Gideon58's Reviews

Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is the most brilliant blending of live action and animation since Mary Poppins

Robert Zemeckis proved to be a master filmmaker with this complex and masterfully edited cinematic gem about a 1930's down and out Hollywood detective (the brilliant Bob Hoskins) who is hired to prove a cartoon rabbit named Roger is innocent of a murder he did not commit. With the aid of crack technical people (the film won four Oscars for its technical mastery), Zemeckis has crafted a completely believable melding of real people and animated characters that is hard to resist. I love when Hoskins is walking through a movie studio and you see all these famous animated characters from the past walking around (he even bumps into one of the hippos from Fantasia). There's a scene in a nightclub where all the waiters look like the penguins from Mary Poppins and Betty Boop is the cigarette girl.

Charles Fleischer provides the voice of the title character and his wife Jessica, who is human but animated ("I'm not bad...I'm just drawn that way.")has the speaking voice of Kathleen Turner and the singing voice of Amy Irving.

But other than the technical wizardry that is apparent in every frame of this film, the thing that makes it all click is the amazing performance by Hoskins, who plays the character totally straight as if her were in a real detective story from the 30's. It is his straight acting approach to these comical situations (aided by Zemeckis I'm sure) that makes this whole bizarre roller coaster ride come together. Who Framed Roger Rabbit is, quite simply,a masterpiece that should have won Robert Zemeckis an Oscar.

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Wildcats was an entertaining sports comedy with Goldie Hawn at the top of her form as a high school track coach, who wants more than anything to coach football (her late father was a football coach). She finally gets the opportunity to coach a high school football team at a tough inner city high school where the majority of the students are African American or Latino.

Of course, Goldie's Molly McGrath meets the obvious resentments from high school boys that you would expect finding out their new coach is a woman, but she does eventually win them over, even at the risk of losing custody of her two daughters to her uptight ex-husband (James Keach).

Nothing new or inventive here but Goldie lights up the screen presenting a smart yet flawed character trying to live her dream. Nipsey Russell has one of the best roles of his career as the principal of the school that hires her and there are some very funny moments provided by the members of the team, especially Woody Harrelson, Nick Corri, and in a star-making turn, a very young Wesley Snipes. Bruce McGill scores as a sexist coach from the opposing school, Prescott and Jan Hooks has some cute moments as Goldie's ex-husband's new girlfriend.

I love the scene where Goldie outruns the boys on the team and calls them "pussies" and the rap song over the closing credits is hysterically funny. A terrific feel-good comedy starring a great actress at the zenith of her personal charm.

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I really like your idea about putting up the image of the poster of the films, but I must confess that I don't know how to do that, could you offer a quick tutorial?

Go to the wikipedia page of the film, right click the poster and click 'Copy Image Location' so you copy the image url like for example

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...tion_cover.jpg

Then write it like this

[img ]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/82/Pulp_Fiction_cover.jpg/215px-Pulp_Fiction_cover.jpg[/img ]

but without the spaces in the brackets.

Or click this little button in the post editor, and paste the link in the box.

I grew up with movies like White Christmas, Holiday Inn, and It's a Wonderful Life as holiday viewing traditions, but that all changed with the release of A Christmas Story, the 1983 instant classic that has so enchanted film goers that TBS in Atlanta now shows the film on Christmas Eve for 24 straight hours every year.

This warm and funny Christmas story centers on an adorable little boy named Ralphie whose only wish for Christmas is to find a Red Ryder BB gun under the Christmas tree and the manipulations he puts his parents through to get one. Written and narrated by Jean Shepherd and based on his story "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash", this delicious slice of Americana is a delight from start to finish filled with equal parts belly laughs and warm sentiment.

Young Peter Billingsley is a joy as Ralphie and he receives brilliant support from Darren McGavin and Melinda Dillon as his parents. Scott Schwartz also scores as Ralphie's best friend Flick, who has a memorable encounter with a telephone pole. Don't miss this one. 8/10

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Airplane! was the 1980 comedic spoof of Airport movies in general and the classic Zero Hour in particular, in which an ex-war pilot (Robert Hays, in a star-making performance), who hasn't been able to get behind the wheel of a plane since the war,ends up, through a bizarre set of circumstances, forced to land an airliner full of passengers suffering from food poisoning.

This on-target comic spoof spawned many imitations and clones, but this is the granddaddy of them all. The gags come at a lightning fast pace so that if one gag doesn't amuse as much as you think, there's another one not far behind. The movie is smartly written with a great deal of attention to the set-up of a joke as well as the actual payoff.

Hays gets great support from Julie Hagerty, as the ex-girlfriend and head stewardess, Peter Graves as the pilot with a thing for young boys, Leslie Nielsen as a stone-faced doctor (possibly an inspiration for his Frank Drebin character), Kareem Abduhl Jabaar as the co-pilot who has an identity crisis, Lloyd Bridges as a grounds control pilot with an addiction or two, and Lorna Patterson as another stewardess. A comedy classic that's just as funny now as it was 33 years ago. If I had to pick a favorite gag, and that's not easy, I would pick the strange problem of Lieutenant Horowitz. 8.5/10

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Angel in my Pocket was a charming and folksy 1969 comedy that took Griffith's Sheriff Andy Taylor persona and brought to the big screen in the form of a devoted minister named Reverend Samuel Whitehead, who has just been assigned a new church in a rural area and all the various problems and troublesome townsfolk he has to deal with. This role is not much of a stretch for Griffith and fits him like a glove. Jerry Van Dyke is very funny as his useless brother-in-law as is Kay Medford as his meddlesome mother-in-law. Lee Meriwether makes a lovely Mrs. Whitehead. A few years later she would play Andy's wife in a CBS TV series called HEADMASTER.

This old fashion comedy is predictable as they come with several film and TV veterans in supporting roles (including Andy's TV co-star Jack Dodson). Take special notice of the wonderful scene where the Reverend goes to a burlesque house to purchase an organ for the church. A light and amusing family comedy that goes a long way on Andy Griffith's considerable screen charisma. 6/10

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A Raisin in the Sun is the 2nd television remake of the 1961 film based on the play by Lorraine Hansberry and the recent Broadway revival about broken dreams that centers on the Younger family, a hard-working black family living in a cramped Chicago tenement in 1959, to whom we are introduced to the day before the family is to receive a $10,000.00 insurance check and the tensions that arise from the plans that the young patriarch of the family has already made for money that really isn't his.

Lena Younger (Phylicia Rachad) is a strong,God-fearing woman who has worked as a housekeeper to a white family for years but has decided to retire because of her impending windfall (the check is only coming because of the death of Lena's husband). Walter Lee Younger (Executive Producer Sean "Puffy" Combs)is a chauffeur who wants to use Lena's money to start his own business. Walter's wife, Ruth (Audra McDonald)is a strong-willed woman who finds herself constantly torn between her husband and her mother-in-law, often at the expense of her son Travis(Justin Martin). Beneatha (Sanaa Lathan) is Walter's flighty, free-spirited sister, struggling to find her identity as a black woman, full of more dreams than she can handle, which are further complicated by her relationships with two completely different kind of men.

This story first hit theaters in 1961 with Sidney Poiter as Walter Lee, Ruby Dee as Ruth, and Claudia McNeill as Lena. Combs has brought the cast of the highly successful Broadway revival (which won Tony Awards for Rachad and McDonald) to the small screen and aided by the detailed direction of Kenny Leon, has opened up the story for the television screen without losing the story's intensity or intimacy.

Phylicia Rachad is nothing short of brilliant, in the performance of her career, as Lena, the proud matriarch struggling to hold her family together and hoping that this money might help. Audra McDonald, who has won 4 Tony Awards for her work in Broadway musicals and won a fifth for this role on Broadway, proves that she is as powerful an actress as she is songstress as she brings a depth and substance to the pivotal role of Ruth that I have never seen before. Sanaa Lathan also offers one of her best performances as the bombastic Beneatha, a walking talking hurricane of emotions struggling to find who she is in a world where she feels like she is suffocating.

Sadly, Sean Combs had some big shoes to step into, taking on a role originated by Sidney Poiter and for me, his performance just doesn't work...there is an emptiness to the performance that implies Combs really doesn't understand a man like Walter Lee. Combs also seems to be unaware at times that he is now in front of a television camera and not in a Broadway theater and that certain facets of his performance have to be taken in and controlled, which can be partly blamed on the director I suppose, but this problem only exists with Combs, not his leading ladies. Poitier brought a dignity and maturity to the role of Walter Lee that Combs is missing...he plays the role as a petulant child, diluting a lot of its power.

