Rating Marilyn: Part 2

Now that we're pretty much left with only five movies, well five and a half if you count "Something's Gotta Give",so let's begin with what I think are some of Marilyn's finest movies!

9.Bus Stop

Ok, I consider this a western because its about a Rodeo dude who is like really strong and really macho. I don't remember much because I was not interested in the premise of this movie. I hate that the whole movie all he wants to do is marry her and then he kind of forces her to be with him. He kidnaps her and it isn't until they get stuck in a diner after a thunderstorm that he gets beaten and therefore forced to apologize to her. In the end she ends up having Stockholm Syndrome and agrees to be with him. At least thats what it felt like. Bo is like a giant child and I just can not deal. However Marilyn's acting was superb, she had to have an accent and it was not bad. The costume's were also quite lovely. 

10.The Prince and the Showgirl

I love this movie! It's not my favorite but I do love this movie. Marilyn plays a cute American Showgirl and she is invited to the home of the prince of some foreign prince. His only intentions are dirty ones and soon she finds herself trapped, however she begins to tease him and gets overly drunk on champagne and he is at. first turned of by her behavior but slowly finds herself drawn in. Sadly she falls asleep and he gets nowhere. It keeps on going in this manner until he falls in love with her and after trying to get her to leave he decides she should stay. In 18 months he will be a free citizen and he will be able to marry who he desires and she says a lot can happen in 18 months. She leaves and I like to think that thats where the love ended. I do not like the fact that for pretty much the whole movie she wore one dress. She went to the coronation ball and ceremony in the same mutherfucking dress. I just don't understand why there was a limited budget to her costuming. Laurence Olivier was a stick in the mud the whole movie and we all know he had an affair with Marilyn during shooting so it makes me wonder whether that was the problem with his atttude of if that was one of his "character traits" but he's slightly annoying. He's just not one of my favorite actors. But Marilyn is brilliant in this film!

11.Some Like it Hot

Ok this was my first Marilyn movie and I love it. It holds a special place in my heart because it was my first. I got to see Marilyn at her comedic greatest. This is also my favorite! Alongside Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon and the stroryline there was just no room for failure. I love Sugar Kane, Marilyn's character. She is a ukelelee player/singer in an all girl band. The boys are witness to a gang slaughter and are on the run and posing as girls in the all girls band to avoid the gang. Jack Lemmon's character finds himself chased by one of the millionaire also on the island and Tony Curtis falls in love with Sugar Kane. I love this movie, everything about it is perfect. The costumes, the story line, the casting, the songs! Even though Curtis and Marilyn had problems I can forgive him because Marilyn won her Golden Globe for this performance. And even though I hate the stupid promo pic of Marilyn I recommend that everyone watch this!

12.Let's Make Love

Offical second favorite movie! Let's make love is about a millionaire who falls in love with an actress at a shanty theater somewhere in New York.  He pretends to be himself in a parody play about wealthy people, celebrities in order to seduce the star Amanda. Yves Montand is hilarious and cute in this movie. I like him a lot better than Laurence Olivier. He also had an affair with Marilyn. Although he was a little bitch about it. I love this movie because I love the dance sequence "My Heart belongs to Daddy". The story line and the other story lines are awesome as well. In this movie we see a Marilyn who is both strong and yet sift and innocent. Something she as quiet adept at portraying. 

13.The Misfits

This is the last movie she ever made. It was also the last movie Clark Gable ever made. It was written for her by her then husband the great American playwright Arthur Miller. The truth is that I watched this movie quiet drink. Barbs gave it to me for my birthday last year and it sat in my desk as I wanted to watch it with her and somehow the tequila was introduced and we saw it but I can't say I was paying much attention. I also lost it because I was so friggn drunk. So i have not seen the end. What I can say about this movie is this! That movie captured Marilyn's spirit perfectly. She was strong but vulnerable. Easily swayed but stubborn. Sensual yet innocent. A ball of lovable contradictions just wanting to be loved. I loved it, and I think this is the best Marilyn has ever looked. I was really digging this hair on her. It's so sad that she never really got to continue making films but this is the potential she had. She was becoming a better actress. The world will never know what really happened to Marilyn Monroe, but we do know that she had an unsurpassed quality that is very hard to emulate. A certain je ne sais quoi, that transcended from screen to pictures and straight to some part of the brain that is attracted to her sensual innocence. Whatever your opinin of Marilyn you just cannot deny how great she was, in life as in death

