#''not disparaging the actor at all‚ I hope he does a great job''

[acesydneysage]

I expected Adrian to look twinkier

#Adrian Ivashkov #''not disparaging the actor at all‚ I hope he does a great job'' #va tv #bloodlines series #va #vampire academy #Rapha's Bloodlines Tag

[average-guy-reviews]

Black Adam (2022)

"In ancient Kahndaq, Teth Adam was bestowed the almighty powers of the gods. After using these powers for vengeance, he was imprisoned, becoming Black Adam. Nearly 5,000 years have passed, and Black Adam has gone from man to myth to legend. Now free, his unique form of justice, born out of rage, is challenged by modern-day heroes who form the Justice Society: Hawkman, Dr. Fate, Atom Smasher and Cyclone."

D.C.'s movies have had a spotty success since they started trying to build a cinematic universe. With some inconsistent styles of movie, and some notorious moments within thise films, they've been on a rocky road. It looked as though the DCEU was collapsing under its own weight. That is until now. This film feels like a fresh beginning, like the reboot the DC universe needs.

Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock, has the image of just being himself in the movies he does, with only small differences. He bucks that trend here. He inhabits the role of Teth Adam seamlessly, taking us along on the journey of a man out of history coming to terms with being in a new world. His performance, as an anti-hero, is a strong one, perhaos more so than I expected. I'm looking forward to seeing more of him as Adam in the future.

He is joined on screen by members of DCs lesser known Justice Society. Pierce Brosnan, as Dr Fate, is perfectly cast and nails the role of the world weary, visionary, magic user brilliantly. It's good to see him in a new genre. Aldis Hodge is Hawkman, a brutal fighter with an intelligence to match. He plays the ups and downs of Hawkman's anger with an apparent ease that can't have been an easy thing. The other two members of the JS are Atom Smasher, played by Noah Centineo, and Cyclone, played by Quintessa Swindell. These two actors are young, and talented, enough to be able to carry DCs Justice Society for several years, if that is the plan.

With this film it looks like DC and Warner Brothers have learned a lot from the success of Marvel. The whole film is much more like a Marvel movie, in look and feel, than previous DC attempts. I don't say that to disparage DC at all. If anything this is a huge step for DC to finally realise what seems to work. Jaume Collet-Serra, as director, has done a great job with this film, bringing out decent performances from almost everyone, and creating a believable world with a solid foundation to be built on.

The choice of using lesser known characters, and the Justice Society, as opposed to the Justice League, may have been the best move DC and WB could have made. I genuinely feel like this could be the beginning of a good, solid, run of movies in a knitted together universe. It's not likely to fully compete with Marvel, but if the quality builds on this, getting better over time, then it could make Disney and Marvel up their game even more.

I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this will not be a film for everyone. There are going to be those people who moan about it not being comic book accurate, and those who claim the casting is all wrong, but i don't care about the naysayers. I now have higher hopes for DC movies than I have had for a long time.

Overall it's a really good film. The performances are decent, the film feels so much fresher and heroic than previously, and it feels like the beginning of something potentially great moving forward. Is it perfect? No, but it is a really good film. I'll definitely be watching it again in the cinema. For all of that it's getting a solid 7.5/10, with a recommendation to go see it asap. Oh, and a word of note: there is a post credit scene so stick around.

#black adam #dwayne johnson #the rock #pierce brosnan #superhero #action #dceu #warnerbrothers #dc comics #movies #reviews #cinema #odeon

[mrsabbington-blog]

Farewell, my dear Watson: Amanda Abbington on Sherlock and her break-up with Martin Freeman

The actress’s career was going from strength to strength when her relationship with her co-star imploded. She tells Bryan Appleyard how she contained the fallout

Amanda Abbington — who, as Mary Morstan, took a bullet for Sherlock Holmes — has a new man whom she won’t name. “He’s lovely, we’re keeping it very much on the low down. We don’t want lots of people to know. We’ve been together for about a year now. He’s an actor and he’s delightful. He’s very mindful of my situation and I’m very mindful of his.”

She was with Holmes’s sidekick, Dr Watson — aka Martin Freeman — for 16 years. They have two children, Grace and Joe. They broke up in 2016 while they were both starring in Sherlock.

“We still get on really well, we still really both admire each other as actors … he’s a great guy, but we just couldn’t live with each other any more.”

Given that Sherlock was an international hit, and that Freeman achieved global superstardom as Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, this was a high-profile break-up. She was papped, looking supposedly “disconsolate” while out shopping.

