beldasnoop-1

This is easily the best version of Oklahoma! that I've ever seen. The one thing that slightly annoys me, though, is that in a lot of comments I've seen everyone seems to talk so much about Hugh Jackman that they mostly ignore the rest of the amazing cast here. Jackman is wonderful--don't get me wrong--but Josefina Gabrielle (Laurey), Maureen Lipman (Aunt Eller) and Shuler Hensley (Jud) are just as wonderful and it truly is an ensemble work rather than a one-man show. A great Curly doesn't have much to do without an equally great cast around him. Of the principals, I think Gabrielle and Hensley have the hardest jobs--their roles being almost complete re-inventions of their characters--and both handle their roles extremely well.

The role of Laurey in particular is approached here in a completely different way than it has ever been done before. The somewhat pampered, petulant girly-girl of past productions has been turned into a reserved, slightly tomboyish girl who seems somewhat uncomfortable with the emotions she feels for Curly. Gabrielle handles this characterization perfectly, and her singing and dancing are also top-notch. She and Jackman have a palpable chemistry that makes their scenes together a major highlight of this production. I also really like that they dance their own parts in the dream ballet, which makes this scene much easier to relate to than previous versions. Also, Hensley brings a great deal more depth to the Jud character than I've ever seen before. He's still a villain, but his motives are made more clear in this version, and Hensley is a powerful presence.

I love that this version succeeds in making the characters more real and less stereotypical, particularly the female characters. Lipman's Aunt Eller is a strong presence in the show, and even Ado Annie is less of a caricature than she has been in the past. Also, the sets and costumes reflect a more realistic approach than past productions, and it works very well. It is not a museum piece but a living, breathing production and most of the players rise to the occasion excellently. Peter Polycarpou as Ali Hakim is the only weak link--he's not bad but not great either--but the rest of the cast shines and works very well together.

If you go into this production expecting an Oklahoma! like you've seen many times before, you are in for a surprise. To me, it is a delightful surprise, and definitely worth purchasing the DVD.

This third volume of the acclaimed North and South saga is a major disappointment, so much so that I was unable to sit through the whole thing. It tries to go back to the plot of the original book, but confusingly so, because characters from the books who were not in the first 2 movies suddenly appear with no good explanation, and most of the returning characters act so out-of-character as to be unrecognizable, from either the books or the first two movies. It seems that the producers just assumed viewers would welcome this edition with open arms regardless of how twisted and convoluted the plot is, and how disjointed this all seems. It's an insult to the intelligence of anyone who enjoyed the first two series.

Some very unpleasant things happen which make very little dramatic sense. To a certain degree, that is the same as the book, but the book handled things much more appropriately for the time period and the characters' sensibilities, where the filmed version doesn't seem to care about that. It seems as if the producers really wanted another steamy soap opera, and they didn't seem to care if the story ended up making no logical sense in how it got there. The love stories all seem very rushed and sometimes downright illogical. This film repeatedly portrays the major players acting against their characters as portrayed in the first two parts, and several major characters are either re-cast or missing from this edition. Also, most of the returning actors don't seem to have their hearts in it anymore. It's like they're sleepwalking through this lackluster, sad production.

This installment has none of the energy and vitality of the first two installments, and the production values are sloppy at best. It's like watching one long, protracted funeral. It's downright depressing. I would advise fans of the first two series to avoid this one at all costs. The DVD set is well worth purchasing for the first two installments and the extras, but I would recommend that viewers just skip Book 3. It's too much of a letdown.

North and South is a miniseries from the "golden age" of television miniseries in the 1980s, which was a time for long, sweeping epics with high production values and lots of star cameos. It is, for the most part, excellent for what it is, although I personally prefer the less soap-opera like elements of the story and the overall sense of history.

James Read and Patrick Swayze deliver excellent performances--especially Read, whose George Hazard serves as kind of an emotional anchor in the midst of the often melodramatic story. The series also contains top-notch work from Kirstie Alley, Wendy Kilbourne, Hal Holbrook, Lewis Smith, Genie Francis, Georg Stanford Brown and others. The costumes, filming, sets and music are all first-rate as well.

Don't take it as a history lesson, but take it for what it is--a well-made, sweeping epic from a bygone era. Book 2, which followed a year later, is also excellent, but I would advise viewers to skip Book 3, which came out 8 years after Book 2 and was not nearly as good as the first two parts. Books 1 and 2 are classics, though, even with their soapier elements, and they are well worth watching.