Day 25: Rebecca

Rebecca: 1940: Winner of the 13th Academy Awards



Starring:


Laurence Olivier as Maxim de Winter
Joan Fontaine as The Second Mrs. de Winter

George Sanders as Jack Favell

Judith Anderson as Mrs. Danvers

Nigel Bruce as Major Giles Lacy

Reginald Denny as Frank Crawley

C. Aubrey Smith as Colonel Julyan

Gladys Cooper as Beatrice Lacy

Florence Bates as Mrs. Edythe Van Hopper

Melville Cooper as Coroner

Leo G. Carroll as Dr. Baker

Wow, wow, wow! This movie has it all, the wry dry British Humor, thrills and chills and a love story. The plot is this a young woman (Fontaine) is a companion to a wealthy woman and is with her on a trip in Monte Carlo, there she meets the young aristocrat Mr. de Winter, who is now a widower thanks to his previous wife’s catastrophic death. As with any movie plot they fall in love. What you have to understand is that she is almost in every way very different to Rebecca his previous wife. Anyhow, this man takes her to his estate called “Manderly” and a series of very intriguing plots begin to twist. I don't want to say to much for fear that I’ll give too much away. I mean honestly you won't get the whole story until the movie is just about done. It is very similar to the movie Psycho, in the sense that you don't get the complete picture all at once, more like in pieces. The end is simply superb and I loved Laurence Olivier in this. I almost pardon him for the movie “Hamlet”, which was way boring. Also I think I might have liked this more because for the longest I couldn’t find a place that had it. Salinger and I went out to get stuff and randomly found a library and lo and behold three movies that had been as of yet not found stood staring at me like new found friends. Rebecca being one of them. This was Hitchcock's first American film and he won an Oscar for it! Go Hitchcock. This is my third Hitchcock movie seen. I never got to finish “Rear Window”. This is joining “My to get List. ” its one of those movies you watch on a stormy and rainy day, in the dark. It just gets you so excited and you can't help but try to anticipate whats going to happen next. This is one of the Academy's better choices. Furthermore considering I had a week of solid war movies of extremely long length I can faithfully say I am happy for a decently timed film with a good plot and no gun shots. Rebecca is a must see, trust me you will not be disappointed.

It also won an award for:
Best Cinematography, Black and White - George Barnes

Day 11: Hamlet

Hamlet : 1948: winner of the 21st Academy Awards

Starring:

 Basil Sydney as King Claudius.

Eileen Herlie as Queen Gertrude.

Laurence Olivier as Hamlet,

Norman Wooland as Horatio.

Felix Aylmer as Polonius,

 Terence Morgan as Laertes,

 Jean Simmons as Ophelia.

To watch or not to watch? TO NOT WATCH! First off, the fucking box lied to me. I always check the back of the dvd case to inquire the length of said dvd and it said 1:33:1. Let me tell you right now that was a falsehood. It was more like 2:33:1, which was and hour more than it needed to be. Now I have seen (Sir) Laurence Olivier in “The Prince and the Showgirl” and he was rigid and cold as ever. I have problems with his snootiness, because he is a Shakespearean actor and blah, blah, blah, but this was beyond that. I was bored throughout the entirety of it, well except for when the ghost came out. That was actually pretty cool. I was tempted to take it out and say fuck it I’ll wiki it and then pretend I watched it, but I can’t really cheat, as it would be kind of ridiculous, so I watched it and died a little. Even though I have always wanted to see exact Shakespeare on video, I never expected this monstrosity. I also believe that it was nominated because America couldn’t turn down Shakespeare even though it was dreadfully boring and might I say overly dramatic, hey what the hell do I know, my suggestion is however , watch it if you abso-fuckin-lutely have too, for no other reason should thine bright eyes witness it.

It also won awards for:

Best Costume Design, Black-and-White

Roger Furse

Best Costume Design, Black-and-White

Roger Furse

Best Costume Design, Black-and-White: Roger Furse

Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White: Roger Furse,Carmen Dillon

Best Actor in a Leading Role: Laurence Olivier