Okay, cuz I know you've all been waiting for my AI thoughts.

Top three for me were Ace, Gideon and then my crush, Chris. Kevin will be going home tomorrow night along with, unfortunately, Gideon. I'm a huge Gideon fan, but I'm afraid his genre is too old fashioned for the average voter. But he led the competition all the way tonight. All the way until Ace came on, that is. Ace completely blew away the field. Completely. It totally slipped my mind how well he can do an MJ song.

Check in tomorrow night to see if I'm right.

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Today is International Women's Day. Celebrate by visiting The Cotillion, where you'll find as many points of view as there are types of women. Unlike on the feminist left, where anyone who doesn't toe the party line gets the boot. (How's that for mixed metaphors?)

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Everyone sucked last night, except for Melissa. Even Mandisa sucked, which was surprising. But it's real tough to sing Chaka Khan and do it better than Chaka can. And Simon was way off his game. He thought Melissa was awful, when she was the only decent act on the show.

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Here's a really wonderful debut work by Publicola. It's meter is very musical. Guess I'll have to start calling him the "Bard of Ballistics" now. Or maybe Mr. "Terror Dactyl."

The Post

Even through the glove I felt it seeping from the metal till my bones ache
Just slightly
The cold is on the metal; the wood, then on my cheek
The almost perfect roundness close to my eye is lost
The bite of the leather in my flesh disappears
Forgotten
As is the cold on my skin and in my bones
Only a tiny column imposing itself on the object I desire to reach has focus
The cold doesn't matter
The feel of the wood doesn't matter
Metal doesnÂ’t matter
The weight of the lever I'm pushing towards myself means nothing
Only the column
The rectangle I know, the rectangle I need
The pillar that my will rests upon
It alone is my world at the same time it isn't alone
Breathe
Stop
The lever lightens, yet becomes the hardest part of my world
Still I only know the rectangle
Nothing else matters 'cept for seeing that little stanchion where I will it to be seen
I don't even notice the break, like a rod
Not like a glass rod but still a distinct and noticeable breaking happens
Yet I don't notice
I only see the rectangle
I know the wood is pushing me back
I hear the muffled boom through my heart as well as my ears
But I only see the rectangle
Rising slightly, lifting itself momentarily above my desire only to settle back down to it again
The metallic shucking of the mechanism tells me it's ready again; that I'm ready again
But there's only that rectangle standing between me and my desire
Bridging the distance between me and my desire
I know the device; I've cleaned it, repaired it, cared for it
I've broken it so that I could build it again
It will not fail me
I can only fail myself
But that rectangle holds my faith, my confidence, my certainty that I won't
It rises again as the boom rolls over me
The boom that I hear but pay no mind to
My heart races, my breath begs for release
I only know the rectangle
Six more times metal slides across metal
Wood heats; expands
Gasses slave to my design; working for me more than against me
Then I heed something other than the rectangle
A ping
A cold metallic sound to others, to me a thing of beauty and sadness at the same time
Whether to fuel the tool or not? Whether to enable the tool to function again or let it rest?
Those are not the questions I would answer here; they are for another time, another tale
Here I speak of the rectangle
What was beyond it? Paper or flesh? Food or enemy?
It did not matter
What I wished it to guide me to was decided long before I gazed upon its sharp lines and flat top
The rectangle will guide me as it always has
A rectangle on a tool made before I was born
Made the same year my father drew breath, years before my mother cried for the first time
A rectangle viewed through a circle; a post through an aperture
Sitting atop a tool made to control burning gas; expanding gas
To direct metal to repeat the task while the wood cradles it; gives it comfort
With leather to bind it to me
Me to it
To make us one
Odes cannot describe it and I when united
Words fail in their vulgarity and barbarism
A rectangle sitting on top of a cylinder made to spew smaller cylinders to affect my will?
How crass that sounds? How empty?
All my eloquence is inadequate to tell of how my eye links with that rectangle
Of how my heart beats inside the wood
How my breath hardens with the metal
How my mind burns the hole that the tool will make real
It is not a mere rifle of which I speak but a Garand
And not a mere Garand, but Mine

I think the best explanation of this poem was from USCitizen, who said: "The Post captures the focus, the essence, the gestalt of the aimed shot. The mental focus that erases the physical, that casts away all peripheral considerations and concentrates all effort on the only thing that matters: the rectangle through the ghost ring."