Trying to keep the new man a mystery is understandable. But it won’t be easy. Tabloids have recently been reporting that she and Northern Irish actor Jonjo O’Neill are an item. She is neither confirming nor denying this. The paps would have been after her anyway, because she is the star of Safe, a new Netflix series by the crime author Harlan Coben. The first strange thing about this show is her co-star Michael C Hall, who played the Miami serial killer Dexter and the gay undertaker David Fisher in Six Feet Under. Here, he is a dodgy English husband in a wealthy suburban enclave (in fact Manchester, but you’re not supposed to know that). The strange thing is his English accent, which is near perfect.

“He was really worried about that. English accents are hard for Americans to do. I don’t think he had a voice coach.”

Her voice has a slight southeastern working-class flavour. She talks quickly, eagerly and laughs a lot and, for some reason, she seems much prettier in the flesh than on TV. I am sure, however, there is something wrong with her tastebuds. We’re both having tuna salad at a studio in north London. The fish is perfectly inedible, but she eats it all.

To get back to Hall — he will always be Dexter to me, so I’m pretty sure he’s guilty of something other than the affair he’s having with Sophie, the detective sergeant played by Abbington, which is revealed in the first episode. Also revealed is the fact that Sophie’s ex-husband is living in a caravan in her front garden.

This is the second time she’s played a detective sergeant. The first was Jo Moffatt in the series Cuffs in 2015. The BBC cancelled that after one series. She was also Detective Chief Inspector Louise Munroe in Case Histories, another BBC series. Female police officers, we agree, have a long and distinguished screen history. “Prime Suspect,” I suggest. “Helen Mirren!”

“The Gentle Touch!” she replies. “Cagney and Lacey! Angie Dickinson! I loved Police Woman. I wanted to be Angie Dickinson when I was growing up.”

There’s a good reason she fantasised about being a strong woman with a gun. For three years at primary school she was badly bullied — her lunches were stolen and she was called ugly, stupid and smelly. Nobody would play with her.

“There was a group of girls who made my life miserable. I am now very, very aware of it when it happens anywhere. If it happens to my kids or on the street or on the internet I’ll wade in.”

She’s certainly an active and sweary anti-bullying and anti-general-nastiness campaigner on Twitter — she is @CHIMPSINSOCKS.

“I’ve never understood the c**** who abuse and hurt animals,” was her latest tweet as I was writing this. “Wonderful. Just wonderful. Let’s make older women feel even more f****** invisible and unattractive,” she tweeted about a story saying men preferred younger women.

She was brought up in Hertfordshire, her father was a taxi driver and her mother was tough: she finally found out about the bullies and went round to the house of one of them. “If your child does anything like that to my daughter again,” she said, “I won’t be responsible for my actions.”

Her mother’s fierceness and her grandmother’s advice seem to have prepared her for the perils of show business. When I ask her the inevitable Harvey Weinstein question, she says she’s never had a problem. “I always go on a film set as a mate of everybody. I set my stall out. I’m just going to be like the funny mate who hangs out with the sparks and the prop boys, and I make sure I am not someone you can take the piss out of or take advantage of. I learnt that from my nana — be strong, make them laugh and don’t take shit from anybody.”

Anyway, there she is in Hertfordshire worshipping Angie Dickinson and wanting to be on stage. Somehow this leads her into dancing. She studied dance from the age of five. Eventually she got auditions for Cats and Starlight Express, but she knew she wasn’t good enough. In any case, the decision was made for her when, aged 18, she did the splits and ripped the muscles in her groin.

“That ended my dancing career, but I would never have been a good dancer. Then a drama teacher told me that he thought my talent lay in acting and he was absolutely right. I’d always performed, always made up stories and done funny voices. I went to a tiny drama school in Hitchin and I felt like I’d come home.”

She picked up small parts — The Bill, Wycliffe, Casualty and so on. But there was no real breakthrough. Well, there was one: the Maltesers TV ads she made with Katherine Parkinson. Unlike almost every TV ad ever made anywhere, they are still worth watching.

At one point she went 18 months without any work, changing her agent half a dozen times in desperation. The first stirrings of a change in her fortunes came with ITV’s Mr Selfridge — she was Josie Mardle — which ran for four series between 2013 and 2016.

“My character was an amalgamation of quite a few women who worked within the top echelons of Selfridges. There was so much going on in those years — the suffragettes, the Titanic. It was a dream job.”

It was a success, but not huge and a bit middle-aged — it was not for geeks, millennials or snowflakes, so it could not really go, as we must say, viral. All that changed when the actor and screenwriter Mark Gatiss invited her and Freeman to sit in on a discussion on the third series of Sherlock. They wanted to bring in a new character from the books, Mary Morstan, who first appears in The Sign of Four. Abbington had a couple of ideas. “I said Nicola Walker, she would be amazing in it. Or Olivia Colman.”

