Gideon58's Reviews

All the Fine Young Cannibals
1960's All the Fine Young Cannibals is an over-the-top melodrama that starts off promisingly, but gets dumber and dumber as the story progresses.

The story starts off in rural Texas, where we meet Sarah "Salome" Davis", a teenage Scarlett O'Hara, whose star-crossed romance with Chad Bixby (Robert Wagner) comes to an end when he gets her pregnant and can't support her. Salome hops a train and meets a handsome Yale college student named Tony McDowell (George Hamilton), moves on campus with him and convinces him the baby is his. Meanwhile, Chad's talent as a blues trumpeter is discovered by an alcoholic singer named Ruby Jones (Pearl Bailey), who decides to take him to New York where she's sure she can find work for him playing trumpet. Salome learns Chad is in New York and manipulates a reunion with Chad. Throw into the mix Tony's trampy sister, Catherine (Susan Kohner), who brings her own brand of bitchiness to this demented love triangle.

The primary culprit here is the convoluted screenplay by first time screenwriter Robert Thom, whose later credits would include Crazy Mama and Death Race 2000. The script never really makes clear what the relationship between Chad and Ruby is, because Ruby appears to have the hots for him in one scene and consider him an albatross around her neck the next. We're past the halfway point of the film when we realize that Tony thinks he is the father of Salome's baby, but the film lost this reviewer a few scenes earlier when Chad and Salome are finally reunited and the whole thing just goes by Tony, making him look dumb as a box of rocks.

The film does have some significance as the first film appearance from Hollywood supercouple Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood, a few years after they had started dating IRL. The chemistry is definitely there...their first kiss in this movie practically burns a hole in the screen, too bad the rest of the movie just wasn't worthy of the future Mr. and Mrs. Wagner.

Hamilton tries to make us believe that his character isn't as stupid as he appears to be. Kohner, fresh off her Oscar-nominated performance in Imitation of Life is just as terrible in this film as she was in that one. Screen vets like Louise Beavers, Anne Seymour, and Mabel Albertson can be glimpsed in support, but the acting honors here really go to Pearl Bailey as Ruby Jones, a heartbreaking turn, which includes a powerhouse rendition of "God Bless the Child", but most of the movie is a melodramatic mess.

Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams
A quietly powerful performance from Joanne Woodward anchors a forgotten drama from 1973 called Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams.

Woodward plays Rita, the middle-aged wife of an eye doctor, who is sent into an emotional tailspin with the sudden death of her mother, forcing her to re-examine all the relationships in her life and her part in their extensive damage.

The sensitive screenplay is by Stewart Stern, who also wrote 1968's Rachel, Rachel, and the 1976 mini series Sybil, which both featured Woodward. The story is not complex, but Stern choses different styles in which to present to the viewer. Loved the opening scene which featured Rita on a plane getting ready to crash and trying to communicate to her fellow passengers, who are equally frightened about what's going on but are unable to communicate with Rita. This clearly establishes that what we are seeing is a dream sequence, establishing Rita as suicidal.

The movie also instantly establishes Rita's relationship with her mother, who awakens her with a phone call and Rita lies that she's been up for hours. We are given a brilliant false start with Rita's mom where she begins to experience pain, but it is a false start, making mom's real heart attack all the more startling. Rita's life suddenly explodes before us on the screen unfiltered, exploding at everyone around her, including her loving husband Harry (Martin Balsam). There is scene at the cemetery where Rita and her family are waiting for mom's body to be delivered that had my stomach in knots.

No cinematic trickery from director Gilbert Cates, just a simple character study of a woman on the edge. Woodward is splendid, as always, earning a third Oscar nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress, that she lost to Glenda Jackson for A Touch of Class, matched note for note by Balsam, as the sensitive Harry. Classic film legend Sylvia Sydney earned an Oscar nomination for Supporting Actress for her flashy ten-minute performance as Rita's mother. It's not for all tastes, but appointment viewing for Woodward fans.

The Tender Bar
Despite solid direction from Oscar winner George Clooney, 2021's The Tender Bar, is only about two thirds of the cinematic experience it was meant to be as the screenplay meanders a little too much before reaching a solid climax.

This is the story of a young boy named JR who is being raised by his single mom, who move sin with his grandfather after he and Mom are deserted by his father, a radio disc jockey only known as "the voice", who JR has never actually met. JR and his mom are taken in by the family, with JR getting special attention from his Uncle Charlie (Oscar winner Ben Affleck), who has taken JR under his wing, despite the fact that he hates his brother. JR flourishes under his new surrogate father as the both try to put their relationship with "the voice" behind them.

The screenplay William Monaghan (who makes a cameo appearance in the film) is based on the memoir of J.R. Moehringer, that establishes immediate sympathy for young JR as we realizes that this child has not only grown up without a father and that said father seems to have no remorse about it. One of the most fascinating scenes in the film is when JR's dad comes and picks him up for a ride, after promising to take him to a baseball game the previous day and standing the boy up. We're amazed at his lack of feeling about the boy during this scene which increases when we realize that "the voice" pretty much disappears from the boy's life for a lot of the remaining screentime.

The movie then flashes forward to JR's college years at Yale, where the movie begins to lose me. JR's years aren't as interesting as the first half of the film, including an underdeveloped romance with a black girl. The film bounces back for a strong finale, but the middle section definitely begins to sag in the center and slow the film down.

Clooney gets strong points for the 70's atmosphere he sets up in terms of settings and music, not to mention some strong performances. Affleck hasn't been this good since Hollywoodland and both Daniel Ranieri and Tye Sheridan score as the young and older JR. Clooney's work is impressive, but it's only about two thirds of a really good movie.

Ash Wednesday
1973's Ash Wednesday is a lavishly mounted soap opera that suffers from a skimpy screenplay and sluggish direction, but is still worth a look thanks to a Hollywood legend in the starring role.

This overheated melodrama stars the legendary Elizabeth Taylor as Barbara Sawyer, a wealthy Detroit housewife who has traveled all the way to Switzerland to have a facelift, thinking it will save her marriage to Mark (Henry Fonda). As she leaves the hospital, she moves to an elegant swiss hotel where she finds possible romance with two different men, but is in denial about the fact that Mark keeps delaying his plans to join her.

The screenplay by Jean-Claude Tramont, who directed the 1981 Gene Hackman-Barbra Streisand comedy All Night Long is very sketchy, especially the middle section of the film where Barbara has left the hospital and moves into the hotel. One of the men who is supposedly in love with her, David (Keith Baxter) comes bursting into her hospital room the day she is to be discharged and starts going through her wardrobe, telling her what she should keep and what she should give away. He comes off more like a gay best friend than a romantic interest. As for her "romance" with Erich (Helmet Berger) , it consists of a lot of heated looks across the room before jumping into bed without saying two words to each other.

The plastic surgery scenes were very interesting and a little hard to watch and Barbara's three meetings in the restaurant with Erich (Helmut Berger) were fun, especially the first one where Erich gets slapped by his girlfriend and the restaurant comes to a complete stop while Barbara and everyone stare at him. But by the time Barbara is visited by her daughter, we know exactly where this is going, even with anther 45 minutes of running time. I was amused by the photos of Taylor and Fonda in the opening credits which were obviously made up of photos of Taylor's private life with Fonda's head imposed and vice versa. Pretty sure the first couple of photos were from Taylor's wedding to Nicky Hilton.

Director Larry Peerce made a much stronger impression with his work on 1964's The Incident, he just seemed out of his element here. Taylor looks breathtaking here with strong assists from Edith Head and Maurice Jarre's lush music score. For hardcore Taylor fans only.

Sing 2
From the "If You Liked the First One" school of sequel making comes Sing 2, a splashy and brassy sequel to the surprise hit of 2016 that provides solid entertainment, despite an overly complex screenplay.

This 2021 animated musical pretty much begins where the first one left off. Koala Bear Buster Moon (voiced by Matthew McConaughey) is enjoying a modicum success with the musical animal stars he discovered in the first film, but has decided he wants to expand and approaches a theater producing fox named Jimmy Crystal (voiced by Bobby Cannavale) about producing an outer space musical that Buster has written. Crystal agrees as lonh as Buster can convince former rock and roll lion Clay Calloway (voiced by Bono) to appear in the show.