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When will it end?

From The Wesleyan Argus:

'Death to the infidels who have committed this blasphemy against Allah!' shouted Lebanese Imam Rahim al-Safaar to a teeming crowd of enraged supporters. 'How dare they challenge the unrivaled supremacy of Jack and Ennis's torturous and passionate love! And that Ryan Phillipe, what a bi-yatch! Maybe you can put Reese's Oscar between your legs and pretend you've got a johnson! Seriously, did you guys see Cruel Intentions? He is so gay! But in that creepy ambiguous manipulative way, not in the repressed-cowboy way. Die, blasphemous scum!'

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A mean old bull.

Runner up: Shar Jackson covers Brittany's "Toxic." I love the ending; Shar gets the last word.

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Safeway Select's Tuscan Style Basil. And it made WebMD's list of approved "light" dressings. So you can drink it right out of the bottle.

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Crash wins.

...

Okay, now that that's over with, on to March Madness. You gotta like Duke again this year. Villanova too. Arizona and Gonzaga will disappoint, as they do every time. And Geo. Washington is overrated. Keep an eye on Alabama. If they make the tourney, they're worth at least one upset.

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The Robotic Mule.

Wanna bet the second generation will kick back?

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From The American Princess:

Were it not for Hollywood, these people would be serving your food, cleaning your homes and parking your cars, which is a main reason that we give thanks, every year, that someone has the intestinal fortitude to organize a meeting, serve them free booze and award them prizes for going three full months not wearing makeup, and working opposite Billy Bob Thornton.

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The next two films in our retrospective contain very strong performances by Ms. Studlendgehawn. I hadn't seen either until they came in the mail this week. I love Netflix.

Butterflies Are Free, 1972

In Butterflies, Goldie plays yet another young waif with more modern sexual mores. Like her first two films, this one is also based on a stage play. The screenplay was written by the original playwright, which is probably the reason why it's so chatty and the action takes place almost completely inside an apartment. Writing for the screen and writing for the stage are two different animals, a fact that is often lost on theater people.

Butterflies is about a blind guy who is trying to gain some independence from his overprotective mother and make it on his own. It's the kind of simple PC message movie that Hollywood made a lot more of in those days: "Blind people are people too." Goldie plays the free-spirited next door neighbor who is afraid of commitment. The conflict arises when Goldie meets the mother (played by veteran TV actress Eileen Heckart, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for this role).

Goldie again demonstrates a surprising dramatic ability in addition to her already established comic talent. As usual, she lights up the screen. Blocking was important in this movie because of the limitations of the apartment set. But Goldie seems to glide effortlessly from couch to floor to kitchen to table to bed. She handles the emotional transitions with the same ease. The drama seems to slow down in the middle of the movie, but things pick up at the end with the addition of Paul Michael Glaser (pre-Starsky, of course) in a bit role as a sleazy director of experimental (i.e. nude) plays.

The blind dude is played by Edward Albert, the son of Green Acres' Eddie Albert. He's an interesting guy. Half Colombian, educated at Oxford, he has an IQ of 157 according to IMDb, and he speaks Spanish, French, Portugese and Mandarin. Unfortunately, I found his constant wisecracking throughout Butterflies to be a distraction. He delivers his sarcastic lines with a deadpan affect that is too annoying for my taste. The mom character is just as sarcastic, but much more appealing.