It was a set-up, they were going to offer it to her all along. She burst into tears. Sherlock was the big TV show of the moment.

“People started to say hello to me in the street when Sherlock started. Mr Selfridge wasn’t iconic. Sherlock hit the ground running and everyone went mad about it.”

She did seven episodes in two series, then she saved the life of Holmes and sacrificed her own by taking the bullet; it’s an invented incident, Mary dies in the books, but the cause is unknown. I ask her why a mouthy, Estuary-accented working-class girl like her would take a bullet for a toff — Holmes being played by the old Harrovian Benedict Cumberbatch.

“I know! Why would she do that? I wouldn’t, I’d run the other way.”

Did being killed off upset her?

“No, it made sense. And, anyway, you never really leave Sherlock, there are always flashbacks. So if they ever do another one I’m hoping they’ll have me back.”

The strange thing about her role in Sherlock was not simply that it made her famous. Out there on the easily offended, lost-its-grip-on-reality internet it made her notorious as the scheming woman who came between the previously happy and — in the imaginations of some fans — gay relationship between Holmes and Watson.

“I made the mistake of talking about the fan art very early on. They used to do some beautiful work about Watson and Sherlock being together as a couple, and I made an off-the-cuff remark that I wasn’t entirely happy with this because my kids might see it. The fallout was terrible and I felt really bad. I wasn’t being disparaging about their work. It got out of hand and I managed to make a lot of enemies. I had to do a lot of damage limitation. It’s because they’re fiercely protective of the show and that’s brilliant! But it means you have to treat it with a lot of respect.”

Meanwhile, Freeman had to be away for years in New Zealand shooting The Hobbit. While away she had the children to look after and had a cancer scare — a lump in her breast that turned out to be harmless. She also landed herself in trouble with the taxman. She was declared bankrupt because of an unpaid £120,000 tax bill. “I didn’t pay enough over a period of years and it accumulated, but for the record I paid it all back with a huge amount of interest,” she says. “Because I’m an idiot and I didn’t put enough away. It was my biggest regret and now I make sure everything is in place where it can never happen again.”

On top of that, their relationship was in trouble and, in the midst of the Sherlock episodes that put them on screen together, they broke up. They kept it as quiet as they could. “When we broke up nobody knew, we didn’t tell anybody except for a few key people because they had to know, because of the logistics of hotels and stuff. It took six months for it to get out and a lot of that was while we were working on Sherlock.

“We were not children, we weren’t going to start throwing crap at each other. We were professional and we were going to get on and make a show and be civil to each other. That’s far more important than being angry and being sad.”

Safe could have her up there again. The first episode I saw looked very promising and Coben does seem to be associated with hits. We’ll see.

Abbington, meanwhile, is back in her home village of Little Heath, Hertfordshire, with her parents living down the road. She’s an only child, they’re close. She loved being an only child because it made it easier to get on with adults and she never had to put up with rows like those between her children.

“Please, Mummy, can I get an agent,” says Grace, who is nine. She wants to be an actor. Abbington thinks she has the talent and presence to succeed. But she’s cautious. Parts like Mary Morstan and Josie Mardle don’t grow on trees.

Safe launches on Netflix on May 10

#Amanda Abbington #Sherlock #Mary Watson #Mary Morstan #Netflix Safe #Martin Freeman #interview

[mrmichaelchadler]

Thumbnails 8/28/18

Thumbnails is a roundup of brief excerpts to introduce you to articles from other websites that we found interesting and exciting. We provide links to the original sources for you to read in their entirety.—Chaz Ebert

1. 

"Miranda Harcourt on 'The Changeover' and Whānau Values in New Zealand": At Indie Outlook, I interview the acclaimed actress and acting coach about her terrific new feature that she directed with her husband, Stuart McKenzie. We also discuss her ingenious coaching techniques, clients such as Melanie Lynskey and Nicole Kidman, and her daughter, "Leave No Trace" star Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie.