Buster, Rosita the Pig (voiced by Reese Witherspoon), Johnny the Ape (voiced by Taron Egerton), Ash the Porcupine (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), Meena the elephant (Tori Kelly), and Gunter the Pig (voiced by Nick Kroll) arrive at Mr. Crystal's theater and discover, among other things, that Johnny can't dance and must take a ballet class, a paralyzing fear of heights might cost Rosita her part, that Meena can't do a love scene with an arrogant bull (voiced by Eric Andre), and Mr. Crystal's spoiled brat daughter, Porsha (voiced by Halsey) wants Rosita's part in the show.

Director, screenwriter, and the voice of Miss Calloway, Garth Jennings, works very hard here not to just duplicate what we saw in the first film. Several characters from the first film don't appear for whatever reason. The only one I really missed was Mike the Mouse voiced by Seth McFarlane, but Buster's motivations didn't really fly with this reviewer. He had a nice successful theater going at the end of the first film and it didn't really make sense that he would want to go to this brand new theater where he would have to kow-tow to this wolf Mr. Crystal and give up all the creative control he had at his own theater.

If the truth be known, all of this went out of my head as, once again, Jennings has staged some of the most intoxicating and entertaining musical numbers created for an animated musical. From the opening "Let's Get Crazy" led by Egerton and Witherspoon", Egerton and Kelly's "There's Nothing Holding Me Back", Egerton's "A Sky Full of Stars", Bono and Johansson dueting on "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking for' and my personal favorite, Kelly and Pharrell Williams teaming up on "I Say a Little Prayer".

Jennings puts a lot of care into production values, with special nods to art direction and sound. There is also standout voice work from McConaughey, Witherspoon, Cannavale, and Chelsea Perretti as Crystal's secretary. There's a slow spot here and there, but solid entertainment for a sequel.

The Flintstones (1994)
The idea of a live action re-boot of the classic Hanna/Barbera cartoon series from the 60's probably seemed like a good idea on paper. However, other than some spectacular production values, this movie just didn't work for me.

After recreating the classic opening credit sequence of Fred sliding off the dinosaur and taking his family to the drive-in, the story starts with Barney thanking Fred for lending him money so that he can adopt Bamm-Bamm and swearing to pay Fred back. A sleazy junior executive at Fred's construction company named Cliff Vandercave offers an executive position to one of the construction workers if they can pass a test. Barney sees that Fred's answers are all wrong and in an attempt to pay him back, switches his test with Fred's and Fred gets the new job. What Fred nor Barney know is that the new position is just a front for an embezzling scheme and one of the first things Cliff makes Fred do is fire Barney.

I've loved The Flintstones ever since I was a kid and I really, really wanted to like this movie and I'm having a hard time pinpointing exactly what it is about the movie that doesn't work. Director Brian Levant (Jingle All the Way) does a superb job of establishing the look and period of the film...that stone-aged look with the contemporary sensibilities, including appliances that talk (though that is only utilized once here). Elaborate set pieces that look stone-age but have a contemporary feel loom throughout the movie, but it wasn't the settings and props made the cartoon series work, it was these four lead characters that endeared us to the show and that's where this show goes wrong.

First of all, Fred would never loan Barney money so that he could adopt a baby, which didn't happen in the original series. Second animated Barney never would have switched those tests because he was always sick of being in Fred's shadow anyway. I did believe the wealth of his new position going to Fred's head, but firing Barney and watching him and Betty live on the streets? The animated Fred never would have done that.

On the positive side, I can't think of a more perfect marriage of character and actor than Fred Flintstone and John Goodman. Rosie O'Donnell nails the Betty Rubble giggle and Kyle MacLachlan was an acceptable mustache-twirling villian. This film also marked the final feature film appearance of the iconic Elizabeth Taylor in an over the top turn as Fred's mother-in-law. The film is an impressive technical achievement, but it was the longest ninety minutes of my life.

Mass
Still trying to collect my thoughts after watching the breathtaking feature film debut as a director and screenwriter of an actor named Fran Kranz called Mass, a shattering and gut-wrenching piece of contemporary theater put on film that left this reviewer limp. Will try to review this without spoilers.

What is presented onscreen here is a meeting between two married couples/parents after a horrible, violent tragedy and trying to find some closure about it.

This 2021 motion picture was a rare film experience written directly for the screen that felt like live theater transferred to the screen due to the intimacy of the situation and Kranz' approach to letting the story unfold, which seemed to have a very personal connection to him and it's felt in every frame.

