#Nada Despotovich
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CHALLENGERS 2024
I'm taking such good care of my little white boys.
#challengers#2024#zendaya#josh o'connor#mike faist#darnell appling#aj lister#nada despotovich#naheem garcia#hailey gates#jake jensen
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Smithereens (Susan Seidelman, 1982)
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CHALLENGERS (2024)
Starring Zendaya, Josh O'Connor, Mike Faist, Jake Jensen, Darnell Appling, Bryan Doo, Shane T Harris, Nada Despotovich, Joan Mcshane, Chris Fowler, Mary Joe Fernandez, AJ Lister, Connor Aulson, Doria Bramante, Christine Dye, James Sylva, Kenneth A. Osherow, Kevin Collins, Burgess Byrd, Jason Tong, Hudson Rivera, Noah Eisenberg and Emma Davis.
Screenplay by Justin Kuritzkes.
Directed by Luca Guadagnino.
Distributed by Amazon MGM Studios. 131 minutes. Rated R.
It’s a problem when you see a movie about a love triangle in which all of the points of that triangle are so toxically unlikeable that you tend to think that they all deserve the misery that they are causing each other.
Oh, sure, some of them are better than others. One of the guys is simply horribly needy, cut off from his feelings and passive aggressive. One of the guys is immature, untrustworthy, vain, jaded and constantly trying to steal his best friend’s girl. In the meantime the woman is a complete horror – selfish, mean, angry, manipulative, unfeeling and treats both of the guys like trash.
You never really understand why both guys seem to be so obsessed with her, other than the possible fact that she is much hotter looking than either of them.
And honestly, with the only slightly closeted homoerotic subtext which kept rearing its head between the two male leads, you tend to think their lives would have been a lot happier had they just forgotten the girl and hooked up with each other.
The real challenge in Challengers is to find a character to root for – either as lovers, or as friends, or even simply as tennis pros. Good luck with that.
Challengers looks at this threesome, flipping back and forth in time over a period of about 13 years. We watch the characters grow from horny college tennis phenoms to horny regulars on the pro circuit, all the while never growing emotionally.
The main character (so much as there is a main character) is Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), an attractive-but-jaded teen tennis phenom whose career is cut short too early by a knee injury. We meet her before she has that life-altering wound, though, when she is still full of potential as a college tennis phenom.
The dudes are Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), who have been friends playing together on the circuit since they were kids. They meet up with Tashi at a teen tournament, talk her up to their room to try to get her drunk. (And, of course, the idea of seducing her lingers in the back of their minds.)
Tashi is more than willing to tease the horny, shy boys, and ends up making out with both of them on the bed – and then she slips out of the embrace and sits back and watches them making out with each other.
Tashi insists early on that she doesn’t want to be a homewrecker, but that is exactly what she becomes, metaphorically.
Over the years Tashi hooks up with both of the guys. First, she is with Patrick, but when she is injured and it becomes obvious that Art has a better career path than Patrick, she gets involved with Art, first as his trainer and eventually as his wife. But their fragile marriage (and their small child) doesn’t mean Tashi is above periodically sleeping with Patrick.
The guys' battle for Tashi is symbolized in their climactic tennis match, which is peppered in throughout the film. Art is near the top of the standings and Patrick is just barely holding on to his spot in the circuit. Art is considering retiring to become a family man (a choice which Tashi is very much against) and wants to go out on top. Patrick needs a big win in order to stay on the pro circuit. Therefore it becomes a grudge match for a pair of guys who already have a serious grudge against each other.
Challengers also does its best to turn tennis into a blood sport, which may even be true, but still it is a bit disorienting on film. The ball constantly hits the racket with a loud report like a gunshot, and on each lunge on the court the players grunt like they are being tortured. While, in fairness, there is some very spectacular tennis footage here, these runaway sound effects also have the tendency of distancing the viewer from the action.
In fairness, Challengers is an extremely well-made film, with good acting on all sides, some terrific sports footage and an evocative visual sense. I just can’t get over the fact that all three of the main characters are such jerks that it is hard to care about any of their lives, careers and their very messy love lives.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: April 25, 2024.
