Word: hollywoodizations
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...arguably the last great burst of Motown creativity. Gordy, distracted by Hollywood, released two films starring Diana Ross - Mahogany and the Billie Holiday biopic Lady Sings the Blues. The 80s brought Rick James and Lionel Richie and The Big Chill - a white, yuppie film with an amazing Motown soundtrack ("Aint Too Proud To Beg" was reduced to dishwashing music). By 1988, Gordy had had enough; he sold the company to MCA, which in turn sold it to Polygram, which in turn was bought by Universal. Really, though, who cares who owns it now? Just pop on one of those numerous...
Admit it, the show was better than last year's. You may recall that, in the face of the Screen Actors Guild's support for Hollywood's striking writers, the 2008 Golden Globes ceremony was a sad non-party, the winners' names announced with all the pizzazz of numbers being called at a deli counter. But last night the stars were out in their fancy frocks, as if to declare that, in a recession that looks to be heading south toward Black Plague territory, America needs both the elevated glamour of movie celebrity and the pert, reassuring familiarity...
...Italian movies, Dino Risi, 91, provided robust entertainment in many genres. Among his 80-some features were 17 starring Vittorio Gassman, most prominently the cynical social fable Il Sorpasso / The Easy Life and the blind-officer-on-a-toot drama Profuma di Donna / Scent of a Woman, remade in Hollywood with Al Pacino. Risi's string of affairs with gorgeous actresses, including Anita Ekberg and Alida Valli, provides the answer to the question: Why do guys become directors...
...Sheldon Keller, 85, was one of the crazy-gifted kids who wrote for Sid Caesar and Your Show of Shows; later he won a Writers Guild Award for the Hollywood parody Movie Movie and co-authored the movie Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell, remade with ABBA songs as Mamma Mia! Many a memorable MGM musical - Meet Me in St. Louis, Yolanda and the Thief, Ziegfeld Follies and (uncredited) The Wizard of Oz - sprang from the typewriter of Irving Brecher, 94. After writing the Bye Bye Birdie screenplay, Brecher began a retirement that lasted 45 years. I wish the same...
...instantly recognizable vocal talent, you went to Don LaFontaine, 68, who was The Voice - deep, whispery, authoritative - for some 5,000 Hollywood trailers. In a Geico commercial he is ID'd as as "that announcer guy from the movies" and famously intones: "In a world where both of our cars were totally underwater..." A nice guy, LaFontaine would do voice-mail messages for fans. He died of a collapsed lung...