As is my wont, I paid special attention to the costuming. Goldie had three outfits in this film. In the first act, she wore a cute peasant blouse and flirty ankle length skirt, which was her best look. She spends the middle third of the movie in a bra and panties only. I thought Goldie looked a little thick in There's A Girl In My Soup, but I must say, she was in awesome shape for Butterflies. Finally, during the third act she wore a dreary green floral dress, which was nothing to write home about.

As for ratings, I gave Butterflies three stars (liked it). The final act, with it's romantic suspense, saved the movie for me. Yes, I had a few tears. But I cry at the drop of a hat with these kinds of movies. In the end, all three main characters learn something from each other. Personal growth is always a good thing in a romantic comedy, if not in life.

The Sugarland Express, 1974

If Butterflies Are Free sounds like too much of a chick-flick for you, definitely check out The Sugarland Express. Not only was it Goldie Hawn's best role to date, it was Steven Spielberg's debut as a feature film director. And what a debut!

Long time visitors may have guessed that I'm a scholar of the 70's action movie. I mean I'm really a scholar; I wrote a paper on them in undergrad, when I toyed with the idea of being a film studies major. However, I can't claim to have been much of a scholar if I hadn't seen Sugarland Express up 'til now. I was truly missing out.

Sugarland was Universal's attempt to cash in on the anti-hero chase movie craze of the early 70's. Like another favorite of mine, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, the main character is a skinny blonde who's as dumb as she is cute. But in Sugarland, the anti-heroes are more loveable than usual. You don't have to sympathize with them in spite of their badness, because they aren't really all that bad.

Goldie plays the wife of a small time crook who has just four months left on his sentence for petty crimes. Their kid just got taken away from her and given to a foster home. Goldie breaks her man out of jail and they take off on a comic journey across southeastern Texas to get thier little boy back. Along for the ride is a kidnapped Texas highway patrolman with a slight case of Stockholm syndrome.

The name Sugarland Express is meant to be ironic, because the pursuit is anything but an express. It's more like a 1970s version of OJ's "slow speed chase," complete with cheering throngs of roadside fans. Goldie's character insists on stopping to pee, or to get some fried chicken, or to pick up some trading stamps.

From the first reel on, you can tell that this is not your ordinary Goldie Hawn vehicle. She puts on a pretty convincing Texas drawl (to my Californian ears at least). And her character is grittier than the previous three hippie-chick roles she played. Consequently, It just might be her best performance. She still shows off her comic skills, but thanks to Spielberg's direction and the Barwood/Robbins script (Corvette Summer, Close Encounters) we get to see much more of her considerable dramatic range. With Sugarland, Goldie Hawn gave notice that she was indeed a star.

Goldie's husband is played by William Atherton, better known to me as the slimy reporter from Die Hard, and the meddling EPA dude from Ghostbusters. He does a nice job in Sugarland and it's a shame he became so typecast in his later work.

Although Spielberg had already made Duel as a made-for-TV film in 1971, he really showed the maturity of his talent in Sugarland. It's no wonder that Universal let him do Jaws the very next year. Their faith in the 29 year old director paid off. Say what you want about Munich ― I'm disappointed in that choice too ― but the guy has always known how to put together a great movie. To say that Sugarland Express is underrated is to underrate the word underrated. I gave it five stars (loved it), and I think you'd enjoy it too.

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It's the first time I've ever said this about a contestant, but if Chris were to take Randy up on his offer to make a record right now, I'd probably buy it.

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Now that Mardi Gras is over, let's have some New Orleans poetry. Gina Ferrara is a poet who was displaced by hurricane Katrina. She evacuated to Jackson, Mississippi, leaving everything behind, including her computer with all her work. She thought she had taken a CD containing all her poetry, but when she arrived in Jackson she realized that she had grabbed the wrong CD. In the interim, Ferrara had to re-learn an old technology.

I bought a red notebook and some mechanical lead pencils, and I began writing poems by hand. . . . I found that this was a totally different process [from] using the computer. Writing poems by hand is slower, and it seems to be more of a permanent process. The page looks like grafitti, with arrows pointing in up and down directions, scratch outs, and edits done in different colored inks.

