Tag: Jazz

  • Paris Blues

    Paris Blues

    Paris Blues has many shades, but only one is visible to us: a whole crew wrote and rewrote the script, and in receiving the reports on these various drafts, there is much to mourn. Primarily, Sidney Poitier, “whose story this ought to be,”* dropping to third billing, after Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, cast as…

  • La La Land

    La La Land

    At the end of 2016, we need a movie like La La Land. Musicals offer an alternate universe where people don’t sit around mad at each other, they get out on the freeway and sing together. The film is a throwback to the classic era of old-school Hollywood, while still managing to be relevant and…

  • Whiplash

    Whiplash

    What does it take to be great at something?  Not just talented.  Not just good.  Great.  That’s the question at the heart of the gripping film Whiplash. Terrence Fletcher thinks he knows the answer.  Fletcher, played to Oscar winning perfection, by J.K. Simmons, believes greatness can only be achieved by pushing people past their breaking…