City Lights (prod. Charles Chaplin), Part Four: The Perfect, Problematic Ending Of City Lights.

I have loved this series of posts on City Lights, one of my favorite movies of all time. The last post is all about the ending which always reduces me to tears: tears of joy and pain. It is so bittersweet, and I enjoy the ambiguity of the last scene.

Then again, I am sentimental at heart and love that part of Chaplin and his films. I even love Limelight!

Do not read the entry if you don’t want spoilers or haven’t seen it. But if you haven’t seen the film: why not!?! It truly is a marvelous work, and one that is often recommended to people who have never seen a silent film before.

In other news, I’ve been watching Bravo all afternoon. I can so easily get addicted to their realit shows. Today it was Tabatha’s Salon Takeover, wherein Tabatha comes in to turn around failing salons and get them profitable again! My favorite today was the ovary-phobic all-male 30-minutes short-cut high-end salon… HA! It illuminated what you sometimes find in exclusively gay male environments, the feeling of “EW, GIRLS!” that isn’t that far removed from the misogyny in hetero male culture. Well, she changed that and things actually got better and the stylists enjoyed working with women.

I also caught several epsiodes of Launch My Line, wherein non-fashion designers work with designer experts to launch their own fashion lines. Most ridiculous so far is the architect who chose blacks and lavenders as base fabrics, which made everything he did look like some modern version of mourning dress. But another is the DJ Club impresario who somehow impresses the judges enough with his barely competent designs. Wow. My favorite is Merle, because she uses great colors. I also admit I love a convertible design, which is what Merle is all about. I blame my weakness for them on my Day to Night Barbie!

These kinds of shows are why I don’t need to have cable in my house. Too much time lost to marathons!

Currently, I’m watching Poirot adapations with Suchet: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Cards on the Table. I rented them from the library (yay!), and had recently read both novels again. I did do some investigation on bridge for that book, as I had no idea what it was beyond complicated 4-person game that Omar Sharif wrote about for the papers.

I am always disappointed in the tv versions of Christie works in that they always change things or make things more dramatic, especially the endings. The same thing happened tonight in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. I suppose poison and suicide wasn’t good enough for an ending!?! I am not sure why in this adaptation of Cards on the Table that they changed Inspector Battle to Inspector Whosit and Colonel Race to Colonel Sahib, though. ETA: And why did they make so many other things different? Rhoda and Ann, Mrs. Lorrimer, etc. DAMN folks, just keep it the same… why change things so drastically?

But one way in which I am never disappointed with Christie adaptations is seeing so many familiar faces in the cast. There are always people from Austen adaptations, Harry Potter, Jeeves & Wooster, Sherlock Holmes, and many other BBC/Granada/etc productions turning up in these. I always pull up IMDB after or during one of these films.