The Stop Button
blogging by Andrew Wickliffe
Category: Directed by Norman Jewison
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The first twenty-five minutes of The Thomas Crown Affair is a bank heist. Starting with its planning. After opening titles suggesting the film is about stars Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway doing fashion advertising, we meet future wheelman Jack Weston. Weston gets hired by a mystery man to do a job. We jump forward in…
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There’s a lot bad about Jesus Christ Superstar. Some of it is casting, a lot of it is Jewison’s direction choices. He’s clearly thrilled to be shooting in the Middle East, but it doesn’t connect to his actual narrative. It connects to the subject matter, just not the film Jewison ends up making. The one…
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Despite all Danny DeVito’s vulgar innuendos–though there are a couple missed opportunities–Other People’s Money is a rather chaste film. Director Jewison’s model for it is a Hollywood classic, with exquisite gowns for DeVito’s love interest slash rival, Penelope Ann Miller, and hats for the men. With photography from Haskell Wexler and Alvin Sargent’s thoughtful, deliberate…
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Sidney Poitier is the big (Northern) city Black detective, Rod Steiger is the Mississippi redneck sheriff, can they work together to solve a murder? One hopes so. Excellent direction from Jewison, excellent performances from Poitier and Steiger (Steiger even gets too much to do considering it’s Poitier’s movie), meandering Stirling Silliphant script (from the John…
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I’ve seen Moonstruck once before–though I’d forgotten the terrible opening titles–and I think (I repressed the experience) that time I had the same response I just had this time. Moonstruck makes me worried I have brain damage. The first three quarters of the film, roughly until the very good scene between John Mahoney and Olympia…
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Somehow, it’s impossible to find an actual Tarkovsky quote regarding 2001 online, just tidbits about Solaris being his humanist response to that film. Damn. I wanted to open with a comment about Norman Jewison sharing the opinion about the science fiction genre. Rollerball‘s a technical masterpiece. Jewison’s sense of composition and editing have never been…
The Stop Button 