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Susan Berman in Smithereens (Susan Seidelman, 1982)
Cast: Susan Berman, Brad Rijn, Richard Hell, Nada Despotovich, Roger Jett, Kitty Summerall, Joni Ruth White, D.J. O'Neill, Joel Rooks, Pamela Speed, Tom Cherwin, Edie Schecter. Screenplay: Susan Seidelman, Ron Nyswaner, Peter Askin. Cinematography: Chirine El Kadem. Production design: Franz Harland. Film editing: Susan Seidelman. Music: Glenn Mercer, Bill Million.
Smithereens is at least a documentary of attitude, a portrait of a moment in the history of youth. It aspires to the lasting achievement of the early French New Wave, to become the punk era's Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960) or The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959). If it doesn't reach those heights, it's only because Godard and Truffaut got there first, and Susan Seidelman's film can only feel like an echo of them in spirit. But it can also transcend them because its protagonist, like its director, is a woman: Susan Berman's Wren displays a gutsiness and vulnerability inaccessible to Godard's Michel Poiccard and Truffaut's Antoine Doinel. Made for chicken feed on 16mm in the crumbling Manhattan of the early 1980s, it set Seidelman on a path to the big time, though it can also be argued that she never again quite displayed the ingenuity and intensity of vision that she shows in Smithereens.
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Just in Time - ABC - April 6, 1988 - May 11, 1988
Sitcom (6 episodes)
Running Time: 30 minutes
Stars:
Tim Matheson as Harry Stadlin
Patricia Kalember as Joanna Farrell
Alan Blumenfeld as Steven Birnbaum
Kevin Scannell as Jack Manning
Nada Despotovich as Isabel Miller
Ronnie Claire Edwards as Carly Hightower
Patrick Breen as Nick Thompson
#Just in Time#ABC#TV#Sitcom#1980's#Tim Matheson#Patricia Kelember#Alan Blumenfeld#Kevin Scannell#Nada Despotovich
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Smithereens (1982) Susan Seidelman 23-04-2019 Lo fi indie with punk sensibilities and an equally sympathetic and frustrating protagonist that you can't help but feel bad for as she makes wrong decision after wrong decision
#smithereens#1982#susan seidelman#usa#susan berman#brad rijn#richard hell#nada despotovich#roger jett#kitty summerall
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Smithereens | Susan Seidelman | 1982
Nada Despotovich, Susan Berman
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The King Zone Podcast Episode 23 - 'Give Me What I Want, And I'll Go Away' The Menacing Forces of Storm Of The Century (1999) Mini-Series
The King Zone Podcast Episode 23 - 'Give Me What I Want, And I'll Go Away' The Menacing Forces of Storm Of The Century (1999) Mini-Series
#StephenKing #Podcast #PodNation
The King Zone Podcast Episode 23
‘Give Me What I Want, And I’ll Go Away ‘
The Menacing Forces of
Storm Of The Century (1999) Mini-Series
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https://supermarcey.files.wordpress.com/2022/03/the-king-zone-podcast-episode-23-give-me-what-i-want-and-ill-go-away-the-menacing-forces-of-storm-of-the-century-1999-mini-series.mp3
Welcome to this Podcast series from The Super Network with The…
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#Casey Siemaszko#Colm Feore#Craig R. Baxley#Debrah Farentino#Denis Forest#Dyllan Christopher#horror#Horror Podcast#Jeffrey DeMunn#Julianne Nicholson#Mini Series#Nada Despotovich#Nicky Guadagni#podcast#Soo Garay#Spencer Breslin#stephen king#Storm Of The Century#The King Zone#Tim Daly
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MOONSTRUCK
LUNAR VISION
Who'd have expected such a charming romantic comedy from Norman Jewison (A Soldier's Story, Agnes Of God)? Who'd have thought that a cast including Cher, Nicolas Cage, Vincent Gardenia, Olympia Dukakis and Danny Aiello— actors whose combined potential for mannerism and excess could blow every fuse in Manhattan — would be fashioned into such an engaging and compatible ensemble?”
— David Ansen, Newsweek, December 21, 1987.
Norman Jewison himself, that's who. Based on the strength of John Patrick Shanley's rich, appealing script, the celebrated director of Fiddler On The Roof and Jesus Christ Superstar assembled a cast and crew to deliver a simple yet enthralling film - one that David Ansen in that same review would call, “a delightful surprise... a very knowing piece of comic artifice...inventively written, wittily scored, seductively photographed...and enchanting.”
But the story of Moonstruck's production actually begins, not with a moon, but with a wolf. A script entitled “The Bride and the Wolf had been submitted to Jewison's office and thinking that it was a horror story, “I almost didn't read it” he says.'
When he did peruse John Patrick Shanley's script long enough to realize it was actually a charming romantic comedy, “it read to me almost like novel,” he says. Shanley had previously penned plays for off-Broadway theatre (“Danny and the Deep Blue Sea”) and had written the screenplay for Five Corners. But the “prose” he had written for Moonstruck inspired Jewison to nickname him “The Bard of the Bronx.”
“He writes in long arias,” says Jewison. “Maybe Cher is the lyric soprano and Nicolas Cage is the tenor. Danny Aiello is the baritone and Vinnie Gardenia is the bass and Rose, the mother (Olympia Dukakis) can be the contralto and you bring them in with a triumphant fugue ensemble performance at the end!”
The language certainly attracted me to the project, he continues, “and I was drawn to the people, who are so beautifully rounded. But what really interested me is the central idea of betrayal, which, now that I think of it, has figured in a lot of my films.”
The betrayal stems from the conflict felt by Loretta Castorini (Cher) after the untimely death of her first husband. He had wanted children, but she had wanted to wait — and the loss her father tells her was “unlucky” seems doubly so without a child to carry on her late husband's legacy. “She shares the dilemma of many women in their 30s today Shanley. “She wants to have children, but has little time left to do that. So does she marry someone for whom she feels no passion but who will fulfill that wish? Or does she hold out for the right man and perhaps risk not fulfilling that wish? Loretta decides not to wait — but just as she becomes engaged, along.”
This subject matter certainly could've made for a heavy-handed film but for Shanley's magnificent characterizations. Instead Moonstruck is a funny lighthearted ménage of a picture with a definite Italian flavor the right man comes Shanley, an Irishman who grew up in an Irish/Italian neighborhood, says that he found the Italian culture very appealing because Italians seem to be so connected to their physical mannerisms. “I used the Italian subculture as a metaphor. I wanted to deal with the conflicting feelings surrounding being able to directly express your emotions, but not having the world come to an end... a lot of their ways of dealing with the world were not in the lexicon of the Irish,” he laughed. “I really wanted to meld the two worlds together for myself.”
But if the periphery of the film is its Italian culture, the center of it is surely the family. “I've been writing about different forms of love relationships for a while,” says Shanley, “and this film is a culmination of one line of thinking. It's about how your family can be used as a tool to unlock your life when you find it in a very unproductive place.
Jewison, who was interested in getting that “family” feeling from his cast, decided to bring them in to rehearse the script much as they would have done for a play. “I took a studio on lower Broadway in New York and the whole cast worked together for about two weeks... If one of the actors in the film was also doing a play across town, then someone else would read their lines while they were gone. At one point, Cher might be reading the dialogue of her mother in the film while someone else would be reading Cher's lines. In time, everyone knew not only their lines, but the lines of everyone else,” he says. This created a family-like atmosphere, which was very important to the film. I wanted to get to the point where all of the members of the cast talked alike because that's the way families are in real life...I wanted it to look on screen like these people belonged together… As you watch the film, you can see the mother's character in Cher's character. I must say that it has been a long time since a family in a film of mine really felt like a family.”
Actor Vincent Gardenia found the familial atmosphere helpful in developing the character of Cosmo Castorini: “It's alright to jump in rehearsals if it's a picture about strangers meeting each other, but in Moonstruck the relationships already exist, he says. “It gave us a little history” agrees Olympia Dukakis (Rose Castorini) of the two- week rehearsal process, “and all families have histories.”
