As far as I’m concerned, the whole point of this movie is when Drew Barrymore is standing on the pitcher’s mound and everyone in the whole packed stadium is applauding her wildly.

That ALONE is a huge-normous fantasy fulfilled.

And it’s the first scene of the movie.

The rest, except for the very end, is flashback.

The whole thing is fantasy fulfilled. For everyone that’s looked in the mirror and come up with the perfect response to yesterday’s taunt, here is your movie. Everyone would like to go back and do it right this time.

High school was so tortuous, we all have things we’d want to do over. So that’s what Josie (aka Josie Grossy) gets to do.

It’s cute, and it’s horrifying to remember all that high-school drama. And the crying in the bathroom scene! I swear, there could be a whole documentary about girls crying in the bathroom.

Naturally, it’s all cathartic, and she emerges an empowered woman, finds her true love, etc. etc.

And that’s what makes it such a good movie. I’d watch it again.

Another one of those psuedo-documentaries, like Dog Show. It’s kind of a cute movie.

Cory-in-the-closet has to direct the 150th anniversary play for Blaine. Red, White and Blaine is what they call it. So the documentary takes you through the lives of the people in the play.

The young lady works at the Dairy Queen. That’s funny. And the singing Dentist. He’s funny.

Cory, of course, it hilarious with his portrayal of the gay man.

But they are all excited about Guffman, who is a famous theater man from broadway coming to see their play. That just stirs up all kinds of feelings and reactions from everyone.

I think it’s worth seeing, a light little video. You have to see Cory’s little funky dance.

Those Southern writers–it seems like they are all filled with drama and theatricality. Appearances, tragedy and social position.

And those amazing accents!

I have to say that it can be really heavy, diving into the Southern drama. When I first started listening to the performance, I felt myself thinking, “Oh no, not another one of these depressing Southern Dramas.”

It was depressing. All the characters seemed so trapped. But the story showed about how people are.

It was incredible how much pressure was put on the son, the man of the family. I felt so sorry for him. He was the BREADWINNER, the one who had to make sure his family didn’t starve. Yikes! I’m really glad that we have more equal opportunity employment now. I would not want to depend on anyone to feed me.

Or have to feed other perfectly capable people, either. It made me realize that women in this story were not considered “perfectly capable.” They were supposed to be protected.

And Laura, the sister, sure seemed to need protection. Either that or a slap in the face. She couldn’t even bear to go to school and take an exam. All she had was her little collection of glass figurines.

But the mother! Whoa nelly! She was more capable than any of them. But she had appearances to keep up, and besides, she was a female and had limited earning potential.

She at least understood her handicap. She didn’t have any skills, but she wanted her daughter to be able to take care of herself. That’s why she tried to send Laura to vocational school.

But Laura was too helpless.

Everyone seemed to be focused on Males. The deadbeat dad, the breadwinning brother, the ‘gentleman caller.’

Not a place I’d want to be.

This particular version of the play was especially wonderful, because there is a recording of the author reading the last scene. His voice, with the accent, is so right for the dialogue.

If any actor wants to be in this play, they really should hear Williams himself reading the scene. It made it really come alive.

Also, Williams reads another short story of his at the end about the Yellow bird. It was a great treat that I wasn’t expecting.

This is another LA Theater Works recorded drama. As far as I know, it hasn’t been made into a movie. But it really should be, wow! Arthur Miller knows his stuff.

The story is of a working-class Italian-American family in the 50s. Times are hard for them, and have been for a while. Eddie and Bea have been raising Bea’s niece, Katy. Katy is turning into a woman.

It’s a struggle for parents to let kids go up. Men especially have a hard time letting little girls grow into women. Some fathers are famously protective. And Eddie gets really protective of Katy.

The narrator of the play is a lawyer, who sees the whole thing play out. He talks about it, like it was a train wreck there was no way to stop.

And I believed it, as I listened to it all.

Bea’s cousins from Italy sneak across the ocean to find work. They talk a lot about how hard times are there, that there is no work and that Marco’s, the older one, children are starving and dying.

But Rodolpho is not married. He is there to work and does not have scary responsibilities. He is happy to be there, and happy about a lot of things.

He can sing.

How could Katy resist?

And the train wreck is set in motion.

This was an incredible story. It was fully compelling. I wish they would make a movie out of it. I really felt something after it was done, and it stayed with me.

I saw an interview with Danny Devito talking about, among other things, Get Shorty. He said the movie was about confidence.

That made me want to check it out.

Devito’s character in the movie was not very impressive. Maybe that was the point. Travolta, now, he was great. His character was riveting.

I don’t know if it was because the acting was so great. I can’t really think of a particularly dramatic moment for him.

It’s just he was so active, he did so many amazing things. Chili Palmer, nobody got in his way. He got the stuff done.

Confidence. Well maybe. Is that what it takes to get things done? Interesting that Devito, a movie star, would choose that aspect to focus in on.

