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Sunday, July 1, 2012

Weekend Binge . . .

This weekend we binged — NOPE, not on food, but these . . .ephron works (4)A trio of romantic films written and/or directed by the late Nora Ephron. It was too HOT to be outdoors. Luckily, we (still) have a dual VHS/DVD player AND the library (still) had VHS copies. We own DVD copies, but they’ve been packed as part of de-cluttering.

This marathon was our personal tribute not only to Ms. Ephron, but to romantic comedies that SO much better then any current films: When Harry Met Sally (Billy Crystal & Meg Ryan), Sleepless in Seattle (Tom Hanks & Meg Ryan), You've Got Mail (Hanks & Ryan).

The films are not inter-connected and the characters (and plots) differ in each so don’t have to be watched in any sequence; that said, we watched them in order of release date. To recap . . .

Harry Met Sally (1989) follows the title characters from post graduation when they met to share a drive from Chicago to NY and  through 12 years of encounters in NYC. The film’s central dilemma: Can men and women ever be friends?

Sleepless  (1993) was inspired by the 1957 An Affair to Remember (Cary Grant & Deborah Kerr). The films climactic ending at the top of the Empire State Building refers to a similarly planned reunion between Grant and Kerr. Clips of the 1957 appear in Sleepless.

You’ve Got Mail (1998) is about two people who exchange romantic emails  unaware that the other person is someone with whom they share a degree of animosity. Its title comes from the AOL email notification. Like Sleepless, it’s based on a previous film, the 1940 The Shop Around the Corner (Jimmy Stewart & Margaret Sullivan) and a 1949 musical In the Good Old Summertime (Judy Garland & Van Johnson).

Nora Ephron’s screenwriting credits as writer, director, producer include SO many more including: Heartburn, Silkwood, Michael, Mixed Nuts, Bewitched, Julie and Julia.  The Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb) has the full listing.

I’m also reading a couple of Ms. Ephron’s popular essay collections: ephron works (3)I Feel Bad About My Neck and I Remember Nothing. She famously wrote about what she would miss or not . . .

Among the things she would miss: family, waffles, bacon, the park, reading in bed, fireworks, laughs, butter, dinner at home, taking a bath, pie, the Christmas tree . . . and NOT miss: bad dinners, funerals, email, dry skin, polls, mammograms, dead flowers, bills, small print, technology, sound of the vacuum cleaner . . .

Hope you all kept cool — Welcome to July !

7 comments:

Connie said...

Those are all great movies. She was a talented lady. Hope you enjoy the movies!

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a good way to spend this extremely hot day. Fortunately, I had a stack of good books to get started on this weekend. Atlanta was a record 106 yesterday and today.

Chatty Crone said...

You like Meg Ryan - I do too. I bet she is getting old though - how old is she? sandie

MadSnapper said...

i loved all three of these movies, i love meg ryan no matter what she is in. and really love Jimmy Stewart. i dont' think i have seen The shop around the corner. would love to. we have two channels on our cable that run back to back 24/7 old movies. one channel is 30,40,50's and i have seen some good ones. also some bad ones that i could not watch.

Anonymous said...

Those movies are great! I never get tired of watching them.
But nothing beats Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy movies :-):-) I really must find them on dvd's!

Have a great day!
Christer.

Anonymous said...

Hi Beatrice, it's always nice to drop by and share in our mutual admiration for the movies of Meg Ryan.

Meg has been on my mind as much as ever over the last few days with the sad passing of Norah Ephron.
There's no doubt Meg and Norah were a great team and Meg absolutely sparkled in the three films you watched over the weekend.
When Harry Met Sally will always be the one film that has a particular place in my heart, being the film that catapulted Meg to stardom, and it saddens me to say that I don't think we'll ever see a film like that again.

Whatever Meg does in the future it's comforting to know she left so many great movies we can enjoy on DVD( or whatever format) in the future.

To answer your friend Carol's question, Meg turned 50 at the end of last year and despite what the haters say, she looks a lot more like her old self since she's left Hollywood behind. Have a great week.

Paul.

Anvilcloud said...

I agree that those are/were three good movies.