Five Terrific New Year's Movies

No ball, watermelon, sardine or rodent drop features into my New Year's Eve entertainment. I find I prefer to watch movies late into New Year's Eve instead. I have my favorite films -- five or six of the ten movies Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers made together, a Cary Grant marathon -- which have nothing to do with the holiday itself. But there are some really dandy movies that do involve New Year's Eve on screen. And I'm not talking about the piece of tripe called New Year's Eve, either. Or The Poseidon Adventure, which turned everybody upside-down with entertainment. If those are your style, you are forewarned to stay away from the movies on this list.

So what am I talking about? Here are my choices for starting out your New Year right with New Year's themed movies:

AFTER THE THIN MAN (1936) The entire series of Thin Man movies features sophisticated toffs in evening wear bantering, attending swanky parties and swilling alcohol, so they are all on the money for your NYE Film Fest. But After the Thin Man, the second one in the series starring William Powell and Myrna Loy as the charming, crime-solving Mr. and Mrs. Charles, actually begins at a New Year's Eve party. What could be more swell? If you want to see how a party (and crime-solving) were done in 1936, put After the Thin Man at the top of your list.

HOLIDAY (1938) This is one of my favorite movies of all time. Katherine Hepburn. Cary Grant. A supporting cast that includes Edward Everett Horton. What else do you need? This is the second film adaptation of Philip Barry's Broadway play, with Hepburn as Linda Seton, the daughter of a fabulously wealthy old-money family in New York City. Self-made man Johnny Case, played by Grant, meets her sister Julia in Lake Placid and comes back to Manhattan to make it official with her, but a swanky engagement party on New Year's Eve makes it clear to everybody that he doesn't belong with snobby Julia. When Linda and Johnny dance alone in the upstairs playroom and she murmurs "Happy New Year, Johnny" with that look on her face, everybody should know what's up.

SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950) "I am big. It's the pictures that got small." That line comes from Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), the fading movie queen who lives in a Sunset Boulevard mansion that's more like a mausoleum. Her faithful servant (played by Erich von Stroheim) writes fan letters to convince her she's still beloved. He was once her director. And her husband. She latches onto young, beautiful wannabe screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) and invites him to a New Year's Eve party where he is the only guest. Uh oh. Billy Wilder wrote and directed the most cynical Hollywood movie ever. And it's fantastic.

THE APARTMENT (1960) Oh, Billy Wilder. You knew how to make 'em count. If After the Thin Man and Holiday conjure up elegant days of yore  that never really were, The Apartment shows us a drizzly, grimy version of New York City in 1960 that seems very, very real. There is humor and sweetness at the heart of Jack Lemmon's C.C. Baxter, the ordinary schlub whose bosses force him out n the street so they can have trysts in his handy Manhattan apartment, and it's the humor and sweetness in the face of disappointment and reversal that make The Apartment so wonderful. The Apartment certainly exposes the craziness we all put ourselves through if we expect New Year's Eve to be a quintessentially romantic experience. If you only have time for one New Year's Eve movie, I'd probably tell you to pick The Apartment.

RADIO DAYS (1987)  The New Year's Eve scenes in Woody Allen's Radio Days show the fantasy -- glamorous stars sipping champagne at a glittering nightclub in the 1940s -- and the reality -- a very ordinary family in Brooklyn, listening to the radio and imagining the glamour elsewhere. If any movie puts the whole New Year's Eve ethos together, it's this one. Somebody has posted those scenes on Youtube so you can see what I mean. If that pan across Mia Farrow, Wallace Shawn and Tony Roberts in their sparkly gowns (Mia) and tuxedos (Wallace and Tony) doesn't tell the story of what we all think New Year's Eve should look like, nothing ever will.

I'm afraid I have to run. I have a date with Cary Grant and Jack Lemmon. Almost time to say Happy New Year, Johnny!