I think it might be something else.
In the movie itself, Palmer says that he would not go about business the way Zimm did. He wouldn’t go through his shrink’s other client, who happens to be the personal trainer of the great movie star.

He says he would just go ask him.

Of course, for Palmer, little barriers like walls and locked doors are trivial.

I don’t know how attuned he was to psychological barriers. Not so much, I would think. But he never had to encounter any in the movie. Weir, the coveted star, just faded before his direct approach.

The movie put the film industry and organized crime in the same category. Position, territory, it seemed like it was all the same things but different titles.

There is so much wrong with this, I can hardly begin.

But did anyone else notice the glaring irony of Miss Princess going on and on about looks not being important (‘I been around so many good looking guys that I just can’t stand, because they rely on their looks…’)

all this, and they show footage

OF HER PUTTING ON HER MAKEUP

!!!!

Repeat after me:

DOUBLE STANDARD

It is apparently easier to be charming and literate than people think. The con artist, if that’s what he really is, in this production put on the whole thing like a glove.

He burst into the lives of Upper Middle Class families and charmed them by pulling down their guards. He had learned the details of their lives and learned the little touchpoints that made him seem deep.

Culture and class is apparently very shallow, if it can be picked up so quickly.

Paul the hero was gay, too. He seemed like a bottom, one who derives his own pleasure from subservience. He wanted to do things for the people he conned. He made Flan and Weeza dinner, and even insisted on cleaning up after.

“Such a nice boy!”

The play checked assumptions, a check like in hockey. It challenged the notion of superiority that the middle class folks had about themselves.

It also brought up the issue of what the children and the parents had to say about each other. That wasn’t really resolved, but it was interesting to bring it up.

I like Paul. I like how he turns into a ghost and floats through the walls of people’s lives.

I think that the folks who were conned should have had a better sense of humor about it. What were they really harmed, anyway? Only their self-delusions had been stolen. You’d think that Flan, being an art dealer would have appreciated the new perspective on his life.

But he didn’t.

Hwang is a genius. That is all I have to say. This play is so insightful, cuts so close to the bone. It pulls away veils for anyone that encounters it.

I first read it in book form, and I was in love with it immediately. I was really lucky, because right after I read it, I was able to hear David Henry Hwang speak.

He seems so genuine and open. He wrote this play, but he is also kind of impressed with how it turned out. Often artists are humbled by their muse.

The basic story is a true one, of a French diplomat who carries on an affair with a Chinese person for 20 years. Whoops! The Chinese person was a man, not a woman, and even more whoops, a spy.

Gallimard, the Frenchman, was tried for treason.

Hwang takes this story and unfolds it like an accordion. There is so much to it, and he pulls it apart so nicely.

I remember him saying, during the Q&A period, that he himself had a lot of empathy for all the characters in his play. He said he understood the Asian perspective, but he was a man as well, and he understood the desire to objectify women.

I just heard John Lithgow and B.D. Wong play these parts. Lithgow gave a gorgeous performance, and that confirmed my opinion of his genius. But I hadn’t heard of Wong before. He was SO GOOD. The rold of the mistress is a very demanding role. Wow. He was good.

This play is really necessary for everyone to encounter. It will make you check your assumptions.

This movie was FAST! they didn’t stop for a minute.

The girl reporter, what they would have called it then in the 40s, was romanticizing a regular housewife life. She had picked up some dumb cluck man and was going to settle down with him.

But she had to separate herself from the ex-husband/editor/boss that still seemed to think he was in her life.

Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant have so much chemistry, the dumb cluck has no credibility at all.

I love the heroine. She is in so much control. She is instantly in charge of every change in the situation, and works it all out to her favor.

A lot of classic movie irritate me, because the females are so beautiful and behave so impossibly. But this woman not only does things that I might do, she does them better than I would.

How does an Indian female, just finishing up high school (or whatever they call it in England), get away from her parent’s expectations and play soccer?

This movie was so great! A chick flick about sports. And it had a killer soundtrack. There was the fights over a boy, the struggle with parents, the shopping and clothes that made your eyes pop (Indian clothing is really elaborate).

There was a lot of pressure on Jess, the Indian heroine, to follow the traditional roles for females in her family. Her interest in boys seems to be mostly as opponents or teammates on the playing field. Some of the other Indian girls, including her sister, are much more interested in boys. Jess’s mother keeps wanting to teach her how to cook a full Indian dinner.

I loved the wedding scenes, when Jess’s sister finally does get married. Oh man! I am now filled with a desire to buy my own sari.

The other female lead, Juliet, shows that it’s not just Indian traditions that want the stereotypical female roles for the daughters in the family. Juliet’s mother is very distraught at her daughter’s preference for sports rather than lacy underthings.

Women are still struggling for recognition in the sports world. Somehow, it seems to be more complicated for us. Bend it Like Beckham adresses a lot of those problems with humor and honesty.