By Alan Hurst Last month the musical Funny Girl was revived on Broadway for the first time in 58 years. Fittingly, opening night was on April 24, Barbra Streisand’s 80th birthday. I say fittingly because the legend of Streisand is irrevocably tied to this musical. Any actress who attempts to play Fanny Brice is inevitably…
By Alan Hurst It’s a little surreal realizing that 1972 was 50 years ago because it was the year movies really became a part of my DNA and I can’t really be that old, can I? At the cusp of hitting my teen years in 1972, I was finally allowed to bypass the latest Disney…
By Alan Hurst Both Myrna Loy in The Thin Man and Bette Davis in Of Human Bondage should have been Best Actress Oscar nominees in 1934. Let me explain. In 1934 – the first time the Academy honoured films released within the 12-month calendar year – there were three nominees for Best Actress (five nominees…
By Alan Hurst Peter Bogdanovich – one of the hottest and most successful directors of the early seventies – passed away yesterday at the age of 82. His career serves as a cautionary tale of the kinetic combination of talent, early success, unbridled ego, and bad decisions. A scholar of film, before directing he had…
By Alan Hurst Remember the Night starts off as a snappy and fast paced comedy, very typical of the genre in the late thirties and early forties. But then it takes you places you aren’t expecting – first a little risqué (but not really) and then it becomes quite dark, almost threatening. But minutes later…
By Alan Hurst John’s recent look at the Oscar snubs of Nicole Kidman and Tom Hanks got me thinking. They’re both winners and multiple nominees, but they also have a resume of performances that somehow Oscar overlooked. Coming from another generation of stars, Shirley MacLaine is another one who can be listed with Kidman and…
By Alan Hurst Cards on the table: I’ve been a major fan of singer Anne Murray since she released “You Needed Me” in 1978. I think I knew about “Snowbird” (1970), “Danny’s Song” (1973), “Love Song” (1974) and her cover of the Beatles’ “You Won’t See Me” (1974), as well as her very 1970’s Canadian…
By Alan Hurst The passing of Broadway composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim last Friday at the age of 91 marked the end of an era for musical theatre. Although his musicals often struggled for financial success, their impact was undeniable – both at the time of their debut and in the numerous revivals since. He…
By Alan Hurst A cinephile’s dream: programming your own film festival. We’ve given ourselves a bit of a challenge here at Foote and Friends on Film to start a series of articles where we each get to program our own film festival, maybe even a few. The theme of the festival, the number of films,…
By Alan Hurst Sleep Hollow and Dragonwyck are set about 50 years apart but they’re eerily effective in provoking the puritanical, malevolent mood of life along New York’s Hudson River in era’s long gone by. They both tell stories that are influenced by the supernatural and occult. They achieve their visual effects through atmospheric cinematography…