Aug 3rd   
Steel Magnolias**  

(US 1989)                  

An Alabama diabetic runs the risk of having a baby with the reluctant help of her mother and their supportive friends.
An episodic all-female stage play becomes reasonably opened out along a predictably sentimental route (with the men mostly marginalised but fitting into the narrative), uneven in style with sudden jumps in time periods, but the star female cast provide interesting if unremarkable variety.

Written by: Robert Harling, from his play.
Producer: Ray Stark.
Director: Herbert Ross.
Starring: Sally Field, Shirley MacLaine, Julia Roberts, Dolly Parton, Olympia Dukakis, Daryl Hannah, Tom Skerritt, Sam Shepard, Dylan McDermott, Kevin J. O'Connor.
Photography: John A. Alonzo.
Music: Georges Delerue.

Preceded by:
Our Gang Follies of 1938*
(US 1937. MGM/Hal Roach. 20m. bw; Child musical revue where a crooner unwisely decides to rest his voice for opera. Curiously conceived (but at the time quite popular) spoof of popular genres using children, bearing interesting comparison with the later Bugsy Malone and other Our Gang musical spoofs.; d: Gordon Douglas; s: Carl Switzer, George McFarland, Darla Hood, Henry Brandon.)