The Italian family feeling was especially evocative for one member of the cast. Cher, noting that her own family was of Armenian, French and Cherokee descent, says that “It kind of reminded me of Sonny [Bono's family. Everybody eating and talking and shouting, but you have such good times.”
But despite her radiant performance and obvious enjoyment of filming, Cher was not a quick-sell on the romanticism or the role of Loretta Castorini. “As much as I liked it, it wasn't like Mask which I felt I just bad to do. I was a little frightened because there seemed to be all kinds of possibilities and all kinds of risks here,” she says.
Once she accepted the role, Cher found that Loretta's “awakening to true love in the film gave her the opportunity to explore the character's release from her self-imposed conservatism. “It's always appealed to me to see people totally transformed in a movie,” she said. “But I much prefer playing her Before than After... The freedom is not interesting to me usually. Yet I don't think of her as being constrained, exactly. My idea was to play her more as bossy and controlled.”
For their part, Jewison and Shanley were thrilled with her involvement and her performance. “Norman talked over his [casting] choices with me before any offers were made,” says Shanley. “Though I didn't have her in mind when I was writing the script, Cher couldn't be more perfect for the role of Loreta...he's a very game actress and has allowed herself to look dowdy for some of this film. The film will look great because the casting is right on the money.”
“She's wonderful at improvisation,” adds Jewison. “We were in a butcher shop on Ninth Avenue and all of a sudden, she started to improvise with people on the street and in the shop. People in New York are such natural actors that it was wonderful. You know, everyone's an actor in New York. These are the kinds of things that a city like this offers that you just can't get anywhere else.”
Although Moonstruck has a definite New York feel to it, most of the interior scenes were filmed not just in another city, but in another country. “I shot five weeks in New York and six weeks in Toronto,” said Jewison, noting that filming is less expensive and more convenient for him there. I'm a Canadian, and I live in Toronto and have my cutting rooms there, so it was advantageous for me personally.”
But for Jewison — and Production Designer Philip Rosenberg — there was no other place to shoot the exteriors but the Big Apple. “I think the film would have suffered if we had shot it all in Toronto,” says Rosenberg. “New York locations are hard to duplicate elsewhere, especially places like stores and food shops. The age and character of New York shops is just missing in other cities.
Filming in two different countries, however, presented many challenges especially in continuity. “You have to keep in mind that when shooting an old man walking through his back yard in Brooklyn one month, he'll be appearing through the door in his kitchen the next month in another country! said Rosenberg. Another challenge of the film was that even though it is a contemporary piece, it often had the feel of being period. We needed to infuse locations with the idea of tradition and family while making it obvious with small touches that we are still in today's world,” he added.
Other challenges in the production included getting the perfect performances despite the bone-chilling cold in both locations. For one outdoor scene, despite the New York winter, Cher and Cage were required to perform eight takes. “I constantly remind myself that if I'm not sure about a scene, to do it over again, otherwise I might be sorry” Jewison says. “That's the exciting thing about film. It's forever. So you have to get it right.”
The talent exuded by Jewison, the esteemed cast and the expert crew comes across brilliantly in Moonstruck. Critics raved over the rapturous performances, the compelling screenplay, the lavish cinematography and the brilliant direction. Audiences thronged to see the film, driving the box office tally to upwards of $100 million. And the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored Moonstruck with three 1987 Oscars®: Best Actress (Cher) Best Supporting Actress (Olympia Dukakis) and Best Screenplay written directly for the screen John Patrick Shanley). Shanley's incomparable vision of the trials of this one Italian family — translated impeccably by Jewison onto the screen remains “beguiling” (Time), “enchanting” (Newsweek) and “irresistible” (“The Today Show”)!
MOONSTRUCK MEETS ITS BAKER
For filming the scenes in the Cammareri Bros. Bakery, filmmakers chose... the Cammareri Bros bakery! When Norman Jewison met members of the Cammareri family, who live above the tiny Brooklyn bakery, he quickly changed the name of the family in the film from Paolo. “They [the Cammareri family] are very proud of the bakery.” says Jewison, who chose the location for its ambience. “It has one of the few coal-fired ovens left in the city...heat and humidity are always there. And bread is always rising, and there is an incredible smell. It helps the actors to be in a real environment.