Despite Combs problematic performance, this film stands as a worthy tribute to its predecessors thanks to the mostly effective direction by Kenny Leon and three extraordinary performances from Sanaa Lathan, Audra McDonald, and especially Phylicia Rachad.

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I remember my parents taking me to see Billie at the local drive-in when I was a kid. Patty Duke, pre-Valley of the Dolls, played this tomboyish teenage girl who could outrun all the boys in her school thanks to something in her head that she called "the beat", but boys don't like to go out with girls who run faster than they do, so Billie is pretty much alone until she compromises her feminist ideals, sings a corny song about becoming a woman ("I'm an In Between"), and purposely loses a race so that she can have the boy of her dreams, who I believe was played by Warren Berlinger.

Jim Backus played her father, who was running for Mayor on a "Women belong in the home" platform while his daughter was out running track with the boys. This movie was kind of corny, but Patty played the role energetically and I liked her blonde, Mia Farrow haircut. 5/10

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Bill Maher really hits it out of the park with his most recent HBO stand up concert, Bill Maher: The Decider. I must confess that I tuned in with some reluctance as I am no fan of Maher's HBO series REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER...I find it difficult to get through an entire episode without nodding off. Maher has a rock solid political conscience that is the bedrock of his comedy and I wasn't sure if I was up to listening to him rant about President Bush for 60 minutes;however,thankfully Maher did manage to touch on some other entertaining but still topical subjects. Don't get me wrong... the President took his usual verbal beating from Maher, but other subjects came up as well, like infidelity, teenage abstinence, travel, and the new prescription drug craze ("Did anyone have restless leg syndrome before they came up with a drug for it?"). Maher is an edgy, yet polished stage presence, who, like Jerry Seinfeld, is an extremely skilled wordsmith...the flawless ability to pick the absolute perfect word for each element of a joke,without ever talking "above" or "at" his audience. For those who like their stand-up with a little substance. 7.5/10

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I can't recall the last time I had such high expectations for a piece of television entertainment and was more disappointed at the finished product. Bob Saget: That ain't Right is an HBO comedy concert that marked the official return to stand-up comedy for Bob Saget, former star of FULL HOUSE and AMERICA'S FUNNIEST HOME VIDEOS.

Now I can absolutely relate to Saget's desire with this concert to distance himself from his image as the king of family-oriented television, but he really drives the message home with a sledgehammer approach here. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with adult language, but Saget really overdoes it here...Richard Pryor never used the "F" word as much as Saget does in this special and most of the time, it has very little to do with the content of his comedy. He seems to be using it purely for shock value and cheap laughs.

His material here is primarily crude, tasteless bathroom humor that just didn't work for me. Saget is working so hard here to let the world know that he is not Danny Tanner (his FULL HOUSE character) by being as tasteless and shocking as he possibly can and it gets very old very quickly. And the saddest part of this debacle is that Bob Saget IS a very funny and intelligent guy who has already proved that he is not Danny Tanner(if you don't believe it, check out his guest appearance on HBO's ENTOURAGE). He's an intelligent comic presence who, for shock value, has checked his quick comic mind at the door and has chosen just to shock and gross out his audience. Saget did share one very amusing story involving an incident in a restroom with his FULL HOUSE co-star John Stamos, but other than that, this concert was a nasty, unappealing disaster. A real shame.

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Chris Rock once again commands the stage in his fourth HBO special, Never Scared, which is just as fall-on-the-floor funny as the previous three. Chris is a bold and polished presence onstage and has become to HBO comedy what George Carlin used to be. His concerts have become "Must-See TV" and I'm sure they will continue to be so for a long time to come.

Though his themes are similar, Chris never really repeats material. As always, he covers a myriad of subjects here, including the war, the president, sex, marriage, Michael Jackson, drugs, relationships, strippers, and rap music.