Kranz is very careful in providing an absolutely spine-tingling suspense in letting us know exactly what's going on. We're intrigued as a small church is preparing a room for some sort of meeting and a woman arrives on the scene to inspect the room and ensure that it is a proper setting for this meeting. She even asks for assurance that this meeting won't be disturbed by the choir rehearsal going on in the sanctuary. We know something very important is about to happen here and the venue is crucial. Even after the couples arrive, we are almost thirty-five minutes into the running time before the pieces of what is going on start to come together...very slowly.

As I watched the pain these couples are in, backstory issues clouded my head without ever losing sight of what was going on. I wanted to know how long ago this incident occurred for one, a question which never gets answered. I wondered why this particular little church was chosen for this emotionally-charged meeting of healing, which is only answered in the abstract. I also wondered whose idea this meeting was, another question that is never really answered.

Once we get down to what this meeting is about, there is enough raw emotion and angry resentment for a Eugene O'Neill play and that whatever happened has put these two couples through an emotional wringer which makes it hard to believe they are still together.
Kranz creates theater without a lot of theatricality...the story doesn't move from this room once the couples are left alone, the camera is appropriately obtrusive and there is no music score

Kranz also pulls a quartet of extraordinary performances from Reed Birney, Ann Dowd, Jason Isaacs, and especially Martha Plimpton, who is totally Oscar worthy here. Kranz' work is Oscar-worthy as well, but being a newcomer behind the scenes, will probably be overlooked, but this film shouldn't be.

Susan and God
Despite a problematic screenplay, the 1940 melodrama Susan and God is worth a look thanks to George Cukor's larger than life direction and some effective scenery-chewing by Joan Crawford in a role unlike anything she's ever done.

This odd but watchable MGM drama stars Crawford as Susan Trexler, glamorous socialite who has just returned from a cruise to Europe, where she has apparently gone through some sort of religious transformation, thanks to someone named Lady Wigstaff. Upon her return home, she attempts to force her new religious beliefs on her family and friends, driving them crazy and having negative effect on all of their lives. Susan also attempts to repair her relationship with her alcoholic husband, Barrie (Fredric March) and her daughter, Blossom, which turns out to be a lot more complicated than she though it would be.

The screenplay by Anita Loos (Gentleman Prefer Blondes) is based on a play by Rachel Crothers, but falters in that being a screen adaptation should have taken a little more tie with backstory. In order to allow the viewer to sympathize with this Susan Trexler character, we should have been given a little more insight to who Susan was before she took this trip to Europe. What we learn at the opening of the story is that her friends are anxiously awaiting her return and that Barrie has been drinking heavily, resulting in some drawing comedy hijinks near the beginning where Susan's friends work tirelessly to keep Barrie and Susan apart and we're not really sure why. We never really learn why Barrie has been drinking because the second he and Susan come face to face, all he wants to do is repair their marriage and be there for their daughter, despite our first glimpse of Barrie in the opening scene finds him stumbling out of a Broadway theater drunk.

The most interesting aspect of this film was the highly theatrical performance of Joan Crawford in the starring role. Research revealed that this role was originally offered to Norma Shearer, who turned it down because she didn't want to play the daughter of a teenager. Honestly, as I watched, I kept picturing Katherine Hepburn in the role. This character is much more flighty and self-absorbed than the kind of character we're accustomed to seeing from Crawford. Crawford usually plays characters more interested in self-preservation than in helping others. Her initially treatment of her daughter borders on insensitive, keeping the poor child at arm's length until the final third of the film and even that doesn't last. The back and forth between Susan and Barrie does remain watchable because unlike most Crawford leading men, Barrie Trexel never allows himself to be emasculated by his wife.

The film is nicely mounted in lovely black and white, featuring superior art direction by Cedric Gibbons and some gorgeous gowns for the ladies by the legendary Adrian. Crawford works hard to make Susan likable, but it's Fredric March's thunderous performance as Barrie that keeps the story interesting. Ruth Hussey, who earned an Oscar nomination the same year for The Philadelphia Story, shines as Susan's friend, Charlotte and there are also glimpses of a young Rita Hayworth and an early look at Marjorie Main, in one of her first wisecracking housekeeper roles. It's Joan Crawford, Fredric March, and George Cukor who made this worth watching.

