Monday, May 28, 2007

The Strange Case of the Steel Magnolias Haunting

Is it just me or is the ghost of Steel Magnolias floating about in Hollywood's attics going booo-ooo-ooo, thus prompting strange reanimations of its 1989 heyday? I'm talking crazy so I should pro'ly explain...

When Brothers & Sisters started its first season run last fall on ABC, I thought it was cute that Sally Field & Tom Skerritt were playing incompatible husband and wife. They had already essayed one prickly enduring marriage in Magnolias. But when Skerritt's character kicked the bucket in the first episode and Sally was back in that familiar comic/grief mode I was a bit weirded out. This must have been intentional. When I started hearing reports about the casting of Poor Things I knew peculiar forces were at work. What's more, they weren't even trying to fly under the radar. For those of you who haven't heard about this,Poor Things is a comedy about two elderly women who are partners in crime. Who are the old women? Why "Ouiser" and "Clairee" themselves, Shirley Maclaine and Olympia Dukakis. They're not actually playing Ouiser and Clairee again but they might as well be. The early tagline is "These magnolias have thorns" and it's not hard to imagine Ouiser and Clairee's playful bickering redux
You are evil and must be destroyed

Is some secret ectoplasmic force at work trying to insure that Julia Roberts returns to work instead of having all these babies. Maybe it didn't want her to have thirty minutes of wonderful and would prefer she work on that lifetime of nothing special.

I don't really know that Steel Magnolias needs to be revived. I really don't. It is, after all, the strongest of all undead films endlessly lumbering through cable rotation. But if this weird pseudo resurrection is going to start, the least it could do is finish the job: How about one last bigscreen hurrah for Dolly Parton and another comedy hit for the eternally undervalued Daryl Hannah?

12 comments:

Lucas Dantas said...

just shoot me! i haven't seen steel magnolias yet. once i got it in the middle on cable, but i didn't want to start a movie from the middle, especially on with such a marvelous cast. i'll add it to my dvds-to-buy list.

Michael Parsons said...

Julia is staring in "The Friday Night Knitting Club" about a group of women form a bond when they meet at a small knitting shop in New York. Based on the novel "The Friday Night Knitting Club" by Kathleen Jacobs.
This could be "Steel Magnolias 2" and I welcome it.

Anonymous said...

From Variety.com...

Lindsay Lohan, Rosario Dawson and Channing Tatum have joined the cast of grandma gang comedy "Poor Things," toplining Shirley MacLaine and Olympia Dukakis and directed by Ash Baron Cohen.

OnePenny said...

I'm glad I've found this BLOG !

Amazing!

Anonymous said...

I discovered Steel Magnolias late but loved it from the first minute :)Loved shirley mclaine in it!

Glenn Dunks said...

I was surprised to discover I really liked Steel Magnolias.

But, we shouldn't be surprised at this latest attempt at a Steel Magnolias haunting. Remember the ill-faited Broadway version? The ghosts of that are probably still spooking theatre goers today.

Anonymous said...

My best friend hates me for loving this movie so much. It is always playing on our "cable" here in South Africa also.

Anonymous in Jo'burg

Derek said...

In shoes, I wear a size 6, but a size 7 feels so good, I buy a size 8.

Unknown said...

I saw SM when it first opened and I walked out of the theater thinking there should be some Oscar noms coming up, specifically Shirley Maclaine or Olympia Dukakis or maybe even Daryl Hanna (I still think it's Hanna's best performance). But, I thought, surely there will be no nominations for Julia Roberts. I thought she gave the weakest performance and she was the only one I didn't believe. You all know who got the sole acting nomination.

min8ive said...

Hey Honey,

It's a chick flick. Maybe you have to be a chick to love it.

"Louie brought his new girlfriend home and the nicest thing I can say about her is all her tattoos are spelled correctly."

Linda

NATHANIEL R said...

Hi Linda! xoxoxo. Linda is one of my oldest friends in the world y'all. We'll be as old as Ouiser and Clairee someday...

eep

Sam, daryl hannah's best performance is KILL BILL but i think she's really good in a lot of things. in an odd way.

Unknown said...

I think so, too and she's never really gotten her due. I've never seen Kill Bill. Not into graphic violence.