Category Archives: movies
Watching a TV series reminds me of a play I saw in 2007
Watched an oddball but extremely affecting British miniseries on Britbox tonight called Don’t Forget the Driver starring Toby Jones (in two roles) and co-written by Jones and Tim Crouch. The plot concerns a bus driver in Bognor Regis who discovers, … Continue reading
Lee Grant
One of the treats about living where I have (and do) on the upper west side is that, walking my dog, I kept (and keep) running into Lee walking her dog. We always stop and swap stories. One time, I … Continue reading
Thoughts after watching THE VERDICT
Just watched The Verdict for the first time since it came out forty years ago in 1982. Sidney Lumet at the top of his game, a perfect damn script by David Mamet (I can’t say how much it owes to the … Continue reading
Review: “The Visitor”
For about the first half of its 90-minute running time, The Visitor, the new musical playing at the Public Theater based on Tom McCarthy’s 2007 film, works very nicely indeed. Kwame Kwei-Armah and Brian Yorkey’s script effectively translates McCarthy’s screenplay … Continue reading
“Deep in My Heart”–Stanley Donen and Sigmund Romberg
Some years ago, I was at a memorial for a friend who had appeared at the Compass in Chicago. I saw a man standing to the side looking a bit perturbed. Elaine May was attending the memorial and, putting two … Continue reading
“People on Sunday”–a film of pre-Nazi Berlin
Have started reading Joseph McBride’s new book, Billy Wilder: Dancing on the Edge, which naturally led to my watching People on Sunday, a silent film co-directed by Robert Siodmak and Edgar Ulmer (with assists from Curt Siodmak, Fred Zinnemann and … Continue reading
Men in White, Sidney Kingsley, and Ancillary Thoughts
I recently read Sidney Kingsley’s play, Men in White (1933), and last night I watched the 1934 film adaptation directed by Richard Boleslawski. (Interesting that Boleslawski directed the film version of a work that had been directed on Broadway by … Continue reading
From “Crime in the Streets” to “West Side Story”
Watched a clumsy but fascinating film called Crime in the Streets. It started as a 1955 live TV play by Reginald Rose presented by the Elgin Hour, directed by Sidney Lumet. A young John Cassavetes starred as Frankie, a member … Continue reading
Encountering Rose Franken
Continuing to wander through obscure corners of American playwriting, I have stumbled across a forgotten phenomenon. A writer named Rose Franken created a character who appeared first in a series of stories for Redbook, then in a series of eight … Continue reading
Jeffrey Sweet--Making the Scene 