Musings on a snowy day indoors on the BAFTA awards and other stuff ... it was amusing (for a while anyway) seeing the impossible-to-get-away-from-here Stephen Fry hosting, spouting a beard and commenting on the amount of actors who had come with their beards (cue Clooney, Jackman, Cooper, Bardem, Affleck, Phoenix, all spouting lots of facial hair - is this a new trend? I shaved off my own beard in my late 30s when it was getting a bit too greyish ....) .
One actor not there was veteran Terence Stamp, but he turned up next morning on breakfast tv, to promote this new film
SONG FOR MARION (another of the 'movies for and by oldies') which teams him with that other great '60s survivor Vanessa Redgrave. Stamp, always so stylish and clothes conscious, looked smart and dapper, if older, at 74 now. I did a post on him recently here, (
Stamp label), on his role
TOBY DAMMIT for Fellini in 1968. Terence was pleased that another veteran, 85 year old Emmanuelle Riva had won the BAFTA Best Actress award for
AMOUR, and I had to agree with his comment that it was a shame that Trintignant "so beautiful when he was young" as Terry said, was also not nominated for that very brave performance.
Also in the news lately, is that other veteran: Gina Lollobrigida, also 85, with those stories about a fake marriage by proxy. Here, in "The Sunday Times", Gina gave her version of events and is seen posed in front of that 1954 photo I have used here before, of her with Marilyn Monroe, in this photo by Nick Cornish. Marilyn had told her that she Marilyn was the American Gina Lollobrigida! Gina also says Marilyn was "modest, an exceptional woman. I was fond of her because she was really undefended and what happened to her happened becasue she wasn't a strong character. I was strong and I defended myself more". She also referred to the time when Howard Hughes was chasing her, he was the most persistent suitor she ever had.
Meanwhile, also in the news here, is a new food scare with horsemeat, labelled as beef, found in ready-meals, burgers and kebabs. Seemingly to originate from horses in Romania, but now also found in abbatoirs and processing plants here in the UK. Thankfully I do not use those kind of meals ..... but did eat horse once in France, in the '70s, but did not know what it was until afterwards, it did taste sweeter than usual beef though .... here is that marvellous round-up scene from Huston's
THE MISFITS where the mustangs were caught and sold for pet-food. Now, its food for humans ...
Meanwhile, good to see the run of
THE JUDAS KISS continues until April - we saw this last year, as per review
(theatre label), and it has been a success, and is now back in business in London's west end, with career-best notices for Rupert Everett. His latest book of memoirs "Vanished Years" is also in my pending pile to read, that attracted rave reviews too. My next theatre date is next week, for that well-received revival of
PRIVATES ON PARADE, more on that then.
Watching (again) those recent Hitchcock revivals - several titles get screened every week here - got me musing on how timeless Cary Grant and James Stewart appear now, and that is due in large part to their 4 each for Hitchcock, which are always on view out there .... their contemporaries Clark Gable and Gary Cooper, after their great years in the '30s and '40s, do not seem as fortunate;
no Hitch's for them and their last films in the '50s are not that
noteworthy or seldom revived (apart from THE MISFITS), they both also died on the cusp of the '60s, whereas too Grant and Stewart worked well into the 1960s.
Coop had a few modest successes after that hit FRIENDLY PERSUASION which I like a lot, from 1956 - some more tough westerns with Anthony Mann's '58 MAN OF THE WEST and Daves' THE HANGING TREE in '59; but I find him all wrong and too old opposite Audrey Hepburn in Wilder's disappointing - for me - LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON, and in that Fox version of O'Hara TEN NORTH FREDERICK in '58. THEY CAME TO CORDURA is a good one, but little seen, for Rossen in 1959 where he and the equally aged Rita Hayworth are touching; then those final two made in England with Michael Anderson: the so-so WRECK OF THE MARY DEARE with Heston and a good English cast, and the dull thriller THE NAKED EDGE with Deborah Kerr in 1961 where he clearly looks unwell.
Gable fared
better:
TEACHER'S PET with Doris was a hit in '58, as was
IT STARTED IN NAPLES
with Sophia in '60 , then he was suddenly aged for his final,
THE MISFITS with
Monroe and a quality film by Arthur Miller for Huston, still a key movie now. I also like
BUT
NOT FOR ME a nice comedy, due for a re-watch, with Lilli Palmer and Carroll Baker, in '59. Clearly though for both maybe years of hard living, drink and smoking had taken their toll.