Close to Zenith

Hearts do not bleed,
there, up in the sky
at the other end of twine.
We are flying a kite
admist rubble
from a demolition
we cannot remember,
past birthdays and ruins
higher than the slipping sun
when we run out of twine.
The blurred kite
with hearts ablaze on gauze,
escapes from our fingers
a curious flag of surrender.

* Poets & Writers Magazine, January/February 2006, p. 59.

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Tonight we'll take a look at the second major role in Goldie Hawn's thirty-eight year film career.

There's A Girl In My Soup, 1970

Girl starred the late, great comic genius Peter Sellers, and Goldie's name appeared above the title for the first time. This import was directed by Roy Boulting, a veteran of largely forgettable British movies. Coincidentally, he and Goldie had the same birthday.

On the surface, There's A Girl In My Soup shares essentially the same plot as Cactus Flower. Both are May-December romance / love-triangle comedies based on stage plays. Interestingly, Roy Boulting was involved in a real life May-December romance for eleven years with former child star Haley Mills (The Parent Trap, That Darn Cat!). She was 33 years younger than him.

In Girl, Goldie plays a 19 year old American hippie chick, living in London with a skeevy drummer. She gets tired of being passed around among the drummer's friends like a tray of tea cakes, so she decides to move out after a chance meeting with a 41 year old tv personality, played by Sellers. The tv personality is a self-absorbed and aging Alfie-like swinger, coming to grips with the handfuls of hair he's beginning to find in his brush every morning.

While the movie starts out prominsingly, Goldie's performance was ultimately inconsistent, a sign of weak directing. There is no chemistry between her and Sellers, who mails in the most colorless performance I've seen from him. None of the comic improvisation he was known for is on display here. I think the character was too constricting for him. Here's what Goldie told Larry King about working with Sellers:

HAWN: Peter Sellers was great to work with. A lovely man. A little bit crazy . . . It was sort of balancing a very delicate spirit on a needle. You know, because you never know where he was going.

But I gave him a birthday party once, and he said to me, you know, Goldie, I'll never have a home like this. I'll never have a house like this, and I would like a piece of me in your home. And he sent me a French armoire, and I still have it. That was after he ate his birthday candle, which is a whole other problem.

KING: Was he a genius?

HAWN: Yes, he was. He definitely was. He was completely in his moment, in his truth, at all times there was never a break. He was able to witness how funny he was, and yet not have any control over his ability to -- inability to stop laughing at himself.

We would have to break for lunch sometimes, because we couldn't bring him back. But, you know, you couldn't get a knife in between who he was playing and his comedy and his truth. It was all there together, which is what made him a genius.

Predictably, after a whirlwind tour of the continent, the mis-matched lovers return to London, and reality. The movie ends the same way as Cactus Flower, but in a wholly unsatisfying way. For that reason, I give it two Netflix stars ("didn't like it").

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Smeagol lovess the Curtissesss.

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dilemma: noun. A situation that requires a choice between options that are or seem equally unfavorable or mutually exclusive. Late latin, from greek, di- meaning two, and lemma meaning proposition or assumption. Example: Starting tonight, NBC will run The Apprentice opposite Fox's 24. Normally, this would not be a dilemma for people with foresight enough to pay the extra four bucks to get DVR with their cable service. But what if you said to the cable guy, "Hey why do I need to spend four more bucks when I already have a VCR, and I know how to program it?" And then the cable guy shrugs because he knows how wrong you are, and also that he will be back, at a price, and with a lot more inconvenience to you. And then on a night like this, when you need the VCR, you suddenly realize that the damn thing won't work with a cable box unless you tape the thing you are watching. In other words, you can't tape one show and watch another. It would make sense for you to be able to do that, but I'm now informed that you cannot. Which is a real pisser. So the only solution, until the cable guy can be recalled, is to watch 24, and then tape the CNBC re-run of The Apprentice on Wednesday. Synonyms: bind, catch-22, difficulty, fix, impasse, jam, mess, perplexity, pickle, plight, predicament, problem, quandary.

