How had I never seen... "Rear Window"?

by Chris Feil

Rear Window has to be one of the more embarrassing blind spots to have among the entirety of Alfred Hitchcock’s repertoire or as a Jimmy Stewart lover, but alas I had it. I know, I know.

Maybe the best thing I can chalk it up to is something that’s been in the ether of my lifelong Hitchcock consumption that’s kept me from the Happy Ending Hitchcocks. Things like To Catch A Thief stayed out of my orbit until adulthood without the veneer of morbidity to entice them to a young horrorhound. And rest assured that Rear Window ends as quaintly, if subversively sly, as any of his films. But like me telling myself I’ll eventually catch up to the film, Rear Window is itself about things we put off and avoid. It’s a movie about a man trying so hard to avoid commitment that he gets himself invested in a murder.

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Showbiz History: Betty Boop, Bob Aldrich, and the Muscles from Brussels

We're still so terribly depressed about the Academy's foolhardy new decisions, that we're looking for ANYTHING else to think about today as distraction. Herewith...

12 random things that happened on this very day (Aug 9th) in history...

1918 HAPPY ROBERT ALDRICH CENTENNIAL! The director was born 100 years ago today in Rhode Island. Among his best known films: The Big Knife, The Dirty Dozen, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Autumn Leaves, Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, and The Longest Yard. Alfred Molina was recently Emmy-nominated for playing him in the TV series Feud: Bette and Joan...

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Perfect Things Which Are Perfect. "Rear Window" Edition

by Nathaniel R

This past weekend Jason and I went to a big screen showing of Hitchcock's masterpiece Rear Window (1954). Or one of his masterpieces that is; has more than his share, that one. We went just because it was playing (bless you rep scene) and it was the absolutely best thing to see during an actual heatwave in NYC because it's set during one yet it's its own air-conditioning. It's utterly cool...

I love that so many characters in the picture but especially LB (Stewart), eternally in pajamas and broken leg cast, come across like the heat is wearing at their nerves, temper, and clothing. Except Grace Kelly as Lisa Carol Fremont, who just floats onto the screen in a cocktail dress, in slomo no less in one of the cinema's all time greatest entrances. Lisa always looks like she is immune to common people concerns like the weather. This only benefits the film because it plays deliciously to L.B.'s (James Stewart) conflicted perception of her as somehow both above the mortal world but also too fragile for it. He thinks his rough and tumble travelling photographer existence too much for her. But isn't the rich dichotomy of the film that she's actually braver than he is when all the dangerous seeds the picture so gleefully places, eventually bloom? 

I've seen Rear Window several times but somehow I always forget big chunks of it. Like that it was set during a heatwave -- how did I forget that? But the heatwave ready to melt me again once I left the theater is beside the point. As I sat there totally engrossed and then delighted and then tense and then elated, I was reminded of a simple fact: Oh riiiiight, this perfect thing is perfect.

COMMENT PARTY ☛ So my spread-the-good-vibes question to you is this. When was the last time you saw an old favorite only to be surprised anew at its total perfection? 

Beauty vs Beast: All Sewn Up

Jason from MNPP here for our weekly "Beauty vs Beast" party - I'd been holding off on fêteing Paul Thomas Anderson's latest and most recently greatest Phantom Thread until it got its proper wide release, and now that it has, hitting over 800 theaters across the US this weekend, let us intrude ourselves upon the very strange (and strangely satisfying) union of Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis), master designer, and his flung-from-space muse Alma (Vicky Krieps). Anderson muddies the waters great deal on what we think we know about this kind of power dynamic going in - Alma's nobody's pawn or pushover. And in Reynolds' sparkle-eyed acquiescence we see what she sees as worth all the fuss, too...

polls

PREVIOUSLY I kept hearing how last week's Hitchcock contest was tough for everybody and the numbers bear it out because this might've been the closest race we've yet had - Cary Grant topped Jimmy Stewart by just 3 votes out of over 300 cast! I'd say we're fairly torn on which man got the most from the Hitch treatment. Commenter Claran was decisively Team Cary though:

"Take that, Jimmy! Lest we forgot who stole the Oscar that should've gone to Grant, who wasn't even nom for The Philadelphia Story!! Tsk tsk....Shame on you, Oscars!!"

Beauty vs Beast: To Catch a Hitch

Jason from MNPP here with this week's edition of "Beauty vs Beast" -- this Thursday will mark the birth of one of the greatest movie stars of all time, Mr. Cary Grant. His filmography of course reads like a dream with classics of all stripes under his belt, but it's his four collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock (Notorious, North By Northwest, Suspicion and To Catch a Thief) that I want to focus in on today because I want to force a question upon us, an unnecessary frivolous question that nevertheless nags at my frivolous brain - know who else starred in multiple masterpieces for Alfred Hitchcock? Jimmy Stewart, who made The Man Who Knew Too Much, Rear Window, Rope, and Vertigo. And I think you know where I am going with this now... Which is the better Hitchcock Star? Choose!

web polls

PREVIOUSLY As with all things Three Billboards related last week's poll devoted to its two shitty cops played by Woody Harrelson & Sam Rockwell brought out some strong opinions, but only in the comments - the contest itself was won handily by Woody, who took 3/4s of the vote. Said Michael R, summing up my own feelings about Three Billboards:

"Write in vote : Lucas Hedges for Lady Bird. I love that performance so much!"