BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Child star Grimes’ Wonderful Life

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Child star Grimes’ Wonderful Life

Click the above link to a very interesting interview with Karolyn Grimes. She played Zuzu in the holiday classic film It’s a Wonderful Life.

Here’s a quote from the intro:

Grimes was Bailey’s six-year-old daughter Zuzu and uttered the now immortal closing line: “Teacher says every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings.”

Her Hollywood career was brought to an end in her early teens with the death of her parents, which led to her being sent away to live with her “mean” aunt.

She became a medical technician but experienced more tragedy with the death of several close family members, including the suicide of her son.

But since being “rediscovered” by a journalist in the 1980s, she has travelled the world as an unofficial ambassador for It’s A Wonderful Life – a film, she has since discovered, that has brought comfort to many a person, including herself.

I love this film and never tire of it. It’s one of the finest Christmas films but not because it takes place at Christmas. It’s about the good in everyone and the potential of every human life. However, it didn’t shy away from showing the meanness in people, too.

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Tags: Christmas, film, Capra, holidays, movies, It’sa Wonderful Life, interview, BBC

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“In a World” – the voice of the film trailer is silenced

Don LaFontaine, voice of the Hollywood film trailer, dies – Times Online

There are few other phrases or cliches better know than this one:

‘In a world…”

The voice of Don LaFontaine was silenced yesterday. Will trailers ever seem the same?

Check out his website at http://www.donlafontaine.com/

Tags: movies, film, voice, trailer

 

Film films online legally – SnagFilms

Home – SnagFilms

Check out SnagFilms.com if you want to watch films online – all perfectly legal. This site has lots of documentaries and independent films.

I’m watching “Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?”. Here is the synopsis:

Frank Popper’s engaging documentary follows the 2004 campaign of Jeff Smith, a young political science instructor at Washington University who runs for the seat vacated by retiring congressman Dick Gephardt. Pitted against state Rep. Russ Carnahan, the scion of a powerful political family, Smith proves that an unknown with no money can make a difference, forging a campaign that ultimately poses a serious challenge to Carnahan.

It’s a really interesting film.

There are lots of other films on this site so go see what interests you.

Tags: film, free, movies

 

Mel Brooks Blazes Wacky Trail : NPR

Mel Brooks Blazes Wacky Trail : NPR
Yeah – Another great NPR podcast. This one is an interview with one of the funniest people on the planet — Mel Brooks. The link has a tiny amount of text but listen to the 13-minute podcast audio – it’s well worth your time.

I would like to comment on the passing of Sydney Pollack, too. What a great director and actor! He was only 73 – the same age as my dad when he died in 1999. NPR has a 2005 interview with him for the release of his film The Interpreter. Here is the link.

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Tags: MelBrooks, Sydney Pollack, comedy, NPR, podcast, interview, film, obit, death, funny

 

Judi Dench, Living Quietly in ‘Cranford’: NPR podcast

Judi Dench, Living Quietly in ‘Cranford’ : NPR

Another great NPR podcast – this one is an interview with Judi Dench one of the finest actresses alive. I particularly loved her in Mrs. Brown, A Room with a View and in two BBC comedies A Fine Romance (with her husband Michael Williams) and As Time Goes By.

Masterpiece Theatre will be broadcasting the dramatization of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford next Sunday and she plays Matty Jenkyns. I’ve been waiting very patiently for this production. I’m in the middle of reading the book and it’s delightful. The link has an excerpt from Cranford.

Gaskell was a fascinating author, probably best known in this country for North and South and Wives and Daughters and both were beautifully dramatized by the BBC.

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Tags: JudiDench, BBC, Gaskell, TV, interview, NPR, podcast, drama, film

 

Paul Scofield, Oscar-winning actor, has died – Times Online

Paul Scofield, Oscar-winning actor, has died – Times Online

Sorry to have another obit but this is an actor I’ve always admired from when I first saw A Man For All Seasons to Martin Chuzzlewit and The Crucible.

Scofield’s presence was described as “monumental but reassuring” and his voice compared variously to a Rolls-Royce being started up and a sound rumbling up from an antique crypt.In his private life he avoided both the limelight and the party circuit, preferring instead to walk, ride and cycle around the area where he lived in Balcombe, West Sussex.He also savoured the wind and rain in his holiday home on a Scottish island. As the headlines once put it, he was “a very private actor”.

My kind of actor, my kind of person.

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Tags: Paul Scofield, obit, death, actor, England, London Times, stage, screen, film

 

Film director Anthony Minghella has died, aged 54 – Times Online

Film director Anthony Minghella has died, aged 54 – Times Online

This is so sad – Anthony Minghella is too young to be dead. He is responsible for two of my favorite films — Truly, Madly, Deeply and The English Patient. His film credits are not many but they reflect the quality he achieved. Such a loss. Here is a link to the London Times obituary.

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Tags: AnthonyMinghella, director, writer, dead, film, London Times

 

A great film artist is dead.

Ingmar Bergman, Famed Director, Dies at 89 – New York Times

On my first date with the man that I would later marry, he took me to see Persona and another film that I can’t remember but it was equally depressing. I remember wondering if my date was clinically depressed. Fortunately, he wasn’t.

I was a bit intimidated by Bergman after that but later we went to see Fanny and Alexander and I loved it. It also helped that I knew my guy better and had met his Swedish-born mother by then so I was more knowledgable of the Swedish sensibility.

For an intro to Bergman, I recommend Fanny and Alexander, Wild Strawberries or The Magic Flute. After those, then try Persona or Seventh Seal.

technorati tags:Ingmar-Bergman, film, cinema, movies, artist, Swede, death

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