Celebrating the Year of the Female Playwright in B-N in 2014

There has been a lot of controversy about the lack of representation for female playwrights on American stages. I don't know if it was on purpose or just a happy accident, but Bloomington-Normal knocked it out of the park when it came to showcasing the work of female playwrights in 2014. From The Diary of Anne Frank back in January to Falling by Deanna Jent, which closed just before Thanksgiving, from stories told in ten minutes to one acts and full-length plays, we had a chance to see -- right here in Bloomington-Normal -- 21 different plays written by women, two plays co-written by women, and three musicals with music, lyrics or books written or co-written by women.

Last spring, Illinois State University gave us Diana Son's Stop Kiss, directed by Leah Cassella for Westhoff Theatre, followed by Exonerated, a "true crime" documentary piece written by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen and directed by Cyndee Brown, and Mrs. Packard, a look at a particularly dark moment in women's history written by Emily Mann and directed by Vanessa Stalling for ISU's Center for the Performing Arts.

This fall, ISU came back with In the Next Room (or the Vibrator Play) by Sarah Ruhl, directed by David Ian Lee for the CPA, with an amazing set design by Jen Kazmierczak; Water by the Spoonful, Quiara Alegria Hudes's 2012 Pulitzer Prize winner, directed by Cassella in Westhoff; and By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, from Lynn Nottage, another Pulitzer winner, directed by Don LaCasse for the CPA.

Over at Heartland, the April play was Iron, by Scottish playwright Rona Munro, a searing look at a daughter trying to reconnect with the mother she can't remember, a mother who is in prison for killing Dad fifteen years ago. Claire BonEnfant, Nancy Halper and Brigitte Viellieu-Davis won slots in Heartland's 10-Minute Play Festival, while Lori Matthews and Pamela Devon Lovell wrote winning one-acts produced as New Plays from the Heartland. And this fall, Heartland staged Julia Cho's The Language Archive, directed by Kathleen Kirk, and Deanna Jent's Falling, directed by Lori Adams, who had also directed the play in its St. Louis premiere and its off-Broadway transfer. Jent's intensely personal play was a shot right to the heart of playgoers.

New Route Theatre continued its mission to showcase underrepresented voices by bringing back The Mountaintop, Katori Hall's play about the last night in the life of Martin Luther King, and then offering Johnna Adams' mother/teacher showdown Gidion's Knot; Full Bloom, a reunion play by Leola Bellamy, Erica Thurman's Flashbacks; and Walking with My Ancestors, a journey into the past told in song, dance and the spoken word, written by ISU professor Ama Oforiwaa Aduonu.

Community Players brought us The Diary of Anne Frank, an adaptation of Anne's own words for the stage originally written by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett and updated by Wendy Kesselman; the musical 9 to 5, with music and lyrics by Dolly Parton and book by Patricia Resnick, and Shrek: The Musical, with music by Jeanine Tesori and lyrics and book by David Lindsay-Abaire.

Illinois Wesleyan University offered 12 Ophelias by Caridad Svich and The Drowsy Chaperone, a delightful 1920s musical spoof with music and lyrics co-written by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison.

The newest theatrical venture in town, the bar plays called Sticky in the Sticks, also featured work by women, in the tradition of Sticky founder Libby Emmons. The Normal version of Sticky gave us pieces by Emmons herself as well as Jeanine Jones in its December show.

All in all, it was a very good year.  More than two dozen different women with very different voices, all represented on stages in our home town.

The work isn't done, of course. It seems unlikely this will happen two years in a row, let alone three or four. But for now, for Bloomington-Normal in 2014, we can congratulate ourselves on quietly, happily getting it done. Here's to moe of the same in 2015!

And the "Spring" TV Season Begins...

Who remembers when there was one TV season, running from September to May? Now we have two (or more) with a lot of shows taking a hiatus over the holidays and coming back in the new year. That means cliffhangers, questions and lives in peril in November and December, with no resolution till January.

We haven't seen Downton Abbey on PBS Masterpiece since last February, but it returns next Sunday with new episodes about the adventures of the Crawley family, their servants and their friends and enemies. Click here for a preview of what's ahead at the Abbey. Let's just say, "The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!"

