Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf

I’ve seen this one before, of course, but it’s been decades and decades. I remember… thinking… it was really good?

I know, that’s a really controversial opinion, but I’m sticking by it!

Er.

Well, OK, I don’t know yet whether I am or not.

What a dump!

Fabulous!

My god! Taylor and Burton are so good!

And I love this set.

I had to look it up — Taylor is playing the old cougar, and Segal is playing the fresh meat… and… Taylor is 34 and Segal is 32. It’s the perfect storm: Hollywood hates using young guys, and hates (even more) using older women, so you end up with casting like this.

I mean, you can’t fault the Taylor casting, but they could have fixed it by using a younger guy for his role.

Oh! I just realised that Apple is doing this in the wrong aspect ratio? It’s a 1.85:1 movie, but it’s displayed in 16:9.

APPLE! WHY YOU DO THIS! I”M MISSING LIKE 15% OF THIS MOVIE!

I don’t know… I really expected to totally adore this… and… some scenes I do. But it just seems to lose all energy with annoying regularity? I might just be me. The way Nichols slathers romantic music behind some of the more sentimental scenes is also pretty cloying.

Taylor is flawless. The rest isn’t. It’s a cultural touch stone for sure…

It won all the Oscars, but not for best movie or best director. So passive aggressive of the Oscars people.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Mike Nichols. 1966. ⚃

This post is part of the Queer Cinema blog series.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Queerty pointed out that there’s never really been a good film version of the play. I watched the 1958 movie last year, and… I mean, I get their point: The script doesn’t make a lick of sense. Because they had to cut out all the bits about Paul Newman’s character being gay.

But if you overlook that little detail, it’s pretty spiffy.

So I’m watching the 1984 version they recommend.

This is with Jessica Lange (yay) and Tommy Lee Jones (uhm) from a made-for-TV production (er).

Hm… Oh, it’s from Showtime. Well that’s hardly TV at all.

Lange is fabulous.

This is really good! Thank you Queerty. It really leans into the theatrical qualities — not trying to go for a “tv realism” thing at all, but is filmed theatre, as it should be.

The casting of the no-neck monsters is pretty odd — why didn’t they get fat kids?

I’m surprised by how good Jones is. He totally avoids all the showboating and plays Brick way toned down. It’s a great contrast to all the other actors who are taking the suthen thing to 11.

This isn’t perfect, but it’s thrilling to watch.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Jack Hofsiss. 1984. ⚅

This post is part of the Queer Cinema blog series.

Flesh for Frankenstein

I’m streaming these movies in this blog series because… I want to experience the pain people experience when trying to watch movies.

So this is from Youtube… from a VHS tape, apparently?

I’ve never seen any of Paul Morrissey’s movies for Andy Warhol… but I thought it was gonna be a lot weirder than this?

This (so far) looks like a totally normal mid-70s horror movie? A sort of mid-Europe kind of thing? There used to be a lot of them around.

OK… now it’s… not… so typical.

This is quite amusing.

Eek.

Oh yeah, this was part of the 70s gore thing? I’ve seen virtually none of those movies, because… Well, I used to love horror movies, but none of the 70s gore movies were available at the time… and then I lost interest in horror, so it never happened.

Did I kvetch about Youtube Premium yet? I signed up because I wanted to be able to buy movies and stuff… but… there’s no way to actually search for movies to buy! If you search for “avengers” you get this: