Word: badham
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
WHOSE LIFE IS IT ANYWAY? Directed by John Badham Screenplay by Brian Clark and Reginald Rose...
This is particularly true in the context Director Badham has created for him in the movie. Onstage the sculptor never moved from his bed, and his confinement powerfully reinforced the pathos of his condition. In an obvious attempt to make his movie move, Badham insists on getting Ken up and stirring in a wheelchair at every logical opportunity. But this continual scooting about in hospital corridors undercuts Ken's arguments for being allowed to die, for it illustrates how much he could participate in life with a little help from his friends. One can never entirely reject his arguments...
...dramatic center -the justification really-for the characters' lives. Director James Bridges, whose last film was the smooth, tight thriller The China Syndrome, does not bring to his realization of the C. and W. scene anything like the dynamic energy, the sheer stylistic force with which John Badham drove Fever. Finally, the electric charge that Travolta jolted into that film is missing here. If he keeps on this way, he will turn out to be not the Brando of the '80s but the Troy Donahue of the decade...
...only other thing worth mentioning about Dracula--aside from the terrible Latex, greasepaint and collodion jobs on a few of the vampires, and the turn-of-the century, tradition vs. modernism theme Badham and Richter apparently tried to concoct in the visuals--is the great love scene that stopped the show on Broadway. As Dracula and Lucy begin to embrace, their figures dissolve into multi-colored silhouettes and recede into the distance, whereupon a bunch of shapely limbs wind and unwind to John Williams' less than austere music. The whole thing is modeled on the title sequences in the Bond...
Olivier has much the same problem, only much worse. He comes on with his elaborate fussing and bogus accent, and just as he begins to work his magic, the way he did under the sluggish lenses of Daniel Petrie (The Betsy) and Franklin J. Schaffner (The Boys From Brazil), Badham cuts away. Olivier is a man of the stage, and cold entrances don't suit him; it takes him awhile to warm up. The only time Badham holds on him for any length of time is after he's just rammed a stake through his daughter's heart, at which...