Heads up: Tomorrow night (technically 3:30 Saturday morning) ET, TCM will show Die! Die! My Darling! It's one of those '60s "older stars in horror movie" genre, this one with Tallulah Bankhead.

I saw it when I was in college. Camp classic.

Viggo's a little past his sell-by date for me (and I'll always have The Indian Runner), but when I get in the mood for Cronenbergian darkness I'm sure his preparation and committment to the part will be a selling point.

Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes are starring in a movie about the Duchess of Devonshire.

TCM will show Die! Die! My Darling!

Oh! That's the one with Stephanie Powers as the ingenue, and a very young Donald Sutherland in a very creepy role.

Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes are starring in a movie about the Duchess of Devonshire.

I've read the biography that it's based on. Georgiana was a fascinating character.

Also of note for royal watchers:

Georgiana was a Spencer, and so the great-great-etc. aunt of Diana. There are a number of parallels between their lives, except Georgiana was much more involved in politics, being a friend and supporter of Charles Fox and the Whigs. She was also friends with Sheridan, who based one of the main characters in School for Scandal on her.

Sondheim likes Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd:

“It’s not the Broadway show,” he warned me. “It’s only an hour and 45 minutes. A lot of the score has been cut. They’ve made it its own thing. You have to go in knowing that. But what they’ve done is great.”

(Quote randomly buried down near the bottom of this story.)

Unfortunately, quotes from the creators of things I love saying "They changed everything, but I really liked it!" always make me nervous. Under two hours? Missing a lot of the score? Noooooooo....

Sondheim has always been fairly unsentimental about cutting his own work, or reframing it. (See: the London production of Follies, the revised version of Merrily We Roll Along.)

IMDB on the ultimate magical negro:

In director Robert Benton's Feast of Love, Morgan Freeman is once again playing another variation of his previous role as God. "Just once, it would be great to see him play a spiteful neurotic or a selfish bastard," Carina Chocano remarks in the Los Angeles Times. Stephen Holden in the New York Times says that Freeman "has a role he could act in his sleep." Lou Lumenick in the New York Post comments that Freeman "has devoted entirely too much of his screen career to selflessly helping white folks." Most critics have gagged on the movie. Lumenick calls Feast of Love "diabetes-inducing." Liam Lacey in the Toronto Globe & Mail suggests it's "like a buffet of contrivance." And Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune uses this analogy: "This feast is more like an artfully arranged appetizer plate."

But I still love him, somehow. Cuba Gooding doesn't wear it as well, but then again, Morgan hasn't played mentally handicapped, has he?

I was never going to see this movie, but I love The Rock, so I like the reviews:

One thing that most critics appear to agree on: If Disney's game plan was to make The Game Plan a movie that would appeal strongly to kids 15 and younger, it succeeded. Jane Horwitz writes unenthusiastically in the Washington Post: "It is an amiable enough movie and ought to give warm and fuzzy amusement to kids 8 and older, even as it will appear utterly contrived to adult eyes." The film stars wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne The Rock Johnson, who draws polite applause. David Germain of the Associated Press says that "Johnson combines an effective mix of swaggering charm, cluelessness and childish enthusiasm." Gene Seymour in Newsday asks, "Why isn't Dwayne Johnson a big star by now? The camera loves him. He's funny, self-deprecating. ... It could be that he hasn't quite found the right vehicle to drive home his persona." This movie may not be that vehicle, either. As Robert W. Butler notes in the Kansas City Star: "Johnson pretty much drips on-screen charisma, but he can't overcome the banality of The Game Plan, a comedy so formulaic and uninspired that you'd swear you've seen the movie before." And Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News concludes her review of the movie by remarking, "The only mystery, in fact, is why Johnson chose to make this film in the first place. He could be -- should be -- one of the biggest action stars of the era. Instead, he's wasting his talents on one mediocre movie after another."

We are going to see Itty Bitty Titty Committee this weekend because we are stereotypical gay girls. [link]