On Friday, we lost Jean Simmons, one of the more gifted and beautiful of screen actresses.  She died at 80, just a week before her 81st birthday.  Simmons is one of those stars who, no matter how famous or popular she became, always seemed underappreciated.  She never won an Oscar, nominated for the award only [...]

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Believe me, I hate to complain about the new gay-themed movie A Single Man, but I can’t help it:  I think I’m done with the sad-gay-man genre.  I am more than ready for something else.  I’m also tired of big gay-themed films that are period pieces.  I want to see prominent film actors as gay characters in contemporary stories, and [...]

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I love Rob Marshall’s film of Chicago (2002), but everything that went right with Chicago has gone sadly wrong with Nine, his film of the 1982 Broadway musical based on Fellini’s screen masterpiece 8 1/2 (1963).  Chicago was a triumph in concept, with all its musical numbers presented as expressions of Roxie Hart’s imagination, and it was also a case of [...]

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