Word: ripley
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...next film by Ang Lee, who directed the Oscar-nominated Sense and Sensibility and The Ice Storm. That was so he could do the next film from the Oscar-winning director of The English Patient, Anthony Minghella. Damon will play the title role in The Talented Mr. Ripley, Minghella's adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel about a charming con man driven to murder. Until recently, scripts sent to him had multiple sets of fingerprints on them; this one came straight from Tom Cruise's reject pile. "There's something so apple pie about him," says Minghella. "You know...
Naturally, the creatures' old nemesis, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), has been--literally--reincarnated, and her wit and toughness were not forgotten in the cloning. Nor did screenwriter Joss Whedon (of TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer) neglect to provide her with a spaceship of fools who refuse to believe her warnings of impending carnage. He has even given Ripley a soul sister (Winona Ryder) to bond with. O.K., she's a robot, but she's got a heart of gold as well as buns of steel...
There's some admirable teamwork in Side Show, not just by Emily Skinner and Alice Ripley, joined at the hip as Daisy and Violet, but by composer Henry Krieger (Dreamgirls) and director-choreographer Robert Longbottom (Christmas shows for the Rockettes). The show percolates best in a couple of brisk, ersatz-vaudeville numbers (one features dancing Egyptians, swan-shaped harps and a crocodile) and in a soul-inflected showstopper, The Devil You Know. And there's at least one anthem-like ballad, Who Will Love Me As I Am? that should have Whitney Houston on the phone to her agent...
...rest of the cast is as solid as one might expect from the ART. Some of the actors choose to exaggerate the comic tendencies of their characters: Ripley turns the incurable romantic, "Ricky-Ticky-Tavy" Octavius into a singing, simpering, sentimental fool; Jack Willis, in a minor satiric role as an American industrialist buying his way into ancient English titles and estates, makes a caricature of himself with his loud, hearty declamations and zestful crudeness of manner. Geidt lacks Mephistophelian finesse as both Mendoza and Satan, but is nicely balanced by Epstein who is superb as the stiffly and stuffily...
...soloists--Ellen Hargis, soprano, Laurie Monahan, mezzo soprano, William Hite, Frank Kelley and Arthur Rishi, tenors, and Paul Guttry and David Ripley, bass--were superb as well. Hargis was particularly impressive; she is a specialist in pre-Baroque music, and it shows. She captured the Renaissance style perfectly, demonstrating complete control over her voice so that there was no excessive vibrato, yet no shrill tone. Also greatly enjoyable was the tenor dialogue in the Audi coelum (IX), in which Hite sang his responses to Kelley from the balcony...