Thieves Like Us, LIttle Women, Holiday Affair

LITTLE WOMEN (MUSICAL).  Big voices, big dreams.  Returning to live theater in Bloomington after 2 years and the orchestra never sounded better.  A very talented cast last night for the musical version of  the 1933 RKO Radio film, the most successful in the studio’s history.  The musical has its moments but less would have been more; a bit long.  

GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK.  Very parallel  times; now and the Fifties when demagogue Sen. Joseph McCarthy smeared reputations of law abiding citizens with big red lies.  Edward R. Murrow was nationally respected journalist and famous WW2 war reporter (London Blitz).  He was a voice of reason when we needed one.  Who do we have now? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0433383/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

CINEMA PARADISO.  Ennio Morricone’s haunting theme lingers long after the movie ends.  In the tradition of Italy’s great filmmakers, Giuseppe Tormatore has borrowed from his memories of growing up in post-war rural Italy where the local movie theater was the community’s nucleus.  Not a foreign thought if you grew up with the Terrace Theater in Robbinsdale to see it demolished to make way for an ugly HyVee grocery store a few years ago. Saw it at the Ebert film festival in Champaign Urbana. (1989 Academy Award winner, best foreign language film, HBO Video) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095765/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

TICK TICK BOOM.  Wake up and shake the nation — says writer Jonathon Larson who is portrayed by Andrew Garfield in this new film based on Larson’s autobiography.  Kudos to lin-manual Miranda who produced and directed this film that casts a magic spell.  After seeing this I watched “Chorus Line” with a greater appreciation for theater. Larson wrote “Rent,” a musical of the AIDS epidemic. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/tick-tick-boom-movie-review-2021

THIEVES LIKE US.  Adapted from the novel of the same name and a remake of the 1948 RKO classic.  Very moody, dreamy version the remake and the actors Keith Carradine and Shelly Duvall look more emaciated than Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell in the original.  But the remake is a half hour longer to dramatize the Depression’s devastation on lives, while the original is more apt to keep our interest.  In a few days we will once again compare classic films with remakes when the big screen debuts “West Side Story” and “Nightmare Alley.”  The actors in the former may resemble teenagers compared to those in the original West Side Story.  It will be challenging to improve on the Tyrone Power original “Nightmare Alley.”  “Little Women” has been remade several times, but only the 1933 and 1994 versions are listed in the NYT bool of 1,000 essential films.

HOLIDAY AFFAIR.  A favorite holiday movie going back to 1949 when cousin Stan and I saw it at the Capitol Theater in Walla Walla.  In post-war New York a grieving war widow struggles to support her cute toothless son by working as a comparison shopper wherein she meets department store clerk Robert Mitchum who is at post-war loose ends.  RKO boss Howard Hughes thought this film would rehabilitate Mitchum’s image after his bust for weed, but it bombed badly at the box office.  It’s a December favorite on cable’s TCM channel.  Gordon Gebbert, who plays the kid, became a professor at Columbia University after he no longer was a cute kid.   A train for Christmas is the theme that binds the film with the ending on a crowded train on New Year’s Eve.