Do You Hear the Actors Sing?

Review: Les Miserables

There was a time when musicals were in style, when tone-deaf actors were dubbed, when stage actors became legitimate Hollywood stars. These days have faded; I'd argue the last great movie musical was Bob Fosse's Cabaret (1972). Les Miserables is respectable, neither subservient to every note of its source nor trying to reinvent a beloved property. But working with a smart adaptation and mostly game cast, director Tom Hooper kills some of the goodwill he dreamed.

For a romantic and bombastic poperetta like Les Mis (Miz?), the film alternates between sweep and intimacy. Hooper loads the opening sequence, following Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) as he leaves prison on parole, steals from a Samaritan, then atones for his sins, with disorientingly fast cuts and handheld camerawork. Later, he calms for Anne Hathaway's "I Dreamed a Dream," effectively repositioned after Fantine gives in to prostitution. In one unwavering shot, Hathaway effectively marries vocals and performance, starting fragile, ending angry. But Hooper's approach to this soliloquy -- an overbearing camera, mouth wide, tears tears tears -- is the same he uses for the other actors. The second female power ballad, "On My Own," is strangely truncated, and poor Samantha Barks as Eponine must sob through while the camera forces her down onto the rain-soaked pavement.

Four More Movies this Fall

I've been watching movies all autumn, and wanted to highlight a few worthy of mention. Get ready for more soon!

Anna Karenina
The first twenty minutes exhilarate: actors are thrust onto the stage of a dilapated theater, pulling on costumes, playing scenes before backdrops. But the peculiar intimacy of Joe Wright's take -- setting all of Anna Karenina in this one theater -- is lost when, more and more, the film abandons its own spatial logic. Konstantin Levin's endless ploughing of fields wouldn't work on a stage, Wright must have realized; but long interludes in the bright outdoors suggest the filmmakers weren't sure how to execute their conceit. If we can ignore the visual palate, Tom Stoppard's screenplay swiftly condenses the action, but the dialogue feels truncated. The cast is handsome, though some are fatally young. Keira Knightley reins in her usual instinct for high-strung petulance, and acquits herself well as a tremulous, willfully romantic Anna. Jude Law impresses by playing Anna's cuckolded husband, Alexei Karenin, with decency and affection. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is out of his league as Count Vronsky.
For Your Consideration: Jude Law (Supporting Actor).

Argo
They did what? Key to Argo's intrigue are the true-to-life twists and turns of a key moment in the Iran hostage crisis that hasn't been well-remembered. In the "Canadian Caper," Tony Mendez at the CIA launched a successful operation to rescue six diplomats from Tehran under the guise of a nonexistent science fiction film. Americans in November 1979 anxiously awaited a sequel to the breakaway hit Star Wars (maybe you've heard of it?). Sci-fi in Hollywood often reflected foreign-policy anxieties, from the aftermath of World War II to the rise of the Soviets and the space race. The specifics of Mendez's invented film (also named Argo) and rescue mission are already cinematic; Ben Affleck lets the story tell itself without over-dramatizing. Only the final airport showdown feels contrived. Could this be the next step in a major director career for Affleck? He's working with the best; the dynamic ensemble includes Bryan Cranston, John Goodman, Alan Arkin, Tate Donovan. Argo sits confidently aside '70s films like The Conversation and All the President's Men, when films were shot on grainy stock, writers trusted politics to be suspenseful, and editors let actors explore without splicing every five seconds.
For Your Consideration: Best Picture; Ben Affleck (Director); Chris Terrio (Screenplay).

Some Are Born Great...

Review: The Master

"Say your name." 
"Freddie Quell." 
"Say it again."
"Freddie Quell." 
"Might as well say it one more time, just to make sure you know who you are."

There's no turning back once Freddie (Joaquin Phoenix) sits for informal processing with Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman). The two men face each other over a tape recorder, Dodd leveling softballs ("Say your name.") followed by more searching questions ("Are you thoughtless in your remarks?"). He speaks with an amiable pomposity, as if giving a Sunday morning sermon. The processing scene is pivotal to The Master, and it's fun to watch: a mental tennis match between Hoffman's confident prodding and Phoenix's unpredictability.

From their meeting, Dodd senses something in Freddie: an otherness? Or that the boy is so easily malleable?  To say he's more instinct than intellect is an understatement. He's a drained vessel, far from heroic, lacking in social conduct. We laugh at his base stupidity: he humps, then curls up to, a sand mermaid made by sailors on the beach. And Phoenix gives an exhausting, highly external performance, his posture strained, his lip fixed in a sneer. Freddie's such an extreme that I wondered how The Cause could lure ordinary thinking people.

Hoffman is the best he's ever been, as effortlessly authoritative as Orson Welles in his early days. Amy Adams may be the real manipulator as his always watchful wife, or (and I suspect this more) full-on Stockholm, a loyal lapdog that Dodd has indoctrinated. Paul Thomas Anderson, writer and director, has assembled the parts together. Is his carefully calibrated direction like Dodd's rhetoric, fooling us into thinking he's made a great movie? As Adams says, maybe it's no more than "a grim joke."

Freddie doesn't reach any great self-realization. His final scene with Dodd simmers, without the volcanic crucifixion that ends Anderson's There Will Be Blood. Hoffman singing "On a Slow Boat to China" as a goodbye feels deliberately arbitary. The Master reenacts welcome-home war films like The Best Years of Our Lives  (1946) and strips them of their patriotism, their hollow Messages and Meanings. We wait with Freddie to figure out where we're going; and when we arrive, what have we seen?

For Your Consideration: Best Picture; Best Director (Paul Thomas Anderson); Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman (Actor); Amy Adams (Supporting Actress); Jonny Greenwood (Score). 

TCM! Hire Me as Your Copyeditor!

Dear Robert Osbourne:

We all love TCM. But Bette Davis and Joan Crawford aren't giving you the stink-eye for no reason.

Oscar Forecast: 2013

Are you in a summer movie slump? I’ve seen many recent releases, and I’m still waiting for one movie I really want to write about. The Dark Knight Rises came closest. So instead of retiring this space until November, how about an early Oscars forecast?

"Will any of us be nominated?"

Moviemakers, take note: Your chances hinge on what the studio spends, how many parties you attend in the New Year, if the public feels you’re overdue. Sure, the actual movie matters. If Harvey Weinstein says it matters.

These are my Best Picture nominee predictions a healthy seven months early. However many there will be:

1. Lincoln

One of two highly anticipated films that couldn’t possibly—but will—live up to the excitement. Never underestimate a biopic starring Daniel Day-Lewis, helmed by Steven Spielberg. Sally Field, they really like you! And if War Horse could make the cut…

2. The Master

Believe. The. Hype. After Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, you bet everyone in Hollywood is ready for his next chance at bat.

So Live and Laugh at It All

Review: Uncle Vanya
City Center, New York
July 28, 2012

Cate Blanchett is a woman of uncanny beauty. Her director, cast, and even husband (the translator) know it, too, judging by the Sydney Theatre Festival staging of Uncle Vanya. As she enters the stage, cloaked in a headscarf, sunglasses, and cream-white dress that evoked Grace Kelly, it's hard not to feel a little reverent. Her wardrobe and coiffed appearance announce, yes, a star who knows she's a star; but she's also considerably older than her character Yelena Serebryakova, who should be 27. Blanchett's approach to Yelena begins with careful elegance, when she comess to the estate of her retired husband's late wife. We soon see her crisp, statuesque appearance fall away into fumbling sexuality and even goofiness. These mannerisms are an artifice for Yelena, maybe trying hard to set back the clock, afraid to let loose and let go.


