Revisit: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

An MGM release 1966

Directed by Richard Lester

Written by Melvin Frank & Michael Pertwee
Based on the musical play by Burt Shevelove & Larry Gelbart
With lyrics by Stephen Sondheim



It's a shame Buster Keaton spends his last screen credit hiding in the shadows of Zero Mostel -- not that Mr. Mostel wasn't a terrifically talented performer, but this aborted fetus of a musical-comedy doesn't do either of them justice.

Released at the low-point of musical-comedy's popularity, this Forum is a stripped down version of the stage play, substituting most of Sondheim's trademark bouncy show tunes with sight gags, puns & wordplay.

I watched this because I was in the stage version in high school and wanted to see how it translated to film. I got my answer: it doesn't. Without the songs, there simply isn't much to go on; stripping to the show to it's essence you sort of realize slavery, prostitutes and Greek tragedy aren't that funny. Add in tons of jokes that are more stale that Roman fresco and you've got yourself one cornball comedy. Likewise, the directorial 'flashes', including jump cuts and the kind of dance sequences Mel Brooks liked to spoof, don't add much flavor.

The cast is terrific -- Phil Silvers, Zero Mostel, Jack Gilford and Mr. Keaton all working hard to elevate the material. They are a pleasure to watch. But it's just not enough. This is a story meant for the stage -- where you can feel the energy -- not the screen.

Revisit: Tommy

A Columbia Pictures release 1975

Written & Directed by Ken Russell
Based on the album by The Who

A deaf, dumb and blind boy becomes a master pinball player and the object of a religious cult.



Ken Russell's 1975 adaptation of the classic Who concept album is a psychedelic kaleidoscope, a smattering of elaborate set-pieces, insane costumes and cartoon colors set the tune of Pete Townsend's windmill licks. It's a lot of fun in that tripped out, self-important yet actually silly & superfluous 70's way. It features the band along with several name actors -- Oliver Reed, Ann-Margaret (in an Oscar nominated turn), Jack Nicholson -- as well as other musicians -- Eric Clapton, Elton John, Tina Turner -- as they tell the story of Tommy, the famed deaf/dumb/blind pinball wizard.

What strikes me most about this film is how it jumbles the story and song out of sequence from the album to bring its vision to life. They make a lot of changes to the source material and take the story down a path I had never truly envisioned in my own head. Tommy was my favorite album growing up -- I used to listen to it every night as I went to bed -- so you could say I have some personal attachment to it. Little details, like the fact that the song "1921" was changed to "1951" so the setting would make sense, seem like strange and unnecessary compromises, while other songs, like "Cousin Kevin", are put to image perfectly. Overall it's a fun film and certainly engaging visually (as Ken Russell films usually are), so it's worth a watch if you're a fan of The Who.

Revisit: Phantom of the Paradise

A 20th Century Fox release 1974

Written & Directed by Brian De Palma

Music by Paul Williams

A disfigured musician sells his soul for the woman he loves so that she will perform his music.



Silly, surreal, insane, dumb, infectious and hilarious, Brian De Palma's 1974 gothic rock opera Phantom of the Paradise is deliciously absurd, and one of my favorite films. Starring the beautiful Jessica Harper (best known from another one of my favorites, Suspiria) and legendary Muppets/Carpenters songwriter Paul Williams, the film is basically a suped-up, drugged up, 70's version of Phantom of the Opera.

The first time I watched this I was quite infuriated; I had no idea what was going on, what the point of it was, why the characters were breaking out into such awful songs. By the end of my first viewing, I was hooked. The film has a 'so bad it's good' quality to it, until you realize that it's actually a work of genius. The off-beat music, the ridiculous costumes, the absurd humor -- it all works together to form this highly energetic, completely insane film that can never be duplicated.

I have a particular fondness for this film, and I know not everyone enjoys it as much as I do. But give it a shot -- you may find it delightfully entertaining.

Review: Repo! The Genetic Opera

A Lionsgate film 2008

Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman

Writing credits:
Darren Smith (screenplay)
Terrance Zdunich (screenplay)

A worldwide epidemic encourages a biotech company to launch an organ-financing program similar in nature to a standard car loan. The repossession clause is a killer, however.



This horror-musical directed by Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II-IV) was a passion project, and it shows. Clearly made for the cult-niche market, Repo! is a mess of electronic music, goth imagery, pulp violence and slapstick humor. While by no means a good film, it will certainly find its place amongst those for whom it was made, as well as a few stragglers, like myself.

Why did I like this movie? I'm not sure. Maybe it's because I have a penchant for horror-musicals -- the audacity, the self-awareness, the silliness of it all was reminiscent of Phantom of the Paradise but for the digital age. Maybe because I've never quite seen anything like it before.

