CaryGrant Tagged Articles at Cinematical

The battle of the sexes is alive and well in Hollywood, and whether it is the subject of a rom-com or an indie flick, audiences love to watch a good ol' fashioned throw down. But what makes a 'battle of the sexes' comedy a tricky proposition is that someone has to lose. So how do you make your audience (who is for the most part, female) accept the idea that a strong and feisty gal has learned the error of her ways and has 'surrendered to love''? Granted, it was a heck of a lot easier when they were making these movies in the '30s and '40s and marriage was the inevitable 'happy ending' for most gals.

Today, The Ugly Truth has been released on DVD and just like a million films to go before it, the story centers on a man and a woman who 'meet cute', fight a lot, and then fall in love -- and just like every other film, the whole thing hinges on the happy couple. When you're covering well trod ground like a battle of the sexes comedy, the charm and likability of your leads are your bread and butter -- and on a personal note, I just don't think Truth pulled it off, and I never got that charge from watching Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler engage in a little 'verbal foreplay'.

So at risk of sounding like somebody's grandmother, I decided that when it comes to the battle of the sexes comedy, nobody did it better than classic Hollywood, and it didn't matter whether it was during the hay day of screwball comedies or gritty films noir. That's why this Cinematical Seven is dedicated to those classic Hollywood couples that could battle with the best of them, but unlike Heigl and Butler, their chemistry became the stuff of movie legend.

After the jump; seven classic couples that are all-time champs when it comes to the battle of the sexes....

By now, you've had your fill of ghosts, goblins, and things that go bump in the night. You've cleaned up pumpkin guts, peeled off your skin along with your spirit gum prosthetics, hoping OxyClean gets fake blood stains out of your carpet. You need a movie with class, wit, and Cary Grant. You need Howard Hawks' classic His Girl Friday, which is playing right now on SlashControl.

There's nothing I can say about this movie that hasn't already been said. Rosalind Russell's Hildegard "Hildy" Johnson remains one of the gutsiest heroines to ever grace the silver screen, and the fact that Cary Grant's Walter Burns loves her for her byline makes him one of the sexiest men of all time. The romance, the scheming, and the race to the presses will still leave you dizzy and laughing. Oh, and let's not forget the clothes. Oh, to spend a day looking as impeccable and sharp as Johnson ... ! I fully intended this to be an anti-Halloween selection, but I imagine it could inspire my fellow females to look for pinstripes and fedoras for next year's festivities.

This movie is especially poignant to watch now in the waning days of the newspaper industry. It's very sad to think of movies like Friday and State of Play being period pieces beyond clothing, hairstyles, and politics. While I have confidence that journalism will find its fast talking feet again, there will always be something romantic about the presses. At least they've been preserved in the background of so many movies as good as His Girl Friday.

Watch His Girl Friday on SlashControl right now!

Over the course of earning a degree in Cinema Studies, I'll be honest with you; I hardly ever got to watch the kind of movies that I liked. Call me lowbrow if you must, but remember, I'm talking about my university years, and getting up at eight AM to watch Berlin: Symphony of a Great City wasn't the best way to nurse a hangover. Don't get me wrong, I learned plenty and I was happy for the chance to see intellectually challenging films -- I just didn't always have that much fun. That is until I signed up for Classic Hollywood Cinema, and finally I got my chance to watch movies like Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth and pretend I was studying.

The great Jean Renoir once said, "[Leo] McCarey understands people - perhaps better than anyone else in Hollywood.", and Truth is a great example of McCarey's way with a character. The screwball romance centered on two 'gay divorcees' by the names of Jerry and Lucy Warriner (played by Cary Grant and Irene Dunne) who only realize how much they mean to each other after they have gotten divorced. McCarey strikes the right balance of farce and humanity with Jerry and Lucy, and even manages to make some keen observations about marital trust. But it is a comedy after all, and there is plenty of funny to go around thanks to stellar performances from Ralph Bellamy as a millionaire hick, and Cecil Cunningham as the wisecracking Aunt Patty.

