We all have traditions for the winter holiday season: turkeys, trees, candelabra. But for the film industry, this season means the tradition of unveiling their best and brightest new movies, an offering of prestige and glitter that aims to capture the biggest slice of the theater-going pie.
And when names like Robert Redford, Al Pacino and Meryl Streep; when directors like Steven Spielberg, Taylor Hackford and Richard Attenborough; and when prestige productions like The Color Purple, White Nights and A Chorus Line begin to light up theater marquees, you know that it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
Nevertheless, the times may be changing. Video Cassette Recorders and cable stations are proliferating around the country, and the traditional night out at the movies takes place more often in the privacy of the living room. This last fall season, always a sluggish one for the movies, was the worst in over a decade.
With films fighting harder to win a dwindling audience, the holiday release pattern may be spreading itself out. Thanksgiving saw the release of Rocky IV, MGM/UA's last film until mid-January. Other studios are holding back films until just after the New Year, perhaps in the hope of avoiding the annual Christmas battle for the box office.
Big holiday releases still abound though, with a pair of offerings by Steven Spielberg raising the most expectations. As executive producer of last summer's smash Back to the Future and the profitable The Goonies, he proves that the Spielberg magic carries over to films he doesn't even direct. This season Spielberg's two films are his own The Color Purple, and Young Sherlock Holmes, which he executive produced.
Spielberg's own directorial effort, an adaptation of Alice Walker's novel, is easily the most eagerly awaited film of the holidays. Purple is both Spielberg's first full-length feature since the record-breaking E.T., and also a surprising choice of subject for the man who brought us blockbusters like Jaws and Close Enconters of the Third Kind. Certainly a story that spans forty years in the life of an ex-slave is a change of scene from the lily-white suburbia of E.T. or the Spielberg-produced Poltergeist.
Whoopee Goldberg, fresh from a roadway triumph in her one-woman show, makes her film debut in Purple as the ex-slave Celie. Danny Glover, himself the recipient of raves for roles in Places in the Heart and Silverado, plays the widower to whom Celie is "given." Rounding out the cast are Adolphe Caesar, an Academy Award winner for A Soldier's Story, and Rae Dawn Chong (Choose Me Commando).
Adding to both the film's box office clout and its ancillary appeal, is the presence of co-producer/scorer Quincy Jones, best known lately for his work as producer of Michael Jackson's Thriller LP. This is Jones' second teaming with Spielberg, for whom he did the E.T. story book album with Jackson. This time out Jones utilizes his past experience as a big band leader, conductor and composer to record music that spans the film's time periods. He also has enlisted a stellar range of talent, from pop star Lionel Richie through blues, jazz and gospel greats Sonny Terry, Snooky Young, and Andre
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