The Good Wife also comes back next Sunday night on CBS, jolting us back into the drama surrounding Florrick Agos & Lockhart. Alicia's campaign for State's Attorney has hit more than one bump, even if she does have a very hot campaign manager (Broadway's Steven Pasquale). Will she bow out? Or pulverize David Hyde Pierce's Frank Prady, who has revealed a nasty side under his warm TV persona? Will she hook up with the very pretty and smart Finn Polmar now that she and the hubby have agreed they can lead separate lives in private? We saw Cary (the Agos in the firm's name) take a plea for supposedly counseling drug lord Lemond Bishop and his thugs on how to break the law without getting caught, but will he end up back in jail or on the lam? Where ya goin'? Barcelona? And what about Kalinda? Not to mention the rest of Lockhart Gardner left behind, like the odious David Lee and sneaky Louis Canning (Michael J. Fox)? And what will happen to the cheeky process server played by Nathan Stark, the son of ISU's Lori Adams and John Stark?

January 4 is a jam-packed Sunday night, with returns from Brooklyn Nine Nine, CSI, Family Guy, Madam Secretary, Revenge and The Simpsons as well as Downton Abbey and The Good Wife.

Two new shows will also be taking bows. Well, Celebrity Apprentice 7 is hardly new. Or interesting. But The Donald and his collection of crazies, blowhards and nutballs will be back. This season's cast of misfit toys includes a Jonas Brother, an NFL star who should know better, two Olympic gold medalists who should know better, slew of reality TV personalities and a couple of dubious "journalists."

The other new show is a more curious (and much more interesting) proposition. What with Once Upon a Time on ABC and Grimm on NBC, not to mention all the vampires, superheroes and immortals running around the networks and all the fairytale movies that have come and gone in recent years (Into the Woods, Frozen, Maleficent, Mirror Mirror, Snow White and the Huntsman, Red Riding Hood, Jack the Giant Killer, Tangled, a bunch of Shreks and the companion Puss in Boots, etc.) you may wonder if we really need another fairytale show. Well, we're getting one whether we need it or not. This time it's Galavant, a musical comedy romp about a knight errant intent on getting back his lady fair. Yes, I said "musical." It sounds a bit like Spamalot meets When Things Were Rotten.

Dan Fogelman, the screenwriter behind movies like Crazy, Stupid, Love, Tangled and Bolt, is executive producer on this project, with composer Alan Menken (Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast) and lyricist Glenn Slater (The Little Mermaid, Tangled) providing all the songs for what ABC is billing as "a 4-week comedy extravaganza."

The cast include British actor Joshua Sasse as Galavant,  Timothy Omundson (Psych) as his enemy King Richard, Vinnie Jones as Richard's chief henchman, Mallory Jensen as the lady love everybody is galavanting after, plus Ricky Gervais, John Stamos, Weird Al Yankovic and Rutger Hauer in guest roles.

Galavant appears to be set for two half-hour episodes each Sunday night from January 4 to 25, taking over Once Upon a Time's 8 to 9pm Eastern/7 to 8 pm Central time slot. Check out its ABC site for a sneak peek at the music, the cast and other behind-the-scenes info.

Holiday Movies on Turner Classic Movies All Through the Night

Turner Classic Movies has already started its Christmas Eve/Christmas Day movie marathon, but there's still time to catch a whole lot of classic holiday action. If you're a fan of Jimmy Stewart, Ginger Rogers, Judy Garland, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Katharine Hepburn or Mickey Rooney, there are movies for you in the line-up.

It Happened on Fifth Avenue, a sweet little movie from 1947 about GIs moving into what they think is an empty Manhattan mansion because of the post-World War II housing shortage, begins at 11:15 am Central time, starting the holiday parade. It stars Don DeFore, someone you may remember from the Ozzie and Harriet show, as the first veteran into the mansion, with Ann Harding as a rich girl pretending to be poor to help out her new friends, Charles Ruggles as her robber baron dad, and Victor Moore, a major star of stage and screen you don't hear a lot about anymore, as Aloysious T. McKeever, a gentleman bum who knows how to keep himself in very nice housing even when he doesn't have a nickel. And you'll find Gilligan's Island's Skipper, Alan Hale Jr., in the supporting cast.

