Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Friday, December 25, 2009

CHRISTMAS in High Fidelity






CHRISTMAS should always be in High Fidelity.... (but on my copy Under Western Skies is not in Living Stereo.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

RIP Arnold Stang 1918-2009



Arnold Stang (1918-2009) -

Uniquely distinctive actor and voice of radio, screen, and television.

He early radio work included the wonderful Saturday morning children's show Let's Pretend. He said radio was his favorite medium because "listeners could contribute so much from their own imagination."

On TV he was the voice to Top Cat (according to the LA Times). But someone commented that he was actually the voice of Top Cat's sidekick.


One of his best-known film roles is opposite Frank Sinatra in Preminger's THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM. 

Monday, December 21, 2009

Bronislau KAPER: GREEN MANSIONS

  

GREEN MANSIONS: Composers: Bronislau Kaper, Special Music Created by Heitor Villa-Lobos Orchestrations: Robert Franklyn, Sidney Cutner, Leo Arnaud– Film Score Monthly vol 8, no 3, TT: 79.53, 21 tracks (stereo)

Producer: Lukas Kendall Performed: MGM Studio Orchestra Conductor: Charles Wolcott


Verdict: Lush symphonic fantasy.

by Ross Care

Green Mansions is a 1959 MGM CinemaScope film based on the 1904 novel by British writer, W. H. Hudson. The classic fantasy concerns Rima (Audrey Hepburn), a mysterious “bird-girl” living in the unexplored depths of the Amazon forest (the “green mansions” of the title), and her ill-fated romance with Abel (Tony Perkins), a South American political refugee. These two leads are certainly photogenic, and the film has its moments, but some elusive literary properties just do not translate to a visual medium. Though director Mel Ferrer removed most of its overtly fantastic elements, Green Mansions remained one of them and was a commercial and artistic disappointment at the time of its release.

Today the film is best remembered for a lavish symphonic score with a controversial compositional  history. Brazilian classical composer, Heitor Villa-Lobos, was originally signed to do the music but, due to a series of circumstances well documented in the liner notes, MGM’s Bronislau Kaper, himself a classically trained musician well-versed in concert techniques, was also brought in. Kaper both adapted and augmented the Villa-Lobos music and created a title song that is judiciously used in the underscoring.

Villa-Lobos rearranged his music as Forest of the Amazon; his last great concert work for orchestra with soprano and chorus, and recorded it for United Artists Records. (It was recently redone with Renee Fleming as soloist). 

This, however, is the first recording of the original film soundtrack. A 5.24 “Main Title/Chase/River Boat” sets the tone and modus operandi of the entire score. An exotically mysterious Villa-Lobos opening (including dramatic statements of his “Rima” motif) is intercut with a brief phrase of Kaper’s title song that will also serve as the film’s love theme. Kaper’s wild “Chase” seems influenced by the “Dance of the Earth” from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, as do other minor bits of his work.

The restrained title song is more in the mode of a folk song than Kaper’s other great pop standards (“Invitation,” “On Green Dolphin Street,” “Hi Lili, Hi Lo”). Tony Perkins, who had a moderately successful (but today mostly forgotten) secondary career as a singer and recording artist in the ‘50s, performs it in a substantial sequence in the film, but his version is not included here. Orchestrally the song’s refrain (“Tell me, Rima, where are the meadows of June?”) is heard at various points in the score, notably the opening, of “It’s Gold” and “Is It You?” 

Villa-Lobos created the ethereal Rima theme, magically orchestrated in “At the Pool/First Visit” (the latter, however, submerged under real birdcalls in the film). The 79.53 score is allowed much time to develop, and builds to a series of profoundly moving final cues in which poignant new Villa-Lobos themes underscore revelations of Rima’s past and her tragic demise.