“I was coaching a few actors via Skype for the role that Thomasin ended up playing in ‘Consent,’ and she was reading a book while listening to our session. After I hung up, Thomasin said in her little voice, ‘I’d like to audition for that role,’ and I went, ‘What? But you hate acting.’ She replied, ‘No, it sounds like a really great story to tell,’ so we did a little read-through of the script right here, exactly where I am sitting right now. I was like, ‘Oh my god, you are amazing.’ It was a great performance, and when she went in for the audition, she got the role. The film was directed by Robert Sarkies, who also made another great New Zealand movie, ‘Out of the Blue.’ Even now, I don’t think Thomasin has seen all of ‘Consent,’ because she wasn’t even allowed to see the bits that she was in. She’s only in the first 17 minutes, but it’s a very intense journey. It took a lot of courage for her to portray a girl who is raped. Francis Biggs, one of my students I taught at Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School, portrayed the rapist with whom Thomasin had to play that scene in ‘Consent.’ We’re both really grateful to Francis because he and Thomasin did ‘hug to connect’ before they played that scene. It enabled Francis and Thomasin to play quite an intense rape scene together so that they are in the flow of telling that story together. They weren’t in opposition, which would’ve been very psychologically damaging, not only to Thomasin, who was 13 at the time, but also to poor old Francis, because it was not a happy job for him. I’ve got a collection of great photographs chronicling the interactions that Thomasin and Francis had in order to build that relationship over a couple of weeks while preparing for the scene. Over the couple of weeks after they did that scene, Thomasin would consistently check in with him and say, ‘Hey Francis! I’m really proud of the work we did together, and I hope you feel good about it too. Just remember—it’s only acting!’”

2. 

"Call it a Comeback: The Inside Story of Elvis Presley's Iconic 1968 Special": As remembered by our contributor Donald Liebenson at Vanity Fair.

“Elvis looms large in the singer’s legend. The live-wire special is featured prominently in two 2018 documentaries, Eugene Jarecki’s ‘The King’ (now in theaters) and Thom Zimny’s ‘The Searcher’ (on HBO). It capped a decade in which Elvis could mostly be seen only in the movies, and, increasingly, not very good movies at that. Taped in June and broadcast on December 3, 1968, it was his first television appearance since 1960, when he guest-starred on ‘Frank Sinatra’s Welcome Home Party for Elvis.’ At the time, he hadn’t performed in front of a live audience in seven years. But Presley and Binder’s creative team delivered. [Steve] Binder, a self-professed ‘West Coast guy into surf music,’ finished the special feeling in awe of Presley. ‘For me, the ‘68 special is seeing a man re-discover himself,’ Binder said. ‘I saw it on his face and in his body language as we progressed.’ Susan Doll, author of Elvis for Dummies, agreed. ‘I think it’s the peak of his career,’ she said. Col. Tom Parker, Presley’s infamously controlling manager, had promised NBC a one-hour special if the network financed Presley’s next film—‘Change of Habit,’ Presley’s screen swan song, released in 1969. He never told Presley about the deal, with good reason: ‘Elvis didn’t want to do television,’ Binder said. ‘He felt he had been burned by it.’ Even Steve Allen, the talk-show host hip enough to give Lenny Bruce a shot on prime time, forced cheese on Presley, putting him in a tuxedo to sing ‘Hound Dog’ to an actual hound dog.”

3.

"'It Was No Gang, It Was One Guy, And He Wasn't Really a Killer': Producer and Star Edward James Olmos on 'The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez": In conversation with Jim Hemphill of Filmmaker Magazine.

“When Bob [Young] agreed to do the picture and rewrite the screenplay from scratch, he and I went to the real locations where it all happened. We went to Gonzales, Texas, where they captured and imprisoned Gregorio Cortez, and we found the exact prison. We found his cell. The jail and the courthouse were exactly how they were in 1901, it gave us an authenticity unlike anything I had ever experienced before in film. We had to talk the district court judge in Gonzales into letting us use the courthouse, and when he asked us what kind of movie we were doing, Bob kept speaking in general terms of how important our subject was to Mexican-American people and to the Latino culture, but he wouldn’t say the name because at that time no one knew who Gregorio Cortez was. The judge kept asking, ‘What’s his name?’ and finally Bob says, ‘His name is Gregorio Cortez, but he’s a really important—‘ and this guy says, ‘Stop, stop. I’ve been waiting for you guys for 35 years.’ He opens his filing cabinets, and in these cabinets is every single piece of testimony and every single newspaper article from around the country related to the trial. This judge was the foremost authority on the case in the world, bar none. He felt it was one of the most important cases in U.S. history because it was the first time a Latino had been tried in an American court of law, and with an interpreter, which was unheard of in 1901. This guy had filing cabinets filled with material, because the case was followed all over the country – it involved something like 600 Texas Rangers in hot pursuit of what they thought was a Mexican gang of killers. And it was no gang, it was one guy, and he wasn’t really a killer – it was self-defense. Anyway, discovering all that material was just unbelievable. It was magical. And it allowed us to make what the United States Historical Society claimed to be the most authentic Western ever made in American film, ever.”

4. 

"John McCain, War Hero, Senator, Presidential Contender, Dies at 81": Robert D. McFadden of The New York Times reflects on the honorable legacy of the late politician.