Cyrano (2021)
The movie definitely has problems. but 2021's Cyrano is a sumptuously mounted, musical re-imagining of the Edmond Rostand play that is still worth watching thanks to the extraordinary performance by Peter Dinklage in the leading role. It should be noted that this review is coming from someone who has never read or seen the play and has never seen the 1950 film version with Jose Ferrer, that won him an Oscar. My only exposure to this work is the 1987 comic reworking of the story called Roxanne starring Steve Martin.

In this story, Cyrano (Dinklage) is a soldier and polished wordsmith who has always loved the lovely Roxanne (Hayley Bennett), but is too self-conscious to be direct with her because of his stature and the belief that he is ugly, though she considers Cyrano a close friend. Roxanne finds herself attracted to a soldier in Cyrano's regiment named Christian (Kelvin Harrison, Jr), who returns the attraction but his approach to romancing her is crude and boorish. Cyrano agrees to write a letter to Roxanne as Christian, a letter that captures Roxanne's heart so Cyrano and Christian decide to woo Roxanne together, through Christian's looks and Cyrano's words.

First let me say that the concept of this film is quite good. I've always felt Cyrano De Bergerac was a story that would work quite well as a musical. Though a lot of the songs are quite pleasant, the score by Aaron and Dessner is rather lakluster. The songs don't flesh out characters or advance story. There was a song called "Heaven is Defenseless" centered on soldiers writing to their loved ones that was moving and, at the same time, brought the movie to a dead halt. Sadly, I think this film would have been much more effective without the songs.

When director Joe Wright (Atonement) and screenwriter Erica Schmidt (the real life wife of Peter Dinklage) stick to the dramatic narrative, the film totally works. Loved Cyrano's opening scene in a theater when he reminds a hammy actor in a theater that he wrote him a couple of weeks ago telling him that he's a terrible actor and should stop was gold. The famous balcony scene, which is the hook upon which the story hangs, is heartachingly beautiful as is the scene where Christian comes to the realization that Roxanne loves Cyrano and not him.

The primary reason this movie is worth watching is the gut-wrenching, delicately layered, and consistently surprising performance by Peter Dinklage. Once again, Dinklage proves to be an actor incapable of giving a bad performance. Watch him in the scene where he learns Roxanne is in love with Christian and not him or that wonderful balcony scene, or the climactic encounter with Roxanne where he's still trying to keep his love for Roxanne a secret. Dinklage gives us a Cyrano who loves Roxanne with every fiber of his soul, but still can't put two sentences together whenever he speaks to her directly. This is another one of those performances that should be studied by acting students.

The film features breathtaking cinematography, art direction/set direction, and costumes, it's gorgeous to look at. Hayley Bennett completely invests in Roxanne, a character who is somewhat unsympathetic here. This Roxanne reminded me of Glenn Close' character in Dangerous Liaisons. Kelvin Harrison Jr makes a smoldering Christian and I loved Ben Mendelsohn a charismatic De Guiche. Remove the songs, and I would have added half a bag of popcorn to my rating, but even with the songs, Dinklage makes this movie worth watching...incredible performance.

The Kentucky Fried Movie
Fans of the 1980 comedy classic Airplane! might want to take a look at 1977's The Kentucky Fried Movie, a nonsensical, silly, and often raunchy collections of unrelated comedy skits that being somewhat dated, does still provide sporadic laughs.

Long before Airplane! and The Naked Gun franchises, David Zuker, Jerry Zuker, and Jim Abrahams put together this random collection of comedy skits and movie parodies that are completely unrelated and play like an extended episode of SNL with no real connection between any of them, except for the thoughtfully executed sight gags that make up a lot of these guys' work.

We get a pretty funny parody of a morning talk show being destroyed by an angry gorilla; a movie preview for a movie called Catholic High School Girls in Trouble and another one called Cleopatra Schwartz. Right in the middle of this we get an almost hour long Bruce Lee spoof called A Fistful of Yen that does provide some laughs, but doesn't really justify the hour of screen time it's granted.

We get a couple of hints who made this film when, during a courtroom spoof, the stenographer is played by Stephen Stiucker, who played Johnny in the Airplane franchises and we meet a character named Rex Kramer. There are cameo appearances by Donald Suherland, Bill Bixby, Tony Dow, and David Zuker. It's not a home run, but there are laughs here.

