Musical. Your Choice

Since the first edition of Musical of the Month had tumbleweeds rolling through it, we haven't agreed on the film to cover for the Sept. 6th edition. So, you decide.


Your choices: Fred & Ginger's glide through Swing Time (1936), the non-stop possessed dancing of The Red Shoes (1948), Gene Kelly and friends exuberantly going On the Town (1949) early Bollywood classic Mother India(1957), Mean Green Mother and Off Broadway transfer Little Shop of Horrors (1986) or Christian Bale and David Moscow (the ex Mr. Kerry Washington) hoofin' it through Newsies (1992)

poll by twiigs.com

After voting... kick us two titles in the comments: 1, a big well known musical you'd like to relive in this series and 2, a less celebrated tuner you'd love to see celebrated. That'll give us ideas for future months.

A Debut For the Ages

Hello everyone, Jonathan here again. Since everyone is watching the Olympic Opening Ceremonies tonight (that and the closing ceremonies are my favorite parts of the whole thing quite honestly) let's celebrate the Olympics and the Movies by remembering one of the most earth shattering, heart pounding, history making debuts in all of cinema: Bruce Jenner in Can't Stop the Music.

Bruce won Gold in 1976 at the Olympics but couldn't even get a Razzie in 1980 for his debut. He was nominated for Worst Actor but, alas, lost out to Neil Diamond for The Jazz Singer. Too bad because he was a hell of a lot more entertaining than Neil, and the Razzies, in the end, are about entertainment.

In Can't Stop the Music Bruce gets to show fear as he is held up by an old lady, frustration as he is hit on by Marilyn Sokol, and finally courage, as a lasagna spill forces him to take off his pants. It was Bruce's first and last feature film although he did plenty of tv work. And now, like the Phoenix rising from the ashes, he's back on E! Entertainment's True Hollywood Story, as himself of course. But nothing will ever top Can't Stop the Music. It's the Olympian Cinematic Debut for the Ages.

8th Image From Persona

In 2008 we celebrate the 8th Something of Something. Woot!


I snapped this shot from Ingmar Bergman's Persona (1966) months ago. I'm not even sure it's the 8th thing you see in that famous rapid experimental montage that opens the film. I typed up a list of all the images flashing by, some of them repeated: projector lamp, phallus, cartoon, tarantula, young boy, etcetera but promptly lost the list and buried this photo accidentally in a folder within a folder within a folder. (Ah disorganization!) But as with the film its culled from, the image came back to me like a dream. Persona always comes back and demands that you return to it, too.

That is to say that I think of Persona the film as the mute actress (Liv Ullman) it gazes upon and the audience as her frustrated nurse (Bibi Andersson) who struggles to understand her before succumbing to some sort of symbiosis. Persona may make little narrative sense but its emotional and psychological effects are large. It haunts, compels, questions and demands rescreenings. Simply put: it's indisputably great.

"08th" the series
This short-lived blog experiment didn't work out exactly as I planned --too much work and too odd -- but I'm still proud of it. Found some interesting things in interesting movies and what better way to wrap it up and say goodbye than on 08/08/08. Did you miss any of the earlier episodes? Chase the label and view them all.

• "FEAR!" in Batman Begins
• Line of dialogue in Volver
• Costumes in Marie Antoinette
• Description of Elizabeth
• Close Up of Carrie's hands
• Shot of Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain
• Kill in No Country For Old Men
• Character in Showgirls
• Use of Magic in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
  

Eight is Great

See the date?
It's 8-8-08
Sounds great.
Let's celebrate!

8MM tanked, so did Eight Legged Freaks,
Eight Heads in a Duffel Bag, ran for 2 weeks.

8 Women was filled with femmes singing from France.
Hard Eight had gruff gamblers, all betting on chance.

Henry VIII bumped off Anne Bolyen,
While the Eight Men Out all schemed not to win.

BUtterfield 8 won a gold boy for Liz Taylor.
In 8 Mile, Eminem rapped and lived in a trailer.

Watch Dinner at Eight today and you'll laugh.
If not, wait 'till noon, then watch 8 1/2

Taking the Express. Got the Munchies?

<-- James Franco at the premiere of Pineapple Express on Tuesday.