“In a 2018 memoir, ‘The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights and Other Appreciations,’ he defended Ms. Palin’s campaign performance, but expressed regret that he had not instead chosen Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-independent. At some McCain rallies, vitriolic crowds disparaged black people and Muslims, and when a woman said she did not trust Mr. Obama because ‘he’s an Arab,’ Mr. McCain, in one of the most lauded moments of his campaign, replied: ‘No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues.’ Analysts later said that Mr. Obama had engineered a nearly perfect campaign. And Mr. McCain confronted a hostile political environment for Republicans, who were dragged down by President George W. Bush’s dismal approval ratings amid the economic crisis and an unpopular war in Iraq. On Election Day, Mr. McCain lost most of the battleground states and some that were traditionally Republican. Mr. Obama won with 53 percent of the popular vote to Mr. McCain’s 46 percent, and 365 Electoral College votes to Mr. McCain’s 173. ‘Few of us have been tested the way John once was, or required to show the kind of courage that he did,’ Mr. Obama said Saturday. ‘But all of us can aspire to the courage to put the greater good above our own. At John’s best, he showed us what that means.’”

5. 

"Inside Patricia Clarkson's brutal 'Sharp Objects' performance: 'It's dark and nasty and twisted and beautiful'": The actress chats with The Washington Post's Jessica M. Goldstein about her role in HBO's excellent miniseries. 

“In Wind Gap, poison is poured down the throats of unsuspecting children. Baby teeth are pried from little girls’ gums, and skin is sliced until it scars. Yet the most transgressive act of violence in town is the low, almost-whispered delivery of four small words. Over a drink, by candlelight, a mother tells her daughter: ‘I never loved you.’ There’s no shortage of cruelty in ‘Sharp Objects,’ the eight-part HBO miniseries based on Gillian Flynn’s 2006 debut novel, whose women pass trauma from generation to generation like a haunted heirloom. But no one cuts quite like Adora, played by Patricia Clarkson. She’s a matriarch [...] who coolly tells her wayward eldest daughter, Camille (Amy Adams), that she feels nothing for her, save for disappointment and disgust. Clarkson, the 58-year-old New Orleanian actress who sees glimmers of her own grandmother in the best parts of Adora, knows these scenes appear brutal. ‘But I think why they have the impact they do is that I don’t think Adora ever thinks of them as brutal,’ she said by phone from her apartment in New York. ‘I think that was what was essential. When I tell her I never loved her, I think it’s just Adora feeling connected to her for a moment to be as honest as she can be. … Sometimes she was just openly cruel. But other times, I think, when she speaks, she’s actually revealing the truth.’ ‘This is the most violent line in the series,’ said director Jean-Marc Vallée. ‘It’s not something you say to your child. … You just destroyed her! And she’s not realizing that. Or maybe she does, and she’s that cruel, that evil. But we’re not sure. And that’s what’s great about the character: that you try to understand, and you’re not sure.’”

Image of the Day

Robert Redford and Jane Fonda starred in "Barefoot in the Park," the 1967 screen adaptation of the 1963 play, one of four works by the late Neil Simon selected by Vox's Aja Romano to illustrate why he was one of America's greatest playwrights.

Video of the Day

Stella McCartney's profile of David Lynch is a stirring ode to the role intuition plays in one's creative process. Look for cameos by "Moonlight"'s Ashton Sanders and "American Honey"'s Sasha Lane.

from All Content https://ift.tt/2oitCeo

[duanecbrooks]

