Day: April 18, 2025

I’ve seen the 20th Century Fox / Henry King movie of Carousel two or three times, and while it’s not a great or even an especially high-grade film in a dramatic sense, the finale always melts me down.

But the deepest emotional depth charge, for me, has always come from Frank Sinatra‘s rendering of “Soliloquy,” which he recorded for the film’s soundtrack on 8.16.55

Sinatra sang at least two songs (“Soliloquy” and “If I Loved You”) that day for the 20th Century Fox / Henry King movie. The session happened on a Fox soundstage on Pico Blvd. The orchestra was conducted by Alfred Newman.

On the first day of shooting in Booth Bay, Maine, Sinatra was told he’d have to shoot his scenes twice, once in 35 millimeter and again in Cinemascope 55, a large format process similar to VistaVision and Todd-AO.

Stunned by this news, Sinatra said “no dice” and quit on the spot. He was replaced by Gordon MacRae. The finished film opened on 2.16.56.

From Owen Gleiberman‘s 4.17 Variety review of Becoming Madonna:

“We’d like an authoritative chronicle of everything that happened [during Madonna‘s struggle to make it], since Madonna intersected with as many notable figures as Zelig. And Michael Ogden, the director of Becoming Madonna, churns through these years in a slipshod way.

“The film keeps tossing out stray bits of information, like the fact that Madonna just about moved into The Music Building, the graffiti-strewn beehive of a studio rehearsal fortress several blocks south of Times Square.

“Yet it leaves out so much lore! Like the fact that Madonna studied under Martha Graham, or that she worked as a hat-check girl at the Russian Tea Room, or that she was sexually assaulted at knifepoint, or that she had a relationship with Jean-Michel Basquiat, or the pivotal way that she recruited ‘Jellybean’ Benitez to remix her first album.

“And though it’s part of Madonna’s legend that she pestered the DJs at Danceteria to play her demo tracks, it would have been nice if the movie filled in that chapter instead of just…mentioning it.”

Does anyone remember my 12.16.16 HE piece that praised Elyse Hollander‘s Blonde Ambition (“Popstar Bitch is Born”), a still-unproduced script that explores Madonna’s tough Manhattan years (’81 through ’83)?

I hereby pledge to send a PDF of Hollander’s script to anyone who’d like to read it.

Alas, Madonna didn’t like it and that’s where it ended.

An instant negative verdict was rendered after Mike Flanagan’s The Life Of Chuck won the 2024 Toronto Film Festival’s People’s Choice award.

Just about every visiting industry pro said “why did a film that generated zero festival conversation win the top trophy? What is wrong with the Toronto residents who voted for it? Are they saps? Why didn’t they show a little more taste?”

THR‘s Scott Feinberg on 9.15.24: “The Life of Chuck may be a lovely film, but it had virtually no profile coming in to the fest [and] generated virtually no discussion at the fest.”

An adaptation of a Stephen King novella, the “genre-trippping” feature costars Tom Hiddleston, Jacob Tremblay, Chiwetel “Chewy” Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Mark Hamill (73 going on 94), Annalise Basso, Mia Sara and HE fave Nick Offerman narrating.

Neon will open Chuck stateside on 6.6.25 with a nationwide expansion a week later (6.13).

It was unnecessarily invasive and even cruel of Santa Fe authorities to release video of a cop examination of the Santa Fe residence of the late Gene Hackman and wife Betsy Arakawa.

Okay, they blurred out the bodies but c’mon…this is humiliating.

That said, why were several rooms in their sprawling home such a revolting mess? It looks like a home occupied by alcoholics or druggies…people with no discipline or any sense of sanitation.

Why did they allow their home to become infested by rats? Is this an age thing? Do old folks just give up and surrender to chaos because it’s somehow more comfortable to do so rather than maintain order and cleanliness?

And the size of the place….Jesus. It looks like a sprawling hotel or a sporting lodge of some kind…at least twice as large as any reasonable older couple might require. What couple would choose to live in a place this cavernous?