The big movie news today is that James Franco is hiking up his pants and trying once again to be a big star. Headlining Pineapple Express (trailer) with Seth Rogen might do the trick if early ecstatic reviews are honestly come by and not being typed within swirling puffing cannabis clouds.

JAMD has a bunch of photos from the star-studded premiere which I found amusing. Looking at photos of the stars who attended the NYC premiere I'm instantly judging their experiences with the mowie wowie and occassionally wishing that Mary Louise Parker and the cast of Weeds had all attended in character --love my entertaiment all mashedup and incongruously mingling as you know.

Not a potsmoker myself but I did inhale once ...okay, twice. And the second time I had the whole endless giggling, "shut up, I'm not high", munchy craving experience. And you?

But more importantly: Alicia Silverstone? Daniel Craig? Emile Hirsch?


How often does Clueless Alicia roll one?
Are James Bond's sunglasses covering tell-tale glassy eyes?
And Emile Hirsch... what munchies is he craving right this very second?

Your guesswork in the comments please.
*

The Mystery of Junkets (and Patricia Clarkson)

Lately I've been nibbling at a few junkets. I don't mean nibbling as in food (though food is present) but nibbling at the idea of actually being there. I'm sort of in denial. I don't really dig the roundtables. I much prefer the awesome one-on-ones I've had with folks like Marisa Tomei, Max von Sydow and Jennifer Jason Leigh. But work is work and there's always Oscar season for a return to the one on ones. I've written up another piece (on Elegy this time) for Tribeca Film --they've been good to me lately. Yay them.

The odd thing is that one on one interviews feel remarkably less schmoozy and more honest. You'd think being alone with a star would be more schmoozy. But it's not. It levels things off. You're somehow equals, even if your accomplishments are rather obviously not. But in a room full of other writers, journos and whomevers it can get really blurb whore & slobbery. The most frustrating thing for me is that I'm a conversational interviewer by nature and you can't do follow up questions @ press conferences or junkets. The talent needs to answer and move on.

I'll share an example and if you love Patricia Clarkson as much as I do you'll be interested. I'm stammering my way through a complicated question [note to self: save those for the 'one on ones' dummy!] summing up my theory about her career (see previous article) and how she moved from wiseacre supporting gal to best friend/betrayer (Dogville / Far From Heaven). I'm thrilled that she's now entered a third phase: a womanly sexual phase [editors note: If Married Life or Elegy were men rather than celluloid, they'd be boinking her]. What I'm trying to get at is this: Is it a conscious choice to steer her career into and out of these "types" or is she just grabbing parts she likes? Patty, smiling, nods her head at the connection I'm making between Married Life (review) and Elegy and jumps in...

Yes, the Dogville days are over. THANK GOD the Dogville days are over...

...I swear there's a quick look between her and her director Isabel Coixet and then Patty segueways into why she said yes to Elegy so swiftly. Meanwhile I'm left to ponder the infinite meanings this sentence, her voice raising and the glance to the side may have meant.

• Does she not know how gobsmackingly brilliant she is in Dogville?
• Perhaps she secretly cherishes Hummel figurines?
  
• Did she have a miserable stay in Denmark?
• Is she merely relieved to finally be using her sexuality onscreen? (Dogville's Vera was quite a pissy frump and Patty in person is hot stuff)
• Does Coixet know Von Trier ...or maybe they've talked about him?
• Is Patty just annoyed that I've momentarily steered away from Elegy even if my point is about Elegy? She's there to promote Elegy.
  

I'll never know. It will haunt my dreams. But at least I got to stare at Patty for 20 minutes. There are far worse fates.

(sing with me now) might as well face it,
you're addicted to Patty

Elegy opens today in major markets. If you've been itching for some genuinely adult drama after this summer of capes, tights, toons and explosions, you'll be relieved watching it. Fine performances all around I must say.
*

I'll Have What Anne's Having

<--- What is Anne Hathaway drinking? And more importantly, can I have some?

According to Tom O'Neil I drank her kool-aid a long time ago* (Apparently I drank it in that cheerleader outfit I keep stashed in my closet. Hey, don't judge. One never knows when Viggo Mortensen might stop by...) but I doubt this is kool-aid she's downing here. Cranberry & vodka? Ruby Red? The blood of young virgins to keep her looking 25 forever?

*he gets details wrong --I never once predicted an Oscar nomination for Nicole Kidman last year but the image he paints still cracked me up.

