This Weekend’s Film Festival - Cinematic Eccentrics

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.

What a better way to start off a lineup of cinematic eccentrics than with Jimmy Stewart's Elwood P. Dowd in HARVEY. This kind eccentric introduces everyone he meets to his best friend — a 6-foot rabbit named Harvey. Different people have different reactions to Harvey. Many of Elwood's sister Veta's snooty friends think he's crazy, but the average Joes he befriends at the bar think he's a humble soul. Bewildered, Veta tries to institutionalize Elwood, but the doctors, at first, find his calm ways far saner than her outbursts of emotion. As I said in my original review, "this fantasy comedy makes one question what society deems acceptable behavior." Elwood lives by the idea that a person can be oh so smart or oh so pleasant, and he recommends pleasant. Based on how he changes people's lives for the better, it's clear that it's great advice.

Like Stewart in HARVEY, AUNTIE MAME rests on the shoulders of a great performance. Rosalind Russell is magnificent as the worldly Mame, a New York party girl who takes in her brother's son after he passes. But Mame's brother didn't completely trust his crazy sister and sets up his son Patrick's trust with the conservative bank run by Dwight Babcock (Fred Clark). Mame is flamboyant and can't sit still for a moment. Her progressive ways of looking at the world help shape Patrick's personality. Some of her ideals would still turn heads today. But she is a bit disappointed when Patrick grows up wanting to marry a girl from a "top-drawer" family of bigots. As I said in my original review, "Funny and frolicking, this Oscar-nominated Best Picture is a grand tale that whips you up in the world of Auntie Mame and carries you along for a fun world wind ride."

THE AVIATOR is Martin Scorsese's fitting tribute to Howard Hughes, whose later life phobias have overshadowed his legacy of beginning an innovator in film and flight. In an Oscar-nominated performance, Leonardo DiCaprio shines as the brilliant golden boy who sees his mental hang-ups creeping up on him, but is powerless to overcome them. In the meantime, he risked it all in doing what he wanted whether it was to push the spectacle of cinema with aerial combat or change the way commuter air travel was done. Hughes found a kindred spirit in the equally eccentric Katharine Hepburn, played in an Oscar-winning performance by Cate Blanchett. The two understand how their peculiarities have helped and hindered them, and they share a mutual love for adventure. But what brings them together, sadly, is what tears them apart. As I said in my original review, "The film amazingly deals with the issue of the thin line between genius and madness." Hughes' eccentricities made him famous and the richest man in the world, but they also brought him down in the process.

The cult documentary GREY GARDENS came about when directors Albert and David Maysles were working on a documentary about Jacqueline Onassis and her sister Lee Radzwill. When the socialite sisters' desire for the film died, the Maysles Brothers went back to their aunt and niece and asked to make a film about them. Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter "Little" Edith Bouvier Beale lived in a crumbling mansion where raccoon and cats roamed the trash filled halls. As I said in my original review, "The filmmakers make this a straight character study… However, many themes still come to mind — mother/daughter dynamics, the freedom to live by your own standards and the contrast between the privileged and the poor." They fancy themselves artist. They're completely dependent on each other. They're friends and fall guys for failed dreams and lost glamour. They're complete originals.

The HBO fictional film, GREY GARDENS, serves as a nice prequel to the Maysles' doc. Lead by great performances from Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore, as mother and daughter, respectively, the story looks into how the two socialites went from living the high-life to living in squalor. "Little" Edie always danced to a different beat and seemed determined to succeed. But her mother and a dose of heartbreak seemed to quickly cripple her self-confidence. Her crazy artistic temperament was accepted by her mother unconditionally, so it was easy to hole herself up at Grey Gardens and pretend to have fame on the horizon. For Edith, she could not be alone and was willing to tank her daughter's dreams to have someone take care of her. As I said in my original review, "Their lives are like a strange sociological experiment were the privileged are left in the woods to fend for themselves. It’s an ugly sight."

To meet these unique cinematic eccentrics just head to the local videostore, update the Netflix queue, visit HelloMovies.com to see where the films are streaming, check out Zap2It.com for TV listings, or help support the site by buying the films on DVD or Blu-ray at the links below.