I don’t think you get to see this relaxed version of Joan Crawford very often. It’s so freaking rare that she allowed someone to photograph her like that, even if it was for Life Magazine. It’s almost as if early 1930s Joan was back.
More amazing photos over at JoanCrawfordBest.com
Ok, I admit I’ve been getting a bit crazed over Madhuri and Juhi over the past couple of days, and I was reading a double interview they both did for the promotion of Gulaab Gang, with the whole talk on female-centric films et all. I just thought: Joan Crawford.
We need a Joan Crawford revival, yo!
Since Madhuri wouldn’t mind doing a musical, I propose a re-imagining of Torch Song for her. Coz, duh! Just switch the Broadway musical star to Bollywood, and you got yourself a Madhuri vehicle right there. You only need to avoid the blackface scene (lol!), develop better the relationship with Michael Wilding’s character, and add a demanding choreography a la boastful excess Bollywood style. I’ll need to re-watch it to figure out the whats and hows.
How about Autumn Leaves and Queen Bee as alternative?
Or a re-imagining of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? with Juhi as Baby Jane! LOL! I LOVE IT! Now that I’ve seen her doing the evil smirk politician, I wanna see her in a Bette Davis grotesque role. That’ll really stretch her acting. I dunno how the rat scene will fly in India, though.
I did my fictional dream cast for my remake of Mildred Pierce set in contemporary India. Right now, just after re-watching Mildred Pierce, I feel it’s perfect. I love it.
Continue Reading…
For the past week or so, I got into my Tabu movie journey and while watching Hawa, there was a particular shot that just struck me like a lightning bolt (pun!) and reminded me of Joan Crawford.
It’s a strong eyebrow thing (I have going on). Plus, Tabu’s got a nose with character (and the character to back it up). With her acting chops, she could totally pull off- let’s just skip The Women, coz I can’t picture a catty Indian version of that and just go straight into Crawford’s 40s- A Woman’s Face (or its En Kvinnas Ansikte version), Mildred Pierce (of course, I would love that), Humoresque, Possessed (1947), Daisy Kenyon, Flamingo Road, and The Damned Don’t Cry. Tabu is also at the perfect age.
The only thing about her that’s off is that… she doesn’t have the hunger for fame and power that I sense from Crawford.
Possessed and Mildred Pierce in contemporary Indian are topping my list.
I really can’t remember exactly when I started out the Top Flicks About Chicks list on MUBI, but it must have been around the same time I wrote how Chick Flicks was a doomed genre in regards of critics. So it might be almost 4 years… and I’ve finally reached 300 titles in the list!!!
A Chick Flick should center on little girls, girls, young women and women… as students, as neighbors, as friends, as daughters, as granddaughters, as sisters, as mothers, as lovers. They are simply women. With that alone, we can tell all sort of other stories that have little to do with romantic comedies.
The purpose of the list, of course, was to encompass an array of female character — not only in the binary sense, since the list also includes men/boys who identify as women/girls… and viceversa — of various cultural, ethnic, social backgrounds. Not favoring one genre over the other, not valuing dramas over comedies… just simple stories about different women.
Though I’m sure the list could be longer, that’s 300 feature length films out of the 2896 (counting shorts) currently rated on the site- that’s roughly 10% so I suppose the list could expand to up to 500 or maybe 1000 once I reach 5000 or 10000 rated films on the site.
1. Treeless Mountain 2. Welcome to the Dollhouse 3. Juliana 4. Labyrinth 5. Fuckin’ Amal 6. Mirrormask 7. Gun Hill Road 8. Pariah 9. Bend it like Beckham 10. Swing Girls 11. The Land of the Deaf 12. Sunny 13. Whip It 14. Stoker 15. Maria Full of Grace 16. Breaking the Waves 17. My Marlon and Brando 18. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days 19. Dil Bole Hadippa! 20. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 21. Kotoko 22. Violeta Went to Heaven 23. Skin 24. Raise the Red Lantern 25. Incendies
I picked 25 of the 300 films to illustrate some of the variety (I hope it’s AS varied as I intend the list to be), though I ran out of picks and couldn’t include any of the ‘older’ female characters. If I could pick 5 more, they’d be: Lemon Tree, Frozen River, Late Bloomers, Mother, For 80 Days.
Has people ever ask you what’s your type? In terms of the people that you like, and you really have no idea because you’ve never really talked about. I wondered if I could see a pattern in the people I like on-screen, so I made a list of women and men — 25 picks each — and placed generally okay photos of them to see if I could see any characteristics they shared.
A few rules- it has to be people that you follow — not randoms that you just find hot. Sofia Vergara is hot but I haven’t seen her outside Modern Family or Chasing Papi. And it also isn’t about talent… completely. It’s people that you would somehow, if given the chance, do / be with / however you want to call it or do is.
Also, photos should generally be color and looking to the front-ish. Natural looks favored, but since it’s a type thing, I suppose you can use any photos you find your subject attractive in.
I was browsing some photoshoots and doing some research, when I ran into this photoshoot for Madame Figaro China featuring Zhao Wei on the December issue of last year. Photographer unknown by me. However, when I saw Zhao Wei, I got a striking shivering reminder of Joan Crawford.
It’s the EYEBROWS.
And possibly the stern expression. Also, Zhao Wei has really big popping eyes (you can’t tell on the photoshoot), but it’s quite impressive on movies.
Both films featuring Clark Gable, released in 1931, and having a leading lady of rather humble beginnings that manages to rise to the top using her… er, skills. Of course, both Susan Lenox and Possessed have very different results. Though the cinematography in Susan Lenox is quite sublime at times — the whole introduction was marvelous with the shadows — I left rather disappointed by the end of the whole movie.
I’ve come to prefer Joan Crawford on screen~~~ remember, I got into her after I saw her on Grand Hotel, which came in the Garbo bundle. I was just left mesmerized. “Who is this woman, and where has she been all my movie-life???” So I do think Possessed edges Lenox by a pretty long thread. Despite its weak resolution, Possessed still holds itself pretty darn well. But even I must admit, I feel Garbo’s magnetism oozing from this still… even more so than I do with Crawford.
So… to me, Garbo on still. Crawford on screen.
While finally watching Joan Crawford’s Queen Bee, I got to watch the finest ‘OMG-I-Can’t-Believe-How-Much-It-Hurts’ on-screen slap EVER [1], even more epic than the whoop-ass that Veda got on Mildred Pierce. It was jaw-droppingly fascinating. xD
Then I found this compilation and I died laughing.
Makes me want to watch all her filmography again… but then I remind myself that I’ve still got Crawford movies to watch, so I can’t re-watch the films I own. I must complete my task at hand.
