Random

I'm officially obsessed with Camelot, although I've not actually seen the movie or play. I've only listened to the music (way too many times now), and I have deemed it obsession-worthy. My favorite song is "Then You May Take Me to the Fair." Its happy melody disguises the fact that Guenevere is encouraging murder. I've also decided that "The Lusty Month of May" is by far the gayest song that has ever existed.

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I went to see The Sound of Music the other night in Grant Park in downtown Chicago and it was beyond fabulous except for the group of drunkards sitting next to us, making obscene jokes about the movie. Now, if the obscene jokes would have been clever this would have been acceptable, but they weren't. They were stupid. For a brief moment, I had to give them credit because they seemed to know every word to every song, but shortly thereafter I realized they had a sheet with all the lyrics on it.

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Speaking of obscene Sound of Music jokes, I found this video distasteful, but hilarious. It's more about the audio than the video.

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After complaining to my mother about my taste for old movies and weird music that nobody else likes, she attempted to console me with this: "You are cultured, that's good. And yet you still like stupid things like Napoleon Dynamite."

Road to Utopia

Our Old Movie Night this month featured the Bing Crosby/Bob Hope classic, Road to Utopia. I'd never seen one of these famous "road" pictures before and I was certain it would be a smash. It did not disappoint.

I'll be frank, I have no idea what the plot of this movie was. I know Bob and Bing were traveling to Alaska and running away from some big tough guys looking for gold. But the plot is not the point of this movie. The point is, Bob and Bing do weird things and they're funny. And they chase women. And they make dirty jokes that are so insinuated, I'm not sure they were even really there.

The movie makes fun on itself. Right off the bat in the first scene we see a fellow in a classroom explaining that he will be making appearances throughout the movie just to explain to us what the heck is going on. Sure enough, throughout the film his head pops up in the corner of the screen, he makes some snide remark, and disappears. I got the feeling that when the writers were sitting down to work on this movie, they wrote out hundreds of their favorite jokes and then built a movie around them, hoping it would start making sense along the way. Well, it doesn't make sense, but that doesn't matter because it's funny.

Bing Crosby is possibly the corniest man alive (or..not...alive). But isn't that why we love him? I've seen White Christmas more times than I care to say, and I think it's pretty obvious that the corniest jokes in that movie are the ones he ad libbed. I can only assume the same is true for this picture. And that's why we love Bing.

It was a great success and luckily, the DVD that this movie is on also has 3 other road pictures on it! It seems I have my work cut out for me.

Camelot!

I went to Goodwill and picked up the Camelot Original Broadway Cast Recording on vinyl (Julie Andrews, of course). I haven't see Camelot, mostly because it sounds kind of depressing, and I really only know the main "Camelot" song. But I'm listening to it now and I'm only on like the fourth song, and it's already amazing. I think I'm going to end up liking this Guenevere and I'm pretty sure I'm going to need to go see the show now. I don't think I want to watch the movie...I have this feeling it'll have the same outcome as the whole My Fair Lady fiasco. Why does Julie Andrews have to always ruin things by being so good. If she would just be crappy sometimes things would be so much easier.

Anyway, the best part of my Goodwill purchase is when I got home and pulled out the record, two more records fell out. One is a 45 with two Carpenters songs that I don't know. The second is more interesting. All it says on it is United Air Lines on the top and "Take me along" at the bottom. I have no idea what that means, but I'm sure looking forward to finding out.

Don't Watch Victor/Victoria Before Bed!

This is just a quick note to say don't watch Victor/Victoria right before you go to sleep or you will have strange dreams about marrying another woman, but one of you is actually a man (pretending to be a woman), but you don't know which one. I'm warning you.

The Awful Truth

The Grant Park Outdoor Film Festival feature last night was The Awful Truth. I've always loved this movie so I was excited to go see it with some friends and lots and lots of strangers in a park in downtown Chicago.

If you haven't seen this movie, you need to. Cary Grant is amazing as usual and I do love Irene Dunn. They're hilarious together and the humor is clever. You really have to be paying attention to catch some of their one-liners. I think people expect old black and white movies to be a little slow and boring, but this one definitely has no boring moments.

The conversation in the car on the way home centered around whether or not Lucy and Jerry were actually cheating on each other. I don't believe we came to a conclusion. I don't really think she did, but I'm not sure about him. We're not used to not having closure these days, but this one does leave you hanging a bit.

We also discussed plans for our next and final trip downtown for The Sound of Music. I can't even wait and I'm even more excited because it seems as though I have friends who actually want to go. On top of that, I think I have friends that want to dress up for it. When I say dress up, I mean find some curtains and make clothes out of them. We attempted to assign characters to everyone last night. I want to be the Baroness, mostly so I can wear a non-curtain outfit.

Joan Crawford Movies

My roommate is gone this weekend leaving me to watch TCM 24/7. It's great.

Joan Crawford was the "Star of the Day" today and I watched a crazy film, Autumn Leaves. I missed some of the beginning, but the gist of it was Joan Crawford gets mixed up with a younger man, Burt, and eventually, he convinces her to marry him. Not only is he like 20 years younger than her, he's also incredibly corny, saying things like, "Hey, man, that's "Bop" talk!" Plus, he's extremely needy and he kind of reminded me of Norman Bates.

A short two weeks after their wedding, Joan finds that most of what she knew of Burt's past (which apparently wasn't much) was a lie when she gets an unexpected visit from his ex-wife who she didn't know existed. She finds that his father, who he said was dead, is in fact alive, and she goes to visit him. He's wearing a referee outfit and clearly has the hots for Joan, and he basically tells her that Burt's a compulsive liar.

After some sharp investigative work, Joan finds that the father and the ex-wife are having an affair and have been scheming to get rid of Burt. Apparently, Burt had discovered his father and ex-wife having SEX and their reappearance drives him insane. Literally. He becomes convinced that Joan is in on their schemes and he slaps her a number of times before throwing a type writer at her and breaking her hand. This leads everyone to believe that he's insane. Which he is. He has no recollection of his violent outburst and Joan continues to stand by him, ignoring the advice of...pretty much everyone.

She finally meets with the sanitarium man and he basically tells her that they can fix Burt, but the only reason he's married to her is because of his neurosis and once he's fixed he probably won't want her anymore. Nevertheless, Burt's incessant weeping finally drives her crazy (not literally), and she sends him off to the loony bin. This is followed by a nice little montage of 1950's psychotherapy, also known as, electrocution.

So, Burt gets all fixed in his head, Joan comes to get him, it turns out he still wants her, and they make out in the middle of the sanitarium while a Nat King Cole song (I think) plays over the credits. The End.

My favorite Joan Crawford movie is Mildred Pierce. It doesn't get much better than a mother and daughter having affairs with each other's husbands and murdering people.

Of course, an honorable mention must be made for Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? I love when Bette Davis beats her up and pushes her down the stairs. They don't make 'em like that anymore.