Mildred Pierce is one of my favorite Joan Crawford movies because the movie is a good drama and mystery.  It’s a story about survival with lots of curves.  The movie is based on a book of the same title,   but was changed significantly in adaptation for film. Michael Curtis, wonderful and versatile, directed this film for Warner Bros.  The film won several Oscars including Best Actress for Crawford.  It catapulted her career back on the rails after she left MGM and arrived at Warner Bros. 

Of late,  it was announced that recent Oscar winner Kate Winslet is attached to star in a miniseries based on the “Mildred Pierce” novel.   For some this might come as a surprise that Winslet would turn to cable television after winning an Oscar.  Perhaps not, if you consider that cable television has been producing sure fire productions that would otherwise never get made as theatrical releases such as Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore’s Grey Gardens and now Mildred Pierce. 

As for the present production of Mildred Pierce, Todd Haynes is writing and directing the miniseries.  Powers that be say HBO is the lead contender to get the series. 

The novel was written in 1941, it concerns housewife who gets into the restaurant business, an enterprise that leads to backstabbing, romance and murder.  The story is told chronological as Pierce grows powerful and old while the Warner Bros. movie is told in flashback never showing the aging process or the power in Pierce’s character. It will be interesting to see how this miniseries will be played out. 

Angela J (35), Glenn Peterson (69), Amir (97), Rose Roberts (116) and djgroz (117) are the 5 winners.

Beloved songbird Judy Garland was at the height of her fame and popularity during the television run of The Judy Garland Show.  Now volume one, the first in a special collector’s set of 13 volumes.

The Emmy-nominated variety program ended its critically-acclaimed CBS-TV run after just one season (1963-64). Today, those 26 shows are revered by many as the entertainment icon’s finest work.  Singing then-new material as well as the classics expected of her, this is the legendary Judy at her peak.  Also featured in volume one of this 13-volume collector’s set is daughter Liza Minnelli, now a legend in her own right. 

Then just 17, Liza sings her off-Broadway hit “You Are for Loving” and displays her renowned ability as a dancer on “Put on a Happy Face.”  Liza and Judy shine in the duets “Together,” “We Could Make Such Beautiful Music Together,” “The Best is Yet to Come,” “Bye, Bye, Baby” and “Bob White”; and revive the “We’re a Couple of Swells” tramp characters from Easter Parade. 

Also featured in a dazzling display of song, dance and comedy are jazz greats Count Basie and his band and Mel Tormé, who perform solo and join the great Garland on such stunners as “I Hear Music,” “The Sweetest Sounds,” “Strike Up the Band,” “April in Paris” and “Memories of You”; folk singer Judy Henske; and series regular Jerry Van Dyke who trades quips with Soupy Sales. 

Judy also sings “A Cottage for Sale,” “Hey, Look Me Over,” “Liza,” “As Long as He Needs Me,” and “Come Rain or Come Shine,” a highlight of Judy’s 45-year career.

Restored and digitally remastered from the original masters, this dynamic diva will move you like no one else! Look for all 13 volumes, each featuring two hour-long shows.

Well, that’s it, folks…stick a fork in the entire concept of Hollywood because it is oh-ficially done like dinner.

Warner Brothers is now on record as planning to launch a movie about Legos.

Yeah, Legos.  You know, those little plastic blocks that pretty much everybody played with when they were kids?  And this isn’t about what people do with them or anything like that, either.  This is about something entirely different.  In fact, the studio is citing Toy Story as its model.

Okay, so maybe this isn’t as lunatic an idea as I first thought.  Let’s be honest here–in basements and bedrooms and playrooms all across the country, Lego has generated literally millions of stories.  I personally liked to arm my Legos and construct vast space fleets of mismatched vessels to go forth and destroy alien civilizations.  Fighter craft out of speedboats, bombers out of airliners, all that sort of thing.

And if I, a mere stripling, could come up with dozens of tales for my Legos to enact, imagine what actual writers could do.  Or failing that, imagine what Hollywood writers could do.

Pulitzer Prize winner David Mamet will write and direct a new version of The Diary of Anne Frank for Disney.  The studio acquired the movie rights and is backing Mamet up with producer Andrew Braunsberg.

Anne Frank is a tragic story told through the young girls diary about the two years her family hid in a secret attic in Amsterdam.  Mamet plans to blend the well-known diary and the stage adaptation by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich while inputting his own original take on the material that could reframe the story as a young girl’s rite of passage.

The young Jewish girl died at 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. She stood as the icon of the Holocaust after the post-war publication of her diary.  

Braunsberg spent a year gathering the rights from the Anne Frank Estate as well as the estates of Hackett and Goodrich.  A 1959 big screen rendition of Hackett and Goodrich’s “Diary of Anne Frank” earned an Oscar for Shelley Winters. The Frank story has been told several times on TV, most recently ABC’s 2001 Emmy-winning mini “Anne Frank: The Whole Story.”

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Disney’s images of Rapunzel are breathtaking. I am stunned and dazzled.  The concept art conveys an enchanting story. I’d love to see the movie right now. Director Glen Keane wanted this to be an animated movie that looked and felt like a traditional hand-drawn Disney Classic in 3D, so he choose the movie’s visual style to be based on the painting “The Swing” by the French Rococo artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard.