After that, Ginger Rogers appears in I'll Be Seeing You, airing at 1:15 pm CST, a 1944 film which has the dubious distinction of turning the beautiful title song into a soggy mess of choral flourishes. Aside from the song and some other melodramatic elements, I'll Be Seeing You is worth a look to see Ginger as a prisoner on a holiday furlough who meets the wonderful Joseph Cotten, playing a shell-shocked soldier who is also on leave, as they both travel home for the holidays by train. Shirley Temple is in the mix as a teenager with a big mouth.

The Shop Around the Corner, a wonderful 1940 movie full of Continental charm, begins at 3 pm CST. Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan star as argumentative sales clerks in a shop in Budapest as the holiday shopping season heats up, offering lots of opportunities for snowflakes falling on romantic street scenes with a Mittel-European flair. They are pen pals as well as co-workers, although neither knows the other is the one behind the love letters. Ernst Lubitsch directed this confection with his lighter-than-air Continental touch, pulling perfect performances from the likes of Frank Morgan, the Wizard of Oz himself, as the owner of the shop and Felix Bressart as a member of the team at Matuschek & Co. The movie is based on a play called Parfumerie by Miklos Laszlo and it's been remade a number of times, in films like In the Good Old Summertime and You've Got Mail and the stage musical She Loves Me.

Meet Me in St. Louis is up next, taking us to the World's Fair in 1904, with the Smith family, including Judy Garland and Margaret O'Brien as sisters, enjoying an idyllic life until Dad (Leon Ames) announces they're all moving. Uh oh. Judy sings "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and there's not a dry eye in the house. It's a classic for a reason. Meet Me in St. Louis starts at 5 pm Central time.

Kaufman and Hart's The Man Who Came to Dinner gets the marquee spot at 7 pm, showcasing Monty Woolley, who reprises his Broadway role as Sheridan Whiteside, an obnoxious radio star who visits a small-town family, suffers a slip and fall on the front steps, and proceeds to take over the household with a non-stop stream of visitors, including eccentric movie and stage stars and a parade of penguins. Bette Davis is on-board as Whiteside's put-upon secretary, with Ann Sheridan as a luscious movie star, Reginald Gardner as a crazy Englishman modeled after Noel Coward, and Jimmy Durane as Banjo, a Harpo Marx-like comedian.

One of my favorites, Christmas in Connecticut, takes over at 9 pm CST, with Barbara Stanwyck at her screwball comedy best as a magazine writer who purports to be a wife and mother and an expert on all things domestic, even though she's really single and doesn't know a stove from a refrigerator. A war hero played by the very handsome Dennis Morgan has one holiday desire -- to spend Christmas with a perfect family like hers -- and her editor, played by Sydney Greenstreet, isn't taking no for an answer. So Babs has to come up with a husband, a baby and a whole lot of picture-perfect food on short notice. S. Z. "Cuddles" Sakall makes an appearance as Barbara's pancake-flipper and general helper-outer. It's delightful.

Cover Girl, a 1944 musical with Gene Kelly, Rita Hayworth and Phil Silvers, begins at 11 pm CST, with 1958's Indiscreet, where Cary Grant tries to keep Ingrid Bergman on a string even though he doesn't want to marry her, at 1 am.

As we hit early Christmas morning, John Wayne, Pedro Roca Fuerte and Harry Carey Jr. saddle up for 3 Godfathers, a John Ford Western with a sentimental side. The Duke and his friends are bank robbers on the lam who find themselves unwilling caretakers of an orphaned newborn. They battle sandstorms, sweltering heat, thirst and all kinds of terrifying perils as they attempt to return the baby to her grandfather, who happens to be the sheriff trying to capture them.

Tenth Avenue Angel, a potboiler with Angela Lansbury in an early role, starts at 7 am, followed by Ginger Rogers as a Bachelor Mother at 8:30 am and Reginald Owen as one of the best Scrooges ever in the 1938 screen version of A Christmas Carol at 10:30.

