Alfred Hitchcock Movie Review: ****^ Torn Curtain (1966)

 This is a very good spy movie from Alfred Hitchcock starring Julie Andrews and Paul Newman as an engaged couple, Dr. Sarah Sherman and Professor Michael Armstrong.  Not only are they engaged but Sherman has been working as Armstrong's assistant.  Sherman starts acting strangely.  He defects to East Germany, saying the United States has stopped funding for his missile project.  In truth he is fishing for information from an East German scientist, Professor Heinrich Gerhardt (Hansjörg Felmy) who appears to have resolved an issue that has stymied Armstrong.  He just needs to convince Gerhardt that he has already resolved the issue and get him to share what he knows.  He leaves for East Berlin having told his fiance he was off elsewhere.  However she discovers his plans and follows him to East Berlin, where he announces he is defecting to East Germany.

Everything that could go wrong goes wrong.  Hitchcock the master director makes a great scene where Armstrong and a spy kill an East German security man who was coming onto Professor Armstrong.  This interfers with upcoming meeting between Armstrong and Gerhardt as the communists want to limit contact until they have studied Armstrong more thoroughly.  However he does have access to the assistant.  At first she does not want to cooperate but does after Armstrong tells her what he is doing, he is not a traitor.  This gets Gerhardt excited, and he takes Armstrong aside and to his secret office, where he is able to trick Gerhardt into revealing his research.  Armstrong takes it to memory as Gerhardt writes it down.  About this time the police are onto Armstrong after they find the agent's body.  However he runs away as Gerhardt realizes he has given his secrets away without getting anything in return.

Then comes the trip out of East Germany with many tense scenes, starting then leaving town in a bus, not a regular bus but following the same line as a regular bus.  There are certain anti communists who help.  They get a bit behind schedule, and eventually the police are onto them, so everyone scatters and they leave the bus behind.  They eventually make it to meet with handlers in a theater, where they are smuggled inside costume baskets onto a boat.  

Very tense and exciting movie and highly recommended.

Christmas Music Review: Christmas with Julie Andrews

 Christmas with Julie Andrews, CBS Inc, 1982.

Julie Andrews is a tresure, and she is in this CD album.  Her voice is beutiful and she sings the high notes so clearly.  This CD features Oh Come All Ye Faithful, In the Bleak Midwinter, What Child is This?, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Away in a Manger, I Wonder as I Wander and Silent Night among others.  I really like the instrujental flute and harp on What Child is This?  This has long been one of my favorite songs since it was included in Krueger's Christmas.  

Movie Review: ****Shrek 2 (2004)

 Shrek (Mike Myers) is back as are all of his friends from the swamp.  Fiona (Cameron Diaz) his wife is invited back to the kingdom where she was raised so her parents can meet her husband.  Donkey (Eddie Murphy) travels with them.  Besides mom and dad Queen (Julie Andrews) and King (John Cleese) we have three new significant character, Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) who is sent as an assassin to kill Shrek, but becomes indebted to him when Shrek saves him from a fur ball.  There is also Fairy Godmother (Jennifer Saunders) who is very evil, and Prince Charming (Rupert Everett) who was suppose to rescue Fiona from the castle but was too late as Shrek got there before him.  

An interesting character study on whether we should change ourselves, if we could and just be ourselves.  Both Shrek and Fiona face this dilemma; as does the king.  Very good movie.  I enjoyed the story, and overcoming the odds with help from your friends.  

Movie Review: ****Cinderella (1957)

This is the original presentation of this Rogers and Hammerstein musical.  This musical was written for television and was first performed live in 1957 with Julie Andrews in the starring role.  Jon Cypers plays the prince.  Many of the songs form this musical taught me about love, although I was watching a later version.  "Do I love you because you're beautiful; or are you beautiful because I love you." and the "Ten Minutes Ago" is classic: "I have found her, she's an angel, with the dust of the stars in her eyes!  We are dancing, we are flying and she's taking me back to the skies.
Those kinds of melodies and lyrics make a home run every time.
This film is in black and white, but beautifully done.  The songs carry the day.

