Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1960)

Film: Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960)

Stars: Doris Day, David Niven, Janis Paige, Richard Haydn, Spring Byington

Director: Charles Walters

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Spring Byington: click here to learn more about Ms. Byington (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Jumping from 1948 to 1960 is a big gap in Spring Byington's career, and a large part of that jump happens because during that time, Byington found the sort of leading lady stardom that had alluded her in her career in movies.  In 1952, Byington had started to work on the CBS radio program December Bride, where she plays a woman who has been widowed, but is intent on finding a new husband (hence, becoming a "December Bride").  Desilu Productions thought that this would make a good companion to I Love Lucy, and brought the radio show to television, putting it on immediately after I Love Lucy, which meant it was a Top 10 hit for the first four seasons it was on.  This allowed Byington, now in her seventies, to be the lead in one of the most-watched shows in America.  Byington even got two Emmy nominations for the series (losing both to Jane Wyatt on Father Knows Best), but when the series moved out of the comfy slot behind I Love Lucy, it tanked and was quickly cancelled.  Byington would only briefly return to one last movie after that, today's film Please Don't Eat the Daisies.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Kay Mackay (Day) a housewife with four sons who is living in a cramped New York apartment with her drama critic husband Larry (Niven).  The two find out that they're being evicted, and rather than stay in the city, they move to a dilapidated old house in the middle of the country, with Kay's mother Suzie (Byington) in tow.  This causes friction in their marriage, with Larry leaving the city frequently, and letting his newfound fame as a viper-tongued critic go to his head.  This is particularly a problem when an actress he lambasted, Deborah Vaughn (Paige) initially makes a scene, slapping him at a restaurant, and then realizing the publicity this could get both she & Larry, starts to coordinate moments for more publicity, trying to start an affair with him.  Suzie eventually convinces Kay that she needs to fight for her husband, and she does, with the two of them making up, now happily settled into their country domesticity.

Your mileage with this film will largely depend on your thoughts on Doris Day as a leading woman.  Few actresses enjoyed the kind of sustained success that Day did from the early 1950's to the late 1960's, and Please Don't Eat the Daisies was no exception (it was a huge hit for MGM), but I get that her movies tend to be a bit repetitive and somewhat reductive (that the onus on fixing her husband's wandering eye falls to Day's wife rather than Niven's character is not lost on me).  But I generally like Doris Day's movies, and this is cute.  Janis Paige is fun (as always) as a vamp, and I think it's always enjoyable.  There should've been more antics from the sons (particularly the adorable baby obsessed with Coca-Cola), and more singing from Day (she only does the film's bizarrely-monikered title song), but this is enjoyable.

It's also a fitting sendoff for Byington, playing yet another charming mother character.  Though she'd live until 1971, dying from cancer at the age of 84, she'd never make another movie, working in television instead on programs as varied as The Tab Hunter Show, Dennis the Menace, Mister Ed, The Flying Nun, and in a recurring role on the western Laramie.  Next month, we're going to switch gears a little bit as we focus on an actress who, unlike Byington, was not only a leading lady, but throughout the 1930's & 40's was a big star...but whom modern audiences, if they remember her at all, recall her for her immaculately-bedecked television show in the 1950's.

OVP: The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)

Film: The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)

Stars: Ronald Colman, Madeleine Carroll, C. Aubrey Smith, Raymond Massey, Mary Astor, David Niven, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.

