The cinetrix sure is, and as soon as she posts students' final grades [they become instantly available and I'm enjoying not being actively hated, so I am putting it off 'til the last minute] the summer season officially commences chez Pullquote.
In celebration, the 'Fesser and I have finally turned to the borrowed dvds and dusty Netflix selections from a more innocent time.
First up, Idiocracy, the savage Swiftian satire Fox buried at the box office. Mike Judge shows us the dystopian future 500 years from now. Basically, once mouth-breathing breeders edged out cautious, "when the time is right" sterile intellectuals, everybody forgot how to take out the garbage. A portentious, pretentious narrator explains, "The years passed, mankind became stupider at a frightening rate. Some had high hopes the genetic engineering would correct this trend in evolution, but sadly the greatest minds and resources where focused on conquering hair loss and prolonging erections. "
A bleakly funny time-lapse montage shows Fudd-Ruckers devolve into Butt-Fuckers. A lawyer named Frito explains he got his J.D. at Costco. Starbucks offers lattes with full release. And crops are watered with a green sports drink called Brawndo: "the taste plants crave." Did I mention the hit television show in the future is called "Ow, My Balls!"?
Oh, don't be such a fucking snob. Watch the movie and wonder at what Judge was able to accomplish with sheer bile and about 47 cents' worth of production value.
In our house there are many mansions, so it should surprise no one that we followed up Luke Wilson with Cary freakin' Grant. And Katharine Hepburn. Call the sacrilege police if you must.
These days Holiday doesn't get the play that other Hepburn-Grant pairings garner, and that's a shame. The sharp-eyed among you might remember Bill Pullman's Jason Slocum showing his children George Cukor's tart parable about life among the rich in Igby Goes Down, but for ages it wasn't available on dvd. That changed last December and the print, newly restored by the UCLA elves, shines in the transfer.
The plot does, too, once Hepburn finally enters the picture, glistening and bristling as the spinster sister of working-class Grant's well-off intended. There are misunderstandings and culture clashes and a little too much Champagne, but it all comes together brilliantly in set pieces like the party in the old playroom, where Professor Nick Potter [Edward Everett Horton, truly the Harry Dean Stanton of 'Thirties film] and his blueblood, down-at-the-heel bride, Susan Elliot Potter [Jean Dixon], take up their brickbats behind the Punch and Judy stage and Grant and Hepburn practice tumbling tricks.
Screw the How to Hepburn how-tos. Watch Holiday and learn that such eccentric grace can be emulated but never equaled. [And tumbling tummler Archie Leach ain't bad, either.]