( 6 reviews )
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Posted: May 4 2009
This movie was pretty good, not what I thought it would be however. Quality was as expected from seller and came in good time. I'd buy again.
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Posted: Aug 19 2007
Great movie, enjoyed every minute. I can remember when I was young and Walter Winchell was the narrator on "The Untouchables" on TV. (1950s). Very interesting to see what he was really like. The Movie was very realistic with costumes, background, speech etc., very well done.
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Posted: Mar 2 2007
True, I have a long list of favorite actors, but Stanley Tucci is definitely on it, and he is wonderful to watch in this HBO film as the driven and bellicose inventor of gossip-journalism. The script for this bio-pic moves along at a swift pace, following Winchell from his youth to his death, charting a meteoric rise to fame that brought him the personal attention of FDR (Christopher Plummer) and the animosity of his employer, William Randolph Hearst. The front man for a team of snoops and writers (chief of which is played with considerable sympathy by Paul Giamatti), he is admirable only in his ability to intimidate those who stood in the way of what came to be a gigantically inflated sense of self-importance. Wrapping himself in the flag and mouthing platitudes about democracy, he makes of himself a self-styled champion of the American people, while in his personal life he is a tyrant and a prickly manipulator of others, both great and small. The film is especially interesting in its recreation of a time when a radio personality could dominate public opinion with a mixture of bellicose, rapid-fire vituperating and political bias (the forerunner of the Rush Limbaughs of today), then losing his grip with the introduction of television, where a smoother, cooler type (represented here by Ed Sullivan) takes center stage. Interesting, too, that today in an age where gossip dominates the news and channels of public information, this story from more than a half century ago seems so current and undated. Definitely an enjoyable and thought-provoking film. The writing, the performances, and the direction by veteran Paul Mazursky make this a fast-paced and absorbing story of the rise and decline of a self-made media personality.
