Word: lumet
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Sherman Oaks, California. An original member of the seminal 1930s Group Theatre--which also nurtured teaching greats Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler and Robert Lewis--Meisner coached actors to interact convincingly and to project emotional believability. Among his many students: Gregory Peck, Diane Keaton, Robert Duvall, and directors Sidney Lumet and Sydney Pollack...
...represented the writer and the director and the stars of a given production. Deep into the 1980s, Cohn had an impressive plurality of the stars and filmmakers with claims to blue-chip seriousness: Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Lily Tomlin, Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams, Robert Altman, Bob Fosse, Sidney Lumet, Woody Allen, Nichols and so many more. Cohn got Columbia Pictures to pay an astonishing $9.5 million for the movie rights to the Broadway musical Annie, a record that will probably never be broken. In New York's big-time legitimate theater, Cohn's hegemony was almost complete, his power inescapable...
...nearly his entire decade-ago pantheon of movie clients have, one by one, left him. Lumet and Allen remain, but neither director is any longer someone whose films the smart set feels obliged to see, and neither has had a hit since -- well, since before Sam Cohn's influence ebbed. In 1991 a New York- based movie star signed with Cohn's agency -- but with the understanding she would not work with Cohn. And Broadway, the classier-than-thou underpinning of his Hollywood power in his heyday, is no longer much of a creative epicenter; only two straight plays...
...matter of his age, his distance from Wilshire Boulevard or his chronic breaches of etiquette. Rather, says a friend, "Sam was the king of artistic seriouness," and the appetite for serious films -- dark and downbeat, reeking of alienation -- is not what it was. In 1993, would studios green-light Lumet's Equus, Allen's Interiors, Altman's Quintet or Nichols' Carnal Knowledge? Cohn was a power broker during the decade or two when every movie director was by definition an untouchable auteur. Nowadays even true auteurs such as Scorsese are kept on rather short leashes, indulged their expensive artistic visions...
...detective Melanie Griffith go undercover among Brooklyn's Hasidic Jews and become one of the mishpocha? The reason why not is A STRANGER AMONG US. This pill of a thriller, written by Robert Avrech, manages to demean everyone involved, regardless of creed or previous credits. The usually workmanlike Sidney Lumet directs Griffith to be shrill and most of the Hasidim to be cute and noble -- E.T.s with yarmulkes. Only Eric Thal, as a young scholar, emerges with dignity intact and prospects bright...