Director: John Cromwell

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Art Direction, Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Madeleine Carroll-click here to learn more about Ms. Carroll (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We are going to conclude our month devoted to Madeleine Carroll this week with a movie not too far away from our last film.  Picking Carroll as a Star of the Month was a tossup for me (there were other leading actresses from Hitch's early films that we could've gone with).  She obviously starred in two movies he directed, which lends a lot to her, but Carroll's fame was sharp but brief, and we'll talk about that below, but it also means that there's not a lot of opportunity for growth in her characters & acting style.  This is true once again for Prisoner of Zenda, a body-swapping tale set in 19th Century Austria where Carroll is asked to play the doted-upon beauty.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about a man named Rudolf (Colman), who is fishing when he comes across Colonel Zapt (Smith) and Captain von Tarlenheim (Niven), who are shocked by how much he resembles the soon-to-be king, Rudolf V (also played by Colman).  The king is a drunkard, and on the morning of his coronation it is found out that the wine has been drugged, thus Rudolf V cannot be coronated.  Since both of his aides are worried that without Rudolf there, his brother Michael (Massey) will steal the thrown he covets, they put Rudolf in his place, which fools most of the court, though eventually not Michael & his aide Rupert of Hentzou (Fairbanks), but there's a problem-the king's betrothed Princess Flavia (Carroll) is now in love with the imposter king, and before they can switch back, the real Rudolf is kidnapped by Rupert & Michael, with madness ensuing that eventually kills both men, and results in Flavia & the faux Rudolf falling in love, but having to stay apart out of her duty to her country.

The movie is fun, though more fun in the first half than in the second when it gets too melodramatic.  Not all of the cast works (Astor is badly misused as the leg of a Rupert/Michael love triangle), but Fairbanks is delicious as Rupert (I've never seen him this good), completely stealing the film, and I always David Niven (even if his part is small).  Carroll, as I mentioned, is kind of just there-there's a twinkle to her work here, but not much more, and certainly it's not a performance I would've paid attention to were I not looking at it from this angle.  Particularly coming a year after the abdication (in this film, of course, Colman in both the Wallis Simpson role to Carroll's Edward VIII decide that duty comes before love), there are more interesting things to focus on than Carroll's wallflower.

The film was nominated for two Academy Awards.  The Score was the first citation for Alfred Newman, who would during his long career win 43 Oscar nominations, so we will be hearing from him a lot in the upcoming years, and while he wrote some truly brilliant music, this is just fine.  It's the kind you'd expect from a swashbuckler, rousing but not that original.  The art direction is better (this is before Best Costume was a thing, otherwise that likely would've occurred, especially for Fairbanks' sexier looks), and has lots of great-looking sets though there's nothing that stands out as truly detailed in the movie.

As I said above, we will end our chapter focused on Madeleine Carroll here.  The actress would continue working in Hollywood for the remainder of the decade, acting opposite Henry Fonda, Fred MacMurray, Gary Cooper (again), and Bob Hope.  However tragedy would strike Carroll's life early in the 1940's, when her only sister Marguerite died during the London Blitz, and afterward devoted pretty much her entire existence to the war effort and beating the Germans (Dwight Eisenhower purportedly said she did more for the war effort than any other movie star).  This resulted in her eventually winning the Medal of Freedom and the Legion of Honor, but it also killed her career in film.  She'd make only three films after the war (most notably Otto Preminger's The Fan), and spent the rest of her life living with family in Europe, eventually dying at the age of 81 from pancreatic cancer.  Next month we're going to focus on a different actress, one who was a contemporary of Carroll's, but whose career took far different turns (and lasted many decades longer) on the big screen.

OVP: Bachelor Mother (1939)

Film: Bachelor Mother (1939)
Stars: Ginger Rogers, David Niven, Charles Coburn, Frank Albertson
Director: Garson Kanin
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Motion Picture Story)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

I interact a lot with "Film Twitter," a subset of the social media platform that focuses on movies, frequently related to awards season & the classical era of Hollywood.  In doing so, you discover a lot of hidden gems, and occasionally find people who put your own (over-zealous) movie-watching habits to shame.  You also learn that your own prejudices against certain old-time movie stars are not universally held.  I have not really found the right role to love Ginger Rogers, something that I'm in the minority here (she seems quite popular on Film Twitter), but she's not my cup-of-tea.  Her performances are too earnest, her dramatics paling to someone like Barbara Stanwyck or Joan Crawford.  But I'm open to new ideas, and always game for liking Rogers more than I currently do, and Bachelor Mother might have posed a turning point for me.  I loved this movie, even if it was as shallow as a teaspoon, and Rogers (with the help of David Niven) might be finally turning me around on her specific set of talents.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is short, so not a lot of plot, but here goes.  Polly (Rogers) is a salesgirl at the John B. Merlin and Son company in New York City.  She loses her job as a temporary sales clerk after the holidays, but on her way home she discovers a baby that someone has left on the steps of an orphanage.  Through a confusion that could only happen in the movies, the orphanage, as well as "the son" of her department store's name, David (Niven), assume the baby is hers, and it's born out-of-wedlock.  Not wanting to fire an unwed mother, and make her give up her baby, David rehires her, and starts to show an interest in this woman who keeps claiming the baby isn't hers.  As the film goes on, Polly & David start to fall in love, and David's father (Coburn) assumes the baby is his new grandson.  In the end, David claims the baby is his, making his father happy that he finally gets to be a grandfather, and Polly gets the untraditional family she wanted, having now fallen in love with both David and the baby.

