Sally Field picks four for Turner Classic Movies
Sally Field is a two-time Oscar winner, a three-time Emmy winner — including last year at Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series for Brothers and Sisters — and she’s bound to be in the running again this year when the nominations are announced on July 17.
Now she’s taking on a new role; she’ll be guest programmer at Turner Classic Movies in July, and having gotten a look at her choices, I have to say to Sally, “I like you, I really like you” — at least your taste in movies.
Sally will be joined by TCM host Robert Osborne introducing and discussing her four films. The Field four are Love With a Proper Stranger, The Awful Truth, All About Eve and The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, and every one of them features great performances by women.
To those of you who aren’t movie buffs, here’s a bit more information about these films — why I like them, and I mean, I really like them.
– Love With a Proper Stranger stars Natalie Wood (in an Oscar-nominated performance) as a girl from a nice Italian family who gets pregnant after a one-night stand with a musician, Steve McQueen. Together they decide she needs to get an abortion. Since the film is set in 1963, that was illegal, expensive and dangerous. Directed by Robert Mulligan, this movie is essentially a two-character piece and Wood and McQueen are fantastic.
– The Awful Truth is a screwball comedy about marriage starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. It’s smart, funny and very grown up about men and women and the trouble with fidelity. Made in 1937, directed by Leo McCarey, it’s still one of the funniest movies ever. If you’ve never had a chance to see Irene Dunne at work, this is the movie to watch. She was the Glenn Close of her era, Oscar nominated five times (including The Awful Truth) and never won.
– Most everyone knows that the 1950 Best Picture Oscar-winner All About Eve is the quintessential movie about the theater, with brilliant performances especially by the women in the cast, Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, Celeste Holm and Thelma Ritter — and George Sanders, too.
– The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek is a flat-out comic masterpiece by Preston Sturges, starring Betty Hutton. Made in 1944, with American at war, it’s the story of Trudy Kockenlocker, a small-town girl who gets married and knocked up after an all-night going away party for a soldier. She can’t remember who he is, has no clue, but her disgrace is ameliorated in a most surprising way.
Tune in on July 10 for Sally and Bob and a top-notch movie marathon.
TV Obits: Charisse, Calhoun, Schwartz, Brandt
A roundup of TV people from in front of the camera and behind the scenes who have passed away.
- Cyd Charisse: Though she is known best for her work with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly in many classic movies, including Singin’ in the Rain, The Band Wagon, Ziegfield Follies, and Words and Music, she also appeared on many TV shows, including Hawaii Five-O, The Love Boat, The Fall Guy, Medical Center, Burke’s Law, Checkmate, and Arthur Godfrey and Friends, as well as a voice role on an episode of Frasier. She died of a heart attack at age 86.
- Robert Calhoun: He was a producer and director who worked on many soap operas, including As The World Turns, Guiding Light, Another World, and Texas. He died of lung cancer at age 77.
- Tony Schwartz: He was an advertising icon who is probably best remembered for creating the famous “Daisy” TV commercial for Lyndon Johnson during the 1964 Presidential campaign. He also worked on other advertising campaigns, including Coke, Chrysler, and anti-smoking ads for the American Cancer Society. He died of heart valve stenosis at age 84.
- Yanna Kroyt Brandt: She was a producer on several shows, including The American Experience, Great Performances, FYI: For Your Information, and many other films and specials. She died in an auto accident at age 74.
Jonathan Roberts on Dancing With The Stars: Week 8
Week 8 brings us another chat with our favorite pro. This week Jonathan weighs in with his thoughts on all of the couple’s performances and picks his favorite dance of the night. It was a better week for the judges, but there is still one dance that he didn’t agree with them about…at all.
Along the way he talks about the difficulties the pros face choreographing the performances as they move further into the competition. We also get to some reader questions. Read on to hear about his trip to the White House, the most, and least, memorable moments from his years on the show, and a sneak peek at just what they have planned for Tuesday’s big results show.
Brett: So, what did you think of the night overall?
