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mdatty
Reviews
Glory Road (2006)
it's a very good movie..why not just tell the truth?
It's a good movie. You will like it. It is true that Texas Western was the first team with 5 black starters to win the NCAA BUT.........the Loyola Chicago 1963 Champions had 4 black starters. Came from 10 down in the NCAA title game to beat Cincy........played SEC champion Mississippi State after that team had to fly out at night to avoid a court order grounding the team. This really happened. Where is the courageous story of these men, and their coach, whom I had the pleasure to meet, George Ireland? It doesn't subtract from the entertainment value of Glory Road, but why can't Disney tell the truth about the team, Coach Haskins, and just about everything in the film. They were a great team, and Coach Haskins was legendary as well. The truth was, as many have pointed out, there were none of these close games in the beginning..Coach Haskins did not come from coaching a girl's team to the NCAA Championship in one year. It's a great story just as it really happened. It's a shame that the only recognition Loyola gets is that Texas Western beat them (in a newspaper headline) and seen in the top ten rankings that year. They both deserve credit. So does Mississippi State for their courage in coming to play Loyola. This really happened, and it's a great story. Where is it?
Hangmen Also Die! (1943)
reinhard heydrich? not really.
I really wanted to like this movie. I, and most people, despise Reinhard Heydrich. Trouble is, that this Heydrich looks nothing like him, acts nothing like him. Walter Brennan as a Czech music professor still sounding like Amos McCoy from the Real McCoys. This movie is not the real Mccoy,though. Jersey accents. Sets look so artificial. Acting is timid or overacted. Brian DonLevy is his usual solid self, but Smetana ,who wrote Ma Vlast (My Fatherland), an intensely patriotic Czech piece, would have been highly unlikely to be heard on the radio, the theatre...everywhere. Maybe Sirius Radio in the phony tanks, too? I do admire this as it was given to the American public honoring the great partisans that eliminated one of the most evil men of all time, closely after the actual event in 1943. So,by today's standards, it is entertaining for the wrong reasons. But I can see by 1943 standards, and its timely release, it provided a morale boost to Americans who may still not be sure of what they were fighting for. It was enjoyable to both my wife and myself as B type entertainment,since we know the actual history well. Perhaps it is unfair to judge films historic so close to the event, and so unknown (the events), that it suffers from accuracy errors, and no one really expects to "know" how Heydrich acted. Fortunately,this person was removed, as many felt he was the eventual successor to Hitler. You'll like it anyway.
Oklahoma! (1955)
it does not get any better than this
Oklahoma, the classic American musical. It just doesn't get any better than this. Did you know Richard Rodgers wrote the music AFTER he saw the words of Hammerstein? Count how many of the musical numbers are in waltz time. Rodgers was famous for this. He has, to this day, written MORE compositions that are published than any other American. Shirley Jones......look at the way she looks and reacts to Gordon McCrae. You can't teach this, because if you could we would have seen it again. And we did from her in Carousel and The Music Man. Rod Steiger even sings...and dances, too. The whole thing is a joyous romp. The bad guy isn't so bad, the farmers and the cowmen do end up friends, this time. The corn at the beginning was grown 16 feet high. It is not a trick of the camera. Neither is it a trick that it is arguably the best known (besides The Sound of Music) of any American musical. The cast is superb. The music better. I don't give very many things a 10. This made it easily. Fortunately, stereo was in its infancy and it still sounds good today. My highest praise.