Janet Leigh and Robert Mitchum are unlikely lovers in Holiday Affair, airing at 11:15, where Leigh plays a widowed working mother and Mitchum yearns to build boats in California. Will he give up his dreams to take care of comparison-shopper Connie and little Timmy? Or will she give up her need for security and follow his dream with him?

In the Good Old Summertime, the 1949 musical remake of The Shop Around the Corner, puts Judy Garland together with Van Johnson as squabbling co-workers, this time in a music shop. Liza Minnelli makes her screen debut as the baby Judy carries in the final number. You can compare/contrast Summertime with Shop Around the Corner at 1 pm on Christmas Day.

Then it's the 1933 Little Women, the one with Katharine Hepburn as Jo March, at 3 pm, Love Finds Andy Hardy at 5, and a slew of Mel Brooks' movies, from High Anxiety to Silent Movie, Mel's 1983 remake of To Be or Not to Be, and The Twelve Chairs, all night long.

DOWNTON Is Back, with Remembrance, Romance and Russians. Lots of Russians.

It seems as if we've been waiting forever, but Season 5 of Downton Abbey will be back on our screens very soon. Sunday, January 4, at 8 o'clock Central to be precise.

Just to whet your appetite, George Clooney and some other interesting folks have popped up in a spoofy charity video that's making the rounds. Yes, George does look like he belongs at Downton. And so does Joanna Lumley, at her AB Fabbiest as an irreverent angel. But back to Season 5...

Because Downton's episodes air in England well before they get here, intrepid sleuths (or people who visit England) already know what will happen to the Crawleys and their friends, lovers, enemies and servants in the momentous year of 1924.*

You will recall that we made it through World War I back in season 2, so it's fitting that we are ready for Remembrance Day and a war memorial as the denizens of Downton Abbey begin the new season. This Remembrance plot puts Lord Crawley and his faithful servant Carson at odds, signaling the continued erosion of the all-encompassing power of the nobility in British society.

Some stories from the past -- Mary's hot and cold running suitors, Edith's baby and her missing baby daddy, former chauffeur Branson caught in a no man's land between the working class and the aristocracy, Thomas scheming behind the scenes, and Bates and Anna's possible involvement with a murder -- continue in Season 5, although some characters we've met before -- like Cora's American mum and brother, played by Shirley MacLaine and Paul Giamatti -- have thankfully departed.

One change is just how much romance there is and how many characters (and generations) are involved. In other words, it isn't just Mary getting all the action. The romance in Season 5 includes the return of a long-lost love, several proposals (not all of them what you might call "decent"), a wedding, and suitors with Russian connections for both a grande dame and an ingenue, neither of whom is Mary.

Guest stars include Matt Barber, Anna Chancellor, Penny Downie, James Faulkner, Richard E. Grant, Sue Johnston, Rade Serbedzija and Catherine Steadman as dishy new arrivals, romantic rivals, and general complications in the Crawley family circle. I continue to hope that Imelda Staunton, the real-life wife of Jim Carter, who plays Carson, will show up, but no luck on that score yet.

For all things Downton Abbey, including preview pictures and video, reminders of where the plot left off in Season 4, games and quizzes, a Q&A with the real owner of Highclere Castle, and a place to shop for Downton trinkets and books, try the main PBS site for the show.

*I harbor fervent hopes that somebody fun -- Rose? Branson and little Sybil? -- will travel to New York and catch Fred and Adele Astaire in Lady Be Good at the Liberty Theatre on Broadway in December 1924, but that will have to wait till after the events of this season, which only make it to autumn of 24.

SMASH's BOMBSHELL Back for a Benefit

When NBC started touting Smash, the 2012 TV show that promised to go backstage during the creative process of a Broadway musical, it  sounded like a Broadway fan's dream come true. Smash mixed television personalities like Debra Messing and Katharine McPhee with well-regarded film actors (Jack Davenport, Anjelica Huston) and legit Broadway luminaries (Megan Hilty, Christian Borle) and its creative pedigree was just as promising, with Theresa Rebeck, a playwright and screenwriter who knew her way around the stage and television, as well as Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, the Tony and Grammy Award winners who wrote the score for the musical Hairspray, on the team.