The movie is silly, and if the plot sounds familiar, it was remade in the 1950's as Bundle of Joy with Debbie Reynolds & Eddie Fisher.  But silly is fine if it's done well, and Bachelor Mother is a really lovely little movie.  At this point in his career, Niven would've been teetering between stardom and becoming a high-profile character actor (just a few months before this movie was released, he'd taken on the third-billed Edgar Linton role in Wuthering Heights).  This movie was a major hit, and made him an established star.  There's a reason for that-Rogers & Niven have great chemistry onscreen.  While I always love David Niven in movies, Ginger Rogers steals several scenes from him & this is a plucky side of her that I've never seen done so well in a romantic comedy.  She's delicious when she's playing along as a Swedish girl who is trying to prove to Niven's ex that she's an improvement on her, and even in the film's softer moments she has a warmth that radiates & keeps the movie from going to darker places around her situation (like how, say, we shouldn't think too much on the biological mother who had to give up this baby, as she was likely in the actual scenario that Polly is only hypothetically in).

The film won one Oscar nomination, for Best Motion Picture Story (thus finishing off our theme week of writing nominations at the Oscars).  While the script isn't perfect (it's predictable & Rogers other love interest is underwritten), the story & idea behind are original and charming.  I left Bachelor Mother dually impressed how spry it was, and how a potentially repetitive plot is played for increasing absurdity & laughs.  Bachelor Mother is a good reminder after a week of heavy pictures & across-the-board reviews that movies sometimes work best when they simply allow you to forget your troubles & be entertained.

OVP: Separate Tables (1958)

Film: Separate Tables (1958)
Stars: Rita Hayworth, Deborah Kerr, David Niven, Burt Lancaster, Wendy Hiller, Gladys Cooper, Rod Taylor
Director: Delbert Mann
Oscar History: 7 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Actor-David Niven*, Actress-Deborah Kerr, Supporting Actress-Wendy Hiller*, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Score)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Rita Hayworth-click here to learn more about Ms. Hayworth (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Rita Hayworth's final years in show business were the stuff of nightmares for her personally.  She continued to act well into her forties, a time period many other actresses known principally for their beauty might have disappeared (it helped that Hayworth always looked younger than she actually was onscreen).  Her marriages during the 1950's were terrible even judging on her own crumby scale, with actor Dick Haymes squandering her money on his own debts, and producer James Hill, her final husband, emotionally abusing her, frequently in front of crowds, until she was to the point of tears (Charlton Heston once claimed that he was "ashamed" of not slugging Hill for how he treated Hayworth in front of him).  During this time, though, she made perhaps the last great film of her career, Separate Tables, that put her front-and-center with acting titans like Burt Lancaster & Deborah Kerr.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is an ensemble piece, the type that occasionally comes back en vogue and is favored by certain modern directors (Robert Altman, Paul Thomas Anderson, Garry Marshall).  The entire film takes place over a 24-hour period at a hotel, and the film gains its name from the fact that the residents sit at "separate tables" when they eat meals.  There are two driving catalysts in the film.  The first is a beautiful woman Anne (Hayworth) showing up late in the evening looking for a room, with clear links to John Malcolm (Lancaster) (it turns out they used to be married and are still very much in love, though they also haven't forgiven each other for the past), who is having an affair with the hotel's proprietress Ms. Cooper (Hiller).  The second is that the rather bombastic Major Pollock (Niven) has been involved in a scandal, indicating that he lied about his war record, and more damning, had sexual improprieties with women at a local theater.  Mrs. Railton-Bell (Cooper) insists that they drive Major Pollock out, bullying the other residents into agreeing with her, including her daughter Sibyl (Kerr) who has a fondness for Major Pollock.  The film ends with these stories being tied up.  Despite his offenses, the people want to keep a repentant Major Pollock on at the hotel, Sibyl stands up to her mother, and Anne & John tentatively reunite, with Ms. Cooper left to have the hotel and its guests be her insurance against not being lonely as she creeps into old age.

