Linkfish

Before we get to the links, two things.

1. Catfish, a hot ticket documentary from Sundance is coming to theaters near you. It's totally worth seeing but please avoid all articles and trailers. Just know that it's about an online relationship. Just trust me on this one. Totally worth seeing (even if you hate it) for the conversations it'll spark afterwards.
2. Black Swan will open in early December, presumably following The Wrestler's release pattern. I'm not sure this is a good idea since it seems like a harder sell for awardage since it's genre tinged AND about young beauties. Oscar likes old broken down piece of meat man drama way more. But I must lower my expectations. I'm unreasonably excited and there's not even a trailer yet.

Link Time
I Need My Fix Emily Blunt in Elle. Did y'all hear Meryl Streep sang ABBA at Blunt's wedding? Blunt leads a charmed life, okay.
Coming Soon The Social Network and The Tempest will open and close NYFF, respectively. But what's the centerpiece?
The Disney Blog a live action Mulan with Zhang Ziyi. Well, Ziyi could really use a comeback hit.
Movies Kick Ass weighs in on the new posters for Tangled and Never Let Me Go.
/Film Liam Neeson on longer attached to Steven Spielberg's Lincoln biopic. Will it ever be made?
Fader remembers the Madonna-adjacent style of Tony Ward. Definitely Madonna's best trophy boy.
That Obscure Object Johnny Depp by Herb Ritts? Wow, this takes me back.


Fashion & Style considers Mad Men and and the vicarious thrills and feelings of superiority watching its messy lives. But are we living? Great piece.
Edward Copeland on Film I haven't read this 75th anniversary article on Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps yet, but I hope to write about the movie myself tonight, if time allows. Watching it on Netflix today.
Alt Film Guide Suso Cecchi D'Amico, the female Italian screenwriter that I'd forgotten on my list of Oldest Living Oscar Nominees last month, died yesterday in Rome. She leaves behind many classic films including The Bicycle Thief and The Leopard.

Today's Must Read
The Awl "Fingered by Fosse" a conversation about jazz hands, not spirit fingers. The clip from All That Jazz makes me sad because we'll never see dancing like Ann Reinking's again at the cinema. No directors or studios care about training anymore. And Ann is a marvel. That takes years to master.

Finally, here's Jude Law for Dior Homme (directed by Guy Ritchie)




Jude Law is nasty. We've always liked him that way. Ever since Wilde.

Bob Fosse, Posterized

Today would have been Bob Fosse's 82nd birthday if he hadn't smoked and sexed himself to death while choreographing dirty musical numbers and flirting with angels of death in Nineteen-Seve... oh wait, I'm thinking of Joe Gideon, his All That Jazz altar ego. Fosse died of a heart attack at 60 in 1987. He's best remembered today as the most important choreographer of the 20th century this side of Martha Graham, totally affecting everything that came after him. But he was also a brilliant film director and in the realm of cinema he rarely gets his due. When great actors die young they often become legendary. When great directors die after just a handful of movies, not so much... especially if they made their mark in the musical genre.

Fosse acted and danced in other movies but these are the six filmed entertainments he directed. All are worth seeing and two are among the greatest films ever made.

Sweet Charity (69) | Cabaret (72) | Liza With a Z (concert telefilm, 72)

Lenny (74) | All That Jazz (79) | Star 80 (83)

How many have you seen? If the answer is less than six, do yourself a huge favor, and put them on your rental queue. Have a Fosse completist festival at home. You won't be disappointed. And maybe you'll even wonder why he's not lumped in with the biggies when people talk about the great 70s directors. I know I do.

I like Rob Marshall's Chicago (2002) just fine but it's hard not to think about what Fosse's version would have been like. And if they do remake Damn Yankees like they keep saying they will, will they keep his awesome choreography, or chuck it and go with unskilled dancers in the big roles?

God... it's so great when you can see entire bodies in dance scenes.
Almost no filmmakers understand this anymore.

If you've seen all of Fosse's films, why not a double feature of Damn Yankees! (1958) and All That Jazz. Think about it: In the former you can watch Fosse and the legendary Gwen Verdon together (like in the scene above) and then in the latter you can watch Roy Sheider and Leland Palmer pretend to be them, acting out their very difficult relationship with Oscar calibre aplomb.

As a takeaway please enjoy Bob Fosse doing a minute of Fosse-isms in 1953's Kiss Me Kate.



Incidentally, that musical was in 3D. I actually saw it in 3D the very first time I saw it at a special showing in the 80s (there was a mini 3D fad ... i think it lasted about a year and half round about 1984 or something?). I'm reading that 3D might die out again and am crossing my fingers that history repeats itself. I like my movies flat. The best performers burst out of the screen in multiple dimensions anyway. You don't need glasses to witness those miracles. Now if only they'd give me film grain back... if anyone ever tries to clear the grain from Cabaret it won't even remotely be Cabaret, you know?
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Birthday Suits: Oscar-Snubbed

Today's birthday list doesn't make me feel celebratory so much as oscarighteously furious. Perhaps I should explain. It's only the four first birthday boys whipping me into a golden frenzy. Then things calm down.

Claude, Ann and Dick

Todays Birthdays 11/10
1889 Claude Rains, never won an Oscar. This despite being a great screen actor, whose filmography reads like a catalogue of Golden Age greatness. He's an actor who made indelible contributions to not 1, not 2 but 7 Best Picture nominees, a number that doesn't even reflect films like Notorious, Now Voyager, The Wolf Man, The Invisible Man, Mrs. Skeffington or The Greatest Story Ever Told. He didn't even get an honorary statue!
1925 Richard Burton, never won an Oscar. This despite winning exactly as many nominations as Liz Taylor won husbands.
1928 Ennio Moriccone has never won an Oscar. This despite being a world reknowned composer, being worshipped by film fanatics and revolutionizing how people scored Westerns.
1932 Roy Scheider never won an Oscar. This despite giving one of the truly great performances of an entire decade (All That Jazz -- more on that great film) replete with them. And it was a biopic performance no less! All That... plus Jaws and The French Connection.

(whew) officially done bitching about Oscars... for now.

1944 Tim Rice, clever lyricist of movie songs you know and love (or loathe) from their ubiquity
1949 Ann Reinking, sometime actor, great dancer
1955 Roland Emmerich, world (and cinema) destroyer: Day After Tomorrow, 10,000 BC and 2012. Ugh
1960 Neil Gaiman, prolific brilliant author. Go, Coraline!!!
1977 Brittany Murphy acts "I hope not sporadically"
<--- 1977 Won Bin (or Bin Won if you prefer) actor, gorgeous creature, star of two recent Korean Oscar hopefuls: Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War and this year's buzzy Mother
1978 Eve, rapper, fledgling actress, Hurl Scout
1982 Heather Matarazzo, actress, Anne Hathaway foil, out lesbian, Dawn Wiener
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Streep Nom #2, 1979

An open discussion thread for each of Streep's nominations. The nominees for 1979 were...

• Jane Alexander, Kramer vs. Kramer
• Barbara Barrie, Breaking Away
• Candice Bergen, Starting Over
  
• Mariel Hemingway, Manhattan
  
• Meryl Streep, Kramer vs. Kramer

...and Meryl won. The first of her two (only two. sigh) Oscar wins. As a little kid I was really into Breaking Away because my sister was in love with it... and I worshipped everything my big sister loved. Barrie was quite an endearing presence as the cycling nut's mom. Hemingway and Streep are my favorite among the nominees these days. The Golden Globe lineup went 3/5 with Oscar, trading out Mariel and Barbara for Valerie Harper in Chapter Two and Kathleen Beller in Promises in the Dark... yes that Kathleen Beller, "Kirby Colby" from Dynasty for your 80s nostalgia freaks! I personally still wonder if Oscar ought to have thrown a nomination towards crazy-eyed, long-legged, codependent dancing freak Ann Reinking in All That Jazz (more on her performance here).



Which performances are you most crazy about from 1979 and how close did Oscar get to your dream ballot?

Matthew Morrison and Glee

Did you watch the pilot of the new show choir comedy Glee last night? Unfortunately, there's no rush. In an odd carrot-dangling exercize from FOX, you can watch it all summer long on their website. You just can't see anything new. Not that Glee is "new" per se. We've seen high school shows with well meaning adorable teachers and can-do dorky kids before. We've seen musically self aware comedies (Ally McBeal / Pushing Daisies). It's not "new" but it is very very welcome. It's another blessed flag planted down in the pop culture sand, with the inscription "the musicals are back."

I swear to god if I read one more opinion piece / review of anything musical that feels the need to use the disclaimer...

I'm not really a musicals guy/girl...

I'm going to...
Well, I'm going to ... bite my pillow!

How about we drop this foolish bias and twittering nervousness about anything show-tuney or theatrical. Let's just admit that it was out of fashion for about twenty years -- roughly the years in between the genre's final 70s classic All That Jazz (1979) and its masterful rebirth Dancer in the Dark (2000) / Moulin Rouge! (2001) -- and two decades is a lot of time to train people to believe that a particular genre is "uncool" or "gay" or "only meant to be in animated movies" and that they're not supposed to like it.


Stop being sheep opinion-makers! Why the disclaimers? It's like many bloggers, talking heads and critics are worried about being seen as uncool. And that's so, well, high school. Stop worrying about what's cool and enjoy anything that's passionately created, well executed and joyfully performed. Enjoy anything that is glad to be what it is. There are so many joyless money-making exercizes out there. [*cough* Wolverine... seriously? I think everyone involved needed major injections of anti-depressants]

Glee is certainly glad to be what it is. The first episode is funny, mostly well cast (yay Jane Lynch. Never can get enough Jane Lynch), moving and bursting with promise. It was also just casually adorable. That light touch was particularly surprising given that musicals are more prone to tilt towards the charm offensive. Not that there's anything wrong with that: if you've got it, flaunt it and whatnot. Glee doesn't whip out its razzle dazzle into the rousing "Don't Stop Believing" finale, but by then you're already a believer. B+/A-

My only quibbles: Why no singing from Matthew Morrison in the lead role as Will Schuester? I've seen him thrice on stage (Hairspray, The Light in the Piazza, 10 Million Miles) and his voice is beauteous. As is the rest of him.

Matthew atop a pickup for a solo in the short-lived 10 Million Miles.

Glee did manage to sneak in one beefcake shot of Morrison in bed but no singing to stamp it with an exclamation point. For a while Broadway and Off Broadway were combining his hunk quotient with the killer voice to great effect: shirtless for the romantic highlight in The Light in the Piazza (the unbelievably gorgeous "Say it Somehow" --god, that show was so fab), Broadway Bares 18, extra pumped-up and wife beater clad for most of 10 Million Miles (the show wasn't so hot but the music was super. You really can't go wrong with Patty Griffin, now, can you?),

<--- Matthew with puppy. Awwww

When Glee returns there will supposedly be guest appearances from other glittery musical theater types like Kristin Chenoweth, Cheyenne Jackson, Victor Garber and John Lloyd Young. But given the show's concepts (which seems to only allow for the high schoolers to be singing ... how are they going to give all these giant voices their own musical numbers?). Either way, this show will be a much better rent-paying option for Broadway stars than Law & Order (their previous cash cow) sine though none of them ever got anywhere close to a musical number on that procedural. They usually just got a paycheck for delivering some exposition as victims, criminals or witnesses. Snooze.

Two videos: Matthew Morrison and Zooey Deschanel in Once Upon a Mattress and "Don't Stop Believing" from Glee (though I'd advise watching the whole show first. It's more moving that way)



In conclusion: September/October can't come soon enough. Summer is my least favorite season, anyway. Let's skip ahead to fall. That way we get the new TV shows, falling leaves, Oscar buzz and prestige movie season.

I'm totally into time travel this month, huh? 1984, Fall 2009, Terminators 91. How to stay in the present tense? Where When am I?
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Breakfast With... Joe Gideon

Alka Seltzer, Dexedrine, eyedrops... a cigarette in the shower. You're ready to go!

Roy Scheider in All That Jazz (1979)

It's showtime, folks

This is not a healthy energy-strong breakfast. Where does Bob Fosse /Joe Gideon get all that energy? Man cannot live on sex, drugs and jazz hands alone.

The 9th Day of Christmas

Some 'Ladies Dancing' to kick off your weekend. Is there anything better than dancing ladies? That's a rhetorical question. There's not.

Whatever Lola Wants...

My Krak(owski) addiction is acting up again since I took in the NY City Center production of Damn Yankees over the holiday weekend. The ridiculously talented Jane Krakowski dares invite comparison to the legendary Gwen Verdon ...and survives.

For those of you too young to know about Gwen Verdon, she was Bob Fosse's chief muse (Leland Palmer plays a version of her in Fosse's auto-biopic All That Jazz, 1979 --click for my retrospective). She created Lola for the stage and transferred her to the screen as well in the 1958 movie musical. Damn Yankees is a comic spin on Faust wherein a crazed baseball fan makes a deal with the devil to help his beloved losing baseball team beat the Yankees. "Lola" is the devil's #1 home-wrecking right hand girl. It's essentially a supporting role but the kind of supporting role that dominates a show. Lola gets the most and the best numbers. Jane Krakowski was working her ass off throughout the new production (running until July 27th), and having a ball with the complicated Fosse choreography.

The production isn't without its rough patches [cough* Sean Hayes is horrible. He can't decide whether to do "JUST JACK" or not ] but the ensemble is great. Cheyenne Jackson plays the Hell bound baseball star and his voice is in better shape than ever. Jane, though, was the dazzling bright spot of the show. She's making a habit of that even if she isn't getting the A list fame her entertaining generosity warrants. She was always a treat on Ally McBeal as "Elaine" working innumerable varations and vulnerability into what would have been a one note role. And then there was Nine, (pictured right) in which she brought down the house with her cooing orgasmic rendering of "Call From the Vatican". The movie version (coming next year --more on that very soon) is going strictly A list in casting. Penélope Cruz snagged Jane's TONY winning role. We know Cruz can do sexy but there's no way her singing is as good. And can she make her seduction wickedly funny as well as sizzling hot? She'll need to bring her Volver A game if she hopes to stop the show movie.

Can Penélope Cruz make seduction hilarious?

Anyway, just for fun here's a very old video of Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon discussing "Whatever Lola Wants" and performing some of it too.

Whatever Lola wants...
Lola gets
And little man, little Lola wants you!

How about Nathaniel. Can Nathaniel get what he wants? It's simple: an Emmy nomination for Jane Krakowski for 30 Rock.

She's one of the 10 finalists for supporting actress. Nobody on 30 Rock makes me guffaw as loudly and that's saying something since its the funniest show on television.

the 10 finalists
Bold means I'm rooting for them though it's basically a respectable list of ten, don't you think? Kristin Chenoweth, "Pushing Daisies" , Conchata Ferrell, "Two and a Half Men" Jenna Fischer, "The Office" Jane Krakowski, "30 Rock" Judith Light, "Ugly Betty" Elizabeth Perkins, "Weeds" Amy Poehler, "Saturday Night Live" Jean Smart, "Samantha Who?" Holland Taylor, "Two and a Half Men"
and Vanessa Williams, "Ugly Betty"

I'm not naive enough to think Jane is ever going to get a big film career (her current movie part is a dance instructor in Kit Kittredge: An American Girl) but her profile should still be higher for all that she keeps giving in television, on Broadway and very occasionally on the movie screens, too (her last decent film role was Alfie, 2004 though she had a relatively indecent one in Pretty Persuasion, 2005)

Links: Barrowman, Tomei, Scheider and more

Variety breaks the news that I broke over a month ago on my first podcast: Marisa Tomei will play the female lead in the next Darren Aronofsky movie, The Wrestler. If you missed my interview with Marisa -click here for listening options
Topless Robot action figures of The Princess Bride --many many years after the fact...
Towleroad a love scene for ScarJo and Penelope Cruz (you know, like, together) in Vicky Christina Barcelona?
Glenn Kenny, Stale Popcorn, David Poland and Kim Morgan all have nice pieces up on Roy Scheider (RIP). I hope you'll read my retrospective tribute to All That Jazz if you haven't already. Scheider didn't win the Oscar for it but damn if that's not one impressive "biopic" performance.
PopWatch Slezak proposes a great script-doctor fix for Juno

And look at this cool campaign featuring John Barrowman (Torchwood --are you watching that? It's good) over in the UK. It's some damn good advice. Too bad this campaign isn't international

[source]

All That Jazz (1979)

Reader Request -Every Monday. I realize it's Tuesday - shut up! I wrote this for Glenn but in the attempt to write about it (abandoned many drafts, rewatched it too much) I decided it needed to be part of my canon after all. And there's also a Fosse blog-a-thon goin' on... or so I've heard. Must check that out when I find moment to breathe. So I guess this is three posts in one*

All That Jazz, written and directed by Bob Fosse, lift its title from the famous opening tune of Kander & Ebb’s stage musical Chicago. That show’s original Broadway production was directed, co-written and choreographed by Fosse himself in 1975. The director undoubtedly felt a certain ownership of that signature opening tune. He may not have written the song but is there any doubt that he lived in those whoopee spots, breathed in cold gin, inspired pianos hot. Did you hear that Fosse’s queer for all that jazz?

The title of this picture is apt and also thoroughly meta which makes it in 1979, ahead of its time. Riffing on a former Fosse triumph is just the beginning of the self-indulgence. Though Fosse did make one more film after it (Star 80, 1983) All That Jazz was his last triumphant hurrah as one of the most influential cultural figures of his time. True to the director’s showbiz bravado, he trained Jazz’s lens on the last hurrah of its fictional director Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider). To Fosse’s credit no fiction is forced. The director repeatedly presents his alter ego in reflected doubled images cheekily underlining the Gideon/Fosse oneness. This is a warts and all autobiographical picture of Fosse’s own larger than life persona -- his life, love, work and legend. Joe Gideon is not a character. It’s a stage name.

Now, to the stage. (Read the full article)
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*it had better be since it's 1796 words long and still I feel like I barely scratched its surface. This movie is impossible!