Some more movies for the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
Jun 05 '02
The Bottom Line Divine some more secrets from the South!
If the book or movie of Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood struck a major chord with you, it's time for you and your friends to rent the following Southern-fried flicks and spend the weekend with the blender-fender-benders of your choice.
The Sandra Bullock Film Festival: I don't know who appointed Ms. Bullock to be the modern-day Scarlett O'Hara, but much of her filmography seems devoted to this theme. In A Time to Kill (1996), she's an aide to a Southern lawyer. In Hope Floats (1998), she's a cuckolded mom who moves with her daughter back to Texas to be closer to her own nosy mother. And Forces of Nature (1999) whirl her and Ben Affleck to Savannah, Georgia. Let's just give Bullock a city key to Atlanta and be done with it.
Terms of Endearment (1983): Talk about a warring mother and daughter! Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger pull out every stop short of hand-to-hand combat (movie legend says the same atmosphere prevailed on the set), and in the end, there's still not a dry eye in the house.
Steel Magnolias (1989): The perennial play about the inhabitants of a Southern beauty parlor, where the woman savor their conversations like fried chicken, was turned into an equally popular and funny movie. (And the film closes with a superb sight gag that couldn't possibly have been done on stage.)
Fried Green Tomatoes (1991): Another Southern-novel-turned-movie, this one sports the great Kathy Bates as a doormat who is moved to assert herself after hearing the picaresque stories of a lively nursing-home resident (Jessica Tandy). Unlike Divine Secrets' Big Revelation, the same plot device here is a real firecracker. And the parking-lot scene satisfied a lot of revenge impulses in movie audiences.
Ruby in Paradise (1993): This movie, directed by Florida veteran Victor Nunez, put Ashley Judd on the map, as she played a woman who leaves her Tennessee home for a new life in Panama City. How you can get more Southern than that?
Primary Colors (1998): Oh, here's how--the Bill Clinton presidential run! Granted, John Travolta and Emma Thompson aren't terribly authentic as Southerners, but with Kathy Bates, Larry Hagman, and Billy Bob Thornton on hand, who notices?
And never mind themes--have you noticed how many of the same actresses turn up over and over in these movies? It's only a matter of time before Broadway rounds up Bullock, Judd, Bates, and MacLaine for Divine Secrets: The Musical!
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