Clarification on mothers and adult children of mothers in movies

Angela Lansbury was born in October of 1925, which means she was about 37 when The Manchurian Candidate came out in 1962, and Laurence Harvey, who played her son, was three years younger.

North by Northwest came out in 1959, which would make Cary Grant 55. Jessie Royce Landis, who played his mother, was eight years older than he was.

Amy Poehler talked (in some video I can't find) about the age difference between her and Rachel McAdams who played her daughter in Mean Girls. Poehler was 33 in 2004 and McAdams was 26.

Speaking of North by Northwest, the second half of this episode of Selected Shorts  is a pretty great story called Cary Grant's Suit.

Buried

All I have to say about this movie--and it is high praise--is this: I watched it all the way to the end. I really didn't think that would happen. I expected one of two things: 1. there would be some parts that were not just me and Ryan Reynolds, trapped in a tiny box. You know, a flashback or something. Or 2. I would fall asleep before the end. I didn't fall asleep. And (spoiler alert) he is never not in that box.

mystery movie chat

I just came across this chat from April of 2009. 
 
Why does Kristin think Simon Pegg is in love with Tom Cruise? I also believe that now, but only since hearing him on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me recently. 

More important: WHAT MOVIE WERE WE TALKING ABOUT?
   11:11 AM Kristin: SERIOUSLY? he's dateable because his dad wrote a book of philosophy

 me: plus, Einstein - live for other people or whatever?

11:12 AM Kristin: yeah, cause there's no one else to quote if you study philosophy

11:13 AM also, do novelists only come from small towns in the midwest??

11:14 AM because that makes me a sweet girl and brilliant writer who's simply the victim of big city circumstance!

 me: I don't know.

  She didn't like publish her novel though, right?

 Kristin: i don't know i'm still mid movie

  well, towards the end

11:15 AM me: I love how in the movies people are always like "I'm working for a little literary magazine." like it's not glamorous but it pays the bills. Like jobs at little literary magazines are basically the same as jobs at McDonald's.

 Kristin: i know.

  what a crapfest.

11:17 AM me: he's not even cute or funny

  there was exactly one place in the whole movie where I smiled in response to something that happened

 Kristin: mostly i gape at how horrible

11:18 AM me: yeah I was just slightly angry most of the time I was watching

11:19 AM Kristin: oh. she's so michigan.

 me: but I'm usually slightly angry

  did she point to her hand?

 Kristin: ?

 me: you know, to say where she was from

  wait, is she from port huron?

  that's where Kelly is from

  or is she from another port

11:20 AM Kristin: oh! no not yet

 me: no, I don't think she does that

 Kristin: yes huron

 me: that was just the only thing I could think of that michigan people do

 Kristin: they're also sort of quiet. understanted. kind.

 me: oh,

 Kristin: you know. it comes from being so rural.

 me: like eminim

11:21 AM Kristin: yes! or people from detroit.

 me: kid rock

  ted nugent

  I get it

  good people

 Kristin: bruce...campbell...

  shit i know no one from michigan.

  famous i mean.

11:22 AM me: madonna

 Kristin: really???

 me: just think of wholesome people

 Kristin: do we really believe stars behave this way?

 Kristin: naked all the time?

who is the actress we're told is his mother?

 me: no idea

  is she a real actress?

 Kristin: no i assume made up.

  i mean, an actress in life, but i assume the movies are fake?

11:26 AM 

11:31 AM and seriously, does this girl only love one movie?

  ah nice, the scene where he rides the woman. appropriate.

11:32 AM wow in all of new york there's about 20 people at this screening

11:33 AM oh! in order to kiss her he flippantly tosses her novel aside!

  immediate engagement ring!

11:34 AM wait. the comedic ending is that he burned her novel?

 me: hilarious

 Kristin: well she doesn't need it. now she has a man who certainly she can find at the bars.

 me: and she's like "oops!"

  doesn't she look like she's worried about him getting hurt?

  not shocked that her life's work is destroyed?

 Kristin: yes. yes she does.

 me: although, she's probably spent a lot of time preparing herself emotionally for that eventuality

11:35 AM Kristin: true

 me: since she's writing her novel longhand in a tiny book she carries around in her purse

 Kristin: it's a short story really

  just enough to bide the time till she meets someone

 me: I love her writing process

11:36 AM "Well, my boyfriend isn't here yet, I guess I'll write my novel for a while while I'm waiting for him at the bar."

11:37 AM Kristin: "sigh. hes not going to make it. that's enough writing tonight."

 me: I mean, we're not supposed to believe that she uses that notebook to jot down thoughts about her novel

  we're to believe that that IS her novel

 

 Kristin: right

  it's the unrevised original full length novel

11:38 AM several pages of which are gone from wine

  maybe the alcohol explains why it went up in flames so quickly. why didn't her friends intervene?

11:39 AM me: maybe they were too shocked

  by the blocking the view

 Kristin: ugh that bothered me.

 me: the fact that she was just like "oh this shithead is here, I guess I'll kiss him on the mouth"

 Kristin: "yes! he's datable now that he's a total loser again."

11:40 AM i mean honestly, are we supposed to believe assholes are great guys because the only other option is sell out?

 me: I hate it when epiphanies have no evidence to support them in movies

 Kristin: how OLD are we/

 me: I feel like you should always include in the formula a period of weeks or months in which he actually redeems himself

  between the moment of realization and the culminating kiss/engagement/burning of novel

11:41 AM I feel like we could write a better script, even though we are so boring

 Kristin: i will make a movie where a total asshole wants to get the girl and is thwarted by her successful dickish boyfriend. in the end both men will be left with only the other, and the realization that they are two sides to the exact same personality.

 me: I don't object to formula

 Kristin: i don't either!

