Mark Twain Tonight
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Movie Reviews of Mark Twain Tonight
Movie Review: Mark Twain Tonight DVD
Summary: 5 Stars
I've been a fan of this show for many, many years and thought it was gone forever; the new DVD lives up to all my expectationsMovie Review: Brilliant!
Summary: 5 Stars
Five stars is not enough. Hal does a masterful job and I can watch this over and over.Movie Review: Not his best material, but still a great performance...
Summary: 4 Stars
Those of us old enough to have seen Holbrook do his one-man Twain show in the 1960's, and to have owned the original cast recordings "Mark Twain Tonight" and "Encore: More Mark Twain Tonight" know that this 1967 television version featured second-rate material. Yet second-rate Twain is still better than most comic/philosophical writing. (There was also an original cast recording of this show released.) Now there is a CD on Columbia Legacy called "Mark Twain Tonight" which combines some producer's idea of the best of each of the three older records. I would have picked some different bits if I had the task, but overall that is pretty good and well worth the money. Since this DVD is the only thing available showing Holbrook as Twain when Hal was still young, playing Mark at the age of 70, it will have to do. If you are a real Twain fan, or a real fan of one-person stage offerings, this should be in your collection...but get that CD also, before it goes out of print, for some even better material. In the TV show, the one mistake was spending too many of the 90 minutes on the more "serious" side of Twain---the anti-war social criticism aspect of his works. Don't sit down to watch this and expect it to be all laughs, all the time.Movie Review: You can't go wrong with this DVD
Summary: 4 Stars
Do you realize Holbrook is still doing this show -- and is now older than the Mark Twain he portrays?
Having said that, this is a very good DVD. I concur with the comments that the material selected for the television presentation isn't the best Holbrook had used (the first phonograph album's material was much better, and the TV show seemed to cover the second album's material), and the second half's (dare I say) self-righteousness is uncomfortable -- one wonders whether Holbrook's (or CBS') opinions on the Vietnam war influenced the choice and delivery of the material. But, as all good literature, it's still though-provoking.
Technically, the DVD reflects CBS' relative inexperience in early color telecasting -- we forget how poor the resolution of color TV in the '60s really was. The same camera angles kept getting repeated over and over; of course, with color TV cameras being as big and heavy as they were then, there wasn't a whole lot of opportunity to do a lot of creative framing. This really is a minor gripe.
Highly recommended!
Movie Review: Better than nothing
Summary: 4 Stars
Hal Holbrook does a one man performance of a 70 year old Mark Twain, weaving together the stories and wit of the latter. I found Holbrook's portrayal to be annoying but any rendition of Twain is better than none at all.