Category Archives: Reviews

Theater Thursday 05/01/08: A Hatful of Rain

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Steve McQueen made his debut on Broadway in 1955, by replacing Ben Gazzara in the play A Hatful of Rain. This is probably the first time that the issue of drug addiction is handled on stage or screen. In 1951 a young Steve McQueen was contemplating entering ’tile setting school’ (through the assistance provided to him under the GI bill), but his plans took a change of direction when a girl he was dating took him to ‘The Neighbourhood Playhouse’, one of New York’s premier … Continue reading →

Romeo and Juliet (1968)

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Romeo and Juliet (1968) is Florentine director Franco Zeffirelli’s beautiful modern interpretation of Shakespeare’s enduring, classic yet tragic love story of “star-crossed lovers.” Filmed on location in Italy, it was the most commercially successful Shakespeare film and its most entertaining, refreshing and natural rendition – a passionate celebration of young love. The film won four Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Director, Cinematography (Pasqualino De Santis), and Costume Design (Danilo Donati), winning two Oscars – Best Cinematography and Costume Design. Nino Rota’s evocative musical score, … Continue reading →

Miracle on 34th Street

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Miracle on 34th Street (also titled The Big Heart in the UK) is a 1947 film written by Valentine Davies, directed by George Seaton, and starring Maureen O’Hara, John Payne, Edmund Gwenn, and Natalie Wood. The film won Academy Awards  for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Edmund Gwenn), Best Writing, Original Story  (Valentine Davies) and Best Writing, Screenplay. It was also nominated for Best Picture, losing to Gentleman’s Agreement.  It was ranked ninth by the American Film Institute on its list of America’s most … Continue reading →

Theater Thursday: Equus

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Equus is a play by Peter Shaffer written in 1973, telling the story of a psychiatrist  who attempts to treat a young man who has a pathological religious/sexual fascination with horses. Shaffer was inspired to write Equus when he heard of a crime involving a teenage boy who blinded six horses. He set out to construct a fictional account of what might have caused the incident, without knowing any of the details of the crime. The play is essentially a detective story, with the psychiatrist … Continue reading →

Theater Thursday: Midnight Cowboy (1969)

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Midnight Cowboy is an Academy Award-winning 1969 drama film based on the 1965 novel of the same name by James Leo Herlihy. It was written by Waldo Salt, directed by John Schlesinger. and stars Dustin Hoffman and then-newcomer Jon Voight in the title role.  The film follows the story of a young Texas named Joe Buck (Jon Voight), who works washing dishes in a seedy restaurant. He wishes to leave the restaurant, declaring to a workmate, “What the hell have I got to sit around … Continue reading →

Theater Thursday: Airplane!

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Airplane! is anAmerican comedy film, first released on 27 June 1980, produced, directed, and written by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams,and Jerry Zucker. Airplane! starredRobert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Lorna Petterson. For release in Australia, Japan and the Philippines, Airplane! was re-titled as Flying High. Airplane! is a spoof of the disaster movie genre. It is unique among film parodies in that Airplane! is a virtual remake of the 1957 Canadian airplane disaster movie Zero Hour. … Continue reading →

Theater Thursday 02/24/08: Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’

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The Birds is a 1963 horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, loosely based on the short story, The Birds by Daphne du Maurier. The film’s innovative special effects, soundtrack, and apocalyptic theme influenced later “revenge of nature” disaster films. Unlike most other films of its era, The Birds did not have a music score or an ending in the conventional sense.   Beautiful and young Melanie Daniels (“Tippi” Hedren), a wealthy socialite whose father is the proprietor of a large newspaper, visits a SanFrancisco pet shop … Continue reading →

Theater Thursday: A Room With A View

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A Room with a View is a 1986 Academy Award-winning feature film, with a screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. The film was directed by James Ivory and produced byIsmail Merchant. The film is based upon the novel, A Room with a View by E.M. Forster and stars Maggie Smith (Charlotte Bartlett), Helena Bonham Carter (Lucy Honeychurch), Denholm Elliott (Mr. Emerson), Julian Sands (George Emerson), Simon Callow (Mr. Beebe), Judi Dench (Miss Eleanor Lavish), Daniel Day-Lewis (Cecil Vyse), and Rupert Graves (Freddy Honeychurch). The film tells … Continue reading →

The Children’s Hour

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The Children’s Hour was originally a stage play in 1934 written by Lillian Hellman. It was a drama set in an all-girls boarding school run by two women, Karen Wright and Martha Dobie. An angry student, Mary Tilford, runs away from the school and to avoid being sent back, she tells her grandmother that the two headmistresses are having a lesbian affair. The accusation proceeds to destroy the women’s careers, relationships and lives. The play is based on the following incident. In 1810 in Edinburgh, … Continue reading →

Theater Thursday: The Joy Luck Club

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The Joy Luck Club was one of my favorite movies of the nineties.After the successful independent features about Chinese-American life DIM SUM and EAT A BOWL OF TEA, director Wayne Wang took on the daunting task of adapting Amy Tan’s sprawling, multigenerational best-seller THE JOY LUCK CLUB. This movie was made in 1993. After her mother’s death, June (Ming-Na Wen) is asked to take her place in a mahjong club. The three other members, like her mother, were all born in China before the 1949 … Continue reading →