Documentary about the influential pop composer and record producer Joe Meek, who died in dramatic circumstances in 1967 after a bizarre childhood and a career, often controversial, which spanned the period from the mid-50s to the rise of the Beatles in the 60s. At the end of his life he was suffering from paranoid delusions that people were watching him through walls. Alan Lewens’ film charts an Ortonesque tale of post-war Britain.
Category: Television
A young poet gets the brilliant idea to live in a department store, hiding by day, and courting his muse by night where it’s quiet, and he can have all his needs met. But, to his surprise, he learns his brilliant idea’s not exactly original; there are other residents who dodge the night watchmen, and who keep their existence secret at all costs. One of them is a young woman who wants to leave, but is too frightened to go. And Charles finds that he wants to show her the larger world outside.
Broadcast on A&E on January 12, 1995, this special is a recording of the presentation of the Algur H. Meadows Award for Excellence in the Arts presented by Southern Methodist University in 1994. The performance, by students at the school and guest artists Bernadette Peters, Chip Zien and Debra Monk, is intercut with interviews with Sondheim, Hal Prince, James Lapine and videotaped testimonials from Angela Lansbury and Jason Alexander. The less said about the student performances, the better, but the professional Sondheim veterans more than deliver, and the whole evening is worth seeing Sondheim himself at the piano accompanying Peters on “Send in the Clowns.”
A packed house at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan welcomed the 69-year old Stephen Sondheim on March 19, 2000 for a conversation with composer Ned Rorem in the “Ned Rorem Hosts” series.
A man who is serving time in prison for a crime he didn’t commit is picked for experiments on sun tanning lotions. What he doesn’t realise is that there is a hidden agenda and it’s only until he touches water that he finds what the experiment really was.
A television adaptation of Eugene O’Neil’s classic American drama of love, revenge, murder and suicide. Set against the backdrop of a small New England town, it is a post-Civil War saga of a fictionalized family in a sometimes idealized, other times reflected version of O’Neill’s own life and family.
Extremely controlled and somewhat austere, Akerman’s contribution to the landmark television series Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge holds true to its title as it hews closely to its moody protagonist, Michèle, a headstrong high schooler and aspiring writer who confesses that her exterior “joie de vivre” masks her inner suffering. Deciding to abandon her studies and her family, she naturally heads to the cinema, where she meets a handsome French deserter from a hoity family. For the rest of the day they meander through the streets of Brussels, oscillating between desire and despair.
The true story of May Lemke and her son Leslie. May is a middle-aged nurse and mother of grown children, who, along with her husband, agrees to take in an abandoned baby boy with mental and physical handicaps. Leslie is blind and brain-damaged, but May patiently teaches him how to eat, walk, and talk. Leslie shows an interest in music, but it isn’t until he is a teenager that his special ability reveals itself.