A Sight For Sore Eyes     It's what could be called an old-time flick, having been released in--steady yourself--1969.       It features two leads who have long, long, long since gone off the radar, namely Jacqueline Bisset and Jim Brown (Actually, Brown has only sunk from sight as an actor. He has for some time had a third-act career--he began as a pro-football heavyweight, remember?--as an entrepreneur).         Having been released in, as was mentioned, 1969, its filmic style and the motivations of its characters would, in this overflowing-with-political-correctness age, likely be dismissed as greatly dated, even rather philistine.               However...     As the theatrical film The Grasshopper, which first unspooled in said year and which stars said folks--and which, in a leonine change-of-pace, I saw not on DVD but (and this is not a typo) on YouTube--proves, it is very much worth re-visiting, being--say what you will about it being Old Hat--an incisively-written, maturely-directed and, its strongest suit, sensitively-performed drama about following dreams, dealing with what life throws at you while you pursue those dreams, and, at last finally, is a cautionary tale concerning the fate of those who thoroughly, totally surrender their positivism, who allow themselves to be entirely swept up in all the crap that comes their way. The long-popular assertion goes: "Be careful what you wish for, for you might well get it." What The Grasshopper, with considerable style and genuinely impressive intelligence, says is: "Be sure to have a realistic perspective about what you wish for, otherwise there'll be hell to pay."             Let's get to the picture itself.                 We open with its heroine, 19-year-old Christine Adams (Bisset), sneaking down the steps of her house and outside--the latter after leaving a good-bye note for, as we'll come to discover, her parents--carrying luggage and, eventually, getting into a convertible and driving off. After she goes a distance, we see her car conk out and Christine having to hitch a ride. As she and her driver are riding along, she fills him, and us, in on her story: She's going to L.A. to hook up with her boyfriend, who works in that city. Also: Her past home life was far from tranquil, as is demonstrated via a flashback, wherein Christine thinks back to her incessantly warring parents. It all culminates in Christine giving her driver, and us, a verbal sketch of what she wants her life to be ("It's very simple. What I want is to be totally happy, totally different, and totally in love"). In time she's taken up by one Danny Raymond (Corbett Monica, a stand-up performer who was quite popular at the time), a Las Vegas-based comic whose humor fails to impact our girl (He freely acknowledges: "I'm not too funny, but you can't expect brilliance in the middle of the desert").           We press on. While transporting Christine, Raymond stops off at his employment base, namely Vegas, where he attends to some business and Christine takes in the sights and, in time, is summoned back to Raymond's side (He has the hotel announcer intone: "Will Christine The Hitchhiker please report to the front desk?"). Eventually she, and we, meet Tommy Marcott (Brown), a former pro-football star who is employed by the hotel as, well, a lure, as a celebrity whose fame is used to bring in customers. We also see Raymond trying to get close to Christine and she firmly resisting ("No, Danny. I like you. You're a lot of fun") but Raymond not being in the least dissuaded ("Stick around a few more minutes. I hate to be alone"). At last finally Christine gets to L.A. and Eddie, with whom she entreats to have a baby with her. Yet life with Eddie turns out to be far from the Paradise Lost she imagined and hoped it would be, as her job as Eddie's sister bank teller, she finds out to her dismay, is routine and boring (In an attempt to put some life into her life, she hands a customer the following note: "This is a hold-up. Give me your money and don't touch the alarm"). At one point she goes for a walk and, gazing into the windows of the other apartments, she sees the inhabitants fighting between themselves and otherwise engaged in the kind of dullish, mind-numbing activities she hates with a passion. Thus our gal leaves Eddie and returns to Vegas and Raymond.             To go forward: At first Christine's hooking back with Raymond turns out to be very pleasant for both of them (We see Christine happily lying in bed next to Raymond and his saying into the phone: "I gotta go now, 'cause there's this gorgeous girl just dyin' for my body"). Yet it all ends when Christine is informed by Raymond that his ex and their offspring are coming to visit. Next we see our heroine audition for a position as a showgirl. At first her auditioner is quite skeptical (Christine: "I did Little Women in school." Auditioner: "Did you do it nude?"), telling her: "Showgirls gotta have gigantic tickets [breasts]." Christine doesn't shirk at the least upon hearing this, firing back: "In my hometown I was considered one of the over-developed girls." At last finally Christine unbuttons her blouse and proudly shows her auditioner her "tickets," which causes the auditioner to happily hire her (The auditioner asks Arnold, his barber at the time: "Would you pay $12.50 to look at that [Christine's fully-exposed bosom]?" When Arnold smiles affirmatively, that to the auditioner is the deciding factor, which causes Christine to say: "Thank you, Arnold"). From there we witness our girl as part of the hotel's regular showgirl line-up and getting the 411 from a sister showgirl ("There are only two kinds of dancers in this line: great dancers and girls with friends") and, later, catching a performance by the hotel's resident rock group, The Ice Pack, wherein she becomes fast friends with a devoutly homosexual member of the group. Their friendship develops to the point where Christine informs him of her hopes and dreams ("I was thinking of becoming a stewardess...I like people. Maybe I'll meet a nice guy") and, after debating whether God did indeed create the world or whether the human race evolved from monkeys, standing side-by-side one night and gazing at the stars (Christine: "When you look out there, there's got to be a God." Homosexual buddy: "Or one hell of a monkey").     