It has it's problems for sure -- comic book style title cards display the action before the film kicks in, revealing way too much information. The acting and singing are terrible. The music has no hooks and isn't memorable. The color palate is disgusting and terribly digital and overexposed. But that's the charm. You can tell so much heart and soul went into making it that eventually it just sucks you in. And the self-awareness that holds throughout adds a lot of humor. It's a pretty damn funny movie.

The film was released in a road show format earlier this year, and already had a sizable cult following before its first date. The showing I went to was completely sold out hours before the showing. I can't say I recommend it, but one look at the trailer, and you can immediately tell if this film is for you.

Review: La Vie en Rose

A Picturehouse Entertainment release 2007

Directed by Olivier Dahan

Written by Olivier Dahan & Isabelle Sobelman

The extraordinary life and times of famed French singer Edith Piaf (Marion Cotillard)



Like most biopics, this incredibly uneven but suprisingly moving portrait of Edith Piaf, one of France's national treasures, relies heavily on the performance of its lead, Marion Cotillard. Thankfully she nails Piaf to a tee, capturing her movements and manneurisms with such precision it's almost uncanny.

If only the script did her performance justice. Dahan's presentation of periods in Piaf's life is so scatterbrained, it's almost hard to tell what is going on. The film does an incredible amount of jumping back and forth through time in the most illogical of ways; snippets from Piaf's childhood are connected to her final days or mid-life antics without any real causal connection, thematically or emotionally. The poor pacing results in a fragmented portrait of this powerful artist, one that leaves the spectator feeling as though they are missing something, despite the film's two and a half hour plus run time.

If you're already a fan of Piaf, then you're sure to love this film. If not, stick to the soundtrack - it'll tell you all you need to know.

Revisit: 1776

A Columbia Pictures release 1972

Directed by Peter H. Hunt

Written by Sherman Edwards & Peter Stone (also play)

A musical outlining the birth of the Declaration of Independence.



Before he was roaming the halls as Mr. Fenie in Boy Meets World, William Daniels portrayed John Adams in this musical interpretation of the events that led to the birth of the United States. The film, based on the Broadway musical of the same name, is fairly straight-forward, unflashy, and lacks any real memorable numbers. However, if you're a history buff, or if the thought of seeing our fore-fathers parading around while singing songs about voting and Congress piques your interest, this may be the film for you.

Revisit: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

An MGM release 1954

Directed by Stanley Donen

Writing credits:
Stephen Vincent Benet (story The Sobbin' Women)
Albert Hackett
Frances Goodrich
Dorothy Kingsley

Adam (Howard Keel), the eldest of seven brothers, goes to town and convinces Milly (Jane Powell) to marry him. Milly sets out to reform the uncouth siblings, who are anxious to get wives of their own.



One of my top three favorite musicals, Seven Brides is an absurd exploration o love as filtered through hyper-accentuated representations of gender. Adam - the manliest man imaginable - marries Milly - the most hopless romantic of women imaginable - and they sing lovely backwoods songs about lonliness and love. The film is a great example of widescreen formatting - MGM crams somewhere upwards 15 characters on screen at once, dancing intensely. Makes a great case against adjusted TV formatting. Fantastic entertainment.

Revisit: Yankee Doodle Dandy

A Warner Brothers picture 1942

Directed by Michael Curtiz

Writing credits:
Robert Buckner
Edmund Joseph

The life and times of American song and dance man George M. Cohan (James Cagney)



Everyone knew Cagney made an excellent gangster, but who knew he could sing? Jimmy won an Oscar for his role as American broadway staple George M. Cohan, an award which was more than deserved; Cagney invests himself completely in the part, displaying his full range of talent. With all the flag-touting, it's surprising this isn't a Busby Berkeley musical. Perhaps only beat by the lessor known Footlight Parade.

Review: Buffy Sing-A-Long

A Warner Brothers release 2002
Written & Directed by Joss Whedon



I've probably only seen about five episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. While the whole WB teenspolision ravaged the rest of our country's impressionable youth, I lay idle, content watching cartoons. Teen dramas never interested me; they all seemed so superfluous, so forced, so melodramatic. I wanted bright colors and absurdity, not bumbling, awkward adoloescents like myself.

But I have to admit, there's something about the Buffy Sing-A-Long that finally makes me interested to see more. The Sing-A-Long features the musical episode, "One More with Feeling", in which the characters break into song and dance at the will of a musical demon, along with a suprise additional episode and, in the tradition of Rocky Horror, performances and goodie bags filled with tools for audience participation.