Posted by: annika at 06:34 PM | Comments (20) | Add Comment
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1 Are you fucking kidding me? The (very lame) Apprentice in the same sentence as 24? I'm waiting for the punch line............. And the fact that you are going to have to watch the network employing Keith O. is a whole another story.....man is that guy a jackass. I apologize for the tangent......glad you are going with 24. Good choice!

Posted by: Blu at February 27, 2006 06:49 PM (QExPp)

2 Olberman is the biggest a-hole on two wheels. How are you holding up in the rain Blu? It's nasty out there.

Posted by: annika at February 27, 2006 06:52 PM (fxTDF)

3 Ah, rain, I can hear it tapping on the roof. We've only had an inch and a half this year. As for not being able to reconcile one's cable box with the remainder of your onboard technoshit, it's just another indicator that the BF is long gone.

Posted by: Casca at February 27, 2006 10:15 PM (2gORp)

4 Ever hear of TiVo? You can watch one and tape another, or tape both. This is not brain surgery. I'm spending today and tomorrow in Sacto; bringing water wings.

Posted by: shelly at February 28, 2006 03:25 AM (BJYNn)

5 My monday night delima is that last night was the final episodes of one of my favorite shows. Monster House. (the only reality show I ever liked, except Iron Chef) I was real bummed out, The list of shows I watch has shrunk to about four. If it were not for News shows, occasional history or discovery channel shows and football, I could just throw out my TV and not iss it. The sitcoms all suck, reality bites, I got tired of LOST leading me around to nowhere. I do watch the scifi network shows on friday night.

Posted by: Kyle N at February 28, 2006 03:32 AM (vhHoW)

6 Annika, Shelly is right, god that wasn't too hard to say, TIVO is the bomb. I have the 3 banger satellite dish and hi-def box with 150 hour capacity. Record two shows whilst watching a third that has been recorded. IT is a life expanding device. NO commericials, what a concept. It takes 38 min to watch 24, it made the olympics only hellish and boring not unwatchable. And you don't have to sit down at any particular time. The Shield, 24, slings and arrows, my name is earl, (no reality TV for me), L word, Huff, Dead like me, entourage, Deadwood are all possible without any stress about missing an episode. Annika, spend the money!

Posted by: Strawman at February 28, 2006 08:59 AM (0ZdtC)

7 I think you'll enjoy this year's the Apprentice. That Russian guy is something else!!

Posted by: Amy Bo Bamy at February 28, 2006 09:02 AM (Wz2Gp)

8 Err, "this season of the Apprentice."

Posted by: Amy Bo Bamy at February 28, 2006 09:02 AM (Wz2Gp)

9 oh I love The Shield, Strawman, but I always miss it. FX is always screwing with the schedule. When's it on now? 2:45 am every other Thursday night?

Posted by: annika at February 28, 2006 09:45 AM (Ck8DD)

10 Man, Annie, it was pretty ugly last night...and now I'm hearing about tornado warnings! And, of course, my heat went out. Try finding a fucking HVAC guy today! Fuck me. Stay dry and safe!!!

Posted by: Blu at February 28, 2006 10:07 AM (QExPp)

11 ANnika, I think the premier night is Sunday at 10pm repeats Tue at 10pm & 11pm, Friday at 11pm, It is a great show and with Forrest WHitaker this year even better.

Posted by: Strawman at February 28, 2006 10:48 AM (0ZdtC)

12 Well, if it's a cable-ready vcr (and most are these days) you can swap the vcr and the cable box so you CAN tape one show and watch another. The cable runs into the VCR "in" or "ant" jack, then from the VCR "out" or "tv" jack to the cable box, then to the tv. Your vcr is a "pass-thru" device. Set it to record the channel and time you want, but select "tv" on the "tv/vcr" button, and the entire cable signal (not just one channel) passes on to the cable box. When I was in the Navy, we chained DOZENS of vcrs off of a single cable this way, to make tapes to send out to the troops during Desert Storm (the 1st Iraqi War for you youngsters).