Director Tamás Ascher throws Blanchett onto a set caked in sweat that seems to close in more each act. The family maintaining the estate all ramble about their boredom while their lives waste away. I'd imagined Uncle Vanya would be full of the melancholy and lingering disappointment I associate with Ingmar Bergman's films. Instead, the audience laughed throughout. The cast didn't push for humor; this wasn't a Vanya for Must-See-TV at 8 p.m. But Andrew Upton's translation lets us laugh (with that laugh of understanding) at the Serebryakova family's follies. We can relate to the shame of throwing ourselves at someone and being rejected.


This isn't grand tragedy, just drama born from ennui. Blanchett moves about the house like a swan, exotic and perhaps dangerous if you get too close. She lures two men, first Uncle Vanya himself (Richard Roxburgh), who at 47 feels he has thrown away all his chances. Even his attempts to seduce Yelena are sad, and well-executed by Roxburgh, the soul of this production. Roxburgh makes his self-pity and disgust extraordinarily funny. And who could resist a shot at the virile town doctor, Astrov? The excellent Hugo Weaving is a force of life as Astrov, shaking up the boredom of this old estate, bellowing about, kissing Yelena with unanticipated suddenness. 


I wasn't sold on Hayley McElhinney's interpretation of Sonya, the professor's daughter who suffers from being not beautiful. McElhinney seemed more simple-minded than plain, and felt overshadowed by Blanchett's male stage partners. But the pleasures of my first experience with Uncle Vanya--and Chekhov in any form--were many. The Sydney mounting steps around tragedy, bypasses comedy and melodrama, and settles into a balance like life itself.

Out of the Past

Review: Other Desert Cities
Booth Theater, New York
June 9, 2012


Last weekend in New York, we went to Other Desert Cities the night before the Tony Awards. If there were an award for ensemble acting, attention should be paid to Joe Mantello's lacerating production. I'm glad I caught the show in New York, with five go-for-broke performances that filled in the cracks of a solid but often familiar play.


Well-off Republicans Polly and Lyman Wyeth (Stockard Channing, Stacy Keach) are spending Christmas in Palm Springs for the first time in years with her alcoholic sister Silda (Judith Light) and their children: courtroom reality TV producer Trip (Thomas Sadoski) and formerly hospitalized novelist Brooke (Elizabeth Marvel), who's overcome crippling depression. But Polly is quick to suspect that Brooke's newest "novel" is something far more personal and damaging to the family. Sure enough: it's a memoir of her other brother, who committed suicide.

Stockard Channing anchors the cast as the caustic, no-nonsense matriarch who once made Nancy Reagan cry at dinner. She will keep the Wyeths' reputation at any cost, even if it means disowning her daughter. Channing's always had a quick wit and sharp tongue, employed here to harrowing (even villainous) effect. As her husband, a former Western movie-star, Keach plays a man overshadowed by his wife and his spectacular cinematic death scenes. It's to Keach's credit that Lyman, so out of touch and haunted by his past, doesn't recede into the background. Neither does Sadoski, sincere as the do-no-wrong son who tries not to take sides.


Marvel's Brooke is on the edge, but she's a strong warrior against Channing's Polly. Her histrionics, though, sometimes feel out of sync with the other actors, pushing the emotional instabilities we already know Brooke suffers from. She's best in her scenes with Light, who starts as comic relief but reveals her determination to have the book published. Silda appears dimmed by the years, even if her outward wisecracks say otherwise.


Jon Robin Baitz's play is in the tradition of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, from the acerbic jabs to the enclosed setting, with the family trapped out in the open desert landscape, isolated but unable to hide. And like Virginia Woolf, everyone has their juicy outburst, and unconscionable secrets are excavated. But Other Desert Cities depends upon its twist ending to be satisfying drama, a revelation that warrants more aftermath than we see. How did they forgive each other? How did they move on from the unthinkable? There's plenty of acid along the ride, but I left wondering if we'd already been down this road.

