Archives: A
- E F - N O
- Z Posters Who
We Are and Why We Do What We Do
BLU-RAY DVDs
Batman Begins
Black Hawk Down
Blade Runner
Casino Royale
Dark Knight
District Nine
Defiance
Fast and Furious
Fast and Furious movies set
Fifth Element
The Hangover
Incredible HULK
Inglorious Basterds
Iron Man
Kill Bill 1 & 2
James Bond Ultimate ed v1James Bond Ultimate ed v2James Bond Ultimate ed v3
Julie & Julia
Moon
Public Enemies
Rambo box set
Silence of the Lambs
Sin City
This is Spinal Tap
Terminator
Terminator Salvation
Terminator 2
Top Gun
Total Recall
300
Transformers: Revenge of Fallen
Ultimate Matrix coll
Twilight
Underworld
Watchmen (dir cut)
X-Men Trilogy
X-Men Wolverine
BLU-Ray for family DVDs
Bolt
A Bug's Life
Cars
Chronicles of Narnia set
Coraline
Ghostbusters
Harry Potter & Chamber of Secrets
& Goblet of Fire
& Order of Phoenix
& Prisoner of Azkaban
& Sorcerers Stone
Ice Age/Alvin + Chipmunks set
The Incredibles
Jungle Book
Juno
Kung Fu Panda
Monsters Inc
Nightmare Before Xmas
101 Dalmatians
Pinocchio
Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy
Pixar short films
Ratatouille
Santa Clause
Santa Clause 2
Sleeping Beauty
Spiderwick Chronicles
Sleeping Beauty
Snow White & 7 Dwarfs
Star Trek motion pictures set
Star Wars Prequel Trilogy (1-3)
Star Wars Trilogy (4-6)
Transformers SE
Wallace and Gromit
Wall-E SE
We're Kidlet Safe
Search engine
by FreeFind
click to search site
Now in Release:
Alice in Wonderland
An Education
Avatar
Blind Side, the
Brooklyn's Finest
Green Zone
How to Train Your Dragon
Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
The Proposal
Red Clif
She's Out of My League
A Single Man
Waking Sleeping Beauty
DVDs on Sale:
An American in Paris
Batman
Begins
Blade
Runner
Blind Side
The Dark Knight
Day the Earth Stood Still
Die Hard collection 1-4
District Nine
Forrest
Gump
Gone
With the Wind
The Hangover
Indiana
Jones trilogy
Inglorious Basterds
Lord
of Rings trilogy
Ultimate
Matrix set
Monty
Python - Holy Grail
Moon
South
Park Movie
Star
Wars Trilogy (1-3)
Star
Wars Trilogy (4-6)
Terminator Salvation
Up
Wall-E
Watchmen - Ultimate cut
Woodstock
X-Men
Trilogy
X-Men Origins Wolverine
DisneyPixar/family DVDs
Alice
in Wonderland
Bambi
Beauty
and the Beast
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
Bolt
Cinderella
Coraline
E.T.
Harry
Potter yrs 1-4 set
Harry Potter
& Chamber of Secrets
& Goblet of Fire
& Prisoner of Azkaban
& Sorcerers Stone
& Order of Phoenix
Kung Fu Panda
The
Lion King
Mary
Poppins 45th LE
Pinocchio
Ratatouille
Shrek Trilogy
Simpsons Movie
Spider-Man Trilogy
Star Trek movies set
Star
Trek TOS (TV)
ST:TNG complete tv set
Star Wars Trilogy (1-3)
Star
Wars Trilogy (4-6)
Wallace and Gromit
Wall-E SE
Looney
Toons
Golden Age DVD
Volume
1
Volume
2
Volume
3
Volume 4
Volume 5
Volume 6
Rocky & Bullwinkle DVD
Season
1
Season
2
Season
3
Popeye the Sailor DVD
v.1 1933 - 1938
v.2 1938 - 1940
v.3 1941 - 1943
75th anniversary coll.ed.
|
Up Close & Personal Starring
Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert Redford, |
|
Once upon a time . . .
There was a poor girl who worked diligently until the day she met a prince. She falls in love . . .
Yeah yeah. Girl meets boy. Girl loses boy. Girl gets boy. Girl loses boy again, and so on into the third act. It's been done to death, but in the case of Up Close & Personal there is one major difference.
It's called STAR POWER. Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert Redford let it out both barrels blasting and totally overwhelm what one of the Crankified rightfully called a "dumb story." Cranky thinks that were ANYBODY else to play the leading roles, UC&P would have been a major disaster.
But it's not.
It is great fun. Redford looks better, and yes hotter, on screen here than he has in a long while. Each crack of them pearly whites brought audible sighs from the audience. Ditto Cranky's reaction to Michelle Pfeiffer .
Up Close & Personal is "inspired" by the book bio of a long dead NBC anchor, and it has so little to do with the life of this person, with whom I was acquainted in my days as an NBC director, that I won't mention the name. If you know the name and expect to see drugs flying every-which-way, you won't. 'Nuff said.
Pfeiffer plays Sally Atwater of Reno, Nevada. She wants to be on Television. She wants to be a Star, and she is miserably equipped for the lowest of positions -- desk assistant, which is where she begins her upward climb. Warren Justice (Redford) is the News Director at a television station in Miami, who becomes her mentor, and takes special interest in her "career." Why this is, is a mystery, since he shows no sexual interest in the woman at all -- which is what everyone, including his ex-wife (Kate Nelligan), expects. So Tally (Redford has her name changed) begins as a weather girl and moves on to fluff reporter. All along the way Redford guides and teaches her, everything moving along smooth as silk until a clumsily-directed scene gives visual clues that Tally is a lot more than interested in her boss than as a boss.
OF COURSE the inevitable happens. OF COURSE Tally moves up and away to a different market -- and promptly falls apart without her sensei??. OF COURSE he comes after her.
But it doesn't matter because the screen chemistry between the two is so intense, it is almost blinding. And as the third act literally explodes on the screen, there wasn't an eye wandering in the theater. Up Close & Personal is, for all its dumbness, the first "really good" Movie-with-a-capital-M of the year. The money wasn't spent just on the above the leading stars. Kate Nelligan, Joe Mantegna, and especially Stockard Channing and Glenn Plummer, provide more than interesting supporting characters.
Enter the theater expecting nothing, pick your star, and have a real good time. Director Jon Avnet backloads the emotion so that you might walk out with red eyes. Cranky also compliments the swooping camerawork of DP Karl Walter Lindenlaub (Rob Roy and Stargate).
As an ex-Network person, everything about the various station ops "feels" right, and there is some hysterical inside joke dialog that writers Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, must be commended for. So I do.
On average, a first run movie ticket will run you Eight Bucks. Were Cranky able to set his own price for Up Close & Personal, he would have paid . . .
$6.75
It's a great date movie, though perhaps not something you can see again and again. Star power can only do so much -- but I really did like this Movie.
 |
Click to buy films by Jon Avnet |
| Click to buy films starring Robert Redford | |
| Click to buy films starring Michelle Pfeiffer |