Rinaldo

Oh, I hope they include "Little Miss Showbiz"! This took half an hour (half the show) and was a musical spoof of 30s movie musicals, Shirley Temple specifically, with Anthony Newley, Bernadette Peters, and the regulars. It wasn't in the syndication package and hardly ever comes around on the specialized channels now. Others of their classics of course include "Went with the Wind," "Rancid Harvest," "Caged Dames," and "Mildred Fierce" -- well, there were a ton of them.

I've seen that now. Which means I'm now aware it was John Osborne who made that claim, in the first excitement of having "discovered" him. So OK, the sort of thing that's been said about many an actor at various times.

He does? I believe you, but this is the first I've heard of it. I mostly hear about how impossible he was to work with. Paul Rudnick's chapter about dealing with him during the run of I Hate Hamlet is the most entertaining of the many instances.

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution! What bliss! I love it unreservedly. I am not in general an admirer of Nicol Williamson, but he found his role in this twitchy paranoid Sherlock Holmes, perfectly paired with Alan Arkin's delightfully shrewd Sigmund Freud. An absolutely stuffed cast, with Robert Duvall, Vanessa Redgrave, Joel Grey, Régine, Samantha Eggar, Georgia Brown, Charles Gray, and oh just incidentally Laurence Olivier. Herbert Ross keeping it all afloat with designs by that master of detail Ken Adams. A nifty score by John Addison -- with a brand-new song by Stephen Sondheim. And Nicholas Meyer actually improving his own novel while turning it into a screenplay. Sometimes everything goes right.

For those moved to investigate Flynn further, I cautiously offer a blog entry by Tommy Krasker, wherein (in a format similar to his essay about Margaret Sullavan, which I linked here a while back) he examines each of Errol Flynn's movie performances. Tommy acknowledges the problems created by Flynn's offscreen life, but maintains that he hasn't had his due as an actor. And at the same time he's always willing to acknowledge which performances and films are not so good. It's fun reading for the movie-minded.

Yes, I thought the movie worked like gangbusters, and surely would lead to the filming of more of the Easy Rawlins books. Didn't happen, and who knows why. Maybe Rawlins's sometimes-shady actions were deemed insufficiently noble or heroic; I myself admired the heck out of Washington for playing that side of the character so fully, when he might so easily have played the Movie Star card of "I want my character to be likable at every moment." And Don Cheadle... I think his Mouse was especially startling (and funny!) at the time because to most of the audience (me included) he was known only as the righteous D.A. on the concurrent Picket Fences. (And his TV guest shots before that had been pretty standard stuff.) This was our first hint that he was a full-range actor ready to take on just about anything. I remember Carl Franklin as an actor on 1970s TV -- most specifically in an episode of Lou Grant. He's a terrific director, and it's a shame we don't have more movies from him. He seems to have settled into prestige TV work.

I saw it too, during its Chicago run. An irreplaceable experience. Including the sensation of being in a big theater full of real movie buffs. I really wonder if the fully restored version could ever have a similar run. The Coppola restoration (with an original score by his father) that I saw in 1981 was contained to 4 hours by playing it at sound speed (24 frames per second instead of 20) and deleting a self-contained side plot, and even so, the orchestra had to be given a break by using organ only for one sequence. The economics of hiring a full orchestra for a 7-hour running time (even if broken by a dinner intermission) would probably guarantee a monetary loss at each performance, and limit screenings to subsidized one-night special events. Making the movie available on home video is also bound to be compromised visually because of the final 3-screen triptych; either the whole movie gets letterboxed which means that the screen size seems too small for one's TV, or letterboxing is used only for that final sequence which means that the image suddenly gets miniaturized.

Only you can know what your budget can or can't permit. But picking up on one of your original points: by present prices, this is not an excessive amount to pay to see a live show. (Solo and chamber recitals often cost more.) And that's what you're seeing, a live musician, and in addition you get a movie. And best of all, the combined experience.

I remember her as a pleasant but not really memorable presence in movies like Operation Mad Ball and Anatomy of a Murder... then decades later she surprised me by standing out among a cast of theater notables in the 1996 stage production of State Fair. She and John Davidson played the parents, and (despite his having a lot more experience in this sort of thing) she outclassed him easily. You just never know about people....

I've not read a full-length bio of Teresa Wright, but it seems to me that she did have at last a moderately big career in movies -- 3 big ones that are still remembered, after all, along with others. Her contactual arrangement to allow her time for stage work (which was equally important to her) sounds similar to Margaret Sullavan's. And as in that case, it understandably meant that some of the prize roles went to others, who were on hand year-round. She did work onstage a lot, and in early TV, and those of course don't leave artifacts for us to watch now. She had a public falling-out with Samuel Goldwyn, which was the ostensible cause of the ending of her contract. She made a public statement, which I quote because it has an interesting aftermath. But then in later years, she looked back with this wry comment: Of course in the 1950s, the whole contract system was falling apart even if those involved didn't always understand just what was different, and it was increasingly up to the actors to sustain and build their own careers.

