Reviews

I was totally gobsmacked and blown away by this sophomoric bio pic. While, Yes, the acting was phenomenal and most likely a challenge for all the actors. However to denigrate and destroy our most famous 20th century musical God and Guru was a cheap commercial, below the belt, in more ways than one, and other shamefully acted over the top at least Lenny's portrayal. I met Maestro Bernstein in 1968 when he was a guest at my parents place in Vienna. My parents invited the cream Ala cream of the music, art, cultural and political worlds to meet Lenny who was introducing Vienna to the first performance of PORGY & BESS with Leotyne Price and some famous tenor and bass male opera singer. The cocktail party for 150 VIP guests held at Turkenschanzsteasse 22, Vienna 18th. I served champagne to Maestro B. And my mom and I chatted with him for 30 minutes about my failure as a pianist and that's another story. Flash forward to a DC Laguardia Shuttle 1975. Maestro and I in the very back of the bus near the head, I on opposite aisle and both of us sitting on te aisle and ready for one hour of very rough turbulent winter weather, a Northeaster. The flight lasted 3 hours and finally landed in Laguardia. During flight Maestro smoked 1 pack of cigarettes and offered me early in the terrible flight if I needed a smoke to calm my nerves. So Maestro started me smoking 1 pack a day that fateful evening. And no he fid not hit up on me, nor snorted coke, nor smoked weed during long short flight. Bottlleline: Lenny was nothing like the devil portrayed and shocked the family gave the old thumbs up. More music background, Maestro as the tortured artist needs to be completed next year's to big forgiveness for this embarrassing piece of work.

I have read Mansfield Park, cover to cover, all 479 pages, Penguin Edition, two times in the last 5 months, a solid 48 hour commitment each time. There is no way a 110-120 minute feature film can do this Austen novel or any for that matter justice. It requires a 12 or more one hour television series a la Downton Abbey. Austen writes with many different voices/1st, 2nd and 3rd persons that it would require a unique writing team and facile director to treat it with any authenticity, and a bold production company with dedicated financing. The novel was written in the early 1800's so to capture this epoch; the height of English naval power, the very early days of pre-industrial England, and the Empire about to expand and become a major super power. From reviews, none of this appears to be captured and pleased I never saw this claptrap modernization. My God, Harold Pinter, acted in it. He should have written it even a la Pinter's own style and he might have redeemed it or created at least a fascinating bowdlerization of it and made it watchable. True Austen fans and readers might have been up in arms but nothing like experimentation. Imagine a 12 hour theater piece i.e. four 4 three 3 hour play pieces over a week period of live "theater streaming." Now that would challenge the Royal Academy and its students.

As a T E Lawrence and Gertrude Bell lay historian, this film was a real disappointment, miscast top to bottom and did not reflect reality of Miss Bell's challenging exploration of Saudi Arabia and the Fertile Crescent i.e. Iraq, Iran, and parts of Syria, almost too slick and clean to accurately reflect life on the ground as a very early European explorer of these regions. Multiple language linguist i.e. dead & living languages, archaeologist, cartographer, artist, poet, letter correspondent, equestrian, expert marks person, cultured, cultivated and supported both financially and spiritually by her father. Oh, what a bloody shame, eh>