But first I would like to comment on the wonderful Pick-A-Flick movies last Friday on LMN.
As both films had the word 'obsession' in their titles, I guess one might gather that Pick-A-Flick employed a theme. But considering that the movies are selected each week through online voting, one could start to have suspicions, or else those are some v savvy, sophisticated voters.
The first was, what I am gathering, is an old LMN Warhorse: Sex, Lies, & Obsession (get it?- who's idea was that, the title? Hamlin?) Starring (& produced by) Harry Hamlin and co-starring Hamlin's real-life wife, Lisa Rinna, it concerns a marriage falling apart due to Hamlin's relentless, tortuous sex addiction. Hamlin had an affair, you see, but all was forgiven as long as he truly dumped the chick and was a good dad from now on. He's a legit suburban professional, coaches his youngest child's hockey team and is a doctor of some sort. Rinna is near unbearable to watch due to the lip job she had (I assume) for the role, or perhaps she felt she had to compete w/ Hamlin's Jagger-like lips of his own.
The best scenes are when Rinna discovers Hamlin's secret apartment where all the lube, handcuffs, mags ("Men's magazines," Hamlin calls them- they're not back-issues of Esquire), porn tapes, etc, ... Her discovery is shot through a milky filter, hand-held, mostly from underneath. Spooky. The other great bit is Hamlin slapping his jacket in childish frustration as he flees his first therapy session. V good stuff. This LMN Hall-of-Famer gets a MA rating and a sweep of the sub-ratings: DLSV (though I am a little skeptical of the V rating.)
The Obsession gets a 14 (or PG) rating with just DV sub-ratings (if it had them at all.) This was much better than Sex, Lies, & Obsession. It stars one of my all-time faves, Daphne Zuniga, a local girl, born in Berkeley and grew up in Walnut Creek.
It is about two obsessions actually, only one of which I can speak of here: Zuniga's daughter is obsessed with becoming the finest ballerina in the History of Humans. But her mentor and stern taskmaster teacher has vanished, 'a family emergency', all right before her absolutely huge, real important, massive big deal audition for some school or what-not. The daughter, played by Canadian actress, Elise Gatien, already has enough on her mind. Zuniga is recently divorced, Dad has run off with some floozy & Gatien resents Zuniga for that.
Luckily, the taskmaster has a friend who can train Gatien for the really big-deal audition. He's a hunk, natch. Zuniga starts to get a thing for the hunk, Gatien feels a little icky about that but Zuniga takes it real slow, and, ...
Look, there is a lot of dancing in this film. We get to see Gatien's audition piece about a million times. If we are going to have to sit through that much ballet, you would think they would have hired a Canadian (cheap & unknown) who could actually dance. You would think they would have even hired a pretty actual dancer over a pretty actual actor. Ms Gatien, god bless her, cannot act or dance. (She is pretty, though.) Ballet is all about elegance, lightness of touch, and (seemingly) effortless grace. Gatien's audition piece (did I mention we see it about a million times) is slow, heavy, labored, and frightfully dull.
This def belongs in the LMN Hall-of-Fame and I hope they show it again soon because I fell asleep and didn't see the end.
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