My Favorite Part...

... of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
is when Kate Winslet says:

"My crotch is still here, just as you remembered it."

Wait! No, it's any scene between these two:

No no that's not it. It's when Mark Ruffalo
dances around in his underwear, duh...

Then again, I do get a fun freak-out thrill
every time I see Elijah Wood's upside-down eyes...

Not that anything compares to the goofy grin
of complete dumb satisfaction that Jim Carrey wears
when he's a baby being washed in the sink:

No, you know what my favorite part is?
It starts here:

And ends here:

Every single second = total, utter bliss.
.

Charlize @ 33

I read a fine novel some months ago called Don't Make a Scene. It was all about a single 39 year-old cinephile running a repertory moviehouse in NYC. In one chapter she's featuring a film series on "Age, Hollywood and the Worship of Youth". She has three acquaintances who were all actresses in the early years of cinema. The two Americans quit acting when they started aging. The French woman continued...

Was it the essence of the star -as diplayed on the face of the star -that the audience fell in love with? Or was it the face itself? And if the face itself was succumbing to the forces of nature, did you still want to watch it? According to Catherine Merveille, the answer was oui: the audience wanted to watch her real face as a conduit of her authentic self. Of course this was not the ruling aesthetic...

Estelle had stopped working at the age of twenty-eight; thus she was immortalized in celluloid at what Paul Veyne once called "the canonical age," the age at which one has achieved full maturity, but before time has altered the facial features.

My own tastes for a "canonical age" skew older than 28. I think the mid 30s are the most beautiful age for Hollywood stars ...and probably people in general for that matter. Faces might have started that shift but they are finally wholly representing the person underneath them.

I've found that the most fulfilling times in the careers of actresses (for the audience I mean) is the mid 30s. Charlize Theron, who keeps on impressing (note: I didn't see Hancock) turns 33 today and I find myself anxious to see what the next few years hold. What does this South African superstar have in store for us?

I know a lot of people think she'll never top Monster but for me --and I'm a complete Oscar contrarian in this particular way -- career peaks only very rarely involve roles in which the actor or actress is plainer than usual or made to look unlike themselves (i.e. biopics). To my way of thinking, career peaks for movie stars --both men and women -- generally happen when the thespian's big beauty and big talent fuse together in the service of a role that either a) fits them like a glove or b) reveals them anew in a startling and fresh way.

Consider the following actresses / performances (ages are approximate to when the film debuted): Michelle Pfeiffer (@31) Fabulous Baker Boys (the beauty!), Kathleen Turner (@32) Peggy Sue Got Married, Judy Garland (@32) A Star is Born, Audrey Hepburn (@32) Breakfast at Tiffany's, Penelope Cruz (@32) Volver, Faye Dunaway (@33) Chinatown, Meryl Streep (@33) Sophie's Choice, Elizabeth Taylor (@33) Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf --the exception to the rule in that the greatest work and greatest role is actually within a deglam situation, Marilyn Monroe (@ 34) Some Like it Hot (previous post), Nicole Kidman (@34) Moulin Rouge! (retro bliss), Michelle Pfeiffer again (@34) Batman Returns, Cate Blanchett (@35) The Aviator, Julianne Moore (@37) Boogie Nights, Greer Garson (@38) Mrs Miniver.

This isn't to say that there aren't other triumphs both earlier and later. Actresses can and do deliver great work at every age (if they have the talent and Hollywood gives them the chance). It's just that the 30s are the common time frame for these magic roles that end up truly defining (at least the women --with men I'm guessing it's more early 40s). Some of this has to do with Hollywood's casting biases but some of it is also, I believe, this moment in life when fully adult beauty meets the explosion of confidence that comes when talent has matured, too. Talent and beauty both in full bloom? Be still my beating movie-loving heart.


What does Charlize's future hold? Take a guess in the comments.
*

Musical of the Month: Calamity Jane

Musicals always raise the spirits, don't they?

I mean musicals that don’t dramatize the slow creep of the Nazi party across Weimar era Germany. Or musicals that don't involve bloody racial conflicts on Manhattan’s West Side. Or musicals that don't torment blind single mothers on death row… Let's restate: Musicals are sometimes cheerful. I need a cheerful one right now.

