeper, 11.5 percent, according to Exhibitor Relations, which tracks the box office.

Multiples theories for the decline abound: a failure of studio marketing, the rising price of gas, the lure of alternate entertainment, even the prevalence of commercials and pesky cellphones inside once-sacrosanct theaters. But many movie executives and industry experts are beginning to conclude that something more fundamental is at work: Too many Hollywood movies these days, they say, just are not good enough.

What is that? Research from the Institute of "No...Duh."?