The Guilty
Fans of the Tom Hardy film Locke will have a head start with 2021's The Guilty, a claustrophobic and squirm worthy crime drama about a man trying to save four lives while his own is falling apart.

The film stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Joe Baylor, a police officer who has been demoted to a job as a 911 dispatch operator. The morning that we meet Joe, we watch him take a call from a distraught woman named Emily who sounds terrified of the man we hear in the background. It's not long before Joe figures out that this woman is being kidnapped and further investigation from Joe puts together that the man is her ex-husband, the father of her two children, and a convicted felon.

As this is taking place, we also learn that Joe lost his job as a police officer because of some serious misconduct that has his partner prepared to lie for him and Joe due in court the next morning. We also learn that Joe has been separated from his wife for six months and she is trying to keep him away from his daughter. It is the eventual collision of this family kidnapping and Joe's personal life that make for the drama of criminal and personal dysfunction that unfolds in front of us.

The Oscar-worthy screenplay by Nic Pizzolatto, the creative force behind True Detective is so delicately crafted because it seamlessly blends two tragic stories with rich backstory but provides said backstory in such meticulous fashion that we are almost halfway through the film before we know everything that is going on. As we are introduced to Joe in the bathroom using his asthma inhaler, we get the feeling we're about to see a story about a former cop who hates his new job and there is an element of that here, but there's so much more going on here. As Tom Hardy did in Locke, Gyllenhaal's character has the most time onscreen and the other major characters in the story we only hear on the phone,

The introduction to the procedures for being a 911 operator were interesting to witness because some of said procedures initially impede what Joe is trying to do because he finds that a lot of the investigative techniques he knew as a cop were helpful to him, but were beyond his pay grade as a 911 operator and we feel his frustration. It was fascinating watching Joe trying to keep people on the phone when he needed to and, more importantly, have them hold the line when he needed them to. The scenes where Joe is trying to talk to Emily's daughter were heartbreaking.

Director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day provides tight direction that keeps the story moving, despite the claustrophobic atmosphere created by the setting. He gets solid assist from his editing and sound units. Jake Gyllenhaal provides the strongest performance I have seen from him since Nightcrawler that anchors this gut-wrenching story. Peter Sarsgaard, Ethan Hawke, Eli Goree, Riley Keough, and Da'Vine Joy Randolph also effectively led their voices to other roles in the story. A tight and sometimes stomach-churning drama that wraps in a very tidy 90 minutes.

Have you seen the original version of The Guilty, Gideon?

When I was originally looking for this film, I actually found the Sweden version first, but switched it off after about ten minutes when I realized it wasn't the film I was looking for. I will say when I started the Gyllenhaal version, the dialogue matched word for word. Since I enjoyed this film so much, I might check out the Sweden version at some point.

It hurts you call it Swedish when it is Danish.

But yeah, I would encourage you to check it out. I haven’t seen the remake personally, but I imagine it’s problematic seeing them the other way around. Cause now the original might look bad cause you already know the story.

But who knows. Give it a go some time.

I'm sorry, I thought it was Swedish...one of the studios backing the film in the opening credits had :Sweden" in its title, so I thought it was Swedish, my bad.

Snow White (1937)
It has a place in cinematic history as the first feature length animated film released by Walt Disney Studios. Snow White is rich with innovation and imagination for a movie made in 1937. It might look a little creaky around the edges in 2022, but for a movie made 85 years ago, it still holds up as viable screen entertainment for the young and young at heart.

Once upon a time, there was a wicked queen who banished her stepdaughter, Snow White, to the forest because she feared that the little girl would grow up to be prettier than she. She had no problem with Snow White's existence as long as her magic mirror reassured her on a daily basis that she was the fairest in the land. One day the mirror decides the queen must face the truth and tells her that Snow White is prettier. She sends a hunter to kill her but he can't do it and tells her to run. With the help of some familiar looking forest creatures, Snow White finds sanctuary in the home of seven dwarves who work in a gold mine and agree to keep Snow White safe as long as she cooks and cleans for them. When the Queen discovers our girl is still alive, she disguises herself as an ugly hag and decides to kill Snow White with a poison apple.