Going on: Christine's former beau Eddie comes to town, accompanied by his wife and their baby, all of whom, after a visit with Christine, make her quite wistful. Afterward she has further association with Marcott, who makes it abundantly clear that he kowtows to nobody unless he absolutely has to ("I used to be eight years old...I don't say anything unless I mean it"), and rebels when, during a conversation with some financiers, his employer casually manhandles him ("Don't do that, man. You make me feel like a piece of meat"). We then see Christine and Marcott riding a merry-go-round and the former further contending what she wants and expect regarding her life ("Sure I know what I want out of life. No, I don't. Yes, I do") and the workings of her inner self ("No matter where I am or what I'm doing, somewhere in the back of my head I'm thinking somebody is having more fun than I am"). They talk more and they exchange dialogue on Christine's priorities concerning her romantic life (Christine: "I hurt that guy I grew up with [Eddie]. And he hurt me." Marcott: "Everybody gets hurt"). Christine fervently urges that she and Marcott live together rather than get married but he loses no time shooting down that notion ("I've been that route. I don't want a chick to shack up with. I don't want a pad, I want a home"). At long last they decide to elope, which, when the woman at the Vegas chapel they turn to sees them with another couple, makes her quite antsy (Woman, into the phone: "I'm serious, Ted. A white girl, a Negro, a Jap, and a sissy").             Grasshopper moves forward. Now Ms. Tommy Marcott, Christine sets herself to getting her new hubby a less degrading job with the hotel. While swimming, she pushes to one of the aforementioned hotel's bigwigs for Marcott to given higher standing and, when the bigwig balks, she flatly spits water in his face. Next we see her with another hotel higher-up making the same case and, again, being unsuccessful (Higher-up: "Only your husband is special at shaking hands." Christine, walking angrily away: "You're a bastard"). The ante is upped when Roosevelt Decker (Ramon Bieri), a particularly wealthy financier, enters Christine's life. She--unwisely, as she, and we, will come to discover--accompanies him to his hotel suite and, not surprisingly, Decker loses no time in making a play for her. Also not surprisingly, she fully rebuffs him ("Mr. Decker, I really enjoy talking to you. Can't we just be friends?"). Decker, alas for her, doesn't take this well, first openly disparaging Christine's hubby ("I'm as good as any nigger"), then going on from there to literally beat the crap out of her. When she arrives home afterward, she shuts herself up in the bathroom. When Marcott forcefully orders her to open the damned door ("If you don't open the door, I'm gonna break it down"), she does and he, along with us, get a full view of her battered and bruised face. Cut to Decker playing golf and Marcott coming after him right there on the greens. Decker runs away but Marcott soon catches up to him and gives him the same aggressive beating that he gave Marcott's wife. The very next scene has the Marcotts in a car, hubby at the wheel, driving away from Vegas and he making it fulsomely clear that from now on their lives are going to be very different ("I'm gonna find myself a job where I don't have to play the clown. And you're gonna be my wife").             We continue. We next see our young lady at a laundromat, washing clothes and unmistakably bored peeless. In an attempt to enliven things, she spreads laundry detergent upon the floor and does an impromptu dance for the others doing their laundry. Following is a scene where Christine's old buddies, The Ice Pack, sneak up on her and following that are scenes wherein she had the same blast with them as before. It all bleeds into her growing disenchantment with her life with Marcott and it culminates in her flat-out confronting him (Christine, standing defiantly over him as he's sitting in a chair: "You don't really like my friends [The Ice Pack], do you?" Marcott: "Look, Chris, are you trying to start a fight?" Christine, still defiantly: "Yeah, maybe I am. Anything to liven things up around here"). Yet Christine comes to shake off her antagonism toward her husband and open herself to him ("I thought if I loved you, everything would be all right"). Things, however, go badly when Marcott, in the midst of shooting hoops on outdoor basketball grounds, is fatally gunned down, no doubt by a fellow specifically hired by Decker. This of course devastates Christine, who deals with her mega-anguish by, during the ride back from the funeral, ordering the driver to stop and pick up these two hippie types whom she sees standing around ("I don't give a damn what you think! Pick them up or I'm gonna jump out!"). We proceed to see Christine pouring her heart out to her homosexual pal ("The worst part is, I can't even grieve for Tommy...If only I knew [my crying] was for Tommy and not for me") and said buddy coming clean regarding whether or not she'll get justice concerning Marcott's murder ("I don't think [the authorities are] even gonna touch Rosie Decker"). Having experienced the real deal in the aforementioned way, Christine returns to Vegas and her former employer, who offers her financial assistance--which she adamantly refuses ("Wait, let me get my tin cup"). Her ex-boss then suggests that she go back to hometown and try for "civilian" work--a suggestion she also rejects ("And be a secretary for $300.00 a week?...I don't want my life to be a cliche"). It's here where her former boss-man throws down the gauntlet: "You're not that talented. You got a pretty face and a nice body...You're an average girl. Why are you knocking yourself out [to Be Somebody]?" Our heroine's response cuts right to the heart of the matter: "Why not?"             