Gable died in 1960 aged 59; Coop in 1961 aged 60, whereas Cary went on until 1986 aged 82, and Stewart till 1997 aged 89 ...
One of my theatre highlights last year was seeing Rupert Everett as Oscar Wilde in David Hare's THE JUDAS KISS which we saw at the compact Hampstead Theatre last summer, before its west end run earlier this year. Rupert also had his second volume of memoirs out VANISHED YEARS which I bought in hardback, but only got around to reading it now - and its like listening to an old witty friend. Totally enjoyable, as per the splendid reviews, and its out now in paperback. Essential holiday reading. Though the likes of Richard Curtis and Emma Freud, Tina Brown, Madonna, Harvey Weinstein, Piers Morgan, Alistair Campbell, Ross Kemp and others must have found it alarming reading. Rupert deliciously skewers our trashy celebrity culture, as in "success for a movie star is no longer simply based on a good performance in a good film. It is measured in perfumes, and book deals, clothing contracts and celebrity endorsements, and the perception of success is as important as the actual quality of the product", 
How very true, as nobody seems ashamed of making trash anymore, as we see them promoting their wares on tv every week ... 
One actor not there was veteran Terence Stamp, but he turned up next morning on breakfast tv, to promote this new film SONG FOR MARION (another of the 'movies for and by oldies') which teams him with that other great '60s survivor Vanessa Redgrave. Stamp, always so stylish and clothes conscious, looked smart and dapper, if older, at 74 now. I did a post on him recently here, (Stamp label), on his role TOBY DAMMIT for Fellini in 1968. Terence was pleased that another veteran, 85 year old Emmanuelle Riva had won the BAFTA Best Actress award for AMOUR, and I had to agree with his comment that it was a shame that Trintignant "so beautiful when he was young" as Terry said, was also not nominated for that very brave performance.
Ben Hardy, that other young actor (now in EASTENDERS) is also naked at the start, as the young waiter, which certainly makes the audience sit up! Rupert, so amusing the other week in a re-run of MY BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING captures Wilde at these 2 key moments dealt with in the play. We first see him holed up at the Cadogan Hotel in 1895 before being arrested, as everyone tries to persuase him to flee to Europe, and the thoroughly unpleasant Bosie goes into drama queen mode. Act 2 is 2 years later in Italy in 1897 as the ruined - both his health and financially, after 2 years hard labour in jail - Wilde contemplates his downfall and realises how Bosie has betrayed him, as he will not give up his family allowance and prepares to leave Wilde once again. Oscar achieves pure pathos here. Below: Freddie as Bosie with Tom Colley as the Italian. 
Wilde of course lived on to November 1900 when he died aged 46 - his major works (apart from "De Profundis" were completed by the time he was 40). Bosie lived on to be 74 and died in 1945 - a bitter Narcissus indeed. If only Oscar too could have lived to his seventies, he would have been a star of radio and film and been rehabilitated as the wit and commentator he was and he would have been earning royalties again. His great tomb with its "Modernist Angel” sculpture (right) by Jacob Epstein has been cleaned and restored to its former glory at Pere Lechaise cemetry in Paris (I have been to it twice) and is that famous cemetry's most visited resting place, along with Jim Morrison's... 
I did though sit happily through MY BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING again the other day - I enjoyed this at the cinema back in 1997. I never really got the Julia Roberts love - I didn't care for PRETTY WOMAN for starters - and had no interest in most of her movies (MARY REILLY - I don't think so...) but I get it here, she is quite adorable and looks perfect with that hair and the mouth etc. Her character isn't pretty likeable but she makes us like her even more. The plot is too well known to re-hash here, but she and Dermot Mulroney and Cameron Diaz as the even more adorable Kimmy are all note-perfect and there are some great set-pieces.
The locations are great and it all looks marvellous in widescreen. Have I left someone out ? Oh yes, Rupert Everett on tip-top form re-defining the role of the Gay Best Friend, in fact I understand the role was extended for him and he simply runs away with the picture. That restuarant scene where he leads the singing of Dionne's "I Say A Little Prayer" is one we can watch over and over, as perfectly realised by P.J. Hogan (of MURIEL'S WEDDING). Love too Rupert's delivery of those lines, like to the mother of the bride: "love the bag, love the shoes" .... the whole movie is full of endearing characters, and that final dance at the end is simply just perfect. "There will be dancing" indeed. 