If you're too shy to participate or aren't a dedicated Buffy fan, the episode is still worth checking out. It's one of the better musical-based moments made for television. Creator Joss Whedon wrote and composed all the songs, each one catered to the cast and character’s strengths, and even shot it in theatrical widescreen to emulate old Hollywood Cinemascope musicals. The result is a surprisingly effective and fun episode that doesn't disrupt the story arch of the show.

Buffy Sing-A-Long plays once a month at the IFC Center. It's also going on a national tour, so check out the dates here.

Betty Hutton passes away at 86!

From Variety.com

Betty Hutton, the actress and singer who brought a brassy vitality to Hollywood musicals such as "Annie Get Your Gun," has died in Palm Springs, Calif. She was 86.

Unlike other actresses who have been called "blonde bombshells," Hutton had a screen personality that had more to do with energy and humor than sex.

Time magazine wrote in 1950: "Betty Hutton, who is not remarkably pretty, by movie standards, nor a remarkably good singer or dancer, has a vividly unique personality in a town that tends to reduce beauty and talent to mass-produced patterns. Watching her in action has some of the fascination of waiting for a wildly sputtering fuse to touch off an alarmingly large firecracker."

Three days after I post my own call for attention to the work of Betty Hutton, she passes away! How terribly sad. As I've said before, she was one of my favorite musical performers; she had a rare energy, her spirit really shined through in all of her work. In tribute, here's a video of my favorite Hutton performance - Murder He Says!




Go check out all of her films!

Revisit: Annie Get Your Gun

An MGM release 1950

Directed by
George Sidney

Writing credits:
Dorothy Fields (book)
Herbert Fields (book)
Sidney Sheldon

The story of the great sharpshooter, Annie Oakley (Betty Hutton), who rises to fame while dealing with her love/professional rival, Frank Butler (Howard Keel).



A musical plauged with production problems from the get-go, Annie Get Your Gun went through three directors and two lead actors before settling on a final cast and crew. Original director Busby Berkeley was also replaced, first by Charles Walters and finally by George Sidney; likewise, Annie was originally supposed to feature the reunion of Wizard of Oz stars Judy Garland and Frank Morgan before Morgan passed away and Judy was fired for poor health.

Normally I'd say Garland's presence would make any musical better, but thank god she dropped out of this one. I couldn't find it online, but if you rent the Annie DVD, there is lots of deleted footage from her scrapped performance and you could tell she was all hopped up on something - jittery, unfocused, really poor stuff. Plus she doesn't fit the role of Annie whatsoever.

Betty Hutton, on the other hand, was made for the part. Easily the most underrated, unseen talent of her time, Hutton had more punch and pep in her pinky finger than most stars today have in their whole lives. She really threw herself into every performance, using complete physicality to put on a fantastic, energized show. Every part of her body is accented, particularly her face, which alone was capable of literally hundreds of expressions. She had this wonderful, wacky spirit, and could throw her voice better than most singers to boot! Check out this clip of her and Fred Astaire from Let's Dance...



See? Hutton was a ball of energy waiting to explode; she was, as Bob Hope once put, a vitamin pill with legs. Unfortunately, Hutton's road to stardom wasn't an easy one, and she quit the business early. Recently, she did an interview with TCM host Robert Osborne that is worth checking out. But I highly suggest you to go out and see Annie Get Your Gun, if anything to pay tribute to this forgotten legend of song.

Review: Dreamgirls

When I was in high school I sat next to the captain of the football team in home room. He was a jock, for sure - stocky, with broad shoulders and little brains - but a nice guy, jovial and very easy-going. We'd talk from time to time, sharing quick conversations before class began. He was just friendly enough to keep it from being awkward, just funny enough to keep things interesting. When Christmas time rolled around our sophomore year, he wore a big Santa hat that pushed his red hair out at all different ends and matched the color of his freckles. He turned to me and asked, "Did you put up your tree yet?" No, I replied. I'm a jew. He looked at me puzzled, his right eyebrow cocked as if he didn't know what I had meant. "So you don't have a tree?" Nope, I responded cooly. "What about lights, do you put up any lights?" No, I repeated. Jews don't put up lights. "You gotta have lights," he said, "for Santa!" No, I said a forth time, wondering if he was just pulling my leg or if he was actually being serious. Jews don't put up lights. "Well how do you celebrate the birth of the lord Jesus Christ, then?" he asked. I sat there a bit stunned for a second before replying, I go to the movies.

Every jew celebrates Christmas at the movies. Though it would appear to be out of convience (considering everything else on earth is closed), it's actually a tradition, one that has lasted for generations and probably dates back to the golden age of the nickelodeon. While the rest of the world is opening presents and sucking down egg-nog, we kosher children flock to see films. As a movie buff, it's one tradition that I admire and anticipate. In fact, if I don't see a movie on Christmas, I get angry, uppity and annoyed. It's the equivalent of a Christian family forsaking the tree - it just doesn't feel like Christmas.

