Hollywood Watch - Part 2

HBO and director Todd Haynes is remaking one of our all-time favorite movies, "Mildred Pierce", into a 5 part mini-series. We haven't heard a lot about the production other than the fact that Kate Winslet will star in the Joan Crawford title role.

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(joan crawford and ann blythe)

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Crawford won her only Best Actress Oscar for this classic 1945 story of a single mother struggling to make a living for her daughter while simultaneously trying to win her approval. It was a classic

"women's picture", fraught with love, romance, cheating, backstabbing and murder all done in a style which walked the tight rope between high drama and high camp.

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(joan crawford as "mildred pierce")

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There were plenty of juicy roles in the original film, both for men and women, but the biggest question for the remake at this point has to be, who will play Ann Blythe's spoiled, ultra-bitch of a daughter, Veda Pierce? We're guessing that every young actress in Hollywood with half a brain is fighting for that role. And, of course, who will play Lottie, Mildred's maid, played in the original by Butterfly McQueen, who shot to fame a few years earlier playing Prissy in Gone With The Wind.

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(butterfly mcqueen and joan crawford)

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Look, there's no way they're going to top the original; "Mildred Pierce" was a legendary, iconic movie, and sadly, that type of movie will never come this way again. However, if anyone can update it and do it in an entertaining way, we think that director Todd Haynes can, who created a minor masterpiece in 2002 with another "Douglas Sirk-inspired" women's film, "Far From Heaven".