Q&A: Hitchcock Presents Reader Questions

Oops. The 'Ask Nathaniel / Q&A' column is a Monday experience. And here it is on Tuesday. I blame... what really matters is the blame  somebody to blame. well if that's the thing you enjoy placing the blame, if that's your aim,  give me the blame.

HI EVERYBODY! Are you glad that the themed banner is back up top? I'm going with photography this week so here is a picture of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck for laughs before we get to eight reader questions after the jump starring Alfred Hitchcock, Daniel Day-Lewis, Drew Barrymore and The Golden Girls.

Why? I don't know. So, it's your fault then!

Click to read more ...

David Fincher and Gillian Flynn Team Up for 'Strangers On a Train' Remake

Margaret here, recovering from yesterday's Oscars nominations and trying to process some upcoming movie news: David Fincher and Gillian Flynn are remaking Strangers On a Train. David Fincher and Gillian Flynn are remaking Strangers On a Train. 

 

There are so many feelings, and I am feeling ALL of them, all at once, right now. Help.

1. Excitement: David Fincher and Gillian Flynn together again, and so soon!!
2. Indifference: Ben Affleck is also involved, which, sure.
3. Anger: A remake of Strangers On a Train? How dare they?? Hitchcock at his best is untouchable and the movie is perfect; no sane human could think it needs updating!
4. Cautious Optimism: But. Buuuuut. If they're going to do to it, and you can't stop them.. The Flynn and Fincher team is such a great choice. Think of the cold, agonizing tension! Think of the pitch-black comedy! We deserve this.
5. Confusion: But Strangers on a Train is perfect and I am mad?
6. Curiosity: Although-- who could play Bruno, the most charming psychopath in movie history? That's going to be really tough to cast....
7. Anger 2.0:....because, dangit, Robert Walker's performance is unimprovable and it's a fool who walks into that trap. Who's idea was this again?
8. Begrudging interest: It's been reported that the remake will have a new context: instead of a tennis player and a psychopath who meet on a train and discuss the idea of swapping murders, this one (tentatively called "Strangers") will follow an actor (Affleck) campaigning for an Oscar who ends up on a flight with a wealthy stranger when his private plane breaks down. A fun, meta premise, no?
9. Amusement: Affleck has been cast in the Farley Granger role which, if you think about it, is sort of a Nick Dunne 2.0; Ben may have found his perfect niche playing morally ambiguous murder-adjacent leading men. 
10. Incredulity: Wait, when exactly will any of the people involved even have time to make this? Flynn and Fincher are already working on a series together for HBO, and Affleck has the whole Batman enterprise and several directing projects in development. It might be quite a while before we can see this.

How do you feel about this news-- more excited, or disappointed? Who would you cast as Bruno, the murderous charmer?

Beauty vs Beast: Fish Witch

JA from MNPP here with this week's mite-late edition of this week's "Beauty Vs Beast" - sorry for the unexpected day-long delay, what can we say, a sea-witch stole our voice from us. Coincidentally The Film Experience is celebrating the year 1989 in the lead up to this month's Supporting Actress Showdown and whaddya know 1989 was the year that another gorgeous princess, not myself, had the exact same thing happen to her! I handled it with a much finer degree of decorum, natch, but she got Prince Eric so she wins. (Mmmm Prince Eric.) Yes I speak of Disney's The Little Mermaid, which is bringing us this week's animated face-off.

poll by twiigs.com

Life's full of tough choices... innit??? I feel like this one could go either way really, so making you cases in the comments could prove important. Sway the little fishies this way or that, people.

PREVIOUSLY If you felt a little falling sensation - kinda simultaneously plummeting forward and back - as you picked between Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak in last week's Vertigo round you ultimately made like Hitch and came out blonde - well blonde eventually (inevitably) anyway - in the end. Judy, poor poor Judy, won your sympathies along with 71% of the vote. Said Leslie19:

"Judy is the perfect Hitchcockian heroine: A blonde puzzle, with a past. A great wardrobe and the perfect palette for techicolor, in this case his use of green. Is there anything more to say?"

Beauty vs Beast: All About the Blonde

JA from MNPP here. At this point it feels more than a little cliche to call Alfred Hitchcock your favorite film-maker. Tomorrow is his 115th birthday and it feels like we've spent at least double that amount of time writing about and reacting to how great, twisted, funny, pervy and technically masterful he was. Hitch is often the gateway drug, the little puff of movie marijuana that leads true cineastes on to the hard stuff.

I'll always come back to my first taste. It was the sweetest, the purest, and it still sends that shiver down my spine. I remember the first time I realized that movies, Movies, these are the thing I love, laying on my cousin's floor watching a camera sweep across across a boxy Manhattan backyard filled with windows into another world, stories in shorthand of life on top of life, all at once. It was everything. It still is everything.

So let's pay our respects by devoting this week's "Beauty vs Beast" to the man who made me interested in the ambiguities of the "good" guys and the "bad" guys in the first place, and let's do it with the movie that finally tossed Citizen Kane down the staircase.

poll by twiigs.com

You only have six days to vote this week since we're running a day behind (sorry about the delay) so get to it - bleach yourself, slide into a gray dress, wander through a redwood forest or some neon green light, do whatever it takes - just pick and make your case in the comments!

PREVIOUSLY Last week we were talking about the blonde presuasion as well - Charlize Theron and Patrick Wilson faced off again in a Young Adult redux. Wilson's Buddy might be the nice guy, willing to clean up baby burps and all that, but he never stood a chance against mean girl-woman Mavis. CMG put is succinctly:

"Mavis. Buddy is blind and seems dumb. The end."

Truth Tell: Barbara Harris is Underappreciated

A Happy 79th birthday to Barbara Harris. She hasn't acted in such a long time but she was often just wonderful on the screen with unique rhythm, energy and comic ability.

I'm not sure that anything about Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot (Hitch's last feature in 1976) totally works but if you could argue that any of it does it's either the cemetery scene or anything involving Barbara Harris's performance as a con-artist psychic. The movie is frustrating since it feels half formed and its inarguably flabby:  every time you need the editing too tighten it up which would have made everything, including the memorable actors (Karen Black and Bruce Dern are also on hand), pop. It just keeps the scene going.

Barbara Harris's largest claim to fame these days is her Golden Globe nominated work in the original Freaky Friday (1976) wherein she switched bodies with her tomboy daughter Jodie Foster but my favorite Harris performance ever is her role as "Albuquerque" in Robert Altman's masterpiece Nashville (1975)

It don't worry me.
It don't worry me.
You may say that I'm not free. It don't worry me ♫ 

 I'd be okay with the entire 1975 Supporting Actress Oscar lineup just being ladies from Nashville, all told. 

Exit Music. Here's Barbara Harris doing bits from "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever," a role she originated on Broadway in 1965 to the tune of a Tony nomination before Barbra Streisand took over in the film version five years later.