Jonathan: Great performances tonight. It really was, for me, one of the better shows of the season so far. Really great dancing. Great routines. Very interesting.
Brett: I agree. That being said, I thought Cristián really stole the show there at the end.
Jonathan: Yeah, I do have to say, if we could remove Cristián’s left arm permanently, he might win this competition. It was his best night yet. A few weeks ago I made a comment about not feeling like he was himself. Like I would see him back stage and he’d be more fun and have more personality. On the dance floor I would feel that he would disappoint me a little. Tonight he was himself. Maybe the distraction of the arm meant he had to put more focus into it. Sometimes when you get thrown off, or you get an injury like that, it really causes you to focus in and 100% mentally pay attention to the one or two things you have to do in the dance. It really paid off for Cristián because it was his best night yet, absolutely.
Brett: I thought that really showed in their mambo. He came out and his attitude was such a huge part of their number.
Jonathan: Yeah, the rhythm was great. His movement was great. His personality came through. With just one arm you could really see he was leading Cheryl. Sometimes I’ve felt that it looks like Cheryl is leading him, and tonight it just looked like even though it was only one arm, he just took control.
Brett: And a lot of that credit goes to Cheryl, right? She had to make everything look good while working around his arm, but keeping it from being obvious.
Jonathan: Absolutely. And that’s why I wish the professionals got more credit as the show goes on. Because it all comes down to how good the celebrity looks is up to the professional. So, we can give them too hard a routine and they look bad, or too simple a routine and they don’t look complicated or professional enough. Tonight Cheryl did a great job. The choreography was perfect for him. It was complicated enough to show him off and it was exactly what the dance needed. It was sophisticated, and it was just perfect.
Brett: Kind of on that same line with what the pro is tasked with in designing the dances, going to Marissa and Tony. I thought again it looked like it was a little bit too easy for this stage of the competition.
Jonathan: Again with Marissa, I feel she did a fabulous job. Obviously her routines are not as complicated, let’s say, as Kristi’s, or maybe Jason’s. But for her, she did a great job and she sold her thing. I think it’s a little bit like last season when I had Marie Osmond. I knew that maybe Mel B. was going to do the splits, and Helio was going to jump flying in the air, so we focused on what she did best, which was selling her character and personality. I think that’s what Marissa and Tony are doing together. Maybe technique wise it wasn’t as complicated as some of the other dances, but she sold what she did 100%. And I think that is what is reaching out to the audience and why people are voting for her. They believe in her and they see that she believes in what she’s doing and she loves it. You can’t criticize that.
Brett: Moving to Jason & Edyta, I thought it was two very different performances. The tango really suited his personality, but with the samba he just wasn’t quite there.
Jonathan: I have to say, the judges were right on tonight with Jason & Edyta. The fist number, the tango, was just brilliant. He was in character, and I have to agree with the judges that I’ve never seen Edyta look so great. As sexy as she is, and she does all these amazing things, somehow in this black sophisticated dress, they really were amazing to me. Very creative in all the little flicks of the leg and the little tricks. There were a lot of subtle things in the tango. I think people should record the routine and watch it again and just notice the little fine parts that Edyta put in there with Jason. It was really impressive.
Equally on the other half, the samba was just a disaster. Sometimes when it comes to this point in the competition, the pressure on the celebrities is just getting exhausting. So whatever routine you start first somehow often sticks more in the celebrity’s head. Whereas the second routine, or whichever one doesn’t come as naturally, just doesn’t come across as well. I think that might have been what happened with Jason. He could sell one routine, but two was just too much for him this week.
Brett: And that one was always going to be harder for him coming in as a football player, right?
Jonathan: Yeah, but as I said before, samba is one of the hardest Latin dances. Like with Marlee, unfortunately she had the mambo and the samba two weeks in a row which musicality and dance-wise are really difficult dances. We see now with Jason getting the samba, it wasn’t his best dance either, and part of that is because it’s just such a hard dance to sell and make look good.
