Editorial Product Review: :Paul Newman, an American original, would seem to be the perfect choice to direct a film adaptation of the second novel by another American original--Ken Kesey. But Kesey's novel, written under the influence of both LSD and growing fame, was a mishmash, and Newman's film can't rescue it. It also seems strange to see the ultraliberal Newman starring as a strike-busting logger who honors a contract on principle, rather than observe union concerns, bringing all sorts of misery down on his family. Henry Fonda ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:Sidney Lumet's directorial debut remains a tense, atmospheric (though slightly manipulative and stagy) courtroom thriller, in which the viewer never sees a trial and the only action is verbal. As he does in his later corruption commentaries such as Serpico or Q & A, Lumet focuses on the lonely one-man battles of a protagonist whose ethics alienate him from the rest of jaded society. As the film opens, the seemingly open-and-shut trial of a young Puerto Rican accused of murdering his father ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:Sidney Lumet's directorial debut remains a tense, atmospheric (though slightly manipulative and stagy) courtroom thriller, in which the viewer never sees a trial and the only action is verbal. As he does in his later corruption commentaries such as Serpico or Q & A, Lumet focuses on the lonely one-man battles of a protagonist whose ethics alienate him from the rest of jaded society. As the film opens, the seemingly open-and-shut trial of a young Puerto Rican accused of murdering his father ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:Ranking No. 21 on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest American films, this 1940 classic is a bit dated in its noble sentimentality, but it remains a luminous example of Hollywood classicism from the peerless director of mythic Americana, John Ford. Adapted by Nunnally Johnson from John Steinbeck's classic novel, the film tells a simple story about Oklahoma farmers leaving the depression-era dustbowl for the promised land of California, but it's the story's emotional resonance and theme of human ...
Editorial Product Review: :Burt Kennedy wrote several of the finest Westerns ever for director Budd Boetticher in the late '50s--marvels of austere, subtle storytelling. Yet on his own, writer-director Kennedy tended to very broad comedy-Westerns. The Rounders, based on a novel by Max Evans, falls somewhere between Support Your Local Sheriff (high) and Dirty Dingus Magee (low). Glenn Ford and Henry Fonda play two bronc busters in the pickup-driving West who, by their own admission, 'ain't exactly the smartest cowboys that ever lived.' Somehow they always end ...
Editorial Product Review: :Predating The Brady Bunch by almost a decade, Yours, Mine, and Ours is a screwball comedy about the ultimate blended family. When the widow Helen North (Lucille Ball) marries the widower Frank Beardsley (Henry Fonda), the two must find a place to house their 18--count 'em, 18!--kids (she had 8, he had 10). Based on a real-life couple, the film details the nuances of everyday life in a house overrun with children. From getting all the kids ready for school to sending off an ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:Writer Ernest Thompson, who came up with the original stage play of On Golden Pond and adapted it for film, is lucky to have two giants of the screen give dignity and breadth to his sometimes trite dialogue. Henry Fonda, in his last role, plays a prickly English professor at the disagreeable age of 80. Visiting his summer house by a Maine lake with his wife (Katharine Hepburn), the old man forges an unlikely bond with a lonely boy, comes to terms ...
Editorial Product Review: :Landmark films never lose the ozone-snap excitement of their special historic moment. The Trail of the Lonesome Pine was the first feature shot outdoors in three-strip Technicolor, and its exhilaration in forest and lake, mountain and cloud remains as fresh and privileged today as it must have been in 1936. Director Henry Hathaway, already a seasoned veteran, had a fine pictorial eye along with sturdy storytelling instincts; he knew just how to place his cast in dynamic settings without getting fussy about it (a ...
Editorial Product Review: : It's the day of the annual high-stakes poker game in Laredo, an eagerly anticipated event reserved for the richest men of the territory. But into the smoke-filled backroom of the host saloon comes a weak-willed family man (Henry Fonda), who's coincidentally passing through town with a large wad of money in his possession. Despite the protests of his demure wife (Joanne Woodward), he's drawn into the game, which holds many twists for everybody. This plain-looking Western plays like a TV movie that got ...
India expects to see rough diamond supplies fall by up to a fourth after the Diamond Trading Co (DTC), the distribution arm of De Beers, cuts down on Indian clients, an industry body said on Wednesday.
Hundreds of internet users from across the globe are signing an online condolence book offering their tributes to the slain former Pakistan premier Benazir Bhutto,