I Miss the Highs and Lows

Review: Next to Normal
SpeakEasy Stage Company, Boston
April 11, 2012

"I miss the mountains / I miss the dizzy heights / All the magic manic days and the dark depressing nights." This is the moment in Act One when housewive Diana starts to grasp the reality (or un-reality) of her bipolar disorder. There won't be much balance. But the show depicting this, Next to Normal, covers the spiral of treatments and their effects on a suburban family with surprising delicacy. The score is often subdued, with a light pop-rock flair. Only a few songs go for the manic side of the disorder. Composer Tom Kitt keeps spirits high and has a knack for weaving multiple characters through a song, though he's stuck with Brian Yorkey's lyrics and their occasionally distracting rhymes that you see coming in advance.


Few musicals win Pulitzer Prizes for Drama, and in Next to Normal's favor, it won't be quickly dated like the previous Pulitzer-winning musical, Rent. Next to Normal shies away from brand names and fads, and the pharmacology and psychoanalytics are generalized. In workshops and Off-Broadway, there were more numbers orienting us in the "here and now," including an ode to CostCo. But Next to Normal eventually focused on emotional heft over satire.


What it does need is a cast that brings electricity to the material. Here Speakeasy's production falls a little flat. The staging space is effectively small, trapping Diana's family inside her illness. But what the actors find in intimacy, they lose in energy. Kerry Dowling's Diana ranges from cool and collected to mildly kooky; there are more ups and downs to explore. Her voice doesn't sound comfortable with the pop score, though she manages some belting here and there. And Timothy John Smith (who filled in for her husband Dan), charismatic in 2011's Nine at Speakeasy and Candide at the Huntington, is overly disconnected. Though his singing is great, he plays the already tight-lipped Dan with too much stoicism.


The younger cast fits better, especially Sarah Drake as perfectionist daughter Natalie, who starts to lose her firm control on every aspect of her life. The writers Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt are compassionate--maybe too much?--toward the whole family, and even their critique of modern tendencies to over-subscribe/analyze patients doesn't sting too much. The show could use more bite, which a more energetic production and actors could fill in. At least, unlike a lot of modern rock musicals, the anger and angst aren't adolescent. This musical (even when it's sentimental) is for adults.

Oscar Season 2011 Roundup (Part II)

Dear readers, it's time to unveil my Top Ten films for 2011. I didn't see Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy or A Dangerous Method or War Horse yet. But for the sake of argument, here's how I'd rank them today. (I reviewed them all but Weekend, which is a graceful, quiet indie about two gay men sharing three days together, a brief encounter more believable and honest than most romantic dramas. You can--and should--watch it on Netflix.)

Josh's Top 10

1. The Descendants

2. Melancholia

3. Take Shelter

The rest, in no particular order:

4. Bridesmaids

5. Drive

6. Hugo

7. Margin Call

8. Moneyball

9. The Tree of Life

10. Weekend

For some diversity of taste, I pulled strings and got two other Top Ten lists for you readers. The only movie where we three overlap is The Descendants.

Oscar Season 2011 Roundup (Part I)

For last year's roundup, I postulated that the Academy Award voters have moved toward comedies and genre films. We've seen dark films win Best Picture recently (No Country for Old Men, The Hurt Locker), but these past two years have gone in the other direction. Audiences are falling for comedies and movies about the movies.

Many of the top nominees were in the running before anyone saw them, but Martin Scorsese's Hugo is a pleasant surprise. Like The Artist, this film delights as it explores the history of movies. Scorsese makes a compelling case for 3D, playing George Melies's utterly charming 2D movies within the three dimensions of Parisian hustle-bustle. Hugo makes technology seem wondrous again: Melies was a superbly innovative artist, inventing the rules of cinema as he went along, and he's given a sensitive rendering by Ben Kingsley.

Oscar Contenders #6: Life, the Universe, and Everything

Review: The Tree of Life

Yes, there are dinosaurs. They pass by quickly, like many images in Terrence Malick's fifth film The Tree of Life. Their time is fleeting--blink and you'll miss it! And once you see dinosaurs, you know Malick doesn't intend to explain everything. His film captures an essence: pieces of lives as they're lived, memories imagined and real. Does it need to be more than that?

Most of the story focuses on a 1950s family in Waco, Texas: Mr. O'Brien, the engineer father with twenty-seven patents (Brad Pitt); his gentle wife (Jessica Chastain); and three adolescent boys. We see scattered childhood memories as their son Jack looks back (Hunter McCracken at 10; Sean Penn in the present day). The images feel like pure cinema; too much plot would be intrusive. Malick's screenplay feels like the beginning and endings of scenes, with conversations left on the editing-room floor.

Brad Pitt fleshes out a father conflicted between sternness and affection for his sons. Jessica Chastain's mother is more archetype than character--earth goddess, free spirit--but she's filmed with a gossamer beauty that's hard to resist. The story that's told is very male-oriented. But juxtaposed with the Big Bang, all the hangups of patriarchal society seem arbitrary, and I bet Malick intended that.

Every frame is full of light. We feel the stifling fifties suburbia waiting to be opened up, just as we see the universe expand. (This definitely owes a debt to 2001: A Space Odyssey.) But the son Jack grows up to be a corporate worker (Penn), stuck inside a glass elevator, imagining his own escape. Penn's brief scenes were probably fuller in the script; his present-day role is a cameo that doesn't contribute very much to the whole. Where has Jack gone since childhood? Is the beginning the only part of life that Malick wants us to see? Why does Penn look so sad?

The emotions we experience are sometimes outside the story, but each image fills in the larger canvas. Sure, sometimes it reaches too far, as in Jack's afterlife reunion on the beach with his parents, transcending time and space. But focusing on just the O'Brien family in the fifties would have deprived The Tree of Life of its wonder. And this is a wonderful film, if you let it wash over you. What better subject for a sprawling epic than creation itself?

Let's Talk about Something Really Important...

Musicals. Yes, musicals.

People either (a) love them because they can sing along on road trips, and guess which Glee character will cover each song; or (b) hate them for the same reasons. Though try singing along to Adding Machine or Marie Christine, and you'll see that not all musicals are what you expect them to be.

Many people rail against the musical because it’s not a realistic form. Why would characters express their feelings in song? Well, to them I say, why do Madonna or Radiohead express their feelings in song? Isn’t that what songs are for, to express things?

Myth vs. Truth #1: Just because some musicals are silly does not mean all musicals are silly.

There are two musicals in the works that we should discuss. One stars Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter, and potentially Taylor Swift. It's incredibly bombastic, and they sing the whole damn time. The odds are strongly against it. 

Myth vs. Truth #2: Audiences find singing in movies uncomfortable.

I don’t think anyone has a problem with singing in the Rodgers and Hammerstein films. The writers knew how to move from dialogue to song and back without apologizing.

Whereas in Rob Marshall’s Nine, the director made so many apologies that the songs felt irrelevant. Nicole Kidman was forced to sing the lovely “Unusual Way” in a basement key, in a fantasy sequence on a movie set with a fantasy fountain, with every verse interrupted by dialogue. See it for yourself:

Give Us More to See

Review: Red
Wimberly Theatre, Boston
January 11, 2011

Mark Rothko, No. 14, 1960

In 1958, abstract expressionist painter (and rising star) Mark Rothko accepted a commission to create murals for The Four Seasons in Manhattan. "I wanted to paint something that would ruin the appetite of every son-of-a-bitch who ever eats in that room," he said. "If the restaurant would refuse to put up my murals, that would be the ultimate compliment. But they won’t." Josh Logan's new play Red studies Rothko over two years as he and his assistant ready paintings for the restaurant.
 
What Logan captures best is Rothko's unerring emotionalism. He has accepted the Four Seasons gig to let the work transform the space, to turn an overpriced, commercialized hotspot into a cathedral for his expression. As Logan presents him, Rothko is not godlike, and does not think of himself that way. He's human to a fault, bubbling over with anger at the slightest provocation, but also thoughtful and willing to open up. Thomas Derrah finds this balance easily in the Speakeasy's current staging in Boston: his Rothko is not enigmatic, nor is he impossible to connect with. For all of his philosophizing, he simply believes the power his colors hold, revolutionizing the tradition of Joan Miró and Salvador Dalí.
 