Yes, this is where it all began for Disney and when you watch it now it becomes apparent pretty quickly that influence for a lot of future Disney characters started here...there is a deer and fawn who bear more than a passing resemblance to Bambi and his mom and a rabbit who looks like Thumper. You'll also see a pair of beavers who look a lot of Chip and Dale. Disney could have spent a little less time with the animals and a little more time with the conflict between between Snow and the Evil queen and the bonding of Snow with the dwarves, but I can forgive.

The creation of the dwarves as seven separate characters contains a lot of attention to detail. Harpo Marx seems to be the inspiration for silent scene stealer Dopey and I was impressed with consistency of the characters throughout...Grumpy always seemed mad no matter how cheery the situation and how everything stopped when Sneezy felt a sneeze coming on...I had a feeling this was the
inspiration for Admiral Boo
M rocking the Banks home in Mary Poppins. The dwarves' cabin also features two great animated set pieces...love that pipe organ and that cuckoo clock.

The songs were adorable...loved "I'm Wishing", "Whistle while you Work", "Someday My Prince Will Come", "Heigh Ho Heigh Ho", and "With a Smile and a Song."

For a first time full length animated feature, the colors are splashy and appealing to the eye and something that I've noticed with my recent look into Disney work, is at least one touch into true darkness not for the intended demographic: I was shocked when the Queen demanded proof of Snow White's death by bringing Snow White's heart back to her in a box...Brrrr. It's a classic though and deserves the acclaim it's received over the years.

I should rewatch some of Disney's early animated films.

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Annie Live (2021)
Someone decided it was a good idea to mount a live version of the 1977 Broadway musical Annie on NBC, despite three previous screen versions. A fourth version of this show should bring something new to the property, but this one doesn't.

For anyone who's been living under a rock since 1977, this is the musical version of the classic comic strip character, an orphan who is convinced that her parents are still alive. Annie is chosen to spend the Christmas holidays with a billionaire named Oliver Warbucks, who becomes so attached to Annie he vows to find Annie's parents for her. Throw in the head of the orphanage, the evil Miss Hannigan, who wants her piece of the reward that Warbucks offers for Annie's parents to come forward.

As mentioned, the Broadway musical premiered in 1977 starring Reid Shelton as Daddy Warbucks and Dorothy Loudon as Warbucks and Miss Hannigan. The first screen version was produced in 1982 with Albert Finney as Warbucks and Carol Burnett as Miss Hannigan. Disney adapted the musical for television in 1999 with Victor Garber as Warbucks and Kathy Bates as Miss Hannigan. Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz took the roles in the dreadful 2014 version, so what did this version have that sets it apart from the other versions? Truthfully, not much.

Once again, director Alex Rudzinski, who also directed NBC's live versions of Rent and Jesus Christ Superstar, chose to film the piece in front of a live audience and, once again, I think it's a distracting detriment to the production because it implies that the director doesn't have enough confidence to let his work stand on his own and allow the television audience to decide what is worth laughter or applause. This live audience applauds everything...every time a dancer does a timestep or one of the orphans does a handless cartwheel, the audience bursts into applause. It's distracting.

The score by Martin Charnin and Charles Strouse is intact. One song, "We'd Like to Thank You Hebert Hoover", which was cut from the other three versions, is restored here, but it's staged like a nightmare dream sequence and comes off kind of creepy. Two songs written especially for the 1982 movie "Sign" and "We've Got Annie" are added here with lackluster results. The music direction is actually lackluster overall. The singers seem to be battling the orchestra for the correct tempo for most of the musical numbers.

Celina Smith is an acceptable Annie with a strong set of lungs, but Harry Connick Jr. phones it in as Daddy Warbucks, wearing a badly fitted baldcap and putting little effort into Warbuck's big solo "Something is Missing". Connick also appears to have difficulty remembering his lines. Taraji P Henson is ridiculously over the top as Miss Hannigan, ruining my favorite song in the score "Little Girls". The choreography by Sergio Trujillo is first rate, but the whole thing is directed with a sledgehammer style that makes a two hour musical seem like five.

Have any of these live TV musicals been good?

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If I answer a game thread correctly, just skip my turn and continue with the game.
OPEN FLOOR.

I really liked The Wiz and Jesus Christ Superstar, but the rest were pretty bad, especially Grease.