Green Mansions is (aside from its tumultuous, somewhat schizoid “End Title”) no conventional Hollywood offering of the period. It’s a sumptuous, expansively symphonic score that captures the magic and menace of an otherworldly, ultimately lost Eden with a power and mystery sorely missing from the often unpleasantly literal film itself. 

The sound is remixed in stereo from original 3-track recordings and beautifully showcases the impressionistic, opulently Ravel-ian orchestrations. 

Charles Wolcott, a Disney studio veteran who became a part of the MGM musical staff, conducts, and also had the delicate executive job of liaison between. Villa-Lobos and Kaper while the score was being finalized.

Bill Whitaker and Jeff Bond’s notes discuss the film’s history and the score’s involved Kaper/Villa-Lobos issues, as well as providing a cue-by-cue description of the mostly seamless meshing of the two composers’ contributions. Kudos to FSM for making this magnificent score finally available in such a complete and definitive version.

Friday, December 18, 2009

RIP: Jennifer Jones 1919-2009

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Thursday, December 10, 2009

SNOW in Southern CALIFORNIA



After the Monday, December 7, 2009 winter storm that passed over southern California. A fresh mountain snowfall provides a background to persisting autumn color. This view from route 150 between Santa Paula and Ojai, Tuesday morning. Click on photo for big screen CinemaScope view.

Photo COPYRIGHT 2009 by Ross Care

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Leigh HARLINE: 7 FACES OF DR. LAO Revisited


Left Composer Leigh HARLINE

 Orchestrations: Leigh Harline, Gus Levene – Film Score Monthly vol. 9, #11, TT: 59.55, 33 tracks (stereo)  1-24 score, 25-33 bonus


Produced: Lukas Kendall, George Feltenstein
Performed: MGM Studio Orchestra, Conductor: Leigh Harline

Verdict: Phantasmagorial fantasy score! 

by Ross Care

7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964) is among the last of the famous late period George Pal sci fi/fantasy features which commenced in 1950 with the classic Destination Moon. Lao is based on the 1935 novel, “The Circus of Dr. Lao” by Charles G. Finney. As the CD notes explain “the film tells the story of a mysterious visitor from the Far East (Tony Randall) who arrives at an undernourished town in the Old West and sets up a magical circus of bizarre attractions.”

How the good doctor and his creatures influence the hearts and minds of the various citizens and how he eventually saves the town from itself is the core of the film’s offbeat plot line.

Leigh Harline had worked with Pal providing the background score for the spectacular Cinerama production, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, in 1962, though Bob (a.k.a Robert) Merrill, a Tin Pan Alley and later Broadway (Take Me Along, New Girl in Town) songwriter, provided the songs and main theme.

Fortunately Harline had Dr. Lao all to himself and the resulting score proved a climax to Harline’s long Hollywood career that commenced at the Disney Studio in the 1930s. (His amazing Pinocchio score  won two Oscars). Leaving Disney’s Harline moved through the various dream factories of the studio era (including RKO and Fox) as composer and music director to conclude with several scores for MGM in the early ‘60s.



Harline’s Dr. Lao score is a melodic amalgam of American western and far eastern (Asian) themes and sonics, plus various motifs and cues for the fantastic creatures in Lao’s show. The main theme (“Main Title”) is a warmly lively tune that represents the doctor himself, and is reprised in various guises throughout the score.

A gently archaic sequence depicts Merlin the Magician (“The Magic Act”), and an exotic theme in soprano sax vividly conjures up the grotesque snake-haired “Medusa”. The score’s best track is “Pan’s Dance,” a magical backup for the choreographed sequence in which Pan, the God of Joy (and Sex), vividly awakens the erotic fantasies of the town’s attractive but emotionally repressed schoolmarm (Barbara Eden).

This virtual suite of character motifs is intercut with Harline’s original dramatic underscore (“Dr. Lao-Hero,” “Death of the Press”) and an assortment of circus source music cues (“Hurry, Hurry, Hurry,” etc.) All display Harline’s prolific melodic gifts as well as his keen ear for the appropriately atmospheric orchestral sound. (The climactic Loch Ness Monster sequence is underscored with an amazing multi-track of studio-manipulated bagpipes and percussion).