And if we can move on to Kristi, I completely disagree with the judges about her samba. But again, the samba, and they didn’t score that well. It just shows that it’s such a hard dance to sell.
Brett: Sure, and with that one I really thought she should have gained a point for the huge spins in the middle.
Jonathan: Yeah, the thing about Kristi is that tonight was just not fair to her. I don’t know if the judges are taking into account her skating background and holding her to a higher standard. I don’t know. But I think, as Len would say, raunchy-wise, her samba could have been a bit more raunchy. But as far as technique, speed, and the choreography, that was three 10s. She had the bounce action. She had the rhythm. She had the timing with her feet. Eight spins in a row into a back bend. She just was phenomenal. So I 100% completely disagree with them.
Brett: With Mario & Karina, they made a big deal this week about everybody getting to do lifts, and I thought their lift in the waltz was the best lift of the night.
Jonathan: I would agree there. The first lift in the waltz was the best executed lift of the night. It was flawless up, flawless down. It fit perfectly with the music. It was really really nice. Whereas the second lift they did, it was a little awkward at the end. He actually managed to save it, barely. Because it was starting to go bad.
Brett: That one seemed like they bit off a little bit more than they should have.
Jonathan: Yeah, that’s the thing. You never know. And this is why there is so much pressure on the professionals. We never know how quickly our partners are going to get it. You don’t want to make a routine that looks to easy and have people say, “Wait a second, that’s not a semi-final routine. That’s too boring.” But then you don’t want a routine that is so difficult they end up looking bad. It really is a tough job for the pros to kind of feel out their partner each week because every week you’re physically more tired, mentally more tired. So many different things come into play. Maybe you have another event from the other part of your life booked and you lose a day of practice or something. There is just a lot of factors that make it very hard. For me, I felt Mario looked a little unrehearsed. Normally he looks so confident and slick, but I saw him looking down at Karina’s feet a lot. Kind of out of the corner of his eye watching her and getting back in time with the routine. So I think Mario is a better dancer than what we saw tonight in the jive.
Then, on the other half for Mario, I was surprised. His first dance, he was so elegant, he was great. He really did take what the judges said and worked on it. From that very first moment he walked out with the grey suit he just looked polished. His posture was better and he really did a nice job. For Mario it was a reverse for me this week. Normally his Latin is good and his ballroom is not so good. Tonight was a switch.
Brett: Out of all of those, did you have a favorite dance of the night?
Jonathan: My favorite dance of the night would be Jason & Edyta’s tango, with a close second Mark & Kristi’s samba.
Brett: Ok, getting to some of the reader questions, a lot of people have been asking about tomorrow night, wondering if you’ll be performing and maybe you can give us a couple hints on what to look for.
Jonathan: The results show is going to be fabulous tomorrow. There are, as far as I know, over thirty celebrities coming back. I think pretty much all the pros from the past seasons are coming back. We’re opening the show with a huge pro number of all of us dancing again. You’ll get to see Ashley and Maks. There is a death defying trick with Karina that Maks and I are doing. Mel B. is dancing again. It’s going to be a must see show.
Brett: Jenn was wondering if you know the name for the spin and drop move that Kristi did in her Viennese waltz.
Jonathan: Off the top of my head, I’m not sure which move that was. I’d have to go back and look at the tape to identify it. The thing is, in ballroom dancing there is a list of what each dance has. Then from there, you go out and create your own moves. So, a lot of the moves are called different things in different places. It makes it hard sometimes to nail down a specific name for a step.
Brett: Nerissa wrote in to ask what it was like dancing for the President and First Lady at the Ford Theater Holiday Gala?
Jonathan: It was one of the most honorable experiences in my entire life. The Ford Theater was an amazing place to be, getting to meet the President, and members of Congress. I just felt honored, and proud of my country, and amazed that ballroom dancing took me to the white house.
Brett: Emily would like know if you have a most memorable and least memorable moment from all of your years dancing on the show.
