Damon Runyon’s stories would most famously make it into musical form in 1955 with Guys and Dolls. But in the meantime, this 1952 effort featured many of the same sorts of characters – wise-cracking-but-harmless gangsters and their glamorous molls. Here, Numbers Foster (Scott Brady) hightails it out of town to avoid a Congressional hearing, and on the way back, he picks up country songbird Emily Ann Stackerlee (Mitzi Gaynor), much to the displeasure of New York girlfriend Yvonne (Marguerite Chapman). Heavier on plot and lighter on numbers than some other musicals of the period, this is a jovial effort, but understandably in the shadow of its more famous cousin.
Star of song and stage Jeannie Laird (June Haver) returns from a triumphant tour to settle down in her new suburban home. Next door is widowed cartoonist Bill Carter (Dan Dailey), and sparks fly between the glamorous star and the low-key nice guy. The course of true love doesn’t run smoothly, however, due to Bill’s son Joe (Billy Gray, of The Day the Earth Stood Still), who doesn’t take kindly to the new woman in his father’s life.
A mixture of biopic and musical, this vehicle stars Susan Hayward as Jane Froman, an incredibly popular singing star in the 40s who had to battle back from terrible wounds suffered in a plane crash after her first performance for American troops overseas during WWII. The film begins with Froman’s triumphant comeback, and flashes back to the events leading up to this. The pic is efficiently put together, and Hayward’s lip-synching (Froman dubbed in her own singing) is unusually convincing. But the crash itself is disappointingly undramatic.
There has to be something wrong with anyone who doesn’t have at least a small soft spot in their hearts for Tim Burton’s A Nightmare Before Christmas. The film will assuredly earn its rightful place as a classic as more years roll by. The film just works on so many levels. Danny Elfman deserves as much credit as Burton here for the wickedly wonderful tunes and songs that accentuate the deviously detailed world of Halloweentown. He also provides the singing voice for Jack, reminding us a bit of his early pop roots with the modestly successful Oingo Boingo.
For as much as I might viscerally disagree with the creation of a film or its sequel, I lay much of the blame at you, the viewer and movie-going public. You created the furor around the Step Up series of films. You all went in droves to the first film when it was released in August 2006, when movies were winding down in the blockbuster season and thus helped it make $65 million domestically and more than $110 worldwide. It’s your fault that another film was inevitable, so in the down-turn of this past February, we got a second one. That one made about the same domestically, but made $30 million or so more and almost brought in $150 million worldwide. Count on the fact that another 90-minute film about teens dancing will be made and that the Step Up trilogy (I threw up in my mouth a little when writing that) will be complete.
It’s nice when a movie lives up to its expectations and even surpasses them because it rarely seems to happen anymore. Such is the case with Anton Corbijn’s Ian Curtis bio-pic, Control.
I’ve been waiting to see Control for a long time. From the start, the film sounded interesting, since I am a huge fan of post-punk alternative rock music, the genre that Ian Curtis and Joy Division practically invented in the late 1970’s. But when I heard that long-time band collaborator and renowned music video director Anton Corbijn was directing the film, my anticipation rose to even higher levels.
Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, Helena Bohnam Carter, and a 1970’s Broadway musical by Stephen Sondheim about a barber with a penchant for truly close, and rather bloody, shaves. With these kinds of ingredients you have a can’t miss recipe for Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street. The finished product is a wickedly clever and most unusual movie experience. Tim Burton’s style blends so seamlessly with the dark humor of the original production.
From the Oscar ceremony, the only thing to speak of when it came to the quaint Irish charmer Once is that the girl was going to speak after the song “Falling Slowly” won the award for Best Original Song, and she was cut off, but she got a chance to thank everyone after the commercial, so points for trivia in case you stuck in there for that long (I know I didn’t). For those who hadn’t seen the film before that, they were certainly missing a slightly profound and moving experience.
World War II has just ended, and the recently discharged Robert De Niro hits New York on the prowl for sex. He runs up against WAC Liza Minnelli, and the more she resists his advances, the more determined he becomes. There is more: he is a saxophonist, and she (of course) is a singer). So begins a tempestuous relationship between two artists whose enormous talents and equally enormous personalities mean they can neither live with nor without each other.
In Belle Époque Paris, the can-can is all the rage but also illegal, and Shirley MacLaine’s nightclub is cracked down on by uptight judge Louis Jourdan. MacLaine is defended by libertine lawyer Frank Sinatra. Jourdan falls for MacLaine, who is waiting perhaps in vain for Sinatra to marry her. Maurice Chevalier shows up to chuckle indulgently.
A remake of writer/director John Waters’ 1988 cult hit, Hairspray is an exhuberant movie musical that builds off the smash-hit Broadway production to recreate the excitement on film for a new generation. Whether it’s bigger and better than previous iterations, I can’t say, because this DVD release marks my first Hairspray experience. What I can say is if Waters’ original and the Broadway show are even half as good, they’re definitely worth your time.
If that doesn’t convince you, this Hairspray also presents John Travolta as an obese, middle-aged woman — a transformation that required plenty of make-up and, more importantly, allowed Travolta to finally reveal his true self for all to see.
