Editorial Product Review: essential video:Mikhail Baryshnikov made his film debut in this lightweight but entertaining drama about the relationship between a renowned ballerina (Anne Bancroft) and the woman (Shirley MacLaine) who had trained with her but had given up dance to become a wife, mother, and teacher. Between MacLaine's envy over her friend's career and the attention her own ballerina daughter (Leslie Browne) is getting, MacLaine's character goes through a complicated crisis. The two actresses carry the story very well and probably camouflage its thinness; they even make a somewhat condescending climax ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:Mikhail Baryshnikov made his film debut in this lightweight but entertaining drama about the relationship between a renowned ballerina (Anne Bancroft) and the woman (Shirley MacLaine) who had trained with her but had given up dance to become a wife, mother, and teacher. Between MacLaine's envy over her friend's career and the attention her own ballerina daughter (Leslie Browne) is getting, MacLaine's character goes through a complicated crisis. The two actresses carry the story very well and probably camouflage its thinness; they even make a somewhat condescending climax ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:Mikhail Baryshnikov made his film debut in this lightweight but entertaining drama about the relationship between a renowned ballerina (Anne Bancroft) and the woman (Shirley MacLaine) who had trained with her but had given up dance to become a wife, mother, and teacher. Between MacLaine's envy over her friend's career and the attention her own ballerina daughter (Leslie Browne) is getting, MacLaine's character goes through a complicated crisis. The two actresses carry the story very well and probably camouflage its thinness; they even make a somewhat condescending climax ...
Editorial Product Review: :Picking up the story thread left by 1983's Terms of Endearment, this overwrought sequel is made palatable by Shirley MacLaine's charismatic performance, which in turn is nearly equaled by Marion Ross's role as her housekeeper. An unexpected surprise, Ross obviously was never allowed to display her range as Mrs. Cunningham on Happy Days. Returning as the vibrant Aurora Greenway, MacLaine far outshines the thin material involving the tangled and unhappy lives of her three grandchildren. The plot picks up 13 years after the death of Greenway's daughter (played by Debra ...
Editorial Product Review: :Fresh, attentive, and emotionally shattering, the French film Ponette is an attempt to enter the world of a 4-year-old girl whose mother has just been killed in a car accident on one of the winding roads in the mountainous countryside near Lyon. Played by pudgy, sad-eyed Victoire Thivisol (winner of a controversial but perfectly understandable Best Actress award at the 1996 Venice Film Festival), Ponette turns her grief into something else, something more childish and yet more mature. Convinced that her mother has been visiting her in her dreams, and ...
Editorial Product Review: :The Arab anti-defamation leagues understandably had a field day with this one. Sally Field plays Betty Mahmoody, an American who marries an Iranian (Alfred Molina) and has a child. They go back to Iran for a visit and, to her horror, he tells her he's decided to stay there. If she wants to leave, she must leave her daughter behind. If she stays, Betty must live in a culture vastly different and, she believes, very dangerous. Part thriller, part culture clash, the film certainly takes advantage of Americans' perceptions of ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:This sumptuous 1949 film adaptation of the beloved Louisa May Alcott novel isn't as good as the 1933 Katharine Hepburn version, or even the 1994 remake starring an Oscar-nominated Winona Ryder, but it does offer its own pleasures, especially in seeing an all-star cast put through its paces. Erstwhile tomboy June Allyson stars as Alcott's famed heroine Jo, the budding writer in Civil War New England who pines for adventure, independence, and her own career. With Father off to war, it's up to Jo, practical older sister Meg ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:If aliens came down to earth to see if humanity was worth saving, showing them Short Cuts, Robert Altman's bluesy riff on life in L.A. in the '90s, would not be a good idea. Based on the stories of Raymond Carver (adapted by Altman and Frank Barhydt), this ambitious film is a devilish valentine to living in L.A., where happiness comes at a premium. There are at least eight separate stories that crisscross, most about people who choose not to relate to the lives they are living. Seemingly ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:If aliens came down to earth to see if humanity was worth saving, showing them Short Cuts, Robert Altman's bluesy riff on life in L.A. in the '90s, would not be a good idea. Based on the stories of Raymond Carver (adapted by Altman and Frank Barhydt), this ambitious film is a devilish valentine to living in L.A., where happiness comes at a premium. There are at least eight separate stories that crisscross, most about people who choose not to relate to the lives they are living. Seemingly ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:Based on Robert Harling's play, this comedy-drama directed by Herbert Ross (The Turning Point) follows several years in the lives of women who regularly see one another at a beauty shop in their small Louisiana town. The story deepens as Julia Roberts, playing a serious diabetic and the daughter of Sally Field, goes downhill in her health. But as an ensemble piece, this is one of those enjoyably lumpy tearjerkers with many years' worth of stored truths suddenly being shared between the characters, lots of grievances aired, that ...
The Web Services Policy Working Group has published two Web Services Policy 1.5 - Working Drafts: an update to the Primer and a First Public Working Draft of Guidelines for Policy Assertion Authors. The new Guidelines document provides ...