In keeping with the magical, almost claustrophobic intimacy of Lau's circus environment Harline scores for a relatively small instrumental ensemble. Both the many solo lines and the briefer big moments are beautifully captured in Michael McDonald's stereo remix and Doug Schwartz's digital mastering.

The remix also spotlights the incredible Hollywood musicianship of the late studio era. There is especially effective writing for solo and dual harps ("Ah, Love") throughout the orchestration.

Due to its integration into theme park scores Harline’s melody for what has become the Disney anthem, “When You Wish Upon A Star” (from Pinocchio), is heard by millions of people on a daily basis, though most would be hard pressed to name the composer.

Pinocchio (1940) and Lau bookend Leigh Harline's prolific and previously rather unsung Hollywood career. But thanks to CD Harline’s excellent post-Disney work is finally getting a hearing, including releases of such Fox scores as House of Bamboo, The Enemy Below on Intrada,  Broken Lance from FSM.

7 Faces of Dr. Lao is given a premiere release and a definitive revival in this terrific FSM stereo restoration. 18-page booklet includes color photos from the film and notes by Jeff Bond, Lukas Kendall, and yours truly.

Nine bonus tracks are featured, including brilliant piano versions of “Pan’s Dance," the last one featuring a virtuoso performance from an uncredited voice apparently counting out the bars for the actors as they filmed the scene!

+++++++++++++

Many of Harline’s early (and uncredited) scores for Disney shorts may also be heard on the recent Disney Treasures Silly Symphonies DVD sets.










No credits other than Disney's are seen on these shorts. Harline's scores include Music Land, The Goddess of Spring, and The Old Mill, among many others.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

MGM Musical: ATHENA

Cover Image

MGM Musical Score:ATHENA: Songs: Hugh Martin, Ralph Blane, Underscoring: Georgie Stoll, Robert Van Epps, Andre Previn, Jacob Gade Arrangements/Orchestrations:  Georgie Stoll, Robert Van Epps Al Sendrey, Conrad Salinger, Wally Heglin
Rhino Handmade RHM 27768,  33 tracks (stereo) 
Producer: George Feltenstein, Performed: MGM Soloists, Studio Orchestra & Chorus, Conductor: Georgie Stoll

Verdict: Heavenly  

by Ross Care

    Athena, a 1954 musical about an eccentric  family of California health enthusiasts, is primarily distinguished by its score of songs by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane. The song writing team first gained fame with their collegiate Broadway musical, Best Foot Forward. They were soon signed by MGM who produced the film version of Best Foot, and where they contributed several original songs to the eclectic score of one of the studio’s biggest hits of the mid-1940s, Meet Me In St. Louis. After St. Louis the team went their various ways but reunited to produce Athena, their most extensive score.

Hyped as “The musical with young ideas,” Athena showcases the talents of MGM’s young ‘50s stars, Jane Powell, crooner Vic Damone, Debbie Reynolds, and Edmund Purdom, the latter a new British leading man best (or worst known) for lip-synching the voice of Mario Lanza in MGM’s nonetheless touching CinemaScope remake of The Student Prince.   

Athena itself is a modestly entertaining affair with a witty, satiric screenplay shot in classic ‘50s Technicolor  with an appealing cast. The score itself was first released  in a truncated version on Mercury,  (Damone’s home label), the soon-out-of-print 10-inch LP becoming a sought after collector’s  item. The 2001 Rhino Handmade release is the first complete release of this appealing score and with 33 tracks (including songs, outtakes, demos, and underscoring) the CD is one of Rhino’s most elaborate productions.