The film in a lot of ways reminds me of Grand Hotel more than the melodramas of the 1950's (think the Arthur Miller or Tennessee Williams plays that dominated cultural discussions during the era).  The film lives-or-dies not just on our investment in the drama of the picture, but in the acting onscreen, and both are marvelous.  The film probably would have gained a wee bit from the original stage production, which gave more background to the Sibyl/Major relationship (this was also in the original script, but producer Burt Lancaster wanted more screen-time for his character, a decision that Delbert Mann claimed "cost Deborah Kerr the Oscar"); it also makes more sense if the Major is homosexual, which is what the original stage script insinuated.

However, these are small trifles to have with a movie this good.  The acting is terrific.  The film was nominated for three acting trophies, and at least the winners richly deserved these citations.  Hiller finds a sort of quiet steel in her character.  She never gets a great big scene where she confesses her loneliness & how she's certain that if she does the "right thing" by Anne, she'll likely lose her own happiness, possibly forever, but it's there in her tense posture and pleading eyes.  She wants John to stay with her, but knows that he'll never forgive her if he doesn't make the decision to leave Anne on his own, and so she must watch as he retreats to a woman whose beauty and advantage are things she's never been given.  Matching her is David Niven, giving arguably the shortest film performance ever to win a lead Oscar (different sites argue whether it's him or Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs).  He plays the Major as a man bereft of emotional connection, someone who has struggled to be taken seriously so he has invented reasons to do so.  His scenes with Kerr are odd (again, there needs more grounding here or for him to be gay to properly define their friendship as platonic or romantic), and Kerr occasionally overplays them, but I don't think I've seen Niven be this good before, and with a drama of all things!

As for Hayworth, she's spellbinding per usual.  Kerr won the Best Actress nod, but if they were going to go with someone from this film for that category it should have been Hayworth who gets the more difficult part and the more humiliating scenes.  She has to basically watch as John shoves her 40-year-old face under a lamp, showing the starts of aging on a woman who has demanded (and received) everything due to her looks for years, and the final scenes, where it's clear she's looking at either forgiveness or suicide as her options, are devastating, as is the ambiguity of what happens next for the couple.  While she'd make a few more pictures, including a Golden Globe-nominated turn in Circus World, and work in television shows like Laugh-In and The Carol Burnett Show, this was the last important film of her career, and once again, she went home empty-handed from the Academy.  By the 1970's, her alcoholism and years of emotional abuse were masking what would ultimately kill her: Alzheimer's Disease, of which she would die at the age of 68 in 1987.

Next month we will take a look at a woman who rivaled Hayworth's stardom for almost the entire run of both of their careers, and whose personal life & seismic beauty demanded far more headlines than her films ever did, but who (unlike Hayworth) the Oscars found room for just once...in what would lead to one of the most notorious chapters in the Academy's history.  Stay tuned to find out to whom I'm referring on Friday as we kick off another month of Saturdays with the Stars.

OVP: Around the World in 80 Days (1956)

Film: Around the World in 80 Days (1956)
Stars: Cantinflas, David Niven, Shirley MacLaine, Robert Newton
Director: Michael Anderson
Oscar History: 8 nominations/5 wins (Best Picture*, Director, Cinematography*, Film Editing*, Score*, Adapted Screenplay*, Costume Design, Art Direction)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

As I start to work my way through my "Quarantine To Do List," one of the tasks I'm working on is finally starting to make my DVR manageable again.  Right now, if I had to guess, there have to be at least 70 Oscar Viewing Project films on that thing (not to mention three episodes of Westworld, which I tend to stockpile as I genuinely like the show, but it can be convoluted if you don't have a few in a row to watch), and I keep putting more random films on there, so it's high-time I start conquering it (like many of you, I suspect, I'm working on a lot of projects that I've put off for a while, and this is a big one for me).  We're going to kick off this clean-up (expect a few truly random movies to be headed your way in the next couple of months) with a bit of a bang-the rare (for me) unseen Best Picture winner, Around the World in 80 Days.

