Thursday, August 06, 2015

Be My Boom Tonight

.
It's the movie we've been waiting for Angelina Jolie to make -- 
her ode to Brad Pitt's sexiness in (and out of) swank costumes. 

The first trailer for By the Sea, which was written and directed by Angie, is over at The Playlist and this thing could either be a nice opportunity to watch two good actors actually get to act, or it could be like Boom!, that infamous "Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton screaming at each other on an Italian island while wearing bejeweled caftans" movie... god I hope it's like Boom.



2 comments:

Pierce said...

I LOVE BOOM! It's a far better movie than people realize, especially with Noel Coward as the Witch of Capri! John Waters loves it as well! It's based on a hauntingly beautiful play by Tennessee Williams with the poetic title, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, which, in turn, is based on one of his short stories. Not a big fan of Brangelina, but if this is what the movie is, I may have to see it.

http://ricksrealreel.blogspot.com/ said...

I love "Boom!"TOO ; )

The conventional wisdom is that Boom was a bomb, which is true. And that Liz was too young and Burton was too old for their roles. True, too.

But the criticism that Taylor and Burton walked through their roles, I disagree. Liz may be unbridled as super bitch Sissy Goforth, but she's also sly and funny, and makes a distinction between Sissy's "great lady" tones and her slangy caterwauling that belies her origins. Compare Taylor's Goforth and Madonna's super rich bitch in "Swept Away" and the difference is obvious. Burton is the straight man here, but is menacing and gives some great line readings to Tennessee Williams' rhetoric.

John Barry's soundtrack is one of his best...I own it! And the sets and photography are also striking.

Williams wrote this after losing his life partner to cancer and facing middle-age alone at the dawn of the '60s, which he called his "stoned age." Some of Tenn's lines on mortality and mankind are pretty stellar...

"Boom!The shock of each moment of still being alive." I use that one occasionally!

Rick