Jonathan: I’ll give you one of each. Most memorable is tough, but I probably would say my second dance with Heather Mills, when we did the mambo and I put her into her back flip walkover. It was right in front of the three judges and I saw all three of their mouths just drop in astonishment. The least memorable has to be when they waxed my chest.
Brett: I don’t think you’re ever going to forget that.
Jonathan: No, but it will never happen again.
Brett: Sydney wants to know about the process you go through doing the choreography for your celebrity. I’m assuming it changes wildly depending on who you are partnered with.
Jonathan: Exactly. For me, a good choreographer looks at what their partners skills and abilities are and highlights those while trying to hide the weaknesses. So if you are great at spins, you put a ton of spins in everywhere. If you’re not great at spins you work on stretching arms and making lines or you work on their personality. Like I talked about before, as the show goes on it gets tougher and tougher figuring out what they can handle in a short amount of time.
Brett: I think it’s pretty impressive what the professionals are able to come up with week after week, especially at this point in the competition with two dances each week.
Jonathan: Yeah, and it’s hard to keep being creative. Like for some of us as pros that have been on the show five or six times now, you tend to kind of run out of ideas at some point. Especially when you’re under pressure. But every week the routines are great, and the show is great. My hat’s off to all the professionals on the show. What a great job they do.
Brett: Before we go, with the semi-finals coming up next week do you have any predictions for who goes to the finals?
Jonathan: My prediction of the final is Jason and Kristi. That’s easy for me. The third person in the final, I don’t know. Cristián looked pretty good tonight.
Brett: He’s really made the conversation a lot more interesting after tonight.
Jonathan: Yeah, hopefully his arm won’t get better and we’ll see more of him.
And with that, we shut down the interview for another week. Jonathan will be back with us next week after the semi-finals to give his thoughts on the dances, and where things stand as we head for the finals. As always, feel free to leave questions in the comments and I’ll do my best to get to as many of them as we can.
American Idol: Top 5 Revealed
(S07E34) That was a bit of a departure from typical American Idol fare wasn’t it? There were a couple of really great performances and a couple of really not-so-great performances on Andrew Lloyd Webber. And if the comments to that post tell us anything it’s that you guys are passionate about who you like and who you don’t like. That’s what makes shows like this fun, and chatting about them online live as they happen even more fun. So feel free to stop in tonight to the hottest live chat on the ’net, starting just before 9:00pm ET. And let’s try and be nice to one another.
This week we had over 38 million votes split among the six contestants. The show started with the Top 6 butchering “All I Ask of You” while Andrew Lloyd Webber cringed behind the piano. Okay, maybe butchered is strong but there at the beginning when the guys all started in different keys it was a derailing train on the fast track to a wreck. The girls chimed in and improved things. But can someone tell the hired mosh pit girls that there are appropriate times to wave your hands back and forth and times where you just look dumb. I really hope they do away with the fake pit next year.
Ryan chatted Webber up for quite a bit at the beginning of the show and while he didn’t have anything really new to say, I found it very candid of him to again say that he felt Jason’s song choice wasn’t right and that even after the performance it still wasn’t the right choice. He avoided directly commenting on whether or not Brooke should have stopped and restarted her performance but gave her much praise for her talent in general. Getting harder to fill that hour with fewer contestants, isn’t it guys?
Ford Commercial - “Tainted Love”
I don’t know if I could get past Brooke’s hair in this very punk gothic Mad Max-esque commercial. But while they were able to cyberpunk most of the contestants, David Archuleta still looked pure and innocent no matter what they did.
Presidential Address
We got a statement from Mr. and Mrs. Bush on their appreciation of the monies raised during “Idol Gives Back.” Was it just me or did they look like they were really straining to hold those smiles while the other was talking.
Idols on Broadway
A lot of Idols have wound up on Broadway. LaKisha Jones, Fantasia and Diana DeGarmo all wound up on Broadway. We checked in with Tamyra Gray, who was one of the strongest voices in the first season. She’s currently performing in RENT. Clay, who was sporting a horrible hairstyle that works for Sir Robin in Spamalot but not otherwise. His new album, On My Way Here, drops May 6, 2008 and sports his new blonde Sir Robin locks.