In spite of all the pratfalls and slamming doors, you really do care about the Warriners, and McCarey even manages to make their reunion pretty sexy for a screwball comedy. Grant and Dunne would go on to star in several other films together, including the hilarious My Favorite Wife (which was also written and produced by McCarey). But, Truth was a little more about people than wild and wacky circumstances, and maybe that's why it will remain their best.

After the jump; Cary Grant meets his muttering comic match in Irene Dunne...

Okay, really this should be more of a top 100 list, so these seven are more "off the top of my head" than any kind of definitive selection. There are several kinds of Oscar snubs. There are talented actors, artists and filmmakers who have never been nominated, and others who have been nominated many times and never won. There are great films that received one or two nominations in minor categories (Vertigo, Singin' in the Rain) and great films that received none at all. The ones I've chosen here are the ones that, especially in retrospect, seem like the most obvious omissions.

1. Naomi Watts in Mulholland Drive (2001)
Watts did receive a nomination two years later for 21 Grams, though that was clearly a case of making up for this mistake. In 2001, no one gave a slyer or more canny performance, in any film, in any category. Watts not only plumbed the depths of her soul for material, but also stretched to two opposite extremes of the character's personality, making up the two parts of this great, enigmatic film. It was historically important that Halle Berry won the Oscar that year, but considering the other nominees: Renee Zellweger (Bridget Jones's Diary), Sissy Spacek (In the Bedroom), Judi Dench (Iris) and Nicole Kidman (Moulin Rouge), Watts' snub is a real head-scratcher.

When the 1932 Olympics hit LA, it began a long history of synergy between the games and the movie business. That synergy led to Zhang Yimou, China's answer to William Wyler, who gave the recent opening ceremony all due pageantry. Over the years, the Olympics contributed to the movies, foaling movie stars by the ton. The games were a casting call whenever one needed someone as chunky as a wrestler or as slender as a swimmer, or Tarzan, who I guess is a combo of swimmer and wrestler. My favorite will always be Harold "Oddjob" Sakata, silver medalist in the light-heavyweight weight-lifting competition at the 1948 Olympiad. Defamer.com has the more tragic roster of Olympians who pursued cinematic careers like those of Mitch Gaylord and Bruce Jenner. The games have foaled classic documentaries, too, the most well known example is Leni Riefenstahl's 1938 Olympia. Yet there have been these lesser known pictures about this world-wide fest:

You're probably thinking you don't need another documentary about the Iraq War. But you're wrong, because Alex Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side is finally being released, and the film is one of three necessary docs dealing with Iraq. The triad, which would make a great box set if only the same company distributed all three films, also includes Charles Ferguson's very highly acclaimed Sundance jury-award-winner No End in Sight (on which Gibney was a producer) and Patricia Foulkrod's under-appreciated 2006 work The Ground Truth: After the Killing Ends.

What do they have in common? Well, if you put them together and watch them all, you'll feel like an expert on three important aspects of the war and its most significant repercussions. They may not tell you everything there is to know about the Iraq War, but they're more thorough and informative than most. No End in Sight is the most directly involved with the actual conflict, from its causes to its effects (read Kim's review here). The Ground Truth more specifically deals with the American soldiers, but in an all-encompassing, training-to-homecoming portrait of modern combat and its consequences (see my review here). Taxi to the Dark Side is sort of like a flip side to that film, though it doesn't necessarily focus on the enemy combatants. Instead it deals with suspected enemies, soldiers or otherwise, who are held and oftentimes tortured in prisons such as Iraq's Abu Ghraib.

