Actors’ Director — Norman Jewison
Norman Jewison directed Rod Steiger, Cher, and Olympia Dukakis to Oscar glory. Continue reading Actors’ Director — Norman Jewison
Tag: norman jewison
Then Playing — Nightmare Alley; Moonstruck; Greenland
Nightmare Alley (Guillermo del Toro, 2021). Director Guillermo del Toro brings characteristic visual panache and gleeful excitement over the most lurid doings to this adaptation of a 1946 William Lindsay Gresham novel that was previously brought to the screen not … Continue reading Then Playing — Nightmare Alley; Moonstruck; Greenland
From the Archive: Other People’s Money
This is the kind of good kid I was in preparation for the review below. Knowing that we’d be covering Other People’s Money on our radio program, The Reel Thing, I went to one of the upper floors of the UW-SP library and checked out a copy of Jerry Sterner’s play to read in advance of seeing the film. Part of the reason, then, this is a slightly longer review than the norm for our weekly show is I had all this deep background knowledge to share. The nineteen-eighties will be forever typified as the time when greed came to … Continue reading From the Archive: Other People’s Money
Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Forty
#40 — In the Heat of the Night (Norman Jewison, 1967) It can be tricky to watch older films, especially those that claim to deliver enlightened social commentary. The intervening years can impose a mustiness on the politics, the once … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Forty
Jewison, Pollack, Roemer, Sommers, Spielberg
In the Heat of the Night (Norman Jewison, 1967). I guessed that this film would seem painfully dated. Instead, Jewison’s police drama about a black Philadelphia homicide detective called upon to help solve a murder case in a small Southern town where rampant bigotry still rules the culture holds up nicely. It’s somewhat an artifact of its time, but a dramatically sound one. Jewison makes his points with care, always grounding the conflicts in believable situations populated by well-drawn characters. What it lacks in subtlety, it makes up for in clean, gripping storytelling. Rod Steiger won an Oscar for his … Continue reading Jewison, Pollack, Roemer, Sommers, Spielberg
Coffee for Two 