(Spoilers Ahead) When I mentioned that I was seeing Around the World in 80 Days to a friend yesterday, their reaction was one of "eek!" more than anything else, as the Jules Verne adaptation is notoriously one of Oscar's least-celebrated top prize recipients.  The film itself is, in fact, very long, which is rarely a good sign for a movie that enjoys a bad reputation.  Essentially, for those who didn't read the book as a kid, the story is about Phileas Fogg (Niven), a punctual English gentlemen with something of a stubborn streak, and his manservant Passepartout (Cantinflas), whom he hires for an expedition around the world.  Fogg has made a bet with men at his club that he can circumnavigate the globe in under 80 days, and as he continues all of the United Kingdom begin tracking his expeditions.  Along the way he and Passepartout get into a series of adventures, including bullfighting, riding an elephant, and a train robbery.  They are accompanied for much of the trip by Princess Aouda (MacLaine, in an unfortunate case of brown-face from my favorite actress) and Inspector Fix (Newton), who is determined to prove that Phileas Fogg has robbed the Bank of England, but is continually thwarted in his efforts to arrest him.

Around the World in 80 Days isn't as bad as its reputation, but it's not a good movie & it's laughable in the same year as The Searchers, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Written on the Wind, The Wrong Man, The Ten Commandments, and Giant that the Academy chose this of all movies to be its standard-bearer.  It's fun to watch, even if it's not funny at all, and I think it's meant to be.  At the time Cantinflas (who would get a Golden Globe win but no Oscar nomination, a rarity for a Best Picture winner) was a huge star in Mexican cinema, and was enjoying here his breakthrough into mainstream American film, but so much of his humor is based on either physical tricks that aren't particularly funny in hindsight (mistreatment of animals is a bigger part of this movie than you'd think, and it feels kind of icky in hindsight) or trading on racial humor.  I get what he's trying to do here, but it doesn't work sixty years after the fact, and no one else in the movie, not even Niven or MacLaine (both very good actors with the right material), are able to make much of the film.

The enjoyment in hindsight are the cameos and the sets.  Producer Mike Todd filmed a lot of the movie on-location, so you literally see scenes across the world that are actually quite wonderful.  Despite the story being a snore, the set designs are fun (especially in Spain & Japan), and the cinematography is expansive & lovely; I rarely have this complaint, but the only thing you can really fault the cinematography for is a lack of closeups.  It explores expansive vistas & makes sure that Todd got his money's worth.  The other Oscar nominations are less inviting.  Costumes are fine, but repetitive & not breaking new ground, while the editing is lacking (three hours without enough laughs is a struggle).  And the score is reliant on too many stereotypes and cliches when it comes to the music of the country they're in to really be interesting.

But the movie is nearly saved by the sheer volume of cameos.  This was one of the first films to employ a plethora of "guest appearances" from major stars of the era, and it keeps the otherwise humdrum plot ticking as you play "I Spy."  Some of these figures aren't as famous today, so it's a bit of a guessing game, but if you know even the remotest bit about classic Hollywood, you'll recognize a few figures.  Chief among my favorites were Marlene Dietrich as a saloon girl, Frank Sinatra as a piano player, Buster Keaton playing a train conductor, and John Carradine as an easily-vexed colonel, but there's enough here to keep you intrigued even while the movie slogs.  The film was a massive hit, proved Mike Todd a boy wonder (who was cut down in his prime), but it's really only the cameos and the location shooting that should be celebrated here.  After a long wait, I can confirm this is no "best" picture.

