Father’s Little Dividend directed by Vincente Minnelli was the 1952 Winner WGA Award (Screen)for Best Written American Comedy, given by the Writers’ Guild, and it was also the 1951 Nominee for The Directors’ Guild Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures, but otherwise it is not as if you must look this seventy four years old feature and see it, I was amused to think that neither is this note so marvelous, indeed, I should try and put in lines only of forgotten books and films, except I invite you to visit my blog and/or YouTube channel, where I have more than five thousand notes on films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and other pages, plus another five thousand reviews on magnum opera from The Greatest Books of All Time and other sites https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html maybe you have something to say

 

Father’s Little Dividend directed by Vincente Minnelli was the 1952 Winner WGA Award (Screen)for Best Written American Comedy, given by the Writers’ Guild, and it was also the 1951 Nominee for The Directors’ Guild Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures, but otherwise it is not as if you must look this seventy four years old feature and see it, I was amused to think that neither is this note so marvelous, indeed, I should try and put in lines only of forgotten books and films, except I invite you to visit my blog and/or YouTube channel, where I have more than five thousand notes on films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and other pages, plus another five thousand reviews on magnum opera from The Greatest Books of All Time and other sites https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html maybe you have something to say

 

 

7 out of 10

 

Vincente Minnelli was a fabulous film maker, even if Father’s Little Dividend is not as great as some of his other oeuvres, such as The Bad and The Beautiful https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/05/the-bad-and-beautiful-written-by.html - which is not to say that this is a failure, there are some laughs, and even lessons to learn

 

Nevertheless, the passing of time means that we would not see things the same way as the characters in the motion picture, Spencer Tracy, once one of the best thespians, is playing the role of Stanley Banks – the voice of Seinfeld would say that ‘these actors have nothing in their head, they are told say what we told you to say and they get awards’

Stanley Banks was The Father of The Bride https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/12/father-of-bride-written-with-four.html in what would be a prequel (Father of The Bride was more successful, and it was re-made with Steve Martin in the lead) when he was unhappy that this unworthy fellow is taking away his beloved daughter

 

Now part of the fun comes from the fact that Father helps the son in law navigate some difficulties, such as when Kay aka Elizabeth Taylor decides she does not want to see her husband, Buckley, ever again, so she leaves him, and comes to stay with her mother and Father, albeit, or in part because she is going to have this baby

Elizabeth Taylor has one of the best performances I have seen in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/06/whos-afraid-of-virginia-woolf-by-edward.html which two contrasting characters, Kay is rather innocent, naïve, while Martha is ruthless, unhappy with her maturity, bored

 

Kay Dunstan and her spouse are going to have a baby, allegedly a big reason for jubilation, except we have the phenomenon called Hedonic Adaptation – when teenagers leave their homes, for university or other destinations, studies have shown that their parents experience a happiness boost, if not a large one, still, a surprise

Harvard Professor Daniel Gilbert has written a psychology classic – Stumbling on Happiness https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/stumbling-on-happiness-by-david-gilbert.html what makes us happy or gloomy is not what we think, we think we will be happy if we were to move on an island in the Pacific, Caribbean

 

Or maybe California, but once we do that, we experience Hedonic Adaptation, we can also feel the effects of the Coolidge or The Honeymoon Effects, which may affect Kay and her husband to some degree, although for the best diagnosis we should consult the ultimate expert on relationships, John Gottman

He wrote The Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-seven-principles-of-making-marriage.html but he was also known for being able to say if a couple would stay together after hearing only a few minutes of interaction – Malcolm Gladwell included this in his book Blink

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – I am on Goodreads as Realini Ionescu, at least for the moment, if I keep on expressing my views on Orange Woland aka TACO, it may be a short-lived presence

Also, maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the benefits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

Comentarii

Trimiteți un comentariu

Postări populare de pe acest blog

In The Fade aka Auf Dem Nichts, written by Hark Bohm and Fatih Akin

  In The Fade aka Auf Dem Nichts, written by Hark Bohm and Fatih Akin In The Fade has won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film, although in this cinephile's opinion, Una Mujer Fantastica- which has won the Oscar in the same category- Nelyubov or The Square would have been better choices. Having said that, Auf Dem Nichts is a very good, significant, remarkable feature, that attracts attention to violence against minorities, in this case the Kurdish community in Germany. It is therefore not one sided, we do not have only Muslim lunatics killing innocent "infidels", but also some extreme Europeans murdering the other side. The problem is that, unacceptable, horrifying and vile as these acts are, it appears that the overwhelming majority of atrocities are committed by zealots acting in the name of Islam- radical and unrepresentative as they are for this supposedly peaceful faith, although there are passages in its holy book that seem to insist on a violent jihad and ultimat...
Citiți mai multe

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice written by Larry Tucker and Paul Mazursky, directed by the latter is included on The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made list, and Variety has published recently its Top 100 Comedies – or else, I have learned about this lately – where this feature has a top spot, as far as I remember it is higher that the 50th spot – speaking of these pages, you have access to my own more than five thousand notes on films from these and other compilations, together with another five thousand reviews on magnum opera from The Greatest Books of All Time and other sites on my blog and You Tube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html you may even subscribe, if you wish

Imagine
  Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice written by Larry Tucker and Paul Mazursky, directed by the latter is included on The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made list, and Variety has published recently its Top 100 Comedies – or else, I have learned about this lately – where this feature has a top spot, as far as I remember it is higher that the 50 th spot – speaking of these pages, you have access to my own more than five thousand notes on films from these and other compilations, together with another five thousand reviews on magnum opera from The Greatest Books of All Time and other sites on my blog and You Tube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html you may even subscribe, if you wish     9 out of 10   First a correction: I wrote above that this comedy is within the first fifty of Variety’s Top 100, I just saw that it is in fact ranked 90 th , I could have edited the above, but maybe this way I will re...
Citiți mai multe