Allhallowsday
B-Movie Kraken
Karma: 2280
Posts: 20726
Either he's dead or my watch has stopped!
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« on: August 01, 2007, 09:06:40 PM » |
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Well a new DUMB MOVIE found its way into my sight today, unexpectedly. I sat thru most of THE V.I.P.s (1963) and have seen it before. Needless to say, I was calling it "the Vips," starring ELIZABETH TAYLOR, RICHARD BURTON, LOUIS JORDAN, ORSON WELLES, MARGARET RUTHERFORD, ROD TAYLOR, MAGGIE SMITH… one of those casts that trumpets “blockbuster” and is oddly reminiscent of a later and much more interesting airport movie, called…AIRPORT! At least the latter film gave us not only a huge cast to ogle, but a tragic bombing and suspenseful landing. We're not so lucky with THE V.I.P.s.
We get lots of JORDAN as smarmy but noble Marc Champselle (insert melodramatic fart here.) Coffee at the Vip lounge, coffee at the ordinary lounge, coffee alone in JORDAN's hand, we can't take our flight because of London fog, Orson Welles is desperate for money (and I don't mean as his character “Max Buda”-yuk yuk.) The Vips get booked at “London Airport’s” hotel, a bizarre timecapsule of bad interior decoration with ultra modern 60s furniture (a la 1963 which, by the way, I personally like) bad paintings, weird lamps, distracting draperies and fixtures, the kind you'd find in an outdated motel you've stayed in that smelled of mildew, or David Lynch or Quentin Tarrantino have shot in, no doubt modern and “high-style” in its day, but now the tackiest, the chintziest... the movie dates about as bad. Liz Taylor once again leaves Burton and goes back (shades of WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?) oop! This is long before Taylor in real life married—and divorced—Burton… twice! You kind of get their vibe, in reel life, and it's a downer, and frankly, not well acted. She turns her back to Burton at a key moment (twice) and talks… to what…? One of the bad paintings? It turns out to be chintzy draperies. We get a lovely cutaway of her swiftly turning head and her falling hairdo.
I won't say it isn't fun with a pill-popping MARGARET RUTHERFORD and ORSON WELLES for comic relief (yes, I kid you not). But…what a big fat silly nothing! Anybody else see this potboiler?
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