Time marches on, and, thanks to a delay, I'm getting plenty of reviews done. More horror on the weekend, but this time around it's a mix of musicals, a classic, and a great docu.
Warners' The Kid Stays in the Picture is a riveting partisan docu on the wild high life of producer/studio head Robert Evans, told in his own words. Dazzling graphics and great clips illustrate this guy's roller-coaster adventures in Hollywood. The extras include about 20 minutes of really great gag-reel comedy, with Dustin Hoffman doing murderously funny, sometimes obscene imitations of Evans. Really something.
Criterion brings out a definitive disc of Vittorio De Sica's Umberto D., the last and acknowledged apex of the Italian Neorealist movement. A helpless pensioner finds himself pushed out of his room and abandoned by society, one indifferent person at a time. When he realizes he can't even keep his pet dog, it's just too much. With a lengthy TV show about De Sica, and a new interview with the woman who played Umberto's only friend, a young maid.
Columbia TriStar's Cover Girl is an attractive presentation of a flashy musical known for three things: elevating the status of dream girl Rita Hayworth, premiering the progressive technical-dance talents of Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, and just being an expensive Technicolor musical made at Columbia! Gene dances with himself, and Rita sings Long Ago and Far Away.
Fox's Hello, Dolly! is a great-looking, great-sounding disc of a musical with some classic moments but an overall feeling of emptiness. Walter Matthau and Barbara Streisand give it their best, but they're woefully miscast, and the giant production plays like an epitaph for the Old Hollywood nobody wanted to see any more. With Louis Armstrong.
It's a last-minute notice, but I just heard about it. Good friend Darren Gross has organized a PAPER MOON event tonight at 7:30 at the Vista Theater, 4473 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood, CA - 90020 323-660-6639. I don't know who will be in attendance, but there should be a nice roundup of personalities.
With all the virus buzz going around, when you write, please make your Email subject lines read like mail specific to Savant or some subject in the Column. I wipe out lots of spam every day (I think I get it all), and too often I can't figure out whether to open something or toss it. Yesterday I deleted an Email by mistake - just saw a jumble of letters and hit the button, and only afterwards realized that it said IAMMMMW : the acronym for IT'S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD. So you might want to re-send that one, if you read this, whoever you are ... sorry. Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson
Posted by DVD Savant at August 21, 2003 08:48 AM