George Roy Hill's Slap Shot gets the Brooklyn Academy of Music's tribute to Paul Newman on ice tonight. It's a brash, terrifically funny picture, and Newman's profane, not-so-bright portrayal as a coach caught up in hockey's commercialism is one of his best and most underappreciated. A great sports film. Tonight's program also turns the spotlight on Newman's considerably more understated directing career, with a rare showing of his 1972 adaptation of Paul Zindel's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, featuring spouse Joanne Woodward. (As for Hitchcock's Torn Curtain, showing later this week, one or two good scenes does not a good film make, but it's an intriguingly counter-intuitive choice for a tribute, which includes the expected, and welcome, The Hustler, pictured).
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