Posted by: OldSalt at February 28, 2006 04:34 PM (MbBI/)

13 Hey thanks Old Salt!

Posted by: annika at February 28, 2006 05:09 PM (fxTDF)

14 Actually, there ARE other solutions. Reading a classic, doing something creative, getting together with a friend, etc.

Posted by: will at March 01, 2006 04:28 AM (GzvlQ)

15 "The list of shows I watch has shrunk to about four. If it were not for News shows, occasional history or discovery channel shows and football, I could just throw out my TV and not iss it. The sitcoms all suck, reality bites, I got tired of LOST leading me around to nowhere. I do watch the scifi network shows on friday night." Sounds like you are on the right track, Kyle.

Posted by: will at March 01, 2006 04:31 AM (GzvlQ)

16 "Actually, there ARE other solutions. Reading a classic, doing something creative, getting together with a friend, etc." Bite your tongue. ; )

Posted by: annika at March 01, 2006 07:13 AM (fxTDF)

17 Here's your solution: Don't watch crappy "reality" shows like Apprentice. Problem solved.

Posted by: Christopher Taylor at March 03, 2006 08:04 AM (1Vbso)

18 1st Gulf War? Ha! We used to watch 16mm movies projected on the side of the mess hall during the Viet-Nam War. BTW, Our favorite reality show is The Amazing Race and my wife is in like shock at how boring the 1st (2) episodes were the other night.

Posted by: Drake Steel at March 04, 2006 01:00 AM (MIaSv)

19 Oh, there is absolutely no contest here. 24 rules! Oh, and so does DVR...it is SOOO worth the $4/mo. Then you can tape whatever you want, watch it whenever you want, easily fast forward through those silly ads and pause it, staring at Kiefer's nice face whenever you wish. Heheheheheh

Posted by: Merri at March 08, 2006 04:43 AM (f289O)

20 Or his bum... lol

Posted by: annika at March 08, 2006 07:07 AM (fxTDF)

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I can't stand that AT&T campaign with Oasis' "All Around The World." I mean, it's on the radio every five minutes, it's on the tv every five minutes. I'm sick of it. I actually hate that song now.

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Poetry for you gun nuts out there. From Wadcutter.

An ode to short recoil

When cases wonÂ’t split
because the pressure is low,
no delay is needed
and the slide rearward can go.

But for a little more power,
the breech must then lock.
Even for a moment
Or youÂ’ll kB your Glock.

As they recoil together
slide and barrel do mate:
the big blocky lug
joined with ejection gate.

Down swings the lug
and the barrel stops short.
The slide continues back
and flings brass from the port

The spring is compressed
and the slide does rebound,
coming back forward
with a fresh shiny round.

ThatÂ’s how it works,
at least you get the gist.
Now pull the trigger again
and double-tap that rapist.

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The Winter Olympics are over. I've always liked the Winter Games better than the Summer Games. In almost every winter sport the athletes risk serious injury. You can't say the same about the summer version. But this year's Winter Olympics was pretty lackluster. Utterly forgettable. And that's all I have to say about that.

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1 Except for say, Apolo's sweet, fine fine self. *sigh* But yeah, pretty lackluster this year other than him (for me anyway).

Posted by: Amy Bo Bamy at February 27, 2006 08:58 AM (Wz2Gp)

2 As one who is partially of Austrian descent and still has relatives back in the old country, the skiin' this year was pretty damn sweet.

Posted by: Hugo Schwyzer at February 27, 2006 03:32 PM (TGpyr)

3 I agree with you Amy, about Apolo's dreaminess. And yes, Hugo, the alpine events were the highlights this year for me. But they always are. I love downhill especially. Still, it seems to me the skiiers in years past were more daring and exciting. Or maybe the course in Torino wasn't as good.