Looking back, however, I can't say that Christmas times makes for memorable movie-going experiences. In fact, I can only remeber a select handful of the films I've seen on Christmas day, most of which were mildly entertaining (Mars Attacks!, Bad Santa), or piddling crap (Man on the Moon) . Hollywood generally doesn't leave much options for the jews of suburbia come December 25th. While most of the Oscar-buzz pictures are still relegated to art houses in NY/LA, your average cinema generally offers a handful of holiday themed, family-friendly affairs or non-spectacular, soft-R rated thrillers. Throw in a biopic and a Ben Stiller comedy and you've got a good idea of what's going to be playing at a theater near you this holiday season.

This year was no different. With Children of Men in limited release and Pan's Labarynth set for December 29th (expect reviews of each shortly), I lost out on all the pictures I asked for this Christmas. My family decided they were going to see Dreamgirls whether I liked or not, so I was stuck. It's not like I wasn't going to see something, I mean... it's Christmas.

Originally I had understood that Dreamgirls was a biopic based on the life and times of Diana Ross and the Supremes. I understood that it starred Eddie Murphy, Jamie Foxx, Beyonce and some girl from American Idol that I didn't care about, and was directed by Bill Condon, who did Kinsey, Gods and Monsters, and a few other films I didn't care about. In fact, I didn't care about any of it - there's nothing that irks me more than musical biopics (I'll say it - Ray sucked), and this seemed to me like the lowest of the low.

However, the film is not a biopic, it's strictly a musical. It takes it root from a broadway show of the same name that premiered in 1981 starring Loretta Devine. While comparisons to the biography of the Supremes are fitting, the characters in the film are original and seem to be extrapolated from a variety of African-American musicians from the past fifty years.

That being said, I was happy it was not a biopic. I can't stand that shit. But cinematic adaptations of broadway shows are often even more disasterous than films with impersonations of famous people. (Anyone remember last years horrid Broadway-style remake of Mel Brooks The Producers? I didn't think so.) It's easy for Hollywood to match the bright lights, glitz and glamor of Broadway, but very difficult to recreate the spirit of the stage. Live performances are engaging on a whole nother level, one that the cinematic performance very rarely captures. Something is ultimately lost in the transition from B'way to the big screen, and Dreamgirls is no exception. For a movie about soul music, the film has very little soul. It degenerates some of the most trying and important times in the history of black music - and America in general - to banal cliches and clear black vs white, good vs bad dichotomies. This is the scourge of Broadway in general: much of everything is simplified and easy to digest. But it doesn't mean that complicated issues have to become cliches, especially in the cinema. The film batters through history like a wrecking ball, giving brief contextual moments before breaking into song and dance. It all makes the Dreamettes rise to fame seem a little too easy, and unbelievable.

Perhaps Condon was focusing his efforts on characterization, but many of the key performances here lack the kind of power they require to breathe life into the film. Foxx starts things off with a whole lotta sleaze as the group's manager and somehow turns what should be a character who's torn between doing what's right and his dreams of granduer into one big money-grubbing cliche. Beyonce offers a big voice but little personality for a character who supposedly can't sing but has plenty of charisma.

That being said, if you see this movie for one thing it should be Jennifer Hudson, that American Idol girl I mentioned earlier. Her performance as Effie, the head-strong lead singer who gets kicked out of the group before their rise to fame, is easily one of the years best. She nails her character to a T, and offers a pair of pipes that can blow the extensions off Beyonce's head quicker than you can say 'destiny's child'. Check her version of "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" that's featured in the film, and you'll hear what I mean.

Likewise, Eddie Murphy gives a rousing performance as James 'Thunder' Early, an amalgamation of Chuck Berry and James Brown and a bunch of other crack-slewing soul brothers. He adds a lot of depth to a character that easily could have been the comic relief. And who knew he could sing?

I saw this film right outside of Asbury Park, New Jersey. The theater was absolutely filled with black people, and it was great. It was like going to church in Alabama; everyone was hootin' and hollerin' and cheerin' along, singing the songs with the film. For all the movie's faults, this seemed to make it a bit more palatable. I can't say I reccomend it - there are a million better musicals out there, with better songs and better performances. But if you absolutely love Broadway and can't make the trek out to NYC, maybe this film is for you. It's got lots of bright lights and sequin dresses, and it certainly captures the shallowness of 42nd Street, but it lacks the heart and soul of the music it supposedly represents. Let's just thank god it wasn't a biopic.

A DreamWorks SKG/Paramount Pictures release 2006
Directed byBill Condon
Writing credits:
Bill Condon (screenplay)
Tom Eyen (book)