Heroes and the Manchurian Candidate

[bitterfig]

Over the past month or so I’ve been getting quasi-obsessed with the television show Heroes. I watched Season 1 (very good) and Season 2 (very bad) on DVD and I’ve also been watching the current Season, 4.

Comments

[lawless523]

The Manchurian Candidate is a great movie, isn't it?

I think books will always be able to go places film can't as easily. A book can include or imply sex that a movie has to depict. Your own imagination won't assault you with something you can't take but a film can; also, I suppose it seems more real when you can see it rather than imagine it. That's why written smut is less likely to be attacked than pictorial smut.

[bitterfig]

I love the original Manchurian Candidate, not only is it a really well made film but becasue I grew up with a mother who never missed an episode of Murder She Wrote watching a manipulative, power hungry, incestuous Angela Lansbury is like Christmas for me.

[lawless523]

Hee! I watched Murder She Wrote too. btw, I think at the time Manchurian Candidate was made, she was not that much older than the actor who played her son.

Angela Lansbury also originated the role of Sweeney Todd's accomplice (Mrs. something beginning with L) on Broadway. She's had a varied career!

[bitterfig]

You speak of Mrs. Lovetts (I have an icon of her from the movie). Last year I was quasi-obsessed with Sweeney Todd and I downloaded copies of the cast album with both Angela Lansberry and Patti Lupone who's a big musical theater favorite of mine (she originated the role of Evita.) I've seen Angela Lansberry (so as my mother calls her "Jessica") in a couple really good classic films including Gaslight with Ingrid Bergman and the 1940's version of Picture of Dorian Gray.

[chelseagirl]

Lansbury was only a year older than Laurence Harvey, despite playing his mother, which definitely added to the incestuous frisson.

[bitterfig]

I wonder if they cast the part like that to escalate the sexual tension of if it was just Hollywood being Hollywood and assuming that women past a certain age are automatically mother material (a good example of this is Sally Fields as Tom Hanks mother in Forrest Gump).

[chelseagirl]

I suspect their reasoning was more the latter, but the former was definitely a side effect . . .

[bitterfig]

There is a lot of sexual tension between Harvey and Lansbury, I think part of it is that he hates her so much (I love the way he covers his ears when she talks...)