The principal baker in the Cammareri Bros. bakery is Gilberto Godoy, who bought the business from the Cammareris in 1985 and considers them his adopted family. His busy schedule which begins at 10 p.m. and ends some 14 hours later-did not allow for the foolishness' of moviemaking. Despite being offered “thousands and thousands a day.” Godoy was initially unimpressed. “I said 'Listen, I have no time to make a movie.' They said, 'Norman Jewison is the director.' I said, 'Who is Norman Jewison? They said, 'He made F.I.S.T. with Sylvester Stallone.' I said, Who is Sylvester Stallone?”
When the “deal” was finally done, Godoy still refused to cease baking for the three days of shooting. Responsible for 5,000 loaves per day (served in cafes and restaurants throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn), the baker allowed the film crew to work beside him. “It was hysterical!” exclaims Jewison. “We had trucks, lights, cameras, Cher- and the poor guy was still baking! Well, baking and acting. Godoy also delivers the line: “Ronnie, someone's looking for you over here” in the film (see Scene Selection 10). “Whenever I can, I like to cast people who do the same job in real life,” Jewison said. “An actor baking bread is not the same as a baker baking bread.
An actor fetching bread, however, is a matter of a different sort. When a native New Yorker barged into the shop demanding his 'daily bread,' Jewison recounts, “I said 'We're trying to make a movie here and he says, I don't care what you're trying to make here! I came all the way from Wall Street and I want my bread!' I said alright,” Jewison continues, “Cher, get the man his bread. By the end of the shoot, Cher and the director had sold eight dollars worth of bread!
THE BACK SIDE OF THE MOON
Screenwriter John Patrick Shanley's script for Moonstruck remains basically unchanged since it landed on Jewison's desk as “The Bride And The Wolf.” According to Shanley, “when Jewison decided to do the film, he had to read through the entire script aloud so he could hear my interpretation of the characters. He wanted very few changes. We had to rewrite a scene to accommodate a location, and in one speech I did some paraphrasing for Cher, to make it more comfortable for her, but there was little else that we changed.”
Norman Jewison produced Moonstruck for only $10.7 million. “I don't think there's any equation between money and art,” he says. “If one has a lot of money, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to create something exciting. I think the writing is good, the acting is good and I was comfortable. We had an 11-week shoot November 24, 1986 through February 13, 1987). It's a matter of putting every dollar up on the screen and not wasting it.”
The title star of Moonstruck — the great glowing lunar presence felt throughout the film — is often “portrayed” by an invention of Oscar winner David Watkin.' Consisting of 196 lights attached to a giant cherry picker, the construction was able to rise up to 150 feet in the air, light a great area evenly while casting only one shadow, be mobile quickly and exude enough light to make the crane behind it virtually disappear. It also enabled filmmakers to work without being dependent on a monthly cycle, like the actual moon would have. Invented by Watkin in 1976 for the film Hanover Street, the “moon” was once mistaken for a UFO by a young boy looking out of his bedroom window!
When Moonstruck was screened in early December, 1987 at the Motion Picture Academy, one audience member simply couldn't sit still for the showing. “I was too nervous” intimated Jewison, who snuck out after viewing only “the first part” of the film and “then walked up and down outside the vestibule there, looking at all the old posters. I get very nervous at things like this. I guess it's because you finally have to show it, and this is the town where one hangs one's hat. You're always nervous to show the baby to the family.
When Olympia Dukakis won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her role as Rose, she was congratulated by her cousin, then Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. “You were ievable,” he crowed to her over the phone from Grande Ticino, a Greenwich Village restaurant which appears in the film (see Scene ctions 3 & 20). “You were radiant. You were fantastic. You were fabulous...'m so proud of you...Everybody in the cast was terrific. But my cousin was the best!
