In the Good Old Summertime (1959)

Four stars, will definitely watch again. You know it's good when you see it pop up on your Tivo and you watch it again start to finish, even though you still remember the plot.

The best thing about in the Good Old Summertime is that it's a Christmas movie. It starts out with a voiceover reminiscing about the good old days in Chicago in the summertime and ends on Christmas Eve.

If you have an eerie feeling that you've seen this one before, you may have seen its predecessor, "The Shop Around the Corner" or the Broadway musical "She Loves Me" or the more recent re-write, "You've Got Mail".



I find it strange that I love this move although I hate You've Got Mail. The premise could just be aggravating, really: two people fall in love through the mail while simultaneously meeting and annoying each other in real life.

Luckily, Judy Garland is just so full of emotion for everything that it makes it believable that her character would love her pen pal as passionately as she hated her coworker.

Plus there are the costumes! Judy Garland's first outfit features a parasol, a hat with cherries on it, and a fake bird that perches atop the hat. AWESOME.

Also features Buster Keaton in a supporting role...up till recently I had no idea how long he had survived in the film business - it's really amazing! Of course he does the physical comedy that adds so much to the scenes he's in.

The movie features a violin virtuoso - giving over one whole scene just to her playing - kind of like the operatic orphan in "Here Comes the Groom".

The movie ends with a forgettable Christmas song and an unforgettable line "Psyhologically I'm very confused but personally I feel just wonderful."
And then as a bonus, you get a return to the "Good Old Summertime" and get to see tiny Liza Minelli's screen debut.

Ziegfeld Girl (1941)

These days it isn't hard to have an award-winning film. Since every two-horse town has a film festival and only industry insiders know which town's festivals really matter, just about every film released since 2000 has multiple awards to its credit.

So that got me thinking - why shouldn't I start giving out awards of my own?

Let me kick off the awards with this one:

* ~ * ~ * Silliest Costumes * ~ * ~ *



What is so amazing about this movie is that THIS is the most conservative and simple costume in it. This movie makes Bjork's swan dress look tame when I woman walks out wearing a full-sized stuffed flamingo on her shoulder.

However, I cannot begin to do justice in print to the insanity of these costumes, but I urge you not to blink while watching this movie, because to miss just one insane costume, is to miss the point.

What is so amazing is that a real, simple love story - no three of them! - survives this insanity intact.

This is a movie about the girls who prance and parade in the costumes - but the larger-than-life quality of their stage life acts like a magnifying glass intensifying their personalities, their foibles, and their - well their follies.

Honorable mention to Eve Arden as Patsy "the best bad example you could have" and Jimmy Stewart as Gil the truck driver with lines like "Dames are like traffic, sometimes you've gotta stop, and sometimes you've gotta go!"

Oh my god! The last musical number is outdoing itself in insanity!

Will watch again!

Four Stars!