Another thing I love about Chris is that he's never afraid to push the envelope where his audience is concerned. There is always at least one joke that generates as many uncomfortable "Oooooooh's" as it does laughs. Chris also never forgets that he's a man and every concert also contains at least one joke that only gets laughs from the men in the audience, but Chris doesn't care. He says what's on his mind and what people think, be damned but he never leaves the stage without a standing ovation. 8/10

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Dane Cook: Vicious Circle was the severely overrated HBO debut of red-hot stand up comedian Dane Cook, wisely filmed in his hometown to make him seem a lot funnier than he really is. Cook was first introduced to HBO audiences with the dreadfully boring documentary Tourgasm which was then capped off with this comedy concert filmed in Cook's hometown of Boston. Apparently, Bostonians find this guy hysterically funny because the audience at this concert is shown going out of their minds at every single word that comes out of this guy's mouth and I just didn't get it. Cook seems full of himself, self-congratulatory, and madly in love with the sound of his own voice. The nucleus of some very funny material is here, but Cook blows everything way out of proportion...the guy takes twenty-minutes to tell a five minute joke and his material hardly merits the 90 minutes (!) that HBO gave him while really funny guys like Chris Rock and DL Hughley only get 60 minutes. For hard-core Cook fans only. 4.5/10

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Kirstie Alley won an Emmy for her performance in David's Mother, an uncompromising look at a blue-collar, boorish mother, who seems to be at a total loss at how to deal with her autistic son.

Alley, cast against type, loses herself in this role of an uneducated, trailer-trash kind of mother who wants to love and help her son but is never really quite sure about what she should be doing for him. The always reliable Stockard Channing is also featured as her snobbish sister and Sam Waterston is charming as a man Alley gets involved with but this is Alley's movie and she forsakes any pretense of glamor to realistically portray an unsympathetic character in a difficult situation who somehow still manages to make us feel for her even though we know that a lot of what this woman does and feels is just wrong. Alley makes the most of a rather unpleasant role and gave us a memorable television experience, light years away from her role as Rebecca Howe on CHEERS. 7.5/10

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D.L. Hughley delivers the laughs in his fourth HBO special subtitled Unapologetic, which was filmed in Washington DC. After the disastrous BOB SAGET: THAT AIN'T RIGHT, this comic confection was a breath of fresh air, offering an amusing look at topics that weren't terribly original, but Hughley's outlook and much more selective use of adult language works to much greater effect here than Saget. One of Hughley's favorite topics is male/female relationship and he gets off some on-target shots on this well-worn subject, and as always, shows his flare for spontaneity by goofing on members of the audience in the theater. The subject matter may not be strikingly original, but Hughley's twisted view and on-target delivery almost always works. 7.5/10

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George Carlin remains the King of HBO comedy and refuses to relinquish his crown with George Carlin: Life is Worth Losing. Carlin continues to be the master observer of all that is good and evil and twisted in the world. He opened this set with an extremely long poem about himself, utilizing every pop-cliché that we have become accustomed to hearing these days and has a way of making most of these clichés sound banal and silly.

Carlin also does something in this special that I liked that he rarely does: he referenced a joke from an earlier concert because he got mail from people who didn't understand it and chose to explain it here. You don't see that often.

This show, like all of Carlin's shows, is scathingly accurate and roll-on-the-floor funny, but this one seems to have a darker theme floating over it than most of his shows. The majority of the material seems to be centered around subjects like death, dying, suicide, murder, and other cheery topics, yet, as always when watching George, I found myself laughing my ass off and agreeing with everything he says because after all these years of pushing the comedic envelope, one constant that has never changed with George is that everything he says is absolutely correct. 8/10

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After several years of working on his sitcom, comedian George Lopez was finally allowed to return to his stand-up roots with his first HBO Special,George Lopez: America's Mexican. Lopez also sticks close to his own roots here, never allowing the live audience he's playing to or us to forget his heritage. Admittedly, there was a portion of things he says in this special in Spanish that I didn't understand, but when he's speaking English, Lopez is hysterically funny. I loved his piece about how kids today couldn't have survived the way he grew up. It's so easy to forget how spoiled kids today are but Lopez reminds us in a most hysterical way. Lopez also offers on target jabs at Arnold Schwarzenegger, elder care,and of course President Bush. I love when he talks about post Katrina clean up in New Orleans and says that it was handled by FEMA, which means "Find Every Mexican Available". A laugh-out loud comedy special guaranteed to tickle the funny bone. 7/10

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Sunday in the Park with George was the first, if memory serves, Broadway musical based on a painting. This sensitive and moving look at the artist Georges Suerat, through his most famous work, "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Le Grand Jatte", was unlike anything Broadway had seen up to this point.