He was, but who would have been better at that date? John Dortmunder is an easy person to visualize, but hard to cast. The later Dortmunders (George C. Scott, Paul Le Mat, Christopher Lambert, and yes Martin Lawrence) came no closer. At least one thing can be said in favor of The Hot Rock as a film: George Segal was dead-on perfect casting as Andy Kelp. When I reread any of the books, Segal is always who I'm picturing.

I'm a bit embarrassed to bring this up, as it's totally insignificant, but here goes: On Tuesday, Ossie Davis Day, TCM is showing the 1979 movie Hot Stuff at 10:15 am ET. I remember watching it more than once in the early 1980s, partly because HBO ran it constantly in those relatively early days of cable networks, partly because the script was cowritten by my favorite comedic suspense writer, Donald E. Westlake. A group of Miami undercover police (Jerry Reed, Suzanne Pleshette, Dom DeLuise, Luis Avalos, with Davis as their captain) set up a pawnshop as a long-term sting. From there it plays out like an extra-long TV episode, with laughs and jeopardy and all, and a bit of a family feeling (DeLuise directed and used his actual family as his onscreen family, Reed wrote and performed the theme song, etc.). Like I said, of no importance, and probably not even "good" in any serious aesthetic sense, but you might find it a diverting 90 minutes if it fits your taste, and I doubt it'll come around on TCM again.

@Charlie Baker, I saw many of the American Film Theatre releases as they happened, but I skipped A Delicate Balance, because I (despite being a fan of other Albee) couldn't make sense of the play, either on the page or in the one local (albeit professional) production I'd seen, and Hepburn didn't seem the sort of performer who would help with that. I was wrong. When I finally caught up with it (on TCM) a few years ago, I was impressed by how well it all worked and "held." Credit to the tactful direction of Tony Richardson, and to the cast including Joseph Cotten and Lee Remick,* but most especially Paul Scofield and Katharine Hepburn, if only through sheer technique and star assurance. It's been pointed out (e.g. by Dan Callahan in his book about American film acting) that whereas many of the studio actresses of Hepburn's generation ended their careers in minor, sometimes cringeworthy movies, Hepburn never stopped taking on classic challenges like Mary in Long Day's Journey Into Night, Hecuba in The Trojan Women, and this. As to The Madwoman of Chaillot: it's a play I know pretty well (I acted in it in high school), and it's a movie that... I guess everyone should decide for themselves. (*Incidental fact about ADB that I doubt will get mentioned: The showy role of Claire, the alcoholic sister and a showcase for vivid actresses like Elaine Stritch and Maggie Smith, was initially cast with the legendary stage actress Kim Stanley. But when at the first rehearsal she went all Actors Studio, improvising and adding lines and noises instead of sticking to the script, Hepburn was so put off she was going to withdraw. So the part was recast with Kate Reid.)

I do understand about this sort of situation. When a movie or TV show features a situation where teachers are trying to do good work but are constantly hampered or defeated by needless funding shortfalls, inane administrative decisions, or buzzwords of the moment, I just can't watch it -- it's too real, and I lived with that world for decades. Many of my friends have recommended Abbott Elementary to me as a good current comedy series, but I couldn't last more than 20 minutes for just this reason. (On the other hand, I can be philosophical or even amused when movies get my area of teaching -- music -- wrong, because it happens so often, it's more the rule than not.) I wouldn't read too much into the interchanges of a half dozen contributors here, me included. In the world at large I think it's fair to say that she is highly regarded, and even some (not all!) of us with reservations admire and enjoy a substantial number of her performances enormously. Me again included. I own all Kael's books and read her obsessively when she was at The New Yorker. I would still say I'm a fan, but I've come to a more measured appreciation since her retirement, and can certainly see her vulnerable spots. Not the ones that are sometimes wrongly used to attack her, like Renata Adler saying she liked only violence etc., or Stuart Byron deciding she was homophobic (completely without foundation). But the way she would go off on a long binge that could seem only distantly related to her ostensible subject. Contrary to your quote about not liking anything -- yes she did have her dislikes (Greer Garson indeed, or musicals that were insufficiently fluffy and unpretentious), but I'd say she was much more prone to pages of praise. Sometimes (Nashville) I absolutely agreed with her; other times (Brian De Palma, and read her laudatory reaction to his The Fury sometime) I was bewildered as to what she was seeing. But really, I don't look to a critic for consumer advice, I want her to make me a better more receptive moviegoer, and she could be a wizard at that. My thanks to @Charlie Baker for the recommendation of The Man with a Cloak. Lots of fun to watch, and I think it'll stick in memory -- it's unlike other movies of its time. I'll have to check to see if I have the Carr story somewhere in the house, I don't remember it but I do have a whole shelf of Carr. And the Raksin music lived up to the advance description. Unlike other movie scores, by him or anyone else.

Thanks for the alert, @Charlie Baker. Looking up The Man with a Cloak, I discovered 2 additional enticing facts about it: It's based on a story by John Dickson Carr, one of my very favorite mystery authors. (And I can't think of any other screen adaptations of his work.) It has a well-regarded and reportedly unusual score by the great David Raksin (most recognized for Laura, but of course he wrote dozens of other movie scores over the years). So I definitely don't want to miss this one.