Film offers models of love and marriage, some with life-long impacts.
Isn’t it the month for a Mad Girl’s Love Song?
A little something different for a Spring weekend, whatever the weather? Sylvia Plath’s Mad Girl’s Love Song is one of my favorite poems from my teenage years. Recently, something reminded me of the words, “I think I made you up inside my head,” and I found myself searching out this classic example of the villanelle […]
Stella Dallas
It stopped me cold, and I couldn’t change the channel. It was Barbara Stanwyck, in 1937’s Stella Dallas, a film I hadn’t seen in years. It’s the story of a working class mother who manages to marry into money, leaves her husband, then raises her daughter under difficult (and questionable) circumstances. Years later, when the […]
Losing Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Taylor – screen legend, world-renowned beauty, Oscar-winning actress – has passed away. She died today, of congestive heart failure, at the age of 79. Like most who recall her in Butterfield 8 or Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, we think of her exquisite face and voluptuous body, her smoldering sexuality that heightened extraordinary […]
Real Camille?
Bad Habits Okay, so send me to my room without supper. I watched the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills last night. The big moment was approaching! The Kelsey-Camille Kiss Off. How could I miss that? And might we actually see the real Camille, when vulnerable? Might we see the Real Kelsey – the one we’ve […]
Kelsey and Kayte: Happiness at any price?
I’m harping. Can’t help it. This particular celebrity divorce (and subsequent engagement) has gotten under my skin. In part, because I feel no sympathy whatsoever for the wife, Camille Grammer, fully cognizant that the (sur)Reality lens distorts, and we really don’t know much about her. Me Generation, Part Deux? But I’m appalled at parading around […]
Kelsey and Camille (Why does their divorce offend me?)
Yes, I watch Bravo. No, I haven’t joined a 12-step program if there is one. Yes, I’ve admitted my problem, but I’m not planning on rectifying it anytime soon. And I confess: I am a viewer of some of the Housewives, including a backward glance at the perpetually petulant crew from Beverly Hills. Every time […]
Bridalplasty? Horrifying Show Takes “Reality” to New Lows
Are you kidding me? A dozen brides-to-be compete for plastic surgery? Have we lost our minds thinking this is entertainment – or even acceptable? In an article in the LA Times, this latest “reality” show (From E! Entertainment Television) is referred to as “creepy” – and I couldn’t agree more. This is the worst of […]
Wedding Shmedding – Show Me the Money!
Some of us remember the spectacle of Charles and Diana’s wedding. We were glued to our televisions, with the sense that we were watching history – and equally – the unfolding of a love story. We were right on the former, but as for the latter – not so much. And here it is, thirty […]
IVF, Older Mothers, Emma Thompson, Aging Out
Howard’s End was on the tube last evening – a film I love, among other things, for two of my favorite British actors. Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins. Released in 1992, we see a lovely Thompson at age 33, and Hopkins, then 55. But I was bothered that I hadn’t seen her in many films […]