Beauty vs Beast: All About Actresses

Howdy folks it's Jason from MNPP here with this week's round of "Beauty vs Beast," wherein we ask you to take sides between infamous cinematic tête-à-têtes... if you've got a seatbelt I'm suggesting right here outta the gate that you might wanna fasten it because, as the saying goes, bumps ho. Yup, it's All About Eve time. I don't really have an excuse for choosing All About Eve this week - the film does turn 65 this year but that's not until October. Bette Davis' birthday is in April. Anne Baxter's birthday is in May. The 106th anniversary of writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz's birth was three weeks ago, we could pretend it's an overdue hurrah for that? Sure. A belated good job on this movie, Joe! Really though any time is a good time for All About Eve. To paraphrase a certain somebody, All About Eve looked great sixty-five years ago and it'll look great twenty years from now. I hate men.

Whose team are you on?

Team Margo

Team Eve

Poll Maker

Curio: Kate Gabrielle's Punny Prints

Alexa here with your weekly art post. Kate Gabrielle is many things: style blogger, cat lover, doodler of flappers, jewelry maker, classic film lover.  She is also a sometime painter (you can buy prints at her etsy shop) and lover of puns.

I've been a fan of her "puns intended" series for some time, especially the pieces that are mash-ups of modern art and Hollywood. Anyone who can paint Ernest Borgnine into a Max Ernst surrealistic landscape is brilliant in my book. Here are some highlights including "The Matisse Falcon" after the jump

"Chagall About Eve"

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14 Days Til Oscar: "All About Titanic"

[Our countdown to Hollywood's High Holy Night continues. Here's abstew with a fun "battle"]

We've only 14 days to go. It seemed like the perfect time to take a look at the two films that jointly hold the record for most nominations (in case you hadn't guessed, that would be 14). One is a fabulous Actressexual's dream about back-stabbing in the theatre world and the other a small indie about a boy and girl in love. Oh, yeah and something about a ship. 

Technically, Titanic holds a higher place in Oscar history, having won 11 of its 14 nominations while All About Eve went home with only six statues (though 12 was the most it could have won with double-nods in Lead and Supporting Actress). But haven't you always wondered what film would come out victorious if they had gone head-to-head?  No? Well, let's find out anyway

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Potent Quotables - Margo Channing in All About Eve

Anne Marie here, looking forward to the end of the holidays when we can all toast the new year with a martini in hand. Many iconic movie lines seem to have come from characters who were three sheets to the wind, so I'd like to celebrate a few of them. I'll start with one of my favorite divas: Margo Channing, Star of Screen and Scotch. Her poison of the night is martinis very dry; buckets of them in fact. During her party - after "fasten your seat belts" but before the bumpiest part of the night - Margo corners Max to deliver this gem:

 

Bill's thirty-two. He looks thirty-two. He looked it five years ago, he'll look it twenty years from now. I hate men."

Though swimming in her self-pity at the bottom of a martini glass, Margot Channing is still a star.

Stars - even drunk ones - get the best lines, and the true insight and witty delivery speak to both Bette Davis's fantastic acting and Mankiewicz's devilish dialogue.

What's your favorite tipsy movie quote?
Slur it out in the comments, won't you?

Great Moments in Gayness: "Fasten Your Seatbelts"

Happy Gay Pride Week Everyone!

The best screenplay I’ve ever come across is from Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve (1950). It tells a deceptively simple story in a straightforward manner, but does it in such a gloriously telling, bitchy manner that it remains to this day, one of the only films I can’t stop watching once it’s started.

Its most iconic moment is when its leading lady, Margo Channing (played by ours, Bette Davis) literally ascends the stairs in her New York apartment. A party is about to take place that changes the direction of the narrative and the relationships between its characters; a climax that comes only halfway through the picture, which manages to sustain its level of suspense and biting humor thereafter. 

Margo, putting on the facade of genteel, warm host is instead preparing her plan for the evening; to oust the titular Eve Harrington (a wonderful turn from Anne Baxter), and reveal her deceptions to their friends. This is, of course, a plan that goes awry once Davis becomes intoxicated and spends the rest of the party moping about, making her pianist play Liebestraume by Franz Litze and effectively dampening the mood of the entire occasion. But for one brief moment, as her partner and closest friends inquire whether or not the storm has passed or if it’s just about to begin, she gives a beautiful telling look, sashays over to the steps in a way that would make Tyra Banks weep with envy, and like a betrayed Cassandra, intones that classic line:

Margo Channing Portrait © Trevor Heath. Read about it here!

Fasten your seatbelts.
It's going to be a bumpy night.

Her prediction holds true.

All About Eve is a hallmark in gay cinema, not just because of the sexual ambiguities of Eve Harrington or the effervescent, snakelike charm of Addison DeWitt, but because of its diva, Margo Channing. A light that shines from a tower Joe Mankiewicz built that, like any great architect of the cinema, is at once inimitable and forever desired.

We all want that entrance, and we all want such an exit.