skybar20-1

I'm always fascinated by any film that can provoke an array of feelings towards it as this films appears to have done. I am in the "liked it very much" camp. Perhaps if one avoids seeing it as a slice of life screenplay, it can be appreciated much better. I saw it as an exercise in watching people proceed to ruin their lives....we're generally responsible for what choices we make. Kelsey Grammar was very good in his role, but I could have done without the false nose, etc. Tim Roth is one of those actors who is never boring regardless of how good or poor the particular film may be. While I can appreciate why some people hate this film, I just approached it from a different angle, took it for what it was and didn't look at my watch once during its run.

I recently purchased the newly released 3-disc DVD set of Al Jolson's "The Jazz Singer." One of the extras was of found excerpts of the otherwise lost "Gold Diggers of Broadway." I had seen other musicals from 1929/30 era which all had a cumbersome, boring execution in style and musical presentation before the snap of Busby Berkeley breathed life into the musical. I fully expected the cumbersome quality in this excerpt. I was stunned at how wonderfully entertaining the number was....how talented these different dancers were to say nothing of the energy involved including the delivery in the available bits of dialog. Everyone seemed to be having genuine fun. I also enjoyed the ballet sequence although my guess is that fewer people might appreciate that sequence. The female ballet dancers were very beautiful in it. The quality of these excerpts adds to the tragedy of "Gold Diggers of Broadway" being a lost film. Other lost films have been found. We can only hope that will be the case here.