With the HBO movie GREY GARDENS arriving on DVD, This Weekend’s Film Festival celebrates cinematic eccentrics. Cheery oddballs have been a staple of film from the start and these films embrace eccentrics that inspire. There’s the nicest man you’d ever meet with his giant rabbit. There’s a worldly woman who take in an orphan. There’s a real life eccentric who made innovations in film and aeronautics. Then there’s a double dose of Jackie O’s aunt and cousin.

Read the rest of this entry »

Check Out the Trailer

This fictional account of Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter “Little” Edie Bouvier Beale chronicles the aunt and cousin of Jackie O and their eccentric ways. For cult film fans, it serves as a fascinating prequel to the famed documentary of the same name. For all other viewers, it’s a unique look at the black sheep of a famous rich family and as they went from lavish socialites to living in a dilapidated mansion where raccoons lived off piles of trash.

“Little” Edie (Drew Barrymore, E.T.) is a strange bird, who fancies herself a singer and a dancer. Her mother Edith (Jessica Lange, BLUE SKY), a singer herself, advises her daughter to marry a man who provides her with a long leash so that she can truly be free. Edith lives the high life with her music man lover George “Gould” Strong (Malcolm Gets, TV’s CAROLINE IN THE CITY), while her husband Phelan (Ken Howard, MICHAEL CLAYTON) pays the bills. But when he gets fed up with her, he cuts her allowance and moves out. Edie isn’t interested in marriage and moves to NYC to be on Broadway and starts an affair with the married Secretary of the Interior Julius Krug (Daniel Baldwin, JOHN CARPENTER’S VAMPIRES).
Read the rest of this entry »

Check Out the Trailer

Based on Mary Chase’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, this fantasy comedy makes one question what society deems acceptable behavior. James Stewart performance as Elwood P. Dowd is just one of his iconic parts, bringing a joyous level of kindness. Josephine Hull (ARSENIC AND OLD LACE) won an Oscar for performance as Elwood’s distraught sister Veta Louise Simmons. Would you be distraught if your brother introduced everyone he meets to an invisible, six-foot-tall rabbit named Harvey?

Elwood P. Dowd might be the nicest man who ever lived. He wants to invite every person he meets over for dinner or out for drinks. Veta’s distinguished circle of friends looks at her brother oddly. Veta’s daughter Myrtle Mae (Victoria Horne, THE GHOST AND MR. MUIR) has lost complete faith that, with her uncle around, she’ll ever find a nice man. Others like Cracker the bartender (Dick Wessel, FATHER OF THE BRIDE) accept Elwood and Harvey as they are. But Veta doesn’t want to befriend bartenders and ex-cons like her brother, so she decides to have him institutionalized. However, her frantic behavior and Elwood’s calm demeanor make one wonder which one of them should be institutionalized.
Read the rest of this entry »