See, it's been a tough week. Things haven’t been going well for me technologically speaking –this DVD player I use keeps freezing on me and refusing to play DVDs. What gives? It did this when I tried to review The Car, too -- and don't even mention "time management" to me. I’m apologizin’ straight away that this post is very short and open-ended (make sure to check out my musical pard'ners at other blogs below). Deadlines surround me. I had but three hours of sleep last night and back to the office I went.

Doris Day kicks off this month's featured movie singing with her fellow travellers on a horse driven carriage way back in the 1870-something. Flash forward 138 years and it's corporate America that's singing "whip crack away" to me. They ain't as cheerful about it as Ms. Doris Day.

Beautiful sky! A wonderful day!
Whip crack-away!, Whip crack-away!, Whip crack-away!

So thank god for musicals and their bright colors, catchy songs and high spirited dancing. I need them. From its first frames Calamity Jane conspires to put a smile on my face. It’s not content to just throw up a huge colorful title. This 1953 musical adds a chorus of swelling voices to sing that very title to me --just in case I'm illiterate like those Deadwood settlers. They sing her name like they're speeding over a hill in their own carriage. It's got a big rise and fall. Yes, phantom chorus, sing to me! Drug me up with that musical cheer. I'll join in as soon as we get to a number I recognize.

Alas, my DVD player isn't playing and I'm denied again. [Editor's note: This is the last scheduled posting that shall be ruined by said problem. I just need a free day to find a solution and I haven't had one in a couple of weeks.] The real reason I wanted to kick off this series with Calamity Jane was that I was dying to see it again. How foregrounded are the fascinating homo undercurrents I remember thinking about once I saw The Celluloid Closet in 1995. I'll have to read the other posts in this mini-celebration to find out. Doris Day was never a Judy Garland but Calamity Jane's most famous song "Secret Love" was understandably a major gay anthem back in its day, descriptive of and embraced by the GLBT community before there was really such a thing as being "out".

Now I shout it from the highest hills
I even told the golden daffodil.
At last my heart's an open door.
And my secret love's no secret anymore

Imagine how thrilling, how moving this fantasy wish fulfillment in a song must have been in the 1950s when the reality was almost always the closet?

Just a brief cursory "scene selection" tour through this Technicolor Deadwood has convinced me that what the world really needs is a gay remake or perhaps a meta drag version for the new millenium. The latter would be vaguely Victor/Victoria-esque only in this case it'd be a thinkier spin "a man pretending to be a woman who everyone thinks of as a man" rather than the fully comedic 82 version

"A woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman?!? Preposterous! No one will believe it."
"Exactly. That's why it will work!"

And whether this imaginary "Jane" is a 50s tomboy or an effeminate man playing a tomboy "she's" got an interesting thing for "Wild Bill", don'cha know. When we first see Bill Hickok, Calamity veritably shimmies at him despite her objections to immodest ladies of entertainment and sings enthusiastically about "his gun with 27 notches"

Jane after checking out Bill's gun: "I'm glad to say he's a
very good friend of mine." (hee)

I love their relationship. I never watched HBO's Deadwood but catching glimpses of Howard Keel and Doris Day's mostly platonic (brotherly?) romance in this musical makes me curious to see how other artists have treated this mythic pairing. Like Bonnie & Clyde, Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane have been mythologized for a long time. No one who can separate the fact from the fiction is still alive. What was going on there? It's ripe for multiple interpretations. Did they really have a child together as Jane later claimed? It's a complicated affair. The true details of this love (reciprocal or otherwise) are secret.

The golden daffodils aren't talking.

For more on Calamity Jane, say...

"Howdy Pardners!"
Movies Kick Ass gender roles & revisionist westerns in Calamity Jane & Johnny Guitar
Spartickes "That ain't all she ain't!"
StinkyLulu delivers a cheeky funny audiovisual meditation
Criticlasm "You make no sense at all, but you’re a rollicking good old time."
Stinky Bits unedited ramblings on the butch/femme lesbian romance within the film


Next time... Those few brave souls who participated in the first installment will be voting on the movie to be featured on September 6th. The options are: Fred & Ginger in Swing Time (1936), the non-stop dancing of The Red Shoes (1948), Gene Kelly's On the Town (1949), Bollywood classic Mother India (1957), Off Broadway transfer Little Shop of Horrors (1986) or Christian Bale hoofin' it through Newsies (1992). We'll announce the winner in a few days.