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.