Dukakis' Oscar, however, was stolen May 19, 1989, from its spot in her kitchen. The burglar left only the nameplate
SPECIAL FEATURES
Theatrical Trailer
Audio Commentary
CAST
Loretta Castorini ☞ CHER
Ronny Cammareri ☞ NICOLAS CAGE
Cosmo Castorini ☞ VINCENT GARDENIA
Rose Castorini ☞ OLYMPIA DUKAKIS
Mr Johnny Cammareri ☞ DANNY AIELLO
Rita Cappomaggi ☞ JULIE BOVASSO
Perry ☞ JOHN MAHONEY
Raymond Cappomaggi ☞ LOUIS GUSS
Old Man ☞ FEODOR CHALIAPIN
Mona ☞ ANITA GILLETTE
Chrissy ☞ NADA DESPOTOVICH
DOLBY DIGITAL
This MGM DVD has been encoded with one or more Dolby Digital soundtracks Dolby Digital is the sound system featured in state-of-the-art movie theatres, and when used with a Dolby Digital receiver, is capable of delivering up to 5.1 separate channels of sound into the home environment, creating a theatre-like, fully enveloping sound experience.
#moonstruck#cher#nicholas cage#vincent gardenia#olympia dukakis#danny aiello#julie bovasso#john mahoney#louis guss#feodor chaliapin#anita gillette#nada despotovich#in english
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Blu-Ray Review - Smithereens (1982, Criterion Collection)
Blu-Ray Review – Smithereens (1982, Criterion Collection)
It takes a lot to stay focused and follow what you believe in or what you desire is doomed. In Susan Seidelman‘s Smithereens (1982), Wren (Susan Berman) is a determined young woman who wants to be famous. Even if that means loosing and alienating those few friends you may have to get what you want.
Now that Captivating directorial debut feature is now available on Blu-ray for the first time…
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#1982#Brad Rijn#Criterion Collection UK#Nada Despotovich#Richard Hell#Smithereens#Susan Berman#Susan Seidelman
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Downloadable Babycakes Movie
Babycakes movie download
Actors:
Nada Despotovich
Paul Benedict
Cynthia Dale
Ricki Lake
John Karlen
Craig Sheffer
Betty Buckley
Download Babycakes
Fall in love with the original BABYCAKES cupcake maker. Pick-Up Only. Diagnosed with wheat and dairy allergies in 2004, McKenna faced a life free of cupcakes, pies and brownies. Home - Babycakes Babycakes - The Original Cupcake Maker.. BABYCAKES ARE TAKING OVER THE WORLD Sign up to the Babycakes mailing list to recieve email updates on new releases, promotions and events BabyCakes Baking Company - Fresh Cupcakes and Yummy Baked Goods. Amazon.com: BabyCakes: Vegan, (Mostly) Gluten-Free, and (Mostly. BABYCAKES :: 619.296.4173 Are you a cocktailian who likes dessert drinks and isn't too cool for flavored spirits? Then you have found your dream bar! If it was possible to drink a luciously moist. This distinguished bakery can create something special for parties, weddings, showers. BabyCakes - Hand-made Cupcakes Baked Fresh Daily Babycakes - Handmade Cupcakes Baked Fresh Daily.. Get the secret to our perfect baked Donuts, addictive Mounds as well as some handy baking tips! Babycakes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Babycakes is the fourth book in the Tales of the City series by San Francisco novelist Armistead Maupin, originally serialized in the San Francisco Chronicle. BabyCakes is locally owned and operated. Refusing to accept such a bleak future, McKenna did her. . Love at first bite. Call for more info. BabyCakes Baking Company in Los Angeles creates fresh, homemade cupcakes daily. 2 dozen minimum required. 617.773.4458 BabyCakes: Cookbooks - BabyCakes NYC NEW! Our second cookbook, BabyCakes Covers the Classics, is now available. Babycakes NYC : Vegan Bakery BabyCakes offers all-natural, organic and delicious alternatives free from the common allergens: wheat, gluten, dairy, casein and eggs. Home Baby Cakes Kansas City's Original Cupcake Shop! BabyCakes opened in 2006 in Kansas Citys Historic River Market
online We Were Soldiers
Bizarre E.R. - Season Four online
One Eight Seven online
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