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Scarlett Johansson movies range from comedy to drama, but she is also a successful recording artist. That is why acclaim singer and song writer Pete Yorn contacted Johansson with the idea to record a duets album in the spirit of Serge Gainsbourg’s 1960s recordings with Brigitte Bardot.

“I was having a strange week of insomnia and when I finally passed out, it came to me in a dream,” says Yorn. “I woke up and the whole thing was in my head, fully formed.” Johansson was intrigued by Yorn’s out-of-the-blue invitation. “It sounded like an interesting little adventure,” she explains. “The idea of two people vocalizing their relationship through duets, I always thought of it as just a small project between friends. I’ve loved the album ever since I heard it completed. It perfectly captured where I was in my life at the time.” 

On September 15, Atco Records, an imprint of Rhino Entertainment, presents the resulting work, Pete Yorn & Scarlett Johansson Break Up, a deeply emotive yet hook-filled song cycle about a tempestuous relationship. Yorn was as protective of Break Up as a father of his daughter, playing it for no one until last year. When those close to him finally heard Break Up, the overwhelming response convinced Yorn that it was simply too strong a work to remain under lock and key. 

Break Up
Track Listing
1. Relator
2. Wear And Tear
3. I Don’t Know What To Do
4. Search Your Heart
5. Blackie’s Dead
6. I Am The Cosmos
7. Shampoo
8. Clean
9. Someday

Screenhead has one vinyl  copy of Break Up to give away.  Post your name and we will pick the winner Sunday, September 6, 2009.

Elvis Presley: The Ed Sullivan Shows: The Performances is available on DVD . The collection of Elvis’ three memorable appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show attracted a record-breaking audience when they first aired and are available for the first time ever.

Elvis Presley turned the world upside down when he was introduced to the nation in these three unforgettable episodes from The Ed Sullivan Show.  I am awed watching this young man who is unbelievably wild and a treasure of talent that you need to experience for yourself .  His sex appeal is so strong and yet so new, even now. 

You will see why Elvis became the legendary King of Rock and Roll! Appearing on the show Sept. 9, 1956, Elvis sent shock waves through a repressed nation with his soulful singing, wild hip gyrations and raw energy, attracting a record-breaking TV audience of more than 60 million people. Presley returned on Oct. 28, 1956, continuing to provoke ecstatic screams with hits such as “Don’t Be Cruel,” “Love Me Tender” and “Hound Dog.” In fact, these exhilarating performances were so explosive that Elvis was filmed above the waist during his final Sullivan show appearance on January 6, 1957.

Post your name and Screenhead will pick the winner Wednesday, August 12, 2009.

 Rockin’ Special Features: 

• A rare home movie capturing a very early Elvis performance, shot on August 7, 1955, at Magnolia Gardens near Houston, Texas
• Elvis and Ed remembered
• Elvis is on his way! Ed Sullivan Show clips
• Special Elvis moments including an appearance by comedian John Byner
• Home movies of Elvis and Priscilla, Elvis and his friends cutting up on a film set and some of the first shots of daughter Lisa Marie
• New collectible booklet featuring liner notes by Griel Marcus

Zed (64) is the lucky winner of the latest Bob Dylan DVD!  Congratulations!!! 

Not only will Bob Dylan fans find Both Ends of the Rainbow a tantalizing journey of Dylan in the late 1970s and through the 1980s, it is a cherished commodity even for those who have followed a different tune.  You will discover a man who speaks candidly and openly about his conversion to Christianity, his feelings about the criticism he received and the enlightenment this change in faith had brought him.

In this limited edition two-disc set you will watch Dylan perform and watch an extensive interview that covers his life during the late 1970s and through the 1980s.  Bob Dylan: Both Ends of the Rainbow hits the streets July 14, 2009.

Bob Dylan is known for his Grammy, Academy Awards and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He is currently touring, playing at a number of venues.

Another King Kong movie is in the works with Spirit Pictures making big plans to bring it back with effects legend Ray Harryhausen.

Spirit Pictures picked up the rights to the book “Kong: King of Skull Island,” a prequel to the celebrated tale of the big ape on an island who falls in love with a beautiful blonde.  The plan is to produce the prequel in motion-capture technology similar to Zemeckis’  The Polar Express, Beowulf and the upcoming A Christmas Carol.  Spirit’s own facility would produce the CG work. 

The prequel was written by Joe DeVito and Brad Strickland and the book centers on the back story of Skull Island. Readers find out how the giant gorilla became king of the island. It introduces other giant gorillas and dinosaurs only hinted at in the previous films.

The book was published at the same time Peter Jackson was producing his remake of King Kong from the original King Kong 1933.

I believe this is the last character poster for Sherlock Holmes.  Rachel McAdams looks rather dandy and mystic. What is she up too?  I am sure if you watch the trailer that is roaming around the Internet, you will know Adler is up to no good and quite a handful for Mr. Holmes.

Anyway, the dynamic new portrayal of Conan Doyle’s famous characters in Sherlock Holmes sends Holmes and his stalwart partner Watson on their latest challenge. Revealing fighting skills as lethal as his renowned intellect, Holmes will battle as never before to bring down a new archenemy and unravel a fatal plot that could ruin the country.

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