Leona Lewis - “Bleeding Love”
Simon discovered the number one selling new artist in the world on his British show The X Factor in 2006. Now, with a debut album and single, Leona Lewis has been toppling sales records in her native UK, the US and across the world. She gave a simple and straightforward performance, but sounded and looked fantastic. I know Simon has said that America has a wider depth of talent in our pool, but kudos to the British Isles as this particular find is an absolutely amazing discovery. And at only 23 years old, she’s got such a stage presence.
Building the Bottom Two
Since there’s only six left, rather than cut them in half and build a “Bottom Three,” this week we’ll just make a “Bottom Two.” Ryan started us off by bringing out David Cook and David Archuleta together. Is this going to be the Final Two? They certainly are nothing alike visually or style-wise. David Cook said he kept the original arrangement to try and be unpredictable by not going with a new or lesser-known arrangement. In a no-brainer of the night, the Davids are safe … and then there were four.
The next pairing to hit the stage was Syesha Mercado and Brooke White. Well, I’m not sure if it was sympathy that saved Brooke’s ass tonight, but Syesha dropped into the Bottom Two just as I suspected. Know that I didn’t put here there because I thought she deserved to be there but rather because I felt that having gone first (you’ve heard of the curse of the first, right?) and having been in the bottom before despite amazing performances, she’d probably find herself there again.
I’m impressed that Brooke wasn’t even in the Bottom Two. I wonder if there was a sympathy factor in that or if it was, as Paula said, just large fan-bases for these contestants regardless of what they do in any given week. Hey, it worked for Taylor Hicks all the way to the finals.
Finally, Carly Smithson and Jason Castro came out together. So if it was to go like the prior pair, Carly would find herself in the Bottom Two and Jason, mobilized by his own fan-base, would be safe. Carly has struggled with popularity throughout the competition while Jason has “those eyes.” My wife certainly thinks he’s incredibly handsome. And so it went.
Clearly, based on these results, we’ve moved more into the realm of a popularity contest than voting based on the given performances in any week. After all, the consensus seems to be that Jason and Brooke had the weakest performances last night and yet it’s Syesha Mercado and Carly Smithson in the Bottom Two.
Going Home
Well, I was none too pleased with this “Bottom Two.” Randy concurred with my assessment that it’s become a popularity contest. So now after two really strong runs on the show, it was time to say goodbye to Carly Smithson. It’s hard to say how much of her problems on the show in gathering a fan-base is due to a backlash from her failed pop career years ago, but clearly something wasn’t working for Carly. She’s taken a lot of flack on this site for her tattoos but it would be incredibly narrow-minded to say she wasn’t a worthy contender because she has a sleeve of tattoos, but then again this is America and we do some crazy things around here.
The biggest surprise of the night, though, wasn’t the elimination of Carly. Paula told her that this was only the beginning for her. Paula never says that to anyone.
My Picks
And I was doing so well. I got half of the Bottom Two right with Syesha, but I had Brooke eliminated and she wasn’t even in harm’s way. I knew Carly wasn’t popular but I didn’t realize Brooke had such a following. Maybe it’s a reaction to her being second-to-last in the voting last week. Fans tend to rally around their singer the week after a low showing like that. Nevertheless, I got it wrong and slipped to 8-11.
Your Picks
You didn’t see this one coming either, agreeing with me that Brooke should have been in the lowest spot. You fleshed out your Bottom Two with Jason. Carly came in only behind the Davids in your voting. You slipped to 11-8 on the year.
Next Week
It’s Neil Diamond week on the Idol. I think we’re done with the mentors after that, and I couldn’t be happier. It’s not that the mentors are bad but that the producers force us to limit specifically to the works the mentor worked on. Why couldn’t Andrew Lloyd Webber be the mentor on musical theater night, so the contestants can choose from all musical theater. Dolly Parton could have done country night and not just Dolly night.