Posted on May 8, 2011 at 11:08 am
I’ve written about my favorite moms on television and my favorite movie moms. But the best movie to share on Mother’s Day is the one your mother picks because she loves it. My best to all the mothers out there and all who love them.
Posted on April 23, 2011 at 12:29 pm
Don’t start with me about who wrote Shakespeare. Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare and today is his birthday. Celebrate with some of the many, many movie versions of, about, or inspired by his plays. Here are some of my favorites:
1. The Taming of the Shrew Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton bring their legendary combustible chemistry to this rambunctious version of Shakespeare’s most famous battle of the sexes. For an extra treat, pair it with the Cole Porter musical it inspired, Kiss Me Kate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9Cm6CU5Kc42. Romeo + Juliet Baz Lurhmann’s dazzling version of one of the world’s great tragic love stories is a treat for the eyes, ears, and soul. For an extra treat, pair it with the more traditional version directed by Franco Zeffirelli.
3. Shakespeare In Love This best-picture and best-actress Oscar winner is a highly fictionalized account of the writing of “Romeo and Juliet,” with the magnificent Judi Dench as Queen Elizabeth and a brilliantly witty script by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard. For an extra treat, try to catch a performance of A Cry of Players, a play about the young Shakespeare by the author of “The Miracle Worker.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUIemfeB_uI4. Henry V There is the thrill of the St. Crispian’s Day speech. There is the heart-wrenching parting with the old friends who cannot be a part of the young king’s new life. But for me, the greatness of this play is that in the midst of all of the drama, Shakespeare inserts a scene of a young French princess trying to learn English so she can understand the man who is walloping her countrymen — and makes it work. For an extra treat, compare it to the Laurence Olivier version, very much the product of its WWII era.
5. The Tempest My own favorite of Shakespeare’s plays is thrilling with Helen Mirren as Prospera, a wizard who calls on all her powers of enchantment to provide a happy ending for her daughter and justice for herself. For an extra treat, try the space-age adaptation, Forbidden Planet.
Posted on April 19, 2011 at 9:59 pm
Reposting — Hag Sameach! Passover is not just about remembering the story of the Exodus from Egypt. It is about telling the story. Thousands of years before people talked about “learning styles,” the Seder included many different ways of telling the story, so that everyone would be included, and everyone would feel the power of the journey toward freedom. The Haggadah makes the story come alive through taste, smell, and touch as well as sight and hearing, and through the example of the four sons it presents the story to the wise, the simple, the skeptic, and most especially to the young — one of the highlights of each Seder is when the youngest person present asks the traditional four questions, beginning with “Why is this night different from all other nights?”If they had known about movies back in the time of Moses, they would have included that form of story-telling, too. For younger children, The Prince of Egypt and Joseph – King of Dreams
Posted on April 16, 2011 at 10:31 am
And be sure to see Robert Downey, Jr.’s brilliant performance in “Chaplin.”
I also recommend Stephen Weissman’s superb biography, Chaplin: A Life
Posted on April 14, 2011 at 3:56 pm
In honor of this week’s release of “Rio,” an animated film set in Brazil, put on some samba music and think about some of these Brazilian-flavored films for your Netflix queue. (No, I am not including the superb film actually called “Brazil” because it doesn’t actually have anything to do with the country.)
1. Flying Down to Rio Filmed on an obvious back-lot very far from its Brazilian setting, this film is best remembered for the first on-screen teaming of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and a dance number featuring girls on the wings of airplanes.
2. Next Stop Wonderland This smart indie romantic comedy is set in the Boston area and no one goes to Brazil. But it is the story of a nurse played by Hope Davis who loves Brazilian music and it has a deliciously romantic samba soundtrack.
3. Saludos Amigos/Three Caballeros
4. Walt & El Grupo
5. Notorious
Also: “Nancy Goes to Rio,” “City of God,” “Fitzcarraldo,” and “Black Orpheus”
And be on the lookout for the upcoming “The Brazilian Job,” the sequel to “The Italian Job.”
