Grace Kelly Tagged Articles at Cinematical

While creepy monsters can send chills straight to the spine, there's nothing quite as thrilling as the perfectly simple fright. Thanks to the master Alfred Hitchcock, as well as a number of other filmmakers over the years, we've been showered in an array of scenarios so believable that every shadow becomes eerie, and every noise, threatening. They're the scares that could happen to any one of us on an unlucky day; they are the dangers that await us when we're alone and in the dark.

For tonight's double feature, I wanted to go old school with chills that go back to the '50s and '60s, centered on New York's Greenwich Village. These films might be decades old, but they hold premises that make them worthy, unforgettable classics. Without further ado, I give you: Rear Window and Wait Until Dark.

Watch out, zombies! The cowboys are coming! As soon as that buzz hits the air, hinting that a new theme is going to traverse the cinematic seas, the news starts pouring in. Recently, Jerry Bruckheimer began to look into remaking The Lone Ranger. Now The Hollywood Reporter has posted that American Film Market has bought the remake rights to the 1952 classic that is most-requested by American presidents -- High Noon. However, the film, which starred classic names like Gary Cooper, Lloyd Bridges, Grace Kelly, and Lon Chaney Jr., is not only prime presidential entertainment.

High Noon has a pretty memorable award record -- it won four Oscars, is considered to have suffered one of the biggest Oscar upsets (losing Best Picture to The Greatest Show on Earth), helped Katy Jurado to be the first Mexican Golden Globe winner, and is considered the 27th best film of all time by the American Film Institute. If all of this success never inspired you to see the classic western, it focuses on a marshal about to retire and marry when a man he put behind bars returns with a gang, thirsty for revenge.

Having secured the rights from late producer Stanley Kramer's wife, the new High Noon Productions is currently looking for a director and star, so they can begin production next year with a nice $20 million budget. Can they pull it off? Is there anyone who can fill Gary Cooper's shoes? Stay tuned!

Normally when I write about a Vintage Image of the Day, I have a tendency to pick actors and films that I particularly enjoy, or want to know more about myself, and go on at length about their good points. Not today. I suppose I should gush sweetly about Grace Kelly, who was born on this day in 1929, cut off her acting career in its prime to become a real-life princess (of Monaco), and then died suddenly in 1982.

But you know what? I've never liked Grace Kelly in a movie. She's lovely to look at, but she tends to annoy me. She was far too in-your-face virtuous in High Noon, had little discernable personality in Rear Window, and was so glacial it hurt in High Society, from which the above still was taken. I still like to watch High Noon and Rear Window occasionally, but I can't stand High Society one bit (except for some of the Cole Porter songs). High Society was a musical remake of Philip Barry's play The Philadelphia Story, which was first made into a movie with Katharine Hepburn in 1940. The witty one-liners of the original are severely toned down in the remake, and the pastel-perfect Technicolor probably doesn't help either. Hepburn plays Tracy Lord as being strong-willed and a little too insensitive, but never the first-class bitch and ice queen that we see when Kelly assumed the role in 1956. I could understand why Tracy might divorce her first husband in the 1940 film, but in High Society, Dex is played by Bing Crosby in such a way that all the blame seems to fall on Tracy herself. (Do not even get me started on the inferiority of Celeste Holm in the role played so perfectly by Ruth Hussey.)

Feel free to disagree with me. Is there some quintessential Grace Kelly role that I've missed? Or perhaps the problem is that I'm not partial to most 1950s American films, and the actresses that dominated that decade.