Pat and Mike

Well, this starts off in a quite original fashion — Katharine Hepburn is affianced to this insufferable dork. Presumably Spencer Tracy is going to arrive to make her dump him?

There he is.

Heh heh.

OK, this is a golfing movie? There’s been a lot of golfing on the screen. It’s kinda contemplative, I guess…

If this movie was being filmed today, they’d have approx. seven extras. Instead of approx. seven hundred.

This is moving very, very slowly. I really enjoy Hepburn’s performance, but I’m also kinda itching for the movie to actually start, and we’re now 30 minutes in.

She does her own stunts!

I can’t tell whether this is science fiction or not. Was “pro tennis” a thing? Is it a thing? Did people really go to a lil stadium to watch some random people play tennis? I mean, in 1952, people had TVs, right, so they could watch Lucille Ball instead?

Hm… perhaps TVs were still expensive?

Making the most out of it.

We had half an hour of Hepburn playing golf, and are we now getting half an hour of her playing tennis? It seems that way…

Aldo Ray is great fun as the dim boxer.

OK, I don’t get this movie. There’s people saying that it’s their favourite, and etc etc. And:

Gordon and Kanin were nominated for the 1952 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for their work on Pat and Mike.

Nominated for the screenplay!? This movie had a screenplay!?

After the other two very good Hepburn/Tracy movies, this is a letdown. It’s not that it’s annoying or anything, but it’s just not very entertaining — the endless shots of Hepburn sportsing just aren’t fascinating. There’s some scenes of repartee, but it’s just a lazy movie in that regard — Aldo Ray has the funniest lines, and he floats by on his character’s dim charm.

So I don’t get it.

Pat and Mike. George Cukor. 1952. ⚂

Even Cowgirls Get The Blues

What the… 4:3!? Oh yeah, this only seems to be available now in that aspect ratio, but it was filmed in 1.85:1. So I guess I’m never going to see the edges to the left and right of this movie: It bombed and was a critical failure, if I remember correctly. I saw it at the time (probably on VHS) and I kinda liked it, so I’m rewatching it now.

Hey! It’s Grace Zabrieskie!

Ah yeah, I guess he died just before this…

Yay.

Hey! It’s William Burroughs!

Hey! It’s John Hurt!

Hey! It’s Keanu!

I love New York.

Hey! It’s Crispin Glover! With an amazing comb over!

Hey! It’s Carol Kane! I was thinking “is that a very young Amy Sedaris? Nooo” but then I got it.

I choose to believe that this looked better in the cinema than in this DVD version.

The darker scenes are just very… like this.

Noo!

Hey! It’s Udo Kier!

This movie still has really awful IMDB scores.

And it’s not just that a bunch of people have given it a 1, but the weight is really on 5-1. People actually really dislike this movie!

I can understand that… It feels very 60s. And improvised. Even though it’s based on a novel? And it doesn’t really make much sense? But I kinda like it.

Hey! It’s that guy!

I want to see this in 1.85:1. There would be like 40% more cowgirls in shots like this.

I didn’t like the ending. No, that’s putting it too weakly — I loathed the ending. It’s such a cliché — I know this was made 30 years ago, but even back then, it was a loathsome trope.

But I quite liked the movie otherwise.

Right:

The film was a critical and commercial failure. The picture opened in wide release on May 20, 1994, and grossed a mere $1.7M against an estimated $8.5M budget.

On Rotten Tomatoes, it has an 17% approval rating based on 30 reviews, with an average score of 3.5/10. On Metacritic the film has a score of 28% based on reviews from 16 critics, indicating “generally unfavorable” reviews.

Eep. 3.5/10. That’s harsh.

Film historian and critic Leonard Maltin said: “The novel was hopelessly dated, and there is not enough peyote in the entire American Southwest to render this movie comprehensible or endurable…K.D. Lang’s score is the picture’s sole worthy component.”

It’s true — the score is pretty fab. Was it released on an album? I should get that.

Oh wow. This movie is one of those OH IT”S SO BAD movies that they put on “worst of” lists.

But it’s not.

Even Cowgirls Get The Blues. Gus Van Sant. 1993. ⚃

Adam’s Rib

Yes, it’s another Hazel Flagg movie of the day. But the reason I’m watching this particular one is because there was a comment on the previous one saying that this is a particularly good Hepburn/Tracy movie.

What a remarkable movie! I usually type these blog posts while the movie is running (you know, while getting a new cocktail and stuff), but I was so riveted by this one that I’m typing this after the movie is over. (I did the screenshots while it was running, of course, but that’s just a button I press here on the couch).

That opening… just wow. So original.

So the plot here is that Hepburn is a defence lawyer and Tracy is the prosecution, and they’re doing the same trial, and you’d expect that drama would ensue. And it does, but for like three quarters of the movie, there’s such a light touch… the Hepburn/Tracy thing is irresistible.

That’s some bandage!

It’s filmed in an unusual way, too. Cukor plants a camera and just holds it there for quite a time — this scene, for instance, lasted for (I’d say) three minutes, without any cuts or any camera moves.