Athena LP Front.jpg


The score opens with a lyrical main title for chorus and orchestra, the ethereal melody of which is beautifully developed in ensuing underscore cues. The songs range from energetic up-tempo numbers, the operetta-like  waltz, “Vocalize,” and the jazzy duet, “Imagine,” to one of the most under-rated  ballads in the vast MGM catalog, the haunting “Love Can Change the Stars,” sung by Powell. Damone performs another moody ballad, “Venezia,” and the film’s opening, “The Girl Next Door,” a slight variation on the durable standard from Meet Me In St. Louis.

Athena LP Back.jpg

Damone also handles an outtake, “Faster Than Sound,” an elaborate  up-tempo tune cut from the film but which ended up in Martin’s  High Spirits, the Broadway musical based on Noel Coward’s Blythe Spirit.

Other bonus tracks include seven demos sung by Blane with Martin at the piano, a virtual mini-album that demonstrates the team’s considerable performing talents. (Visually the team can also be seen performing a “soundie” on the recent 2-disc DVD of Meet Me In St. Louis).

Though Athena was not shot in CinemaScope the score was nonetheless recorded in authentic stereo, the sound brilliantly showcasing the jazz soloists in numbers like “Imagine” and the lush MGM orchestral sound in the rest of the songs and underscore.

Athena is one of Rhino Handmade’s finest releases and provides a welcome and complete restoration of one of the most appealing and under-rated  classic MGM musical scores.

Bravo!                   

Friday, November 13, 2009

Lakme Fashion Week 2009, bollywood’s top celebs walks on the ramp



Lakme Fashion Week 2009 or LFW is the event making all hot bollywood celebrities, to walk on the ramp. Sushmita Sen and Deepika Padukone who were in limelight on the fourth day of the Lakme Fashion Week.

Sush in her richly embellished ethnic wear reminded us of the ancient princess, while Deepika fluttered like a butterfly on the ramp in her cute black and white gown designed by Vikram Phadnis and Gauri and Nainika.

South Indian actress Sameera Reddy walks at the ramp for designer Neeta Lulla at the Calcutta Lakme Fashion Week Spring-Summer 2009

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Hugo FRIEDHOFER: BOY ON A DOLPHIN

BoyDolphin.gif
Intrada Special Collection, Volume 78, released 2008. TT: 54.18, 19 tracks (stereo) Producers: Nick Redman & Douglass Fake; Performed: 20th Century-Fox Studio Orchestra and Chorus, Conductor: Lionel Newman; Orchestrations: Edward Powell

Verdict: Mediterranean magic!

by Ross Care

BOY ON A DOLPHIN (1957) is one of those great 20th Century-Fox “dramalogues” of the 1950s, i.e., escapist narrative films emphasizing international locations lushly shot in Fox’s new wide screen/stereophonic sound process, CinemaScope. DOLPHIN showcases Greece and deals with the search for a priceless antiquity, the shipwrecked golden statue of the title that is accidentally discovered by Phaedra, a buxom Greek sponge diver (Sophia Loren), in the waters around the island of Hydra. A dedicated archeologist (Alan Ladd) and an illegal collector (Clifton Webb) both vie for the statue and who gets it provides the intrigue in director Jean Negulesco’s entertaining and strikingly photographed film.

Hugo Friedhofer’s score is a fusion of a title song, exotic folk influences, and the composer’s own brand of gorgeous orchestral impressionism. In his notes to the original (mono only) Decca LP Friedhofer comments: “Southern Europe, and particularly the Mediterranean area, is hardly an arctic wilderness. If I have been as successful with the delineation of the aural image, as (cinematographer Milton Krasner) has been with the visual, anyone so inclined can call it ‘’lush,’ if they want to. As a matter of fact I hope they will.”

