Hollywood always gets it SO wrong, especially when it comes to the Bad Girls of Cinema. Two cases in point: - The original script of The Sound of Music had the Baroness kill off Maria by strangling her with Frederick’s lederhosen during a performance of, I am 16 going on 17 but I look 39. But the scene was rewritten because of Facebook complaints from the Gays-For-Leather-Lederhosen Christian Lobby. Apparently Julie Andrews tipped them off - sanctimonious bitch! - During the original hand-jive sequence in Grease, Cha Cha DiGregorio, “the best dancer at St Bernadette’s…with the worst reputation”, outs Danny Zuko, creams Kenickie and then dry humps Sandy as part of her initiation into The Pink Ladies. But the producers wanted to preserve the film’s G-rating and cut the scene in favor of Rizzo’s musical number at the abortion clinic.For shame Hollywood studio system, for shame.
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Hollywood always gets it SO wrong, especially when it comes to the Bad Girls of Cinema. Two cases in point: - The original script of The Sound of Music had the Baroness kill off Maria by strangling her with Frederick’s lederhosen during a performance of, I am 16 going on 17 but I look 39. But the scene was rewritten because of Facebook complaints from the Gays-For-Leather-Lederhosen Christian Lobby. Apparently Julie Andrews tipped them off - sanctimonious bitch! - During the original hand-jive sequence in Grease, Cha Cha DiGregorio, “the best dancer at St Bernadette’s…with the worst reputation”, outs Danny Zuko, creams Kenickie and then dry humps Sandy as part of her initiation into The Pink Ladies. But the producers wanted to preserve the film’s G-rating and cut the scene in favor of Rizzo’s musical number at the abortion clinic.For shame Hollywood studio system, for shame.
Zoom

Hollywood always gets it SO wrong, especially when it comes to the Bad Girls of Cinema. Two cases in point:

- The original script of The Sound of Music had the Baroness kill off Maria by strangling her with Frederick’s lederhosen during a performance of, I am 16 going on 17 but I look 39. But the scene was rewritten because of Facebook complaints from the Gays-For-Leather-Lederhosen Christian Lobby. Apparently Julie Andrews tipped them off - sanctimonious bitch!

- During the original hand-jive sequence in Grease, Cha Cha DiGregorio, “the best dancer at St Bernadette’s…with the worst reputation”, outs Danny Zuko, creams Kenickie and then dry humps Sandy as part of her initiation into The Pink Ladies. But the producers wanted to preserve the film’s G-rating and cut the scene in favor of Rizzo’s musical number at the abortion clinic.

For shame Hollywood studio system, for shame.

Guilty pleasure #71: Just re-watched the 1942 classic Hollywood weepie, Now Voyager, starring Bette Davis. It really should be titled, Shopping Can Really Cheer A Girl Up!, as the joys of retail therapy are taken to exhilarating heights in this beautifully crafted melodrama. This is such tremendous trash. It has it all: secret lovers that can never consummate their desire, Freudian mother-blaming psychoanalysis, and a woman who has had the make-over of a lifetime (those eyebrows really needed work!). From a sad spinster to a heroic heiress, Bette Davis is at her teary-eyed best. This absolutely stunning cinematic spectacle proves that blowing smoking in someone’s face can mean so much more than “f*** off”. 5/5
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Guilty pleasure #71: Just re-watched the 1942 classic Hollywood weepie, Now Voyager, starring Bette Davis. It really should be titled, Shopping Can Really Cheer A Girl Up!, as the joys of retail therapy are taken to exhilarating heights in this beautifully crafted melodrama.

This is such tremendous trash. It has it all: secret lovers that can never consummate their desire, Freudian mother-blaming psychoanalysis, and a woman who has had the make-over of a lifetime (those eyebrows really needed work!). From a sad spinster to a heroic heiress, Bette Davis is at her teary-eyed best.

This absolutely stunning cinematic spectacle proves that blowing smoking in someone’s face can mean so much more than “f*** off”. 5/5

There is still something wonderfully queer about the Wachowski Brothers’ film Bound (1996) and the never-ending positive responses from members of the lesbian and gay community. This noir tale depicts the ‘horizontal collusion’ between Corkie, an overtly butch ex-con, and Violet who, as her name suggests, is a rather glamorous femme, and their plot to do away with Violet’s Mafia husband Cesear, and the mob’s money. Now what is so astonishing, so perverse, so ‘queer’ about this movie is that these lustful lesbians get away with it; it’s a happy ending - this is unheard of! Adding to my rapturous amazement is that there are no apologies for overt displays of lesbian sexuality, no guilt about one’s desires, no angst-ridden characters searching for that ever allusive cure. Yet the creative forces behind this progressive noir narrative aren’t butch-femme activists or semiotians, but instead are two straight married men, Larry and Andy Wachowski, and their leading players, Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon, identify as heterosexual. Now that’s a little queer to me!   *****/5
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There is still something wonderfully queer about the Wachowski Brothers’ film Bound (1996) and the never-ending positive responses from members of the lesbian and gay community. This noir tale depicts the ‘horizontal collusion’ between Corkie, an overtly butch ex-con, and Violet who, as her name suggests, is a rather glamorous femme, and their plot to do away with Violet’s Mafia husband Cesear, and the mob’s money. Now what is so astonishing, so perverse, so ‘queer’ about this movie is that these lustful lesbians get away with it; it’s a happy ending - this is unheard of! Adding to my rapturous amazement is that there are no apologies for overt displays of lesbian sexuality, no guilt about one’s desires, no angst-ridden characters searching for that ever allusive cure. Yet the creative forces behind this progressive noir narrative aren’t butch-femme activists or semiotians, but instead are two straight married men, Larry and Andy Wachowski, and their leading players, Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon, identify as heterosexual. Now that’s a little queer to me!   *****/5

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a brilliant film and an astounding example of the cinema of the closet - or what D.A. Miller refers to as the ‘Open Secret’.  It’s all there in the monochrome mise-en-scène: the secrets that are known to be known but maintained; the strategic silences, omissions and coded expressions of the spies; the exchange of women as a cover in this homo-social subculture; the secret service as the boundary between the public and private; and the double agent located everywhere and nowhere at the same time.The capture of the duplicitous mole in the film is but a secondary narrative piece in this espionage puzzle. It is the invisible specter of the closet – always hidden yet under surveillance - that is the central, structural conundrum of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - its elusive, open secret.*****/5
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Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a brilliant film and an astounding example of the cinema of the closet - or what D.A. Miller refers to as the ‘Open Secret’. 

It’s all there in the monochrome mise-en-scène: the secrets that are known to be known but maintained; the strategic silences, omissions and coded expressions of the spies; the exchange of women as a cover in this homo-social subculture; the secret service as the boundary between the public and private; and the double agent located everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

The capture of the duplicitous mole in the film is but a secondary narrative piece in this espionage puzzle. It is the invisible specter of the closet – always hidden yet under surveillance - that is the central, structural conundrum of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - its elusive, open secret.

*****/5

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