Going forth: Christine next hooks up with one Richard Sherman (Joseph Cotten), a highly rich older man who gives her a fur coat. Christine, naturally overjoyed at receiving such a present, hugs Sherman--which brings forth a lighthearted admonishment from him ("Christine, you'll break something!...There are certain rules you must follow when you're dating an older man"). Christine, for her part, solemnly assures him that he really and truly is The One ("I think what I've always wanted was a mature man, someone with whom I can have a real relationship"). Yet we next see the utter insincerity of her words, as we see her making out bare-ass-naked in the shower with Jay (Christopher Stone), a singer with The Ice Pack, who's also jaybird-naked. Christine, along with the rest of us, get the inside skinny on Jay's doings since Christine last saw him ("I didn't leave [The Ice Pack]. They fired me") and she gives him, and us picturegoers, the inside skinny about her actual needs ("I need someone. I'm lonely, Jay. I want to be in love"). Next: Christine is back with Sherman, who warmly extols her ("I'm not going to bore you with the old story of my wife not understanding me...You saved the day"). Afterward we see Chris back with Jay, who angrily lights into her ("Do you love me, Christine, or do you just think you do?...[W]hy don't you try the only thing you were ever any good at--balling?"). Jay winds up leaving Christine a "Dear John" note, and Christine, having reached the end of her rope emotionally/psychologically, gets this pilot to sky-write "Fuck it." (This being 1969, we natch don't see the full statement) As Christine is being taken in by the cops, she's asked how old she is. She replies rather listlessly: "22," which says volumes about all she's been through and the emotional/psychological toll it's all taken on her.             There's The Grasshopper, a skillfully-made cautionary tale about what happens to those who don't take care while pursuing their dreams. Ramon Bieri wholly chills the blood as Christine's eventual assaulter. The men in her life--Brown, Cotten, Monica, Stone--are all virile and appealing, each in their own ways, to make you see why Christine stayed with them as long as she did. The then-red-hot writing team of Garry Marshall and Jerry Belson (also Grasshopper's producers) come up with many engaging characters and many heart-tugging romantic entanglements. And as director, Jerry Paris--who would work with Garry in the future, helming many a Happy Days episode--deftly pushes the proceedings along, never, ever allowing even an iota of schmaltz or grandstanding to show. And one of the picture's key numbers, "Used To Be," is sung with impressive feeling by the intensely-beloved Carol Burnett sidekick Vicki Lawrence.               And at last finally there's Jacqueline Bisset. She is, quite simply, radiant. With her stylish beauty, her beauty-queen charm, and her lightning-rod energy, she absolutely walks off with the picture. Her smooth good looks and her volcanic sexiness positively dominate every scene she's in, easily heralding her breakthrough performance in her signature theatrical film The Deep (Fess up: Is there any one of us men who, when we look back on said picture, does not mightily drool at the memory of the opening when, while underwater, Bisset exposed her oh-so-succulent breasts?). Indeed, it's Bisset's Grasshopper portrayal that brings out this unarguable fact: Motion pictures were the most effective as a visual medium, when they entirely eschewed aesthetic considerations and presented luscious, well-bodied players who enchanted us with their vitality and their charm. It was the 1950s cinematic sexpot Ava Gardner who, in her classic personal/professional memoir, freely acknowledged, concerning her heyday: "I wasn't an actress--none of us kids at Metro [-Goldwyn-Mayer] were. We were just good to look at." In point of fact--and Bisset in Grasshopper abundantly proved this--pictures were at their best when they sidestepped artistic aspirations and simply gave us performers who "were...good to look at." (Television is, in the main, fantastically moronic. But the redemptive factor regarding it is that it's a visual medium. There's none of this crap about the director or about how some star "fell in love with the script." All that's necessary is to put Pamela Anderson or Carmen Electra or whoever on camera showing skin--or to put Kerry Washington on camera, period--and the battle is won)                     It was the fiercely-esteemed big-screen director Bruce Beresford who, in a forward to a compilation of picture reviews by a then-well-known critic, asserted: "I know it's not politically correct to say it...but...watching beautiful girls can do a lot to relieve tedium." It is "watching" Jacqueline Bisset, the "beautiful girl" of The Grasshopper, that "does a lot" to keep said picture from becoming "tedious." And how glad we are to have that specific "relief."

#1969 #jacqueline bisset #jim brown #the grasshopper #youtube #dreams #christine adams #Tommy Marcott #las vegas #l.a. #joseph cotten #Garry Marshall and Jerry Belson #jerry paris #used to be #vicki lawrence #the deep #ava gardner #Bruce Beresford