OVP: Eternally Yours (1939)

Film: Eternally Yours (1939)
Stars: Loretta Young, David Niven, Hugh Herbert, Billie Burke, C. Aubrey Smith, ZaSu Pitts, Broderick Crawford
Director: Tay Garnett
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Score)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Loretta Young is not a name that inspires a lot of confidence in me as a filmgoer.  When I told my brother I watched a Loretta Young movie the other night, in fact, his first comment was "an evening with the Republicans!" which is pretty accurate.  Young's films usually border on the overtly sincere and far too simplistic, and while her politics are hardly a reason to indicate that's the why behind this formula (there were far too many Republicans in Hollywood during the Golden Age to assume that all of them made puritanical films) it does always feel like the case, particularly in a film like Eternally Yours, which goes to incredible pains to underline Young's virtue even when her marriage to a successful magician goes on the rocks.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows Anita (Young) who is engaged to be married to Don (Crawford), but during her bridal shower she falls for a talented magician named the Great Arturo (Niven).  She eventually takes over as his assistant and they get married, but after a drunken night Arturo boasts to a reporter that he can jump, bound by chains, from a plane and get out of the trap to activate the parachute before he hits the ground.  The feat is easily the coolest scene in the movie (and is repeated multiple times as they clearly had a winner), and his Houdini routine is obviously a rousing success, but despite Anita's protestations he continues to do it again and again, gaining huge fame and wealth in the process.  When he has no time for her in face of his work, she runs away to Connecticut to a house she secretly had built and gets a divorce, or so she thinks.

The film then takes a rather ludicrous turn where poor, hapless Broderick Crawford (who, let's face it, can't remotely compare to David Niven) comes back into the picture, proposes marriage to Anita and then they get married on a boat.  The marriage is never consummated, though, through a series of ridiculous twists and turns that involve Arturo distracting Don's boss and we learn after a while that Anita is in fact not divorced, and she and Arturo, after a near-suicide attempt, are brought back together.

The film fails in so many ways, not least of which is that Anita sticks to exactly zero of her principles.  I know that bringing feminism into a film in the 1940's where the female character isn't a murderer is a tough sell, but seriously-Anita gets back together with Arturo despite having some fairly grounded objections against him constantly putting his life in danger.  The film also goes to eye-rolling pains to underline that she doesn't have sex with Don, despite the fact that they are married, which feels like it was something that the prim Young (the actress) threw into the film but it feels weirdly and bizarrely expositional and not really that important considering that Arturo feels a little bit like a cad who probably slept with his new assistant Lola (they don't go to the same levels to protect her virtue).

The movie received a sole Oscar nomination, for Werner Janssen, whose work I've never really taken to in the movies and I'm a bit surprised that he landed six nominations so seemingly-out-of-the-blue.  Though he had a pretty pedigreed career as a conductor (becoming the first American to ever lead the New York Philharmonic) his scores always feel a bit, well, pedantic, and Eternally Yours music is thin, omnipresent, and relies so heavily on a bassoon you half expect a dog to come bouncing out and for Loretta Young to randomly turn into Irene Dunne.  This was during the era when scores were nominated without much bound (there were thirteen nominations that year), and I feel like this was simply United Artists getting its seat at the table.

Those are my thoughts on this film-what about yours?  Do you have a similar sort of reaction to films that star Loretta Young?  Would having a dashing David Niven jump out of a plane cause you to divorce him?  And what precisely am I missing in the appeal of Werner Janssen-is there a film that will change my mind about him?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

Everybody's Linking for the Weekend

It's that time of the week where we round up all of the stories from the internet that have fascinated me and we haven't discussed yet (or hopefully a few that you weren't even aware of) in "Everybody's Linking for the Weekend!"  Shall we?

On Entertainment...

Michelle Pfeiffer

-In one of the bigger pieces of news this week that I almost missed, Oscar-nominated actress Michelle Pfeiffer will be returning to television after decades away from it, or at least that's what she, Katie Couric, and Diane English (the masterminds behind the show) are hoping.  Nathaniel over at the Film Experience of course had two cents or so on this subject (Pfeiffer being his favorite actress) and I tend to agree with him-why not just go back to making movies?  Pfeiffer is notoriously stingy with her cinematic output, and unless this is a TV movie or miniseries, why would she make a giant return to acting only for it be on the small screen?  She's only done one lead role this decade, which is insanity (plus, it was in that horrible-looking The Family with Robert de Niro).  Go back to your roots and make some big screen magic instead.

