spacing between items in itemize or enumerate environments (lists)

In LaTeX Beamer, I wanted to adjust the spacing between items in an itemize environment. This post shows how to do it for each individual itemize environment:

\begin{itemize}\addtolength{\itemsep}{-0.5\baselineskip}
\item one
\item two
\end{itemize}

To do it globally, one can use the enumitem environment per this post; one can actually change lots of feature using enumitem. However, it does not work with LaTeX Beamer since Beamer defines itemize in its frame environment. To change itemsep globally, this post suggests the following in the document's preamble:

documentclass{beamer}
\newlength{\wideitemsep}
\setlength{\wideitemsep}{\itemsep}
\addtolength{\wideitemsep}{100pt}
\let\olditem\item
\renewcommand{\item}{\setlength{\itemsep}{\wideitemsep}\olditem}