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Friday, April 24, 2009

Want to win one of my groovy collaged journals absolutely free? Zip over to the Ozark Scents blog and read their feature of me. There's a fun little interview, plus pics of a bunch of my items, and the rules for how to enter the drawing for my "Off the Beaten Track" journal. They even have ways for you to get entered in the drawing multiple times by doing things like following my Huggermugger blog or their blog, etc -- check out that post for the official rules.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Monday, April 13, 2009

"East Side, West Side" (1949) -- Initial Thoughts

I just finished watching East Side, West Side (1949) for the first time. It stars Barbara Stanwyck, James Mason, Van Heflin, Ava Gardner, and Cyd Charisse. Yeah, quite a lineup, huh?

I picked it up at the library, where they'd stashed it in the Mystery section, which is about par for their decidedly odd genrefication system there. Because while a murder does occur, it's not until an hour and fifteen minutes into the movie, and it's not really the point of the movie. The point of the movie is, should the steadfast wife (Barbara Stanwyck) believe her philandering husband (James Mason) when he repeatedly promises to reform and stop seeing his old girlfriend (Ava Gardner). Or should that steadfast wife say enough is enough and start her life anew, possibly with the upright, charming cop/reporter/agent (Van Heflin) who's just wandered into her life? The murder is just a side issue, really, but the library decided that meant it should classify this as a Mystery. Which is actually a good thing, because if this movie had been lost in the vast Drama section, I probably wouldn't have seen it, borrowed it, and um, well, er, uh, heh heh... gotten a crush on Van Heflin.

Yeah.

Sigh. Smile. Grin. Bounce. Sigh again.

This is a funny kind of crush, I've gotta say. Because I've seen Van Heflin in several movies, like 3:10 to Yuma and Shane and Battle Cry and The Three Musketeers and Grand Central Murder, and I always thought he was a good actor and okay to look at, but nothing to make me dust off my swooning couch. But boy howdy, was he just cute as a button in this! All sweet, non-home-wrecking, gosh-I-wish-I'd-met-you-before-you-married-that-jerk, upstanding, cute... and you should see him playing someone who'se pretending to be drunk! Hot diggety dog! Hamlette's having another spring fling, folks. The boy next door turned out to be a lot more interesting than she'd thought. I think I'll try to watch this one again before I take it back to the library.

Friday, April 03, 2009

Sad news -- Andy Hallett, who played Lorne on Angel, just died of congestive heart disease :-( Here's him singing "Lady Marmalade" from the season 4 ep "The House Always Wins."

Man, are there ever a lot of great Silly Songs with Larry that I've never seen! I think this is my favorite of the new ones: