Jerry's Thoughts, Musings, and Rants!

The Oscars

I don’t know about you, but after staying up until almost midnight on a work night, all those nominees and winners get all jumbled in my head, and the next morning I have trouble remembering who won what. Is it just me? Maybe I should lay off the red wine and martini combination. Whatever it was I had a difficult time focusing at work today.

Here are the winners from last night’s ceremony:

Best Picture: No Country For Old Men
Best Actor: Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Best Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men
Best Actress: Marion Cotillard, La Vie En Rose
Best Supporting Actress: Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton
Best Animated Feature: Ratatouille
Best Director: Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
Best Original Screenplay: Diablo Cody, Juno
Best Adapted Screenplay, Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
Best Art Direction: Dante Ferretti/Franscesca Lo Schiavo, Sweeney Todd
Best Cinematography: Robert Elswit, There Will Be Blood
Best Costume Design: Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Best Makeup Effects: Didier Lavergne, Jan Archibald, La Vie En Rose
Best Visual Effects: The Golden Compass
Best Sound Editing: Karen Baker Landers, Per Hallberg, The Bourne Ultimatum
Best Sound Mixing: Scott Millan, David Parker, Kirk Francis, The Bourne Ultimatum
Best Film Editing: Christopher Rouse, The Bourne Ultimatum
Best Original Song: “Falling slowly,” from Once
Best Score: Dario Romanelli, Atonement
Best documentary: Taxi to the Dark Side
Best Documentary, short feature: Freeheld
Best Foreign Film: The Counterfeiters (Austria)
Lifetime Achievement: Robert Boyle (Art director)

The Bourne Ultimatum took home three awards for sound and editing, which was a surprise. Another big surprise: Transformers was actually nominated in three categories. No Country For Old men racked up four awards - Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture.

While most of the wins went the way experts predicted, there were some interesting choices. Last night's biggest upsets were in the actress categories: Marion Cotillard won Best Actress for La Vie En Rose (a movie seen by nobody), in a year when everyone thought Julie Christie would take the statue for Away From Her. Michael Clayton’s cold-as-ice villainness, Tilda Swinton (who?), won for Best Supporting Actress, when Cate Blanchett was the favorite for her work as Bob Dylan in I’m Not There.

There were several references to the recent strike by the Writers Guild of America, which, if it had continued, might have meant canceling the 80th Oscars altogether or putting on a much reduced and postponed show later in the year. Actually, that might have been a pleasant change and a blessed relief from the bloated show and the effusive windbags making speeches that movie lovers and catty fashion reviewers endure annually, even as the number of other awards shows on television has grown exponentially.

Highlights:

Javier Bardem, who won for Best Supporting Actor in the Best Picture winner, "No Country for Old Men," did move the crowd when he concluded his speech with a message to his mother in his native Spanish. She was sitting in the audience, surrounded by the usual suspects and celebrities. Sadly she had decided to wear the entire output from a Spanish silver mine on her hands, neck, and arms.

This was the 'United Nations' Oscars. All of the acting Oscars went to foreign-born actors for only the second time in the show's 80-year history. Some have complained bitterly of this. Personally I think it is a reflection of the fact that many Americans are obsessed with Britney, Paris, or Lindsey.

Helen Mirren announcing the best Actor Oscar - my god she could show the rest how to do it. She had grace, class, and poise. She has more talent in her little finger than Cameron Diaz, Jessica Alba, and Anne Hathaway put together.

Low moments:

We all know that Diablo Cody, winner for best screenplay, is a former exotic dancer. She apparently has moved into a different field now. Unfortunately her dress for the evening was calling out to be flung into the audience and a pole to descend to the stage . . .

Jon Stewart, the cable TV comic brought in to host, did only a fair task, and in fact threatened to ruin the poignancy of Bardem's speech by later informing the audience, "That was a moment," sardonic doesn't work when a son unleashes a torrent of love to his mom in a very public manner.

Renne Zellweger looked so uncomfortable. I hope that she never does to that hairstylist again - she spent her entire time trying to tuck it behind her ears and pushing it from her eyes. Speaking of her eyes . . . does she ever open them?

Ryan Seacrest asking Jessica Alba if she planned on breastfeeding.

Something I never thought I'd say - I miss Joan Rivers . . .

Something I found at the sun-times site:

The Oscars by the numbers:

1 million: Value, in dollars, of the shoes that screenwriter Diablo Cody was offered — but refused — to wear.
5,829: Academy Awards voting members.
1993: Last year a black-and-white film won the best-picture Oscar — ‘‘Schindler’s List.’’
1951: Year the first film in color, ‘‘An American in Paris,’’ won the best-picture Oscar.
83: Age of supporting actor nominee Hal Holbrook and supporting actress nominee Ruby Dee.
63: Countries submitting foreign-language films.
43: People remembered during the In Memoriam segment.
21: Age of ‘‘Juno’’ star and best-actress nominee Ellen Page.
17: Days it took to shoot the film ‘‘Once.’’
13.5: Height, in inches, of an Oscar statuette.
13: Age of ‘‘Atonement’’ star and supporting-actress nominee Saoirse Ronan.
12: Length of acceptance speech, in seconds, by Alexandra Byrne, winner of the costume design Oscar.
6: Prominent stars wearing a scarlet red dress.
4: Sponsors highlighted in the opening of the telecast.
3: Visibly pregnant actresses who appeared on-screen.
1: Number of times Cameron Diaz fumbled her pronunciation of ‘‘cinematographer’’ while presenting the category’s Oscar.
0: Number of times veteran sound mixer Kevin O’Connell has won an Oscar after 20 nominations.

No Country for Old Men

Dave and Rosanne were in town this weekend so we decided to go to a movie last night and the out to dinner. Rose really wanted to see 'No Country for Old Men' so off we went. I had heard buzz about this film and knew that I was in for a violent ride. Needing to control the violence which would come, I googled about and read up on the film prior to seeing it. In the end it wasn't as bad as I had been expecting (the violence anyway - the film was very good).

"It’s not that I’m afraid of it,” Tommy Lee Jones’s Sheriff Ed Tom Bell says at the start of the Coen Brothers' film based faithfully on the book by Cormac McCarthy. “But I don’t want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don’t understand.” That “something” is Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a psychopathic killer equally adept at using a cattle gun to blast doorlocks or to put a round hole in a person’s forehead. Bardem’s plod-footed killer, with his disquieting smile and helmet-shaped hair, haunts this picture, a specter of uncompromising evil.

“How dangerous is he?” asks a financier who sends out a professional, Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson in a cameo - where has he been - other than getting some plastic surgery as pointed out by Ruth), to kill him.

“Compared to what?” smirks Carson. “The bubonic plague?”

The time is 1980 and the action is based in a small Texas border town where the vistas are wide and the dreams narrow. The situation circles around Llewelyn Moss, a Vietnam veteran and welder played aptly by Josh Brolin. While out hunting, Moss comes upon three vehicles, big trucks and SUVs, surrounded by dead men - reminiscent of the circle of wagons prior to an attack in the 'old west' myth.

In one of these vehicles there is a Mexican man who is not quite dead, and who begs for water which Moss doesn't have. The truck is packed with drugs. Moss follows a blood trail to another dead man who has beside him a leather satchel full of a great deal of money. Moss takes the satchel - a perverted version of the American Dream.

Llewelyn returns to his trailer, and to his wife Carla Jean (wonderfully played by Kelly Macdonald as a homespun innocent). “What’s in the satchel?” she says, hardly taking her eyes off the TV.

“It’s full o’ money,” he says.

“That’ll be the day,” she fires back. That was John Wayne’s line in John Ford’s The Searchers, and it doesn’t turn up here by accident. For the film is reminiscent of Ford's classics - both minimalist and epic at the same time. The most frequent sound is the rustle of the wind.

Back home Moss wakes in the night with a sense of urgency, fills a jug with water and returns to the truck. This humanitarian gesture lets loose the demons. One of the hot topics of discussions at the post movie martini sip and later at dinner was just who was killing and chasing whom - it almost required a diagram to map it all out. Moss fights to keep the money and to live, Chirgurh tracks Moss for retribution and the money, a mysterious band of Mexicans track Moss and the money, Harrelson's bounty hunter tracks Chigurh, and Bell tracks the ensuing trail of blood and gore in an effort to save Moss and his wife from the horror that has been unleashed.

A lot of people die in this movie, some of them horribly, but most of the deaths mean something. They are not thrown away, as in a lot of genre movies. Towards the end, they become appallingly tragic, enough to singe at your heart. You know that this movie won't have a happy ending.

So there's no justice in the form of retribution here at all, just the memories and fears of hardworking good old girls and boys, some of whom come up against Chigurh - a neighborly storekeeper, an earnest motel owner who refuses to give Chigurh information about Moss, or a chatty chicken farmer. Near the close of the film Bell spends time with a sympathetic fellow sheriff and his uncle Ellis, a crippled lawman (Barry Corbin) living in squalor, who quietly reminds him that there's nothing new about the violence that has demoralized Bell, and that the cleaner country he recalls never existed.

We last see Sheriff Bell seated at a table telling his wife (Tess Harper) about his feelings about mortality, and his tragedy - America's tragedy - is written on his face. Their dialog makes it crystal clear that he has in fact retired.  Some would suggest that he’s given up. The camera holds on him as he describes two dreams he had to his wife. The first concerns money. The second is about his dead father, who had also been a sheriff. His father passed him on a path and Bell was left with the sense that his father would always be up ahead waiting for him. No analysis of the dream is offered.

The screen fades to black and you are left wondering why you didn't pay more attention to Bell's description of his dream to help you understand just what laced across the screen for the past two hours! The hallowed halls of the internet is rife with debate about the ending. The one thing that is apparent to me is that many folks like their films (and books) tied up in a pretty pink bow. This movie doesn't do that, in fact the bow is ripped off and you are left staring into a broken box attempting to make meaning from the scenes flickering through your mind. I for one like to think (most days anyway) and have enjoyed the post-movie review in my mind almost as much as I did viewing it in the theatre.

Juno

Tonight I was reminded of the horrors of semi-adolescent filled movie theatres. You know, the ones where the audience and their behaviour is far more chill inducing than the action on the screen. I suppose it might have been worse, there were no Gummy Bears flung about, but I really think if I'm paying 12 bucks to see a movie I shold be able to enjoy it. It is official, it will take a really great movie to drag me out of the leather bound comfort (and child free) of the VIP theatres (AKA the best $ 5 I have EVER spent).

Juno was just such a film. Unique voices at the multiplex seem rare these days but the voices in this movie were fresh (too fresh at times) and unique. With the past year full of sequels and remakes, it’s always nice when a true indie pokes out its colorful head and gets real distribution. Juno is such a film, a movie with a character and charm all its own. Filled with fun dialogue, great performances and compelling characters to propel it forward, it is a film worth seeing. I don’t think it’s as great as all the hype surrounding it, but it still makes for a solid movie experience.

Juno follows the exploits and decisions of 16-year-old Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) as she discovers that her boredom-induced activities with best friend and love interest Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera) have led to an unplanned pregnancy. After Juno decides to go through with the pregnancy and give the child up for adoption, the latter half of the film centers around Juno’s interactions with adoptive parents Mark (Jason Bateman) and Vanessa Loring (Jennifer Garner).

One of the first thing you’ll notice about Juno is the writing. Penned by first time screenwriter Diablo Cody, Juno exists in that world where everybody is quirky and witty and clever. I understand that Cody is a 29 blogger whose previous claim to fame was her blog (and of course the fact that she is a former stripper). Sometimes this witty dialogue can be off-putting and phony, but it works here. Now we know what a 16-year old character written by a 29-year old blogger sounds like.

One things I really liked about the movie is how they didn’t portray Juno as a victim. She’s not a poor hapless teenager who got into trouble. She’s not in a ridiculous relationship that she’s trying to force to work. She’s got the “cheese to [her] macaroni”. Juno isn’t walking about moping about the baby within that she won’t be raising. She’s walking about moping about a boy, and she wants to get the band back together. She’s not solely defined by the fact that she accidentally got pregnant.

Of course, there are those who are condeming the film for this; if the pregnant teen is not depicted as going through the valley of hell than the right message is not sent. Frankly, I prefer this message - 'bad things happen to decent people and you have to try and make the best of things'. Doesn't this provide some level of hope for all of us?

The film's feel is neither saccharine nor preachy, and the musical score adds the right (quirky - the word for the day apparently) flavors. In lesser hands, humor might have made the action seem wacky, even distasteful- after all, there really is nothing funny about a pregnant sixteen year old. But Cody and Reitman put humor to its best use: as an antidote Juno, her father (J.K. Simmons, brilliant) and her stepmother (Allison Janney - equally brilliant, as always), like most of us, use to cope with their lives. When Juno tells her dad she's pregnant, his disappointment is real but not over-the-top. "I thought you were a girl who knew when to say 'when'", is all he tells Juno - there is no verbose condemnation, no antics, but a heartfelt remark. "I was hoping she'd been expelled for drug use" he quips to Juno's stepmother in the same wry, deadpan tone that his daughter seems to have inherited.

Juno provides a refreshing and satisfying detachment from what we’ve come to expect from a teen comedy and the movie industry in general. Page’s talented and honest performance truly underscores the all-around solid performances of the cast. Combined with the cutting tongue-in-cheek writing of Cody’s magnificent script, “Juno” delivers on all levels and is truly this winter’s best and most deserving surprise

Charlie Wilson's War

I have to admit that I didn't have very high expectations of the film (I have not read the book), but I wasn't doing anything noteworthy enough to not go. In fact, the main reason I went was that there were three movies playing in the VIP theatres, one was scary, one was all romantic, so we went with this one.

Turns out going was totally worth it. Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Tom Hanks + an Aaron Sorkin screenplay = every time either of the above opened their mouth I often found myself laughing out loud. I was not prepared for the movie to be as funny as it was.

There's also the whole the-US-screwed-itself-by-crapping-on-Afghanistan angle, which is pretty important to understanding the role the U.S. played in the rise of the Taliban. And Sorkin doesn't mince words on that front, for which I am glad. One is always left wondering where the boundaries between fact and fiction lay blurred in the sand and the reality is that everyone will have to arrive at their own conclusions.

This is allegedly a quote from Tom Daschle when asked about his recollections of the 'real' Charile Wilson:

I knew him fairly well in the House. Served with him on the Steering Committee.

I can’t vouch for the movie but the book is pretty accurate.

He was (is) a great guy to be around. Story a minute. Texan through and through. We all marveled at his ability to do things that would have killed the careers of most of us.

I was very green, young and curious in those days. He always had a warm smile and a kind word.

I liked him a lot.

I remember how single-minded he was about helping the Afghans. He was extremely laid back until he would begin talking about Afghanistan.

For me the biggest required leap was the one required to get over the fact that Charlie Wilson was a boozing misogynist. Having him played by Tom Hanks apparently takes the edge off. A quote ("you can teach ‘em to type. You can’t teach ‘em to grow tits.”) attributed to Wilson regarding why all his congressional aids are beautiful young women was delivered in the film not by Wilson, but by a woman; again apparently in an effort to sanitize Wilson.

The final pre-credits title card quotes the real Charlie: "All these things happened, and they were glorious and they changed the world. Then we fucked up the endgame.”

Coming at the end of an efficient, briskly-paced 97-minute film, this ominous note seems tacked on and strangely ambiguous: an inspirational story about how one man can change the world switches gears to show how easily good works can be undone.

Of course, the movie, like most Hollywood movies, tended to gloss over some 'tricky bits'. As columnist Robert Scheer notes over at Truthdig, the film portrays the Soviets as soulless killers while the mujahideen are portrayed as nothing but a cruelly persecuted band of noble rebels:

The movie does not mention that the mujahedeen went to war against the Soviet-backed government then in power in Kabul after the government committed the unpardonable crime of allowing female students to attend rural schools. The film casually notes that Gen. Zia, the U.S. ally in this effort to bring “freedom” to Afghanistan, was, like so many of the movie’s heroes, a hard case full of contradictions, as exemplified by his having murdered Pakistan’s previous ruler, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

The movie also tries to gloss over the fact that the United States was funding some of the mujahideen – Haqqani and Hekmatayar in particular – that we are now fighting in Afghanistan. Shah Ahmad Massoud is presented in the movie as the main beneficiary of U.S. largesse. Not so. He received one, but there was continuing tension between Massoud, a Tajik, and the Pushtun Afghans who were backed by Pushtun cousins in Pakistan.

In the end, a highly entertaining moive. I recommend it and I suspect that you'll be hearing more about it come Oscar time.

The VIP Room

a gratuitous self-promotion . . .

One of our photos from Italy has been entered in a photo contest.

Our photo is currently number 13 out of 464 photos.

You can vote by clicking here

Remember a 10 is good!

Feel free to e-mail the link to friends and loved ones!

*smile*

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We've had a new movie theatre open about 10 minutes from our house. We had heard that they featured something called a VIP room . . . well we had to check that out as it was calling our names.

The tickets were $ 5 more than the normal price but for the extra money we were transported into the most civilized movie going experience imaginable.

Once in the theatre your ticket provides you access to a special lounge. There you can order food, drink, snacks, and so on. While they don't currently have a liquor license it is on the way (we noticed a healthy supply of martini glasses waiting for us behind the bar!)

Because we had assigned seats there was no need to race into the theatre to get decent seats together. We knew that we could walk in whenever and claim those wonderful seats in the centre of the theatre.

When we did claim the seats - oh my! These leather seats reclined and embraced you with leather and padding. You weren't on top of your neighbour nor did you have to worry about legroom.

It truly was a wonderful experience!

The best part of it was the fact the no on under the age of 19 was allowed in. Now, I like children, I really do. However, it was such a treat to watch a film without a child snickering when there was an on-screen kiss or adolescent boys screeching when a full-chested woman appeared on the screen. I have to say I'd pay the $ 5 just for that!

Dirty Dancing

a gratuitous self-promotion . . .

One of our photos from Italy has been entered in a photo contest.

Our photo is currently number 14 out of 464 photos.

You can vote by clicking here

Remember a 10 is good!

Feel free to e-mail the link to friends and loved ones!

*smile*

---

When "Dirty Dancing" movie hit the theatres in 1987, it became a surprise smash hit, thanks largely to the white-hot chemistry between Patrick Swayze as brooding dance instructor Johnny Castle and Jennifer Grey as Frances (Baby) Houseman, the idealistic summer vacationer who falls in love with him. It seems impossible to comprehend but it was 20 years ago that the movie caused couples to try their dirty dancing moves on the dance floor. Hopes were riding high for the North American premiere of the musical currently playing in Toronto.

The show, which had its humble beginnings in Australia in 2004 and later became a smash hit in London, launched its first North American production at Toronto’s Royal Alexandra Theatre on Nov. 16. Producers were evidently riding on expectations that the massive popularity of the film would fuel ticket sales regardless of the production’s quality. And now, as the Toronto show is now selling well through August 2008, they’ve already been proven right.

The reviews have been  mixed. We went to the theatre last night with open minds. But even with a slick set design, talented ensemble and what would seem to be a foolproof plot designed to tug tightly on North American heartstrings, “Dirty Dancing” cannot decide whether it is a film or a musical. In the end, it turns out to be neither.

But first, the good news. Leads Monica West as the painfully naive Baby and Jake Simons as the hot-blooded rebel Johnny Castle are fine dancers, and very easy on the eyes at that. A couple of amazing vocal soloists can be found in 2005 “Canadian Idol” winner Melissa O’Neill and Ryan Gifford. And despite everything its creators have done to drag things down, it remains impossible not to squeeze some enjoyment out of the musical’s 50- plus songs.

Most everything that made the film so much fun is preserved, including its hokey dialogue, its quintessentially ’80s low-rent music montages and its awfully contrived story line. Unfortunately, the steamy connection that made the movie such a success is conspicuously absent in the stage show. 

The movie's unforgettable songs are also here, including "She's Like the Wind" (the film version was sung by Swayze), the memorable end-of-summer "Kellerman's Anthem," and the Oscar-winning "(I've Had) The Time of My Life," performed deftly in the Toronto stage show by "Canadian Idol" winner Melissa O'Neil. 

Much of the film's appeal was in the highly suggestive dance moves, and there's plenty of shimmying in the Toronto show, including standout moves by Milwaukee-born Britta Lazenga as Penny, the summer instructor whose accidental pregnancy forces Baby to become Johnny's dance partner in the first place.   

At the end of the first half both mom and I looked at one another, we both were having a difficult time caring about any of the characters on the stage. The rest of the group pooh poohed us and suggested that perhaps we were just too curmudgeon-like to enjoy such a show. Hmmmmmm

Now to be fair, the second act was far better and in the end I did feel a tug when Johnny struted on the stage and had the famous 'last dance of the season' with Frances. Dirty Dancing fans are a pretty rabid bunch. Many of them will likely have the time of their lives revisiting the classic tale on-stage.

The Simpsons Movie

Yes gentle readers. I adore the Simpsons. I have watched the show for years. Imagine that this cartoon has been around for 18 years - there is a reason - because it is sophisticated, adult humour brilliantly disguised as slapstick humour so the kiddies can appreciate it as well. It appeals to adults and to kids.

Other primetime cartoons have come around which push the envelope to a greater extent than the Simpsons. I'm not sure that I enjoy them as much - I like to think about my humour, not be smacked in the face with it!

I have wanted to see this movie for awhile but Paul was holding out. Yesterday while we were eating dinner he decided that he wanted to go see it today. Works for me.

So was the movie good?

18 years after the TV Series creation, The Simpsons hit the big screen. And it shows why it still has the legs to run for more years to come.

There are those who argue that Matt Groening's phenomenal yellow-skinned family have seen better days. A decline in the laugh quota has been noticeable in recent years, with nothing to rival classic episodes like Mr. Plow or Who Shot Mr. Burns? Add to that the consistency of shows like South Park and Family Guy and TV's most successful animated series of all time has challengers to its throne.

Setting the scattershot tone of its jokes early by having crayon-eating kid Ralph Wiggum emerge from the 20th Century Fox logo, the audience is dropped straight into a world that has been their second home for the last 20 years—Springfield.

As you'd expect everyone's favourite icon of loveable stupidity Homer Simpson, has got himself, along with the inhabitants of his hometown, in a whole heap of trouble. Adopting a pig ("Spider-Pig, Spider-Pig"), ignoring long-suffering blue-haired wife Marge and neglecting his own son Bart, the plot takes a topically environmental twist—although being The Simpsons, Lisa's pollution lecture is titled "An Irritating Truth" and proceedings are kept firmly tongue in cheek—that results in Springfield being quarantined and removed from the map. Understandably everyone from Chief Wiggum to Groundskeeper Willie are unhappy so it's down to our "DOH-ting" father to win back his family and save the town.

The need to accommodate the larger canvas, however, does mean that the plot veers into an enjoyable action-based finale that, although impressive, dilutes the film's laugh ratio.

What the leap to the big screen allows, though, are sequences such as the tracking shot through an angry mob that features every single character that has appeared in the cartoon since its conception. The successful aesthetics go a long way to proving that 2-D animation can still survive in this CGI world, a point not lost on the makers when Homer plays an arcade game that features a walrus shooting a dancing penguin, poking fun at the lamentable Happy Feet .

Fans of the long-running animated television show should be delighted in seeing their small-screen idols given the big screen treatment, and with a PG-13 rating, getting a bit more ribald in the level of humor than they could with the stringent censorship on TV.  We get to see Bart nude, Homer use his middle finger, Otto take a hit off of a bong, etc.  For those who have followed "The Simpsons" over the nearly 20 years of its existence, I suppose it's worth the expense to see the characters, who haven't changed very much since their inception, in a different light.

I was slightly surprised that they didn’t go overboard with the freedom that being away from television censors allows. There were a couple of bigger curse words and a funny, if inappropriate moment where Bart shows more than his famous naked tooshie. But they could have done much more, but showed some surprising restraint in that front.

Lots of main characters were left out, and while I can’t blame them for not trying to throw every single character in for a one liner, I still wish Moe and Principal Skinner had more of a presence. Using Arnold Schwarzenegger as President may be a better gag, but I think it would have been more fitting to have used Rainier Wolfcastle for the part (as he’s the Simpsons parody of Arnold anyway.)

The Simpsons Movie is funny, clever and at times even hilarious (Bart skate-boarding naked through Springfield has to be the sight-gag of the summer).

The Simpsons - trailer

The Simpsons - trailer

Dreamgirls

We saw Dreamgirls on Sunday. We enjoyed it. We had never seen the stage show so we had nothing at all to compare it to.

If Jennifer Hudson never makes another movie, if she never sings another song, if she drops off the radar tomorrow, her place will nonetheless be cemented forever by her acting debut in Dreamgirls. Effie is the zaftig member of the girl group the Dreamettes, later re-christened The Dreams. She has most of the talent, but none of the looks in an age when an audience judges singers more by their appearance than by their pipes (some things never change!).

As the film opens in the early 1960s, Effie brings the house down at a Detroit amateur contest with her earthy R&B that shakes the rafters and brings the audience to its feet. They don’t win the contest, an early lesson in life not being fair, a lesson they should have remembered, but it does lead the trio to a gig as the backup singers for local R&B celebrity, James “Thunder” Early (Murphy). It’s also the night that car-dealer and backstage hanger-on Curtis Taylor, Jr. (Jamie Foxx), spots them as his ticket into the music business. It turns the ladies’ lives upside down in more ways than just climbing the charts. Taylor woos Effie, Early, with an oddly irresistible narcissistic charm, puts the moves on Lorrell (Anika Noni Rose), and Deena (Beyonce) begins her transformation from sheltered mama’s girl into a world-class diva.

The story is the show biz classic of fame changing everything for everyone, but the subtext here is much more. Taylor’s plans for crossover success for the Dreams mirrors, perhaps unsteadily, the civil rights movement. Some characters look backward, some look forward, and some sell out. The scenes of rioting in Detroit on the same street as Rainbow Records, Taylor’s nascent music empire, may feel forced, but when Effie is told that Deena will be the lead singer because the act needs to “lighten” up its sound in order to draw a larger audience, there’s no mistaking what’s being talked about here and it’s more than just the backbeat, just as there’s no mistaking the irresistible lure of expediency over politics, money over people.

Director and screenwriter Bill Condon, who proved with the screenplay for 2002’s CHICAGO that he knows how to translate a stage work, has re-imagined DREAMGIRLS for the screen by trusting in the story, not in the way a film can open up a play. The scenes are necessarily episodic, as the film rockets through 15 years, but because the emotional arc remains steady, it’s surprisingly cohesive, creating a story that is much more than the sum of its often very impressive parts. The music seamlessly bridges years and transitions, spatial, temporal, and emotional. The best moment is Effie singing the iconic “I Tell You That I’m Not Going” as her world crumbles around her, a solo that raises goosebumps with its rawness. The best zinger in the film is that it’s followed immediately by the new, Effie-less, Dreams singing pre-digested white noise designed to offend no one rather than appeal to anyone

Effie is at the heart of that arc, impulsive, playful, and arrogant. Hudson celebrates the complexity. She is ferocious in a role that requires nothing less, reconciling the bombast and the vulnerability by making them both, like Effie, larger than life and, more, makes them two sides of the same coin. Her presence is palpable in every frame of film, even if she herself is not on screen. Everyone else is just treading water trying to catch up. Foxx makes the mistake of being reptilian from the start with nowhere to go from there as his character moves from hustler to mogul. Beyonce is better, playing the lump of clay with nothing distinct except her bone structure, but she is still essentially a mannequin. Keith Robinson has more depth as Effie’s songwriter/choreographer brother who loses and then finds his soul, as does Danny Glover as the old-school type of manager who is tossed aside along with the debris from the riots. It’s Murphy who comes close to stealing the film as the mercurial, R&B singer doomed to be road kill when he makes his own try for crossover success, dredging up some genuinely poignant gravitas amid the cocksure comedy.

DREAMGIRLS has the requisite high energy, but more, it nails the even higher emotional stakes working in the tricky idiom of an artificial framework. It has the glitz of a great showbiz story, and the soul of a morality play

There were parts of the story that I thought could have been 'fleshed' out some more i.e. Effie's fall. The ending was a little too 'Hollywood' for me although it did bring a tear to the eye of this curmudgeon.

The Queen

No, I am not referring to Paul in a derogatory manner. Rather I am referring to the wonderful movie starring Helen Mirren.

Last night our friend Ruth called up and aske dif we wanted to see a movie. She is on her number 7 of her '10 Movies Over the Christmas Break'. We were happy for a night out although our movie philosophy is slightly different. She goes to be entertained whereas I like to go to think. Luckily with this movie we both won!

The Queen is a docudrama that scrutinizes public events where the wounds are still raw. "Queen" slips audaciously behind the famous facades of Buckingham Palace, 10 Downing St. and Balmoral Castle to catch Queen Elizabeth and Prime Minister Tony Blair in action. Both still occupy those positions. The screenplay, which director Stephen Frears has brought to life, zeroes in on the traumatic week in August 1997 following Princess Diana's death in a Paris car crash. The film, a fascinating mix of high-minded gossip and historical perspective, examines the clash of values -- of ritual and traditions versus media savvy and political ambition -- that leads to a crisis for the British monarchy. It is fascinating to watch the crash of hundreds of years of tradition against modern public sentiment.

One is so used to seeing movies and TV shows mock the British monarchy that it takes a while to adjust: This is a serious attempt to delve into the thinking and beliefs of several extremely well-known yet distant personalities. The actors do not look too much like their real-life counterparts. But the actors and filmmakers are dedicated to capturing their behavioral ticks, speech patterns and mind-sets so as to accurately as possible catch their actions and reactions to this tragedy. After you get used to the fact that the physical appearances aren't the same you do start to see many of the characteristics of the real people represented by the actors.

In the days following Princess Di's death, Queen Elizabeth (Helen Mirren), cocooned with her family in dangerous isolation at her summer retreat of Balmoral in Scotland, seriously misreads the grief of her subjects. Her silence over the princess' death, which she considers a "private matter," damages her image and the institution of the monarchy. Blair, a slick political practitioner of spin and PR, seeks to overcome the family's denial and confusion with an aggressive and one assumes unprecedented mix of persuasion and pressure.
 
Mirren's Queen comes off initially as a relic of a bygone era with a direct link to Queen Victoria herself. But over the course of the week, she emerges as ... well, a queen with dignity and durability, a woman dedicated to doing her duty but needing to cope with a newly discovered "shift in values." Mirren is superb in finding those telling moments where the royal mask drops to reveal the flesh-and-blood woman.

So, too, must Sheen's Blair adapt to an evolving situation. Whereas he is a little weak-kneed in his first audience with the Queen, despite his wife Cherie's (Helen McCrory) well-known anti-royalist sentiments, he now exhales and begins to push none too gently. Sheen has played Blair before in a telefilm also scripted by Morgan and directed by Frears. Yet Sheen still lacks the politician's supreme self-confidence and smoothness.

Prince Charles (Alex Jennings, stiff but correctly so) comes off as the voice of modernity in the family, but also a bit wimpy as he fears assassination in the days following his ex-wife's death. The Queen Mum (Sylvia Syms) is the soul of comfort and tempered advice for her daughter, but the advice pertains to another era and is of no use. Only Prince Philip (American James Cromwell, who really does not fit into this mix) acts like a blustering fool. Could he really be this daft?

The film's design is terrific as the formality in the Queen's apartments contrast brilliantly to the rough-and-tumble casualness of Blair's office and household. So the film serves dual functions. It's a giddy delight to see how these famous people behave among themselves. Yet on the serious side, the film gives us a tantalizing peak at how people operate in the corridors of power at moments of crisis.

They say that the movie is up for a number of Oscar nods and well it should be as it was excellent! Mirren wasoutstanding in respresenting a woman who has dedicated her entire life to an role that suddenly changed in a manner she didn't understand. Her gradual realization of this and her coming to terms with it makes for some very well-acted momments.