Suerat serves as sort of a narrator and Greek chorus, as well as the main character, as James Lapine's smart book takes what little was known of the artist's life and fleshes out characters from the people in the painting. Broadway's most gifted composer, Stephen Sondheim, crafted a lilting and beautiful score filled with clever lyrics and lush melodies. Sondheim is the best lyricist in the theater because he writes as people talk, not as they sing.

The first act follows the relationship between Suerat, electrically portrayed by Mandy Patinkin and his model/mistress Dot, the luminous Bernadette Peters, as their on again off again relationship is constantly challenged by his obsession with his work. The second act features Patinkin as Suerat's grandson and Peters as his grandmother as we see the modern sculptor struggling with a heredity he continues to deny until a fateful trip to the island where the original painting had been done.

Director Terry Hughes has lovingly captured this intimate story on video and given us close-ups and sweeping camera shots that were not possible to experience seeing the show onstage, making the show even more personal and involving.

Mandy Patinkin commands the stage as George with a stylish stage presence and magnificent singing voice that fills the theater as well as the television screen and is matched note for note by Peters, who makes Dot a tragic and fragile heroine and brings a lovely touch of humanity to the ditzy grandmother, Marie.

It should be noted that at the time this was filmed, Ms. Peters was vocally and physically exhausted. She had already left this show and was in rehearsals for the show that would finally win her a Tony Award, SONG & DANCE. Some vocal strain can be noted with Peters, particularly in one unmerciful close-up where her voice just gives out on her, but Peters is a pro and delivers a performance of opening night quality.

Though not for all tastes, Sunday in the Park with George is a lush and lovely musical theater experience that all those with a passion for the genre should experience.

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I grew up watching this 1966 version of the Broadway musical Cinderella, which was shown on an annual basis for several years after its initial premiere.

This musical version of the classic fairy tale features some wonderful songs by Rodgers and Hammerstein and originally premiered on Broadway with Julie Andrews in the title role. Lesley Ann Warren plays the role here and 40 years later, no matter what else she does, Lesley Ann Warren will always, first and foremost, be Cinderella to me. She is utterly enchanting in the role and her rendition of "In My Own Little Corner" is charming.

Celeste Holm made a delightful fairy godmother, Walter Piedgon and Ginger Rogers added a touch of class as the king and queen, and Stuart Damon made a handsome and elegant Prince Charming. Jo Van Fleet was a memorable evil stepmother and Pat Carroll and Barbara Ruick score as the stepsisters and they stop the show with "Stepsisters' Lament", one of musical comedy's funniest songs.

Well mounted with lavish sets and breathtaking costumes, Cinderella, like THE WIZARD OF OZ, should continue to be shown on an annual basis in order to renew our faith in miracles, love, and fantasies coming true. If this show is not available on DVD, it should be. A winner for children of all ages.

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The 1997 television remake of Cinderella is watchable if you didn't grow up on the 1966 version with Lesley Ann Warren. This remake seemed to be working so hard to please so many people that it really doesn't please anyone.

Although I admire the attempt to make the story more PC by making the cast multi-ethnic, I found it distracting to the story. A white king (a bland Victor Garber)and a black queen (an over the top Whoopee Goldberg) have a son/prince whose Puerto Rican (Carlos Montalban).

Cinderella's stepmother is white (Bernadette Peters, superb as always) but the stepsisters are black and white (Natalie Desselle and Veanne Cox, who both appeared to graduate from the Whoopi Goldberg School of Overacting).

The producers for some reason also felt the need to enhance the Rodgers and Hammerstein score with two songs that Richard Rodgers wrote for other shows. Cinderella and the Prince duet on "The Sweetest Sounds" which Rodgers wrote for the musical NO STRINGS and Peters sings "Falling in Love with Love" which Rodgers wrote with Lorenz Hart for THE BOYS FROM SYRACUSE, a song which seemed unbelievably out-of-place in the story and seemed to have been added just to give Peters a solo.

Then you have the battle of the Divas, Brandy and Whitney Houston, as Cinderalla and her Fairy Godmother. Houston seems to be making a concerted effort to sing Brandy off the screen and she almost succeeds in their primary battle, a song called "Impossible/It's Possible". I guess if you've never seen the show before it might be worth a look, but if you grew up with Lesley Ann Warren like I did, this version will disappoint.

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