tannochbrae

What a time capsule! I knew Jerry Orbach could sing because I was introduced to him through my parents LP record of The Fantastiks. But little did I know just how good a singer he was, wow.

Of course, this is a showcase for Mitzi Gaynor, who I best remember for South Pacific. Half way decent dancer, amazing legs!! Material of its time but fun to watch, especially the commercials from Kraft!

Rating this a 7 for historical value. But it's a 10 for Jerry: Knowing his body of work with Law and Order, I wish his musical career had more 'stage' especially for the younger audiences. The stars of this era were truly triple threats.

Always a fan of anything Dame Judi Dench, this movie was of course on my list. And I found it a tastefully well-told story and very much a positive addition to Dame Judi's resume. What an amazing lifetime of work from this incredible woman (I first saw her at Stratford, playing Desdemona).

No doubt terrible wrongs were done by "The Church" in its day but I find myself concerned with the acceptance of "all things catholic/organized church is bad" a little hard to take (watch the short lived Single Handed series for more on church abuse) They were of their era, and how quickly we forget social mores -- you truly cannot judge without knowing the social environment of the times. I'm definitely not religious, and in fact hold organized religion at fault for so much of the world's ills but movies really need to find an even hand in representing social mores and truth.

Long may Dame Judi reign!

I believe the movie achieved its goals of telling a real story, tastefully and well. And I loved the sub-plot of Steve Coogan: in a number of ways this was the icing on the cake. Oh, and how lovely to enjoy Michelle Fairly in role unrelated to Game of Thrones (where some of us know her outcome) -- she was quite excellent and I'm now on a view-her-works spree.

A well made movie, no doubt. But I didn't learn anything new about slavery, owners, or slaves,or even the era. There is a huge body of work out there that documents this history, and I really wish I had been moved by this particular story, but at the end, I was underwhelmed. Yes, it's shocking about kidnapping and denial of status (I still wonder about economics of kidnapping of free men), but then let's compare to all the shanghai'ing/press-ganging of sailors (slavery just the same but not confined to skin color or ethnicity) Having rights negated is extremely disturbing no matter what, and this is probably the only level that the film reached me.

Performances were very good. But overall, I felt the movie was over- hyped and did little-to-nothing to contribute to commentary on the era.