Word: mirandas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Done with trying to make sense of life-or even of a play-Shakespeare pitched upon a strange island world almost outside geography. There, while his playwriting became a tangled, stunted vine, his poetry blazed like a burning bush. There Prospero, the banished Duke of Milan, tended his daughter Miranda, shipwrecked his enemies by waving his magic wand, ruled over the spirit Ariel, all speed and light, and the monster Caliban, that "freckled whelp hag-born." There also the shipwrecked men tediously conspired and caroused. When, at the last - his enemies forgiven, Ariel and Caliban set free - Prospero forswears magic...
Arnold Moss is an impressive Prospero with an incisive voice that gives force and significance to some of Shakespeare's most moving poetry. France Heflin portrays Miranda with an air of innocent wonder that is truly beautiful. Ballet is not out of place in "The Tempest," and Vera Zorina's Ariel has exceptional grace, if not marked dramatic excellence...
Something for the Boys (20th Century Fox) turns out to have nothing very notable for anyone. Carmen Miranda replaces the stage version's Ethel Merman as the girl whose radioactive teeth help the soldier hero (Michael O'Shea) win a sham battle and a promotion; Mr. O'Shea and Vivian Elaine handle the love interest, and one of the Cole Porter songs, plus six fair-enough new non-Porter items. There are some pleasant essays in low-keyed Technicolor and sculptural cross-lighting in the dance numbers. Phil Silvers combines a daftly likable energy with some blurrily...
Greenwich Village (20th Century-Fox) provides a hackneyed but handsome vehicle for a number of Hollywood virtuosos, notably Brazilian Dancer Carmen Miranda and the plug-ugly king of illiterary men, William Bendix. Resplendently decked out in Technicolor, the film is a gaudy, expensive improvisation on the oft-told story about a cafe singer (newcomer Vivian Elaine) who yearns to be a musicomedy queen, and a struggling composer (Don Ameche) who wants to have his concerto played at Carnegie Hall...
Hardly any of this is as interesting as the improvising that Bendix (materially assisted by Miranda) does with the King's English. As an ambitious nightclub entrepreneur, he substitutes affability for finesse and rides to glory as a Broadway producer, pausing periodically to potshot people who think high-flown language is better than low-blown horse sense...