Posted by: annika at February 27, 2006 05:52 PM (fxTDF)

4 I just returned from attending the Winter Olympics. It was a once in a lifetime trip that I can recommend to everybody. But I won't go again as it is very expensive, lots of hassles getting from one venue to another, and you can see every event better on TV. What surprised me about the Olympics was how closely matched the top ten competitors in every event were. One eye blink too many, and you drop a place in the standings. The pressure on these athletes must be unbelievable. I think the Olympics would have been more exciting for Americans if we had won more gold medals. The Italians, Russians and Norwegians were very excited about the Olympics. They all had a large number of very vocal fans at every event.

Posted by: Jake at February 27, 2006 06:52 PM (r/5D/)

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It's Oscar season, and it's time for the First Annual Annika's Journal Film Festival. This year, we will be taking a look at the career of Goldie Hawn, specifically Goldie Hawn's cute years,* from the late sixties to 1980.

Why Goldie Hawn? Because she's awesome. How many of you realize that Goldie Hawn won an Academy Award for her very first picture? That's a fact. Also, people always tell me I remind them of a young Goldie, which was probably more true when I was 20, but is still a nice compliment.

When you think that Goldie stumbled into acting (she started out wanting to be a dancer), her comic genius is even more impressive. I rank her talent as a comedienne on the same level as Marilyn's. In fact, I think Goldie took the next step in the evolution of the female comedienne. She played the ditzy character as well as Marylin, but embodied a new beauty ideal that was born in the sixties: the waif look.

But where Marylin played the dumb blonde so straight that people still think she was dumb in real life, Goldie always played it with a subtle wink. You get that same wink today from comediennes like Heather Graham and Cameron Diaz. They're too hip to be dumb. Thank Goldie for that.

Cactus Flower, 1969

I just got done seeing this one again. I love this movie. The opening credits promise a lot: directed by Gene Saks (The Odd Couple, Barefoot In The Park), starring Walter Matthau and Ingrid Bergman, screenplay by I.A.L. Diamond (Some Like It Hot, The Apartment), music by Quincy Jones, and Sarah Vaughan singing the theme song. Wow.

The plot reminds me of a Three's Company episode. It's a bedroom farce, and like all great bedroom farce, begins with a lie. Walter Matthau plays a dentist enjoying the bachelor life. In order to "keep things honest" he lies to his girlfriend, played by Goldie. He tells her he is married so he won't have to commit. But then, in a moment of weakness Matthau promises Goldie he'll divorce his wife and marry her. Hijinx ensue when big-hearted Goldie insists on meeting his wife to make sure she won't be hurt by the divorce. Now Matthau needs a pretend wife, and he picks his dental assistant, played by Ingrid Bergman in the title role. Bergman is a frumpy old maid who, like a cactus, occasionally produces a pretty blossom.

Goldie Hawn's performance is a revelation, as they say. This is the one that got her the Best Actress in a Supporting Role Oscar. When she's onscreen, I'm afraid to look at anything else in case I miss one of her facial expressions or funny vocal inflections. There's a scene in which she teaches Ingrid Bergman's character to dance, which is hilarious and embarrassing at the same time.

Walter Matthau is an unlikely romantic lead, but if you remember The Odd Couple and even Charley Varrick, he always seems able to pull the chicks. And there is a sweet onscreen chemistry between him and Goldie. You just have to suspend your disbelief a little bit.

I love Goldie's outfits too. The burgundy velvet suit is very mod. She also wore a nice rust suede miniskirt and boots combo with a yellow turtleneck. And my favorite is pictured above: blue mock turtle, extra love beads, batik inspired capris, and mary janes. Extremely cute.

My rating (using the netflix 5-star system) is five stars. A very witty, sweet and enjoyable romantic comedy with that innocent sixties hipness that you can't find in Hollywood anymore.
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* When I say her "cute years" I don't mean to imply that Goldie ever stopped being hot. Did you see her on Larry King recently? I hope I look that good at 60. She looks 40.

Posted by: annika at 12:43 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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