551rcg@hound.UUCP (R.GANNS) (01/02/85)
I'll register my vote in favor of "Cotton Club". Anyone who likes good dancing (the Hines brothers, etc.) and singing (Lonetta KcKee is terrific) will enjoy this movie thoroughly. For me, the plot was of secondary interest, but it did manage to do an adequate job of filling in the blank spaces between song & dance.
adolph@ssc-vax.UUCP (Mark Adolph) (01/06/85)
*** YOUR MESSAGE *** Am I the only one that believes that Richard Gere should be run out of Hollywood (right after Dom DeLuise) with his possesions thrown after him? What's appealing about an actor who plays the SAME character in every movie, no matter what the movie actually calls for? I'm sorry, but I couldn't accept an American Gigolo playing cornet in 1920s Harlem. -- Mark A. ...uw-beaver!ssc-vax!adolph "We'll cross out that bridge when we come back to it later."
daveb@rtech.ARPA (Dave Brower) (01/25/85)
> > > > Actually, I think it's entertaining enough to pay for its > > much-ballyhoed self... > > Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer > > Speaking of money, I really couldn't see where the $40M went on this film. > The production values were good, but uless they did some massive urban > renewal on the real Harlem for location shots, it looked like your basic > $15M-$20M high quality film. > > Jack Hagerty, Zehntel Automation Systems One of the problems is that your basic $15-20M film now costs $30-40M to produce. Examples: ``Star Wars'' was shot for 9M, ``Empire'' jumped to about $20M, and ``Revenge'' to $30-35M. I'd be hard pressed to say the last one looked three times as expensive as the first. And where did all the money in `Dune' (shot in a cheaper place than NYC) go? A period studio musical is costly to shoot compared to SF. Musicians and rehearsals are expensive compared to models. It's cheaper to optically print in a laser blast and synthesize a zap than it is to line a street with cars from the 20's and riddle them with bullet holes. And `real' choreography is more time-consuming ($$$) than trash filler, like say the `Solid Gold Dancers.' Cotton Club was GUARANTEED to a small country's national debt because: 1) It's a period piece requiring expense bvut not immediately apparent detail. 2) It's a musical with formal staging using many musicians and dancers who are to appear on screen. 3) Name talent (FFC, Gere, etc.) is not free. 4) New York is not a cheap place to do studio work. That's Entertainment, That's Dancing, That's Too Expensive to do very often anymore. My five bills were happily exchanged for the 70mm version of Cotton Club. +/- 20%, the money showed, which is not bad. (How late was your last software project?). ``I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused.'' ---------------- -dB {ucbvax, decvax}!mtxinu!rtech!daveb "The closer you look, the worse it gets." -- ---------------- -dB {ucbvax, decvax}!mtxinu!rtech!daveb "The closer you look, the worse it gets."