Logan stumbles on one key moment: Rothko's boyish assistant Ken, an enterprising painter himself, has a dark childhood secret. This comes after a breathless tableau, the two men priming a canvas blood-red, and Ken's sudden confession feels like Logan is forcing emotions after they'd just been summoned with only paintbrushs.
 
Ken gains chutzpah over their two-year collaboration, and him battling Rothko over the crassness of the commission is one of the play's pleasures. Karl Baker Olson pushes Ken's naivete too much at first, but he soon becomes a confident opponent. He's part of the young crowd, pushing their mentors aside to create something new. The trend is Pop Art, which Rothko dismisses, quietly fearing that he'll soon be snuffed out. Red casts a remarkably level-headed look at the painter Logan enlivens. Like the paintings, layered rectangles of searing color, it's not what the play says, it's how it feels.

Win Win for Comedies

Let me interrupt my steady movie reviews for a few notes on awards.

1. And now, for something completely different...

2011 was a year for comedies. Three of them are in Gold Derby's top 10 Oscar predictions for Best Picture: frontrunner The Artist, Midnight in Paris, and Bridesmaids. In Original Screenplay, Beginners (I'd call it a comedy), Young Adult, Win Win, and 50/50 compete the three films above.

Not all comedies are getting Oscar love...

2. For once, the Golden Globes don't seem so strange.

Of the Golden Globe comedy nominees 50/50, The Artist, Bridesmaids, Midnight in Paris, and My Week with Marilyn, two vie for Best Picture and four are primed for Original Screenplay. Even though there are no Adapted Screenplay comedies, 2011's dramas were still light (The Descendants, Moneyball, and Hugo... not quite Schindler's List). More portentous Oscar bait (i.e. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and J. Edgar) sits on the sidelines.

3. Who do you have to sleep with at the WGA?

The Writers Guild continues to surprise. The films ineligible by their strange rules look just as good as those recognized.

Nominees: Bridesmaids, The Descendants, 50/50, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Help, Hugo, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, Win Win, Young Adult

Not eligible: The Artist, Beginners, Drive, Margin Call, Martha Marcy May Marlene, My Week with Marilyn, Shame, The Skin I Live In, Take Shelter, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Oscar Contenders #5: Women's Edition

Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo + Young Adult

Lisbeth Salander is a rock star. Eerily thin, tattooed and pierced, with jet-black hair, she's both a fierce punk cybergenius and a vulnerable little girl. In the riveting The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, magazine publisher Mikael Blomkvist calls upon her surveillance services to aid his search for the long-lost Harriet Vanger, likely murdered 36 years before by her family. Lisbeth joins him in work and even in bed, but keeps her distance, forthcoming with research and withholding emotionally. Relative unknown Rooney Mara accentuates Lisbeth's waywardness. She wears the clothes, but underneath the hardened outside, she looks so impossibly young and fragile. Mara's Lisbeth is a palimpsest: a blank state she keeps erasing, to lose herself in.

The character is interesting enough, and Daniel Craig so quietly appealing as Blomkvist, that we don't think too much about the central mystery. The elderly Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer, sly as always) recruits him to figure out which family member killed Harriet. To work, Blomkvist takes up residence on the island, a windy wasteland where we expect violence to erupt any moment. And does it ever.

Director David Fincher has never been squeamish, and he doesn't hold back from the more upsetting moments of the books--including sexual violence. Steig Larsson's novel (originally Men who Hate Women in Sweden) depicts a misogynistic world where "an eye for an eye" prevails. How should we react to Lisbeth's comeuppance against her sexual aggressor? Fincher surely revels in her coolness, but does he want us to cheer or cringe? Since he can't sink too deep into the mystery and its twenty-odd suspects, he instead propels the pace forward. The script feels like an adaptation, sure, and the last half-hour's epilogue is a long-drawn-out tangent, but Fincher has a certain touch. He's a rock star, too.