And lush it is, in the best sense of the word. The film opens with a brief visual/musical tour of the Greek islands underscored solely with a droning folk-like cue that emphasizes a huge woodwind section. The ensuing credits feature an intimate title song (later also heard in a kicky “lounge” version: “The Café”). Though not mentioned in the liner notes, according to the film’s credits this is based on a Greek song, "Tinafto," with music by Takis Morakis and Greek words by J. Fermanoglou. (Roughly translated the title means “what is this they call love?”) Friedhofer is credited with adapting the music and Paul Francis Webster with providing new lyrics. (Strangely enough, the film version was also recorded by Tony Perkins on one of his RCA LPs during his brief 1950s stint as a pop vocalist).

Whatever its origins the melody is a haunting one and is freely developed in the underscoring. At the conclusion of the credits (track 1) Friedhofer’s brief vacillating “sea” motif is first heard as Loren rises from the watery depths to emerge (like an earthy Venus) with one of the most striking wet looks prior to Jacqueline Bisset in THE DEEP! For the mainland sequences there is a recurring theme in 7/8, a distinctive Greek/Bulgarian folk meter also used by Bartok (“Instructions”), and other ethnic-derived cues (“Street Music”). The “Acropolis” and Meteora monastery (“On The Road”) episodes feature two of the most epic cues, the latter with an orchestral build of almost Bond-ian brass.

But Friedhofer’s most charismatic cues are for the several underwater sequences, liquid symphonic impressionism embellished with rippling harps and woodwinds and a seductive siren-song vocalise. (“Phaedra Finds the Boy” with its beautiful coda-conclusion, the 6.20 “Nocturnal Sea”).  As rendered by the superb 20th Century-Fox orchestra under Lionel Newman (in beautifully spacious stereo) and overlaid with the ethereally pure soprano of Marni Nixon these are simply some of the most magical cues ever created for a mainstream Hollywood film of any era.

Booklet includes lively, informative notes by Julie Kirgo and (as noted) a reprint of Friedhofer’s original LP comments.

Elmer BERNSTEIN: SUMMER and SMOKE


Orchestrations: Leo Shuken, Jack Hayes – BMG reissue of RCA VICTOR LP, 12 tracks (stereo) Producer: Dick Peirce, Performed: Paramount Studio Orchestra , Conductor: Elmer Bernstein

 Verdict: Sensitive, sensual Bernstein

by Ross Care

As a film composer the prolific Elmer Bernstein went through more “periods” than Picasso. He may be best known for his jazz and western scores, so it’s sometimes overlooked that during the 1950s and ‘60s Bernstein scored some of the most prestigious  projects in Hollywood.

Among these were scores for a number of literary and Broadway adaptations, including the 1961 film of Tennessee Williams’ Broadway drama, SUMMER AND SMOKE. The American playwright’s works inspired a number of film scores during this era, notably Alex North’s landmark  A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE in 1951.

While in a different musical mode Bernstein’s SUMMER AND SMOKE emphatically ranks with North’s STREETCAR  as a definitive musical evocation of the unique Williams mythos. SUMMER is Williams’ only period play, set in a small delta town in (circa) WWI era Mississippi, and deals with the conflicted relationship between Alma, a repressed minister’s daughter, and Johnny, the bad boy next door. Thus Bernstein is dealing with both the period background and the sacred/profane conflict that is the core of script and screenplay.

The period (and emotional) setting precludes the use of jazz techniques, resulting in (aside from solo guitar interludes) a purely orchestral mode, primarily for strings, varied woodwinds, and harp. The period mode does not, however, limit Bernstein, and the modern sensibility of the play is suggested  in the score’s sometimes Bartokian embellishments (“Summer Thoughts”), and the quirky treatment of traditional waltz rhythms. (“Two Lonely Women,” “Alma’s Dilemma”)

The spiritual/sensual dichotomy is immediately announced (as in Bernstein’s DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS) in the Main Title’s severe chordal introduction to the swirlingly romantic main theme, the latter also providing material for much of the score.  On a broader scale the same idea is contrasted by the Alma/John orchestral cues vs. the subtly erotic guitar tracks for John’s dalliance with a seductive Latina (“Rosa,” “Rosa’s Dance”).

