Celebrity Gossip / By Liz Smith
A brand new Bisset
Jackie Bisset wound up her duties presiding over the Chicago Film Festival last weekend. The star was as beautiful and glamorous as usual, and the Windy City was blown away by her.
Soon, Miss Bisset will be attending festivals with her own feature. This is writer/director/producer Linda Yellen’s wicked little indie movie “The Last Film Festival.” This one concerns a group of misbegotten, narcissistic actors and film types who are attending a tacky movie festival in the middle of nowhere USA. Jackie stars with Dennis Hopper, JoBeth Williams, Chris Kattan and LeeLee Sobieski.
This film marks a significant departure for Jackie. She plays a beautiful star who has seen better days when it comes to career. Jackie employs a fantastic Italian accent and hilariously steals every scene.
A brand new Bisset, very funny! One hopes this movie might get the attention it deserves. After Dennis Hopper saw the completed movie, he complimented director Yellen on her “genius.”
You movie buffs will know this is high praise coming from a guy who started out in George Stevens’ masterpiece, “Giant,” back in 1956. He played the son of Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson.
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This is why cable news is so often bad! Just two words—Balloon Boy. That is the nonstory about a kid, thought to be in a box in the air under a giant runaway silver bag. When it landed he was found hiding in his attic.
Once we were assured the child was safe, we no longer cared about the balloon, but TV treated us to the same nonstory footage. CNN, Fox and MSNBC all disgraced themselves over and over again with images of the empty balloon.
In the beginning it may have looked like a story.
But what’s the excuse for rerunning it ad nauseam? It proves you don’t have to be airborne to be a giant gasbag.
•••
“You come most carefully upon your hour,” says Hamlet early on in the madly modern new interpretation of Shakespeare’s 400-year-old classic that rages on at the Broadhurst Theater for three hours. You’ve already heard that the star, Jude Law, is not so much a “sweet prince” as he is an intriguing, magnetic and different kind of Hamlet.
Law, in dark jeans and jacket, constantly scurries, almost angrily, across the gorgeous stage setting.
There is a memorable moment when he crouches against a stone wall, and in heavy snow delivers “To be or not to be.” His is a raw and almost brutal intensity that builds to visceral climaxes and seems to shock the older audience. Younger people are entranced. And there was a majority of the latter the night I’m talking about.
Chief compliment is that you can understand every word of Old Will’s play. Chief complaint is that older theatergoers just don’t like a “new” Hamlet. Nevertheless, this is another chance to see Shakespeare, and the production is intelligent and fiercely directed by Michael Grandage of London’s Donmar Warehouse.
You have only until Dec. 6 to form your own opinion of these “wild and whirling words” now momentarily on Broadway.
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I don’t believe the rampantly bad reviews suffered by the latest incarnation of “Bye, Bye, Birdie” on the Broadway stage can be overcome for a long run of this beloved but dated musical.
The show received critical death blows, especially for director Robert Longbottom. But my friend, Gina Gershon, in the lead (the Chita Rivera role) has been described as “luscious” by the Times critic Ben Brantley. He said she brought to mind “the physical ripeness of Ava Gardner at her peak.”
I advised pal Gina to paste that on her makeup mirror and forget everything else. Gina rose to fame after playing a lesbian plumber who takes on the Mob in the noir film “Bound.” So from lesbian plumber to Ava Gardner in one acting lifetime ain’t bad!
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