-Proving that Maleficent and Cinderella were just the tips of the iceberg, Disney is now planning a live-action film of Mulan.  This comes off of production news that most of the cast of Beauty and the Beast is set (including my beloved Audra McDonald as a side character).  While I think this constantly mining the same well is eventually going to hurt Disney, they've still got quite a few classics to go before that happens ($20 says The Little Mermaid is announced by year's end).  I actually think this could be interesting as Mulan has a lot of battle sequences, but please for the love of God don't have a white-washing incident with this film where they cast a white actor to play a part intended for an Asian.  You think I'm kidding, but it still happens in 2015 (just look at Rooney Mara and Princess Tiger Lily in Pan).

-Manoel de Oliveira, the world's oldest filmmaker and one of the last stars of a Silent Era movie, has passed away at the age of 106.

On Politics...

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN)

-Minnesota politicians (my home state) seem to be continually in the news this week.  Probably the funniest and most pleasant story of the bunch was Sen. Franken on Letterman this past week, who amidst a conversation about the disastrous religious freedom bill in Indiana, said that Letterman should consider a run for the US Senate in the Hoosier State.  While I think certain things in Dave's past would preclude him from winning, I said the same thing about Al and I could not have been more wrong (I have grown extremely fond of him, particularly the way he handles politics in a way similar to Bill Clinton, frequently trying to make it through without cheap political points or soundbytes, a truly odd trait from a man whose forte was in comedy and radio).  His fellow senator Amy Klobuchar is giving back her donations from Bob Menendez, whom we profiled earlier this week, and appears to be Senator 1 in the indictments against Menendez (for the record, Senator 1 is not accused of any criminal wrongdoing).  It'll be interesting to see if any other Democrats return their contributions from Menendez's PAC, though Klobuchar, who announced that she's releasing a memoir just in-time for the Iowa Straw Poll, may have other ideas in mind and want to avoid a scandal entirely.  I could also chronicle the ridiculousness of Michele Bachmann, but thankfully she doesn't hold office in the state anymore so I won't bother with her.

-Roll Call took a look at 2016, which they are already dubbing the Year of the Rematch, which is something that's hard to disagree with considering the number of candidates seeking out another bout.  While it's not usually advisable to go with someone whom the district already rejected (they're a proven loser, as unkind as that is to say), these are some pretty quality candidates all-around and most of them probably would have won in better cycles than 2010 and 2014.  I do always find it funny that each party has the same reaction to these sorts of situations, with the repeat challenger being tagged a "proven vote-getter" and the incumbent tagging them a "rejected loser."  This is particularly funny from the Republicans, who have people like Pat Toomey, Bob Dold, and Frank Guinta potentially running in these races, all of whom were rejected by voters before they held office.  Politics: land of a thousand inane talking points.

-Everyone in the Senate is trying to guess what Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) is up to, and what her intentions are in the wake of Sen. Chuck Schumer's move to be Democratic leader come 2017.  Like I suspect Sen. Murray is, I'm torn on what direction she should go.  Part of me wants her to run for the spot; Sen. Durbin has been in office forever and quite frankly it's time to get some new blood in leadership, particularly in the Senate where senators like Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Manchin seem restless, a critical issue since they're vitally important to getting to 51 seats for the Democrats.  The other part of me wonders if it's a great idea for us to completely roll-over Dick Durbin, who has done a decent job as Whip and with keeping a very coordinated caucus for the past decade or so.  If I had to pick right at this second, I'd say Murray should go for it but I might change my mind tomorrow.

Shameless Self-Promotion of the Week...

I get into the real appeal of Snapchat.

YouTube Video of the Week...

I love that the official Oscars channel on YouTube has put the Streaker video on the channel!  Even if you've seen David Niven and Elizabeth Taylor's reactions a thousand times, it's still worth catching (Linda Blair's reaction to Niven's famous "shortcomings" joke is awesomely robust).

Just One More...

-This could technically qualify under the entertainment bucket, but it felt more like news of the world and art news specifically.  Robert Schoenberg, who is played by Ryan Reynolds in the new film Women in Gold, recounts several different artworks that are still in court over their rightful owners after being stolen during World War II by the Nazis.  One of the paintings you will remember famously from the opening credits of Desperate Housewives.