The 1999 BMG release is an exact  reissue of the original  RCA Victor LP. It features much, though not all of the music in the film, but is a beautifully recorded Living Stereo representation of the score as a whole. (One of the most attractive cues is a full version of the lilting, yet bittersweet “Glorious Hill Waltz” which is only heard as background source music in the film).

The subtle delicacy and detail of the orchestrations were made for CD, though my copy is plagued by an annoying hum on some of the quieter passages.

In the original LP notes Bernstein himself describes his score: “… we hear the music of loneliness, the sounds of our secret thoughts, whispers of our hidden desires and unspoken hopes, in a musical mystique suggesting at times foreverness and eternity.”

I personally consider this Bernstein’s masterpiece, and the film, directed by Peter Glenville who directed the London stage production, is certainly one of the composer's best.

Ross Care

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Elmer Bernstein: SOME CAME RUNNING


SOME CAME RUNNING: Composer: Elmer Bernstein

Film Score Monthly vol. 10, #1, TT: 78.48, (score: 52.40, bonus tracks: 26.01) 43 tracks; (stereo ,  some bonus tracks in mono)

Producer: Lukas Kendall Production Executive: George Feltenstein Performed: MGM Studio Orchestra Conductor: Elmer Bernstein, Orchestrations: Leo Shuken & Jack Hayes

Verdict: One of the Bernstein's Best

by Ross Care

Following on the epic heels of Raintree County is this definitive FSM score reconstruction from another MGM blockbuster based on another big American novel. Some Came Running was author James Jones’ follow-up to his best-selling first novel which was turned in one of the major films of the 1950s, From Here to Eternity.

MGM purchased the rights to Jones’ second novel before it was even published and, though I’ve never been able to wade through the massively intimidating tome, the general consensus seems to be that the film is a vast improvement. As opposed to Eternity (which features a minimal score by Columbia’s George Duning and a couple of Army songs) for Some Came Running MGM hired free-lancer Elmer Bernstein who created one of his seminal scores of the decade for director Vincente Minnelli’s 1958 film version.

The plot revolves around Dave Hirsh (Frank Sinatra), discharged G.I, aspiring writer, and “volatile non-conformist” (as the original Capitol LP liner notes describe him) who returns from W.W.II to shake-up everyone in his stogy mid-western hometown. Bernstein’s score is bookended by several tumultuous orchestral cues, the “Prelude” (Main Title), and three climactic tracks, “Pursuit, Parts 1 and 2, and “Denouement,” which make up the film’s finale, an almost psychedelic chase through a garishly-lit street carnival. The string-driven music is both ominous and dynamic and is accented by raucously trilling woodwinds, virtuoso brass passages, and Bernstein’s characteristic use of percussive Bartok-ian piano.

“Denouement” brings all the elements (including a nod to Stravinsky) to the boiling point in a furious toccata that climaxes one of the best fusions of music and visuals in ‘50s CinemaScope cinema. These three remarkable cues are edited into one track, “Pursuit,” on Bernstein’s Capitol rerecording of the score. There are cuts in the LP version but hearing all three fused as one relentless sequence is also amazing.


Original Capitol LP jacket (British pressing?)

In a contrasting nature are themes for the two polar-opposite women in Hirsh’s story. Gwen (Martha Hyer), the cool blond schoolteacher who at first expresses interest only in Hirsh’s literary talents, is represented by a lyrically intense melody suggestive of banked fires (“Gwen’s Theme/Metamorphosis”). The childlike Ginny (Shirley MacLaine), the dim but good-hearted floozy Dave unwittingly brings with him from Chicago, is portrayed by a naively wistful jazz theme (“Fifty Dollars”).

