Word: hollywoodizations
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Ross of Happy Days couldn't have missed for wearing age make-up and dying suddenly in The Evening Star. No dice, ladies. Instead, this year's voters went for Jean-Baptiste, an unknown first-timer in a tricky, understated ensemble turn. Allen and Hershey have higher profiles, but Hollywood and the public spurned their films; regardless, their indelible performances were deservedly remembered...
...presence of independent films has finally reached the crescendo we have anticipated throughout the 90s. Rather than a single My Left Foot or The Crying Game to represent the Little Film, this year's oddball is Jerry Maguire, the only Hollywood project to earn a slot in the Picture race. The somnambulists who voted in featherweight tripe like Scent of a Woman and Field of Dreams are finally hibernating where they belong. As Shakespeare once apostrophized, "Studios, studios, where art thou, studios...
Offbeat nominations, however, do not necessitate the same maverick spirit in the final balloting. My suspicion is that Hollywood is still far more predictable than one might think. The nominations themselves, however hip, bear much in common with Old Academy tradition, and if you don't think lifetime achievement, physical affliction, and onscreen heroics can still push a nominee to the podium, you don't know your Oscars...
Lala Levy (Jessica Hecht) is a socially awkward young Jewish woman, back home in Atlanta after an aborted semester at the University of Michigan. In between decorating the Christmas tree and ogling the Hollywood celebrities in town, she is trying to get a date for the big event of the Jewish social year, known as Ballyhoo. Reacting in various ways to her travails are her widowed mother; the unmarried uncle and widowed aunt who live with them; and her prettier, more socially assured cousin, home from Wellesley...
...just gone to work for the family business. Uhry juggles a lot of elements with no evident strain: creating a believable family that seems both quirky and emblematic; exploring issues of Jewish self-hatred; giving hints of The Glass Menagerie and then taking a sharp right turn. Hollywood will probably shower the play with stars, but most likely will miss the delicacy of Ron Lagomarsino's understated direction and Dana Ivey's touching performance as Lala's stern, no-nonsense mother. She can get a laugh and evoke a lifetime of prefeminist frustration with a single line ("If I were...