If you’ve started reading this review, and have yet to have the title song stuck in your head, watch the preview and you’ll be hard pressed to forget it before the end of the day. Viva Las Vegas is arguably one of Elvis’ best films known especially for the on-screen chemistry between the King and Ann-Margaret. Some catalog high definition releases have been of less than desirable quality, but Warner Bros has put out a real winner here that’s sure to stun friends and family. If you wanted something to show your parents, or grandparents (gasp!) the value of high definition, look no further. Oh yeah, and the movie’s fun too!
There are few things as tragic as potential that is unrealized. Whether it’s by choice or by extenuating circumstances, to see a life cut down before it has a chance to develop and make an imprint on the world is sad to see. And it seems to happen disproportionately among musicians. In most casts, drugs frequently has been the main culprit (see Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin), or suicide in some cases (Kurt Cobain being the more notable name in recent memory). But when an entertainer is murdered, the abrupt nature of the crime seems to shake many to the core. It was sad four decades ago when Sam Cooke was murdered, and equally disappointing two decades later when Marvin Gaye was felled by the hands of his father. When Selena Quintanilla was murdered by her business manager in 1995, it sent shockwaves through the Latin music community. Here was a young woman on the fast track to superstardom, gunned down before her full promise could be delivered.
I’ll describe this show the same way I did to a friend of mine who is now a fan of all things Dethklok. If you took This Is Spinal Tap added Type O Negative (at their hardest) and made it into a cartoon, you might have some idea what Metalocalypse is all about. Part tribute, part parody, all metal, Metalocalypse is likely the most gruesome and one of the best shows on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim lineup.
Planning a high-profile charity football game that they must nonetheless be sure of winning, the powers that be of Yale attempt to invite the University of Texas, but instead accidentally invite Texas State University, a small college whose town population is a mere 700. Newly arrived coach Jack Haley and his formidable wife Patsy Kelly face the challenge of somehow whipping the football team into something that won’t be utterly destroyed on the day of the big game. The key to possible victory is bumpkin-but-natural-prodigy Stuart Erwin, but he’s a package deal, and comes along with little sister Judy Garland, here making her debut.
Danny Kaye plays Jack Martin, entertainer in a Riviera nightclub, as well as Henri Duran, philandering aviator. Duran is being driven to the edge of bankruptcy by a man with which he is forced to do business. Desperate to raise cash, he leaves town, but then his rival is invited to a dinner party. If Duran is not present at the party he is supposed to be hosting, disaster will ensue. So his partners conscript Martin, who has done a pitch-perfect impersonation of Duran at the club, to act as …
Dreamgirls created a substantial amount of buzz when it was first released at the end of 2006, and has since won two Academy Awards. Although this movie never really struck me as being something I just had to watch, I’ve been curious to check out what all the praise was about. For those of you that don’t know, Dreamgirls is a musical, a whole whack load of singing intertwined with the ongoing plot; much like Grease or Chicago. Like most musical films, Dreamgirls is adapted from a pl…
Ahead of the pack with eight nominations, Dreamgirls had a lot of buzz leading up to this year’s Academy Awards. In the midst of it all, there was talk of a surprise standout performance by American Idol alumnus Jennifer Hudson in her first film role, and even more surprisingly, Pluto Nash – I mean, Eddie Murphy was up for best supporting actor.
With that many nominations, Dreamgirls, in yet another surprise, was not up for the coveted best picture Oscar. And after the dust settled, the film had been honored with just two of the golden statues, for Jennifer Hudson as best supporting actress and best achievement in sound mixing. No best picture nod and so few wins seemed to say, ‘yeah, your movie had a lot of good parts, some even great, but they didn’t add up to something more.’
Adapted from the hit stage musical, Norman Jewison’s film version of Fiddler on the Roof has established itself as a classic over and over again since its release in 1971.
“He loves her. Love, it’s a new style… On the other hand, our old ways were once new, weren’t they?” I’ll hardly be the first to write it, but the reason Fiddler on the Roof, a story about Jewish people and their culture, is so popular, is that its themes have universal appeal. In fact, in a way it hardly matters th…
Paul McCartney is a great example of what Darwin meant by survival of the fittest. No one in the music business has learned to adapt and thrive like Paul McCartney. The term timeless has been applied so often to so many performers that it might have lost any meaning. Still, if anyone deserves that description, it is Paul McCartney. With The Beatles he helped define the 60’s and reinvent Rock and Roll. In the 1970’s and 80’s he continued the hits with Paul McCartney and Wings. When Wings finally disappeared into the midnight sky, McCartney was still at it as a solo artist.
I never saw the original film, so I won’t be able to offer any insight on how this film might compare or continue the story set down by Save The Last Dance. What I can say for certain is that this direct to video release isn’t worth the 86 minutes it takes to watch it. The film begins with the first film’s Sarah (now Miko). In a video much like one provided for a dating service, she’s telling us how she feels about various things. These are her highlights and already I don’t care. She is apparently headed to Jullia…
Valley of the Dolls is a musical that way way ahead of its time. Based on the novel by Jacqueline Susann, the film tells the story of three aspiring actresses and their attempts at becoming stars. Sure, this is an age old tale, but it had not been told as bluntly an honestly until now. The film starts Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke and Sharon Tate as the actresses in question. Audiences must have been shocked upon going to the theater, as they were much more used to rags to riches musicals such as A Star is Bo…
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