But there were cracks in the Smash facade right from the get-go. The musical within the musical, the prize everybody was trying so hard to get on its feet and two leading ladies were trying so hard to snare the starring role in, was called Bombshell. And it was about Marilyn Monroe. Not like that hadn't already been tried. The Broadway Marilyn lasted a whole 17 performances. Bombshell, indeed. Or maybe just Bomb.

Plus the two rivals for the role of Marilyn Monroe, the linchpin storyline, were a huge mismatch. Hilty looked and acted like a Monroe type as well as a Broadway star, while McPhee was limp and listless and clearly wrong for the role. But the scripts (and the characters who were supposed to be Broadway pros) kept touting McPhee's Karen as a phenom and giving her accolades, while treating Hilty's Ivy Lynn like something to be scraped off the bottom of one's shoe. It was actually sort of bizarre.

And then there was Messing's character. A mom, a songwriter, a crazy lady wrapped in scarves... Messing had a huge TVQ left over from Will and Grace, but Julia, her Smash character, was awkward and unpleasant, and she got what may've been the worst love scene in TV history.

Smash had its highlights, too, of course. Hilty knocked several musical scenes out of the park, guest stars like Bernadette Peters, Liza Minnelli, Jesse L. Martin and Jennifer Hudson were brought in to try to ramp up some excitement, Christian Borle was dynamite with everything he was given, and I will never be sorry to see Jack Davenport.

And quite a few people professed a desire to see Bombshell, the musical they were all working on in the first season of Smash, as an actual musical on stage, with Shaiman and Wittman's songs and the terrific numbers we got to see pieces of.

If that was your dream -- to actually witness Bombshell -- you will need to make arrangements to get to New York in June of next year. The Actors Fund and producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron are putting together a one-night-only benefit concert of Bombshell scheduled for June 15, 2015, with Megan Hilty and the Shaiman/Wittman Bombshell songs we heard on Smash.

The rest of the cast and the venue have yet to be announced but Broadway World, which broke the news, advises keeping an eye on the Actors Fund site for details..

AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY Has a Cast at Eureka College

Tracy Letts' August: Osage County is one of the most celebrated plays of the 21st century. After the 2007 Steppenwolf production in Chicago, the play took home seven Joseph Jefferson Awards and went straight to Broadway, winning six Tonys and nine other New York awards, plus a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Anna D. Shapiro, who was recently named Steppenwolf's Artistic Director, directed August: Osage in Chicago and New York.

Joel Shoemaker, a Eureka College alum, will direct August: Osage County for his alma mater with performances in April, 2015. Shoemaker's cast will include Christopher Tam and Stephanie Sager as Beverly and Violet Weston, the patriarch and matriarch of a deeply troubled Oklahoma family.

The plot of August: Osage County kicks in when Beverly Weston disappears and the three Weston daughters, Barbara, Ivy and Karen, along with Violet's sister Mattie Fae and various other in-laws and offspring arrive, ostensibly to offer support to Violet.

For Eureka, the three sisters will be played by Kayla Pulliam, Alexis Godbee and Emilie Dierks. Austin Bristow II will take on the role of Barbara's husband, with Ashleigh Feger as her teenage daughter. Nathan Bottorff will play Steve, Karen's fiance, along with Sarah Hall as Mattie Fae, Drew Carter as Mattie's husband Charlie and Austin Travis her son Little Charles. Completing the cast are Isabella Anderson as a caretaker for Violet and Jason Punke as the local sheriff who also happens to be Barbara's high school boyfriend.

If you are curious to see how all three stories of Weston family dysfunction will fit on the stage at Eureka College's Pritchard Theatre, you will have to wait till April. But you'll want to keep an eye on Eureka's Facebook page and theatre webpage to stay current in the meantime.