Word: benton
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MacGraw also praised the defensive line of Julie Corman, at left wing, Aryle Singer at point, Laurie Benton at cover point, and Lisa Chang at the other wing spot. "Julie just played her usual game, consistent and phenomenal," she said...
...woman with the kaleidoscopic face, is just about that clever herself. She becomes the embodiment of Edith Ann, Lupe, Rick, Tess and a dozen or so others so quickly and flawlessly that she fools even the pros. "I don't think Tomlin really acts," says Robert Benton, who directed her in the year's sleeper film hit, The Late Show. "Her imagination is so vast that she just assumes the personality of the character...
...Late Show. Art Carney trudges through the role of washed-up shamus Ira Wells, opposite Lily Tomlin's hippydippy hippy, who hires Wells to find her cat and leads them both into a big mess of a sinister imbroglio. Robert Benton, screenwriter and director, does a lot of borrowing, from both classic and more recent detective flicks, but does his cribbing in style. The actors, meanwhile, are heavily, and affectingly, into themselves: particularly the kharma and vibrations-obssessed Tomlin. With the same L.A. backdrop that the great Chandler stories grew out of, this one proves as well-oiled...
...BENTON'S OTHER WAY of accentuating this juxtaposition of eras is through the unlikely combo itself: the old timer and the space cadet. This device is trickier, though; Altman and a lot of American film directors have tried the modern gangster idea and seen it work, while at first glance the oddball team device looks to be striclty situation comedy. Something That Girl would have larked into, or just the thing for The Sandy Duncan Show (a sitcom that keeled over in its break from the starting gate). And indeed, stereotyped situation comedy stuff...
There is also the matter of the plot, but you'll have to check that out for yourself. Let's just say that The Late Show has much of the style of some of the great Hollywood shamus movies. Benton borrows quite a bit, most notably a could-be corpse in the bathroom sequence from The Conversation and a manic chase scene from a long line of films. But he steals with style, and this movie has what these detective stories always required: laughs, suspense and the romantic angle. In this business these days, what looks like a bulging...