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Film – Page 3 – Ennis Smith

Film

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Criticals, Current Affairs, Film, Short Cuts

More Oscar Bait!

February 10, 2013

Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell, director). Two zanies meet cute, overcome a boatload of wacky complications to find love. The setup sounds like a plot spun from the delicious mind of a Preston Sturges or Howard Hawks. Russell, returning to the brand of comedy he minted in such films as Spanking the Monkey…

Film

Oscar Bait!

January 21, 2013

In Hollywood no one can hear you scream: that thought went through my head as I watched Rebecca Miller on the red carpet parade preceding last Sunday’s Golden Globes. Miller is Mrs. Daniel Day-Lewis; she’s also a fine film director, so it was a touch dispiriting to see her introduced as merely “the wife” (okay,…

Current Affairs, Dance, Film, Music, My back pages, Theater, Vespers

Why my heart doesn’t go dancing

April 28, 2012

Is April the kindest, or the cruelest month? The party line affirms the first: it’s the time of rebirth when saucer magnolias pop their tragic blooms, crocuses and tulips sprout, warm weather hints and Easter descends, toting tales of resurrection. I’m not feeling it, which makes me wonder if I ever have. Chocolate bunnies excepted,…

Film, Music, My back pages, Vespers

Dory Previn, Lyricist, 1925-2012

February 16, 2012

All ten year-old tragedians need a soundtrack. Mine was the Theme from Valley of the Dolls, that heartbreaking ballad from the film that starred Barbara Parkins, Sharon Tate and Patty Duke. I had no idea that the song was meant to underscore the film heroine’s descent into pill addiction (I thought Parkins, Tate and…

Current Affairs, Film, Music, My back pages, Vespers, video

Where do broken hearts go: Whitney Houston 1963-2012

February 12, 2012

I heard the news last night before bed, and forgot about it. Then I woke up too early and, as I sat in front of the TV, the news scroll reminded me. Still it’s vague, I’m in denial until I walk down to my building’s lobby to pick up our Sunday Times. A tenant on…

Current Affairs, Dance, Film, Race, Television, Theater, Vespers

Firsts: Don Cornelius 1936-2012, Camilla Williams 1919-2012, Ben Gazzara 1930-2012

February 6, 2012

You turned on the TV on Saturday afternoon and there he was, the envy of every black boy on the block. It was his high style and aspirational exhortations that drew us each week, mirrored more youthfully by the Soul Train dancers, whose moves we copied for use on our own dance floors: street corners,…

Art, Film, Television, Theater, Vespers, video

James Farentino 1938-2012; Nicol Williamson 1936-2012; Eiko Ishioka 1938-2012

January 27, 2012

Farentino was lethal: a handsome actor whose performances ranged from Happy in Lee J. Cobb’s Death of a Salesman (later onstage as Biff to George C. Scott’s Willie) to Juan Peron in the Faye Dunaway telefilm “Evita Peron.” My favorite: his hotheaded lawyer in TV’s The Bold Ones. The Scotsman Williamson was a pretty decent…

Criticals, Current Affairs, Film, Politics, Short Cuts, Theater

Shortcuts: Coriolanus

January 13, 2012

Fiennes, with Vanessa Redgrave Was it accidental, or did Ralph Fiennes anticipate the cries of the rabble? At the beginning of Coriolanus, Fiennes’ adaptation of Shakespeare’s parabolic tale of a war hero who, prodded by minions and his politic/duty-bound matriarch (Vanessa Redgrave, better than ever, if that’s possible) loses the courage of his convictions…

Film, My back pages, Television, Theater, Vespers

Alan Sues, Comic Actor 1926-2011

December 4, 2011

There was Liberace, Paul Lynde, Charles Nelson Reilly and on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In, Alan Sues. What a quartet of flamboyant personalities who blazed on prime time when I was coming of age. In the 70s their very names were punchlines, code for every euphemism of that other f-word even as the longhaired hippies and…

Film, Gay, Literature, Music, Vespers

Ken Russell, Film Director 1927-2011

November 28, 2011

The Music Lovers. Women in Love. The Devils. The Boyfriend. Tommy. Altered States. Could anyone combine the prurient and the literary, the highbrow and low rent more effectively than Ken Russell? His best films actually look better now than when they were made; the worst (Lizstomania, Gothic, The Lair of the White Worm) remain loopy…