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Kristen Chenoweth appeared on PBS’s series “Live from Lincoln Center” in an hour-long set of great songs from great Broadway musicals. It was called
The Dames of Broadway . . . All of ‘Em!!! and she tried her best to include every dame ever. Kristen Chenoweth is a tiny blonde package who just explodes on stage. She’s forty-four but you’d never know it to look at her, and she’s got a voice that belies her tiny frame—4’ 11”, just under a hundred pounds. With the help mainly of her musical director on the piano and a trio that came in midway through the performance, she sang a bunch of songs most of which I wasn’t familiar with. And I’m a lifetime lover of and follower of Broadway musicals. The songs weren’t your usual singalong songs, the ones that make it on the singles charts, like “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,” “Some Enchanted Evening,” “The Impossible Dream,” or “My Funny Valentine.” These were “My White Knight” as sung by Marian the librarian in
The Music Man, “Green Finch and Linnet Bird” from
Sweeney Todd, “My Lord and Master” as sing by Tiptum in
The King and I, “It’s a Quiet Thing” from
Flora the Red Menace, “When I Marry Mr. Snow” sung by Carrie Pipperridge in
Carousel, “Old Maid” from
110 in the Shade, and Mary Martin singing “Moonshine Lullaby” from
Annie Get Your Gun. Wow, what a dramatically musical evening. I was especially struck by "It's a Quiet Thing." I remember first encountering this song when I heard it fifty years ago recorded by Morgana king in her oh so quiet voice. If you’d like to see Kristen's show, go to www.pbs.org and check in with the
Live from Lincoln Center performances. Watch her here as she does a dame she didn't include in the PBS show, "Glitter and Be Gay."
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And if you want to see a thriller that really thrills, go see Halle Berry in
The Call. Hell, even if it doesn't thrill you, it's worth it just to see Halle Berry. She may just be the most beautiful woman in the world. She plays a 911 operator with the LAPD, but loses her nerve after she loses a girl to a killer who takes her from her bedroom while she's speaking to Jordan Turner (Berry), the killer saying to the operator when she pleads with him not to kill this little girl, "It's already done." Six months later, after Berry has given up her job on the phone and taken up teaching new 911 recruits, another girl is taken and calls 911 from the trunk of the car she's in. The girl, Casey Wilson (Abigail Breslin) is a young blonde with a hauntingly familiar face that finally came to me after we left the theatre--little Miss Sunshine from that movie nearly a decade ago. It's never made very clear what motivated the bad guy in his taking young blonde women, but he's one spooky dude. And at the end of the movie, the phrase "It's already done" takes on a whole new meaning. Go see it. You'll know what I mean.
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