DVD Playhouse—July 2009
By
Allen Gardner
Do The Right Thing: 20th Anniversary Edition (Universal) Spike Lee’s groundbreaking fable about race relations in an ethnically mixed Brooklyn neighborhood during a sweltering New York summer remains as potent, timely and prescient as it was in 1989. Lee is among the cast, which also includes John Turturro, Danny Aiello, Samuel L. Jackson, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Rosie Perez (to name a few), that provide the tableaux-like framework for this stunning work. Criminally ignored by Oscar (it wasn't even nominated for Best Picture, but did garner nods for Supporting Actor Danny Aiello and Lee’s screenplay), it endures as a timeless classic. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Commentary by Lee, Ernest Dickerson, Wynn Thomas, Joie Lee; Documentary; Deleted and extended scenes; Featurettes. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS 5.1 surround.
Coraline (Universal) A young girl moves into an old Victorian house with her parents...
By
Allen Gardner
Do The Right Thing: 20th Anniversary Edition (Universal) Spike Lee’s groundbreaking fable about race relations in an ethnically mixed Brooklyn neighborhood during a sweltering New York summer remains as potent, timely and prescient as it was in 1989. Lee is among the cast, which also includes John Turturro, Danny Aiello, Samuel L. Jackson, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Rosie Perez (to name a few), that provide the tableaux-like framework for this stunning work. Criminally ignored by Oscar (it wasn't even nominated for Best Picture, but did garner nods for Supporting Actor Danny Aiello and Lee’s screenplay), it endures as a timeless classic. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Commentary by Lee, Ernest Dickerson, Wynn Thomas, Joie Lee; Documentary; Deleted and extended scenes; Featurettes. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS 5.1 surround.
Coraline (Universal) A young girl moves into an old Victorian house with her parents...
- 7/14/2009
- by The Hollywood Interview.com
- The Hollywood Interview
NEW YORK -- A jazz singer's tragic life will hit screens this May in the Palm Pictures documentary Anita O'Day: The Life Of a Music Legend.
Palm picked up all North American rights to the portrait of O'Day, who overcame alcoholism, rape, heroin addiction and jail time in her seven decade career. Directors Robbie Cavolina and Ian McCrudden filmed interviews with the singer shortly before her 2006 death at age 87.
Legend includes new interviews with jazz artists Annie Ross (Robert Altman's Short Cuts) Margaret Whiting and George Wein, along with rare footage of O'Day performances with Louis Armstrong and other musicians from her 1940s heyday.
The film premiered at last year's Tribeca Film Festival. A fall DVD release is planned following the platform theatrical release in May.
Palm's Ed Arentz negotiated the deal with Cavolina, McCrudden and producer Melissa Davis.
Palm picked up all North American rights to the portrait of O'Day, who overcame alcoholism, rape, heroin addiction and jail time in her seven decade career. Directors Robbie Cavolina and Ian McCrudden filmed interviews with the singer shortly before her 2006 death at age 87.
Legend includes new interviews with jazz artists Annie Ross (Robert Altman's Short Cuts) Margaret Whiting and George Wein, along with rare footage of O'Day performances with Louis Armstrong and other musicians from her 1940s heyday.
The film premiered at last year's Tribeca Film Festival. A fall DVD release is planned following the platform theatrical release in May.
Palm's Ed Arentz negotiated the deal with Cavolina, McCrudden and producer Melissa Davis.
Mill Valley Film Festival
AOD Prods.
MILL VALLEY, Calif. -- Anita O'Day, a singer whose captivating stage presence, rich smoky voice, sophisticated good looks and unique phrasing made her a performer who inspired ecstatic joy and awe, was considered the only white female singer in the same jazz league as Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan, though she was never as well known.
That she failed to attain the fame of the aforementioned greats or that her career never reached the same heights was in part because of her being her own worst enemy. This and more is discussed by a roster of record industry professionals, jazz critics and friends who sing her praises in Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer, an engaging if less than revelatory documentary, from Robbie Cavolina (O'Day's former manager) and Ian McCrudden, which covers her seven-decade career and was screened at the Mill Valley Film Festival.
For those who read her frank autobiography, "High Times, Hard Times", there's little new here. But the docu, which should have a good run on the festival circuit and a second life on television broadcast, will introduce O'Day to the uninitiated and make fans nostalgic for her smooth, feeling delivery, tough-girl demeanor and technical prowess.
O'Day's famous lightning-fast rhythmic delivery was fueled, in no small measure, by bouts of alcoholism and a 20-year heroin addiction that nearly killed her. Most of the money she earned went directly into her arm or into the system of drummer and fellow junkie John Poole, who died from an overdose.
The filmmakers incorporate grainy TV kinescopes of interviews with Dick Cavett and David Frost -- she turns around and turns it on when confronted by a judgmental Bryant Gumbel -- testimonials from those who knew her and excerpts from conversations with O'Day, shot in disconcerting extreme close-up shortly before her death last year at 87.
But it's rare clips of her singing solo or along with Stan Kenton, Hoagy Carmichael, Roy Eldridge, Gene Krupa or Louis Armstrong that grab the spotlight. This includes footage of her memorable, show-stopping rendition of Sweet Georgia Brown at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. High as a kite and dressed in a chic, white-fringed black hat and matching dress, she's a sight to behold and a supreme pleasure to hear.
AOD Prods.
MILL VALLEY, Calif. -- Anita O'Day, a singer whose captivating stage presence, rich smoky voice, sophisticated good looks and unique phrasing made her a performer who inspired ecstatic joy and awe, was considered the only white female singer in the same jazz league as Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan, though she was never as well known.
That she failed to attain the fame of the aforementioned greats or that her career never reached the same heights was in part because of her being her own worst enemy. This and more is discussed by a roster of record industry professionals, jazz critics and friends who sing her praises in Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer, an engaging if less than revelatory documentary, from Robbie Cavolina (O'Day's former manager) and Ian McCrudden, which covers her seven-decade career and was screened at the Mill Valley Film Festival.
For those who read her frank autobiography, "High Times, Hard Times", there's little new here. But the docu, which should have a good run on the festival circuit and a second life on television broadcast, will introduce O'Day to the uninitiated and make fans nostalgic for her smooth, feeling delivery, tough-girl demeanor and technical prowess.
O'Day's famous lightning-fast rhythmic delivery was fueled, in no small measure, by bouts of alcoholism and a 20-year heroin addiction that nearly killed her. Most of the money she earned went directly into her arm or into the system of drummer and fellow junkie John Poole, who died from an overdose.
The filmmakers incorporate grainy TV kinescopes of interviews with Dick Cavett and David Frost -- she turns around and turns it on when confronted by a judgmental Bryant Gumbel -- testimonials from those who knew her and excerpts from conversations with O'Day, shot in disconcerting extreme close-up shortly before her death last year at 87.
But it's rare clips of her singing solo or along with Stan Kenton, Hoagy Carmichael, Roy Eldridge, Gene Krupa or Louis Armstrong that grab the spotlight. This includes footage of her memorable, show-stopping rendition of Sweet Georgia Brown at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. High as a kite and dressed in a chic, white-fringed black hat and matching dress, she's a sight to behold and a supreme pleasure to hear.
- 11/2/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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