MORNING/MOURNING

Over the last few weeks Barry & I have caught up with some high-testosterone fare, including Ben Affleck’s smashing melodrama The Town, out on DVD in December, & Tony Scott’s fine Unstoppable. This weekend The Wife & I went back to chick-flick land with Morning Glory, in which Rachel McAdams, as a workaholic executive producer, drags an ailing network morning show back from the brink of cancellation with the reluctant help of washed-up, curmudgeonly news anchor Harrison Ford.

McAdams is good company, even if her role, as written, is a bit too traditionally perky, Ford is quite funny as the epically miserable has-been, & there are other lively performances. But if they went to the trouble & expense to hire the great Diane Keaton to play Ford’s prickly co-host, it’s baffling that they didn’t make more generous use of her.

RIP to two major directors: Italian master Mario Monicello, best known for Big Deal on Madonna Street, has departed in haste at 95, & Irvin Kershner, who made easily the best Star Wars movie in The Empire Strikes Back, has passed on at 87. Kershner also had a nice onscreen role as Zebedee in one of the best scenes in Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ.