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GUYS & DOLLS (1955) (Blu-Ray Book)
BD: November 6, 2012
List Price: $34.99
Publisher: warner.com
Description
Joseph Mankiewicz's brightly stylized film of Frank Loesser's classic musical (based on the stories
of Damon Runyon) casts the criminal underworld as a harmless fantasy in
this whimsical vision of the Big Apple. Nonsingers Marlon Brando and
Jean Simmons acquit themselves fine in the lead roles as high-rolling
gambler Sky Masterson and Salvation Army missionary Sarah Brown. It's
odd casting, to say the least. Frank Sinatra, who plays the good old
reliable Nathan Detroit (who runs "the oldest established permanent
floating crap game in New York") is left with novelty tunes while husky
Brando delivers the love songs and hits, including "Luck Be a Lady." But
in the context of the colorful dialogue and comically affected speech
patterns (a giddy gangster-speak straight out of Runyon's breezy
stories) the song performances aren't the least out of place. Stubby
Kaye, reprising his role as Nicely Nicely from the Broadway run,
practically steals the show in his few scenes and his show-stopping solo
"Sit Down, You're Rocking the Boat." The film is overlong at two and a
half hours and somewhat stagily confined in the stylized, studio-bound
sets--perhaps the mark of a director who had never helmed a musical
before--but a terrific cast of eccentrics and Michael Kidd's high-energy
choreography gives the film a memorable and enchanting character. --Sean Axmaker
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Associated Press is reporting that Run Run Shaw has passed away at the age of 106 (the report lists 107, but he was born on November ...
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GUYS & DOLLS (1955) (Blu-Ray Book)
November 6, 2012
Warner Bros
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