Taxi to the Dark Side somewhat falls outside the box (set), though, in that it really isn't about Iraq. In fact, Gibney insists that his documentary is not an 'Iraq film.' Yes, it does feature a lot of details about, and footage of, Iraq's Abu Ghraib, which is probably the best-known prison of its kind, but it also prominently features Bagram, in Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, the two other facilities used in the detention and interrogation of individuals presumed to be involved with Al-Qaeda, the Iraqi insurgency or any other enemy of the U.S. in its "War on Terror."

There have been countless debates about which James Bond is best, and as we saw from Kevin's post last November, the fans are all in disagreement. But those who side with Sean Connery can now celebrate a scientifically conclusive victory over the others, since a computer has apparently proved that the first Bond was the true Bond. Two U.K. psychologists -- one based in Scotland and one based in England, in case you think there's regional bias -- produced a composite image using a prototyping technique on a computer, and of all the Bond actors the image most resembles Connery.

The funny thing is, according to their procedure, the psychologists' proof is incorrect. Maybe they should have stressed that Connery is the closest thing to a real Bond ever portrayed in an official 007 film, because the real movie Bond would have to be David Niven, who plays the character in the parodic adaptation Casino Royale (the 1967 one). See, the composite image was made by feeding the computer pictures of other actors who Bond author Ian Fleming had said in 1961 had a facial structure similar to what he imagined for the character. Those actors were Stewart Granger, Richard Burton, Patrick McGoohan, James Mason, Rex Harrison, Cary Grant and, yes, David Niven. Considering the fact that McGoohan is still alive, there is still time for a tie, but I'll go ahead and crown Niven with the honor despite what a computer tells me. Either way, though, one important thing the composite seemed to indicate is that Daniel Craig is the furthest of all from being the true Bond.

According to Bottlegreen Drinks Co., the most beautiful British woman of all-time is Gone with the Wind star Vivien Leigh. Okay, I imagine you American readers are now wondering, "What is Bottlegreen Drinks Co. and what do they have to do with the movies?" Unfortunately, I can't really give any answers. I'd never heard of Bottlegreen before this news, either, and a quick glance at their website doesn't have me going, "ooooooh, they make _____." As for their expertise on surveys about British celebrity, I can't find a thing.

Nonetheless, the company apparently polled 1,000 men and women, and Leigh, who died nearly forty years ago, topped the list of British beauties. And what about the most handsome British man, you ask? Well, that would be Cary Grant, whose popularity still astounds me (even though he's grown on me, if only because he appears in so many great films), particularly in the looks department (that hair and butt-chin are awful!). If women aren't ignoring his voice when they claim the attraction, then I give up trying to figure out what women want. Unfortunately, the reports of this news don't include a full list of the male runners-up. As for the other nine ladies who followed in the top ten, you can check them out after the jump.

I don't know about you, but when I think of a movie, set in the 1940s, about a man who cheats on his wife and decides the best solution is to kill her, rather than force her to go through the "shame of a divorce," I think satirical, Cary Grant-starring screwball comedy. Now, as far as I know, Cary never plotted to kill any of his movie wives, but that plot fits him perfectly, doesn't it? He'd be perpetually exasperated at the wife's ability to unknowingly avoid countless attempts to end her life, and everything about the movie would make it clear that his character is a (lovable, dapper) moron.

I bring this up because that very story is about to be brought to the big screen by Ira Sachs, who also wrote the screenplay (he did the same double-duty on last year's inexplicably praised Forty Shades of Blue). Here's the one big difference (apart from the fact that my fantasy star is long-dead): Sachs' film, entitled Marriage, is a drama. Wha? So, he's going to make a serious movie about a guy sincerely trying to spare his wife by killing her? That sounds ... interesting. I guess. Maybe they're setting it in the 1940s so that the period atmosphere will make his actions seem rational, or something.

In talks to star in the film are Pierce Brosnan, Chris Cooper, Rachel McAdams (She better be a freaking daughter, and not the girlfriend -- is she even half Brosnan's age?), and Patricia Clarkson; Sachs hopes to begin shooting in a few months.