Word: capra
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...LAST BUSINESS titan -- devoid of electoral experience but rich in patriotic fervor -- to try to bankroll his way into the White House as a high- minded alternative to an unpopular President and the usual band of two- faced out-of-power politicians. In the Frank Capra classic, Tracy falls under the thumb of a cabal of back-room bosses before reclaiming his virtue in a dramatic radio address, in which he confesses, "I sold out my ideals to a gang of corrupt politicians...
...innocence. For all its cynicism, or even paranoia, about official venality, the film is a call for a kind of informed innocence. Stone says: Open your eyes wide, like a child's. Look around. See what fits. And Costner's summation is right out of an old Frank Capra movie in its declaration of principle in the face of murderous odds. Lost causes, as Capra's Mr. Smith said, are the only causes worth fighting...
...WONDERFUL LIFE. Joe Raposo, composer of Sing and much of Sesame Street, left a trove of musicals-in-the-making at his death in 1989. This remake of the Frank Capra-Jimmy Stewart film classic It's a Wonderful Life, at Washington's Arena Stage, is as sweet and gosh-darn inspirational as the original. But Sheldon Harnick's book and, especially, lyrics wobble embarrassingly in tone, and the storytelling transition from screen to stage is much less than magical...
MILESTONES Frank Capra had superb skill to match his sentiment...
...Manon of the Springs) based on his novels, Pagnol is a figure unique in 20th century French culture. He might be described as the Provencal Mark Twain, if that beloved "regional" writer had also made movies championed by critics and the public. He could be a French Frank Capra, if that populist filmmaker had also been his country's most popular playwright. Pagnol introduced French theatergoers to the accent of his own rural south, where Rs roll off the tongue like a river over its bed, and carted his movie camera out of the studio and into the side streets...