Music Review: Disney Timeless Classics

This C.D. (2013) has something for everyone, and lots for the Disney fan.  Some of these songs go back a long ways, and bring back fond memories.  It represents a wide variety of Disney movies and t.v.  For example there is "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" from an early cartoon.  However these are mostly movie songs, "Whistle While you Work," (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) "When You Wish Upon a Star,"(Pinocchio) "When I see an Elephant Fly" (Dumbo) and "Little April Shower" (Bambi) are some early Disney classics.  "The Three Caballeros" reminds me of "Ay Jalisco".  There is "Zip-A-Dee-Doo Dah" sung by James Baskett and Burl Ives sings "Lavender Blue" (So Dear to my Heart).  Other later classics include: "A Dream is a Wish You Heart Makes" (Cinderella) and "What a Dog" (Lady and the Tramp) "Once Upon a Dream" (Sleeping Beauty) and "Cruella De Vil" (101 Dalmatians). 
My favorite of all the songs is Julie Andrews, "A Spoonful of Sugar" (Mary Poppins).  Burl Ives sings another, "The Ugly Bug Ball" (Summer Magic).  Pearl Bailey offers up "Best of Friends" (Fox and Hound), which is the concluding number to the C.D. and a beautiful place to stop. 
This C.D. is for Disney lovers.  Reminds me of the sing-a-long videos we use to have.

Christmas Music Review: The Joy of Christmas

This is an anthology of Christmas music with several performers.  This is volume 2.  It looks to have been produced in 1995.
For me the crowning number is Julie Andrews singing "Deck the Halls."  Her's is a voice that is very appealing and I enjoy listening to her.  It makes me smile to listen to her.  Other noteworthy numbers include Harry Belafonte and "Silent Night." His rendition is very spiritual and very simple with guitar  and violin accompaniment.  His voicePerry Como sings "I'll Be Home for Christmas" and John Gary "The Christmas Song."  There is also "Feliz Navidad" by Jose Feliciano and "Jingle Bells" with Glen Miller and his Orchestra.  These two songs really pick up the pace.

Movie Review: ***Eloise at the Plaza

This is a 2003 Disney movie based on a children's book by Kay Thompson.  This is the story of a six year old girl, Eloise (Sophia Vassilieva) who lives in a hotel along Central Park in New York, because her mother is off doing what rich mothers do.  She does have a nanny (Julie Andrews).  Even so, Eloise manages to get into plenty of trouble.
The boss at the hotel is Mr. Salomone (Jeffrey Tambor).  He warns everyone to be on the look out for the Prince coming to visit them, but shows his father's picture.  As a result, no one recognizing him when he arrives.  He is dealing with the death of his mother, and alienation from his father who wants to send hi to boarding school.  He befriends Eloise, who takes him in and shows him the hotel, not knowing he is the prince.
A cute scene is where she is looking through her telescope at Central Park looking for the prince.  She wants to dance with him at the upcoming ball to be held at the hotel.  And there he is right next to her.  Of course she does not find him.  Later she is even part of the search for him, but she still doesn't realize who he is.  It is much later that she puts things together.
With all of her bumbling, Eloise is able to effect others in a positive light, giving them knew courage with her own, and her own directness. 
This movie is cute, albeit a bit canned with the precocious child.

Movie Review: *****The Sound of Music

This is one of my favorite movies of all time.  I saw it when it first came out at a theater in Denver, where we had traveled for my father's graduation with his Masters in Library Science from the University of Denver.  It was at a big theater in Denver.  And what a presentation from the "Sound Of Music" in the Austrian Alps, and Maria running full speed to make the bell, which she fails miserable.
This show has many high-lights.  My favorite is the Mother Abyss singing "Climb Every Mountain to Maria, telling her to face her challenges rather than run from them:
Climb every mountain,
Search high and low,
Follow every byway,
Every path you know.

Climb every mountain,
Ford every stream,
Follow every rainbow,
'Till you find your dream.

A dream that will need
All the love you can give,
Every day of your life
For as long as you live.

Don't you just love the two nuns confessing "I have sinned" as she shows the Reverand mother the car parts, as the von Trapp family makes its way over the mountain.