Blog Archives

WEST SIDE CRYBABY

Posted on December 23, 2021 by ronbase — Leave a comment

Steven Spielberg’s beautifully reimagined West Side Story succeeds in doing what the musical has always done to me—turning me a sobbing emotional wreck. Tears-streaming-down-my-face wrecked. For-god’s-sake-it’s-only-a-movie wrecked. Please-don’t-turn-the-house-lights-on-at-the-end wrecked. Leonard Bernstein’s brilliant score has only to swell majestically as Tony…

Tagged with: Arthur Laurents, Carol Lawrence, Elizabeth Ashley, Frankie Avalon, Jack Nicholson, Jill St. John, Larry Kert, Leonard Bernstein, Natalie Wood, Richard Berymer, Richard Chamberlain, Robert Redford, Robert Wise, Russ Tamblyn, Stephen Sondheim, Steven Spielberg, Warren Beatty, West Side Story
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The Lost Comics

Posted on December 22, 2015 by ronbase — 2 Comments

Even though they had already been hugely popular in North American newspapers for at least twenty years, King Features, the granddaddy of newspaper syndicates, is celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of a lost, all-but-forgotten art form: the comic strip. As…

Tagged with: Flash Gordon, George Lucas, Gregory Peck, Indiana Jones, Jungle Jim, King Features, Li'l Abner, Mandrake the Magician, Milton Caniff, Richard Outcault, Steve Canyon, Steven Spielberg, Terry and the Pirates, The Guns of Navarone, The Yellow Kid, William Randolph Hearst
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At Barney’s Beanery With the Guy Who Created Jaws

Posted on June 23, 2015 by ronbase — 1 Comment

In the years I lived in Los Angeles, I occasionally hung out at a legendary West Hollywood eatery called Barney’s Beanery. Mostly, I sat with screenwriters in late middle age, all of us grumbling about the state of a movie…

Tagged with: Airport 75, Apocalypse Now, Barney's Beanery, Carl Gottlieb, David Brown, Deadline Hollywood, Earthquake, George Lucas, Howard Sackler, Indianapolis, Jaws, Joel Grey, John Milius, Lee Marvin, Lew Wasserman, Martha's Vineyard, Peter Bart, Peter Benchley, Richard Dreyfuss, Richard Zanuck, Robert Shaw, s, Sid Sheinberg, Sterling Hayden, Steven Spielberg, Universal Studios, Variety
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The Guy Who Fired Robert Redford (and Forever Changed Movies)

Posted on July 17, 2012 by ronbase — Leave a comment

When I did that sort of thing for a living, one of my favorite people to interview was the producer Richard Zanuck, who died of a heart attack last week at the age of seventy-seven. Zanuck was stiff and formal, handsome…

Tagged with: A Few Good Men, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Compulsion, Dark Shadows, Darryl F. Zanuck, David Brown, Doctor Doolittle, Driving Miss Daisy, Hello Dolly, Jaws, Joel Grey, Johnny Depp, Lili Fini Zanuck, M*A*S*H, Paul Newman, Richard Dreyfuss, Richard Zanuck, Robert Redford, Star!, Steven Spielberg, The French Connection, The Sound of Music, The Sting, The Verdict, Twentieth Century Fox
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Shooting The Wounded

Posted on November 1, 2011 by ronbase — Leave a comment

Critics, it is said, come down from the hills after the battle is over and shoot the wounded. For the better part of the 1980s, I shot the wounded as the movie critic for The Toronto Star, Canada’s largest circulation newspaper. Even…

Tagged with: Bonnie and Clyde, Clyde Gilmour, Jaws, Jay Scott, Kenneth Tynan, Marin Scorsese, Pauline Kael, Raging Bull, Steven Spielberg, Toronto Star, Toronto Telegram
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