11:42 AM formula is fun! hence magnetic fields!

 me: can the two men then realize that they hate women so much they can only have sex with each other

 Kristin: y.e.s.

  can the successful man be played by tom cruise? i now believe that simon peg is in fact desperately in love with tom cruise.

11:43 AM me: i want you to also watch ghost town now

 Kristin: i rented hound dog and just buried

  michael and i will watch one at 6:30 if you care ot join us.

 me: a movie in which the woman chooses the putzy twit instead of very good looking human rights lawyer

  like he's good in every way

  but she picks Ricky Gervais because...

11:44 AM I think it's because he made a funny semi-racist joke

 Kristin: of course! he's irreverent.

  fucking sellouts.

 me: the premise of the joke was the chinese names often sound like slang english terms for penises

  oh ho ho ho

 Kristin: with their cultural understanding.

 me: long wang dong!

11:45 AM ha ha ha !!!!

  I don't want to see Hound Dog

  I didn't know I didn't want to see it until I saw how many copies they have at Top Ten

11:46 AM Kristin: i have rented one of those copies

 me: that's the dakota fanning rape movie, right?

 Kristin: yes

 me: you're not wrong to do so

  I'm the irrational one

 Kristin: it appears to be a movie in which a white girl teaches a black man about the blues.

  should be great.  

NOOOOOOOooooooo!

This unsubstantiated rumor might not be true, but that won't stop me whining.
http://nearwestendnews.net/2011/08/09/westhampton-theater-to-become-upscale-restaurant

Note: the Westhampton theater, especially upstairs, is very small and very cramped. Even I feel like the seats are too close together, and I am very short-legged. I don't care.I still don't want it to be converted into another restaurant I will never go to. 

I would actually sort of like to see our NTC participants post about their own pivotal movies or movie decades.

I tried recently to come up with a big list of "the movies that made me love movies" or something like that. I was thinking of making a movie-themed redwork quilt. (I'm probably not ever going to do that.)

The first movie I saw in a theater was Annie. My grandmother took me to see it, and I was pretty scandalized by all Carol Burnett's bad behavior. Confession: I still think of Tim Curry as Rooster before Frank-N-Furter,  or Wadsworth or whatever else you think of him as. This guy probably:



Labyrinth. The first movie I bought myself on video. Followed closely by And Now For Something Completely Different. It is a very reassuring feeling, owning a movie, knowing that you can see it whenever you want to, and pause it, or start over when it's done. It seems so obvious now, but it was a revelation in 1990 or so.

It's a Wonderful Life and Harvey. I had a record of Jimmy Stewart reading Winnie the Pooh stories when I was a kid. He was the first movie star I felt a personal attachment to. Celebrity culture is one of the weirdest aspects of being a movie lover/watcher/fan. You come to feel as if you know these people, and it's rare (and sort of a relief) to see the occasional movie without familiar faces in it. On the other hand, sometimes you like a movie just because of who is in it...

Dead Poets Society. The first time I remember loving and hating a movie at the same time, which is a really important part of my experience of movies. I fought with people about what was left out (e.g. any women, any poet born after 1900), but I also toted around my mother's copy of The Viking Book of Poetry of the English Speaking World all that summer while I worked at my first job, selling dried flowers to tourists in an alley in Kennebunkport. Parts of Leaves of Grass still remind me of the aggressive scent of lemon verbena and rose potpourri.

Heathers. The first movie that I watched so many times I could recite most of it from memory. It is hard to watch now, because..well, because it's kind of bad. I don't remember why it was so great then. Speaking of things I no longer understand my adolescent fondness for (I'm talking about Winona Ryder), I saw Edward Scissorhands at The Movies on Exchange in Portland, and I was sad for days afterwards, thinking about...you know, mortality and stuff.

The Fisher King. Oh how I loved The Fisher King. I saw other Terry Gilliam movies earlier, and others are better, but The Fisher King is the one that got inside my head, made me incredibly sad, and made me keep thinking about it. I was fifteen when that movie came out. Amanda Plummer's mean, novel-reading character was named Lydia. That alone would probably have won me over.

There were a whole series of sort of smarty-pants movies that I rented and watched by myself, in the back room of the dance studio where my mother was working, or in my room on a tiny black and white TV. These are movies that made me think, made me feel smart and stupid in turn. The Seventh Seal, Mindwalk, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Jesus of Montreal. I am not sure I understood all of the issues raised in these movies. They made me realize that watching a movie can be hard work, and that it can be worth it.

Finally, I remember going to the Nickelodeon theater in Portland, where they showed second run movies for $2. It was a hot day, and I watched Scent of a Woman then immediately went back and watched Benny & Joon. That was the first time I went to see a movie alone, and I loved it so much I did it twice in the same day.

The funny thing about my list of movies that mattered to me is how many of them are not movies I ever need to see again. Even Harvey, which I would have named as my favorite movie for many years, seems a little trite these days, if I'm honest. Does everyone feel this way? The stuff that made you who you are, do you still love that stuff? Are you embarrassed by it? Do you cling defensively--or proudly--to nostalgia for terrible things you loved when you were thirteen?

Horror isn't just...

Horror isn't just for perverts and lowbrows anymore. Whether the undead pose a threat to serious art is unclear. What I'm more concerned about is the danger serious art poses to the undead.

Jason Zinoman in Slate

TEAM CARDIGAN FTW

Honestly, this picture, from this i09 article, made me want to see the movie (and the last one, which I haven't gotten around to either) more than anything else has. I'll have to dig out my "Team Neville" Tshirt...