The Gwen/Ginny themes are a musical objective/correlative of the virgin/whore theme beloved of macho writers such as Jones (and so many others), but Bernstein (and Minnelli/MacLaine) do a spin on this cliché by transforming the character of the self-sacrificing Ginny and her jazz into some of the most poignant moments and music in the film (“Ginny,” “The Noblest Act’). It’s the “whore with heart of gold,” of course, but Bernstein’s music, including poignant orchestral transformations of Ginny’s jazz theme, makes it real and touching. Her theme also returns in an ominous guise in “Denouement,” and in an elegiac statement in the penultimate “Shock;” the two feminine themes fuse in the final “Catharsis.”

Some Came Running deals frankly with issues of sex, class, and morality in small town America, and is also a brilliant example of the “new Hollywood” score of the declining studio era. Along with the “big” tracks Bernstein’s innovative orchestral underscoring sometimes invokes an intimate “less is more” sound, as in the passage of intense chamber strings midway through “Dave’s Double Life” and the solo violin in one of Gwen’s variations. Dave’s own music is a wired theme no doubt inspired by Alex North’s jazz combo sound for Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire.

Special note: the varied jazz sequences, many submerged as background source music in the film, are here revealed to be among Bernstein’s coolest!

With this wealth of melodic material one wonders why MGM felt the need to insert the Van Heusen/Cahn song, “To Love and Be Loved,” into the film, other than the fact that the writers were often associated with Sinatra. It’s used a bit in the underscore but does not really intrude. Fellow Rat Packer/Capitol-crooner-turned-dramatic star, Dean Martin, also co-stars.


Bonus cues include a deleted prologue with a lost orchestral cue, “Crocked,” and an assortment of source vocals, including one in which a blotto Ginny/MacLaine drunkenly sings along.

Eight cues of manic Bernstein carnival music, one based on the ironically patriotic “View from Parkman” cue, are also included, providing (if more is needed) additional proof of the composer’s incredible range and versatility in this, one of his most vivid and archetypal scores.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Oliver Wallace, Sammy Fain: PETER PAN Soundtrack

 

 Disney's PETER PAN 
Also first seen at the Senate Theater, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1953.

Online Walt Disney Records Soundtrack Review LINK:




Thursday, October 8, 2009

SADA


Sada made her debut in Telugu film 'Jayam', which was big success and later her even bigger success is 'Aparaichithudu', starring Vikram. She is now busy with Tamil films rather than Telugu. She loves the movie Kaho Na Pyar Hai and her hobbies include watching movies and listening to music. She sets her own code in dressing, and she hates smoking cigarettes. The Film Fare award for best new comer in 2002 for the film ‘Jeyam’ was won by her. The actress Sada has a target of proving herself as a good actress.











Wednesday, October 7, 2009

CINEMAS of the World



The Senate Theater, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA. 
Now demolished.
During the studio era the Senate showed the releases of Universal International, RKO, and other smaller studios. It was the smallest of the downtown theaters, located on Market Square in Pennsylvania's capitol city.
This is a photo of the mysterious ELECTRIC EYE which automatically opened the beautiful mirrored doors through which one passed into a small vestibule with posters of coming attractions and thence to a modest lobby at the rear of the theater.
Appropriately, due to the futuristic ELECTRIC EYE, this was where I first saw  
THIS ISLAND EARTH.
PHOTO COPYRIGHT 2009 by Ross CARE

RAKSHITA

Rakshita acted in Kannada, Tamil and Telugu movies. She is a kannada girl by birth and was brought up in Mumbai. Her father was a cinematographer in Kannada and her mother too acted in a few Kannada films. She started her career with a Kannada movie Appu in Kannada. Then, she went on to act in Telugu films for the remake of the same movie as heroine. Later she acted in few films but none of them were very big success. 






Tuesday, October 6, 2009

SHREYA SARAN

Shreya Saran now looks even glamorous than before. Age doesn't look effect her too much, as she is drawing more and more chances in the Tamil films. Though her career is limited in Telugu films, she has become popular in Tamil films. Her latest film with Vikram ' Mallana' is not a big success, still she made a good impression.